by J R Devoe
“Everyone should fend for themselves,” is what she once said to me. “Anyone who cannot is deadweight.”
“One day you’ll be old,” I’d told her, “and you’ll be glad for the help.”
“No, I won’t,” was her response.
When I’d asked her which she’d meant—the becoming old or the needing help part—she did not respond.
Normally soft green light would welcome me to the Grand Gallery, but the unwelcome visit still has the colony in blackout mode. So I feel my way to my alcove, where I light a candle in its entryway. Murmurs rise to fuss over the light, the fear still in them, but I know Marlok will not enforce a continued blackout. That risks diminishing his victory.
You are safe with me as your Master of Defense, is all he wants them to know.
I set Marlok’s dagger on my desk near the entrance and light another candle. Most think the smell of burning whale fat is not worth the light the waxy cylinder casts, but its illumination helps me study for and design our victory.
The desk drawer squeaks when I pull it out to retrieve my mother’s sketchbook. I sit against the rock wall and get to work with a graphite stick, scratching the details of that winged creature while they’re still fresh in my memory.
When I finish the contours of her eyes, I examine my work with mild dissatisfaction. It’s the irises. The grey graphite does them little justice. Though, would any shade of green capture them? And why do I care? She is my enemy.
I squeeze the pencil so hard it snaps.
I flip back a few pages, to a similar drawing. My mother had sketched a winged warrior, her side notes suggesting weak spots to aim for. Our fighters back then had landed strikes where the heart should be, yet the beasts continued on without much bother. Come to think of it, the creature today instinctively covered its belly when facing the flurry of arrows.
I return to my own drawing to sketch a target on her soft navel, but when I place the broken pencil’s tip to the brittle page, my hand remains firm. For some reason, I am unable to point out this vulnerability, even to myself.
“Always hiding behind your books,” comes a voice from behind.
I slam the journal shut and look up to see Mali in the entryway.
“They didn’t save your mother when the demons came,” she says, as if an orphan needs reminding that his parents are dead.
And my father’s spear didn’t save him, either, is what I want to say. Instead, I nod to a stack of books beside the doorway. “The words on those pages told my mother how to set up lights for us to see down here. They taught her how to farm the algae that provides oxygen for us to breathe, and plants for food and medicine. Without those books we’d have suffocated in darkness long ago.”
Mali crosses her arms and looks around at the rock walls. “Marlok says there is only one book we need down here. It is that book that provides all the light we need.”
I bite my lip, knowing a rebuttal will only earn me scorn or worse should she relay my words to her brother. My defense of my mother’s methods ring hollow with Mali, and for good reason. My mother is dead. She was our colony’s last scholar, and in the end, she reached for a knife to defend herself. Only the fighters survive in this life.
“I’m sorry I got you in trouble,” I say.
Mali picks up the knife from my desk and pokes her thumb with the point. “Marlok is using you as bait.”
“Then why give me the knife?”
“He knows you won’t use it.”
My shoulders tense. I hadn’t considered if I’d be able to plunge the blade into that creature if I ever get another chance.
“We can learn more from a live specimen than a corpse,” I say.
Mali admires the knife with a smirk. “Then I guess you won’t be needing this.”
“Take it,” I say absently as I rub the spine of my mother’s journal. Some day I will show my tribe that knowledge is also a weapon.
Footsteps fade away. I look up to see Mali has left with her brother’s dagger.
I tear my mother’s drawing from her book and hang it on the wall, then pin mine beside it. I step back, comparing the two. At five feet tall, both figures are the same height, with my mother’s appearing slightly older and with sturdier legs and arms. But it’s the wings and eyes that suggest they are two different species.
My mother’s sketch depicts two large, black wings with ragged edges. The demon holds a spear over her shoulder, and one of her pointed ears is mangled. A warrior. The creature from today had four smaller wings that were so clear I could hardly see them. And mine wore the tattoos of a few black bands around each wrist. Mother’s specimen either lacked these, or she failed to capture them.
But it’s the eyes that reveal all. Mother’s notes describe reptilian eyes—two yellow orbs with a vertical slit down the middle of each—all menacing and full of hate. My specimen had eyes like my own, and our encounter drew only a look of curiosity and amusement. If they are of a different breed, and she wishes me no harm, then perhaps she can lead me to the beast who killed my parents. If she survives her wound, of course. And if she even returns. We didn’t form a very friendly welcoming party.
A thought occurs to me. What if they attack us out of self-defense? If we show them we mean them no harm, maybe they’ll leave us alone. Or better, become allies.
I stare at the picture a long while, noting the contours where my shading needs work. And what’s the meaning behind those bands around her wrists?
Something whistles past my ear and hits the rock wall. I jump at the whack of Marlok’s dagger burying between the eyes of my drawing. I whirl around in time to see Mali storm away from the entrance.
4
—
NYA
AT SOME POINT during the evolution of my species, we were hunted by predators higher on our food chain. Though it has been years in the tens of thousands since we faced such threats, the instincts of my ancestors still guide me.
This gift helped me escape that ambush. It’s what keeps my heart pounding hard inside my belly and my wings buzzing against my back in my race across the dusk desert. Their voices cry out over eons, infusing every particle of my physical being with an energy reserved only for near-death situations. They demand that I carry on their legacy.
Keep going! they command by way of my hammering heart. And I obey.
I fly high over the rippled sand sea, wary of another attack, but find myself drifting lower toward silvery dunes as the sky above me darkens into deep night. I’ve tried my best to ignore the pain in my chest, but the burning spreads like wildfire across my skin, becoming a weight of its own that drags me dangerously low.
But fear rises to the occasion and excites my faltering wings. There are dangers on this land I never thought existed. Shadows of ages past that I must avoid.
My chest throbs, though not from the hole in it. This pain swells from the spark deep within my core, a fire of black flames casting shadows across my mind. In all my cycles reclaiming planets, never have I encountered their previous inhabitants. And for good reason. It’s against the rules. These laws can never be broken, not by anyone.
I’m saved when the full moon rises over the horizon before me. Its surface reflects the sun’s rays that give me the energy I need to endure. My body feels lighter, less of a burden to my wings, which now hum away with less effort. As the moon rises high into the night sky, I rise with it.
As my struggle eases and my flight becomes effortless, my heart races with a new feeling. Excitement. Finally, something I can help preserve!
I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this rush of purpose before. I can’t wait to see the look on everyone’s faces. All their toiling away here…all for nothing! The pain in my chest can’t even keep the smile from my face.
It’s just past midnight when the first hint of moisture graces the desert air. Not long after, the wavy dunes level to sodden earth. Beyond this expanse of fertile ground, between me and the horizon, glows a dome of soft green light
into the night sky.
My tired wings buzz wildly under the bright moon, driving me from the desert toward the forest edge. The smell of wet earth brings tears to my eyes as pity for my Ori cousins swells in me. They’ve invested so much time and love here for nothing.
Beyond the forest edge ahead, a cluster of floating green orbs and faint drumming beckons our roving workers home.
But this is no home to me. Not as others see it, anyway. An outcast has no place to call their own, and though others are not to consort with me, punishments are rarely exercised for doing so. I can’t remember the last time I visited a Hive, but after flying wounded for so many hours over desolate land, the promise of seeing a familiar face gives me comfort.
I glide through the first staggered row of trees that shield the forest border. Water drips onto my skin from the leaves above, remnants of my Aeri cousins’ work above. What will their reaction be to the fateful news I bring? All their labor here has been for naught. Everyone’s toil was a waste.
I shake off my guilt. Let them feel the ache of dissatisfaction, I tell myself. For once, I’ll be the one who beams with purpose.
A great tree marks the center of the Hive. The Heart Spire, they call her. She’s one of many nodes channeling the planet’s energy to support our work, a constant hum for all of her sprouts to hear and rise from darkness toward the light. Glowing orbs hang from her gnarly branches. They cast green light over the bark of her twisted trunk, revealing grooves that spiral from roots to crown and gives her an emerald appearance. She is a beacon in more ways than one.
A Hive’s arrival through the portal is chaotic. The transit leaves many disoriented for days or weeks, but everyone knows where to find their new home as sure as migrating birds returning to a nest abandoned at the changing seasons.
Knowing my flight is at an end, my wings give out on me. I slam onto the Spire’s giant roots and roll into the crevices between, where all I can do is submit to the embrace of rough bark. Only now, wedged between two immovable tree roots, do I realize how hard I’d been breathing as my chest struggles in this tiny space to draw shallow breaths.
“I guess we didn’t make ourselves clear last time you came around,” says a voice from up top.
I look up to see Squiggs and Sheffa standing on the root above me. Each bears the same number of black bands on their forearms—six per side—each a mark for one of the dozen planets they’d helped reclaim. It’s only two more than me, yet they speak to me as if I’m a youngling.
“This Hive is for makers only,” Squiggs says. She crosses her arms while a scowl wrinkles her pug face. By the size of her cheeks, I see her sweet tooth for berries still holds her in a tight spell. Her poor wings. It’s a wonder she can still fly.
Sheffa plants her hands on her hips and nods. “Yeah, ain’t no termites allowed.” Her words whistle through a gap between her front teeth, and her hawkish nose wrinkles as she fakes taking in a foul smell. “Just like in the Galaxy of Gems, you got no place here, Nya.”
They watch as I claw my way out of the crevice. Sheffa looks like she’s going to shove me back down, but when I reach toward a handhold by her feet she stumbles away.
As I stand, my wings wrap around my torso, overlapping thickest on my right ribcage to seal tight over my wound.
I slide down the sloped root to the ground and march around the Spire’s base.
Squiggs jumps down after me. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I have a message for Ko Mirah.”
She grabs my wrist with both hands and pulls me to a stop. “You can’t. She’s working.”
“This is important.”
Squiggs grabs my other wrist and locks me in a stare. “No disruptions.”
I forgot Squiggs had appointed herself as Ko Mirah’s bodyguard to keep pests away.
“Leave her alone, S-S-Squiggs.”
We both look to see Jinny limping toward us. I can always count on her to stick up for me, though she’s the only one. Even with a mangled leg, she’s become known as the Hive’s anti-bully patrol. If only her body matched the size of her heart.
Squiggs laughs. “What are you gonna do, runt?”
Jinny picks up a stick and holds it out nervously. She limps forward.
To her left, Sheffa swoops down from the high root to intercept her. Jinny flings the stick at her and turns to limp into flight.
This provides enough distraction for me to wrench my wrists free.
Thanks, Jinn, I say to myself as I enter the tree through an acorn-shaped opening in the trunk. No footsteps follow.
Inside the tree, static in the air prickles my skin and lifts the cobwebby hairs on my arms. In the center of a round patch of smooth dirt, surrounded by inner trunk walls, is Ko Mirah.
The Hive Elder sits cross-legged with eyes closed and back straight. Not a single strand of her green hair has survived the ages, leaving her head crowned in grey. She’s restored so many planets that her earned stripes cover each forearm from wrist to elbow in one giant, solid black band, with no gap for a single other. She’s earning her Final Gateway here. The next planet she sees will be the one she calls her home. Or, so it should be.
I freeze in the entryway, terrified to cause a disruption. And it’s not just the dread of letting her know that her journey home will have to wait a little longer. Squiggs was right. It’s a great taboo to call one from their inner space, especially an Elder, for it is they who do the grounding work with the planet that ensures all our projects flourish. But I’ve heard these spells last days on end, and we don’t have that much time. We shouldn’t even be doing the work that she’s grounding.
“We’re too early!” I say. My voice booms up into the void above and then cries back to me even louder. I cringe and stumble back toward the green glow of the entrance.
Ko Mirah’s eyes slide open. Her brow folds down into a frown until her eyes focus, then raises in surprise as she takes in the sight of me. Her shoulders rise. “Nya, have you not recovered your wits yet? Can’t you see I’m busy?”
I rush forward and drop to my knees before her. I lean in, closing the distance between us, and whisper the fateful news. “I saw . . .” My brow furrows deep as the word eludes me. How do I describe those beings who attacked me? They were so similar to us, yet…different. “I saw Others.”
I close my eyes and wince, expecting the wrath delivered upon carriers of ill messages. Instead, I feel cold hands enclosing mine. I open my eyes to see Ko Mirah’s nurturing smile.
“You have the imagination of your mother,” she says, almost wistfully. “Just don’t let K’lora’s folly lead you to darkness as well.”
Hearing my mother’s acts referred to as folly by an Elder stings me with shame. We are the remnants of our parents’ deeds. I am a fool’s legacy. An Elder’s confirmation of this burns away all delusions of anything else, much like the sun burning away a morning fog.
But my errand here is not that of a fool.
I stand and open my wings. A patch sticks to my wound, stinging as my inner flap peels from my right ribcage. My four wings spread wide. Their instinct to curl inward at their ends to return to my wound is stopped only by my conscious effort.
Ko Mirah leans forward to examine the sticky hole in my chest. Her brow sags in concern, her lips twisting in anger. “Where did this happen?”
“Why does that matter?” My wings flap shut around my torso and once again suck tight around my wound. “We shouldn’t be here. It’s against the rules. This is their home.”
Ko Mirah, Elder of this Hive and Keeper of the Sacred Laws, sinks back and waves a hand dismissively. “There is much about our work you don’t know, Nya. You’d do better to see them as ghosts from a species long dead—mindless beasts cowering in caves.”
“Shadows,” I say, finally allowing myself to admit what I always knew in my heart. But the time for ignorance has passed. I’ve seen that these shadows have faces. “Does the Magister know about this?”
Ko Mir
ah shows me the stripes on her arms. “I’d have about as many marks as you if we just up and left every planet we found survivors on.”
This hits me like a punch to the gut. She can’t be serious!
Ko Mirah closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “You had a traumatic experience, Nya. Rest here until you’re ready to get back to work. Let the Light Ones take care of these Others.”
I step back and study my Elder in disbelief. Her casual attitude toward this discovery strikes me harder than that arrow to my chest, and drives deeper than any weapon ever could. My belly clenches, but I compose myself. “What will the Watchers do with them?”
“Their time here is done. The Light Ones will bring them to a new home. We must prepare this planet for a new race—one that will take better care of this gift. Now, go. Rest.”
“But…”
Ko Mirah frowns. “Must I summon The Hammer to come set you straight?”
My throat tightens as if a hand just clamped around it. My Entropath siblings make me uneasy, for they enjoy our destructive work too much, which you’d expect considering our ability to destroy evolved from our nature. But our leader, Ko Skadia, is on a whole other level. They say when she fought against the Watchers in my mother’s rebellion, The Hammer used our skill to turn her opponents to dust. Living flesh—POOF—gone! Jexa let her live because only she can control the unruly dust maidens without killing us. But to prevent us from causing trouble, we’re not allowed to associate with each other. Lucky for us, we happen to be loners by nature as well.