Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop

by Patrick Stephens

  Instantly, the smell of heat and biofuel fill his sinuses. A metallic breeze wafts into the ship as the first creature makes its appearance. It smiles. At least, Perry thinks it’s a smile. It opens its arms, all four of them, and kneels to the ground. It rests its upper arms on the foot of the hatchway. The two lower arms – Perry feels uneasy at their thinness, the way the pincers at the end open and close as if they have a mind of their own – stick up in the air. The creature drops its two bottom arms and looks up. Perry can see the plates all over its body. At first he thought it was a form of clothing, but now can see that the plates are just extrusions of the skin. Each one is surrounded by a seam where the skin has hardened into its genetically given shape. The colour is soft and red, while the plates are closer to crimson.

  “Choko-sigurat,” it says. The sounds are guttural, and Perry doubts – for a moment – that the creature is speaking. It stands. “Na dajenko. Belovore-ah.”

  “What is it doing?” Perry asks, fully aware that the sentries wouldn’t hear him.

  The creature scans the interior of the ship, and extends a hand to the wall. It looks at Perry, not touching anything.

  “Na?”

  Perry cocks his head to the side. The creature pretends to touch the wall, to caress it. It repeats the word. Perry opens his mouth and nods. “Na,” he attempts the word. It comes out – as he thinks – sounding like an American attempting a British accent. Which is to say it sounds nothing like the guttural mimicry he’d hoped. The creature bows and looks to the wall. It steps further into the hatch and touches the surface. Perry winces at its skin scraping against the sheet metal. The sound is like running nails across a table-top. He watches as the creature continues stroking the wall.

  “Looks like they’re more interested in our ship than us,” Russell, his second in command, jokes, nearly scaring the life out of him as he comes up from behind.

  Perry smiles. “I think you might be right.”

  He steps forward and stands next to the creature. It looks at him and puts out a hand. Perry extends his own to waist level expecting a handshake. The creature grunts twice, places a hand on its chest and turns to Perry. It sticks out one of the lower arms, opening the claw at the end. Perry, startled, begins to withdraw his hand, but freezes. Russell eyes the Admiral, sliding a hand to the gun on his side. Perry is distracted by this moment, so doesn’t pull his hand back. However, he reasons, if the creature wanted to hurt him, then they wouldn’t be having this moment. Perry puts his hand near the claw and waits. Everything his Mom had ever told him about playing with lobsters or crabs on the beach returns in this moment. He imagines his fingers snapped off or crushed.

  The claw closes, and the creature sets it in Admiral Perry’s palm. The pincers are warm to the touch and feel soft, near to brittle. He closes his hand around it, but doesn’t shake. The creature nods. Admiral Perry hopes that his settlement has a chance now, and that his choice to land early hasn’t killed them all.

  “Welcome home,” Russell says.

  “I believe the phrase you’re looking for is ‘powder keg’,” Perry responds.

  “I’ll start breaking out the wine.”

  “There was no reason for what would come,” Davion said. His sudden break from describing the landing of the original colony ship jarred us as a transition. By then, we were halfway through the woods. “But you can see how I’d hoped it wasn’t them. Perry was peaceful; he never had any ill will towards the Belovores. He wanted it to work out.”

  “As a colony ship, they were just looking for a home,” Lancaster piped in. He’d grown a tad more comfortable in the group. Kayt had not, remaining vacant and distant.

  “How would you know that?” Davion asked.

  “Well, if you were a colony ship, wouldn’t you? Just following your own logic,” he mumbled the rest of his sentence away.

  “I read about them when I was just a boy,” Davion said. “Back at the commune we had dozens of books on the colonization, but only one had been written for a child of my age to understand. I was grateful for it. I thought it was fiction. The book had been available for all to see, but very few cared. You see, the Primary Divinity cares mostly about the future we’ve earned, not the past, if we are to be forgiven for the sins of our parents.”

  “So why did you read it?” I asked. I pulled back a leafy branch and Melanie and Kayt slid past it, while Lancaster did the same for Annalise.

  “Because I wasn’t afraid of its contents. Fiction has a great deal of impact upon its reader when it tells the right story.”

  “He means it wasn’t a dry textbook,” I whispered to Kayt. She smirked.

  “But it was all a mistake,” Davion started.

  Davion stopped. “Let’s stop for a moment. Rest our knees.”

  He’d noticed a small undercurrent of fallen brush leading to the first open area barren of life, though having an implied feeling that people used to come here often. Two thick logs had been set across from each other. Neither one of them belonged in the setting, as they’d been fashioned into benches. They sat at a ninety degree angle to each other. False rotting had been painted onto the wood. Davion tested the first one, pushing his robes out beneath his backside and lowering himself onto it. It bent – I suddenly recalled Melanie sitting on the Blanc de Noirs cask – and paint chips crackled off.

  In the centre of the angle was a hollowed out campfire surrounded by pearlescent pebbles and logs stacked in a pyramid.

  Melanie sat next to Davion; Annalise sat on the other bench, followed by the kids on the far end of one, and then I sat next to Annalise. None of us mentioned how the place resembled a campground, or how the deliberate placing of the logs made us think of the places boy scouts used to go when they wanted to pretend to be woodsmen. With the neighbourhoods nearby, I suspected Annalise could have confirmed that the local troop used the area for their ghost stories, marshmallow roasting, or singing. But the less I referred to normal life, the better.

  “I’m fucking starving,” Lancaster said. He tried to lock eyes with Kayt. She’d responded with a distant glare and scooted closer to me.

  “I could do without the coarse language, young man,” Davion said.

  “Oh,” Lancaster said. “I’m sorry, Dad. Should I put a coin in the jar?”

  “We’re all hungry,” Annalise spoke over the boy.

  Davion ignored her attempt at pacification. “You accomplish less than you desire when you feel the need to integrate foul words into your dialect. A simple ‘I’m starving’ achieves more than I’m sure you’re used to.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Lancaster stood. His hands tensed.

  Kayt grabbed him by the arm and pulled him down. “Just be quiet,” she rasped.

  “It’s clear everyone is a bit touchy right now. Talking sometimes helps,” I said. A flash of recognition made me realize that I’d done to Davion moments ago what Lancaster was doing now. I’d reacted out of anger and distrust, and even earlier than that, allowed hatred to well up inside. All because I was avoiding a certain subject. It all seemed so trivial watching it happen from another perspective.

  “All we’ve been doing is talking,” Lancaster interrupted.

  “Lancaster,” Kayt’s voice was stronger this time, louder. “Stop pretending to be something you aren’t and shut up. Just because I said you were too nice doesn’t mean you have to start being an ass. It doesn’t impress anyone.”

  Lancaster turned to her and grimaced. He scowled at Davion. “Doesn’t she get a lecture? She just called me an ass and you’re sitting there acting like she can do no wrong.”

  “Few can do wrong when they speak the truth,” Davion said.

  Lancaster huffed and sat back down. He leaned forward and, much like Melanie had when I’d dragged her down into the wine cellar, cupped his face in his hands. He sniffed a couple times, then leaned back up. His eyes were redder than before. Kayt touched him on the back and patted him as a friend would. The rapport between them would
n’t stay quiet for long. It had already begun bleeding into the situation.

  Annalise turned to me, widened her eyes and mouthed ‘wow’ before winking and looking out at the group again. She leaned in close to me and rested her head on my shoulder, whispering: “If I fall asleep, don’t wake me.” She closed her eyes. It felt good to have someone touching me like Daniel would have.

  “Davion,” Melanie said. “When we get to the commune, who will be there?”

  “Is that the question you wanted to ask?”

  “Of course it is, that’s why I asked it.”

  “Do you not mean to ask if we will see your father when we arrive?”

  She paused. “Will we?”

  “I wish I could give you an answer,” Davion frowned. “The Lord knows you deserve one. But all I can tell you is that some answers come in the form of actions – whether or not you will ever see your father again is up to fate. Divine guidance. Perhaps you might not ever see him again; perhaps you will.”

  Melanie took this as a challenge. “The last place he went was the commune,” she said, partly smiling, partly sneering. “We’re heading there now. I think that’s about as guiding as you can get.”

  “You are always so persistent. You do not have faith in the Lord you worship, as I have been trying to tell you for years,” Davion finished, shaking his head. He didn’t need to add the last bit, but I could tell he’d wanted to. He’d said it in the way some people have to add a provocative ‘I told you so’ to the end of their last statement.

  Melanie didn’t take this well. Her voice raised an octave. “Trying to tell me? You call giving me the run around ‘trying to tell me’?”

  “Is nobody going to mention Sondranos?” Kayt interrupted. Melanie was silent and looked at the newcomer as if she’d been slapped.

  “We can do nothing by discussing an event that we can’t change,” Davion said.

  Melanie said, “Don’t dwell. We need to keep clear heads.”

  “Don’t you people have any emotion?” Kayt asked.

  “A little dramatic, are we?” Melanie shot back.

  “Stop,” I said. Annalise adjusted her head on my shoulder as I spoke, moving so that her ear wasn’t placed directly on my body. “We all have something we were coming from. Lancaster, Kayt – where were you headed?”

  They took a moment, looked at each other, and paused before saying anything.

  Kayt spoke first. “I was moving across the city to live with my fiancée in Metro Sondranos.”

  “I was driving her,” Lancaster added. His lips had turned into a frown. His large, sad eyes contradicted the way he’d been acting before. Defeated was the first word that had come to mind. In that moment, I couldn’t imagine him trying to stand up against anyone.

  Annalise perked up. “Driving her? From here to Metro? That’s a six hour drive, clear across the city!”

  “We didn’t start from this area,” Lancaster said. He was proud of this. “We started further away. I had to pick her up. My parents live in the suburbs about two or three miles from here. We were heading in that direction.”

  Annalise smirked, bit her lip, and rested her head back down. “You could never convince me to do something like that,” she whispered.

  “What about you?” Kayt asked me.

  “I came here on vacation,” I lied. It was easier that time than it was with Melanie. I could feel the lie growing through my teeth, rotting in my gums to make the roots hurt. “My boyfriend and I were supposed to come together, but he couldn’t make it on the day we needed to leave – we’d already paid. It was an all-expenses thing, actually. He was going to come in a few days, once his vacation days kicked in.”

  “Boyfriend?” Kayt asked. She seemed taken aback. “You’re…?”

  The question put a pause in the atmosphere. None of us wanted to be quiet, but we felt like we should – like someone had begun praying again. Only this time the prayer was to an eggplant, pointless and inefficient. I offered a placating smile. It had been a long time since someone wordlessly questioned by lifestyle, so the action came with a sting reminding me from where I came.

  “Let me ask you something, Kayt,” Annalise didn’t pick up her head, or open her eyes. It made her look like she was sleep-talking. “Does Leon being gay change that he saved your life earlier? Are you just a little dead inside just because of it?”

  “N-N-No,” Kayt stammered.

  “Then it’s not something that will affect you,” she said.

  “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Lancaster chuckled, and Kayt elbowed him in the ribs. He grunted at the blunt force, and corrected himself. “She’s right. Kayt’s never really judged people like that.”

  “Just like nobody would dare judge someone who’d spent time in a maximum security prison,” Annalise said, the phrase hitting both Davion and Melanie in the chest.

  There was another pause. This time, it was pregnant with anticipation. You can feel out pauses by what kind of information is begging to be known. This one focused on Annalise, who held her tongue. With Annalise’s head on my shoulder, I could feel a tremor of awkward laughter wanting to escape. Davion and Melanie watched with anticipation from their own log, as if they were watching a program play out on screen before them. Annalise finally broke the silence by laughing. It was a healthy laugh, quiet but relieving all the same. She let her head fall from my shoulder and into my lap. Kayt’s cheeks turned red. The rest of the conversation went unspoken. Kayt apologized by grimacing, and I waved it away with a smile.

  “You spent time in prison?” Lancaster asked. His demeanour had changed. He leaned forward and opened his eyes wide.

  “Yes – Beaumaris Correctional Facility,” Annalise offered. She said it strongly, and with enough confidence that it made everyone in the group afraid to ask more.

  “If you will excuse me,” Davion stood and brushed off the front of his robes – they’d begun to wear and brighten in shade, the blues and gold turning into sky and yellow. “I am going to find a suitable place to relieve myself.”

  “You have our permission,” Annalise joked. She sat up straight, giving up on closing her eyes for rest. Davion held himself for a moment, and then bowed, smiling sheepishly. Annalise then smiled, adding: “If you can find a tree, use it.”

  After Davion stalked off, we listened to the brush cracking and snapping until it was far enough away that we were certain he was out of earshot.

  I grabbed at the attention of the group, opening my mouth and taking a deep breath. “This has been bothering me. You’d think he’d jump at a chance to offer redemption, not condemn people for their past - what religion does he follow, and what is the name of this commune we’re going to?”

  Melanie leaned forward, whispering as well. “The MacKinnon Commune of the Primary Divinity – it’s a branch of Catholicism that has literally little to nothing to do with Catholicism anymore. They split maybe three or so hundred years ago to follow something more similar to Buddhism – the spirit and all that. Not like the Church of L.I.A.M., which would hunt you down for even insinuating there are other religions. They respect that we all have gods, or a God. To shove their god into someone else’s life is considered an insult.”

  “So, you’ve been to the commune before?” Kayt asked.

  “You need written permission from an authorized priest, or to be accompanied by one to get in. So, no,” she frowned. “I’ve just been around him a lot lately.”

  “You’re of his faith, too?” asked Annalise.

  “No, Lise. I’m more of an atheist. Don’t have time to put my life in the hands of something I’ve never seen,” Melanie shook her head. “But if you’re wondering, I think I know why he’s insistent on going to the commune. He honestly believes this is a spiritual journey we have all undertaken, whether we’ve decided consciously or not. I don’t know, it feels like he’s trying to make up for something. He and I were talking about this earlier on the road out of town.”
r />   “What about your mission to find your father?” I asked.

  “Davion said ‘every mission comes with an unexpected journey to self-discovery.’” Melanie said. “He said this was always the path I was supposed to take, and now he keeps any information about my father more secret than before.”

  Annalise sighed. “Ah, faith.”

  It seemed, for as long as we were hiding in the tree farm a good distance away from the suburban sprawl, like we were going to be fine. When Davion returned, we all welcomed him back before starting up a new conversation about when and how to leave. Most of it was about fear. The rest was about hope. None of it was memorable.

  We started out thirty minutes later. Lancaster had mentioned, again, how hungry he was – omitting the curse and looking to Davion for approval. He’d also tried to get into Kayt’s good graces again, making it obvious to all of us that he was trying to win her affections.

  Our group had become almost unwieldy. There were six of us all together, and I felt like I could only handle two or three at a time. Davion also looked less than enthused about the numbers, except I could bet he wanted more. Melanie, Lancaster and Davion took up the front while the rest of us followed.

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” Kayt said. I could feel her will to add herself into the apology.

  “No worries. How long has Lancaster been in love with you?”

  Kayt stumbled.

  “It was pretty obvious,” mumbled Annalise.

  “He’s going to be jealous, you know. He already kind of is,” Kayt said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I told him he was too nice before Sondranos was attacked, before the cars and everything stopped working. He didn’t take it too well. His initial swearing was an attempt at sounding masculine. When Davion called him out, he thought he’d be able to use it to stand up for himself – I guess nobody ever taught him what was worth standing up for. He was jealous that someone acted stronger than he could.”

  “Fancy analysis coming from a sheltered girl,” Annalise said. Kayt went on, explaining what I already noticed. Platonic friendship, and all.