Children of the White Star

by Linda Thackeray

  A wave of dizziness overtook him as the skimmer came to a halt. As they others emerged from the vehicle, Garryn remained seated, trying to fight the swirling images in his head. This place, with its rusted iron roof, its overgrown garden and derelict appearance, opened something in his mind. As his eyes swept over the dwelling, he saw flashes of memory before his eyes.

  Garryn wasn't even aware of it when he staggered out of the skimmer and started running.

  “Gar!” He heard Flinn calling in the background but ignored him.

  As he ran past the house, he saw the faded paint and knew it hadn't always been in this dilapidated condition.

  Yellow! It was a yellow house with white eaves and gutters. Sunny colours. I called them sunny colours!

  By now, he was in a heightened state of panic. He ran past something resembling a child's swing, tipped over and almost engulfed in tall grass. Another flash of memory stopped him for a second before he was running again. An animal with short brown and black fur was wagging its tail as it chased after a small, luminous coloured ball.

  Einy! Einy! Bring ball, Einy!

  Garryn was moving again. This time, he ran through the gap in the fence where a gate had once hung. He could see the corroded lines of its frame resting against the ground and concealed by vegetation. Beyond the gate, he entered the field of tall golden stalks and saw the hills in the distance. Driven by instincts he could not control, Garryn only knew he had to keep going.

  He heard the loud chirping of birds on a nearby tree and looked up at them. They stared at him in question, unafraid of him from their high perch. Garryn saw their white feathers and the yellow crowns on their heads. One of these creatures stirred and took flight, sailing across the blue sky and the sun that was beginning to make its descent into the night.

  Inside the mind of Garryn, Prime of Brysdyn, the wall finally came down.

  * * *

  “Don't go too far, Jus.”

  The boy stopped running and glanced over his shoulder. He paused at the command given, even though his desire to keep going was still strong. He bit his lip as he saw the man a short distance away. Although the adult's concentration seemed no longer centred on him and had returned to the large bovine whose foot he was tending, the boy knew better.

  He watched the man working deftly on the bovine's cracked hoof, taking usual care to clean the infected flesh. The man stopped a moment and wiped the pregnant drops of sweat rolling into the lines of his skin. His face was a myriad of creases, lined from hard work under the sun. His hands were similarly marked, with palms just as cracked and hardened after a lifetime working the land.

  Once the child was certain he was not being watched, he faced front again, staring longingly into the brilliant afternoon sky. He could smell the faint scent of the wheat fields nearby, tickling his nose with its dry pollen. The hot glare of the sun made him squint. In the back of his mind, he remembered being told he should never look straight at it. The conditioning to obey that voice was too strong and he gazed into the horizon instead.

  Beside him, the dog waited impatiently. The animal circled him repeatedly, waiting to see where he would go next so it could follow. It wagged its tail furiously, as if to convey its displeasure at the interruption in their walk. The boy smiled at the sight of the long tail moving back and forth in rapid succession, finding the whole thing rather amusing.

  “I'm here daddy,” he replied, placating the man as he started moving again.

  At the response, the man looked up again. He adjusted the brim of his hide-skinned hat to keep the sunlight out of his eyes. “Justin, you and Einy stay where I can see you!”

  “Yes, daddy!” the small singsong voice responded as the child ran a short distance away and the man continued working, glancing up periodically to keep an eye on the boy's whereabouts. At the moment, the child was not so far away the man considered calling him back.

  The boy was throwing a ball in the air. The yellow felt-covered orb sailed through the air as the dog ran after it in pursuit. It scampered through the long blades of grass and found the ball quickly before running back to its young master. It was a simplistic game, but neither child nor dog seemed to tire of it.

  “Catch it, Einy!” The child giggled as he threw the ball forward again, sending the animal running. It retrieved the toy and padded faithfully back to him.

  Einy the dog disappeared into the foliage as the ball flew into the air again. Its movement through the tall grass was signalled by crisp rustling as it searched for the ball. While the dog searched for the toy, the boy cast his eyes into the sky again, squinting as the sun shone on his face and eyes. For a moment, he was unsure he was seeing anything out of the ordinary, if he could be certain of what ordinary meant in his limited experience.

  They looked like birds, the dark shapes moving across the sky at lightning speed. He knew what airplanes were, but these moved without the linearity of conventional flight. There was fluidity to their movements, a grace belonging only to denizens of the sky. The shapes looked like the biggest birds he had ever seen! They flew fast and made a loud sound as they approached. Only when they flew overhead did he realise that they were not birds at all. They did not look like airplanes either. If the truth be known, they looked like more like something he had seen on television. Suddenly, he felt a spark of recognition. They looked like one of his toys.

  “Buzz Lightyear,” he muttered. It looked like a toy at home!

  “Buzz Lightyear!” He shouted this time, pointing at them.

  The adult looked up at this point, following the direction of the child's pointing finger. Even if neither ship were making any hostile moves, it was enough to make the adult stand up abruptly. The child was still mesmerised by the two fast moving ships and did not associate them with danger, not yet. The power in those engines ripped through the serene quiet of the air and hastened the farmer's approach.

  The man kept his eyes trained on the two alien vessels and saw when they split formation to fly in two opposite directions. One moved into a classic loop and began descending to the ground at rapid speed, the other headed straight for them. With his inner senses tingling, the man forgot the two ships and looked around for his child.

  The ship was less than a thousand metres from him when it started firing. Deadly bolts of plasma energy struck the raw earth, sending soil and debris into the air with each blast. The shots ignited the dry grass and quickly set the ground ablaze. The man simply stared in disbelief for a moment, trying to grapple with what was happening. Yet the smoke and fire motivated him to move.

  “Justin! Stay where you are!”

  “DADDY!”

  His vocabulary did not extend beyond a dozen words, but his terror was articulated in that one scream. Frozen to the spot, the child began to cry harder as he saw the man approaching. He remained where he was, crouched low in the grass, frightened by the loud noises and the rising smoke. The dog was tugging at the child's shirt, trying to prompt him into leaving this dangerous place, its tail no longer wagging.

  The man was running harder now, unconcerned with his own safety. All he cared about was reaching his son before the fire or the deadly blasts of energy. Only a few meters away from his child, he was oblivious to the fact it was not the child who was in mortal danger. Suddenly there was an explosion of sound and the man thought for a brief instance he had fallen. Only when he felt exquisite agony did he suspect the worst, but he had no more time to ponder that question before he died.

  “DADDY!”

  The child scrambled forwards, still on his knees, towards the dead form of his father. The ships in the clouds had moved away and the boy did not notice where they went. The dog followed sedately and whimpered, recognising the stench of death in the air. It understood better than the boy did.

  “Daddy, wake up!” he wailed, kneeling against his dead parent and shaking him with his tiny hands. The blood that stained his hands made him recoil a little, but the boy was beyond caring.

  “J
ustin!”

  The child reacted instantly to his name being called. The voice carried above the roar of the fire and the shrieking animals fleeing the blazing field. Behind him, the dog had started barking, torn between his natural instincts to run and its loyalty to its young charge.

  “Justin! Where are you, baby?”

  The woman was running up the hill, coming from the direction of the house. She ran over the hill, fighting her way through the rising smoke and heat. By now, thick clouds of smoke had fogged away most of the landscape, but she kept coming, ignoring the noxious fumes. The dog's barking became more frantic, allowing her to pinpoint the child's location. Where the dog was, the child would not be far away.

  “Justin!” she shouted again.

  Her voice was becoming more desperate, more edged with fear than ever before. She glanced up in the air and she saw one of the ships returning. The other had already landed somewhere close to the house. The ship still in the air was closing in on her, making the woman run faster, trying to stay ahead of it.

  She would keep running. She would run until the very last moment. She would never find the child, because her vision was too obscured by smoke and tears. In her last few paces, she would start to cough because her lungs required fresh oxygen and could find none because of the billowing smoke.

  The ship swooped in for a final pass firing a blast of energy from its guns. In that last second, when it dawned on her that she would not escape, that she would not see her son ever again, she let out an anguished cry of desperation.

  “RUN AWAY JUSTIN! RUN AWAY!”

  The child saw her coming, just as he'd seen his father running towards him a short time before. He saw hope disappear with a blast of plasma and screamed when he saw her body hit the ground. The force of the bolt had flipped her onto her back and he heard the sickening squelch of bone snapping as she hit the ground.

  “Mummy! Mummy!” He began to wail… “Mummy!”

  .

  XXVII

  Home

  When he opened his eyes, he found himself on his hands and knees.

  It was odd, because he did not remember falling. What he did remember was a vision of pain he wished he'd never unlocked. In the cold light of consciousness, Garryn felt tears running down his face. At last, he remembered. He knew who he was.

  Staring at the grass beneath him, the raging fire in his head diminished and Garryn began to sob quietly. The truth had always been inside him. His mind kept the memories, despite his years away. In his dreams, he was capable of accessing them, even though he understood little of what he had seen. All it required for those memories to surface was one simple act.

  Coming home.

  In doing so, he now remembered both of them. His mother and his father. He remembered sitting in the sun, watching his mother feed the animals, her golden hair bouncing off her shoulders. The memories he had were few, but some, like this one, were vivid. He'd had a dog whose name he could never get right, so he'd ended up calling it Einy. Its fur was brown and black in patches and she was his constant companion. When it came time to remember his father, his sobs became more anguished.

  He remembered a big desk. He remembered sitting on it while his father worked on papers. The globe sat on the edge of the table and he kept spinning it around. He liked watching the colours blur as it moved like a spinning top. His father looked up and smiled at him before placing a hand on the globe to stop it moving.

  “This is where we are,” his father explained, pointing to the continent on the globe.

  Garryn blinked the memory away. He did not want to look in the face of all that pain. At this moment, it was enough for him that he remembered. He would deal with his grief when he was alone.

  Hannah stood behind him and Garryn saw things clearly there as well. She cared for him. He did not know why, but she cared for him, this stranger who had just entered her life a few hours ago. That, too, would have to be dealt with later. He rose to his feet. Despite his anguish, he knew what to do.

  “Gar,” Flinn spoke first. “Are you okay?”

  Garryn wiped the tears from his face and nodded slowly. “I'll live.”

  He turned away from them and looked into the horizon of the setting sun.

  “This was my home. Somewhere out there,” he gestured to the swaying stalks of long grass, “are my parents.” He swallowed thickly, not realising how hard those words were to say. “They died out here. They were attacked by Brysdynian fighters. One landed to get me and the other killed them both from the air.”

  “Lords,” Flinn whispered, but Aaran and his family said nothing. They knew this story already.

  “We're leaving,” Garryn said abruptly. “I've got what I came for. Its time to go. Aaran, you and your family are welcome to join us.”

  He heard the man's hesitation and paused. Garryn turned around to see Aaran conferring with his wife. Hannah was also included in the conversation and for a few minutes they engaged in native speak. Garryn allowed them the time to decide, knowing this was not as obvious a decision as it seemed. Harsh as this world was to Aaran, it had been his home for the past twenty-three years. For what Garryn was about to embark upon when he returned to Brysdyn, he would need the former science officer.

  “I always thought, given the choice, I would leave immediately,” Aaran replied. “Now the moment comes, I don't know what to do.”

  “Aaran,” Garryn said with a sigh. “I need you to come back to Paralyte with me. I need you to provide testimony to the Imperator.”

  “I don't know…” Aaran started to say.

  “Aaran, I am the Prime.”

  Aaran's eyes widened in shock. “You are Iran's son?”

  “My mother, the Lady Aisha, contracted the Scourge. She could not have children either. I was adopted when I was three years old and have been, for the past twenty-three years, the heir apparent to the throne of Brysdyn. Since I saw that yellow star in the sky, I have dreamt of nothing but this place.” He let his gaze sweep across the plain before looking at Aaran again. “I require your presence on Brysdyn, Aaran, but this is not a command. I'm asking you.”

  Aaran took a deep breath in realisation of what Garryn was attempting to do. “Edwen is still alive, isn't he?”

  Garryn did not have to answer. The look he returned Aaran was more than enough.

  “You're going after him.”

  Garryn nodded slowly. “I have no idea what I am going to do, yet, but what happened to this world has to be answered for.”

  He thought of all the other Dreamers whose nightmares were likely interpretations of what happened to them when they were taken. He remembered Nikela, the youngest of the Dreamers, who had visions of being born. How would she take it knowing that she was taken from her mother's body after it was slit open like a ripe fruit? How could any of the New Citizens bear to know what he did?

  Nightmares were one thing, but did he want them to suffer this terrible knowledge as well?

  Garryn had no answer to that, but Edwen needed to pay for what was done to the Earth.

  “I need your testimony, Aaran. I need you to stand before the Quorum and tell the Empire what you know. This world deserves justice and it needs help. I do not know much about Earth, but I do know that maybe Earth could have helped Brysdyn. There was no need for what he did. There was no need for people to die.”

  He saw the look of concern on Rachel's face and quickly added. “Once we do what we have to, I'll bring you home to Earth or any other place you wish to go.”

  Aaran turned to his wife and related Garryn's words. Her face lit up immediately and she addressed him with her limited vocabulary. “We will try to help you.”

  While there was hesitation in Rachel's face, Hannah's showed eagerness. Garryn supposed that, having grown up on this ravaged planet, the chance to leave it was an exciting prospect. For some reason, he wanted to show her Brysdyn.

  “I made some repairs to the ship after our run-in with the warship,” Flinn announced. “She'
s ready to leave when you are ready.”

  “I want to go soon,” Garryn answered, before his gaze shifted to the house beyond the gate. “There's just one thing I need to do first.”

  * * *

  Despite the fire to the surrounding fields, the house was unscathed.

  The garden and lawn within the enclosed fence around the house was now covered in overgrown weeds and grass. Garryn knew it was once just dirt. There were two main entrances to the house, but it was the back door that was wide open. The screen door swayed back and forth in the wind as Garryn brushed aside the cobwebs and stepped through.

  There was plenty of light inside the house, because the curtains were frayed and many of the windows were broken. He entered what appeared to be the kitchen. Dishes remained in the dry and rusted sink. There were still plates on the dining table, coated in traces of food, long since decayed. Flashes of memory came to him as he took in the room. He could visualise sitting at this table with the two people he now knew were his parents.

  It was not a terribly ostentatious house. There were no fine silks or expensive tapestries. There was no lavish lifestyle here, just the simplicity of a rural existence for people born to work the land. He heard noises in the ceiling and guessed it was likely the native wildlife taking up residence in the crawlspace above. The furnishings were eclectic and put together by people who wanted more than just a place to live. They had wanted to make a home.

  He paused at the mantle place and felt his boot crack something underfoot. Garryn looked down and saw a wooden frame surrounded by broken glass. Lifting his foot off the crushed fragments, he saw the corner of something peering over the edge of the frame. Garryn bent down to investigate. As he turned over the frame, his breath caught. Garryn found himself staring at a squarish piece of paper. It was a picture.

  A couple was seated on a large divan, but not the same one he saw in the house. He briefly wondered where it had been taken. They were smiling happily and displaying, with great pride, their son, who was seated on his father's lap. The child was looking up at both parents, wearing a delighted expression on his face.