2017 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide

by Maggie Allen

  Immediately, she set out to pick the lock on the door. Gears within it turned and the bolt retracted. The corridor beyond was empty, save for a slim figure in a long gown, heels, and a massive, jeweled headdress, carrying a small jar with one of the phosphorescent creatures swimming about in it.

  Lady Sofia.

  "Quickly!" Sofia said. "The guard will return any moment."

  Juliet followed her through winding pathways, their feet squishing on the soggy dungeon floor. When the lady paused in a quiet corner to catch her breath, Juliet's tongue loosened.

  "Who are you? And why are you helping me?"

  "Sofia... the royal tinker. And I'm not helping you; you're helping me... to escape."

  "Escape? Why?"

  "You think we enjoy being trapped down here with no contact with the outside world? Our isolation was based on the Queen's own emotional pride alone, not any logical rationale. She only cut us off to punish him for leaving." She set off again down the dark corridor, and Juliet followed on her heels.

  "Who? Who left?"

  "Her son, the heir. When her search for him proved futile, she flew into a rage and commanded Prosperia be cut off from the world above. Now hush, or someone will hear."

  "Do you have a weapon?" Juliet whispered. Without her sword or knife, she felt positively helpless, completely at the mercy of this overdressed aristocrat. Sofia reached up to her headdress and pulled out a hat pin the length of her hand and passed it to Juliet, who took it with some skepticism. It was no dagger, for certain, but it was better than nothing.

  They turned a corner and Sofia screeched, nearly backing up directly into Juliet. The guard had returned by another route and was blocking their path, his sword at the ready.

  Juliet stepped in front of Sofia, brandishing the hairpin. The guard smirked, obviously unimpressed. Juliet lunged. With a quick, well-placed jab, she pierced the gap between his chest plate and helmet, causing him to cry out and giving her the element of surprise needed to knock his sword from his hand. Finally, a proper weapon!

  "Lie down on the ground," she instructed him, "and count to three hundred. If we meet again, I will not be so merciful."

  Juliet urged Sofia on, and the bewildered woman took off down the corridor once again. Juliet paused now and again to glance behind her and see that the guard was still lying prone as Sofia rushed further ahead. She climbed a flight of stairs, and Juliet rushed to follow, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the brilliance of the phosphorescent light.

  At the top of the steps, Juliet stopped short.

  Sofia stood before her with a guard's blade pressed to her throat. On either side of her stood a dozen other guards, their swords drawn. Juliet hesitated, her mind racing to devise a strategy that would leave Sofia unharmed. She was just about to step forward when the guards shifted, parting in the center to admit the Queen herself.

  "I see that I've a traitor in my midst. Dear Sofia... I do hope the kraken doesn't mind if his feast begins early; I could hardly hope to keep you contained in the locks and chains you designed yourself."

  "If you lay a hand on her..." Juliet began, holding her weapon steady.

  The Queen raised her eyebrows and placed a hand upon her chin, as if amused. On the third finger, she bore a dark ring with a design Juliet recognized from the palace's curved arch—the kraken. "Go on. What shall you do?"

  Juliet lowered her sword, her eyes transfixed on the ring. The palace entrance wasn't the first place she'd seen that design.

  "You will allow Sofia and me to return to the surface unhindered, and I, in turn, will tell you where to find your son."

  Juliet stood on the deserted city street once again and raised the ten-legged doorknocker—the gilded kraken. Beside her stood two women, dressed in long cloaks and hoods to protect their golden skin from the rays of the early morning sun.

  The Realm of Impossibility's crew had been surprised at Juliet's return after they believed they'd lost her, and even more surprised at the two strange women she'd brought with her. Juliet had held off on answering their questions, promising she'd explain all once she'd held up her end of the bargain.

  The bolt slid across and the door opened with a creak. This time, it was not Stenson who opened it, but a lean man wearing a smock, long gloves, and an iron-welder's mask over his face. Upon seeing the three in the doorway, the iron-welder slowly raised his mask, exposing his golden skin.

  "Mother?"

  The Queen rushed forward to embrace him. Juliet and Sofia hung back, though Juliet could see how the tinker's eyes danced about the workroom, taking in all the tools and metalwork there. The Realm, too, had fascinated the Queen's lady-in-waiting, and Juliet had spent much of their journey back to the city explaining the airship's inner workings to her.

  "Let's leave them to their reunion," she whispered to Sofia.

  They waited beside the iron door, watching the carriages bustling past and people walking to the market as the city awakened to a new day.

  "I'm sorry you lost your vessel," Sofia said.

  "It wasn't mine. Not yet anyway."

  "Will its owner hold you accountable for its loss, then?"

  "Perhaps." If Stenson wanted the Seeker back, he'd have to retrieve it from the Queen himself. As for the Argonaut and its treasure, when Juliet had questioned her earlier, Sofia verified that the wreck had already been picked apart by Prosperian scavengers. They'd used every bit of metal for repairs of their underwater city.

  "What are your plans now, as a free woman?" Juliet asked, breaking the silence.

  "I... I don't know." Sofia fiddled with the buttons and levers on her belt. The metal jangled like a song and glimmered in the sun. "I hadn't dared to hope for anything beyond escape."

  "I've a proposition for you, then." Juliet spied an airship on the horizon and shielded her eyes against the sun. "The Realm of Impossibility could use a good tinker on board, someone to help out when the mechanical parts require repairs. Tell me, how do you feel about the skies?"

  Sofia looked up from her belt, startled. Then, she, too, raised her eyes to the blue sky, and slowly a smile spread across her golden face.

  The Biting Sands

  by Doug C. Souza

  Doug C. Souza has always had a love for the art of storytelling. His favorite genres are science fiction and fantasy, but he enjoys a good yarn of any variety. His story “Mountain Screamers” was published in Asimov’s and received an honorable mention to be included in The Year’s Best Science Fiction 2014. Doug teaches in Modesto, California, where he lives with his wonderful wife and daughter. You can find him at dougcsouza.com.

  The Haze stays low to the earth as it hunts. Reaching out with wispy limbs, the amber mist rolls across the plain. Still miles away, it has not sensed me yet. But I know the Haze will come for me. And I know I can’t escape.

  Will the monstrous cloud devour me in one fell swoop? Or will it drain me in slow pulses?

  No one ever returns from the Haze.

  Well, they return, but not with life in their eyes.

  I suck in a deep breath while the air around me is clean. Early morning sun warms the ground and nourishes the Haze. The deadly cloud slows as it nears a herd of grazing sheep at the dry creek bed. It lingers among the ignorant animals and then floats away.

  The Haze only feeds on people—and it won’t settle for anything less.

  I untie the cord across the satchel at my hip and reach inside. My heart skips a beat, and I brace for the Haze. My breath shakes.

  The cows just beyond the fences stir but do not panic. The Haze will pass them by, too. Then it will pass through the rows of apple trees and the fields of yams.

  The air is different up here than underground—not rich with the scent of earth and life. I can taste the emptiness as I breathe it in.

  My crooked leg burns from my trek below, but I will not crouch. Falling to my knees and crying is not for me. Sha-shen will be remembered for her bravery if nothing else.

  I’m being dramatic.
Well, heroes are dramatic.

  The magistrate hesitated after he had recited the terms for my sentence. My refusal to drink the mind-numbing elixir made him uneasy. His eyes searched me, wondering if reiteration was necessary. Few “afflicted” or “damaged” refused the stupefying syrup before exile.

  “The drink will ease the pain up there,” the magistrate explained while his soft hand slid the vial forward.

  “No thank you,” I said.

  “Very well.” He shrugged, waving me along.

  “Did you read my Repentance?” I asked.

  He glanced at the stack of scrolls and rolled his eyes. He waved me away again, this time in quick motions like I was some pesky gnat.

  I didn’t budge. “My Repentance,” I insisted. “Please take a moment to consider—”

  His neck became blotchy and red. “How dare you?” he spat. “To imply—” The oil-lamps in the lower chambers were dim, but I saw his neck vein pulsing.

  “I can aid in the lower rivers. I have developed plans for better pumps to the surface. Pumps that work through a series of wheels and pulleys, like in the tram system—” I leaned over the short table separating us and pointed at the scrolls just inches from his hand. “It’s all there. I can teach the pipe-smiths. I can stay and help.”

  “You have been sentenced,” the magistrate said, grabbing my Repentance and shoving it aside. “Damaged,” he muttered.

  “You are wrong!” I fell forward onto the table.

  The magistrate looked away and simply crossed off my name. His hand shook as he made a jagged line.

  “Send her out!” he yelled, glaring at my warped hand and crooked leg. “Bring in the next.”

  Jaggers, the guard assigned to escort me, grunted and pulled me away. The vial filled with the elixir stood in a row with the others. Many pleaded for their lives the way I had. So clever, Sha-shen, putting your diagrams for the lower rivers and irrigation system in your written testimony, I scolded myself. If only he had taken a moment to read over my Repentance. If only someone had—they’d see I could contribute.

  Jaggers nudged me out of the chamber-room. His frown glared down as his large frame loomed above mine. The next of the condemned limped forward with his escort in tow. Like me, he wore an elegant robe donated by the Regulator Office. On him it covered a withering body. On me, the thin fabric draped across me like a breeze. The finest material in all of Spesterra. I hated it—a sad gift to ease the Regulators’ guilt.

  Or did anyone feel even a sliver of guilt about sending “non-contributors” topside?

  “What’re you thinking, Sha-shen?” Jaggers asked as we climbed the stairs to the upper passageways. He carried the gas-lantern a bit lower to read my face like a corridor map.

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t trust you to think ‘nothing.’” Two days ago Jaggers first showed up at my door. I knew what was happening before he finished explaining: the days were warming, and I was going topside. The years of foolishly hoping it wouldn’t happen to me were over.

  He peered at me. “Why didn’t you take the soother? I mean, even after he ignored your pleas.”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, and stopped to catch my breath at one of the guardrails near the pathway edge. We hadn’t gone far, but the day and sentencing had taken its toll. My crooked leg ached. “I just...” I couldn’t answer him. Instead, I gazed at the underground river far below. The water’s sloshing echoed up the rocky walls. I pictured the wheel in my mind’s eye as it turned in the water, pushing a separate pipeline to the irrigation lines. The pump wouldn’t replace the pipe-laborers entirely, but it would help ease their burden. My wheel and pump design could even eliminate the need for the storage tanks and reservoirs throughout the mid- and upper-levels of underground Spesterra.

  To keep truth, the notion of going to the surface sober first entered my mind as a scientific endeavor: What would it be like to encounter the Haze with all my mental facilities intact?

  Jaggers shrugged and guided me toward the tram docks. Onlookers moved out of our way. The condemned were feared more than the sick. The sick might heal.

  Jaggers put a hand under my armpit and led me up the steps to the wooden and metal cage. He opened the lift door, handed me the lantern, and cranked us upward. The tram swayed. I snaked my clawed hand through a handhold and held the metal bar under my elbow. Ropes and pulleys squeaked; for a moment I wished the whole thing would just crash down.

  Didn’t matter. In two days, I’d be heading to the surface.

  I knew better than to consider fighting the Haze. Like all Spesterra citizens, I snuck glimpses of the Haze devourings in my youth through surface-side windows. Even people numbed by the elixir flailed their arms or kicked and screamed when the Haze encompassed them.

  To no effect.

  The hungry mist claimed all within minutes, whether they were exiled in a group of twenty or two.

  Except Rafe: he lasted the longest. The clever idiot had wrapped a scarf around his head; he even stole a pair of goggles from one of the maintenance sub-levels.

  He didn’t fight but stood amidst the thick cloud, observing. Being off-kilter like me—except he had two crooked legs—the Regulator Office left him outside after his mind was taken. They didn’t need his body. Cursed to roam aimlessly until his body withered and fell.

  Once the Haze retreated back into the distant mountains, able-bodied folk were brought back inside. Docile and obedient, they made perfect laborers. Would my drone body be welcomed back, or would they leave me out there to rot?

  I shook away the images—no point living the topside nightmare until exile. As one damaged, I hadn’t thought about facing the Haze since childhood. Somehow, I had tucked it into the back of my mind.

  “Hold,” Jaggers said, grabbing my arm.

  My fourth mother was waiting at the end of the stairwell. Her eyes burned. They held the light of a rescuer.

  The Haze grows transparent as it arrives. Its pace slows and stretches into thin threads as it senses me.

  Tree branches from the east orchard crinkle as a breeze kicks up. A lone bird drifts overhead. For a moment, I’m tempted to hobble over to the yam rows and pull a couple. No one could stop me from enjoying a fresh tuber.

  A trickle of sweat stings my eye. I blink it away and then stare up after the bird drifting high above. The sky, the blue, I had almost forgotten to gaze at the blue. As an older child, I had realized I’d be sent to the ground, and I swore to look up at the unfiltered blue sky.

  The little we see through the surface-side windows in Spesterra do not compare in the least. The glass is thick and warped.

  A smile hits me unaided. An electricity trickles across my arms. I shake it away, worried that the Haze is mussing my mind. Altering it already.

  No, it’s just the sky.

  The Haze is still several lengths away, folding and unfolding on itself.

  Is this why you covered your face, Rafe, and didn’t succumb to the Haze like all the others? Did you want to soak in as much as possible before the Haze took you?

  You looked so silly in that scarf and goggles you had snuck out. But I knew you were being brave. You were a hero.

  To think, the farmers and land workers visit the landside regularly. They till the dirt and sow the seeds when the Haze is absent. Do they know how lucky they are? The Regulators say we live underground because the Haze won’t descend below the dirt-line. But now I understand that merely surviving underground is not enough for life.

  I also understand why the farmers are sworn to keep silent about the topside. If more people knew how wonderful it is, they’d demand to come up.

  I search the horizon for the surface-side windows and find the lengths of glass reflecting the sunlight. It’s difficult to see, but I can make out spectral forms moving behind the windows—I feel eyes on me.

  Time to get to work.

  My good hand wraps around the glass within my satchel. A moment of doubt taunts me. What if I look silly
? What if they think I’m trying to fight the Haze?

  No.

  I’m a hero, and it’s a good plan.

  The Haze circles me, closing the gaps. The blue is swallowed by golden brown.

  “A friend,” I said, pulling out of Jagger’s grip and lumbering up the last few steps.

  “Five minutes, for rest. Then we go.” He remained close behind me.

  My fourth mother was not a threat to him. Far older than me, she was nearly all gray. She reached for my good hand and guided me to the nearest bench. Her flesh was soft in my palm.

  She pulled me into a hug. My fourth mother was very tactile, never shying away from her wards. Even my being sixteen seasons, she made me feel like a lamb. In her arms, I felt her strength course through me.

  “When?” she asked. We sat near the back of the cable-tram port.

  A mid-level digger slid farther down the long bench. He wasn’t bothered by me. He was eyeing Jaggers. No one enjoyed random encounters with people from the Regulator Office.

  “Two days,” I said, my good foot absentmindedly drawing a circle in the dirt.

  My fourth mother tenderly smothered my drawing with her foot. She grabbed my face in her hands and forced me to meet her eyes. “Well, Sha-shen, then you have just over a day to think of something.”

  “A plan,” I said with a laugh and pulled away.

  We sat in silence for several heartbeats before she said, “Yes, a plan.” Her tone was not pleasant. She surreptitiously reached into her dress pocket and pulled out an oval piece of smooth glass. “Remember this?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Such an odd endeavor for a young one,” she said, shaking her head. “Wanting to create a bent piece of glass to look through.”

  “So?”

  “You’re something unique, Sha-shen. I just want you to know that. In all my years serving as a caretaker, I never encountered a child so determined.” She handed me the oval glass. “Find a way out of this.”