Entanglement Bound: An Epic Space Opera Series (Entangled Universe Book 1)

by Mary E. Lowd

  Am-lei turned to the others and her antennae swayed in a welcoming way, like she was asking them to sing the song to Lee-a-lei with them. Roscoe began to hum, trying to match the tune; his long ears waved along with the rhythm like Am-lei's antennae. Irohann didn't try to sing, but he patted the ground like a drum with shuffling front paws.

  Clarity's voice felt hoarse and uncontrolled when she finally tried to join in. Yet there was a magic to the sound of her voice blended with the music of the others. She kind of wished Mazillion were here to buzz along. She wondered what they were up to on Cassie right now.

  And just like that, all of the warmth of the moment flowed out of Clarity; she filled with coldness and a heavy rock-like feeling in the pit of her stomach as she pictured Mazillion hijacking Cassie, selling the Merlin Box to one of the mysterious bidders they'd mentioned, and destroying the universe in a cataclysm of shattered time.

  Except, Mazillion wouldn't do that. No one would. Clarity was being paranoid, because she'd had so many shocks to her system lately.

  Besides, even if Mazillion wanted to hijack Cassie, the starwhal wasn't wired for being piloted by a swarm creature like them. Nonetheless, Clarity suddenly felt like the ground beneath her—an entire world of dirt and rock—was shaky and unstable. It could disappear at any moment.

  The feeling wouldn't go away, not completely, until she knew the Merlin Box had been properly disposed of at the Devil's Radio.

  After three rounds of them all singing together, Am-lei's voice trailed off. She didn't start the song up again. But after a pause, filled with the rustling of russet leaves, Roscoe filled the silence, beginning a round of a children's classic from Crossroads Station. Clarity had heard children of all species sing "We Are Star Stuff" while playing on the carousel of tiny painted spaceships in the grav-bubble playground. It usually sounded juvenile and fluffy. But somehow, here among all the hanging chrysalises, the lyrics felt deep and profound, meaningful in a way they never had before and probably never would again.

  After a few more children's songs they all knew, Roscoe sang a few songs in his native language from his own homeworld. By then, other lepidopterans had begun filtering into the grove, gathering in circles around various chrysalises, just like Am-lei had led them to do with Lee-a-lei's chrysalis.

  The light in the grove dimmed a little and took on a rosy, sunset hue. Twilight was approaching. Clarity wished she could see the lacy filigree of clouds better, but there were only tiny patches of them scattered across the glorious roof of red leaves. From what she could see, though, the clouds had turned hot pink and deep orange, molten gold dripping across a lemon-yellow sky.

  Sunsets never got old. Clarity couldn't imagine herself ever tiring of discovering new styles of sunset—new stars, setting behind the horizons of new planets. Places she'd never been before were her greatest joys in life.

  "Look," Irohann said softly.

  Light pressure against Clarity’s knee made her look down to see Irohann's white-furred paw. He squeezed down, and she felt the blunt tips of his clawtips, but then he lifted his paw and pointed, discreetly, at Lee-a-lei's pulsing chrysalis. The translucent surface had taken on a filmy quality, and a narrow crack ran from the rounded bottom, hovering and twitching a few inches from the metal floor of the bio-matter crate, halfway up the chrysalis's side.

  Clarity had almost missed the changes in front of her, because she'd been lost staring at the leaf-filled sky. "Thank you," she whispered.

  The crack in the side of Lee-a-lei's chrysalis widened, hinging half of the curved bottom off to the side. The translucent surface—which had been clear and solid like crystal or glass—suddenly looked flimsy, nothing more than a thin layer of wax paper, crumpling aside.

  Glancing around the grove, quickly to avoid missing more of Lee-a-lei's change, Clarity saw other chrysalises had begun splitting open too. For a moment, she was surprised so many chrysalises would burst open on the same day as Lee-a-lei's—was this something that happened every day? Then she realized, the metamorphosis must happen seasonally, and Lee-a-lei had chosen the continent to send them to based on the seasons. This region of Leionaia was the closest to being in sync with Lee-a-lei's biological rhythm, which was probably completely catawampus from growing up on a space station instead of her homeworld.

  This transcendent ceremony might well happen every night and morning, but only for a few weeks or a month at the height of the season. At least, that was Clarity's guess. For all she knew, it was something else entirely.

  The twitching and wriggling visible in the crack of Lee-a-lei's chrysalis intensified. There were angular black corners mixed in with the smooth curves of purple and blue. Then an antenna, long and black, popped out of the crack and sproinged into a perfectly straight line. The crack shifted, doubling in width, and the slow changes became fast: twiggy black legs with sharp angles, bending in multiple locations, elbowed their way out of the crack and grabbed onto the crumpling wax paper of the chrysalis's shell with obsidian talons just like Am-lei's.

  Lee-a-lei's face looked just like Am-lei's too. Her multi-faceted dome eyes sparkled in the rosy sunset light, and Clarity could see the circle of her onlookers—wingless butterfly, elephant, bunny, fox, and pink primate—reflected in miniature at so many different slanting angles.

  Lee-a-lei's mouth parts wriggled soundlessly all around the base of her curling proboscis as if she were tasting the air—musty and rich with a brambly smell like summer blackberries—for the first time. Perhaps she was. At the very least, those mouth parts—brand new, just born from the womb of her self-made chrysalis—were feeling the touch of fresh, flowing air for the first time. Her proboscis uncurled, and Lee-a-lei fluted a high-pitched inchoate squeak with her entirely new speech organ. She tried again, furling and unfurling her proboscis as she repeated the sound until her voice lowered into a musical trill, forming the Solanese words, "We made it! You got me here!"

  "We did," Am-lei said, her voice low, clear, and sweet. "We brought you home."

  Lee-a-lei's rumpled wings hung from her thorax, covering her abdomen like a dress that had been crumpled up in the back of a drawer for too long. The blues and purples had a slick, damp quality. The colorful membranes were still wet from their time in the chrysalis, but as the seconds passed, Lee-a-lei's wings straightened, flattening out and drying before their eyes. She tilted them, waving them lightly, as she stepped down to the ground with her new long legs and let go of her crumpled chrysalis.

  A patch of rosy sunset light streamed through the tree branches above and shone through the blue and purple membranes of Lee-a-lei's wings. Around the edges, her wings were decorated with little dots of brilliant buttercup yellow, fire orange, and hot pink. As the sunlight poured through those dots, pools of colored light danced over the onlookers.

  When the colored light played over Am-lei's obsidian black body, clothed as always in an ashen gray garment, her long twiggy limbs shifted uncomfortably, and she said quietly, probably to herself, "I didn't have a chance to change..."

  Clarity looked around the grove. Just like on Lo'riana station and during their travels to here, all of the other lepidopterans were dressed in brightly colored clothes, like a stand-in for the wings they'd all shed as teenagers. Even the few pudgy, green-and-yellow, caterpillar-like younglings were swathed in rainbow clothes, premonitions of wings to come in future years. All of them dripped with brightly colored cloth. All of them except Am-lei.

  Lee-a-lei was like a living rainbow. Am-lei had clothed herself in shadows.

  And of course, she couldn't have changed clothes, because all of her clothes had been lost when The Serendipity was destroyed. Clarity had made it out with a duffle bag, but none of the others had had a chance to grab anything. They'd barely made it out of there with Lee-a-lei's crate.

  "I'm sorry, Honey-sticks," Jeko said softly, a comforting bassoon song. "I know you had a whole outfit picked out."

  Am-lei's antennae quivered, and she turned her head away. Though t
hey all still reflected in the glittering facets on the back side of her giant dome-eyes. "I should have stopped to buy something on the space station... It would have only taken a few minutes. I just... didn't think of it."

  "Neither did I." Jeko reached the end of her nose into a mauve, heart-shaped pocket on her calico dress—the same dress she'd been wearing since The Serendipity's destruction—and pulled out a silken scarf checkered with little red and orange hearts. "For now," she said, "this will have to do."

  Jeko draped the scarf over her wife's thorax, and Am-lei's antennae oscillated gratefully. She still looked more like a creature of shadows than a creature of rainbows, but at least she had a bright line of red, a heartstring, coloring her.

  Clarity unzipped her duffle bag and dug into it—she was sure she'd packed a scarf or two in there, more than a week ago, a lifetime ago, back when she was only moving from her own room to Irohann's. Clarity hadn't meant to pack for the second half of her life.

  Underneath the fluffy gray Woaoo doll and couple of other toys, she found an aquamarine shawl with forest green tassels along the edge. She pulled it out and held the fistful of fabric out to Am-lei, her own offering to this primal ceremony.

  Am-lei waved her top two talons, demurring, but then Jeko gave her a stern look. Am-lei reached out to take the shawl. "Thank you." She tied the triangle of fabric around her narrow body, between thorax and abdomen. The wide aquamarine shawl draped over her oblong abdomen, and the thin red and orange scarf shimmered in a loop over her thorax.

  Roscoe leaned forward and offered a handkerchief, a little square of mustard yellow pulled from one of his pockets. Am-lei held out one of her twiggy forelimbs, and Roscoe tied the yellow square around the narrow black limb just above one of her elbows, adding a touch of sunlight to the ensemble.

  Jeko leaned in close to her wife and whispered from under her nose, "You look beautiful." Then she spoke up and trumpeted the same words, loud and proud, to her daughter. "You look beautiful, Lee-a-lei, so beautiful."

  "Don't get used to it!" Lee-a-lei said, a trilling bell of laughter. She flapped her blue and purple wings, fanning the group with a light breeze. She flapped harder, the slices of colorful membrane straining against the air and pushing bursts of wind outward. "I can't believe our ancestors were once able to fly with these. They're so useless!"

  "But stunning, m'lady," Roscoe said. He bowed his head, long ears brushing against the ground. "Allow me to introduce myself," he added. "The name's Roscoe; I'm a friend of your mothers'."

  Irohann introduced himself as well; then Clarity followed suit. Lee-a-lei was polite to them, but she seemed distracted and uninterested in the mysterious appearance of new mammalian friends of her parents. It was only fair. She was in a grove surrounded by young butterfly aliens, all her own age and own species, when she'd never met another person of her own species before, except for her mother and grandmother, from whom she had been cloned.

  Clarity felt like an intruder, a barely welcome guest, at a family holiday. She marveled at how comfortable Roscoe seemed, and even Irohann. But then, Irohann never let others get to him, unless he thought they could guess his secret and betray him to the Doraspians. He always seemed to feel at home. And that meant Clarity always felt welcome, everywhere she went, when she was with him. Traveling the universe was going to be much harder without him.

  Her resolve wavered. Maybe even if he had lied to her... She should forgive him, move on, and forget about it. Maybe it really had been only one lie. They'd made it through thirty years together. Surely, if he'd been lying to her and betraying her all along, there would have been clues? She couldn't be so blind that she'd been misjudging her best friend for decades.

  Clarity shook her head, trying to push aside all of the doubts and uncertainties plaguing her. She was in the Grove of Changes on Leionaia, a beautiful place of huge cultural significance, and she needed to exist in the moment, soak every detail in while the moment lasted.

  Teenaged lepidopterans were emerging from their chrysalises all around them now. Crystal vases thinned into wax paper and crumpled up at the feet of sentient butterflies, hanging upside down from the branches above. Underneath these newly birthed teenagers, their families gathered in circles, dancing and singing. The sight was strange and unnerving, but also magical, heartening, and beautiful.

  Clarity’s family had celebrated when she was a similar age—birthday parties with gifts in brightly wrapped boxes and sugar-bombs of cake; high school graduation with a long, dour, black robe and a silly square hat with a tassel hanging over the side. It had felt like such a big deal to her, so many years ago, to move a golden tassel from one side of her graduation cap to the other, and yet it had been such a tiny gesture, a minuscule detail, an alien visitor could have easily missed.

  What details were happening here, in this moment, that were as easy to miss? What could Clarity see if she looked closely enough?

  Most of the newly emerged lepidopterans hung upside down from their crumpled chrysalises while their wings dried. Lee-a-lei, however, had climbed down onto the ground in the middle of the circle of her onlookers. Her new twiggy legs wobbled slightly under her, but there wasn't room for her to hang comfortably upside down from the top of the bio-matter crate. All the other lepidopteran teenagers had hung their chrysalises from the branches above. They were much higher up. Their wings fanned the grove, filling the space between the wide tree trunks with swirling eddies of breezes.

  The lepidopteran adults and adorably pudgy green-and-yellow caterpillar younglings held out their arms, spreading their cloth simulations of wings. The caterpillars' clothing included long sticks they could hold out, increasing the reach of their stubby arms, so their cloth wings draped better. Lepidopterans—adult insectoids and baby caterpillars alike—turned in place, inscribing little circles with their waving cloth wings. Above them, the newly emerged lepidopteran teenagers with their true wings climbed up into the branches and then ran along them, jumping from one branch to the next with wings flapping as if they were flying, even though their vestigial wings couldn't actually lift them.

  Lee-a-lei's antennae circled intently, and she pointed with a talon at the others her age. "Help me up," she said. "I need to be in the branches, with the others!"

  Jeko grabbed one of Lee-a-lei's hind talons with the coiled end of her nose, and Am-lei grabbed onto two more of their daughter's talons with four of her own. They hoisted Lee-a-lei up into the air, but their combined strength didn't raise her quite high enough. Irohann jumped up to lend a paw. He was the tallest of the group by several inches, and with his help, Am-lei and Jeko raised Lee-a-lei high enough to grab onto the top side of the nearest branch with her two foremost talons. She clambered up and stood above them all. Rosy sunlight streamed through her wings and painted the leaf-covered ground all around them in joyous colors.

  Lee-a-lei ran along the branch above, waving her blue and purple wings, and her mother Am-lei ran along the ground below, waving the aquamarine shawl Clarity had loaned her. A beautiful butterfly, and her shadow, a costumed mimic, following beneath her.

  Caught up in the excitement, Roscoe left his walking stick behind and hopped along after them. Irohann followed too, tail swishing and muzzle split in the widest grin. He didn't have wings, but his fiery orange fur tipped with snowy white on his paws and the swishing tip of his tail always looked cheerful. In a grove of red leaves and rainbow-colored butterflies, he looked downright celebratory.

  "I wish we'd had more time to prepare," Jeko trumpeted, again picking at the dowdy shades of mauve in her cotton dress with the tip of her nose. Of course, she'd had plenty of time to prepare, but all of her preparations had been destroyed with The Serendipity. "I had cloth wings on sticks for myself," she mused. "Like the cater-babes."

  Clarity dug through her duffle bag, seeing if she could find anything else to offer Jeko. But she didn't have much left after The Serendipity's destruction either. She zipped the bag back up and replaced it, balanced agains
t the back of her shoulder. She reached a hand out and squeezed Jeko's hand. The elephantine woman's wrinkly gray skin was surprisingly soft to the touch. "You're here," Clarity said. "You're here, and your daughter is happy. That's what matters."

  Jeko coiled her nose up under her chin like the spiral of an ammonite shell. She nodded. "Yes, and pictures," she said, uncoiling her nose. She pulled a pocket computer out of another heart-shaped pocket in her dress and held it up with her nose. "Can you take pictures too? We'd get more angles if you did, and have a better chance of getting really good shots."

  Clarity pulled out her pocket computer and aimed it at Lee-a-lei, still running along the branches, dancing with the other lepidopteran teenagers. "Of course, I can," she said. "It's allowed right? We're not breaking some taboo by taking them?"

  "We're not," Jeko said. "There's no taboo. The lepidopterans simply don't care about preserving the memory of their wings. But... I've wished for most of my life that someone had taken a picture of Am-lei when we were both kids, and for one day, she had those glorious wings."

  So, instead of dancing with the butterflies, Clarity and Jeko stood and filmed them, preserving the beauty of Lee-a-lei's temporally transient, teenaged colors in digital files on their pocket computers. Little scraps of memory Jeko could treasure forever.

  25 Slicing Away the Past

  When the time came, Am-lei borrowed a ceremonial knife from one of the other lepidopteran parents. Lee-a-lei stood perfectly still on the leaf-covered ground, surrounded by her band of mammalian well-wishers, and Am-lei sliced the curved metal blade along the base of one wing, right up against Lee-a-lei's obsidian black thorax. So far, the cut of the blade didn't seem to hurt the young butterfly at all. As the knife cut along the edge of the wing, the taut membranes collapsed, crumpled, and hung lifeless. When the knife reached the bottom of the joint, the entire wing fell, fluttering lightly in the breeze, and pooled around Lee-a-lei's six feet.