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

by Mary E. Lowd

  The young lepidopteran laughed, flapped her remaining wing, and said, "Look at me! I'm lopsided now!"

  Jeko made a guttural sound, like a tuba choking on a handkerchief, and a tear glinted in her eye. She wiped it away quickly with the tip of her nose.

  "Are you okay?" Clarity asked, her voice low so only Jeko could hear.

  "Yes," Jeko answered, wiping furiously at the tears continuing to flow. "Oh, yes. It's just..."

  "That's exactly what I said," Am-lei said to her daughter. "When my first wing was cut off."

  Lee-a-lei twirled around, tilting wildly now that she had only a single wing to throw off her balance. She looked liked a whirligig seed falling from a maple tree, except much more colorful.

  "It's like traveling back in time," Jeko whispered, sounding like a breathless trombone. "Back to when we were kids, and we'd only known each other a few weeks before the change. But I think I was already in love."

  Lee-a-lei stopped twirling and took the ceremonial knife from her lepidopteran mother; she held it out toward her elephantine mother and fluted, "You cut off the other one. That's the tradition."

  Jeko's nose snaked away to drape over her shoulder, the prehensile tip as far as possible from the proffered knife. She shrank away, looking like she wanted to melt into the trunk of the nearest tree. But Am-lei said, "It's as easy as slicing through warm butter. Besides, we can have Clarity take a picture of you doing it. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

  Jeko looked at Clarity with something between terror and deep need inside her eyes. Clarity simply held her pocket computer up, an implicit promise that she'd get the desired picture. Jeko nodded solemnly and reluctantly reached her nose out to take the knife. She held the silver blade against the seam between colorful wing and night black thorax on Lee-a-lei's back for so long without moving that the young lepidopteran waggled her antennae impatiently and said, "Come on, Mom! Cut!"

  Clarity checked the photos she'd already taken on her pocket computer of Jeko standing motionlessly with the knife pressed to her daughter's thorax. They were perfect. She said, encouragingly, "I already have a beautiful shot of you preparing to cut the wing. You don't have to hold still for me in that pose any longer." As if that were truly the reason for Jeko's hesitation.

  Nonetheless, with an excuse offered for her hesitancy, Jeko began to draw the knife down the seam at the base of the wing. The colorful membrane collapsed like a circus tent when the tent poles come down. It crumpled on the leaf-strewn ground beside the other colorful, discarded wing.

  Lee-a-lei leaped from her six-legged position into a two-legged stance, throwing her four uppermost limbs into the air triumphantly. "I'm an adult!" she sang, a soaring flute solo.

  Each of her parents mumbled something about the difference between physical adulthood and emotional adulthood. But Lee-a-lei was far too busy dancing to hear them.

  She'd shed her wings so easily. An entire piece of herself—the biological, evolutionary history of her people. And already those wings, which she'd spent months growing inside her chrysalis, were nothing more than popped balloons, scraps of color left over from a big party, abandoned on the ground and left to be trod upon like the crinkly fallen leaves.

  Clarity wished she could shed her past so easily. But the sight of The Serendipity being ripped to shreds on the knife-like spiraling horn of a giant starwhal plagued her. She dreamed of it. She saw it when she closed her eyes. And it was not peaceful like Lee-a-lei's wings falling away from her had been. Lucky child.

  As Lee-a-lei danced with Roscoe and Am-lei danced with Irohann, Jeko edged over to stand beside Clarity. "May I see the pictures?"

  "Of course."

  Clarity held her pocket computer up, and the two of them scrolled through the photographs and videos she'd taken. The delight in Jeko's eyes was clear. The elephantine woman held up her own pocket computer, and they copied all of Clarity's photos over for her. Then Jeko scrolled through her own photos, while Clarity cooed politely over them. Finally, Jeko came to photos she'd taken before today's celebration—photos of the chrysalis and then photos from before, when Lee-a-lei had been a pudgy green and yellow-striped caterpillar babe.

  "Wasn't she cute?"

  "So cute," Clarity agreed. She didn't even have to lie. The squishy bulges of Lee-a-lei's caterpillar body between each pair of stubby legs looked genuinely huggable, and her head had been nothing but a pair of giant green dome eyes. There was an innocence and sweetness to her.

  "She's still the same," Jeko said, clearly more to herself than to Clarity. "On the inside." She slipped the pocket computer back into one of her dress's heart-shaped pockets. "I'm going to miss squeezing her though. You can't hug an adult lepidopteran the same way you can a baby—they're all legs, not nearly so squishy-soft." She smiled under her nose. "But they sure do dance beautifully."

  Clarity turned to watch the others dancing. She and Jeko stood, side by side, watching for a while. Roscoe hopped about comically. Irohann twirled with the lepidopterans, and his floof of a tail swirled after him, the splish of white at the end shining brightly in the dimming reds of the sunset grove.

  When the lepidopterans danced, their long twiggy legs bent at complicated angles with a clockwork precision. Their movements made Clarity think of marionettes, hanging from strings and dancing under a power not their own. The dance filling the grove was mesmerizing.

  Clarity didn't feel like dancing and drifted away from her traveling companions to explore. Deeper in the forest grove, she came upon a clearing between the trees where a giant fountain filled a round, raised pool. The amber liquid in the fountain rose into the air in graceful arcs and splashed back down with the musical sound of a babbling brook. Despite all the dancing, this was the only music: the random sounds of a fountain splashing. All around the edge of the fountain, intricately carved wooden cups and bowls were set out in elaborate place settings, brightly colored squares of fabric beneath them. Each cup rested inside a bowl; beside each bowl was a ladle.

  Young lepidopterans, fresh from their chrysalises and exhausted from dancing, kept coming up to the fountain, ladling the amber liquid into the cups, and drinking deeply through their unfurled proboscises. Clarity could tell the freshly emerged lepidopterans from the long-time adults, because their obsidian black carapaces were unclothed in colors. After they'd shed their wings, they let themselves stay black as night and naked as newborn larvae for their dancing.

  Clarity went up to one of the adult lepidopterans, dressed in garishly bright colors, who kept fixing the place settings after the young lepidopterans disturbed them. After an awkward conversation facilitated by the pocket computer's garbled translations, Clarity established—so far as she could tell—that anyone was welcome to drink the amber fluid, and it was unlikely to be harmful to her.

  She dipped a ladle into the fountain, poured the amber fluid into a cup, and lifted the wooden goblet. She tasted the flavor of the wood—spicy like pine, earthy like cedar—before the amber fluid touched her lips. The fluid was sweet but thick; it tasted of apples and summer with a twist of ginger and lemongrass. It felt satisfying in her stomach, and Clarity drank deeply. She hadn't eaten in many hours.

  After two full goblets, Clarity checked the messages on her pocket computer. The Solar Class III vessel's owner was ready to show it to her, any time. She just had to make it back up to the station.

  She looked around the Grove of Changes. The twin suns must have finished setting. No more rosy sunset-light streamed through the trees at steep angles. Now the light came from little twinkling globes, wound along the tree branches. Clarity hadn't noticed the lights when they were off. Now they filled the grove with fairy light. The dancing lepidopterans, with their long twiggy legs, cast even longer shadows dancing over the leaf-covered ground. All in an eerie silence, broken only by the crunching of leaves under foot, the splash of nectar, and the occasional, indecipherable conversation. Flutes singing to each other, not playing songs, but only speaking.

  Thi
s place was magical, straight out of a fairy tale.

  Clarity wondered what it would be like to hang her hat here, give up her life of wanderlust, and become a permanent denizen of fairy land. The lone furless monkey on a planet of wingless butterflies, limping along with her garbled translations and only two arms, compared to the natives' four.

  It was tempting. But so was the prospect of replacing The Serendipity. Clarity found her way back to her group, still dancing, and pulled Am-lei aside.

  "How long are you planning to stay?" Clarity asked.

  "At the party?"

  "Sure," Clarity said. "But also, on the planet. We—I mean, you—still have an errant entangled particle to destroy."

  Am-lei's antennae drooped, and her proboscis curled up tightly into a prim, serious expression. "At least for tonight," she said. "I haven't seen my daughter in so long... not truly." She stumbled, clearly thinking of Lee-a-lei's chrysalis and how the metamorphosing child had been visible through its crystalline walls. "I can't leave on a dangerous mission so soon."

  "You can't leave a dangerous mission waiting for too long," Clarity countered.

  "The danger will come when we open the containment crate," Am-lei said. "A few days more or less until then won't make a difference."

  "Are you sure?" Clarity asked.

  Am-lei took long enough to answer that her hesitation was an answer in and of itself. "Tomorrow, Roscoe and I will leave for Lo'riana tomorrow. Let me have tonight." She said it as if Clarity had any power over her actions.

  Yet, Clarity accepted the role implicitly by answering, "All right. But I think..." She hesitated, looking around. It would be easy to get caught here, snared by the magic of fairy land. "I'm leaving now. There's a spaceship for sale, like the one—" The image of The Serendipity speared on a starwhal's horn flashed before her eyes yet again. "The one I lost. I'm going to go see if I can buy it."

  "Then this is goodbye." The trilling sound of Am-lei's voice left it unclear whether she was asking a question or stating a fact.

  Clarity chose not to answer. She half nodded, half turned away. "Good luck saving the universe," she said, not looking at Am-lei as she spoke. "Tell the others goodbye for me."

  26 Alone on Leionaia

  Clarity made it to the edge of the grove before Irohann caught up with her. "Where are you going?" he said.

  "Away," she answered, keeping her eyes firmly on the zip-line trolley headed for her. She couldn't take looking at Irohann's face—hopeful grin, sad shock, whatever expression was on his muzzle would be too much for her.

  "Back to Lo'riana station?" His voice was right beside her now.

  The breezes changed as they were blocked by the fuzzy mass of his body. She didn't answer him; she merely waited for the hanging trolley to stop and climbed onboard, filled with complicated feelings, desperately wanting him to follow her but also wanting this goodbye to be over. And it wouldn't be over until he was gone.

  Once she got to Lo'riana Station, she could buy the new Serendipity and set off for uncharted stretches of the sky. He'd never know where to find her. She could fly away from her past like Lee-a-lei had shed her wings.

  Irohann sat down beside Clarity on the trolley and said, "Hey, you're not talking to me?"

  She bit back an acerbic response along the lines of "Gee, you're quick," which would have actually proved him wrong and herself failed at not talking to him. Instead, she kept her face turned away from him and watched the cocoon-like buildings and forest groves pass by as the trolley zipped through the city, back to the spaceport.

  When she got off the trolley, Irohann stayed right beside her. A few times inside the giant spaceport building, he helped direct her when she took a wrong turn, until she finally snapped, "Geez! You're like a puppy following me home!"

  A few lepidopterans turned and tilted their heads, reflecting the screaming primate and her canid companion in multiples on the facets of their disco ball eyes. Their antennas quivered, tasting the tone of the moment, measuring whether the bizarre mammalian aliens would be a real problem.

  Clarity pulled out her pocket computer and had it translate for her as she said, "I'm sorry, so sorry," while gesturing with flat palms downward, trying to signal that she'd tone down her emotions, keep it under control, and certainly wasn't going to turn violent.

  When the disturbed lepidopterans turned away, back to their own business, Irohann sidled up close to Clarity and whisper-said, "I'm your puppy. Of course, I'm following you home. Aren't you going to keep me?"

  The lightness in his tone and the tentative half-smile on his muzzle showed he had no idea how serious their fight had been. He was joking. Of course she was going to keep him, he thought. And his innocence was a knife twisting in Clarity's gut.

  "You lied to me," she said, her tone devoid of emotion, only full of numbness. "You tried to trick me into selling my home. You betrayed me and didn't trust me. We're... done." She faltered over the last word. It was so much harder to end their thirty-year friendship out loud than it had been to decide inside of herself that it was over.

  Irohann's face fell, but his tail kept swishing, slowly but hopefully, behind him, almost a nervous tick. "No," he said.

  Clarity wanted to snap back, "No what? No, you didn't lie to me? No, you didn't betray me? No, it isn't over?" But she didn't. She just smiled sadly and turned away.

  But Irohann kept following her. He gave her more space, following a few feet behind her instead of right at her shoulder, but every time she glanced back, he was still there, following along.

  He got a seat in the back of the shuttle up to Lo'riana; he didn't try to sit beside her this time. Well, not sit—hang suspended from the web-like safety straps. Maybe, she thought as the shuttle rocketed up through the atmosphere, he wasn't following her. Maybe he was just heading back to the space station too, planning to start his own life over there, without her.

  Aboard Lo'riana Station, Clarity lost track of Irohann as she wended her way through the lowest levels, the floor of the spinning wheel where ships docked. Not that she'd been keeping track of Irohann. Not really. Well, maybe she had been keeping an eye out for his bright orange fur among all the rainbow-clothed lepidopterans. But she was trying not to. She was trying to shed her wings gracefully like a naive, optimistic teenager.

  Irohann was her wings. Her bright, beautiful, red giant star of fluffiness that she could sink into and feel safe. And she couldn't see where he'd gone among all the colorful banners on Lo'riana. But she didn't need to, because she could set her own destinations without him.

  Clarity used her pocket computer to translate the writing on the hanging banners and navigated her way to an undistinguished docking berth. If anything, it stood out from the other berths for being less ostentatiously decorated with colorful draperies. A lepidopteran stood inside the open airlock door of the berth, twiggy black legs fidgeting restlessly, and body clothed in flowing yellow, lavender, and pink robes. The robes draped elegantly over the lepidopteran's oblong abdomen, reaching all the way to the floor.

  "Hello," Clarity said, holding the pocket computer a little below her face where it could pick up and translate her voice easily. The slip of a computer emanated a fluting sound. "Thank you for meeting me," she continued, and the computer fluted along.

  The lepidopteran answered her with a series of musical trills, and her pocket computer translated the foreign speech into a stilted, stiff-sounding human voice speaking Solanese, "I welcome. Found ship derelict, been using storage depot. I show."

  The lepidopteran stepped back and spread their four upper limbs wide, gesturing for Clarity to join them in the airlock. She did so, and the airlock cycled around them. The shift in the air was palpable, and Clarity gasped involuntarily with intense relief, stepping back aboard her home. The shape of the air around her, the curve of the airlock walls, all felt familiar and safe. Like Irohann's fluffy arms.

  Dammit.

  Clarity drew in a deep breath and steeled herself to step aboard
a brand-new Serendipity, one she would own alone, without Irohann. She really needed a new name for this new ship.

  Or...

  Maybe she didn't.

  Clarity looked around the cargo hold of this Solar III Class vessel. It was shaped exactly like The Serendipity's, but it was stocked to the gills with weird boxes, made out of something that looked like cardboard but in a variety of bright colors instead of plain brown. The stacks of boxes had completely covered the wide window in the cargo room's floor. She hoped it was the larger window, but she wouldn't be able to tell unless all those ratty, tattered, rainbow-colored boxes were moved out.

  Clarity hadn't thought rainbow colors would ever annoy her. At first, everything here had been so beautiful, but it was starting to look garish, like noise for her eyes. She wished the sights would settle down, calm themselves into a complementary palette of shades—greens and blues together; red only in moderation; and splashes of bright yellow to add cheer. Instead of an equal mix of every shade, all swirled together, with no regard for visual harmony.

  The lepidopteran fluted something, and her pocket computer said, "Can clear this away. Not problem."

  Clarity nodded and then remembered that primates bobbing their heads wasn't a universally understood gesture. Sure, on Crossroads Station, even the most foreign-looking aliens, like sentient trees, knew what humans meant by nodding. But probably not here. So, she said, "That's fine, can I see the upper levels?" She pointed up the ladder.

  The lepidopteran pointed upward with three talons and fluted something that translated into "Yes, yes, go up. No store up there."

  Clarity climbed the ladder and found herself in a Solar III Class vessel kitchen, exactly like The Serendipity's, except for a much older, more run-down looking food synthesizer. There were no rainbow-colored boxes on this level. The lepidopteran owner of the vessel must not have wanted to bother hauling them up the ladder.