Aurora Burning

by Amie Kaufman

  I know I’m making it harder for myself. I’m spending all day pushing things away, and then I come home each night to fall more and more deeply into Kal. And he seems to know it, too. I can feel it growing in him, along with the love he feels for me. A shadow in him. It’s heavy tonight, weighing him down even as he looks at the beauty of the stars wheeling overhead.

  “Are you okay?” I ask him.

  I can feel his mind, the tapestry of golden threads, the faint empathy he inherited from his mother entwined with my own growing strength.

  “I am torn, be’shmai,” he finally replies.

  “About what?”

  “I have been thinking.” He sighs, looking up at the night sky. “About the gift Adams gave me. The cigarillo box that saved my life aboard the Totentanz.”

  I blink. “Why have you been thinking about it?”

  “The case…had a note inside it. A note in Finian’s handwriting that he does not remember writing. It was he who discovered it. But I wonder if it was for me.”

  “…What did it say?” I ask, unsure if I really want to know.

  He looks at me, eyes shining. “ ‘Tell her the truth.’ ”

  I remain silent, watching him in the dark. He’s beautiful, ethereal, almost magical, and for a moment I can’t believe he’s mine. But I can see the struggle in him. Feel the torment in his mind.

  “There are things about me, be’shmai,” he says, and I’m amazed to see tears in his eyes. “About my past. My blood…”

  “Kal, it’s okay,” I tell him, touching his face.

  He shakes his head. “This thing in me. I fear I will never be rid of him.”

  I remember the story he told me about Saedii. The pain of his childhood, his father’s cruelty to him and his mother, the shadow of his past that always hangs over him. I know he struggles every day. The violence he was raised to, the violence inside him. I can feel it, even now, prowling behind those beautiful eyes.

  “You’re not your past, Kal.” I curl my fingers through his, my eyes on the constellations above. “You’re not the things you were raised to be. If being here has taught me anything, it’s that. Our regrets, our fears, they hold us back. We have to let them go so we can become what we’re supposed to be. We have to burn them all away.”

  “Our past makes us what we are.”

  “No,” I tell him, remembering the weight lifting from my shoulders as I let go of my mom and dad. “No, it doesn’t. We choose who we are. Every day. Every minute. The past is gone. Tomorrow is worth a million yesterdays, don’t you see?”

  Kal looks up at the stars above us, frowning.

  “I…question this road they make you walk, be’shmai,” he says quietly.

  “…What do you mean?” I ask.

  “If you cut yourself off from who you were, burn away everything that means something to you as the Ancients bid you to…” He shakes his head. “What will give you purpose? What will drive you to fight?”

  “Saving the entire galaxy is purpose enough,” I say, my voice firm.

  “Your fight is honorable,” he agrees.

  “I can sense a very large but approaching.”

  “But love is purpose, be’shmai,” he says. “Love is what drives us to great deeds, and greater sacrifices. Without love, what is left?”

  I pull my hand away from his. “Kal, I have to do this. If the Ra’haam’s nursery planets are left alone, everyone in the galaxy, including the ones I love, will be taken over. I already lost my father to this thing.”

  “And now you would lose everything else to stop it?”

  “I’m not saying I want to,” I sigh. “I’m saying I have to.”

  I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know what to do. So in the end, hating that I’m doing it, I push to my feet and walk back silently toward camp.

  And though I can feel it tearing at him…

  He lets me go.

  * * *

  • • • • •

  I’m expecting to see Callie the next day, but I’m expecting her to be a child like she was when I left her. Instead, as I slip into my vision, I see a woman in her thirties, sleek black hair reaching the small of her back, rippling with her movements as she plays the violin. She’s standing by a sunlit window, playing the song from memory.

  “Callie,” I whisper, my voice sticking in my throat.

  Her smile blossoms, and she sets down her violin and bow. “There you are,” she says simply, opening her arms to me.

  I’m across the room in an instant, smacking into her chest as she folds me up in a hug, holding me tight.

  She’s older than me, which feels strange, but this is how it must have been almost all her life. I wonder what it felt like for her to reach my age, and then her eighteenth birthday, knowing she was now older than I’d ever been.

  “I’m so sorry,” I sob, tears soaking through the green silk of her shirt. “I’m so sorry I left you. I never meant to do that.”

  “Stop it,” she chides me gently, one hand smoothing down my hair.

  “But I left you,” I insist.

  “Nothing’s forever, Auri. Everything has its season. The world keeps turning, and the stars keep dancing after we’re gone, just as they all did before we came.”

  “I was your big sister, Cal. I was supposed to look after you.”

  She looks me in the eye then, a small smile on her lips.

  “Come with me.”

  One arm around my shoulders, she leads me out through the door. We make our way along the hall in silence, and pause in the doorway to another room. I see a toddler in a crib, curled in a tiny ball. There’s just a mop of black hair and a small face, slack with sleep, visible above the quilt.

  “This is Jie-Lin,” Callie murmurs.

  “She’s beautiful,” I breathe, tears in my eyes.

  “I miss you, Auri,” my little sister tells me. “But I’m all right. Everything continues without us. The dance carries on.”

  She’s beginning to fade away, and I want to reach out and grab her, hold tight and refuse to leave this moment. But instead, gazing one last time at her face, I let her go.

  I let all of it go. Finally. Completely. I look at that little face, that beautiful baby girl who shares my name, and I feel it wash away. The anger and the rage and the pain and the sadness. The thought that I missed all of this. Because I didn’t, really. I was here all along. In the hearts of the people I left, but never truly left behind.

  I let it all go.

  And as I open my eyes, I find the Eshvaren above me. I feel the Echo around me shiver—a ripple that runs through the length and breadth of this whole plane, changing the sound of the horizon and the taste of the sky. And I feel it smile down on me with all the colors in its memory.

  At last, it says.

  Kal

  The world around me trembles.

  My fingers fall still; the music coming from the siif in my hands fades into silence. I look to the sky and note that it is a different shade of perfect. For a moment, I sense a shadow at my shoulder, and inexplicably I am put so deeply in mind of my father that I turn, almost prepared to see him standing there.

  My fists are clenched.

  But there is only the Eshvaren, wearing its crystalline form. It peers at me intently, as if truly looking at me for the first time. I can feel the power in it, in this place, the legacy of the Ancient Ones flowing in this plane’s every atom.

  Remember what is at stake here, it says. This is more than you. More than us.

  I blink. “I do not understand.”

  Only one obstacle remains. Only one hindrance that binds her to what she was, and stands in the way of what she must be.

  I feel a scowl at my brow, growing slowly darker. “And that is?”

  The Eshvaren tilts its head and smiles
a rainbow.

  Finian is leaning in close to Aurora’s face, studying the rapid fluttering of her eyelids. “It’s been nearly twelve hours since they went under,” he says. “Shouldn’t something have happened by now?”

  “I take comfort in the fact that nothing has,” I say. But the truth is, although my tone is calm, I am also concerned. Based on Aurora’s account of her first visit to the Echo, it appears that during the two minutes of unconsciousness we observed, she subjectively experienced a period of approximately twelve hours.

  This suggests that she would pass a day in four minutes, and so the almost-twelve hours that have now elapsed mean that she and Kal have been in the Echo for nearly six months. Their brain activity is off the charts, which implies they are indeed experiencing the passage of time at astonishing speeds.

  The question that troubles me is how long a human or Syldrathi brain can maintain this kind of workload without suffering permanent damage.

  “How is the tracking of the probe’s particle signature progressing?” I ask.

  “We’re on the trail,” Finian shrugs. “Scar’s upstairs on the bridge right now. I’m still trying to fix Aurora’s damn uniglass.”

  I blink, struggling for a moment to identify the feeling in my chest.

  Alarm, I realize.

  “Scarlett Isobel Jones is flying this ship?”

  Finian grins. “She’s not that bad. The auto-guidance is helping. Apparently one of her ex-boyfriends gave her some lessons. And she picked up a little from Cat.”

  I feel a pang of hurt at that. The memory of Cat’s face, her smile, her end. The barriers that hold back my responses to these things are not as strong as they once were.

  I am not feeling nothing.

  “But there’s no telling how far across the Fold the probe originated from,” Finian continues. “We could be traveling for weeks.”

  “Let us hope not,” I say. “Our brains are not suited for prolonged Fold exposure. Nor should we tempt calamity with Scarlett at the controls that long.”

  Finian nods. “Yeah. And I don’t think the Unbroken are gonna wait long before they let Earth know what they think about the attack on their flagship, either.”

  I nod. “It is extremely unlikely an attack by Terran forces against a blooded Syldrathi Templar will go unanswered.”

  Finian looks down at Kal’s slumbering figure, chewing gently on his lip. “Pixieboy’s big sister was really something, huh?”

  “She was…most formidable.”

  Fin checks the bay about us, as if to see if anyone is listening.

  “…Kinda hot, though, right?”

  I blink. “I did not know you found psychopathy an attractive quality, Finian.”

  “Come onnnn,” he grins. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice. I sure wouldn’t say no to a short visit to her torture chamber?”

  I purse my lips, picturing Saedii’s face. Her form. It is true. The aesthetic qualities of Kal’s sister are…undeniable, despite her demeanor.

  But still…

  “She is too tall for me,” I finally declare.

  Finian rolls his eyes and gives me a friendly smile. I feel my cheeks warm a little at the thought of discussing romantic notions with him. I tip my head forward to hide any sign of the vascular response, wondering if this is perhaps what having friends feels like.

  I am not feeling nothing.

  I nod to Kal and Aurora in an attempt to divert the discussion.

  “I will continue to monitor them,” I say.

  “All right.” Finian steps back, his exosuit whispering softly as he stretches his arms. “I’m gonna grab snacks—you want anything?”

  I contemplate. “Those cookies Scarlett enjoined me to eat were adequate.”

  “Adequate? You two have practically eaten the entire supply.”

  “The excess calorie intake will result in an upscaling of my mass, which…”

  I frown. That is incorrect.

  “I mean to say, your affection for me will increase as I also increase in…”

  No. That is also wrong.

  I fall silent. Look up into Finian’s blank black eyes.

  “Still getting the hang of this humor thing, huh,” he says.

  I lower my voice to a whisper. “It is extremely perplexing.”

  “Well, keep working on it. I’m off to the galley.” His mouth quirks to a crooked smile, and he glances down at Aurora. “I’ll see you kids in a month.”

  I’m gliding home on a storm wind, flying on wings of thunder. I can feel the power rushing inside me like a waterfall. All the shackles holding me back, the guilt, the fear, who I was—all of it is gone.

  I roar across the Echo, the earth torn up by the force of my passing. My right eye burns like a newborn star, a midnight-blue tempest crackling in my wake, a tornado of pure psychic force that I can beckon with a wave of my hand.

  I can’t wait to show Kal.

  I think about him waiting for me, like he’s always done. The time we’ve spent here, all he’s come to mean to me. I think about Scarlett and Finian and Zila waiting for us outside the Echo, these people who’ve become my family. All the faith they’ve placed in me, all they’ve sacrificed—all of it, all of it has been worth it.

  I’m not that girl who set out for Octavia anymore. I’m not the girl who woke up two centuries later, cut off from everything I was. I am the vessel they made me to be, the unmaking of an enemy set to consume all life, all light, all hope. And I smile fiercely, almost giddy with the thought of it.

  I’m the girl who’s going to save the damn galaxy….

  Kal sees me coming, the power raging in my wake, his eyes wide with wonder as I drop down to the beautiful green grass around our camp and throw myself into his arms. I kiss him, letting myself flood into his mind, feeling the golden strands of his psyche entwined with mine, the two of us together, complete and perfect.

  “I’m ready, Kal,” I whisper.

  I press my lips to his again, caressing his face, his mind.

  “I’m ready.”

  Not yet.

  The voice comes from behind us, soft and melodic. I turn, see the shimmering rainbow form of the Eshvaren watching me. I sense a wrongness in the air—a ripple shivering the trees around us, the golden threads in Kal’s mind. And I can suddenly feel something I’ve never felt in him before.

  Kal’s afraid.

  You have come far, Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, the Eshvaren says. But you cannot yet wield the Weapon.

  I hold out my hand, and a psychic shock, massive, tectonic, flows out across the Echo, shaking every tree, every rock, every blade of grass.

  “I’m ready,” I say.

  Ready, yes, Esh nods. To cast off the final impediments that hold you to your old self. Your every thought. Your every cell. Your very existence.

  The words hit me like a slap. I glance at Kal, drag myself free of his arms.

  “My existence…?”

  And looking into the Eshvaren’s glowing right eye, I finally realize…

  “That’s what you meant,” I whisper, my heart twisting a little in my chest. “When you said, ‘Like us, you must sacrifice all.’ ”

  I look around the Echo, at its beauty and its splendor, all that remains of a civilization that collapsed eons before mine was ever born.

  Esh told me that if I failed in my testing, it would cost me my life.

  It didn’t say that even if I succeed…

  “Using the Weapon…being the Trigger…” I swallow hard as the truth finally sinks in. “It’s going to kill me, isn’t it?”

  In all likelihood, Esh replies. Yes.

  “…Mothercustard.”

  “There must be another way!” Kal spits, his Syldrathi composure fraying.

  Look around you, young one, Es
h says, its voice a song. All this, our world, our civilization, our very name, is lost to the sands of time. We gave all we had to destroy the Ra’haam when first it rose. One thousand years of blood and fire from which we never recovered. Our entire race spent itself so that future races might be spared the Great Enemy’s hungers.

  Esh looks at me, and I think maybe I feel something close to pity in its mind.

  Is one more girl too much to ask?

  I can feel Kal’s fury. His fear of losing me. But deep down, I know…

  “No,” I say.

  I shake my head, and even as I speak, I know it’s true.

  “No, it’s not too much at all.”

  “Be’shmai…,” Kal whispers, reaching for my hand.

  “It’s okay,” I say, smiling as I turn to face him. “I’m not afraid, Kal. I’ve made peace with who I was. I’m ready to become what I was meant to be.”

  I think of that little girl, asleep in her cradle, and can’t help but smile.

  “It’s all a cycle, Kal. And if I have to…stop for others to go on, it’ll be okay. Because here with you, these last few months, I was more alive than I’ve ever been. And even after I’m gone, you’ll still have this. You’ll still know I loved you.”

  I rise up on tiptoe and slip my arms around his neck. And I lean in slow, kiss him slower, tears in my eyes, lips brushing his as I pull back far enough to whisper.

  “I love you,” I tell him.

  He touches my cheek and kisses my tears away, folds me in his arms and—

  No, Esh says.

  The world falls still. The spell between Kal and me is broken. Fingers entwined with his, I turn to meet Esh’s eyes.

  “What do you mean, no?”

  You must abandon your past totally. You must surrender your future utterly. There is only the moment you were made for, and you must be ready to act without hesitation when it comes. You must not flinch. You must have nothing that binds you to this place, this self. Nothing at all. You must burn it all away.

  It looks at me with its glowing eye, all the way into my heart.