by Dawn Steele
“A war rages within me. There is a part of me who wishes to kill you, and a part which does not.”
“Then I have only one request,” Snow White went on, marveling that she could speak so lightly of her own death. But the Wormhole and what she had gone through had leached all self-pity from her. Swiftly, she told the Raven about the invasion. “Our kingdom is at stake if we don’t stop this. Help me and I will come willingly to you.”
She realized she meant it too. She wasn’t afraid anymore.
For the first time, the Raven seemed doubtful. “You are with child. What woman would willingly sacrifice her own child?” The Raven realized the import of her own words and then cried, “Oh!”
“I have since learned that there is much more at stake than the three of us put together. So help me, or you will be queen to a wasteland!”
The shimmering light shifted. There came a clap of thunder so deafening that Snow White’s eardrums splintered. She found herself writhing on the ground in agony.
Ground! Amazed, she looked up. She was on a rocky ledge, carved so smoothly that it had to be artificial. Golden walls of indeterminate texture closed in around her, and to her left plunged the Wormhole in all its radiance. The hot air immediately seared her flesh. She felt her skin blistering, as though it were doused in mild acid. Her throat and nostrils burned with the smell of sulfur. She looked down to see patches of her skin turning black and trailing wisps of smoke.
“What’s happening?” she rasped. Her scalp felt as though a crown of fire thorns had been rammed onto it. She touched her head. All her beautiful ebony hair had fallen off.
Aein crept to his feet beside her. A few red splotches were beginning to form on his face.
“We’re in a Wormhole Hive,” he said warily.
She felt his palm on her cheek. When it came away, it wore a bloody slough of her skin. Around them were splintered wood beams and shredded sail. Their vessel had indeed disintegrated.
A little distance away, Gustav whimpered, the blisters puckering his skin into a red and white mess.
“You can both jump back into the Wormhole.” Aein gripped her arm urgently and shepherded her to the edge. “Go now, hurry!”
“No.” She wrenched her arm away. “You and I are going to see this through. What if something happens to you and you can’t make it to your mother? What if you get killed?”
“I’m coming too,” Gustav said. He crept unsteadily to his feet.
Her heart speeding out to him, Snow White said, “No. It is you who should go back to the Wormhole. This is no place to die.”
“I came here of my own free will.” Gustav summoned enough strength to hold his head up high. “Just as you did. You will not deny me front seat to the greatest scientific discovery mankind has made.”
“There will be no discovery if you’re dead!”
The Raven squawked once and flapped her black wings. She cast a massive shadow on the wall. If her skin was blistering beneath all those feathers, Snow White could not tell.
A high-pitched chittering sounded. Snow White turned to see several Sporadeans flying towards them. They aimed their red rods at the little cluster of humans.
“The guards think I’m an imposter,” Aein said tersely. “They were told several days ago that all the princes are dead.”
The Raven flew at the guards with a shriek. The rods sputtered with energy beams that cut through the Raven’s body, but she endured them and wrapped the guards in a tangle of limbs, wings and scorched feathers. Several guards, their gossamer wings broken, fell spiraling into the Wormhole, wailing in despair. One guard fled to the aperture above where skylight gaped.
“Quickly,” said the Raven. Her singed feathers gave off a smell like roasted meat. “Get onto my back.”
Aein helped Snow White and the clearly suffering Gustav up. Blisters began to appear on Aein’s face and arms, but they were progressing at a far slower rate than the humans, possibly because of his biological engineering. What did it bode for them? Snow White wondered. Was Gustav going to be the worst off? The Raven’s back was broad, with frayed but strong feathers that Snow White could grasp in her blistering palms. She clung to Aein even as Gustav clung to her. The Raven took off, ascending to the opening above.
They exited the Hive. The sky was the color of an old bruise and the hot wind seared Snow White’s lungs and stung her eyes. She buried her nose in Aein’s back, taking in the tall structures that looked like gleaming silos everywhere. The ground was red rock and burnished gold.
“Raven,” said Aein, caressing the great bird’s neck, “turn to the right.”
The Raven veered sharply. Silo after silo fell behind like toy buildings. Sensing movement behind them, Snow White turned to see a battalion of flying Sporadeans on their tail. Red pulses zinged across the divide.
The Raven arced her wings and dove. Into the mass of silos and other fluted structures she flew, dancing in and out to avoid crashing into them. The Sporadeans followed, some of them scattering. Several red pulses struck the Raven’s wings. The feathers seared and smoked, but did not catch fire. Instead of slowing, the Raven picked up speed.
“To the caves,” Aein cried. “Over there!”
The Raven shot to the red rocky cliffs in the near distance. Snow White could see that hundreds of cave mouths pockmarked the rock faces. These wore bizarre shapes that ranged from simple ovals to leaves, flowers, and geometric designs. It was becoming more difficult to breathe. Her nasal passageways stung as if the flesh in them had been plucked raw.
Aein was right. Humans could not survive Spora.
“Snow White,” Gustav said softly behind her. His grasp around her waist tightened. “I think I’m hit.”
Ignoring her own difficulties, she turned swiftly. “Where?”
She suppressed a gasp when she saw his face. Wet, glistening and red patches shone on his cheeks and forehead as though he were a burn victim. His eyes were a weeping red. She knew, from the stinging of her own skin, that she resembled him.
He clasped the right side of his torso. His shirt there was singed.
“Can you hold on till we get there?”
She was shocked to see tears running down his wounded cheeks. Gustav never, ever cried. A pang pricked Snow White’s chest.
“Hold on,” she said hoarsely.
From several cave mouths came dozens of Sporadeans. Oh no, Snow White thought. More reinforcements. They were now hemmed in from both front and back. She wanted to tell Aein to ask the Raven to head for the distant wasteland, but Aein straightened his back and waved his arms.
“What are you doing?” Snow White cried.
He ignored her. A cry issued from his throat: “Gnomica!”
A memory beckoned. Gnomica. The name of the cousin he loved but was betrothed to someone else. A lead ball dropped into her stomach. The oncoming Sporadeans did not fire, but swarmed around and behind the Raven. Much chittering filled the air.
A huge Sporadean streamed close to keep pace with the Raven. Snow White was certain this was the beauteous Gnomica, whom she thought resembled a not particularly attractive praying mantis.
“Raven, to the largest cave of them all. Over there,” Aein instructed.
The Raven ascended. Up, up to the highest peak, where the largest cave mouth of all yawned in the shape of a glorious oak tree. They entered the cave, and the Raven screeched to a halt on the floor amongst littered dried leaves and twigs that bore the scent of decaying roses.
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The cave would have been an overgrown replica of a section of the Enchanted Forest, had not every tree in it been dead. The smell of desiccated leaves rose amid the cloying stench of old flowers. If she struck a tinderbox in this place, Snow White was certain it would light up into an inferno.
“My mother will be in her throne room,” Aein said as he vaulted off the back of the Raven. “I must hurry. Please wait here.”
Before he could turn to help Snow White off, Gnomica threw four of her arms
around him. Aein did not resist the embrace. He spoke to Gnomica in soft, affectionate tones. Snow White forced herself to look away.
You can’t wipe away his past with your arms and kisses, she told herself.
Aein finally turned to Snow White. “I am sorry. My cousin was told by Dimynedon that I was slain. She became overwrought when she saw me. Gnomica will see to you.” Restlessly, Aein glanced at his cousin. “You will, won't you?”
Gnomica fixed her pineapple eyes on Snow White as Aein fled the cave through a door.
“Here,” Snow White said, helping Gustav off. The boy was now almost completely flayed. He sank into unconsciousness in Gnomica’s arms. “Please help him first.”
The flapping of her wings fanning the dead leaves into a swirl, Gnomica laid Gustav on the floor. None of them spoke as she began to hum. Tendrils of liquid wax seeped from the pores in her abdominal segments like threads woven with spell. They crept to cover Gustav, beginning with the fresh wound in his side. As they broke off from Gnomica’s segments, the tendrils clung to the boy and continued to grow at an amazing pace, lengthening and broadening into a latticework.
Another Sporadean knelt by the Raven and did the same.
Snow White looked down at her arms, wondering if she merited the same treatment. A thin yellow crust was beginning to form over several red patches. Aein’s healing blood once again proving her savior. But at what cost?
The Raven twisted in agony. Her wings beat against the floor, breaking some of the threads.
“Stepmother.” Snow White knelt by her side. “Don’t move.”
The Sporadean tried to hum some more, but the new threads refused to gel with the Raven’s feathers.
“What’s happening?” Snow White asked anxiously.
The Sporadean could only shake her head in despair.
“It doesn’t matter,” croaked the Raven. “This body is but a mirage anyway.”
Snow White worriedly ran her hands across the Raven’s torso and wings to feel for tender areas. A clump of feathers came off in her hand. The skin beneath where the Raven’s feathers had come off was human. The moment it came to contact with the air, it blistered. The Raven rolled upon her side, revealing a blanket of shed feathers on the floor. Her right wing was now a sparsely feathered arm.
Tears sprang to Snow White’s eyes despite herself. Without the Raven, none of them would have gotten this far.
“Stepmother,” she murmured, a stab of true pain in her breast. “Isobel.”
The floor was covered with black feathers as a naked Isobel finally writhed in pain. Her skin wore the blisters of exposure.
“The devil’s pact. It is being broken.” Isobel arched her back, and indeed, there was an awful snap, like a joint being popped out of its socket, followed by a sickening crack. Her hair rapidly whitened as fissures ran across her skin.
Snow White swung to Gnomica, who stared frantically back at her.
The cracks in Isobel’s once red lips widened. “I am no longer the most beautiful in the land. Neither of us is anymore. Oh,” she raised her fists to her face, “I must look hideous! I can’t bear for you to look at me!”
“Mother, it’s all right.”
“Let me go, Esmeralda,” Isobel said, clawing herself out of Snow White’s arms with unseemly vigor. Her hair was completely white now, and her face was that of a woman who had seen two centuries. She gazed down at her shrunken arms, her own wizened body which was starting to flake and her flapping breasts.
“Isobel,” Snow White cried in anguish, holding out her hand, “don't look down at yourself. Keep your eyes on me!”
“Don't touch me. Let me be.”
“Mother – ” Snow White leaped to her feet.
“Don’t come any closer.” Isobel teetered at the edge of the cave.
“No!”
For one crystalline, ephemeral moment, Isobel was silhouetted against the sky. Tears sprang into Snow White’s eyes as the furious winds buffeted her stepmother’s wispy body. Instead of falling into the rocky ground far, far below, Isobel disintegrated into fine dust that was whisked away by the howling wind.
Snow White could only stare, horror-struck. Her own skin sizzled with the rapid combustion of simultaneous excoriation and healing. Every part of her itched, but she still stood there, swaying. A gentle hand touched her shoulder. No, not a hand, but the serrated edge of an insect limb. Gnomica. Sisterly in her solidarity despite the language barrier.
The door opened. Aein took in Snow White’s ashen face and immediately ran to her. “What happened?”
Snow White could only tremble in his arms. No words were spoken as he cradled her, peering at the mount of feathers on the floor.
“You can’t stay here much longer,” Aein said. His concerned face wore the same honey-colored crusts, only they were in a more accelerated phase of healing. “As fast as you can heal, the air will strip your flesh from your bones. As for him,” he indicated Gustav, “you do understand that he will no longer be . . . ”
“Human,” she finished limply.
Aein nodded.
“From what I know about him, I don’t think he will mind that much.” She tried to smile, but the sides of her mouth hurt too much. At least Gustav was alive. She now understood the struggle Aein went through when he made the choice to save her.
“My mother now understands Thulrika and Dimynedon’s subterfuge. She is weeping at her throne. I have harnessed the MegaPods. Our armies will descend upon your world to stop the soldiers sent by Thulrika. I only hope it is not too late.” He lightly touched her face.
She caught his double meaning. “My face. It’s bad, isn’t it? I thought your blood will heal me.”
He shook his head. “Not completely. There will be scars. There are already scars.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. She grabbed his hand. “Come. It’s time to stop a war.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Snow White rode on the back of a Karskh. A broad-backed insectoid creature with a blue carapace as hard as iron plate, it was twice the size of an ordinary Sporadean. It boasted three pairs of wings. It gazed at her out of intelligent, resentful eyes.
“It will not harm you,” Aein said. The soft, dewy skin of his face was mostly healed, and his complexion shone with a pinkness that called to mind a baby’s flesh. He was still in his human form, having not stepped into a cocoon since the day he arrived on Earth.
“Is the Karskh from your world?”
“It’s from one of our colonies.” Aein hesitated before adding, “A world our Judges found unworthy over a millennium ago. We made modifications to the species.”
Snow White eyed the modified Karskh. This would be her people’s fate if she allowed Dimynedon to have his way. She clung to Aein’s waist as the Karskh flapped its heavy wings.
Behind them lay the main Wormhole of Mt. Nordstrom. The graceful peaks of the glacier-formed mountains made a ring around the lake, which now resembled a cauldron seething with splintered MegaPods. Snow White could see the Pass of Doubt, which trailed out of the caldera like the fluted leg of a keyhole. The army was visibly absent from the plains.
Snow White said restlessly, “Where are they?”
Aein did not reply. She could tell that he was every bit as troubled as she was. He surely did not wish to see his countrymen dead any more than she did her own, but neither did he wish to see them triumph. Aein struggled with an unenviable situation. At any rate, she loved him more for being so stoic about it.
Gnomica flew beside them, graceful and airy. She had been tasked with the generalship of this mission. She spoke several times into a brownish crystal the shape of a trapezoid.
“It’s a communicator,” Aein explained, “as well as a map.”
“Who’s she speaking to?”
“Trying to, you mean. Thulrika.”
“Any luck?”
He flashed a grim smile. “All we are getting is static. This means either the c
ommunicators have been destroyed, like mine was when I first entered – ”
“Not by me,” Snow White said hastily.
“ – by my passage into your world, or Thulrika has turned them off.”
“So they truly have turned rogue.”
“We have to bring them in to face court martial. If guilty, the penalty is execution.” He let the last word linger.
Instead of being vindicated, Snow White felt empty. This meant they would be even more desperate not to be caught. What did that bode for the upcoming capture?
As the hours passed, Snow White found ways to tell Gnomica apart from the others. Aein’s cousin possessed a light lavender tint on the topside of her wings and a slant to her robust, jewel-like eyes. Yes, I can see why, as a boy growing up, he must have admired her. Behind them flew seven Sporadean units, sent to hunt the ones who were misled into betraying the ancient laws.
“We end this,” Gnomica, with Aein’s translation, announced firmly at the outset.
Snow White agreed, feeling an unexpected comradeship with her rival. She breathed in gulps of the cold, clean air above Lapland, so fresh it was ice upon her ravaged face. Patches of her skin glistened a pale pink on the path to healing. Aein was right. Much like a burn victim, there would be scars.
It was morning, and the sky was a sparkling blue. Such a contrast to what lay below.
Everywhere Snow White gazed, the ground was charred. Entire forests put to the torch. Billows of grey smoke trailed as red embers glowed in angry patches.
Snow White hesitated, then plowed on, aware of the aliens around her. “Is it your people who did this?”
“No,” Aein replied. “Sporadeans would never put to the torch the riches they crave.”
Then it must have been Kalle. Burning his way as his people retreated. Snow White could well imagine the very army she travelled with putting houses and fields of wheat, oats and barley to fire. Destroying the very riches the enemy craved.
Far below, a village in ruins stood as testament to the invasion. A little woebegone dog stood in the crumbled stonework and charred chimneys, barking at the sky. Snow White tightened her grip on Aein. No other life abounded. Had the villagers fled or were they all dead, prey to the bolts from the red Sporadean rods? They sped, passing blackened forests and plains. More deserted villages. More smoking fields of crops. More charred bodies of cattle and wildlife. The smell of soot. Over a mountain range where a river twisted, bleeding animal carcasses floated.