Amnay

by Rayann Marse

  Coming down from her high, she remembered that she wasn't on Earth. It had been a reflexive thing, a natural assumption that she must be on Earth because where else would she be?

  But it wasn't true. This was an alien world, in a completely different star system. She let herself marvel at that; she was the first human to breathe alien air. She was the first human to do a lot of things. All credit for it could go to Amnay, but it didn't change the fact that she was a pioneer.

  Emboldened by this realization, she sat up and had a better look around.

  The first thing she noticed was that the stuff she was lying in wasn't grass. For one thing, each wide stalk of the stuff had two beady little eyes at the end. And what she had thought was the sigh of wind was actually the quiet hissing of a thousand tiny creatures.

  Kozue screamed, getting to her feet and springing forward, back into the mouth of the escape pod.

  All the tiny creatures she had lain upon seemed crushed and lifeless at first. But then they reinflated, coming erect, back to life. She checked herself for stings, for injuries, but found nothing.

  As she studied the strange little creatures, she made some quick assumptions about them.

  First, she decided they must belong to a single organism, some giant thing underground. Perhaps it was like a fungus, a great colony that spread over many acres.

  As far as appearance, the stalks resembled tiny, green garter snakes. Except that they had no tails, or none visible. Each stalk went into the ground; they could not move about, they could only wave in the breeze and keep watch for... something.

  For something. If this thing had eyes, it must also have a natural predator. If it was consciously alive, its predator was technically a carnivore. And that might be bad news for Kozue.

  She retreated into the pod, closing the door to give herself a safe space to think.

  Amnay had told her to wait for him. But only if the area where she landed was safe. How the hell was she supposed to know what was safe?

  Trial and error. That was the way. If she saw any big beasts with sharp teeth and they started running at her, she would know that she had not landed somewhere safe.

  This was a planet which had been colonized by the Menin. But, according to Amnay, it had been their most recent colonization. She doubted there were much more than a hundred of them here. And it was a large planet. Their presence was no assurance of safety.

  There was nothing to do, then, but to recon the area surrounding the pod.

  She opened the door and peeked out. The snake-stalks had gone back to what must be their passive state, staring dumbly forward like fish bait. The pod sat right at the edge of their domain. Using some narrow ridges along the outer shell of the pod, Kozue climbed around its circumference and stepped down on the far side.

  Here, the ground was just ground. Simple plant life dotted the dirt, alive but silent.

  Ahead of her stood the wall of a forest. It was astonishingly thick, a tangle that would block all light and sound. She couldn't see further than a foot into it. She doubted any really dangerous creatures dwelt in there, other than perhaps a poisonous insect or a thorny bramble. But she would never be able to penetrate it, even as small as she was.

  She turned right. There were more trees, here. But they were structured more like saguaro cactuses, their hides leathery, covered in huge blooms of orange and green flowers.

  A smell drifted from that direction, like rotting meat. Like something fermented. She hoped it was just the flowers, themselves. At any rate, she didn't want to go over there to find out.

  She turned left. The wind picked up; a distant smell touched her nose. The smell of smoke, acrid and foul. Kozue scrunched up her nose.

  Does this whole planet stink? she thought.

  But the smoke was a blessing. It smelled like a sappy kind of wood that shouldn't be burned, rather than something artificial. As such, it wasn't Amnay's pod burning. It was a campfire, perhaps one hastily put together by a worried Menin who wished to make it easy for his human concubine to find him.

  "Amnay," she called into the alien forest. Her voice fell dead and flat; no echo came. The trees huddled close, the smell of a corpse filled her nose, and the wind suddenly died as though the entire world was getting ready for something horrible to happen.

  Kozue lost her cool. She started to run as though something were right at her heels. And maybe there was something there. She never looked back to find out.

  ***

  When you're going through hell, keep going.

  Hell isn't fire and brimstone and red, pointy-headed guys stabbing you with giant forks. Hell is the familiar — twisted and distorted until it is surreal. Hell is reality viewed through a permanent, nightmarish lens. Hell is being lost with your own thoughts, with nothing familiar around you, with no one to speak to. Hell is being alone, so far from home you might as well not even be in the same universe.

  That was where Kozue found herself.

  She felt like slapping herself in the face. Amnay had told her to stay, that he would find her. And what did she do? Run off toward the smell of smoke. And now the smell was gone. She had no idea which direction it had originally come from. She had no idea how to get back to her pod.

  She screamed his name until nothing came out of her but ragged squeaks. He was her hero. He was Amnay. If he heard her, if he was anywhere close, he would be here already. He hadn't failed her; she had failed him, in her stupidity and impatience.

  To think she had been afraid of being concubine to another of the Menin. She almost welcomed the thought now, if only because she wouldn't be so alone.

  It could be worse, she told herself. She could be on a planet without breathable air. Or she could have landed in the ocean. Or she could have fallen to the bottom of a ravine or a crevasse, somewhere very cold. She could have landed in an active volcano.

  Throughout her career, as she lived and worked in some of the most inhospitable places on Earth, she had learned the importance of companionship. She had learned that the human mind could adapt to anything, if there was simply someone else there to share the experience with.

  Here, she didn't even have that. She was doomed.

  But at least she wouldn't be here forever. Thirst or hunger would get her, if some beast didn't eat her alive first.

  She had used all her energy long ago. Now she wandered like a zombie, arms hanging limp, mouth slack. She must look, she thought, like an exhausted student trying to find her next class. How she would have loved to go back to those days, when keeping up her GPA was her biggest challenge.

  But that would mean giving up Amnay. If there was even a shred of hope that she would be reunited with him, she would gladly stay here and face the loneliness.

  In a sudden burst of energy, she sprinted forward and broke out of the forest. Sunlight fell over her like warm honey. The humidity that settled over the clearing was like a wall, a heavy blanket that she had to push through. Her feet sank into loose, dark soil as she climbed the shoulder of a spine-like hill that extended miles in either direction.

  Twice she stumbled and nearly fell. But she felt like a kid; all she wanted was to reach the summit. For some reason, she thought everything would be fine if she could just get there. Maybe she was already losing her mind. All the mental fortitude she thought she possessed meant very little, now. It meant nothing at all, for this little creature so far from home.

  She reached up, her hand shredded by the sharp rocks that jutted out of the hill. She slung her arm over the zenith. It was like the hip of a giant. Her body rolled over it and plopped down into a flat area on the other side.

  A village stood below her.

  Could it be? Had she found the Menin colony?

  No, it couldn't be. The houses were tiny. They seemed built for people the size of children. Or for giant termites; the houses were fashioned from dried mud.

  As she watched from her bed of cool, moist dirt, a stream of tiny, dark figures erupted from one of the houses
. They fanned out in perfect sync, as though controlled by a single mind. They broke like a forked river. Half of their numbers went one way along the hill, and the rest of them went the other way. They began to climb gradually, following a diagonal path upward. For every twenty feet of horizontal distance they covered, they climbed the hill by five. They were like mountain goats, perfectly balanced and perched, unerring in their placement of foot and hand.

  They were searching.

  Kozue's blood ran cold as she thought back to all the noise she had been making. That had been very careless, a dumb act born of dread and terror.

  Amnay couldn't save her now. She was on her own.

  She turned onto her belly and pressed herself into the earth, trying to hide below the rim of the divot she had fallen into.

  The village was positioned straight ahead of her. The two branches of the search party had fanned out to either side of it, leaving her in the middle. In the only spot of the hill that didn't seem to be under active scrutiny.

  She had gotten lucky. But it would be stupid to assume they wouldn't come back to cover this little bit of ground.

  Once they had gone, Kozue hauled herself over the lip of her hiding place and quickly crawled down the side of the hill. This was a rare time when she was thankful for her small size; the short scrub grass that bristled on the hillside was enough to hide her.

  She reached flat ground and pulled herself along on her fingertips, using her knees to help propel her body. Once she reached the first of the mud huts, she pressed herself against the cool outer wall and circled it until the shadow of the looming forest hid her.

  All was silent. The search parties had retreated into the distance; they were nothing but dark motes, bouncing along the edge of the hill. She couldn't tell whether they were moving further away or coming back. Either way, she had room to breathe.

  As she stood there, breathing hard and wondering what to do next, the sky was filled with noise.

  She looked up. A streak of fire and smoke lanced across the blue expanse of the sky, tumbling and screaming as it broke apart. It was Amnay's ship. It had taken this long for its orbit to decay completely. And now it was falling like a meteor to the ground.

  Forgetting her fear, Kozue ran out into open sunlight, shielding her eyes to watch the ship. It would land perhaps two or three miles beyond the village, deep in the brooding, green forest that proliferated in this corner of the world.

  Surely, Amnay would see the ship as well and hear the thunder it caused as it plummeted. He would go there eventually to see what he could salvage. Or to see if she had gone there, too.

  It was the best chance she had for reuniting with him.

  She looked left and right. A dense wall of forest stood before her. It might take her days to reach the ship through that tangle of trees and vines, if she didn't become lost. Which could easily happen. She had no compass, and a compass might not even work on this world.

  But there was a better way. She was standing on the central road of the mud hut village. The road continued, stabbing through the forest ahead of her. It faded into the distance, straight as an arrow. As long as she moved fast, she ought to be able to make it to the ship untouched. Those aliens, those little people or whatever they were, had shorter legs than her.

  She was thirsty, hungry, tired, full of aches and pains and bruises. But she had to forget all that. If she found Amnay, he would take care of her.

  She ran forward, kicking dust off the alien trail.

  Behind her, like the roar of crashing waves, she heard the search party reconverging. They had been moving back toward the village. And if they were close enough for her to hear them already, they had to be moving fast.

  And now Kozue heard the trampling of a thousand tiny feet and the squeals and squeaks of a thousand tiny voices. It was an evil sound, a sound full of menace and hatred and terrible purpose. It was then that Kozue realized she was hopeless. As hopeless as a bat who has been caught in a garage and is being chased by people armed with brooms. She was out of her element, with no idea of how to get away.

  It was her first instinct to keep them from laying eyes on her. Although they probably already had.

  She ducked behind one of the mud huts, flattening herself in a pool of shadow.

  Amnay's ship finally struck ground, exploding like a bomb. Kozue saw the flash, briefly dissolving the shadow she was hiding in. Then came the wind, the shockwave blasting her with loose dirt and shredded grass.

  It was no wonder the creatures were so riled up. They probably thought they were under attack. Perhaps they had already had run-ins with the Menin in the past. Perhaps they had a good reason to be defensive.

  The shadow fell over Kozue again, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  But the shadow was deeper and darker than before. And it was full of movement.

  She had no time to scream before two dozen tiny creatures were on top of her.

  First, they got her onto her stomach and pinned her arms. She kicked her legs toward her body, crushing one of them against her hamstrings. But another sank its teeth into her shoulder, making her cry out in pain and release her hold. The one she had crushed slinked away, whining to itself, more insulted than injured.

  Once they had her immobilized, they used plant fiber ropes to bind her wrists and ankles. Three of them held her head down hard, forcing her to breathe dust. She kept coughing and sniffling, dripping snot into the dirt, but they never once gave her an inch to move.

  One of them started poking her in the back with something sharp. She went taut, grunting and straining against her bindings. Another of the creatures admonished the one that was poking her, slapping its hand away.

  Apparently, they wanted her alive and somewhat healthy. Maybe they just wanted to make sure she wouldn't hurt them. It was too bad she didn't have one of those Menin translators with her, or else she could tell them that her only goal was to get home.

  But what was home? She wasn't going back to Earth. There was no way to get there, now.

  Home was Amnay's arms. That was where she belonged and where she wanted to be. From now until the end of time. And even that wouldn't be long enough.

  She started to cry, croaking his name with her dry throat and cracked lips.

  By now, she had lost several pounds of water weight. It took only five of the child-sized creatures to lift her, carrying her above them like a crowd-surfing rock star.

  Kozue fought, but her fighting amounted to nothing. She was bound so tightly that she could build no momentum. None of her muscles could gather enough strength to burst free of their bonds.

  A secondary explosion burst in the distance, bringing another gust of hot, oily, unnatural wind. The wall of bodies that carried Kozue acted like a sail, catching the breeze. Like a bunch of dominoes, they collapsed and knocked their neighbors over.

  Kozue hit the ground hard, rolling twice, her wrists crushed painfully against her spine. She winced and yelped in agony. Reflexively, she tried to reach up to protect her head and found that something, perhaps a sharp rock on the ground, had weakened the green sapling fibers that bound her wrists. The rope snapped, freeing her hands.

  She turned onto her belly and pushed herself up. All around her, confusion and chaos reigned. With their mud huts and prehistoric garb, Kozue doubted these creatures had experience with explosions.

  Some of the creatures were running for cover. Others turned in tight circles, staring upward and swinging at an invisible enemy with short spears and clubs.

  There was a brief moment to enact an escape. Kozue seized it, tugging the rope off of her ankles, launching from the dirt like a sprinter. She jumped over several of the creatures, who had taken to the ground in fear or confusion.

  A pair of hands grabbed at her left ankle. They gripped hard, bringing her up short. She stopped dead in the air and plummeted to the ground again. Sharp rocks cut her hands. All her breath left her in a single rush, leaving her gasping and choking.

 
It had been a valiant effort. But they had her. In less than a minute, she was bound again. This time, they tied her even tighter. One of them hit her hard in the face, a punishment for her vain attempt at escape. The blow was enough to send her crashing out of reality. Her head spun, and all she saw was the sky. And the faint, billowing tail of Amnay's dead ship spreading through it.

  Chapter Nine

  She was in a cage. It was made of green wood, flexible but strong, quadruple lashed at every criss and cross. The lashing had also been sealed with something yellow, something hard as diamond that didn't chip or crack, no matter how she dug at it.

  There seemed to be no door to the cage. They must have built the last wall up after putting her inside.

  The floor had been covered in layers of huge leaves. She recognized them as being from a species of tree quite common to the area. They smelled nice, like sage and rosemary, but they leaked a thick yellow sap that clung to her skin like superglue. The sap was probably what the joints had been sealed with. At least partially. She hoped that the sealant was a compound that included other ingredients and wasn't just straight-up sap. If it was the latter, she might never get it off her skin.

  But she had other problems.

  Eight feet away, outside the cage, a group of the child-sized creatures had gathered around a huge fire. A spit had been fashioned, the wood covered with more yellow sealant to keep it from burning. The size of the spit was what worried Kozue. Her height was five foot even. Sixty inches. If she took a tape measure to the spit, she wouldn't be surprised if it matched her height exactly.

  While she had no doubt she would taste very good, being eaten did not feature in her plans.

  For a moment, she was full of purpose and confidence. The idea that she would fail, that her life would be forfeit, that the sum of her experiences and existence would amount to nothing more than a meal for a bunch of savages, didn't register as remotely possible. It just couldn't be. Like a character in a movie, she felt her fate was written and that an escape from this cage and a reunion with Amnay was imminent.