by David Beers
Glenn couldn’t give him a straight answer without looking to Rita, and Rita wanted only what was best for her son, or what she thought best for her son. Wren didn’t know Rita at all, but what he did know, he slightly wanted to drown.
“Bryan,” he said, hoping his voice was loud enough to carry to the yard behind him, but not loud enough to make it through the windows of the house. He wanted to speak to Bryan by himself, without Rita or Glenn getting in the way. He heard Bryan’s footsteps as the boy reached the cement driveway. Wren looked to his left as Bryan stepped between him and Julie.
“Yeah?”
“Why do you want to move him? First you said we had to leave, then you said it didn’t matter where we went, and now you're telling me we need to get him out of here. I’m not trying to be an asshole, but it’s not adding up.”
Bryan didn’t look at Wren, but stared at Michael still lying asleep in the vehicle.
“I had a dream,” he said after a few seconds. “Except I don’t know if it was a dream, because it feels real, even now. You remember I told you about when Thera and I entered that other place, the place without any color? Our parents were there. Well when I was sleeping, I went back to it, and Michael was waiting for me.”
Wren tried to talk, but his mouth only opened; no words exited.
Bryan didn’t seem to notice. “He said that Morena can feel him. He said she was going to try to find him and that he couldn’t come back here yet. He told me I had to try to keep him safe until he could come back.”
Wren felt tears in his eyes now, the same as Julie had a minute or so ago.
“You’re saying there’s nothing physically wrong with him? That he’s fine, just in some other world, and we need to move him because an alien is coming for him?”
“It sounds insane. I know.” Bryan looked to Wren. “All I can tell you is I want what’s best for Michael and that I’m not completely sure what that is. If I had to choose, though, of leaving him in that house or moving him somewhere else, then I choose to move him. I don’t know if I dreamt all that or if it was real, but if it’s real, I’ve seen Morena, and we don’t stand a chance if she shows up.”
What could he say to that? Was he going to argue with the kid who had been kidnapped by the alien?
He had to put his son’s life in someone else’s hands.
And how is that so different than the last ten years, Wren? Linda asked.
Fuck you.
Linda was quiet, but Wren knew the voice to be right. What was different between now and the past ten years? Someone else had raised Michael, perhaps Bryan as much as anyone else. So why was he so against it continuing to happen?
Because I’m sober.
His hand went to his back pocket but the flask wasn’t there. His fingers stopped their searching and rested just inside the empty pocket as he realized he had been walking around without a sip of alcohol, without even thinking about a sip. Panic sparked inside of him, brief and bright, before he brought it under control. Panic that if he didn’t get at least a drop soon, that everything would collapse—though what everything meant wasn’t exactly defined. Only doom, only death to all that mattered.
It’s not true, he thought. I’ll get a drink; I’ll keep myself from withdrawal, but I don’t have to rush inside right now and grab it.
And that was something.
Maybe he hadn’t raised Michael, and maybe he wasn’t the one making the decision to move him—maybe that was the boy next to him and the dream he had, but Wren was standing outside and at least fucking conversing about it. He was here without a drink in his hand and caring about something else for once. So fuck Linda if that wasn’t enough.
“I’m going to get your parents. It’s time to go,” Wren said.
98
Present Day
The white strands protruding from the Earth had ceased their destructive eruptions, stopped grabbing the ground around the hole and dragging it down with them. The hole that they created was large, and would grow larger still, but for now, the strands were content to leave the world be. Or at least to stop such obvious destruction.
Now the white strands grew from the Earth’s molten lava, stretching out every which way. The area around the hole was burned black, up to a half mile in each direction, but the white strands grew across the ash, turning what should have been a dark landscape into something beautiful beyond measure. When they reached the end of the ash, they began climbing on anything they found. Stretching up trees and across the houses they came in contact with. The people inside ran out screaming, though in at least one house, a rogue strand grabbed onto a child’s ankle and grew across him just as it had the house. When the parents rushed to save him, the strand made sure to pull them into the birth as well.
A beautiful covering of the town was occurring.
The first colors that had come from the core were already beginning their coalescence, but that was only a beginning. The strands were starting to bud. Tiny, transparent bubbles growing off them, every few feet another one sprouting up. Inside the clear covers were—what else—but a beautiful array of color. Every few feet, another aura sitting inside a tiny pod.
Though the strands had no idea what Christmas meant, had the little boy who was suffocated by their unending reach seen the strands and buds across his house, he would have thought they looked like Christmas lights.
The strands didn’t know exactly how far to grow; their mother would give them that direction. They only knew how far safety stretched right now, and that they would fill that zone of safety with as many of their offspring as they could. The strands were conscious, much like their forbearers had been inside the earth. The only thing they truly wanted, besides a safe birth, was to be able to see it when it happened. Because the strands knew how beautiful it would look, how miraculous such a thing would be.
Wishes and dreams, though, were ephemeral things.
* * *
The noise ceased and, The Makers bless everyone, that felt good. It hadn’t taken Morena long to find the source of incessant words and the moment she did, she ripped out the electrical guts of the machine, letting silence drape over the land again.
She stood outside the building, watching the white strands slowly grow across the ground in front of her. Slow for her, at least, but rapid for the planet. Rapid for humanity, if they had known what was happening here. For her though, even watching it move across the sidewalk, was too slow. She wanted to see it sprint, instead of this crawl.
It will come.
She knew it would, too. This was just her impatience, even after so many years of living, rearing up inside her. Impatience because she wanted everything right now, just like she had on Bynimian. The strands would continue their magic though, and then they would be gone, and her children born. Rushing it, or wanting it to rush, would cause her to miss something that she would never see again.
And yet, she couldn’t sit here and watch the strands work their way through the town because there were things she needed to attend to. She had only done the first thing on her list, there were still two others. She wanted to go find this other, to find the creature that felt oddly like herself. The human would be easier to take care of, to see what he wanted and then dispatch him if necessary, but yet—the other. She wanted to know what it was, where it had come from, and what it meant.
She couldn’t find it, though.
Morena searched through the town, mentally mapping out every piece of property and person through the white aura that covered the place thicker than any fog ever could. Even so, she couldn’t find it. She didn’t know if the buds in front of her blocked her vision, or if the nearly countless auras now growing in this town kept her from sensing exactly where the other was. Or it could just be her Knowledge wasn’t strong enough. She didn’t know, and it truly didn’t matter. She still had to act, even without all the information she needed.
Choices. Choices. Choices.
The human or the other.
The
other might be a threat. She didn’t know how it even existed here on this planet, as it felt different from the auras growing around her. It could mean anything, her death, Briten somehow crossed over from the Ether, some kind of stowaway from Bynimian that she missed. Or it could be something here to help her, something that came along with the birthing process that would reveal itself when the time was right.
The human though, most definitely was a threat. It didn’t matter what words blasted over the loudspeakers for her to hear. If they knew what was happening inside here, then they would devastate the land at their first chance. The white aura kept anyone from outside seeing in, but the man walking the roads now? He would see it, and he would report it. Then the threat would come, and while Morena felt she could handle anything they brought, it would still be prudent to minimize what they did bring.
The human then.
She would go for it, and then once she finished, she would find the other and decide what to do.
She had to remember what was important here: protecting her children. Everything else could fall away until that was done. If she remembered that, then her choices should be true.
Isn’t that what you tried to remember on Bynimian, with the Hindran?
Times were different, then.
Even if your intentions are right, your choices can still be wrong. Ask Briten if you need confirmation of that.
99
A Long Time Ago, In Another Place
This is what death looks like? Morena wondered. It was a lot calmer than she expected. Somehow she had thought there would be more action, more panic, more something. There wasn’t anything though, just she and Briten on opposite ends of a long stage, facing each other, with auras wrapped around their hands, feet, and necks. The stage was raised about three feet off the ground, and guards stood on the floor, lining the stage, all of them facing inward.
The Head Guard, the one sworn to protect Morena, stood on the stage, in the middle, directly between Briten and herself. He didn’t look at either of them. Why would he? His job here was simple, to give word, and then the chains holding both of them would drain their auras—blackening them until everything disappeared from this stage, nothing but a wisp of smoke to float off into the air, perhaps to be breathed in by someone at some distant time.
No, the Guard had no need to look.
And that was good.
Because the time that she waited for was arriving on this stage, with all these guards staring at her. Briten and her deaths’ were not being broadcast, and she was happy for that. Because what Morena would do in the next few minutes needn’t be witnessed by her people; they saw her conviction, there was no need to see her escape.
Had any other Var ever murdered? Morena doubted it. None ever needed to until this point, so Morena would be the first in committing two unprecedented acts. The first to revolt and the first to kill, though they would be done at different times and for different reasons. She found, standing there on the stage seeing her Head Guard and her husband just behind him, that she still did care what history would say about her. Because the reasons wouldn’t be recorded as she saw them. They would be recorded as Chilras saw them, or The Council, or whatever historian The Council dictated should write about this whole era.
She would be remembered as evil, especially after what came next.
“Guard,” she called from her point on the stage. She felt the tenseness grow around her, and watched as all the other guards tried to gain control of their auras, tried to hide their surprise.
The Head Guard didn’t move. He was waiting on word from The Council. He knew his place in this and Morena wanted that. He would perform flawlessly when he murdered the Var. No one could say that he had any fault in what happened, because he did exactly as he was told. And his following of orders was why things were about to open up. Her Knowledge hadn’t told her how it would happen, only that it would, and now she saw it as clearly as her mother would have.
What she saw was so simple, and so, so stupid. It was only possible because perhaps a million years had passed since anyone was killed on Bynimian. Only because Bynimian had no need for capital punishment would her escape be possible. Because they didn’t understand what they were about to do. They thought they did, they thought that the chains would drain her and Briten, then everything would be over.
Just a few more seconds.
“Begin,” the Head Guard said, his voice echoing across the chamber. The auras of those around her, the guards, tightened up as they watched what would surely be the murder of a Var.
The burn came from the three places where the auras wrapped around her. Morena gritted her teeth, looking down to the wraps of light surrounding her wrists and feet—as much as the one around her neck would allow. She didn’t want any noise escaping her, didn’t want to give any of these guards—or The Council if they watched from some other place—the satisfaction of understanding the pain that the chains wreaked.
A few more seconds, only a few more. She had to let it start working.
She saw the green of her own aura flaring out all around her, trying to find something, anything to stop the death creeping into it.
Hold on, she thought. Just hold on. I’ll get us out of this.
Briten’s red aura wrapped around him, bringing the calmness of his life to his death.
Morena moved.
She threw herself from the stage, basically falling as the chains allowed her to do nothing else. She fell correctly though, directly onto one of the guards looking up at her, managing to wrap her chained arms around his neck, so that she hung on his back.
Morena had been able to hide her scream. The guard couldn’t.
His voice shrieked through the cavern and the burning that pulsed through Morena dampened as it picked up intensity on the new aura it found, the aura Morena had shoved it on. The guard thrashed and Morena hung on, not looking up to see who was coming for her. She pushed her legs and neck up against the guard, trying to smother his aura with the chains.
She felt him dying beneath her, felt his aura decaying more rapidly than any Bynum thought possible.
Yelling echoed across the cavern, and then another shriek, coming from whatever poor soul Briten had just jumped on.
As the creature beneath her expired, his aura turning to the same black that had been intended for Morena, the chains on her body evaporated too—thinking their duty done, their conquest completed.
Morena’s aura shot outward, soaring to the top of the cavern, and she saw the Head Guard look at her—stunned, unmoving. Morena smiled, and then she was upon him, her hands around his neck, listening to the gurgles that came from his throat, his own aura completely overwhelmed by hers. Even as she choked him, her aura began pulling his into it, stealing the blue directly, consuming the aura.
Others came at her; she took one hand from the Head Guard’s throat and turned to see what was at her back. The aura from her hand shot out, wrapping itself around those trying to get to her, quickly realizing how foolish they were—that they should have turned and ran. That they should have never challenged a Var, but it was too late now.
She focused, allowing her aura to strangle off every one of the guards, listening even as their final gasps struggled to be heard by someone other than her, by someone that might help.
None were.
Morena released them all, her aura returning to her, dancing as if it had just returned home from some glorious night out, instead of the truth of its actions. She felt amazing, felt alive, more so than she had ever felt before. Her breath moved quickly in and out of her mouth, but she wasn’t nearly done here, and she knew it. The Council, even now, had to be moving to recapture both of them.
She looked to Briten, having forgotten about him in her struggle to free them.
He lay on the ground, his aura a faded pink.
“No,” she whispered. She rushed to him, watching as his aura weakly flicked out around him. She knelt, her hands going to his face. His eyes
were closed and the breath coming from his body very shallow. The chains had taken too much from him before he moved; gone now, but they had done their damage.
The alarm sounded—a high, wailing thing that pierced through the air like sunlight through darkness.
Morena looked to the door. No one was entering yet. She had to move now if they were going to escape. She had to take Briten, even in this condition.
Morena reached down and put her arms around her husband, lifting him to her, and then walked from the room that should have been her coffin.
* * *
Morena laid Briten’s body down. The white ship stood open and his pink aura was more still than when she had picked him up. They had made it here, to the place underground where she planned to build the ships that would take her planet to the ends of the universe. Chilras hadn’t been able to find it yet, and the machines were still working, still building, as if nothing had changed above. They didn’t know, couldn’t know, that what Morena had set them to no longer mattered.
Her aura sagged with the weariness she felt from carrying Briten here. Her aura had tried to resuscitate his, tried to give him some of his life back, but she had only been able to keep him from fading more. She didn’t know how to give him life back. Now, his body and aura looked as pale as she had ever seen it.
Where are you going to go, Morena?
They would find her, eventually, if she stayed here. It was impossible, any kind of life on this planet. What she had just done would be known, and there wasn’t any way that she could do it to everyone that would oppose her. And to protect Briten while defending herself? No. None of it was possible.