We Are Not Prey

by Taki Drake

  Ruth noticed a bit of commotion from just inside the doorway to the hall. Both Pawlik and Cal were headed purposely toward her, so she moved the children off of her and stood up.

  I must have stood up too quickly, she thought to herself as her head ached suddenly and swimmingly. Her vision wouldn’t seem to focus, and the men’s faces zoomed closer and retreated into a fog repeatedly. Trying to maintain her balance by sheer force of will, Ruth looked up in the general direction of her son and friend, before abruptly collapsing. As she fell, she heard Cal cry out in fear and Pawlik respond in a commanding tone, but the swirling lights and ringing tones in her ears prevented her from seeing or hearing anything clearly.

  Her body hurt. The ache in her head was echoed in her spine, gut, and limbs. She could feel herself shaking and jerking, but had no hope of controlling any of the random movements that were wracking her body.

  She could hear the cries of the children and tried desperately to tell them not to touch her. Somehow she knew that there was danger in that touch and wanted to keep them from harm. It felt to her as if there were wildly bouncing balls of lightning slamming into her body, igniting pain receptors in her arms, and skull, then ripping into some other body part. Her skin felt on fire, concentrating a wall of pain and a ripping sensation onto every external surface. Was this death? Was it not just her mind that was broken? She couldn’t think past the pain.

  Mary came charging across the room, scattering people as she made a beeline for Ruth and the children. She managed to grab Techla and pull her away from Ruth’s convulsing body but was unable to also grasp Troyer. He had awakened from a deep, relaxed sleep to total and complete panic. His beloved grandmother looked like she was dying and the only thing on his mind was to help her.

  Troyer grabbed his grandmother’s arm, his small hands clutching desperately at her sleeve. For an instant, he managed to slow the flailing of her arm, but a blast of some force clad in a brilliant green light slammed him away from her and to the floor. Cal dove toward his son and clutched him protectively. The child was reacting as if he had been electrocuted, shivering and shaking, but was still breathing. Holding the boy carefully, Cal looked up and saw Pawlik reach Ruth and dropped to his knees beside her.

  Pawlik shrugged off the clutching arm of one of his men to grab Ruth’s body and pull it against his chest. A whirlwind of spinning multicolored lights rose around Ruth and Pawlik. Glowing mixed colors of blue, green, red, and blinding yellow spiraled in streamers above them and around them. The two figures were in the center of a column that rose more than 20 feet upwards and expanded slowly to a 10-foot diameter.

  All other motion in the room seemed to stop, as everyone stared at Ruth and Pawlik. The stunned silence in the room was broken only by the heartbroken lament of one of Pawlik’s sergeants. He was the one who had tried to stop Pawlik from grabbing Ruth. The other of Pawlik’s men had an arm over the grieving man’s back in an attempt at comfort. Cal couldn’t hear clearly what the first man, Gray, was saying, although he could make out a word that sounded like “hair.” That didn’t make any sense to Cal since it seemed so out of context.

  A series of deep tones and subtle vibrations begin to build within the room. As the sounds got more musical and louder, the swirling lights began to subside. Pawlik’s figure became more visible although Cal was having some difficulty seeing his mother. She appeared almost fuzzy to his eyes, which made him repeatedly rub his eyes in a vain attempt to see what was happening more clearly.

  Finally, the sound transformed from a cacophony to a small repeated musical motif. The strength of the sound rattled against the hard surfaces of the room and rebounded to assault ears everywhere. There was a moment of an almost unbearable sound and intensity before all noise abruptly ceased, just as the swirling lights disappeared.

  No one moved for a moment, as the entire room stared at the tableau. Pawlik was frozen in a kneeling posture with Ruth’s body held to his chest. His face was contorted in a grimace of pain, but his hold on Ruth was gentle. Flickers of light continued to crawl across his skin in small tendrils. His appearance was startling but paled in impact beside that of the body he was holding. Ruth’s face was calm and unlined, seemingly serene and untroubled. Her arms are crossed over her chest, and her legs were extended, toes pointed. Wrapping her lower body in multicolored leaf shapes were shiny, veined petals of a reflective material.

  The shapes appeared to be slowly building a covering around Ruth that reached from her toes to her mid-thighs. Even as the onlookers stared, the shrouding encased another handwidth of her body. Cal started up with a cry and lunged for his mother’s form, only to have his motion arrested by Gray. The man had ceased his muttering and was looking resigned but in control. He gave Cal’s arm a small shake and said, “You can’t help her now boy. Let Pawlik take care of her. He’s the only one that can touch her.”

  Cal stared uncomprehendingly at Gray and asked, “What do you mean? I have to do something to help her.”

  “They have bonded, and Pawlik is now her Anchor. All Mages are said to need someone that connects them to a planetary residence. When she broke her mind, her harmony with the place of her birth was forever destroyed. She will never again be able to live inside or on a planet without an Anchor.”

  Cal drew a shaking breath and straightened up. He looked over at Ruth and saw that Pawlik had stood up, still cradling Ruth’s body. In total silence, Pawlik carefully strode across the floor and through the doorway, taking his burden to the privacy of a different place.

  Troyer and Techla began to sob.

  It had been three weeks and two days since Pawlik had carried Ruth’s body into the sleeping chamber of the former captain’s suite. He had emerged shortly after getting the space arranged to his satisfaction, saying only that Ruth was going through a transformation that would complete her emergence as a Mage.

  Cal had insisted on going into the room to check on his mother. He came out of the room with a pale face and shaking hands, and stated that Troyer and Techla would not be allowed in the room until their grandmother emerged. Pawlik had also given orders that no one else was to enter the space. To ensure this, there was a guard at the door from the hallway at all times.

  The surviving former slaves had been extremely busy during this time. Personnel skills were inventoried, and an organizational structure had been built. People with skills in communications and engineering had been busy adapting the controls on the spaceship to ones that fit the new crew more efficiently. Everyone it seemed collapsed at their end of their shift, resting deeply and having very little energy for other pursuits.

  Pawlik had built a command and control group that included many of the people that had survived from his original crew. He supplemented this group with those that passed Cal’s rigorous interview process and had significant and necessary skills in military or merchant shipping and operations.

  The crew was stretched very thin. The Insectoids had operated the ship with at least five times more actual crew, excluding the slavers. So many of the members of the new crew were covering multiple areas of responsibility. Controls and procedures were being created when a requirement was recognized and amended as needed. Cal’s team of support personnel which included cooks, clerks, medical, etc., were also straining to keep up with the creation of documentation, policy, and the myriad tasks necessary for a living environment and necessary bureaucracy.

  Most of the surviving former slaves had been swept into either Pawlik’s or Cal’s organizations, but there were some that either temperamentally or functionally did not fit in either group. Mary was a silent head of the group of nurturing parents that continued to care for and tend the immature entities. These children ranged from Troyer and Techla to infants. The children were managed in a group so that there was a minimal requirement for childcare personnel.

  Troyer and Techla stepped into the breach, acting as big brother and sister to many of the smaller children. The number of children was heartbreakingly sma
ll. So each one was precious, and their welfare was the primary driver for Mary’s group. Mary also oversaw those people that were either physically or mentally nonfunctional. After urgent injuries had been tended by the medical personnel under Cal, Mary’s group took over the longer term therapy and hospice care.

  There were a few beings that did not fit into any of the other groups. While this group did not have a significant number of people, they were very vocal and represented an increasing difficulty for the rest of the new crew. Bartha and his two men were in this group, as were another seven beings of like mind. Cal had been forced to make an edict about not feeding those who were physically and mentally able but didn’t work. Chief among the reasons for the rule were Bartha and his adherents, who had been idle and verbally critical, jeering at the people who are working and interfering with tasks. Bartha’s response had been to insist that he was mentally traumatized and could not be forced to work. While Cal did not believe the claim, he was at a loss on how to handle Bartha and ways to minimize his obstructionist behavior.

  The strain of dealing with Bartha and his group was beginning to tell on Cal. His frustration level was very high, and he had run out of strategies and options. So he decided to discuss it with Pawlik and see if there was some stratagem he had not tried that might help.

  Pawlik had been pretty difficult to corner. He was spending most of his off-duty time in the room with Ruth. Cal knew that Pawlik was sitting by her side and talking to her for hours since he had been checking on his mother several times a day. With only Cal and Pawlik entering the room, Ruth’s transformation was mostly unknown. Pawlik had only said that her change was getting closer to its finish. Cal had no idea what to look for and was forced to trust Pawlik.

  The petals completely covered Ruth’s body, overlapping in intricate patterns of texture and color. Cal could still see minor rhythmic movements in the area of her chest, so he comforted himself with the idea that his mother was still breathing. He had panicked a bit when the petals had turned from a flexible, almost leather-like material overnight to crystalline edged plates, but Pawlik did not appear to be concerned. The quiet man told Cal that according to family stories, this process was perfectly normal and that he thought Ruth would emerge sometime in the next week.

  So they all waited. Some patiently, others impatiently. And for some, patience had drawn thin.

  Chapter 6 – Wisdom of the Heart

  Troyer murmured to Techla, “Just act as if we’re supposed to be there and remember our plan.” The little girl gulped nervously and then clutched her bundle of papers closer to her chest. The two children came around the corner of the corridor and stopped to greet the guard on the outside of the captain’s suite. Troyer looked up into the guard’s face and smiled winningly, “Decker, my father wanted me to drop these papers off, so may I please put them on the desk?”

  The guard, a bipedal warrior from an ice planet close to Pawlik’s own world, had a fearsome appearance but a weakness for small children. Shaking his head slightly at Troyers undeniable charm, he gave permission.

  “Make sure that you don’t touch anything else in there, boy child. Your little sister can stay out here with me while you do what you need to do in there.”

  “Thank you, Decker. It should not take me very long since I just have to put all the papers on the desk and organize them into the right piles. I don’t need Techla for that, and I know she would like to hear some more stories about snow.” Techla smiled shyly at the guard as she handed Troyer her papers and squatted down by the man’s feet, gazing up at him with her full attention.

  Decker was far less able to resist a little girl’s focused eyes than he was Troyer’s more obvious attempt to charm. As Troyer entered the room with a large armful papers, Decker began to tell stories of skiing and snowball fights from his childhood. Both he and Techla were quickly absorbed in the storytelling, one as the storyteller, the other as the audience.

  Troyer carried the papers in and placed them on the desk. He started to split the piles out, watching from the corner of his eye as Decker got more involved in his storytelling. When the boy noticed that the guard was not continuing to glance over his shoulder to check on Troyer’s progress, Troyer slowly and carefully move toward the bedroom door. He was determined to see his grandmother. A six-year-old human child can be extraordinarily stubborn and very willful. However, the combination of affection for his grandmother and concern about her welfare had transformed Troyer stubbornness into determination. In this, he was both his father’s son and his grandmother’s descendent.

  The bedroom door slid open automatically and closed quietly as Troyer stepped into the room. There was a dim glow by the bed that allowed him to see clearly as he got closer. His first thought was how beautiful was the shroud concealing his grandmother. The dim light reflected on the millions of crystal edges that formed around the petals and the ever-changing color of the crystalline plates provided an intriguing display.

  Ruth’s form was totally obscured. The overall shape of her body was dimly visible, but details of her face and body surface and even clothing had been concealed by the thickness and opacity of the shroud. It reminded Troyer of a butterfly chrysalis that his mother had shown him when he was smaller. Somehow the wrapped form looked more like the butterfly to him than it did a mummy so he was reassured in that his grandmother was still alive.

  He knew his grandmother was in there, he could somehow feel her. Feeling desperate, the need to touch her and be touched by her made him reach out both hands and lay them on one crystalline plate.

  As soon as his hands touched the plate, a visual storm of small light tendrils arose. They streamed from all areas of the plate and covered Troyer’s body. His eyes grew large, and a yelp of astonishment emerged from his mouth.

  The door to the bedroom slid open, and Pawlik walked in, stopping in mid-stride for a brief moment in surprise at the vision of Troyer next to his grandmother. Moving quickly, Pawlik grabbed Troyer and broke his connection to the surface of the shroud. Troyer cried in denial struggling to get back to his grandmother. Pawlik turned and rushed out of the room carrying the child with him.

  Cal waited in the outside room with Techla huddled in the corner of the couch. Cal looked furious. Before Pawlik could say or do anything else, Cal had yanked his son from the other man’s arms and was shaking him. “I told you that you are forbidden to go in there! Why did you disobey me? You could have been hurt, or you could’ve hurt your grandmother!”

  In the next breath, the boy was crushed in an immense hug by his terrified father. Cal looked up at Pawlik and asked, “Is everything okay in there?”

  “I think everything is fine, although Troyer was lit up by small lights and I have no idea what that meant or what the effect will be.”

  Cal held his son up in the air and stared him in the face, “What did you do? Are you all right?”

  “Grandma is scared, and she is lonely. She needs somebody and you guys are too busy.”

  “Troyer, you are just putting your feelings onto your grandma and assuming that she is feeling and thinking like you are. I know you’re frightened for your grandma…”

  The boy interrupted him, determinedly repeating, “She is scared, I can feel it. She needs to be hugged, you know that hugging will make her feel better!”

  “We don’t know if you will be hurt by touching her, Troyer. So that is part of the reason that I told you not to go into the room. Think about how your grandma would feel if somehow touching her hurt you. You will just need to wait like the rest of us.”

  “And he has to hug grandma!” Troyer responded heatedly as he pointed at Pawlik. “He can touch her, but he’s not. If it’s dangerous for me and he can touch her, and he’s the one who has to cuddle her.” The boy’s eyes welled up with tears, and he began to sob. Techla joined her tears to his, as the two men stared helplessly at each other.

  The children were inconsolable. Cal, Pawlik, and even Decker attempted to calm them, but they
continued to sob hysterically. Finally, Pawlik knelt down in front of Troyer, picked up his hand and placed it on his own chest where his heartbeat could be felt. “I do not know if what you’re saying is true, Troyer. But I am willing to try. I promise you that I will hold your grandmother when I am able and to try to make her feel less scared and lonely.”

  The crying child leaned forward onto Pawlik’s chest and whispered into the man’s ears, “Think love and happy thoughts at her, please. Grandma being sad and frightened hurts my heart.” Slowly, the children stopped sobbing.

  Pawlik stood up, nodded at Decker and Cal before turning and walking into the bedroom. The privacy light lit as the door closed.

  Pawlik looked at the chair that sat by the head of the bed where Ruth was lying. That was the place that he had spent so many hours over the last few weeks hoping that his presence would somehow comfort Ruth. The chair drew him, but his promise to Troyer firmed his resolve. Instead of sitting beside the bed, he walked until he was standing next to it. Reaching out a tentative hand, he laid his palm flat on the crystalline shroud for the first time since he had placed Ruth in the bed.

  Tendrils of light started to swirl up his arm covering his hand and reaching toward his body. He did not flinch, but instead hardened his resolve to endure whatever would follow. The tendrils were different than what he had seen on Troyer, with these being more colorful, thicker, and somehow more intense. They felt like feather kisses running up his skin. There was no pain, just a sense of exploration and wonder.

  As the light continued to grow and penetrate his skin, Pawlik began to relax. There didn’t appear to be a wave of pain that was going to be attacking him with the light, although part of him still worried that it could be around the next corner of time. Even that doubt began to subside as the light did nothing more than fill him with feelings of joy and calm. As he relaxed into the feelings, he began to perceive an underlying layer of fear and someone else’s pain. It was Ruth - her fear and her pain, and loneliness. Troyer had been correct.