by Enid Titan
“Duchess Daphne, do you have what your ingredients?”
“Yes.”
“Lay the hairs out on the altar, my dear. We’ll begin your work.”
“Thank you, priestess,” Daphne whispered, kissing the glass tubes that would rid her of that bothersome alien once and for all.
The ritual was simple enough. Daphne stripped down to nothing and the priestess followed suit. She exhaled, both prongs of her tongue flicking to the base of her tongue and then retracting. Two nipples on each breast came alive in the cool basement air.
The priestess chanted. The door slammed shut behind them and they opened the dark dream world together. Every Devoran ritual required an even number of participants. Daphne was lucky she found a priestess from The Order who respected her family’s power and history on the planet.
The room blackened and the deep fog of the dark world opened up to them.
“Spirits of Devor, I beseech you, turn the hearts of these three men to my bidding.”
Daphne turned a ritual knife on her hand and cut, just wide enough that three drops of blood spilled to bind three to her will.
46
Who Are You
In the evening, as the blue moons rose in the sky and the twin suns set in the distance over the ice mountains, Penelope fastened her cloak around her shoulders and laced her boots up her thigh. This time, she’d go to the boys voluntarily. This time, she understood how hurt they were to be apart from her.
Her last vision awakened the bond they shared in her.
“I love them,” Poppy whispered to herself.
The sensations were different from a crush or puppy love that Poppy might have been expecting. The yearning tugged at her heartstrings. It was uncertain and new and exciting, the way any new relationship should have been. They’d have to take things slow.
Hecate assured her that love on Devor was private. In this case, Poppy expected the three boys to take the matter seriously. Once in awhile, they’d proven that they could muster some solemnity.
The end of the semester approached and before facing the task of sending the rings into the fire, Poppy needed answers about who she was and what her mother’s message meant. With Uncle Monty out of the city, her only choice was for Castor to press his fingertips to her head and guide her through a vision the way he had the last time she’d gone to him for help.
As Poppy traveled through the snow, she encountered the typical melee of students heading back to campus from the city or heading down to the city for the weekend. Poppy was still technically restricted to her room, but she had another two or three hours before her restriction kicked in. Plenty of time to see the boys. Plenty of time for more to unfold amongst them.
The snow no longer weighed down Poppy’s boots. She could sing if she wanted to. The white and blues of the planet didn’t seem grim any longer. She still missed earth, what was left of the green and blue planet, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel that self-pity.
I am more than Earth, Poppy recognized, her mind traveling so fast that she hardly noticed that she was only feet away from Jason’s family apartment. She stared up at the windowpane, flush against the smooth white walls. From the street, the row houses looked like giant, shiny bubbles.
How have I gotten used to the alien? Poppy wondered.
She could feel the energies of the neighboring Devorans in their homes. Their presence was a ballerina’s toe, dusting against her awareness. Poppy’s gloved hand reached for the icy door handle but her fingers stopped before she touched it. Unsettling nausea broiled in Poppy’s tummy. She stepped back. Blood throbbed through her temples.
The door opened on its own.
“Hello, Penelope,” Daphne sneered.
The buildings seemed to get taller and Poppy’s heart trotted along in preparation for an inevitably anxious encounter.
“Hi. Is Jason here?”
A cloud of fog followed her statement. Daphne’s eyes glowed and for a moment, Penelope saw the resemblance between the girl in the doorway and the boy she was just beginning to love.
“No. My brother isn’t here.”
“Oh. He told me to meet him here. Never mind.”
A wicked smile tugged at the corner of Daphne’s lips.
“He’s on campus. I know where he is.”
“You do?”
“Mhmm.”
“Okay… Do you plan on telling me?”
Penelope understood the joy that her uncertainty elicited in Daphne. She saw it properly now. Poppy’s expanded awareness from her vision captured the thoughts racing along the edge of Daphne’s awareness.
She thinks I’m a stupid human. She thinks she’s better than me. She thinks that whatever she has to say will hurt me.
If Daphne senses my change, she doesn’t show it, Penelope thought.
“He’s on the outdoor rink, skating with Jocasta.”
“Jocasta?”
“Yes. All three of them are with her.”
“Okay… I was supposed to meet them here. Do you know when they’re coming back.”
Daphne stepped into the cold, unbothered by her exposed blue arms. She leaned over Poppy and hissed, “Never.”
“Okay…”
“Listen here, jazad, you stay away from my brother and his friends. You don’t belong with them. You never will.”
“I think that’s your brother’s choice,” Poppy replied.
The voice. The moment she’d heard Daphne say ‘jazad’, her memories washed over her. Poppy's head spun. She knew that voice. When she kneeled in the snow screaming, surrounded by chanting aliens who wanted her gone, and wanted her dead, she heard that voice amongst the many.
Without the vision sent by her mother, she couldn’t have remembered only one voice out of eight or ten.
She thinks I’m a simple human, but I’m not.
“What’s a matter, jazad?” Daphne taunted, “Scared?”
“No,” Poppy whispered.
Daphne’s eyes glowed.
“You should be.”
She stared into Poppy’s eyes and Poppy could feel the onset of a psychic attack like knives burrowing into her ears and through her brain. Pain. Intense pain. Worse than the first one. Stronger. Her limbs locked in place and her neck throbbed. Poppy’s knees trembled as Daphne reached into her head and found the center where she felt pain and twisted and squeezed and stabbed at it.
«You will kneel, jazad,» Daphne growled, her voice echoing through Poppy’s head as pain twisted up inside her.
She had to fight back. She had to reach whatever had been hidden inside her. The block on her memory. The block on her identity. Whatever her parents had hidden from her needed to escape. Now. There was no time for the boys to help her. And no need.
«Father of mine, do not leave me standing to die here on a cold world so many lightyears from my true home. Father of mine, do not leave me to die without knowing the ones who came before me.»
Daphne scoffed.
«Nonsense words from an outsider who will finally suffer for intruding on our homeworld.»
Poppy opened her lips to scream but no words came out. Not even the words that spilled from her lips were hers. They came from nowhere and everywhere at once. There was no more block, just power. A ball of energy that she could nearly touch, dark and twisted and electric.
«I am not the one who will kneel,» Penelope said, the voice coming from her mind wasn’t hers, it was deeper and stronger.
«You are the one who will kneel, Daphne. You know not what you are dealing with.»
Daphne’s grip on her loosened. Penelope’s lips slammed shut. Her eyes widened and she glared ahead of her, intently focused as she watched the blue girl shudder and then fall backward, leaning up against the door to her apartment, trembling from limb to limb.
“What are you doing?” Daphne whispered.
“Kneel,” Poppy hissed.
Daphne fell to her knees and landed face forward in the snow.
47
Shards of Ice
At least I didn’t leave her in the snow, Poppy thought to herself. She pushed the door to the apartment open and left Daphne alive, but unconscious on the ground. Her hands trembled as she left. No one had seen, Poppy reminded herself as she wandered around Vortha.
She needed time alone.
Time to think. Daphne lied. The boys weren’t with Jocasta. That couldn't be true. They were supposed to be down here, in the city, and somehow Daphne had convinced them not to come. Never mind, Daphne. What on earth had just happened? What were those voices? What were the words that came from her lips? Those weren’t my words, Poppy thought to herself. She knew they weren’t. What normal eighteen-year-old says “Father of Mine”. The words had come from somewhere. Her power had come from somewhere too.
Poppy walked in a circle, passing the temple and gazing up the hill where the Academy was nestled in an idyllic snow globe of its own, separate from the bustling city. A taste of the air beneath her tongue guided her there next. She’d walk to the ice rinks and prove that Daphne was wrong about the boys and Jocasta.
She hadn’t meant to hurt Daphne and if she had hurt her, it wasn’t serious. She’d explain everything to Jason and Jason would understand. He’d tell her what to do. Her heart fluttered as she pictured his half-grin as he sat across from her in the library, white hair flowing past his shoulders as he struggled through a maths sum. The way he teased her. The way his hands felt caressing her. It had just been in the wee hours of the morning when she’d shared a dream with the three and now if they were in her head, still bonded to her, Poppy couldn’t detect their presence at all.
There was only about an hour or so until her restriction kicked in. It was nearly too dark outside for anyone to be on the outdoor rink. Poppy walked the additional half-mile from the campus gates to the outdoor rink. As she approached through the trees, she heard laughter. Jocasta’s laughter. Then she heard three familiar voices.
Poppy concealed herself behind a tree and watched for a moment. They whipped around the ice, tall figures with long white hair. She recognized Ajax’s untamed curls instantly. Poppy stepped out without the intention of conducting an ambush, but with the appearance of such all the same.
“Hi guys,” she said, her voice booming across the empty patch of ice.
Jocasta stopped skating. Ajax skated up next to her. Jason followed. Then Hecate.
“Uh… hi,” Ajax greeted awkwardly.
Neither Jason nor Jocasta met her gaze. Why was Hecate here?
“Hi,” Hecate mumbled.
Hecate’s face wasn’t flushed with shame like the others.
“Weren’t we supposed to meet in Vortha?”
Jason skated to the edge of the rink.
“We should talk, Poppy.”
Poppy. Not jazad. He didn’t mince her with his usual quips. His gaze was forlorn and for the first time in a long time, Poppy didn’t even get a sense of what he was thinking or feeling. He was holding back. From her. Intentionally.
“Fine. Let’s talk,” Poppy snapped.
Hecate skated up to them then.
“Let me explain,” she said, “I meant to tell you earlier but you weren’t in your room. It suddenly dawned on me… I have a crush on Jocasta!”
“You…do?”
That might not have surprised Poppy much except for the fact that Hecate had been notoriously lukewarm on the subject of Jocasta. Like other Devorans, she seemed to trust the pale outsider as much as they trusted humans. There was a tacit acceptance but never a sense of true belonging.
“It came to me earlier that… well, I’ve been denying myself a bond for so long. And now I can have one.”
Jason and Hecate blocked her view of Jocasta protectively. Poppy recognized the stance. The boys had done the same to protect her not too long ago.
“Okay.”
“You aren’t mad?” Jason asked.
“Why would I be mad?”
“I thought you’d figure it out,” Jason asked, “I’m sorry, Poppy, but… I love Jocasta. She’s my true mate.”
“What?”
Hecate nodded, her eyes glassy with hypnotic excitement.
“Yes. We’ve decided to share our love for her. The three of us.”
Ajax skated up finally, the final brick in the blockade, protecting Jocasta from whatever response they seemed to expect. Poppy didn’t need them to block her from lunging for the girl. She was stunned. And frozen.
“What are you talking about, Jason? Is this some kind of joke?”
He smiled, uncharacteristically for the often sullen Devoran male.
“No. It’s not a joke. I’m sorry, Poppy but the bond between us is severed.”
Ajax nodded.
“It’s true. We were in error to have believed it to be a real bond.”
They weren’t joking. The horror set in. They were dumping her. Jason and Ajax.
“Where’s Castor?”
“I don’t know,” Jason shrugged her off, “But I think you’d better go now. Our time with Jo is private. Y’know?”
“Are you serious? You’re dumping me and chasing me off without even an explanation?”
Hecate leaned in.
“Please, Penelope. Don’t make a scene.”
“I won’t make a scene, don’t worry,” Penelope scoffed, “But just so you know, I fucking hate you… all of you.”
She turned around and stormed off. Fuck. Those had been stupid last words. Hardly zingers. Shit. Shit. Shit. Hot tears poured down Poppy’s cheeks but she didn’t dare give them the satisfaction of turning back.
48
Cas
Poppy didn’t have time to find Castor. By the time she walked back to the main campus from the outdoor rink, her face blotched red from crying and tears froze along her round cheeks, stinging with each step she took. The winds picked up as they often did at night and the chilling howling of icewolves on the distant tundra only heightened Poppy’s emotional torment.
The nurse wished to ask her what was wrong but avoided the intrusion. Devorans could be funny about intrusions. All for the best. Poppy didn’t want to tell her. The ache in her chest was both physical and emotional. She sensed the pain would worsen over time. Everything she’d been told about Devorans and their emotions had been a lie. The three boys had assured her their bond would be unbreakable. Like everyone else, the boys lied.
Her mother and father promised to keep her safe and they’d vanished, leaving her to unlock an old secret that terrified and terrorized her all alone. Uncle Monty wasn’t on this godforsaken planet either. He’d left her to muddle through everything on her own, only because she possessed some vague hope of saving Earth.
Poppy sensed she was powerful, or growing powerful. What happened in the city seemed like ages ago but had only been hours. She wasn’t a weakling like everyone here seemed to think. Like her friends seemed to think. They’d all hurt her. And what about Castor? He hadn’t been at Jason’s, or the outdoor rink. In her dreams, she’d laid her head on his lap and he’d stroked her hair like she belonged to him.
He’d left too. Poppy curled up into a ball.
“I hate it here!” she yelled to the empty room and her sobs clawed their way out of her as she shivered in bed.
Crying has a merciful manner of sending you to sleep. Poppy drifted off and as she felt a dream forming in the barrel of her subconscious she could have kicked herself and woken right up. She heard Castor’s voice whispering to her. The only voice left in her dream world. Sadness echoed in her chest, a bell ringing in an empty room.
«Penelope. Penelope. I’m right here»
«Go away,» she sniffed.
«PENELOPE. HURRY UP.»
Her eyes snapped open.
«Finally. I’ve thrown all the pebbles on the planet at your bloody window.»
Poppy rushed to her window. Castor stood below, alone, his cloak billowing around his shoulders in the harsh nighttime wind.
«What are you doing here
?»
«Let me up. I’ve been out here calling to you for half an hour.»
«Shit.»
Poppy shook the sleep out of her eyes.
«How am I supposed to let you up?»
«I’ll climb but you’ll need to drag me over the sill. I just need a boost.»
Sickbay was in a stone building, similar to the gothic castles on earth but with shimmery stone closer to the color of the snow than any building on Earth. Poppy’s room at the end of the hall, specially designed for miscreants and delinquents, sat two floors up in a small turreted section of what was essentially a small castle.
«I can’t pull you over the sill!»
«Hurry, Poppy. In case you haven’t noticed, we have big problems.»
«Fine. I’m ready.»
«I know you aren’t. But it’s too late. I have to hurry before Ajax and Castor figure out where I’ve gone.»
Poppy didn’t bother asking him yet why the two would care. Castor climbed up the first story easily. His fingers hovered uncomfortably on the white stone near her window.
«Come on,» Poppy encouraged, «I can almost reach.»
She leaned out the window but Castor’s hands were too far away and if she leaned out any further to reach him, she’d topple over. Castor grunted and nearly lost his footing. Poppy squealed.
«Quiet,» Castor chided.
«Sorry, only worried about your life.»
«I’ll be fine.»
He grunted one last time, found his footing and came just within arms reach.
«I’m not heavy enough to pull you up,» Poppy reminded him, just in case he forgot that he was a 6’7” blue alien and she was a slip of a human being.
«Yes, you are, Penelope. Focus.»
She grunted and focused on Castor’s blue hand in hers. His hands were huge in comparison. She used her second hand and he let go of the stones. If she didn’t pull him over, they’d both fall two stories into the snow.
