The Star Bell (The Cendrillon Cycle Book 3)

by Stephanie Ricker

  Elsa reached forward and grabbed her hands, pulling them away from the fay’s face. “Marraine, I have a chance. This isn’t a death sentence the way it would be if my helm had shattered in space.” She ducked her head, trying to make eye contact with the girl. “Don’t grieve for me just yet.” She looked up at Karl helplessly.

  He didn’t know what to tell her. “She didn’t react this strongly even when we first saw your broken helmet, before you opened your eyes. Perhaps she can sense something we can’t, some damage to your system?”

  Elsa frowned and tilted her head, puzzled. Sudden realization dawned on her. “Marraine,” she said. “You didn’t scream until you saw the blood.”

  A shudder went through Marraine.

  “Is that it?” Elsa asked. “Have you ever seen a human bleed before?”

  Marraine shook her head violently. “You’re the first. I’ve never seen a human die before,” she said brokenly. “I will always carry your memory, Elsa.”

  “Bleeding isn’t the same as dying,” Karl said, still lost.

  Elsa looked at him, her eyes wide. “What if it were?”

  He frowned. “What?”

  Elsa put her hands on Marraine’s shoulders. “Marraine, when your people bleed, does that always mean they’re going to die?”

  Marraine uncovered her face, having regained some control of herself. “I don’t understand your question,” she said uncertainly. “It’s the same thing.”

  “You’ve never seen a human get hurt, so you’ve never seen a human heal before,” Elsa said slowly. She looked up at Karl. “To a race of beings who cannot heal, a scabbed cut would be a miracle of regeneration.”

  Karl raised a hand in protest. “But what you’re saying isn’t possible,” he interjected. “Marraine, if the fay can’t heal from something as small as a cut, you would all die from small wounds in childhood. Stars, Elsa and I probably skinned our knees a dozen times apiece before we were eight years old.” A horrible thought struck him. “How…how long do your people live? Is it only a few standard years?”

  Marraine gave him a look that plainly told him he was being an idiot. “You know it’s more than that,” she told him. “You’ve visited Hayzeltry. You even met me.”

  Karl gaped. “But I was only on Hayzeltry once,” he protested. “And I was only twelve years old. I didn’t meet any fay children, only adults—” He looked at her with new eyes. “You were one of the adults?”

  “Yes. Well,” she amended, “I looked much the same as I do now. I was an adolescent by our standards at the time. I’ve only recently come of age.”

  “How long is the average lifespan of a fay?” Elsa asked quietly.

  “About one hundred years,” Marraine replied. “In our years,” she added.

  “And what would that be in Earth standard years?” Elsa pressed.

  Marraine frowned as she did the conversion in her head. “About two hundred and thirty, give or take five years,” she said.

  Karl whistled. “I’m very glad for your sake, Marraine, that the prohibition on disturbing the fay has been so religiously upheld. Many people would pay a great deal of money and disregard a great many scruples to get the secret of your longevity out of you.”

  “Clearly it’s been a very well-kept secret,” Elsa said, “since we didn’t know about the bleeding issue either. But how is it possible for you not to regenerate if you’re so long-lived? Surely you must’ve had scrapes and cuts before.”

  It was Marraine’s turn to look baffled. “Of course not. I would be dead. A laceration opens the body up to infection, and if it’s deep enough, causes death via bleeding. I assume your bodies need blood to survive, the same as ours?”

  “Oh yes,” Elsa replied, “but our blood clots, and the skin heals.” She parted her hair to show the gash on her head. “See? It’s already stopped bleeding.”

  Marraine gazed at the wound with a mixture of revulsion and undisguised fascination.

  “How is it possible you never saw anyone hurt before?” Karl asked. “No one ever got a scratch when you were mining?”

  Marraine shook her head.

  Elsa thought back. Marraine hadn’t mined very long, and she had been fresh from Hayzeltry before coming to Aschen. “I guess it’s possible,” she said.

  “We are very different,” Marraine marveled. “I had no idea. I just thought you were like me.” She looked closer at the gash. “What caused this?”

  “A piece of the broken faceplate, it looks like,” Karl chimed in, realizing Elsa hadn’t yet seen her own injury to be able to describe it.

  Marraine nodded. “I begin to see the distinction. Such a small thing would never puncture a fay’s skin. Our skin is pliant, especially while we are growing, but it’s very resistant to tears and punctures—much more so than yours, evidently. It has to be something very traumatic to break the skin, but once it’s broken, death almost inevitably follows, especially in adults who are fully grown.” She looked up at Elsa shyly. “You see why I was so upset. Such a death is considered one of the most terrible. I was distressed to think that you were going to experience it.”

  Karl looked around the circle of sailors. “We can’t breathe a word of this,” he warned them. “Lots of folks would exploit this as a terrible weakness, especially if they were trying to get at the cause of the fay’s longevity. If we leave here—when we leave here,” he amended, “we can never discus this again, even with those closest to us.” He looked at Louise. “Including Hon. I know he means well, but he talks too freely.”

  Louise nodded solemnly.

  “We should get under cover,” Karl said. The squirrels had been quiet for too long; the fact that they’d been able to have this conversation uninterrupted made him nervous. The sailors made their way towards the cave entrance, Arne supporting Louise as she kept her injured leg off the ground.

  Karl crouched next to Elsa on the pretext of helping her to her feet. “Do you suppose Jaq knows all of this?” he whispered so that the others wouldn’t hear.

  She winced. “I doubt it. He should. I’ll talk with Marraine later to make sure she understands the danger she could be in if this gets out. Jaq may not comprehend how serious it could be either.”

  They stood together. She was very pale, he realized. “Do you still feel all right?” he asked suddenly in a louder tone as they moved nearer to the others.

  She looked surprised by the abrupt topic change. “I’d forgotten all about it for the moment, to be honest. But yes, I feel the same. It seems I’m extremely lucky.”

  “We’re not out of this yet,” Louise warned. Her face was tight with pain, but otherwise Karl wouldn’t have known she was hurt. Her voice was steady as ever. “And I’m not up to any skipping through the daffodils at the moment. Oxlan, bring me some branches, will you? I’m going to get started on a splint.” She looked to Karl. “Astonishing xenobiologic discoveries aside, what’s the plan?”

  Discussing the fay’s fascinating characteristics had been a welcome distraction from the problem his brain had never ceased to mull over since they lost contact with the Sovereign. How to get everyone home? They had one working skiff, and that was some distance away through a forest filled with beasts bent on tearing them to pieces. He had one crewmember with a broken leg, and another without a helmet, breathing in heavens knew what. But even if they all somehow made it to the skiff, they had to reconnect with the Sovereign, with whom there had been no contact for many hours. The skiff alone could never make it back to the star bell.

  Karl decided that it didn’t matter whether the Sovereign was waiting for them where they had left her or not. They couldn’t stay in the cave. The skiff offered the best shelter and the best hope of rescue since, if the Sovereign was nearby, she would follow the distress beacon. Every moment the sailors were in the cave diminished their chances of being found; the Sovereign had no reason to look for them here, and no way to contact them via commline due to the signal-dampening rock.

  Louise and the ot
hers still looked at him expectantly. He wondered if his father ever grew as tired of that look as he did. Probably not, he decided. Jacob Tsarevich thrived on attention, and Karl suspected at least a small part of him enjoyed being responsible for so many lives. Karl did not.

  “We’ll camp here tonight,” he said. The light had long been fading while they discussed the fay. “There’s no way we would all make it back to our skiff in this light. Oxlan and Arne, please see what you can do about boosting the signal from our helm commlines to cut through this interference. If the Sovereign contacts us, I want to be able to hear them. We’ll head back to the working skiff in the morning.”

  “What about Elsa?” Arne asked. “Who knows what it’s doing to her to breathe this air for so long.”

  Karl tried not to wince. He had been thinking of that himself, but he couldn’t justify putting the whole party at risk just to get one person to the skiff and a safer atmosphere. “Louise can’t make a night hike, and we would be easy pickings for the squirrels; it’s hard enough to see in these trees during daylight. But I do have an idea.”

  He unclasped his own helmet and pulled it off amid the crew’s cries and protestations. He took his first breath of the world’s air, noticing a faint, indecipherable odor. The atmosphere was a little cool, but not uncomfortable. “We’ll take turns,” he said, holding the helm out to Elsa.

  She crossed her arms, and her mouth narrowed to a thin line. “No, we won’t. You’re going to put it back on. I’ll be fine.”

  “If you’re fine, then so am I,” he argued, still holding it out to her. “You wear it for a few hours, and then I’ll wear it. We’ll both have limited exposure.”

  “Put that thing back on,” she demanded. “We may not even know what the long-term effects of exposure are until years from now when I get some rare brain cancer. Better that it should happen to one of us instead of both.”

  He didn’t want to have to do this, but there didn’t seem to be a way around it. “Vogel,” he said bluntly, “I’m ordering you to put on the helmet, and I outrank you.”

  The glare she sent in his direction almost changed his mind; he’d never seen her angry before. But she snatched the helmet from his hand and clasped it to her suit.

  He exhaled, feeling his shoulders relax a bit. “Thank you.”

  “You’re getting it back in two hours,” she warned.

  He decided that was as close to a victory as he was going to get.

  The Sovereign fell back into regular space with a shudder that set Bruno’s teeth on edge. Yeah, those sails definitely needed some recalibrating. He ran his own scans and saw no sign of the creature, but he waited until the bridge called him.

  “All clear, bosun,” came the captain’s voice. “Long-range sensors detect the creature out past the first planet of the system and heading towards the sun, so we’ve got some time. We’ll meet with the skiffs in a few minutes. Go ahead and send out the riggers; that last sail was pretty rough.”

  “Agreed, sir,” Bruno replied. Even the creature, quick though it may be, couldn’t move faster than a Fleet ship. The first planet in the system was a good fifty million miles from the planet they were exploring. Bruno activated the line to the rigger crews, who were on standby near the airlocks. “You’re good to go, boys and girls,” he told them. “Make it snappy, though. Priority work orders first.”

  On his viewscreens, he watched his crew make their way out onto the sails, zipping along on their maneuvering thrusters. He felt a thrill of pride: they were good at their work, and they were coming together in a unified family, learning and working together.

  His warm, fuzzy feelings lasted for exactly as long as it took him to open a commline to one of the riggers, intending to request that she check a loose halyard. The same whine he had heard earlier filled his ears.

  One hand slapped the recall lights and the other slapped the commline to the bridge. “Sir, it’s back,” he snapped. “Or another one like it. We just lost external comms again.”

  “The beast isn’t showing up on sensors.” Captain Tsarevich himself replied. “Are you sure the comms aren’t still down from earlier? We had a few problems reported—”

  “No sir,” Bruno cut him off. “Rigger helm comms were working fine moments ago. The thing’s probably still on the other side of the planet, but it’s coming.” He scanned the views anxiously. Many of his riggers were back inside or were moving as quickly as they could towards the hatches.

  Two were not.

  Gus and Jaq. Bruno swore. Both men had their heads down, hard at work on a patch of sail. They were either ignoring the recall lights or were so engrossed in their task that they didn’t see them.

  “Confirmed, bosun,” Tsarevich said. “The creature just emerged from behind the planet. The skiffs aren’t yet in position for the rendezvous—they must still be on the surface. Prepare for sailspace again. We can’t keep getting beaten up like this.”

  Bruno clenched his jaw in frustration. “I’ve got men on the sails, sir; we can’t go to sailspace.” He looked at the view again and made his decision. “I’m bringing them in. Just wait for my signal. Do not go to sailspace until you hear from me.”

  That was probably the only time in his life he would ever issue an order to Jacob Tsarevich, but the captain didn’t comment on the breach of hierarchy. “You don’t have time to launch a shuttle, and you can’t communicate with them,” he warned. “How are you bringing them in?”

  Bruno was already standing up from his seat, pulling the headset from his head. “Manually,” he growled, terminating the connection. He sprinted for the nearest airlock, tossing his coat aside. He really did need to exercise more; things creaked that definitely didn’t use to.

  He rushed into a suit faster than he had in years, however. He had hardly needed to wear one since becoming a bosun. Life had changed a lot—Volkova had been right about that much, he decided as he clasped the helm to his suit.

  Bruno burst out of the airlock before the door had fully slid open and immediately fired his thrusters, jetting straight for Jaq’s and Gus’ location. Both were still hard at work. Bruno snorted. Jaq’s inattention he understood, but he expected more from the usually preternaturally observant Gus.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the creature approaching. It seemed excited, jinking from side to side as it sped closer to the ship. Bruno looked away and focused on his two men.

  He fetched up on the halyard near them rather imperfectly; as bosun, he was rarely on the sails himself, and he was still inexperienced and clumsy at some of the maneuvers. He lunged forward in his magnetic boots, grabbed an arm from each man, and jerked them around to face him.

  Both were startled, and he could see Gus’ mouth moving in protest. Jaq made a grab for his marlinspike, which was now drifting away, and missed. Bruno let go of Gus long enough to point at the creature. The riggers’ eyes widened, and Jaq abandoned the marlinspike.

  “Come on!” Bruno shouted uselessly, since they couldn’t hear him. They had the idea now. Jaq and Gus retracted their tethers, and Bruno cast one more look at the creature before speeding for the hatch.

  It was right above them. Bruno could see the Sovereign’s blinking recall lights reflecting against its scaled hide. It turned its head to examine them with one eye as large as a skiff’s viewscreen. Its eyes were a vivid blue, with a darker blue, square-shaped pupil inside. The creature looked as though it were smiling at them, since the mouth wrapped most of the way around its head and turned up at the corners.

  It didn’t look like it was smiling when it opened its mouth, however.

  The bottom jaw unhinged, and the mouth opened impossibly wide, wider than the animal’s body. Then the interior of the mouth unfolded outward, opening the mouth even wider into a vast, roughly square maw. Bruno couldn’t see any teeth, but rows upon rows of sheets of some kind of tissue lay tightly packed along the lining of the mouth. He could see past that down into the creature’s body, the interior white with a faint
bluish tint.

  He didn’t wait to see more. He spun back to Jaq and Gus. Gus gazed in fascination; Jaq’s face was twisted in terror. “Move!” he shouted at them, giving them both a shove in case they didn’t get the message.

  They were only fifty feet from the hatch when the creature hit the shields. The blows that hadn’t seemed like much from inside the ship now shook Bruno’s teeth in his head. Energy singed its way along the shields above the riggers’ heads as the barrier absorbed the impact, and Bruno felt his hair stand up on his head. The creature hit the shields again, mouthing at the shielded area above the gunwales in spite of the protective field, and Bruno staggered as the ship lurched.

  Jaq grabbed Bruno’s arm with incredible ferocity. Bruno saw that Gus had been knocked from his feet by the force of the blow. He drifted up towards the shields, limbs hanging limply. Had he knocked his head on something?

  So quickly that Bruno didn’t have a chance of stopping him, Jaq deactivated the magnetism on his own boots and lunged forward to catch his friend’s hand. He pulled sharply downwards to bring Gus away from the deadly shields. The energy-devouring creature might be able to touch them with immunity, but a human could not; Gus would die if he drifted into the charged barrier.

  Unfortunately, the act of pulling Gus down sent Jaq upward as the momentum of the maneuver began to reverse their positions.

  Bruno’s thrusters burned, and he flew upward past Jaq’s flailing limbs. He grabbed Gus’ ankle, jackknifed himself around by using that point as a fulcrum, and blasted his thrusters again now that he was between the boys and the shields, pushing all three of them hull-ward. He didn’t know how close he had come to the shields, but it was close; a buzzing sensation filled his head, and he could feel heat prickle along his back even through his suit. The feeling quickly dissipated as they moved toward the hatch, and Bruno bundled all three of them into the airlock as fast as he could before the creature could attack again.