The Faarian Chronicles: Exile

by Karen Harris Tully

  “Oh, good. There you two are. I’d started to wonder if you went on the plane to pick up the General,” Ethem said when he saw us. He took a taste from one of the pots, made a face and reached for a spice jar with one hand and the phone on his belt with the other. He pressed one button and held it to his ear.

  “Otrere, would you come down and give our new arrival a quick tour of the residences before dinner?” He paused to hear the response. “Yes, now,” he said, irritated, “it’s not like you and your sister set the tables while I was gone, like I asked, did you?” Another pause, “Good,” he sounded mollified, “she’s here waiting for you.” He snapped his phone shut and turned to me and Sensei, shaking his head.

  “You know how it is. You ask people to do something while you’re gone and what do you get? A houseful of chores left undone and dinner to finish.”

  I could see that he was annoyed and felt partly responsible. “Well, do you want some help?” I offered. “I can set the table if you’ll show me where things are.” I immediately regretted saying anything. They probably did it completely differently here.

  He looked at me curiously. “That’s nice of you, Sunny,” he said after a pause. “Why don’t you have your tour first and see where your room is, then we’ll see if there’s anything left to do.”

  So in other words, thanks but no thanks.

  A few minutes passed while we waited and I observed the cooks bustling along, preparing vast amounts of food. The kitchen table was already covered with a tower of bread loaves, desserts cooling on racks, and dozens of bowls of several kinds of salads. How many people lived here, anyway? They weren’t having a dinner party or something, were they?

  It was amazing to see everyone working in the kitchen in unison, quickly and efficiently, as if they did this together every day like a professional restaurant kitchen on TV. Not that Dad never helped in the kitchen at home, but mostly Judith kicked him out if he tried. If Dad had to cook, which Judith made sure almost never happened, he popped in a frozen pizza or ordered out.

  Like Ethem, the other male cooks had geometric patterns across their eyes and cheeks in a variety of shades, some subtle and spotted, some bold and graphic, with coordinating teeth colors. Despite Sensei’s explanation about traditional markings, I still couldn’t imagine wanting a tattoo covering half my face.

  They were all thin, so thin I had a hard time believing they spent their days preparing food. Maybe they weren’t any good at it, I mused. They mostly wore boring polo shirts and khakis, with the exception of a tall, skinny young man wearing silver pants that must have belonged to Mick Jagger in the 80’s.

  "Okay, so where is she?” I turned and saw two girls about my age and a lot bigger than me take the corner into the kitchen at full speed, almost knocking over the cook removing a casserole from the oven. He did a graceful spin to avoid them and got the hot dish onto a trivet without incident.

  “Lyta! Otrere! Watch what you’re doing!” Ethem pronounced their names Lee-Ta and Oh-Trare.

  “Sorry Ethem!” they chorused, grinning devilishly and skidded to a stop in front of me, obviously anything but sorry.

  “One of you can give Sunny a tour. The other can help set the tables.” Neither girl gave any indication that she had heard Ethem’s orders, focusing their attention on me instead.

  “Hey,” one said. I had no idea which was which, and probably wouldn’t still if they were introduced. They were twins.

  “Hey,” I replied. I wasn’t used to girls being bigger than me, both in height and muscle. Despite their grins, there was something rough and intimidating about them. And they were in a hurry.

  “I’m Lyta. This is Otrere. You’re Veridian. Let’s go.” They spun back to the door and grabbed my bags as I looked at Sensei.

  “Help,” I mouthed.

  “Go on, you’ll be fine,” she said, giving me a shove toward the door and the girls.

  I had to run to keep up as they dashed through the house, turning this way and that, up stairs and down hallways until I felt as if we were running through a maze. They pointed right or left as we passed and yelled out, “INFIRMARY!”, “BATHROOM!”, “ADMINISTRATION!”, “COMMISSARY!”, “FISH TANKS!”, “SUPPLY ROOM!”, a never-ending string of individual people’s rooms, and finally, “GENERAL’S QUARTERS!”

  By the end, I was too busy dodging people who stuck their heads out of doorways at the racket they were making to get more than a glance at any of the rooms they pointed out. They threw my bags through the doorway of a small bedroom, off of an even smaller living room, pointed out the bathroom, and took off again, leaving me there out of breath and shell-shocked.

  “What? Stop! Come back!” I yelled after them. I had no idea where I was or how to get back.

  “Gotta go, Princess!” one of them yelled back.

  “Some of us have work to do!” the other yelled and their laughter echoed down the halls as they ran back to whatever hole they’d crawled out of. Some tour guides. I didn’t know a lot here, but I knew being the General’s daughter didn’t make me royalty. For the first time I wondered if being my mother’s daughter would make me the object of envy or ridicule. Great. One more way for my mother to ruin my life.

  Not sure what to do now, I checked my iPhone and other belongings for damage and looked around the Spartan little room. It was like a cheap motel room, but with no phone to call the front desk. This had to be a mistake -- a joke. My mother was in charge here, wasn’t she? There was no way this plain little apartment was where she lived.

  The tiny room had an old chest of drawers next to a window that looked out on the desert, a twin bed that looked old and lumpy, a short metal filing cabinet as a bedside table, and a chipped lamp. Besides the handmade quilt on the bed, there were no decorations. Boy, someone had really made an effort, I thought sarcastically.

  Be tough, I repeated Sensei’s words to myself. This was how things were. Make the best of it. But I sure knew which girls I didn’t need to expend any effort being nice to.

  And now ‘making the best of it’ meant going down to dinner and meeting a whole bunch of strangers, who may or may not be like those girls – and I had no idea how to get back to the main hall from here.

  I went into the little bathroom and glanced in the mirror. Sure enough, wheat fields in August. I needed to calm down. It usually took quite a bit to get my eyes to change all the way, but today had been plain weird. Nerve racking. And apparently being dumped here after a wild goose chase was the last straw.

  Feeling overheated, I undid the Velcro on my Nike sandals and sighed at the coolness of the tile on my bare feet. I guess they didn’t believe in air conditioning.

  I wanted to splash my face, and a cool drink would be nice, but how did you turn this thing on? I looked all around the otherwise standard pedestal sink, but there was no control knob on the faucet, only a little black panel stuck to the wall below the mirror. I tried waving my hand in front of it, thinking it was the sensors like at the mall. Then I tried poking it like a button. Nothing. My foot hit something raised on the tile and I looked down to see a button on the floor. Stepping on it didn’t do anything either, even while waving and poking. I probably looked like I was doing some sort of rain dance in front of the sink.

  I could see my eyes flash and the hated yellow intensify as I slapped my whole hand against the panel and stomped on the floor before giving up and kicking the porcelain base of the sink. Ow, ow, OW! I hopped around in a circle and dropped to the floor to hold my stubbed toe, swearing. You’d think after all these years in martial arts I’d remember to flex my foot! God, how ridiculous! I started laughing ruefully and fell back on the cool tile, cause sometimes there’s nothing else you can do.

  After laying there a while, I got up and went back to the bedroom to get my iPhone and started my relaxation playlist. I noticed a stack of clothes on the worn quilt with a note balanced on top. A pair of tall boots sat on the floor.

  The short note was written in a strong, angular ha
nd. Veridian, thought you might need some work gear. Asked your father for sizes and guessed from there. Hope they fit. If not, take them to the commissary and trade. Next to my mother’s distinctive signature was a scrawl squeezed in at the bottom - definitely an after-thought: Welcome Home.

  So, this was the place. I put down the note and picked up one of the ugliest boots I’d ever seen in my life, knee high with a thick, waffle sole and non-realistic navy pleather uppers. Geez! They didn’t even resemble real leather. And why were they metallic? The material had an odd rainbow shine reminiscent of an oil slick. Yuk!

  I tossed it back on the floor and inspected the “work” clothes. Long pants and long-sleeved shirts made of some breathable synthetic fabric in light gray and beige. Andi would never be caught dead in this fabric.

  Next was a glass bottle of sun block. Hadn’t they ever heard of plastic? Wait, yes, cause that’s what the boots were made of! Maybe I’d just keep wearing my Nikes.

  A cursory tour of the rest of the apartment found a tiny living room with a large fish tank built into the outer wall. Huh. That seemed decadent. I could see right through the tank, a wavy view of the desert outside as a backdrop for a school of flat silver fish with sunset bellies.

  There was a couch, table, and a couple of chairs in the sparsely furnished room. No knickknacks or pictures to tell me anything about the person who lived here. No TV. An even tinier kitchenette looked like it was never used.

  The door to my mother’s room was open and I thought about not snooping, but decided that if she hadn’t wanted me to look, she should have shut the door. But her room was like the rest of the apartment: sparse, cold, impersonal; the single bed made with military precision.

  A quick search through the drawers found half of them empty. The others held more dull work clothes and basic toiletries, neatly arranged. Did anyone actually live here? I had to wonder. Didn’t she ever dress up or go out? Or was she just a joyless workaholic?

  I went out into the hallway, hungry and tired of staring at the beige walls of my new bedroom. Twenty minutes and three wrong turns later, I felt the anger and helplessness bubble up inside me for the millionth time today. I was lost.

  “A little help?” I yelled. Still no response. “Can anybody hear me?” I yelled at the top of my lungs. Apparently everyone had gone to dinner and I was too far away to be heard.

  Okay Sunny, think this through. It’s a house, not a maze. Those two braying donkeys got you lost on purpose. You saw the place from the air. It was square, with a square tower on each corner. It can’t be that hard. You can figure this out. Calm down. Deep breaths.

  I went through the stairs we’d taken in my head, up and up and down and up and down again. So I must be on the what, second floor? Okay, so I needed to find some stairs, go down two flights and take the long straight corridors until I find the main hall. Okay.

  I actually felt rather pleased at my deductive skills; that is until I ended up at the same railing overlooking the same tiny courtyard full of the same potted plants and trees - for the third time. No stairs, nothing that looked like a door to a main corridor, only short, nearly identical hallways filled with nearly identical doors.

  The railing in front of me was wide and covered in more potted herbs, sunning themselves under the skylight, which seemed like a good idea. I sat with my back to the railing, trying to think and getting nowhere.

  Agh! Why did I follow those girls, anyway? I smacked my head back against the rail, hard, and raised my face to the sun, jerking forward again when I heard a giant crash below me.

  I had to stand to see that a huge turquoise pot holding a little orange tree directly below me had broken in half, spilling dirt everywhere, and was now surrounded by pottery shards from another, smaller pot. That’s when I noticed the bare spot on the rail in front of me.

  Chapter 9: Thalestris

  “Crap!” I swore. “Crap! Crap! Crap!”

  “Hey, is someone out there?” a voice came from behind me. I turned to see nothing but empty hallway and a padlocked door. Thump! Thump! Thump! The padlocked door vibrated as someone pounded on it from the other side. “Come on! I’ve been stuck in here for an hour! Let me out!” a boy’s voice shouted. The door whacked against the frame as he shook it for all he was worth. He sounded a little panicked.

  “Okay, okay! Calm down and tell me where the key is,” I answered.

  “Who’s that? Oh, who cares? Ethem’s got it of course. Link him and get someone to bring it, will you?”

  Link? That must be like calling someone? “Uh, I don’t have a phone that works here. And actually, I’m kind of lost in this place. Where are the stairs?” There was a pause as he digested that.

  “Veridian?” he asked.

  “How’d you guess?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “I mean, yeah, but I go by Sunny.”

  “Who else would be lost? So, how’d you end up over here anyway?”

  “Ugh!” I snorted. “These two big girls were supposed to be giving me a tour, but I swear they just ran me around in circles, tossed my stuff in a room, and took off.”

  “Lyta and Otrere?”

  “Yeah, I think those were their names.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like something my sisters would think was funny. They locked me in here too,” he said. “So, do you think you can get me out of here? I’ll give you directions if you promise to come back.”

  “Yeah, hang on. I’ve got an idea.” I’d been studying the door while we talked. I whipped out my Leatherman, a gift from Dad that I tended to carry cause it came in handy. A little work with the pliers, a lot of prying and… Clink.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “You’ll see. Can you hold the door please?” Clink.

  “Hold the door? Why?”

  “So it doesn’t fall in on you.” Clink. “Now push.”

  Together we opened the door the wrong way. The only thing holding it to the frame now was the padlock. He started to laugh. “That’s great!”

  The wiry boy who emerged was probably a little younger than me, and surprisingly short. Judging by his huge sisters, he probably hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet. As he stepped out of the dark supplies closet, I got a closer look and realized that he looked nothing like the twins. If you ignored his sage green hair and eyes, he could have passed for someone in my Pakistani friend Chandra’s family. Maybe he was adopted.

  “Hey, thanks,” he said grinning and casting curious glances at my hair and eyes. “Glad you showed up when you did.”

  “No problem,” I grinned back. “They wouldn’t have left you in there forever, would they?”

  “No, probably not. Lyta and Otrere are pretty good at knowing how much they can get away with before someone notices you’re missing. Hey, can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure, shoot.”

  He tipped his head to the side quizzically. “Why would I want to shoot you?” He gave a little shake of his head as if to say, well anyways, and continued with his original train of thought. “What’s going on with your hair? Are you sick or something?”

  “Sick? No, why?”

  “I’ve just never seen hair so dark. It doesn’t even look green.” He gave a little shrug and looked down at the silvery hinge pins on the tile floor. “Can you put it back together?”

  “Sure, just swing it back in place,” I answered. “It’s dyed black,” I said as we worked on the door. “People on Earth don’t have green hair.”

  “No one?” he gasped while replacing a pin for me to whack back in place with the Leatherman.

  “Not unless they dye it green.”

  “Well, how do they get energy from the suns then? Sun,” he corrected quickly. “I know there’s only one.”

  “They don’t,” I replied, jiggling the door into the right position.

  “Oh,” he looked confused, but didn’t ask any more questions. It took a few more minutes and the door was good as new.

  “See? Easy.”

  He clapped his han
ds together and laughed a peal of pure delight. “Now they won’t know how I got out when they come check! Come on. Let’s go to dinner before the food’s all gone.”

  He remembered something and looked around. “So, what made that noise before? Do you know?”

  I grimaced and sheepishly pointed over at the empty spot on the railing. “That was me,” I replied. “I didn’t mean to,” I said, at his look.

  “Oh, well. If anyone gives you a hard time, we’ll say you just bumped the rail. It happens.” He led the way to a gap in the railing and stepped onto a ladder I hadn’t noticed before.

  “They decided not to waste space with stairs when they built the additions onto the main building,” he explained as he descended to the little plant-filled patio below. “You know, more space for apartments.” I followed him down the ladder even though I was sure I hadn’t used a ladder on the way here. I didn’t think he was going to take me on another wild goose chase.

  “So…Veridian,” he looked at me appraisingly as we walked to dinner.

  “Call me Sunny,” I said automatically, paying careful attention this time to where we were going.

  That brought him up short. “Suh-nee,” he repeated, surprised. “What does that mean?” I pointed at the sun streaming through the skylight that made up most of the ceiling and said the Faarian word for sun. He laughed.

  “I’m Thal. Well, it’s Thalestris really, but don’t ever call me that,” he warned with a scowl. I laughed, remembering Thalestris from the list of traditional Faarian names the Robot had made me memorize. Traditional female names. He pronounced his chosen nickname Tal.

  “How’d that happen?” I asked grinning.

  “My mom was expecting a girl,” he shrugged, but I guessed there was more to the story.

  “So Thal. Can I ask you a question?”