by TJ Berry
“That’s not– I wasn’t–” Horm stammered.
“Gary, get up,” said Findae. Gary pulled himself to his feet.
“Dumbass,” said a bystander that Gary couldn’t see through his teared-up eyes. It sounded like the lisp of a toothless fairy.
“Nice. Got your dad to rescue you again,” Horm mumbled.
“Enough,” called Findae. “This behavior will not be tolerated here. We were peaceful creatures before the humans arrived and we will be peaceful again. The next one of you caught fighting will be banished to the third moon.”
A discontented grumble went through the crowd. Creatures peeled away toward their newly built shelters. The yeti grabbed the arm of the angel, who was spreading his wings for takeoff.
“Anywhere cold on this world you can drop me off? It’s a blasted furnace around here,” said the yeti. The angel wrenched away and pushed off from the ground. His wings unfurled and the pink sky filled with a chorus of heavenly voices singing a muted chord.
“My shuttle shift doesn’t start until noon. Get someone who’s on duty,” he called down as he soared into the heavens.
Findae snorted and boomed out to everyone within a thirtymeter radius.
“That’s the last I want to hear about going back to the Reason. We have enough to worry about without leading humans here to slaughter us again.”
Findae turned and cantered up the hill, only slowing down when he noticed Gary lagging behind. He shook his mane with an aggravated whinny. Gary consciously avoided any equine movements that would give him away as part-unicorn, but his father had no such shame about his lineage. He’d been raised in a time when unicorns were the rulers of everyone and he still had trouble understanding why his son often hid his royal ancestry.
Gary caught up to Findae, wiping away blood and tears. The swelling in his eyes had gone down but his chest ached. Though it was fixed, it would take a few hours for his nose to stop throbbing.
“We knew this wouldn’t be easy,” said Findae, by way of consolation.
“But I never imagined they’d want to go back,” said Gary. “We spent a century trying to escape the Reason and they want to turn right around and enslave themselves again.”
“A few more weeks and they’ll forget all about human technology that they’ve lost. It’s quiet and restful here. They merely need to get used to it,” said Findae. “Get off their phones and look around at the real world for once.” He nodded to a passing dwarf laden with double their weight in woodcarvings, who didn’t particularly pleased not to have a truck to haul it with.
Gary and his father climbed a steep rise toward a crimsoncolored wooden building. They had declined shelter until all the other Bala were housed, but the dwarves had insisted on making their accommodations soon after landing. They placed the fortress atop a nearby mountain, crafting a two-story citadel overlooking the valley where the village had already started to take shape. Even now, when the dwarves should have been directing all of their efforts toward housing everyone else, Gary still occasionally noticed freshly carved murals on the logs of the fortress in the morning when he woke.
The Bala had arrived on this new planet six weeks ago, appearing all at once, clutching anything they could carry and squinting in the bright pink sun. In their hasty rescue, the Pymmie had scattered the Bala randomly around the surface of the planet. Families were separated. Mermaids appeared on mountaintops. Fairies burnt to a crisp in lava pools. The Pymmie had never been known for their nuance, but this was outright negligence.
The fighting had begun mere moments after their arrival. Many Bala had spent the last years of their lives in Reason captivity, being stripped of their valuable magical parts. The dominant ones – gang members from prisons and harvesting centers across the Reason – asserted their authority over cowering beings who had just been freed from household servitude. The bullies went around extorting loyalty and payment before an economic system had even been established.
Gary and his father arrived together, but the third known unicorn, Unamip, never appeared near them. Some of the Bala reported that he was chatting happily with newly-arrived Bala in their prayers but preferred to remain a disembodied voice instead of giving away his location.
Gary and Findae had stepped in to enforce order; just the way unicorns had done for millennia. They gathered as many Bala as possible at the base of their mountain, setting up camps with trusted beings in charge of keeping the criminals at bay. Even with their diminished numbers, unicorns were still regarded as Bala nobility and nearly everyone was willing to remain in the village with the promise of safety. With the help of the dwarves, working in unrelenting shifts, within a day they were able to construct an impenetrable building to contain the planet’s most violent offenders. It pained Gary to know that the first building on their new world was a prison.
“Horm mentioned that beings are disappearing into the marsh,” said Gary.
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Findae in a tone indicating that he definitely knew something about that. Gary was about to press the issue when a shadow engulfed them, chilling the morning air by a couple of degrees. Gary looked up to see an unfathomably huge asteroid passing overhead. Findae tossed his head toward the ocean and shouted up to the floating rock.
“Not here. Meet out by the islands.”
The asteroid spun on its axis with a curtness that looked almost like annoyance.
“Why are the stoneships coming out of orbit?” asked Gary.
“Inventory and maintenance,” replied Findae.
“I wouldn’t bring them so close to the village. Horm wants a ship to get back to Jaisalmer and I wouldn’t put it past her to muscle one down from the sky,” said Gary.
“They’re not supposed to come in this far,” said Findae. “The dwarves are meeting them on the offshore islands. The ships are stretching their legs, I suppose. A few have been in Reason service for the last fifty years or more. They’re eager to get out from under human hands and go for a run.”
Gary could relate. He’d been kept against his will by humans for the better part of two decades. Some days he almost felt too free. Like he wasn’t sure what to do with his time if a corrections officer wasn’t shoving a tray of food at him three times a day and turning off the lights when it was time to go to bed. He didn’t exactly miss prison, but he felt a bit adrift without the drumbeat routine to help him keep the time.
An angel did a low fly-by, cursing at the stoneship as it spun away toward the open water.
“Get out of the shuttle flight paths, asteroid-hole,” she called, raising a fist.
The angels had been put to work teleporting creatures and materials to the settlement – after being convinced not to herald the arrival of all the new Bala who popped into existence simultaneously around them. The unicorns set up a rudimentary communications system with angels ferrying baskets of messagebearing pixies all over the globe. The unicorns had landed together, in a temperate spot flanked by a large body of water that would serve the majority of Bala needs. The angels and pixies sent word to the far reaches of the new planet and on feet, tentacles, and wings, the Bala began to gather there.
There were a few exceptions. The fairies asked to be brought to a forest in the west, where the trees felt vaguely familiar, except in fiery pinks and oranges instead of chlorophyll-laced greens. The handful of centaurs had been shooed off to the rocky cliffs that bordered the ocean where they had pull-up contests and talked about carbohydrate ratios to their hearts’ content. A few of the more fearsome Bala – gorgons, banshees, and sirens – headed south to find their own homes away from the others. It had actually seemed like a fairly friendly questing party, full of singing, giggling, and long hugs. One of the gorgons had yelled, “Girls night every night!” to a rousing cheer before they left. Gary kind of wished he could go with them.
Other than those few Bala, everyone else had stayed in the small village that coalesced at the base of the unicorns’ mountain. The dwarve
n work crews organized and prioritized themselves, exactly as they had when they’d maintained the giant stoneships in space. Diminutive workers chopped and carved throughout the day and night. Every morning, the village awoke to a new neighborhood. A collection of dwarves of every gender – sawdust embedded in their beards – apologized for the tolerances on their perfect dovetail joints. During the sunny days, when it became too hot for delicate dwarven skin, they dug tunnels beneath the unicorns’ mountain for their own shelter. Pickaxes chipped stone in time to an ancient song. Hey-ho.
Several days into their mining, the dwarves had hit upon an expansive cave lined with glowing crystals. It was a proper place for mountain dwarves, with musty air unbreathed for centuries and slick fungi that tasted good fried up in butter. They found a cool underground spring from which to drink, and that had far less acidity than the surface water. They decided that this would be the new home of dwarvenkind. Around crackling embers they wondered aloud if they would ever again return to their spacefaring days.
The dryads (the ones who had been found) asked the angels to place them deep within the forest. There they attempted to blend in with the local flora. Gary was secretly glad they’d opted out of village life. Dryads were impressive to behold but they spoke in long, slow sentences that took hours to complete. A conversation with a dryad could last days. He didn’t have that kind of time. There was one dryad; however, that he intended to find. Kaila, the wife of his former-captor-turned-reluctant-partner, was here somewhere. He had promised to look after her. Jenny had sworn to come find her wife after the Pymmie moved the Bala to safety, but Gary doubted that Jenny would ever find them. In fact, he hoped she wouldn’t. Because one human meant more would eventually come, leading them right back to slavery and exploitation. He prayed that the absence of unicorn horn fuel for faster-than-light starship engines would keep humans away for at least a couple of centuries. Or at least long enough for the settlement to establish ample defenses.
Gary held open the door to the unicorn fortress so that his father could pass through. A russet-haired dwarf came around the corner of the building, looked at him with a surprised expression, and then ducked back around the way she came.
“Boges?” called Gary, stepping after her. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he called to his father.” Boges had been so involved with construction that hadn’t seen her in days.
“Boges,” he called, running after her. He rounded the corner and found her halfway down the steep side of the mountain that bordered the sea. She was almost to the carved entrance to the dwarves’ caves where Gary couldn’t follow on his clumsy hooves.
“I have to go,” she called up at him, her red beard braids blowing in the wind. She ducked into the cave and was gone. It was at least the fourth time she’d run from him. He was finally sure he wasn’t imagining it. They had been close friends for over one hundred years. On many occasions they had even saved each other’s lives. Now, she was distant and cagey when she wasn’t avoiding him entirely. At first, he had assumed she was simply busy. But now her caginess seemed purposeful.
“Are you coming?” called Findae from a window above him in the fortress. “We have meetings.”
Legend had it that the one thing unicorns loved with all their souls was meetings. But the truth was that the only thing unicorns loved more than meetings was committees. There was an old Bala saying that a unicorn would form a committee to take a piss, which was wrong because unicorns didn’t urinate. But there was a kernel of truth to it. An ancient unicorn named Percathexis wondered if it was better for the other Bala to urinate into plants to fertilize them or into the sea to wash the odor away. He formed a group called the Percathexis Committee on Urination Protocols or P-CUP, a committee that lasted for sixty human years and ended with no meaningful results other than a terrible odor in Percathexis’ back garden.
Gary headed inside and joined his father in the main hall where Bala came to request a resolution to grievances – and there was a never-ending tide of grievances.
Gary looked at the kappas in front of him and wondered if asking the Pymmie to relocate them had been the right choice. This pair of turtle-like beings had been fighting over a single parcel of land for the last three weeks. No matter that the planet was big enough to support a population a hundred times their number.
The larger kappa beat his chest to emphasize every third word. The pool of water on his head tipped precariously, threatening to spill his magic all over the baked-tile floor.
“…and he kept his cistern in the same location, but angled the pipeline so that it’s pulling water from the aquifer under my property. He doesn’t have the right,” cried the kappa.
“The aquifer goes under both of our lands. I have every right to access to that water,” said the other kappa.
“He takes so much that my water pressure has been halved.”
“My sennet grains are dying without proper hydration. All the water above the ground is brackish and unusable.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“It is if you’re stealing my water.”
“It’s not your water.”
“I caught him trying to coax Bala into a pond he dug on his property. That’s why he needs all the water. He’s luring people to their deaths.”
“Not true! It’s a reservoir!”
“It’s a trap!”
Gary held up his hand and the bickering ceased. The kappas waited for his pronouncement, panting as if they’d run a race. He leaned down to the first kappa.
“What was your situation during the rule of Reason?” he asked.
The air in the room became heavy with tension. The kappas gave each other a surprised look. Everyone was trying to forget their recent history, but Gary felt it was crucial that it remained fresh in their minds.
“Uh, I acted as a fountain at a big house in New Dallas,” replied the kappa.
“And you,” Gary turned to the second kappa. “What was your situation during the occupation?”
“I was incarcerated at Hirudin Harvesting Center,” the second kappa mumbled.
“I have been in such places. There are many tortures visited upon a Bala in Hirudin and the other harvesting centers,” said Gary.
“Indeed, said the kappa.
“In light of how far we have come over the last few weeks, a cistern should be the least of your concerns. If there is not sufficient water for both of your needs, I am sure the dwarves would be happy to schedule the drilling of a second well,” said Gary, trying to project confidence through the careful selection of words. It was not working.
The two kappas turned to leave, giving each other confused and wary glances. Gary sat back in his chair, pleased that he had fixed the problem to the satisfaction of all parties. A voice near his ear startled him.
“You cannot keep dredging up their pain for your benefit,” said his father.
“You don’t need to watch over me. I’m certainly capable of hearing the minor grievances of the creatures under my care,” said Gary.
“But that’s my point, Gary. If they are under your care, you must care for them. And reminding them how good they have it does not actually solve their problems. You simply force them to relive their trauma in front of each other to make your job easier,” said Findae.
“I think some of them need to remember where we came from, how excruciating life was under Reason rule. How many of us died,” said Gary.
“Do you think they’ve forgotten?” asked Findae.
“They act as if they have,” replied Gary.
“They are moving on, Gary. Living their lives. You steep yourself every day in the misery of a life that once was. You ignore the new life that is blossoming around you. This world is a reality for them; stop forcing them to live in memories as you do.”
Gary scoffed, a sound not unlike the sputter of a horse. His father acted as if they were all supposed to shrug off decades of torture and oppression like it was nothing. How could one turn off the memo
ries and worry about sennet seed germination and fertility rates among the neofelis cats? It wasn’t as if you could get the nightmares to stop simply by willing them away.
A familiar shiver went through Gary’s body and he shifted in his chair to hide it from his father. Findae lowered his head and sniffed, then his voice softened.
“I know this is hard for you, Gary. I–”
“You don’t know anything,” said Gary. “You slept away the last century and left the rest of us behind to be tortured.”
Findae recoiled.
“I…” He stepped back and out of the room. Gary gripped the arms of the wooden chair – the one that he had instructed the dwarves to make look less like a throne – in order to stop his hands from shaking. All of the conversations about the Reason ended up in this familiar place; with him feeling ready to crack into a million pieces from the pressure of his past. Flashes of bygone terrors intruded on his daily thoughts, making a trip to town fraught with panicked moments. Like when a group of children screamed and he was right back in the harvesting center on Jaisalmer, hearing the screams of those being stripped for parts.
His father seemed determined to pretend that none of those things had happened. It was not the first time he and Findae argued about how best to approach the trauma of human rule, but it was the first time Gary had brought up his father’s time in stasis. He’d never quite asked why his father had stepped out of life when the Bala needed him most. As a leader, he could have prevented the subjugation of their planets or at least helped a majority of the Bala escape.
Gary was flushed and tense when the next petitioner entered. The dryad crossed the room with languid movements. She was a pine, stiff and proper. Her branches shot out in perpendicular rows from the top half of her body. With her tiny steps and inflexible limbs, the walk alone might take half an hour.
“What?” he snapped, before the creature had crossed the hall halfway.
“Danger in the forest,” said the dryad, attempting to convey the most information in the shortest amount of time. As it was, the four words took nearly a minute to articulate. Gary felt his calves tense. The muscles cramped into tight ridges. He heard a shuffle from the corridor. Findae was still listening.
