by S. E. Smith
“No…I’m not dating Ted.”
“That is well.”
Why? I directed a penetrating look his direction, but he had a tough hide. I was curious he was curious about Ted, no question, but it didn’t seem like the main point, which was…
“Why did you come back?” I hesitated. “Are you really back?” I’d need to restart his bug order. It had really impressed my friends that I bought bugs and had a dragon for a pet, I recalled a bit vaguely. Was this what shock felt like? Cold and fuzzy around the edges? I grabbed the lap quilt at the foot of my bed and wrapped it around my shoulders.
“Mazan would like to talk to you.”
“Mazan?”
My dragon studied me with a peculiar intensity. “You truly do not remember?” I shook my head. “That perhaps would explain—”
“Explain what?” I felt a strange dread, as memory tried to pierce the thick fog hiding whatever happened that night eight years ago.
“There is a problem with the launch.”
There was nothing in my nondisclosure agreement about talking to a dragon, but it still felt disloyal. “Launch?” I tried to look clueless. Which should have been easy since I pretty much was.
Peddrenth couldn’t raise his brows, but it felt like he did.
“Okay, so there might be a launch—which you didn’t hear from me—what of it?”
“There is a leak.”
“A leak?” I jerked upright in alarm. “In the fuel tanks? On the team?” Exploding space vehicles and corporate sabotage were both a real worry. “What?”
“You. You are leaking.”
Two
It shouldn’t be that hard to wrap my brain around making first contact with an alien. It’s what all of us geeks dreamed of and hoped for. Perhaps we didn’t hope for first contact by dragon, but still, I should have been ready.
I didn’t feel ready.
The almost full moon was up, but mostly hidden by puffy clouds left over from an afternoon storm.
With Peddrenth riding on my shoulders, we took the path through the woods just like we used to do. It didn’t feel like it had been been eight years since I’d taken Peddrenth into the clearing to hunt for free range bugs…why had we come this far, I wondered now? There were bugs closer to the house, further from—
My heart began to thump like it wanted to jump out of my chest as this path wound ever closer until the one place road and path crossed.
The spot where my mom had died.
On that night I can’t remember.
She died instantly, they said. It wouldn’t have helped if the other driver had stayed. The shrink told me my need for closure, for justice, was what kept me from remembering. I guess I believed him, since my degree wasn’t in psychology. Oh wait, I didn’t have a degree. I gave it up to help my dad. That probably sounds bitter and I’m not. Mostly I’m bewildered. And I didn’t understand why dread coiled in my chest like a snake. Or why my throat felt closed, and the humid air felt thicker than usual. Why did I taste metal on my tongue?
Why was I afraid?
It wasn’t the place. Dad and I passed the spot every day on our way to work. Some days I didn’t even think about it. I certainly didn’t have a panic attack, which was good since I drove. But now I wanted to turn tail and run home.
I didn’t. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t hide. I couldn’t flinch from thinking about that night. Not anymore.
I needed to know what happened. I needed to remember.
I might not be a genius like my dad, and no, I didn’t have that college education, but I’m not stupid. It had to be more than a lack of closure fueling this choking dread. There was something I didn’t want to face, something buried deep inside my head. Only it wasn’t buried, maybe it never had been. It had ridden on my shoulders for eight years, it was riding there now, with Peddrenth.
I glanced his way, found him watching me. He almost looked worried. Or I was projecting.
I swallowed to wet my dry throat and asked, “Is he, you know, humanoid?”
“Mazan? Of course.”
What was “of course” about it? This alien had accidentally collected the dragon, not the human.
“Does he look like…I mean, is he purple or something?” I had a feeling if Peddrenth could have rolled his eyes, he would have.
“You…” he stopped, as if reconsidering what he’d meant to say. “You all look similar to me.”
If I could have chuckled, I would have. I did manage a smile that felt wry, but it didn’t last. “The implant, they didn’t hurt you, did they?”
He actually shook his head, well, his head swept left, then right.
“The implant was a gift, so we could communicate.”
“They wanted to talk…to you?” And not me. Was I jealous of my dragon?
There was another pause. “The Draze are like that.”
The Draze. I didn’t know anything about the Draze, did I? And yet…there was something almost familiar about both words. Mazan. Draze. My panic eased. “Did I meet him that night? The night you left.”
Peddrenth hesitated, then said, “Put me down here, please.”
I opened my mouth to tell him I usually waited until we crossed the—
The road. Until we crossed the road. It was just a road.
I crouched and he left his perch. I straightened as he crawled out of sight, his tail twitching from side to side. I clenched my hands into fists and followed my dragon.
And there it was.
The road.
Right where it was supposed to be, looking like it always had. At least, it looked like it had a couple of hours ago when we drove home. Still, it felt different looking at it from here. It changed my point of view. Standing, not speeding by, I could see the spot—though brush had grown back where her car hit the tree. The skid marks were long gone, too, of course. Time was supposed to heal everything, wasn’t it?
I didn’t feel healed. I felt…not healed. To my core.
All was quiet, peaceful even in the low light from the nearly full moon. I looked both ways, even though ours was the only house this far down the road, and I would have heard a car coming from quite a ways off—I tensed but the twitch of fear didn’t produce an image to go with it—so I crossed. I was relieved to get to the other side. I felt a chicken joke wanting to happen inside my head and quickly followed the path into the woods to escape it. The trees and bushes closed in fast, narrowing the trail so sharply, I couldn’t see that far ahead.
Instead of dread, now I felt eager, excited, like a good geek should.
I pushed a particularly large branch aside and there it was.
My jaw dropped and in my amazement the horizon spun around the ship, but not in a bad way. More like a flourish. I moved forward, because it was too cool to fear. Straight out of a bigger budget scifi movie, its sleek, aerodynamic lines made my geek heart go pit-a-pat with happy. Big enough to fill the clearing almost from edge to edge, it was thickest at the center. It was so much what I’d expected it was almost a cliche, except it wasn’t because it was there. It was real. And it glowed the shade of green most associated with alien encounters. Seriously, it was like that green had been matched to this ship. I drew close, my hand lifting because I just had to touch it, but a crack appeared in the side closest to me, a crack that rapidly turned into a lowering ramp. I froze with one hand half lifted. Just visible at the top of the ramp, I saw booted feet. Brown boots. A bit buccaneer-ish. Sassy. I would buy those boots.
I thought that before. For the first time, I believed I had been here, that I’d felt this, seen this. But then the boots started moving toward me…
This wasn’t a movie. This was real. I backed up as the horizon began to spin around me again—and this time not in a good way—with the ship at the center, as if it needed to keep pace with my suddenly racing heart. I wasn’t worried, not about meeting Mr. Boots. There was something else, some other worry that made panic build…
The horizon spun faster, blurring it int
o an impressionist painting. Then it tilted to one side as my suddenly weak knees hit the dirt. Oddly enough I was more worried about landing in a fire ant bed than the alien wearing the boots a few inches from my nose. I tried to put a hand out to touch them, but my hand didn’t move. The spin of the horizon narrowed to a pinpoint. And then went dark.
A pinpoint of light pierced the black and grew slowly bigger. Memories played pinball wizard inside my head, all disconnected and weird as the smothering fog hiding that long ago night began to shred, letting bits and pieces of the past escape.
I opened my eyes and there he was.
A familiar stranger.
Someone I knew, but didn’t.
His worried eyes were the color of a stormy sea, with streaks of purple and turquoise in the gray. And his lashes, do not get me started on his lashes. So not fair that a guy got those lashes. He had a narrow face, with tufted brown brows and hair with a mind of its own. Kind of Harry Potter without the glasses. His body was long and narrow, too. He wasn’t handsome, at least not in a movie hero way. I knew, without knowing, that he was clever, that I used to love his smile—which was nowhere to be seen. That I used to love—I shut that thought off. I couldn’t finish it, not now with memories playing bumper car inside my head and refusing to connect properly. When I backed off, the pain eased, as if to reward me for being good…
“Are you feeling more satisfactory?”
His voice wasn’t deep, or especially low or high, but still managed to be very distinct. I knew it, I knew his voice. He had a slight exotic accent that made my toes want to curl. Had always made my toes curl…
“Mazan?” I made it a question, though it was more of a mental confirmation as at least one piece slotted into place. I knew the name, knew it belonged to him. Why he had mattered, why he did matter to me, was less clear.
His lips curved up, but it wasn’t a full smile. He thought I was leaking something, I remembered. But what?
Moving slowly, carefully, his fingers wrapped my wrist, his fingers settling on my pulse. I looked down, startled at the sight of his hand, his skin against mine. And yet…not surprised either. His fingers felt cool, but not like he was cold. More like that was his normal temperature. There was an “otherness” about him. No sparkles and no sign of prominent incisors between his lips. I know it was silly to even think it, but he was seriously pale.
I flexed my fingers, trying to connect this present with the pieces drifting in and out of view inside my head. To figure out this mystery, wrapped in the past and happening…inside an alien space ship.
“Will I,” I had to clear my throat to finish it, “live?”
His smile widened and his hand dropped away, leaving my skin feeling suddenly cold. “I believe so, my friend, Emma.”
His friend? My heart hurt a little, like there’d been more between us.
Mazan looked away and his shoulders rose and fell in what looked like a sigh. He turned to face me again, sadness and yes, disappointment in his gaze. That hurt as much or more than being called his friend. I struggled to a sitting position, letting my legs hang off the edge of what I realized now was some kind of bunk bed affixed to the wall. It was just high enough that my toes barely brushed the metal floor.
I pushed my limp, damp hair off my face. “What?”
“Why did you do it?”
“Do what?” I didn’t have to try to look bewildered.
“She does not remember,” Peddrenth said, a bit too patiently, like they’d covered this ground already. His beard flared black for several seconds.
Mazan’s gaze probed mine for what felt a long time. My eyeballs dried. I wanted to blink, but I didn’t dare. If I blinked, he’d think I was lying and I would never lie to him—
“How—” he stopped. He pushed his hands through his hair, which probably explained its charming disorder. And that’s when I saw something new enter his gaze.
Hurt. I’d hurt him.
“I was in a car accident eight years ago. My mom—” I had to look away then. It took two tries for me to get it out. “My mom died. I hit my head.” Those first words felt like rocks coming out, but the rest came easier, faster. “The shrink says I have hysterical amnesia which is kind of funny because I haven’t been able to cry. Not once in eight years. Don’t you think that crying is a prerequisite for hysteria?” I rubbed my face fiercely. I had to…I had to…what? It was as if there was this voice in my head telling me I couldn’t. Couldn’t what? I didn’t know what I wasn’t supposed to do or say, but if I did or said it, something bad would happen. I almost laughed at that last thought. What could be worse than this half life of guilt and fear? This sudden realization that I’d lost more than my memories of that night?
I lowered my hands and looked at him, met his gaze with my chin lifted a little. He could believe me or not. Didn’t know why I wanted him to believe me, except that I seemed to be in trouble. And I did want him to believe me. A frown pulled his crazy brows together. Made him look just a touch mad scientist. My heart did this little flutter. Apparently I liked mad scientists.
“This news is…well, my friend, Emma, it is heart-breaking. It is—”
At least we were still friends. But that didn’t explain why he was heart-broken. It’s not like he knew my mom.
“She is lost, gone, and we did not know.” He turned away, causing more disorder in his hair with frantic hands. He paced away, then back.
“Are you talking about my mom?”
He looked surprised then. “Of course. She was a great hero to our people.”
“Hero?” I croaked. To his people? “My mom?”
“Yes, she was the Deliverer.”
I felt my jaw go slack and couldn’t do a thing about it.
So I was back to gobsmacked.
Neither Mazan nor Peddrenth appeared to notice. Mazan had adopted a tragic pose over by the door, like he needed something to hold him up. Peddrenth, well, he sat there staring at Mazan with his tail twitching back and forth, looking very wise and remote.
She was the Deliverer.
My mom. The Deliverer. A hero to his people? She’d driven car pool and made cookies and bandaged my knees and bought me Peddrenth and nagged me to take care of him. She delivered mom-ness, not hero-ness. There had to be some kind of mistake. Only…somehow, don’t ask me why, I knew it wasn’t a mistake. I didn’t believe it…but I did. It was there, I decided, buried somewhere in my missing night with all the other stuff I couldn’t remember. Or…was I afraid to remember?
I sat there because I didn’t know what else to do, other than finally get hysterical, and honestly, I didn’t have the energy. Looking at Mazan was unsettling. More than memories started to stir inside my head. For the first time, I was also starting to realize how little I’d felt for the last eight years. As if all of me had been wrapped in some kind of emotion-damping fog. Seeing him made my heart hurt. Like a limb coming back to painful, tingling life—I looked away, studying my surroundings instead. It was more of the familiar unfamiliar. Like I was on the other side of a movie, watching me, seeing this without being part of it.
The small cabin was very ship-like and also very space ship-like, because it had that curved edge on what was probably the outside wall, and there were space-stuff fixtures. The bunk where I sat had been tucked into that curve, which saved the straight wall for a small desk area, some shelves, and a sink. There were two doors. One stood open giving me a glimpse of the corridor and the other, I suspected, was for a commode. No, I knew it was. Why could I remember peeing here but not being here?
Bits of memory drifted just out of reach, taunting me, daring me to look. Was it the whole Deliverer of her people thing? But why would I freak out and get amnesia over that? If she really had been a Deliverer of an alien people, well, logically, that could have played out in a lot of different ways. But it wasn’t logic that made me know how it was. Okay, more weirdness to realize my mom was an alien. I made myself repeat it. Mom was an alien.
That
would actually be more cool than having a dragon for a pet, particularly at the cons.
Oh my freaking heck. If my mom was an alien, then I was one, too. At least half a one.
Still not enough for amnesia.
Okay. Even the doctor admitted that something traumatic had happened that night. He believed it was the driver of the other car that I was afraid to remember. I knew he wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t completely right. There was more. Something huge and ugly lurked just out of sight inside my head like a bad dragon, the mythic kind that hides in storm clouds over the ocean and dives out to eat sailors. My dad—
My brain twitched with a sudden stab of pain. I mentally jerked back, wanting—no, needing to go fetal and forget again. But I wasn’t seventeen. I was twenty-freaking-five about to turn twenty-freaking-six. It was time to woman up. And that meant facing the dragon in my head. No matter what—or who—it was.
Okay, it was unthinkable that my dad would, so just think it, I told myself. Because if it was unthinkable, then it wasn’t true. My dad couldn’t have been in that other car. He wouldn’t have left us there. Unbidden came the memory of my dad’s haunted eyes, his strained gray face. Okay, what if he had?
There. I’d thought it.
And the world hadn’t stopped turning.
My brain hadn’t exploded. Or given up the Big Secret.
It was still there, just out of reach and fighting me. It was weird to feel detached from me but to also feel this rising panic. My heart pounded and my breathing came in shallow pants. I forced myself to hold in a breath, then another, to slow it down. The little stars circling my vision faded. I flexed my tingling fingers, then looked at Mazan. He’d turned back to face me, looking sober, sad, but calmer.
“This is sad news for our people, my friend, Emma, but—”
My eyelid twitched. Oh right. “Our people?” If my mom was alien, then I was half alien. So that made his people half my people. My other eyelid joined the twitch-fest.
His brows arched. “But you know this, my friend—”
