Allie's War Season One

by JC Andrijeski

  Who are they all? I ask. They can’t all be the Bridge?

  No, she agrees. This mural is meant to be a depiction of the intermediary beings. The ones we know of. She smiles again. They are your family, Alyson. Your true family. The last of your kind to incarnate here.

  I glance over at her, once more startled by the brightness of her light.

  What does that mean, I send. ...My kind? What kind would that be?

  You know the myth, do you not? The Myth of Three?

  I nod. I am uncomfortable though...I don’t know it, not really. It would be more accurate to say I know of it. It is one of those things that separates me from the other seers. They were raised on the Myth and I was not, and no amount of having it summarized to me now would make it a part of my living and breathing reality the way it was for them.

  Tarsi smiles as if she understands. Or at least...as if she hears me.

  She begins to recite. From her mind, the Myth is poetry.

  More than that. The phrases fill with light, resonating with fine structures in her aleimi. Music unfolds from inside collapsed pockets of meaning, expanding like opening flowers, drawing intimate pictures.

  She sings:

  Love’s breath ignites in pools of gold, but it is not the first...

  ...Nor the last, nor even the beginning. A people swim the surface of Muuld, in a world marked garden for the chosen. We breach simple with flat tails and fingered toes, revel in the brightness of young light...

  Numbers swell, our limbs extend...exiting gentle waves. We conquer worlds alarmingly fast...cover creation with our works, both ugly and wondrous. As time brings new, as every cycle of birth and chaos has beginning...

  It cannot last. The first race consumes itself inside itself. It calls to Death, and Death listens. But Death could not be left in his loneliness, nor the first in our pain. Compassion brings tears, a wondrous Bridge to touch the sky. They watch, afraid...

  ...For with her, Death leaves bones to feed the new. Love softens death, brings hope between them. The others come, to weave the next, and...

  ...Those of us who stay must grow, or perish. We make magics beyond what any sees after...but the gods closed doors to those other worlds, and they are left with only one, and it is alone. And in that world, there is Second race born, from trees and under rocks. They grow to our likeness, yet believing they are alone. Their works cover that lone world, until they meet us and fear.

  Fires burn black a second time, a second life. Death listens as the Bridge spins down, illumines a path to the sky. Love song beckons, leaves them alone...and the gold ocean covers all wounds.

  Second race follows the path of the first, and those left behind, fated to watch the fires burn yet again. For time speeds up, and all histories fold inside themselves.

  As for the first, the youngest and most foolish, most magicked and most childlike, the gods call us from the stone. And a great wail rose when the gods spoke, for the door to that other place must need be lost, and those on the other side forgotten...

  For when Third Race comes, they bring with them the stars. We leave them, our Guardians of the Middle. And the Bridge spins her light...

  ...Until we come to live here no more.

  12

  ELAERIAN

  SILENCE FALLS INSIDE the Barrier as her words end.

  In that construct cave, I realize I have never heard the Myth before, not like this, and I can only stand there for a few seconds as lines continue to reverberate through my aleimi like shivers of live current. The words themselves hold a kind of light that doesn’t look like light to me; I feel it as presence laced with emotion and images. I let them wash over me, waiting for some kind of...I don’t know.

  Understanding, maybe.

  Something that makes me feel like I know something I hadn’t before.

  It’s not there...not in a way that makes sense to my mind.

  Tarsi breaks the solemnity and chuckles.

  You see? she says. Female. In the old myths, the Bridge is always ‘she,’ never ‘he.’

  But I’m going over specific words now, in my head.

  The myth, I say. It kind of implies that I’m not, I mean, that I’m not actually—

  You are not Sark, she agrees.

  Her words are matter of fact, as if she were relaying a fact of little consequence.

  ...Not second race. You are first race. All intermediary beings are first race. We call them Elaerian. Second race is Sarhacienne, “Second”...Sark. The third calls itself human. The old names for them are immaterial now...

  I hear only part of this. I repeat her words back to her, like a myna bird...as if hearing them again might change her mind about what she’d said.

  I’m first race, I send. Like actually a different species? Biologically?

  At Tarsi’s raised light eyebrow, I see red and orange sparks course through the veins in my aleimi.

  I ask her again, Not only am I not human...I’m not even Sark?

  She smiles. You were aware you had differences from us. The light in your eyes...it is visible to humans. Your blood is not like ours. There are other things. You are telekinetic...that is not a Sark trait. You came to physical maturity much too fast to be Sark. You were able to adapt your early growth cycle to that of humans, to pass...Sarhaciennes cannot change their biology to accommodate their environment. Raised among humans, they continue to resemble very young human children until well past their twentieth year.

  She gauges my eyes.

  It strikes me that she has converted our appearances to match those of our physical bodies. It happened so seamlessly that I barely noticed.

  She adds, You likely have other differences we are not aware of. Much of our knowledge of your race has been lost...

  But I am stuck in a mental loop that I can’t seem to escape.

  Something Revik said to me once repeats in my head.

  ...It is illogical to have an opinion about what species one is.

  Of course, when he said it, I thought he was talking about his own species.

  But who gave birth to me? I ask.

  She shrugs with one hand, seer-fashion.

  Isn’t that kind of an important detail? I say.

  It is said that Elaerian reproduce differently than Sarks and humans...that they are able to manifest their offspring inside the physical embryos of other beings...from the Barrier. It is also said that some always live among us, but keep their presence unknown. Some say they are able to appear here just long enough to breed and then expire. It is possible your parents did any one of these things. It is equally possible you birthed yourself from the Barrier...or were born of a Sark, and the difference is in your aleimi.

  That makes absolutely no sense, I send, fighting anger.

  She shrugs again. I cannot tell you what I do not know.

  Wait, I say, holding up a hand. Revik said my blood is a ‘type’ among Sarhaciennes. He said it’s rare, but that it does occur...

  Her smile is patient.

  Is it so important, to be the same race as us? She quirks an innocent eyebrow. Or is it to him you are so determined to be alike to?

  Averting my gaze from those rock-still eyes, I force myself to pause, to think.

  Maybe, I concede. Or maybe it’s just a little much, thinking I knew what I was...twice...only to find out I was wrong both times. Is this how the elders came to think I was the Bridge? Those biology things?

  She makes another of the ‘more or less’ gestures.

  The markers in your aleimi are even more telling, she sends. If you were more accustomed to looking at people by their aleimi, rather than by physical appearance, you would realize there are some distinct differences in yours.

  So Revik knew?

  She gestures affirmative. Most certainly he knows. He conducted the final confirmation.

  Confirmation? Meaning what?

  Tests of your aleimi, she sends, waving dismissively with one hand. You would not have noticed these tests, not the
n...but it is partly why you were able to bond with him so easily. She smiled. In a sense, you already knew one another. Far more than you probably realize...

  I feel like I am back on the ship, discovering all over again what he’d done to me behind my back. Even now, he keeps me in the dark about how much he knows.

  I found out on the ship, after practically prying it out of him at gunpoint, that he’d invaded my privacy numerous times while protecting me for the Seven. He’d been through every room of my apartment in San Francisco, as well as my mom’s house, my brother’s, my friends’. He’d had weapons stashed at my place...and at mom’s. He’d created a hiding place in my ceiling for in case he ever had to get me out of there without using the door. He’d read my mind and the minds of just about everyone with whom I came in contact regularly.

  He went through my drawings, medical records, school records, police records, all of my online accounts. He had open access to anything I did on the net, any VR portals I visited...any porn I looked at or read. He’d conducted surveillance on my work and school, my bosses, my family...

  Why didn’t he tell me? I say finally.

  She sighs. You wish me to decipher the intricacies of my nephew’s mind?

  Feeling my anger rise, she clicks again, softer.

  ...There are many possible reasons, she says. To avoid frightening you. To avoid losing your trust so early in your relationship. Disclosures of this type tend to operate better in stages. That you are the only known living representative of your species...and that you did not realize because you can shape-shift to match your environment...is not comfortable information, either to give or to receive.

  Thinking further, she made a dismissive motion with one hand.

  ...And, yes, the telekinesis alarmed him a bit.

  At my silence, her amusement returns.

  ...He also did not expect to find himself married to you within a week of having awakened you. She chuckles, her humor sending ripples through the Barrier space.

  ...I imagine a lot more of his attention was consumed with determining how to relay that particular piece of information to you, Bridge Alyson.

  Still smiling, she studies my eyes.

  I feel a faint worry under her humor, though. Like Chandre, she’s concerned she’s harmed my view of Revik. This irritates me, too.

  Alyson, she sends, before I can say anything. ...We are simply aware that, given your current condition, you are likely to overreact to any information about your mate. In this case, it is completely unwarranted. He was under strict guidelines on approach and disclosure. He asked us, many times, for permission to approach you directly so that he might start training you. He was refused, repeatedly...mainly because we did not know how violent your awakening would be. Blinded, you were safe...relatively speaking.

  I pause on this.

  So why didn’t Vash tell me? I ask. Once I got here?

  I am telling you, she says.

  Fighting to keep my temper in check, I pull a childhood trick I used when I got angry at my mother.

  Holding up my hand, I stare at the reconstructed flesh.

  It works, in part. I am amazed at the detail...down to a cut I got that morning on the helicopter door, bruises on my knuckles from the fight with Maygar.

  I wonder if I added those details, of if she did.

  You did, she says. You see? It is one of your gifts...to become like those around you. You have only been partially successful at this in the human world.

  Again, I remember something Revik said to me.

  Like blood on a white sheet. They notice you, then make up a reason why...

  Thinking aloud, I say, Mom said I stared too much. Later it was that I flirted, or that I said the wrong things...but honestly, it didn’t seem to make any difference what I did or didn’t do.

  At Tarsi’s smile, I look up at the painting on the rock wall, focusing on the figures painstakingly drawn there. I count twenty-five, maybe thirty forms in the painting other than the two she’s already said were the Bridge.

  They’re all intermediary beings? I say. All Elaerian?

  She points at particular images.

  The first stands below the image of the sword bisecting the sun. He is a boy, holding the blue sun in his arms and laughing. His eyes are kind, startlingly innocent.

  Death, she says. You know him as ‘Sword’ or ‘Sword of the gods’...Syrimne d’ gaos.

  Her finger moves to another of the forms, a female figure in all red, woven into and standing behind the image of the sword and sun.

  War, she says. Also cataclysm. Her finger moves again, to a figure made of bones, but in the shape of a crow-like bird.

  Rook, she says. He is also called famine...the starver of souls. She glances at me. These are imperfect translations, of course...but your knowledge of old Prexci is insufficient at this time, so I am providing the English. It is only roughly equivalent—

  I know those names, I say, interrupting her.

  Looking around a little uneasily, I remember a conversation Revik and I had, what seemed a million years ago now, about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Bridge.

  He didn’t call them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, of course. That had been my sarcastic contribution to the conversation.

  I’d blown him off at the time, thinking he was nuts. But in the cave, I am pretty sure Tarsi just listed off three of their names, one after the other: Death, War, Famine. The fourth was their leader, who rode a white horse...that was the one no one could agree if it was supposed to be evil or some kind of force for good. I looked at the images of the Bridge.

  In both, the figure was dressed in all white.

  Great. That was perfect.

  When I look at Tarsi again, she is smiling, but her eyes are watching mine.

  It is not so simple as the humans portray it, she sends gently. Let us simply say for now that much was lost in the translation. She gestures towards the painting with one hand. What else do you see here, Alyson?

  I re-focus on the images in front of me.

  It’s like chess, I say. I point to the image of a centaur in a helmet, carrying a sword. He wears chain mail, his face fierce. Knight? I say.

  She nods. Warrior...Knight is also good.

  I point to an image of an older, Saint Nicholas-looking man wearing a crown. King? I ask. When she gestures ‘more or less,’ I point to his female counterpart. ...Queen?

  Again, she makes the ‘more or less’ gesture with her hand.

  We call the King ‘Shield,’ she says. The queen is ‘Arrow.’ But essentially you are right. They are stabilizing forces. They provide structure when it is needed...

  Shield? I stare up at the kingly form. Galaith then, right?

  She gestures assent. That is correct.

  So he was good?

  She gestures dismissively. Good, bad...at base he was neither. He aligned with the Dreng, Alyson, so no, he was not good. Her light eyes focused on mine, and their complexity made me stare. ...As with Syrimne, she added. It did not have to be that way. And he still served his purpose...more or less. There were darker consequences to that stability than were strictly necessary. But he did help to thwart that early attempt at bringing the Displacement...prior to his recruitment by the Dreng.

  I stare up at the face of the being there, and imagine I can almost see him in it.

  He, too, is your brother, Bridge Alyson, she added. It is part of why you were tasked with curbing his excesses...

  I gave a wry smile. If by ‘curbing his excesses’ you mean bringing about his death, well I guess I fulfilled my task well enough...

  The old seer merely shrugged, her eyes focusing back on the mural.

  Not all of your brothers and sisters made it to the human chessboard, she says. But many make their appearances in other places...

  She points to the image of a dancing rabbit.

  Fool, she says. Trickster.

  I point to the image of a turtle, under the earth. That on
e looks familiar, too...what is he?

  Wisdom, Tarsi says. And traditionally, it is she. She points to a being I hadn’t seen, woven into the fabric of the oceans. ‘Dragon’ would be close in English. Not quite that...not quite fish. Perhaps it is more accurate to call him ‘Birth.’ They are male and female, creation...closer to the Chinese meaning of dragon than that of European humans. Some of these beings do not incarnate down here in an individualized form, Bridge Alyson...

  I look around at the other images. We haven’t covered a third of them.

  Do you understand now? she says.

  Understand? I look at her. Understand what?

  She smiles, and her smile is patient.

  Why Death is your responsibility, she says.

  I DIDN’T SLEEP well that night.

  Piled high in furs, mostly yak and llama, I didn’t want for warmth, and the bed wasn’t too hard.

  It was him. The separation pain came back as soon as I closed my eyes.

  Mixed with that came a paranoia I hadn’t experienced since he first left for Egypt. I knew it was irrational. Whatever Revik did to skirt the truth when it inconvenienced him, I’d never known him to lie to me outright. He’d made it pretty clear he expected monogamy from me, and that he had a fairly all-encompassing definition of what that meant. Besides, if he wanted some before I got back, he was smart enough to do it somewhere other than Seertown.

  That train of thought didn’t help my mood much, though...nor did the realization that I’d left him with a hell of a hard on, not unlike both times he’d turned to others in the past.

  Somewhere in all my worrying, I did fall asleep though.

  I know this, because I was awakened by the girl the next morning.

  I finally got a name out of her—Hannah, of all things—right before she handed me a cup of that steaming brown drink. I dragged myself out of the pile of furs only to be handed another mug, this one holding the requisite yak-butter tea. That, and the freezing cold air coming through the open windows didn’t improve my mood much. One lovely thing about seers in Seertown was that most were Westernized enough to have a healthy appreciation for espresso.