Dust

by J R Devoe

  The exertion of the past few days has my body feeling as if every cell is made of stone. I can’t even flip over onto my back. All I can do is lie on my belly as the tide creeps toward me. I have given more than I had to give, and it wasn’t enough. I have pushed my limits too far for too long.

  Deka’s harsh words ring loud in my head. Foul creature, he called me. Did he really mean that? Yes, I think he did. His tone left little room for interpretation. Fortunately I’m too tired to dwell on it.

  The swish of the rising tide soothes me. My eyelids slide down easily and disobey my orders to rise again. What’s the point, anyway? I let sleep take me. I am so tired. I have been for so long.

  This is one darkness I go into without protest.

  When my eyelids seal shut the sun still warms them. I realize I may not wake up and would consider that a mercy. This is the most peaceful ending I could ever hope for.

  • • •

  It’s well past midnight when I wake. Somehow I’d slept through the rise and retreat of the tide, because I’m soaked with sea water from head to toe. I’m about to close my eyes to resume my slumber, but a familiar feeling tingles my spine.

  I’m being watched. I know this feeling too well. I sit up and turn to see Jaleera sitting cross-legged on a rock shelf beside me. She stares wistfully at a glittering column of silver light on the water, sunlight reflected by the quarter moon.

  “Where were you?” I say. My voice comes out hoarse and barely audible.

  Jaleera keeps her eyes on the sea. “Recruiting Ko Skadia. She’s gone to round up the scattered dust maidens.”

  I sit up all the way and wipe sand from my eyes. “How many?”

  “Fifty at best.”

  I perk up, hope surging through me. “That’s enough to destroy the gate.”

  “A noble endeavor, but I’m afraid that’s no longer an option. Jexa began her attack on the pyramids while you were raiding her stronghold. She overran the defences and is raising the Capstone as we speak.”

  My shoulders slump. “Then it’s over.”

  Jaleera lowers her head. All the answer I need.

  “Ko Tora?” I say.

  “Only one of her scouts managed to escape the abyss. Left her wits down there, they say. The rest are lost in a shifting maze of tunnels.”

  My eyes swell with tears for every one of them. Yes, even for Ko Tora. No one deserves such a horrendous fate. Not even the Elder who led them there.

  “Jexa has created a Dark of her own inside the planet’s crust,” says Jaleera, confirming what I already knew. “A hole so deep and absent of light that, once you are lost, there is no coming back. Mind separates from body. Madness fills the void.”

  I shiver at the thought. That could have been me down there.

  “You shouldn’t have left,” I say, trying to spark fire into my voice, but it only comes out damp. “They’d have listened to you. Now they are lost. We have lost.”

  “I have seen enough battles to know that you are right,” Jaleera says. She rises with a spear in one hand, and a round shield in the other. Barely covering her from waist to shoulder, the silver plate is comically small. “But I will go make a stand anyway. I will die as I have lived. At least now I know what I’m fighting for.”

  If the Watcher who drove a spear through my mother’s back is expecting an emotional farewell from me, she is in for a disappointment.

  “You know how I always find you, Nya?”

  I say nothing. It doesn’t matter now. Soon nothing will matter.

  “Your light shines bright wherever you go,” Jaleera says. “Even the darkest dark cannot dim that spark of yours. That is the greatest truth my kind have kept from your people.”

  I frown up at her. She looks away.

  “Watching you grow was my only joy,” she says. It must be the way she has her head turned that chokes her voice. “You were the light in my darkness.”

  I want to laugh. Does Jaleera really expect me to believe she has a heart? But no laughter comes from me. And though I have little love for the monster that betrayed my mother, I take no comfort in the fate she has assigned herself.

  “Did we ever have a chance?” I say.

  “Jexa knows too well the danger of a united enemy. If it wasn’t the counterfeit Capstone trick, she’d have found another way to divide you.”

  “So we were doomed from the beginning.”

  “We had to try, Nya. Do you know what will happen if Jexa opens that portal out of proper alignment? She may unleash any manner of disaster upon this planet—–a solar storm or noxious gas cloud, the vacuum of empty space, or who knows what. That’s why the Consuls are so important.”

  I’m glad I’m too worn out to process all this horrendous news. It’s nice to be numb to it. I pray this apathy remains when Jexa opens the gate, and hope whatever manner of devastation she invites here makes a quick end of us all.

  “You were right,” Jaleera says, “we should have stayed together. All of us. I should never have left, and you shouldn’t have lied about trying to recruit your sisters.” Her voice flares with anger, but she steadies herself. “Anyway, this is no time for blame or regret. My hour has come. Farewell, Evening Star.”

  I say nothing as Jaleera flies away. Only slap a rock with my hand. It bursts into shards, which land in a nearby tide pool. Bioluminescent algae glow purple where the rocks sink. Sea sparkle. I envy such an existence. To be beautiful and ignorant of your impending demise must be so blissful.

  If only we’d stayed together. If only… No, that way of thinking is for fools. I cannot change what has already passed. Jexa will set the Capstone soon and the only force that can stop her is lost. They are lost, and I am glad I am not among them in that abyss.

  I am not among them.

  They are lost and I am not among them.

  I stare into the tide pool, its water so calm. An eyelash falls from my eye and lands on the surface. A tiny purple flash responds to this change in its environment. It’s hardly noticeable and lasts only a second, but it’s enough to give rise to the flicker of an idea. No, not an idea. Madness.

  I poke the surface. My disturbance sends glowing ripples spreading outward. I laugh and hear the madness in my voice. I latch onto it. Reel it in. I embrace the insanity, for I shall need every bit of it I can handle.

  I will bring light to the darkness.

  25

  —

  DEKA

  MALI ONCE TOLD me a true warrior never grows old. If dying young is what makes a warrior great, then she’s earned her place among the finest. It didn’t matter how many words Marlok recited from his holy book. It didn’t matter how many times I begged her to stop playing.

  Still, though she has long turned cold, part of me refuses to accept the finality of it. She is Mali. She has been a part of my existence for as long as I can remember it. Without her, what am I? She can’t be gone.

  Shrouding her in a sail doesn’t help. Not seeing her lifeless body feeds the fantasy that she’ll come back. That it’s not her wrapped tight in this grey canvas that I carry through the dark forest. She’ll jump out from a nearby tree and tackle me to wrestle her goggles from around my neck.

  I steal a look up at the swaying tree tops. For all its beauty, this is no paradise for us. Our place is in the colorless abyss, where we must endure the punishment for the faults of our ancestors.

  We reach the shore and set Mali on the sand. We do so gently, as if she might complain about our rough handling. Everyone seems to breathe easier here in the open, without those giant wooden sentinels looming over us.

  It’s about midnight, and I wonder if the quarter moon in the clear sky reflects enough sunlight for our enemy to roam above.

  “We have a solid five hours of sailing time,” I say. This knowledge I gained from Nya, and I should be thankful for it, but gratitude may lead to a measure of forgiveness. That I cannot do. Yet…this refusal conjures a measure of guilt in me.

  I shake my head and scold my
self for allowing such a feeling. That demon deserved every venomous word I spit at her. Not only did she lead us here knowing the dangers of this world, but she even tricked us into thinking it was safe.

  While Huxley and the others drag our boats from the tree line, I scan the sea for danger. A glittering wedge of moonlight obscures a large area over the water surface, so I pull Mali’s goggles up over my eyes. A smudge across the left lens obscures my view, but I dare not remove it. I’ll make this voyage home half blind before I wipe away any sign that Mali once lived. That the body at my feet once moved and breathed and wore these goggles to shield her seeing eyes from the sun, and at one point those now stiff fingers wiped a fly from this lens.

  Mora follows us onto the beach. “You should leave her remains here with us.”

  I shudder at her voice. All of Nya’s kind should leave us alone. Can’t they see we grieve because of one of them? I shoot her a rueful glare, yet she remains insensitive.

  “Her body will do more good nurturing the soil,” the Ori leader says.

  The ice caps will cover the poles again before I leave what’s left of my friend in this fool’s paradise. Besides, we’ll have our own soil to nurture now. At least for a little while. Hopefully the colony has filled every piece of scavenged plastic with rainwater. Mali’s sacrifice will not be in vain. She will enrich the soil, which in turn will give us food that will fill our bellies. I will thank her for every bite. I’ll remind Marlok to ensure everyone else pays her the same respect.

  Huxley and the gang lay our two boats at the water line. Waves splash the polymer hulls.

  He takes a drink of water from a clear jar, then passes it to Marlok.

  “Is that all we have?” I say.

  Marlok takes stock of our belongings and shrugs. In our hurry to leave the forest, we forgot to refill our drinking water. I can see he’s too distressed to give this oversight the weight it deserves, but we’ll not make it far with what we’ve got. We can’t count on a storm to top us up like on our voyage here.

  Marlok orders Huxley to go get the water jars we’d left behind.

  “No way am I going back there,” Hux says.

  “I’ll do it,” I say. The thought of depending on something from that forest for our survival makes me ill, so it’s best I just get it over with.

  Without the weight of Mali’s body burdening me, I’m able to reach our abandoned camp in good time. At least, I think this is where we’d held up. There are the black coals from my birthday fire, and the logs arranged in a circle for seats, but the jars we’d kept our medicine and water in are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the Ori took them as souvenirs. If so, I need to get them back.

  Whispering catches my attention. I creep close to a large tree, the one Nya had me climb, around which some Ori argue.

  “Even if she destroys the gate, we’ll still have the Watchers to fight.”

  “Assuming Nya even goes through with it. What did she take those jars for?”

  I clench my jaw and ball my hands into fists. In another act of treachery, Nya has stolen our water containers. Does she think that will keep us from going home? Or is she counting on us to attempt the return voyage without them? Either way, she’ll end up killing us all without spilling a single drop of blood.

  “She didn’t say why she needed the jars,” an Ori says, “but she’ll wreck the pyramid if it guarantees a victory over Jexa.”

  “Even if it means killing herself?”

  “No one really knows that’s what’ll happen.”

  “Sure it will. I saw it once. An Entropath tried dusting an archway, only, she had no idea it was made of sacred lonsdaleite. She blew apart right in front of me.”

  A long silence ensues.

  My jaw goes slack and my heart slides up into my throat. Nya is going to sacrifice herself for us? And the last words I said to her…

  Something I never thought possible happens on the walk back to the beach: I return with a heart heavier than when I’d left. Under the light of this same moon that glitters off the sea, I have loved two people in ways that all the words in my mother’s books cannot describe. Today I lost one when she sought out a present for me. Now, another goes to certain death to offer me an even greater gift.

  In my absence, Marlok and Huxley had laid Mali in the main boat with her crossbow on her chest. I grab her weapon and drop it into the boat that she and I had both taken here, then drag my small vessel away from the others.

  “What are you doing?” says Marlok. The rage in his eyes is suppressed only by a measure of surprise.

  “I’m going to the pyramids.”

  “The hell you are!”

  “Mali knew what she risked by coming here,” I say. “And if she could speak right now, she’d call you all cowards for turning away from this fight.”

  Marlok’s upper lip curls in animal rage. Huxley glances between me and Marlok, shifting nervously.

  My next words may be my last if I’m not careful, but I risk more by backing down. “By abandoning this cause, you offer her the greatest of disrespects. You’d say the fight she died for is not worth fighting. You all know that if you or me or every single one of us died out here, she’d honor us by carrying on to the bitterest of ends. Better to die fighting than hiding…that’s what she believed. And make no mistake, when you return home to our colony, that’s what you’ll be doing. Hiding. Even if you fire a few arrows into the sky, all you’ll be doing is playing hide-and-seek. It’s time to stop playing.” My fists clench so tight at my sides my knuckles crack. “You all rush out to face death on our home soil, hoping your blood in the sand will buy yourself glory and our people more time. If that’s what you consider victory, you’ll find no better arena than at the pyramids. There you will face every demon that has hunted our kind. There you’ll find the only fight that will ever bring us freedom.” I raise Mali’s crossbow. “If it is death that awaits us, let us die as the hunters, not the hunted. Let us give that Jexa and her demons a fight they’ll never forget.”

  Marlok crosses his arms and appraises me with a mix of scrutiny and wonder. I’d spent my whole life shunning the warrior spirit, but now it is not only me who goes forth. Mali’s spirit lives on with every beat of my heart, and she was a warrior until her last breath. Her fight will live on through me. Because I’ve seen that there is a time for caution. A time to think and evaluate. And then there is a time for action. To be bold and courageous and put it all on the line.

  Now is that time.

  Marlok lowers his fists to his sides. But, instead of reprisal, a faint smile lifts the corner of his mouth.

  “We will return home victorious over our enemy,” he says with a nod, “or we shall not return at all.”

  I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  “Well, in that case,” says Mora, always eager to intrude on a sensitive moment, “you’ll be wanting these.”

  She offers us tunics of silver. Only, as I take one in my hands, I notice this steel garment bends. It’s too soft to be armor, yet, other than providing a bit of warmth, how will a shirt serve us on this daring mission?

  “Bark spider silk,” Mora explains. “It’s the strongest natural material we’ve come across on this planet. We didn’t have enough to outfit all of our own fighters, so none dared wear it. Solidarity…or something like that. But there’s enough for all of you, so it’s yours now.”

  I slide the shirt on. It hangs loose, so Mora steps behind me and quickly reworks the material until it fits me perfectly. Her six workers fit the rest of our warriors with this silky armor.

  I notice Marlok staring at Mali’s wrapped remains.

  “We should bury her here,” I say, sizing up the tall trees. “It’s a peaceful place.” Even though it killed her. But it’s better than the battlegrounds to the east, or our desolate caves to the west. Not like we’d have time to bring her home, anyway.

  Marlok gives a faint nod of approval.

  “We’ll prepare her a grave,” Mora says, then
motions for two of her Ori to get digging in the tree line. She joins Marlok in looking at his sister’s body. “Soon she’ll be one with her Mother. What remains of her will break down until what was once dead reforms into life anew. She’ll emerge from the cold earth a sprout, and once again she will feel the sun’s warmth. She’ll grow tall into a tree that will stand strong against even the fiercest winds, and…”

  Marlok raises a hand to silence her. Mora trails off, then turns her attention to me.

  “You’ll travel by sea?” she says. “Can you fit a few wee ones like us in your water craft? We’re fairly light. Plus, I think we’ll make fair paddlers.”

  “You can ride with me,” I say. We’ll need every hand we can muster to reach the pyramids in time, and even that may not be enough.

  26

  —

  NYA

  THE EMPTY JARS from the sapien camp come in handy. I buzz around a meadow gathering fireflies into the glass containers, but I’m catching more than just glowing insects. The jars that I’ve already filled with sea sparkle should provide more than enough light for my crazy endeavor.

  Curious eyes watch me from the trees surrounding the meadow. Many have no doubt seen me before, in battle or at the pyramids, before they abandoned our cause. I no longer blame them for that. Fear is a powerful master of the mind, as I’ve seen myself. But soon there will be nowhere for them to hide.

  Surely they wonder why I now play in a meadow so far from the fight.

  I fill a jar with fireflies so that it glows neon green, then set it with a pile of jugs full of octopus bacteria. I’d ordered my Nixy cousins to retrieve me some before coming here. When I’d told them what they were missing above water, they were swift to fulfill my request. In the night, the glowing light reaches every tree around the meadow, illuminating the faces of a dozen Fori watching me. It’s a big enough audience.

  “By now many of you have heard of our failure,” I say. “But our fight is not yet over. I need your help to rebuild our ranks so we can stop Jexa from seating the Capstone.”