What I was unprepared for most was the ascended that were among them. Nearby I heard Min, the same age as Qori—and her joined—growl over the others at my brother. “Where is she? Where’s Hanea? Arvex, I swear if you’ve let anything happen to her…”
“She’s safe, brother, I promise you.” Arvex clasped the older ascended’s arms. Placated for now, he began to move to his mate, but not without calling back, “You shouldn’t have left her in those water-logged caves! She never was meant for this kind of life! We’re going to get her after this.”
“Min, that is enough,” one of the adults reasoned with him. I recognized the scar-covered male to be our mother’s older brother. Our uncle had never been fond of palace life, preferring to keep the peace with the scattered miner clans on Datura. He was the leader of the Pioneer and I was not surprised to see him alive.
My eyes strayed over the desecrated forest at our feet. Once, the sight of dismembered bodies, even those of alien beings might have sickened me, but now I only felt a numb acceptance. A pale child’s hand stuck up out of the gore and a hoarse cry escaped my lips as I realized what I had missed in the chaos.
Dropping to my knees in the mud I hefted off the torso of one of the aliens before pulling the lifeless form of Menai into my arms. Kahne threw herself into Bruv, unable to look on. I felt Ohre’s hand on my shoulder as I began to rock back and forth with Menai’s body. My translucent inner eyelids closed rapidly in an effort to stay my tears. The steel walls I had spent my life erecting around my resolve were being ripped to shreds as I stared down into his lifeless orbs. Flashes of our lives on the ship and before, when he and Gem were babes held in my arms sank into me with the weight of a leviathan’s teeth.
Pressing my fingertips to his gills I searched for any pulse, any sign of life and choked on a sob to find none. I reached into him until I could see inside his ruined flesh with my gift, until our flesh was one. The ache it left in me shook me to my core, because there was simply nothing left, and that nothingness wanted to swallow me up too. If there was a chance he was still there, clinging to his ruined body, there was also the danger of his soul leeching onto mine. Then we would both lose ourselves. It was better he die than live half a life I reasoned.
“No! Menai!” Qori wailed with the same raw emotion I was feeling. She was the twins’ eighteen-year-old sister, who was just as bushy-haired and bright-eyed as they. Her travel tunic was soiled and torn in several places, and her flawless skin covered in scratches and fresh scars.
Min ran to stop Qori before she ripped her brother from my arms, his hard granite eyes not softening until he noticed my stare. Nodding to Menai’s crumpled form he insisted, “You must be certain, Orona.”
Hearing the official title from his lips made me freeze and flinch at once. I tightened my grip on the boy I had watched grow up, a boy I was responsible for. Until Min spoke, I had pushed the truth to the back of my mind. We were ascended in the adults’ eyes now. Perhaps all of us were, even baby Jymee. No child could go through what we had and not be irrevocably changed. But now that I knew I was the last, no other choice was acceptable. I must find a way to finish my father’s mission. And though my powers might have tripled since my ascension, I couldn’t bring the dead back to life.
Qori twisted her tear-streaked face and cried out to me. “Heal him! I know you have the power.”
Shaking my head in denial I pleaded with her, my voice a whisper to keep myself from screaming. “I can’t, Qori, I can’t heal the dead.”
“No! He’s not dead! You aren’t even trying!” Her eyes were accusing, but now Min was wrapping her in his arms. She screamed louder and he attempted to calm her waters.
“Love, you mustn’t be so loud. They could be watching us as we speak.” I shivered with foreboding at his words. I too, had felt invisible eyes watching us every time we entered the massive trees. Were the aliens hunting them too all this time? Is this why they hadn’t kept still for longer than a few shifts of the star?
Yet my eyes fixed onto Menai and compassion welled up in my heart. It was difficult to fight my emotions even though I knew I wasn’t strong enough. Somehow I found myself kneeling at the twin’s other side and cupping his face with my palms I breathed and dipped into my gift. The pain I instantly felt was enough to make me cry out. I felt a firm pair of hands grasp my back to steady me, but I was fading too fast. Too much of my energy was pouring into him. It would take every ounce of life in me to bring this boy back. And I carried the distant memory of the last orona who had sacrificed herself, as well.
But it was then I felt him, could see his pained expression as he fought against his injuries. People’s inner auras glowed, depending on their health. The stronger the soul, the more closely they resembled their fleshy form. Seeing Menai’s eyes open as he recognized me and reached out affected me much more than my last attempt to save him. Wrapping tendrils of my energy around him I watched as he grabbed hold and clung to me. His voice was suddenly in my head.
I caught fading glimpses of Menai’s mind, of endless laughter and pranks with Gem. I saw how he and his brother idolized Arvex and later Ohre. I saw how they had always competed for my attention and thought my face the most beautiful of anything else they had seen. I could feel Menai’s will to live now attaching itself to mine. I struggled to repair the damage in his body enough so his soul could remain in it. But not enough blood remained to rebuild him, and I couldn’t hold onto Menai without ripping his aura away.
Our eyes locked in that moment, as I let him go, terror-stricken, and left to face the unknown of that next world. How was I going to face Gem? How could any of us when we had sworn to protect each other at all costs? Why hadn’t I been paying better attention? My fault, I thought as the pain became too great, my cry increased until Ohre’s hands pulled me off of the boy and into his solid chest.
Blinking past tears I met Qori’s sad eyes and shook my head, unable to form the words. At last she nodded and crumpled in defeat over her brother’s corpse.
“Can’t you try again?” she asked in a voice more feeble than I had ever heard from her before.
My uncle spoke for me then, stepping between us. “We need our healer. Having both of them die would have served no purpose.” He knelt beside her to close the child’s eyes. Qori’s cries after would haunt me for moons to come.
Without thinking, I turned to find comfort in the miner’s arms, then gasped as I saw a worn mud-stained jumpsuit. Instantly I knew the chest I was facing was too thin to be Ohre’s, his arms too long and the awestruck face drinking mine was one I knew better than myself.
“Tamn!” My voice cracked as I clung to him.
His haunted gaze traced my features before his hands moved to follow the trail and burrow into my soiled red hair. “Qeya…” he whispered in that clear, deep voice, the same voice that had sung me to sleep most nights after the invasion of home world, aboard the terror of the miner’s heaven vessel.
Tamn was the eldest of our crew’s children now that the others perished in the crash. Remarkable as their icy features were, to me, Tamn was the most striking and attention-arresting of them all. Unlike Arvex, my intended had never been the golden boy, though his hair was nearly silver. Confidence and determination leaked from every one of his gills, poured out from his equally pale eyes.
As if touch was the only way he could be convinced I truly was before him, Tamn snatched me by the waist, trapping me in his crushing embrace. His eyes were awash with emotion, something else uniquely Tamn. He could keep his composure perfectly contained, but his eyes truly were windows to the hunan within. His breath was hot against the nape of my neck.
“Qeya! We saw the attack from here. Pieces of the Datura have been falling through the outer sphere and I thought you…”
I gasped when I felt wetness against my neck. We were not joined yet, though I realized there was nothing stopping him from taking me now. And yet my eyes somehow found those of the tattooed miner over the ridge of Tamn’s shoul
der, watching us with guarded fury. Even after the other two miners dragged Ohre’s attention away, those green eyes followed mine.
Bruv and Kahne were still in shock over the death of their friend and had turned their attention to the Pioneer crew. I watched as Bruv approached them, the harsh edges of his face crumbling when he didn’t see their missing adult member.
Looking up at my uncle, the crew’s leader, Bruv asked in the bravest voice he could muster, “Where’s my father?” Even from here, I could feel the child’s pain as the adult knelt to his level, placed a hand on his shoulder and held his gaze.
“He died an honorable death, Bruv. He was the best warrior among us, just like you. He told me he wanted you to be strong for us now, in his place.” My uncle stood and turned to confer with the others briefly. Arvex was officially King Arvex now that our father was dead, and ready or not, even the adults would adhere to him. From their expressions, I could tell they had rekindled their purpose by finding their king, by finding us. We were their future, all that was left of their legacy. Still there were so many of us who hadn’t made it.
Bruv stared at the space the crew leader had left in his wake, clenching his father’s blade so tight his energy began to dart over his skin and fill the curved metal. Kahne stood behind him, leaning on him to follow. Her parents had died on board Datura 3 like the rest of ours. Bruv had had one last hope and now this too was crushed.
We weren’t given time to grieve just then, however. The captain looked first at Arvex and then me before insisting we move. “We can’t stay any longer. I’m surprised they haven’t caught up to us by now.”
“Who?” I asked, hearing the harsh shell of my voice. Uncle’s eyes softened and then shifting his stance he turned to my brother. His second mate pulled Qori from Menai’s bloody form.
“We can’t leave him! He’s just a boy.”
The captain called harshly to his crewmember, “Menai is dead and we can’t carry him with us or we’re dead too. And perhaps this will occupy them long enough to give us time.” Turning to Arvex he inclined his head, one leader to another. “Where is this cave you spoke of?”
Arvex nodded to Menai. “He made an atlas.”
Qori couldn’t restrain her sob when the captain searched her brother’s corpse and pulled the bark loose. Marching back over to Arvex he handed over the wood. “Take us there, my king.”
All of this happened so quickly, yet like certain moments in life, would remain imprinted, painted just as clearly as the day I experienced them.
As we made our way closer to the mountains, Tamn explained our situation as best as he understood it. This was truly a hostile world, with ravenous beasts and giants roaming within. Yet there was something else in the forest they had narrowly avoided, another intelligent race. They knew from the weapons used against them this was unlike any alien race they had encountered before. This was why Bruv’s father was not among the team anymore. He had been injured in the first fight and then sacrificed himself to save the others.
Within the Pioneer’s initial scan of this hostile world, they discovered the sea covered most of its surface, which is part of what intrigued them. Two major continents were split far apart and various island chains dotted other parts of the ocean. It was a very young world, from what they could tell, and our continent was ringed along its southern end by a very impassable mountain range. This valley was the span of the largest of our islands on home world. The crew had found their way inside just as we had, through a different set of undersea caves.
The alien ship shot them down first from the heavens, then returned to the mothership to finish the job. The Pioneer was currently resting at the bottom of the shallow sea. They had managed to take most of the necessary supplies, and the swim was easy enough for them. Yet Tamn said there was more beneath those waves than we believed.
I could hear Ohre arguing with the other two miners nearby but could not find my own voice. Not with Tamn beside me, alive and not dead.
“We’ve been on the move without any time to really breathe ever since we arrived, Qeya,” Tamn continued to explain, his fingers laced through mine. “These people don’t like that we are here. We aren’t sure if they’re connected to the ones who attacked our shuttle but the captain’s convinced they are. I tend to think it was someone else. The weapons these use in the valley are primitive, but not simple. Still there’s no sign of any advanced civilization like ours here. That’s what drove us to come in the first place. We thought it was safe.”
He grinned faintly, eyeing me in a way that I had never noticed before, as if he could not take in enough. “We ejected the pod soon after takeoff. We were on our way back when the attack came, Qeya. That’s how we found the caves too.” After a pause his lips quirked into the grin that once arrested my heart. “I’m so glad to see you, Qeya. When I thought you were still on Datura 3…”
I didn’t know what to say to that so I tried to just enjoy the feel of his fingers wrapped around my own.
The surviving three royals and two miners were arguing on whether or not they should go back and salvage deck two, to make a new ship. Clearly the miners wanted to get back to the heavens as soon as possible. What the Royals were not saying was they wanted to salvage their children as well as what was left of the ship. Tamn said they held on to the hope there might have been more survivors. I didn’t have the heart to take away their hopes. I knew it wasn’t so, though. Ohre and I had scoured the deck for other heartbeats and found none. My scanner had confirmed that. We would never leave our own behind.
I wanted him to see reason, even though I secretly hated the idea of giving up as much as he did. “We can’t let the crew keep walking around like this. We have to settle somewhere, Tamn.” The much taller hunan beside me had grown silent while I worked through my thoughts. Even the caves we’d found would be better than wandering forever.
“I know. But every time we’ve stopped, the others show up.” For Tamn to sound afraid meant whoever these others were, it might take all of us to fight them off. I turned to take in our numbers and found Ohre’s eyes still fixed on me; more specifically on Tamn’s fingers wrapped through mine.
The other two miners flanked Ohre, different yet similar tattoo designs covering their bald heads. I was surprised when I realized the younger of the two miners was subtly delicate in feature. It never had occurred to me to notice they had females among the workers of the ship. Together they rambled off in their guttural language.
The captain’s second was walking at the head of our group alone, while he guarded nearby to my right side. It felt strange to be around adults again, and it reminded me how much my crew had changed in so short a time. Could we even try to return to that life? Would that life satisfy us now that we had found freedom?
Tamn spoke softly so the others would not hear. “Qeya, I want you to know if anything happens to us… I meant to ask you as soon as we came back from this mission. I wanted to tell your mother so many times. I couldn’t stand waiting for you anymore.”
“What?” I met his eyes with a flicker of my inner lids. His white eyes were filled with the most emotion I had ever seen in an adult. His love washed over me and I wondered how long he had kept it bottled inside, and how he had kept me unaware of it all this time.
“Qeya, I wanted to tell you that I…” he breathed.
A piercing cry cut through the fading daylight. The old miner had been trailing behind us, and his wrist weapon let loose a rapid succession of energy bursts as he fell. The alien blade poked through his chest and the plasma power from his weapon lifted roots from trees and nearly cut the massive trunks in two. The forest exploded into sound and action. The aliens had caught up to us.
Tamn and I both had our blades out and ready, along with a second weapon he unhooked from his belt. It looked much like the miners’ tools. His eyes found mine one last time as the children screamed behind us and the others scrambled off into the foliage looking for cover to fire from. Before I could registe
r his actions Tamn drew me into him, his lips covering mine in one passionate breath-stealing tangle.
“Go!” he shouted, running back to the growing chorus of otherworldly screams approaching us. The alien people shouted out their war cries as they attacked and what was left of the Pioneer turned to face them.
The captain, our uncle, was using a weapon I had never seen before, some blend between a whip and a scythe. Every twist and turn he made, using the trees and branches for leverage, the blade extended on a thin chain to attack a nearby enemy. The trouble was their spears were coming in faster. Suddenly, a face appeared through the trees and I gaped at the first sentient being from the Edge I had seen. Its skin was dusted in hair that grew about its face and its head, where too intelligent eyes blazed brightly. It roared at the captain as he fended off the initial blow of the alien’s spear, then ducked and swinging his weapon, allowed the chain to wrap about the upright creature and slice him to pieces.
My uncle turned to me, his granite eyes filled with determination, and for the first time fear, as he shouted, “Take the others and run! We’ll hold them off and meet you at the cave! Never stop, no matter what you hear!”
His second mate jumped in the way of another alien attack, narrowly avoiding being skewered at the end of its spear tip. Using the now-dead being as a shield, he shook with each impact of sharp stone blades.
Arvex was already leading the others in the opposite direction. “Qeya! Come on!”
I stared numbly after Tamn, who held his scythe in one hand and a miner blade in the other, crossing them over another alien’s bare neck. I gripped my scythe, refusing to run, refusing to lose him again. I wasn’t a coward!
I cried out when a pair of hands grabbed and dragged me away from the battle. Ohre growled in his first tongue when I would not run. He shouted over the boom of plasma charges and upturned earth. “Get your metal together, Qeya! You heard what the captain said! There’s too many of them! I’m getting you out of here even if I have to carry you!”
Qeya (Heaven's Edge Novellas Book 1) Page 8