Beneath the Twin Moons of Haldae

by Angela Yseult

  Kris’ hand closed on her wrist and brought her to an abrupt halt.

  “Rest,” he said, pointing at the forest behind them.

  “Rest?” Her voice climbed almost to a shriek. “But the shuttle is right there!”

  She looked at the gleaming metal, so close now. Couldn’t he see it? She tried to free her hand to point, but Kris’ hold tightened until she could feel his nails digging into her skin. She yelped in pain.

  “You’re hurting me!”

  He let go of her wrist and raised his hands, palms out toward her, murmuring a few words that sounded apologetic. She shook her head and gestured toward the shuttle. She didn’t care about apologies, not now.

  “We could get there before night falls! We could—”

  He shook his head and covered her mouth with two of his fingers, cutting her off. “Rest,” he said again. His tone was cold and unyielding, but his fingers trembled against her lips.

  With that, he walked back into the forest and started gathering leaves. Zaren watched him as he built another shelter. Her excitement had disappeared, giving way to frustration. Why didn’t he want to go to the shuttle now? He had to have a reason.

  She joined him, and although annoyed, started helping him. She hoped it was a good reason. Just like she hoped he had a reason for not building a fire even after she struggled to make him understand she was cold.

  Letting her tiredness and bad mood take over, she refused the food he offered her, just like she refused to come inside the shelter. Instead, she sat outside, at the foot of a tree, arms around her raised knees and her eyes in the direction of the shuttle. It was too dark for her to see it anymore, but it was there, almost close enough to touch. In the morning, whether Kris accompanied her or not, she would go.

  She wasn’t sure how much time passed before the wolf appeared. She scowled at it when it curled at her feet like she had scowled at Kris, but after a moment, she couldn’t help but relax. Without thinking, she reached to caress the thick fur. The wolf raised his head and flicked his tongue at her wrist, where Kris had held her tight enough to hurt earlier.

  “I’m sure he had a reason,” she murmured. “He’s helped me so far and nothing forced him to. He must have a reason.”

  The wolf stared at her with eyes that sometimes seemed to glow. She fell asleep hoping that Kris would come with her to the shuttle in the morning. She didn’t want to say goodbye before she really had to.

  * * * *

  Kris didn’t sleep that night. He didn’t dare to sleep. Twice that day he had barely managed to stop himself from shifting in front of Zaren: the first time when he had turned to see her lying on the ground with despair wafting off her in sour waves, and the second time when she’d started shouting at the edge of the forest.

  He wished he could have told her that where the forest ended, the Ushias’ territory began. He wished he could have conveyed how dangerous they were, and that caution was now their best ally.

  As he rested, curled at her feet, he tried to hold on to words, the best way he knew to keep his human mind a little longer. He repeated in his mind the few words of Zaren’s language he had learned, and wondered what else she might teach him, if she stayed with him a little longer. He doubted she would, though. He had seen that thing—her shuttle—fly. He knew, with a certainty anchored deep inside him, that she would leave when he returned her to the gleaming object.

  If he was totally honest with himself, it was another reason why he hadn’t wanted to enter the Ushias’ territory as night was falling. The sooner they found the shuttle, the sooner she would say goodbye. He’d be free to shift, then, and settle on his final form, but he didn’t want to lose her, not quite yet.

  The litany of words in his head shifted, turning to words that described Zaren. Beautiful. Fire. Smile. Bold. Smart. Beautiful. Stranger. Beautiful.

  Morning came both too soon and not soon enough. Before Zaren awakened, Kris trotted away and, hidden behind a large tree, focused on his human form.

  Nothing happened.

  With panic twisting like a living thing inside his belly, he shut his eyes and tried again. He had to change. He had to. Zaren would be waking up soon, and if he understood her at all, she wouldn’t hesitate to go to the shuttle alone now that she knew where it was. He had to accompany her, he had to keep her safe, he had to.

  He finally managed to shift.

  Panting, sweat pearling on his forehead, he returned to Zaren, and found her awake and apparently ready to go.

  “Shuttle,” she said on a decisive tone, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold her back anymore.

  Less than an hour later, with the sun at their back, still hidden behind the forest, and the bright moons on their way down, they reached the gleaming object he had first seen glide in the sky. He didn’t do more than glance at it, though; all around, footprints in the soft ground made it all too clear that the Ushias had been there. He breathed in deeply, but could not catch any scent on the changing wind other than his own and Zaren’s.

  He looked for her, and for a second his heart was in his throat when he couldn’t see her. She emerged from inside the shuttle with an object in her hand, small and square, that she fastened around her throat with a strip of fabric. She slipped another object inside the shell of her ear and looked at him in triumph.

  She started speaking, the words coming out as fast as they were incomprehensible. He shook his head. She fell silent and took a deep breath, then rested a hand on her chest and said, “Zaren.” She looked at him expectantly. Was she losing her mind? She took his hand—he shivered at the unexpected contact—and laid it on his chest. “Kris?”

  “Yes my name is Kris, what do you want—”

  Her face lit up with excitement and she gestured toward his mouth.

  “What? You want me to talk?”

  She nodded; her smile widened.

  “Why? What do you want me to say? It’s not like you can understand what I’m saying. I could tell you you’re beautiful and you wouldn’t know it. I could say I’ll miss you when you leave and that wouldn’t make a difference, now would it?”

  Her smile wavered. “Keep talking, Kris.”

  He could hear her voice, the words as strange, as meaningless as ever. He could also hear a strangely distorted voice coming from the box against her throat, and that voice he could understand. He stared at her, his eyes going wide.

  “I... I can understand you. Can you understand me? Do you understand what I’m saying? How is that possible, how can you—”

  “Not everything yet. Keep talking.”

  He suddenly felt numb. There was so much he wanted to tell her, so much he wanted to ask, he didn’t know where to even start. Before he could figure it out, he heard something behind him. Footsteps. He turned on his heel to find a group of five Ushias warriors marching closer. The tips of their lances gleamed harshly in the morning sun.

  The change took him before he even knew what was happening. He couldn’t have stopped it if he had tried. His last thought, before he lost himself to the wolf, was to hope he wouldn’t hurt Zaren too badly.

  * * * *

  Zaren stared at Ilona Brink in shock. Things were not going well for her? What did Brink mean by that?

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She licked her lips. “I’ve told the council everything that happened to me.”

  For a few seconds, Brink considered her, her light blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Zaren tried not to squirm under her piercing gaze.

  “Let me tell you a story,” Brink said at last, dropping her gaze to her robes and smoothing them out on her lap. “I was an observer once.” Her lips curled into a wry smile, and she looked at Zaren again. “Long ago.”

  Zaren nodded automatically, too worried to do more than listen absently.

  “One time,” Brink continued, “I touched down on a planet to do some flora sampling, and met an indigenous woman. I was not authorized to make contact, it was an accident, but once she was standi
ng in front of me, it was too late to hide.”

  Zaren took a sharp breath as Brink’s words permeated her consciousness, and she focused on her, frowning lightly. Brink noticed her frown and nodded.

  “Yes, you heard that right. I had unauthorized contact with indigenous people. Not only that, but I was a guest of the woman and her village for a couple of days. They sang for me. They had beautiful, multi-harmonic chants that dated back hundreds of years, as far as I could figure out.” Brink sighed. “Some songs had been old before their people had come to this world, they said, and I believed them.”

  Her gaze drifted toward a cluster of flowers a few paces from them, and she fell silent.

  Zaren’s heart hammered in her chest. She tried to wait patiently for the rest of the story, but after a moment she had to ask, “What happened then?”

  Brink gave a small start and blinked very fast two or three times, her attention returning to Zaren.

  “I was grounded once I came back to the base and reported what had happened, but I expected as much.” Her voice began hardening with each word until Zaren wondered if this was truly the same woman in front of her. “I didn’t think my superiors would send in more observers, despite the planet being categorized as no-contact. But they figured since I had already breached the natives’ isolation, more contact wouldn’t hurt. Within the time of a generation, the natives’ entire way of life was shattered. There is nothing left of that civilization today but a few holo recordings of their songs.”

  There was a knot at the back of Zaren’s throat, but she pushed a few words past it anyway.

  “It’s very sad,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”

  Brink inclined her head, and for a moment as her shoulders curved, she seemed old and tired. When she looked at Zaren again, it was with the same gentleness that had filled her words when she had asked her first questions at the start of the hearing.

  “Believe me,” she said, taking Zaren’s hand in between both of hers, “the last thing I ever want to see happen is the loss of another civilization. I couldn’t do anything to stop it back then, but I have a little more power today.”

  In the end, it was her self-deprecating smile that convinced Zaren.

  She breathed in deeply and said, very quietly, her eyes begging Brink not to make her regret this, “His name is Kris.”

  A weight lifted off her chest, and the rest was easier to confess.

  Chapter 10

  The Wolf

  Zaren couldn’t understand what was happening.

  Only moments earlier, she had been talking to Kris—finally! The translang had picked up on his language almost at once, translating most of his words in the shell of her ear after analyzing only seconds of his speech. It confirmed what observers had suspected for some time; the habitants of this planet had once been part of the space diaspora hundreds of years earlier. Their ship, like so many others, had to have become stranded on this planet, forcing them to start from scratch. She was certain that, if she asked Kris, he would tell her about ancient myths that explained his people had come from the stars.

  The only problem was, she couldn’t ask Kris.

  Kris was gone.

  And in his place stood the wolf that Zaren had first seen in the river moments after crashing, the wolf that she had since realized must have dragged her out of the water. The wolf she had seen every night since then, that had come always closer to her despite her fear, that had spent the last night curled at her feet, warming her. The wolf she had believed was Kris’ pet.

  The wolf who was—

  “Kris?”

  It—he?—looked at her as she said his name, and she shuddered. Until now, there had always been something in the wolf’s eyes, a gentle spark that she now recognized as Kris’ own. That spark was gone, though, and in its place was steel. Without thinking, she took a step back, then another, until she could feel the curved body of the shuttle behind her. The wolf watched her with his cold gray eyes but did not come toward her. When she stopped moving, he turned away.

  Only then did Zaren manage to tear her eyes off him. Only then did she notice the group of armed men advancing toward them.

  The wolf—Kris—flattened his ears and started growling, his fur rising as though electrified. The man who stood at the front of the group came to a halt and raised his arm to the side, stopping his companions. They were dressed differently from Kris; while he had worn simple clothes in the natural color of the fibers they were woven from, these men seemed to be wearing animal skins that had been dyed bright colors.

  Their faces were painted with lines of red and blue, the number of lines and pattern different for each man, and they all had their hair cropped very short. They also each carried a spear tipped not in stone or bone, like the knife she had taken from the cave, but in metal.

  In the couple of seconds Zaren needed to take in all these details and realize that these men and Kris probably did not belong to the same indigenous group, the man at the front brandished his spear. She flinched once, then a second time when he let out a long, wordless yell. She unconsciously moved back along the body of the shuttle. At the same moment, the wolf leapt forward.

  “Kris!”

  She watched in horror as the warrior stabbed his spear toward Kris. In this form, however, Kris moved remarkably fast, and the spear missed him. His front paws hit the warrior in the chest, toppling him backwards onto the man who was standing behind him. Before any of the other warriors could do more than gasp in surprise, Kris had retreated. He was now out of reach of the spears if the warriors stabbed—but not if they threw them.

  The first launched spear missed Kris by mere inches. The second glanced off his flank, leaving a long red line in his fur. Zaren shrieked, but neither Kris nor the warriors took notice of her. The men were facing him now while he trotted back and forth, changing his rhythm with occasional bursts of speed, never standing still for more than a couple of seconds. Even so, there were two more cuts tinting his fur red. The second wound must have been deeper; the tip of the spear had imbedded itself in his flesh, and he wrenched it out with his mouth.

  Zaren had to help him. But how? Even if she had had any sort of weapon, she was not allowed to fight, that was one of the most sacred rules of observers. If she was in danger, she was supposed to flee, hide, but never, never strike at native people. She couldn’t run, though, not when Kris was in danger. If she could only scare the warriors away…

  Inspiration came in a flash. She scrambled into the shuttle and pulled the emergency box out of its recessed nook. She hurriedly pulled the flare pistol from inside it, armed it, and aimed toward the moons gliding on the horizon, high and in the direction of the warriors now surrounding Kris. She ground her teeth when she saw how close they were to him and pulled the trigger.

  The bang was deafening. The flare, this early in the morning, was bright enough to bathe the clearing in green light. The warriors immediately started running, frightened shouts echoing behind them. Zaren didn’t have time to rejoice, though.

  Leaving the flare pistol inside, she grabbed the medikit and practically jumped out of the shuttle. As she slowly approached the wolf, she kept her eyes on him and waited to see how he would react. When he lay down, resting his head on his paws and whimpering quietly, she came to stand beside him.

  “Kris? Are you okay? Can you change back?”

  She felt a little silly talking to the wolf and expecting him to answer, but she had seen Kris change into this animal right in front of her. She knew it was him. She had heard stories about shape-shifting, but she had never believed they were anything more than legends, nor had she expected to discover there was any truth to them.

  When Kris did not answer, she crouched in front of him and extended her hand toward him. He raised his head just long enough to flick his tongue at her palm before lying down again, his eyes closing for a few seconds before they opened again.

  “Don’t die,” she murmured. “Don’t die now. There’s too much I w
ant to say to you.”

  Kneeling on the ground, she opened the medikit and pulled out the spray. It was designed to close wounds and cause human flesh and skin to knit itself together again, but she didn’t dare wait for Kris to change back to his human form. He seemed too weak for her to wait.

  He growled quietly when she touched him where the blood had stained his fur, brushing it away to expose the first wound. Raising his head again, he looked at her through narrow-slitted eyes.

  “This will help you heal,” she said very gently, hoping that her tone, if not her words, would soothe him. “It won’t hurt.”

  He settled down again, his eyes closing once more. She sprayed the ointment along the wound and bit her bottom lip when Kris shuddered, a sound halfway between a growl and a whine rising from his throat. At least, it seemed to be working; the flow of blood was stopping, and as the ointment was absorbed she could see pink, tender skin forming over the wound. With a quiet, shaky sigh, she sought the next cut on his skin and treated it the same way, then the next one, until she had treated every wound.

  She stayed next to him when she was done, lightly running her hand through his fur. His heart was beating fast, but no faster than it had when he had curled up against her at night. Soon, he fell asleep. That was good. The ointment worked fast, but it drew a lot of energy from the body.

  As she watched him sleep, his transformation kept playing over and over in her mind. It had taken no more than a couple of seconds, so fast that it was all a blur, but she hadn’t imagined it; the thick fur under her hand left no doubt about that. One second he had been a young man, and the next instant, this beautiful wolf.

  Had he tried to tell her? He had talked to her, sometimes, as they walked or when they stopped; had he tried to explain that she didn’t have to be afraid of that large wolf that seemed to turn up everywhere they went? Would she have believed him if she had understood his language and he had told her he was the wolf?