Beneath the Twin Moons of Haldae

by Angela Yseult

  There was nothing more to say. Kris held out his hand toward Zaren, but she didn’t take it right away. Instead, she touched the guard’s shoulder, drawing his eyes to her. She smiled.

  “Thank you,” she said in their language, and the guard’s face lit up with surprise. Unless Kris was mistaken, she had just bought them a little more time.

  Finally taking Kris’ hand, she looked at him. “I’m ready.”

  They ran out, and didn’t stop until Zaren was completely out of breath. Only then did she tell him her people were on their way to take her home.

  Only then did she break his heart.

  Chapter 13

  Medicine

  Zaren and Kris arrived in his village at night, two or three hours after sunset. Zaren had asked to stop when darkness first fell, but Kris explained that his village was close-by, and his promise that she would have a proper bed to sleep in that night had helped her keep walking even when exhaustion turned her legs to stone.

  By the light of two pale slivers of moon, Zaren discovered a picture that seemed straight out of a holo-projection, and she had to stop on the edge of the village to take it all in. A street wide enough for five or six men to walk abreast led into the village. It was covered in large, flat rocks that seemed white under the light of the moons. On each side, she could already see narrower streets, also paved in white stones.

  Houses were scattered through the village, farther apart on the periphery, closer together toward the center, and she could already guess the shape of larger buildings at the very center. These had to be communal structures. As far as she could tell, the houses were made of brick and wood, some with fenced yards, others close together. Most windows were shuttered, but she could still see flickering lights inside some houses, from candlelight, or fires maybe.

  “How many people live here?” she asked Kris when he turned back toward her. “Do all your people live in the village or—”

  A shake of Kris’ head interrupted her. “Ask me again later,” he said very quietly. “We have to be quiet now, it’s better if no one knows I brought you here yet.”

  It was the first hint Kris had given her that her presence wasn’t entirely welcome, and suddenly Zaren had a dozen more questions—but couldn’t ask them. She wished she had asked about how she might be received before they had reached the village. Seeing how she wouldn’t stay long before the rescue shuttle arrived, she hoped she wouldn’t get in trouble before that—and that she wouldn’t get Kris in trouble either.

  He led her around the edge of the village, and rather than taking one of the wide streets, they followed one of the narrower alleys up to a small house midway inside the village.

  “Is this—”

  His head whipped toward her and he motioned for her not to talk so loudly. She ducked her head.

  “Sorry,” she whispered. “I just wanted to know if this is your house.”

  “My family’s,” he replied, just as quietly. Rather than taking her to the front door, he made her step into the fenced yard, where bushes that came as high as her chest almost hid them completely. “My sister is in there, and a neighbor is probably with her, too. I need you to stay here for a moment. I’ll send her home and you can come in after she has left. All right?”

  He squeezed her hand gently as he finished, as though to apologize for leaving her alone. She smiled and nodded to show she understood, then lowered herself to crouch behind the bush and remain hidden. Kris walked away, entering the house. After a few moments, she could see a woman stepping out. A few moments more and Kris reappeared, calling her name softly from the threshold. She hurried to him and he closed the door behind her.

  The first room, Zaren observed, had to serve as kitchen and dining room. Fire was crackling in the fireplace on her left, and after being in the cool night air, the warmth of the room was very welcome. All the furniture was crafted out of wood, with a deep, rich patina that spoke of age. There were two doors in the back of the kitchen, and two more on the right side of the room, but only one door stood ajar, candlelight flickering inside it. As Zaren stood by the table, wondering whether it was safe to talk now, Kris approached the open door and peeked in.

  “She’s asleep,” he murmured as he turned back to Zaren.

  “Your sister?”

  He nodded. “The sickness takes their strength from people. As they get to the end, they sleep more and more.”

  His voice remained steady, but his face betrayed his pain. Without thinking, Zaren went to him and rested her hand on his shoulder. “The end?” she whispered. “You mean…”

  He looked at her hand on his shoulder, but made no movement to dislodge it. “There is no cure and most people die. Some people die in just days. Our mother did. Others last for weeks. A few recover. Elea lasted longer than our father already, so maybe…”

  He shrugged and looked inside the room again. He sounded and looked so defeated that something twisted inside Zaren. Ever since she had met him, he had been so strong, so sure of himself, that she hadn’t imagined anything could affect him like this.

  “I was afraid I’d come back and she’d be gone,” he continued after a few seconds. “But I had to leave. The Elders ordered me to. I just hope she’ll wake up again.”

  All of a sudden, Zaren thought of the medikit and the medicine it contained. The kit only held one dose of universal serum, meant to cure the observer of any unexpected disease contracted on the planet. The rules she had sworn to follow when she had become an observer specifically prohibited her from interfering with native populations, including giving them medical help of any kind.

  But then, if she had had followed the rules to the letter, she wouldn’t have asked Kris’ help in finding the shuttle. She wouldn’t have remained with him, tried to interact with him, learning from him as much as he learned from her. She wouldn’t have healed him—healed his wolf form—after the warriors had wounded him.

  She had broken so many rules already; what was one more if she could help Kris? Of course, she wasn’t even sure she’d be able to help at all. For all she knew, the serum might have no effect on Kris’ sister.

  A gentle hand brushed against her bare arm, where the sleeve was torn, and Zaren started. She blinked, looking up to find Kris peering at her worriedly.

  “You’ve been quiet for a long time,” he said. “Is something wrong?”

  “You’ve helped me so much,” she murmured. “I wish I could help you in return…”

  He frowned a little. “Zaren? What…”

  She pulled the medikit from the repurposed fruit bag in which Kris had asked her to hide it and set it on the table. Opening the kit, she pulled out the vial of serum. The liquid inside was a pale green color, like a newly formed leaf that needed more sun.

  “This is medicine,” she said quietly, showing Kris the vial. “If I was sick, this could cure me of almost any disease.”

  She watched his face as she spoke, watched realization slowly turn into hope. His eyes were wide when he looked up from the vial and met her gaze.

  “Can your medicine help Elea?” he asked, his voice shaking with eagerness.

  Feeling a pang of guilt for giving him such hope when she wasn’t even sure she could help, Zaren dropped her gaze to the vial again. The serum inside had been formulated for someone like her—someone who had lived in a particular environment all her life, who had fed a certain way, who had been immunized against all sorts of diseases. One of the reasons why offering the serum to indigenous populations remained taboo was simple: there was no way to predict how someone from a different world might react to it.

  “It might help her,” Zaren said, but added very fast, “but it’s just as possible that it might kill her.”

  * * * *

  Kris waited a few seconds, certain that Zaren was going to add something else. When she didn’t, he shook his head. She did not understand. But then, how could she?

  She had not grown up with sick people around her, had not hoped for months by t
he bedside of the people she loved, waiting for them to get better, only to see them die in front of her. She did not know how randomly, how unfairly the sickness struck, wiping out some families entirely or affecting only one sibling out of a handful. Kris’ only consolation was that his parents had died thinking that both he and Elea would be all right; she had fallen sick seven years after their mother had passed away, and five years after their father.

  No, Zaren really did not understand.

  “Most people who are sick die,” he explained again, forgetting to be quiet in the sudden rush of hope that had filled him. “If you don’t try to help her, it’s likely—”

  His voice broke. He had tried not to think of this during his journey, and at times his mind had been so preoccupied with Zaren that he hadn’t thought of Elea at all. But in truth, he was lucky that Elea had not faded away before he returned. And if he was totally honest with himself, a small part of him had hoped Zaren would be able to help, like she had helped his wounds heal.

  “It’s likely she’ll die,” he finished, no louder than a murmur.

  Zaren observed him for a long moment, her expression grave, the smile that had lit up her face so often during their journey now no more than a memory.

  “Does that mean you want me to do it?” she asked, and she still sounded uncertain.

  “Kris?”

  Elea’s quiet word startled Kris. He turned back to her room and entered it, a smile automatically rising on his lips even though Elea had never been so pale. He knelt by her bed and took her hand in his. He squeezed her fingers gently, but she was too weak to even squeeze back.

  “You’re back,” she murmured. Her eyes drifted to his marked shoulder and she squinted before grinning. “The wolf. I knew it.”

  He nodded. “Yes, you were right. I’ll tell you when you’re better. Rest now.”

  But she wasn’t listening to him. Her eyes had found Zaren where she stood on the threshold, and she looked at her with obvious surprise.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  Her voice was so weak that something twisted inside Kris. Their mother had spoken just like this, before the end.

  “Hello, Elea. I am Zaren.”

  His eyes met Zaren’s as she approached, and he offered her a smile; she had spoken in his language rather than through the box at her throat; she was learning fast.

  “Your hair is like fire,” Elea breathed. “It’s so pretty.”

  Her hand twitched inside Kris’, as though trying to rise to touch Zaren’s hair. Kris covered it with his free hand and leaned in close to whisper against Elea’s fever-hot temple, “Zaren is going to make you better.”

  “Kris, don’t you want to think about it?” Zaren asked, and if the box at her throat delivered the question coolly, he could still hear the urgency in the words she pronounced.

  “I trust you,” Kris said simply.

  He’d thought the same thing in his own mind before, but as he heard the words he was startled to realize how true that simple statement was. He had only met Zaren days earlier, had only been able to actually talk to her for a couple of days, but he already trusted her as much as he did any of the friends he had grown up with, maybe even more.

  He looked into himself, trying to understand his own feelings, and it didn’t take him long to realize why it was that she had anchored herself so deeply inside him already. He hadn’t met her during a usual time, but rather right on the edge of his final shift, and beyond. She had seen him change, she had approached him when he was nothing more than a mindless wolf, and the wolf had accepted her.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen. That was one of the reasons why the final shift was supposed to take place away from the village, away from everyone; cautionary tales warned that accidents happened when someone tried to interfere during that crucial moment, accidents that left the interlopers maimed, or worse. But the wolf hadn’t attacked her. On the contrary, he had protected her, then allowed her to help him.

  He wasn’t sure if the wolf had trusted her because Kris had started enjoying her company, or if Kris liked and trusted her because the wolf did. Maybe it went both ways, and in the end it didn’t matter. Kris was the wolf, and regardless of the reasons, he trusted Zaren.

  And as he watched her press the tube of medicine to Elea’s arm, as he saw color rising in Elea’s cheeks until she wasn’t so pale anymore, as he noticed that her eyes weren’t shining with fever any longer, he knew he had made the right decision, back in the forest, when he had seen Zaren fall into the river and had plunged in after her. He had made the right decision when he had brought her to the village. And he was making the right decision now.

  * * * *

  “The universal serum was our first clue,” Ilona Brink said as she dropped the leaf she had been twirling between her fingers.

  They had been in the gardens for much longer than the fifteen minutes the break was supposed to last, and Zaren wondered what the others thought. No one had come to look for them.

  “You said you used it on yourself, but there was no trace of it in your system when you had your medical check up. They tested the syringe for confirmation.”

  Zaren felt like a fool suddenly. She should have known. She had tried to anticipate every question she could be asked, but she realized now that her explanation of why the syringe was empty had been less than adequate. She should have thought of a better story. If she had only thought of leaving the syringe behind, she could have claimed she had lost it instead of used it—she would have been reprimanded for it, but at least her lies wouldn’t have been discovered.

  Or so she thought until Brink added, “That wasn’t all, of course.”

  When Zaren looked at her askance, Brink continued on the same calm tone. “The translang.”

  Zaren frowned. “I wiped it.”

  A small smile pushed to Brink’s lips. “I’m afraid it takes more work to wipe one of those than the simple hard reset you are taught during training.”

  She didn’t explain why the training was incorrect on that point, but Zaren could already guess. In a situation just like this one, the translang had to be the easiest clue of all.

  “You knew before I ever submitted my report,” Zaren whispered, her eyes widening in understanding. “Didn’t you?”

  Brink gave a simple, unabashed nod. “I did, yes.”

  For years, Zaren had thought that Ilona Brink’s role was more to be a head figure that anything else. She was beginning to see she had been mistaken—and beginning to wonder if what the council would say about all this would matter at all, or if Brink was the important person here.

  “Are you the only one who knows?” she asked.

  “A couple of my aides do. But the council doesn’t know, if that’s what you’re wondering. And neither does your mentor.”

  Zaren was feeling more and more confused. Staring at Brink, she shook her head slowly. “Why?”

  Taking Zaren’s hand in hers, Brink patted it indulgently. “I told you why. I know, personally, what happens when we intrude on civilizations that aren’t ready for us. I didn’t want it to happen again, not under my watch.”

  Although she was beginning to understand, Zaren’s turmoil remained the same. Her fear at having being discovered had transformed into an unvoiced hope in the past minutes, but now she realized that just because others knew, it might not mean she would be able to help Kris’ people.

  “But they need us,” she murmured. “Their sickness… we can cure it.”

  Standing from the bench, Brink clasped her hands behind her and started pacing in front of Zaren. “Not without destroying who they are,” she said, and she sounded less than the confidante from the past few moments already, and more like the head of the council again. “If we go, if we help them, their culture is at risk of being lost.”

  Zaren watched her walk back and forth, her brow furrowed as she thought fast. “What if… what if we just gave them the medicine?”

  Brink made a dismissive gesture
. “They wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

  “All right,” Zaren said slowly, still thinking. “What if I brought it to them, then?”

  Brink stopped in front of her, looking down severely. “An observer can’t interfere like this, you know that.”

  Zaren lowered her head at the light rebuke. “What if…”

  Realization struck and left Zaren breathless for a moment. Her head spinning fast, she blinked up and stared at Brink, who looked back at her serenely.

  “You knew,” Zaren whispered. “You knew it would come to this from the start, didn’t you? That’s why you told me about that civilization you contacted by accident.”

  Brink’s face remained perfectly serene at the accusation. “I suspected,” she said, inclining her head. “But you had to get there on your own. Do you want to do it?”

  “I have to,” Zaren said, shaking her head. It was in her power to help Kris’ people; she couldn’t not do it.

  “There’ll be no coming back,” Brink cautioned her. “No contact with your family or friends anymore, not ever again.”

  Doubt slid over Zaren, darkening everything. Could she leave her parents behind? Her friends? She would miss them so much…

  Just as much as she missed Kris.

  But probably not more.

  Still. Could she abandon her life, everything she knew, to go back to Kris and help save who knew how many people? It wouldn’t be about discovering a new culture anymore. She would learn about his people, but she would never be able to share what she found out with anyone.

  When she had dreamed of becoming an observer, she’d had in mind to find a civilization no one had heard of before and to learn everything about it, but she had never imagined she would have to leave her own world behind for that.

  She looked up and found that Brink was observing her, her hands behind her, her expression patient.

  “Suppose… Suppose I do this.” Zaren’s voice was trembling with all her hesitations. “What if we needed more medicine? How would I let you know if I can’t contact you?”