by Gwynn White
The room—a room?—had lights that flickered on, and hummed with warm air. Verily wiped her eyes. Her fingers were shaking and so, so cold.
She lay on what looked like the ceiling of a hallway. Ten meters away, a hatch slid open to an upside-down cockpit. Two chairs were attached to the floor above in the center, and a wall of screens and machines lit up as they powered on. What is this place?
Verily spat a piece of food off her lip and wiped her mouth on her soaked jacket. The world waited for her response, and she was a captive audience. A dream might have led her here, but everything about this felt like an accident. And she was intruding. She watched as the water that had brought her in drained away into grooves lining the edges of the ceiling.
She glanced the other way, to see a closed hatch at the hallway’s end, not far away. She turned her head back to the cockpit. “Hello?”
“Verily.”
She jumped off the floor like a sprung cat, arching her back before landing on her butt.
Sitting with his arm around his knee, and smiling as though she were here to amuse him, was the man from her dream. He wore a loose-fitting suit that reminded her of an airplane pilot, but with a different fabric and design than she’d ever seen.
“Are you from Arrinoz?” she asked, grasping for something to make sense around here.
He chuckled. “No, sweet girl.” He rose and carefully approached, hand extended to help her up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Verily didn’t take his hand. Hers remained planted on the floor… er, ceiling.
“There isn’t much one can say that won’t frighten someone when one appears from thin air.” The glint in his eye made her feel as though he wanted her to laugh. She couldn’t. He shrugged, and retreated his hand to rest on his hip. “There’s so much intelligence in your eyes, Verily. I can see why the Father chose you.”
Verily’s attention wriggled through the mud of the words he just said. “My father sent you?”
She read sadness and empathy in his gaze. “No, sweet girl. Your father… he’s lost. He loves you, but…” at the word “love”, Verily breathed in and her lip quivered. “He’s buried himself in anger and refuses help. I’m sorry.”
Verily wiped a tear using her shoulder and looked back up at the man. His skin was so clean. And dry. He looked older, like her father, but so… smooth.
“The All-Father is whom I meant. He sent me.”
Verily had no idea what he was talking about. The air into her mouth tickled her dry throat. The heat filling the hall helped calm her shivering, but she was still cold, and wet. “How come you’re dry?”
He smiled. “Smart girl.” He offered his hand again. She remembered how soft his palm had felt in her dream. “Please, we can’t stay long.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
He edged his hand closer, as though hinting that his answer would come with her compliance. She accepted his hand and let his strength lift her to standing. The strain in her shoulder flared new pain in her back, and she hissed.
The man sucked in a breath. “Let me see.”
Verily twisted to expose her back, and as she looked away, fearing the wound to hurt more, the opposite happened. The pain disappeared under the gentle touch of a hand. She might have heard something whispered, but couldn’t make it out.
She turned back around in time to see him retract his hand, a warm smile on his face.
“There you go, sweet girl.”
“Why’da you keep calling me that?” she asked, not upset… just curious, as though that answer might fill in a puzzle with far too many holes to begin completing.
“Because I love you, just like the Father does.”
At his words, she felt the corners of her eyes getting wet. She opened her mouth to say “Love?”, but a tremor in her stomach halted her ability to speak. Followed by her quivering lip. Her right eye leaked the first tear.
The man opened his arms and she filled the space, hugging him out of a sense of need as great as if her body were cut in half and she needed his to be whole. His body was sturdy, and she clung to him, as though he’d become a transfer vessel to take everything she didn’t want that made her feel weak.
“You’ve always been loved.”
His words rumbled the floor of her heart, making her weak to the core, then shook loose the last pieces of fear and worry so they fell away, leaving her lighter and like a piece of glass reflecting the glory of the sun.
Thank you, she thought, still unable to speak through her sobs.
He tugged her closer in a brief squeeze, then relaxed, but let her remain, holding him. “There you go, sweet girl.”
This time, those words felt more familiar, as though spoken by a father, and she loved them.
He rubbed her back, then laid a finger on her forehead to clear a strand of hair.
She looked up at him, smiling and thankful. Fear no longer held a centimeter of residence in her body. Only joy.
“Sweet girl.” He softly shifted her shoulders toward the cockpit, and she let him guide her. “I have something very important to show you.”
And just like that, an inkling of fear slipped in at the thought of what unknown trial might await her. She trusted the man enough to walk alongside him, but the weightless joy of seconds ago had dissipated and left her back in her old body—a meager seven-year-old body that had no business walking toward a cockpit. “I’m scared.”
He stroked a gentle hand through her hair, but did not slow their pace. “It’s okay, sweet girl. The chosen gain extra strength.”
The cockpit was now less than a few steps away. Verily wondered what they would do with everything upside down. She steeled herself. “What kind of strength?”
“Don’t focus on what you lack. Trust that the Father will fill you with what you need when you get there.” He stopped below the chairs. She knew he was going to ask her sit in one, which was only somewhat less frightening than going back underwater… am I still underwater?
His grip on her shoulder tensed.
She looked up. He was searching the floor above them, or maybe not. “Mr.?”
He looked down with concern in his eyes. “Your sister. She went looking for you, and the wolf….” He cupped his hands under her armpits and lifted her up to the cushion of the upside-down chair. “Grab the armrests. I’ll hold you up by your shoulders until you’re buckled in.”
“What about the wolf?” she asked as he turned her upside down, forcing her to grab the armrests.
“Your sister is safe right now, but we need you to focus so you can save her.”
Verily didn’t like how he’d said, “right now.” She remembered how he’d appeared here when he definitely wasn’t here before… right? “Can’t you help her? What can I do against a wolf?”
“It takes me just as long to get places as it does you, and I can’t use one of these.”
“You can’t?” Verily’s hair hung straight down, as the blood began to collect behind her eyes, making her head ache. “Then… wait, what am I using?”
“Don’t worry about that for now. Like I said, focus.” He helped fit her arm inside the seatbelt strap and clicked it into the harness between her legs. This helped support some of her weight while they got the other strap in and clicked home.
“On what?”
He held up a finger to indicate patience, then took a mouthguard out of a retractable compartment in the armrest and held it before her mouth, waiting for her to open so that he could fit it in. Next, he tapped a series of buttons on the armrest, and a glowing, rotating cube floated before her eyes. The shimmer and fluctuating brightness of the yellow lines was like a river lit by the sun before it passes into shadow. As she looked into the hollow center, the world outside faded.
“Focus on the alley behind the antique machine parts store.” Each of those last four words hit her with increasing difficulty, like a pinch on her heart that squeezed harder with each identifier to her least favorite
place in the world.
The place where she first heard that her dad was leaving.
Her heart raced, but her body was strapped in; and in a strange vessel planted upside down in the ocean, there was nowhere to run. She barely had the breath left to ask, “Why?” Her hair blocked most of the man’s face, but she caught a section of his dark eyes, and the sadness there, as though he knew why this would be hard. She’d felt that shared knowledge in the way he’d hugged her, but that didn’t help now when he didn’t back away from his request.
“Because that’s where your sister’s hiding.”
The wolf. Verily felt terrible for denying her sister’s fear, and now she was out in the open and vulnerable, while Verily was stuck in here. “What do I have to do?”
“Look deep into the cube and recall the strongest memory you have of that place, where your father stood when he spoke to Mr. Grange.”
Verily’s throat nearly closed, making swallowing while upside down even harder. The moment of countless nightmares, the singular moment she tried not to remember.
The man with the sad brown eyes parted her hair and held her cheeks, his hands strangely… not warm. They were like a stuffed animal’s, only firmer. “Verily, you must. Your sister doesn’t have time for you to be afraid. Don’t focus on what you lack. The Father will bolster you.” On “you”, he tapped the end of her nose and disappeared.
The cartilage in her nose rebounded a fraction. She could have taken longer to reflect on the man who’d brought her here and then left with no explanation of how she’d get out, but the low growl of a wolf taunted her from her imagination’s dark playground.
She looked into the cube and took a deep breath as the memory of her father’s betrayal returned to life.
Mr. Grange was an old man with greasy gray hair that hung to his shoulders, crowning the bald spot made red by the sun. He never wore a shirt, and on that day, a slimy black stain stretched over his deeply tanned beer gut—as her dad called it. He set his ever-present Stine’s beer can on a rusty, oil-tainted barrel, then turned to her father. “I can’t go any higher than one hundred.”
Her father was holding the Joseph watch he’d worked on with her all summer. They’d just got it working again the day before!
Verily felt the same cold pang like a drill into her stomach as she remembered fearing the worst—that her dad was going to get rid of what they’d worked so hard on, and spent so many evenings putting together. Her whole summer had revolved around finding pieces and putting it back together. It was the only time he made for her. And before she heard the confirmation leave his mouth, she knew exactly what he was doing. It was a punch to her stomach unlike any she’d felt, and from the source she’d least expected it.
Sadly, tragically, it was only the beginning of the hurt he’d planned to deliver.
“Come on, Gary,” her father said. “I’m two hundred short, and this—”
“Is not my concern.” Mr. Grange took a sip of his beer as he looked her dad in the eye, unflinching. He crunched it empty and tossed it over his shoulder into an open-topped garbage container, where it clinked on a heap of similar metal. He wiped his mouth with his forearm, leaving a new trace of black on his cheek that he evidently didn’t care about.
And then came the words that started the avalanche. Verily tensed as the memory played on.
“You want to leave your family for some city skirt, I’m not payin’ your way.”
A sob broke through the clench in her throat as she re-lived the event. “Leave your family” was more than enough to deliver the shock of truth, even if “city skirt” wasn’t something she’d understood right away.
Her dad glowered at Mr. Grange, his strong forearm flexed as he clenched the watch. At the time, Verily had feared he’d smash it into Mr. Grange’s sunburned dome. “Don’t!” she’d cried out, seeing in that heart-breaking moment that Mr. Grange was the better man of the two.
Her dad had turned, his expression of fear convincing her that her worst fears were true, and his guilt as true as the love that shattered between them.
Unlike in the real event, she did not turn and run. At the time when she’d started to pivot away, time froze, and the hot sunny day of her betrayal blinked into the moonlit shadows of the same alley.
A girl screamed.
K! K was screaming.
Verily’s gums itched, and her scalp felt like it had been dipped in a bowl of ice cream. A bright blue light faded from the edges of her vision. Her hair once again brushed her cheeks and the sides of her neck. The pressure in her eyes from being upside down was replaced by a dizziness that made her hold her tummy and moan.
But she knew K’s scream, so she unbuckled her harness despite the nausea and ran into the hall of the vessel. Her balance tipped to the right and she stuck her hand out, but her estimate of where the wall was hadn’t been accurate, and she landed hard on her knee. She cried out against the bone-deep bruise tingling into her foot.
K had taken a breath and started her scream anew, this time calling Verily’s name. Strangely, it was a stationary noise, as though she was standing and pointing at something that was no longer a threat, but screaming all the same.
Verily pushed herself up from the floor. She couldn’t find where she’d first entered the vessel—no hatch or portal, just flush metal paneling. That fact spun her world in a different direction, but she didn’t have time to slow it down, only roll with it and get to her little sister.
There was a button by the hatch at the end of the hall. She popped it with the side of her fist and the hatch slid open to the cool morning air and a scent of blood that made her nose hairs crinkle.
She ran out into an open area, cluttered with broken washers and picked apart cars, and caught a glance of the side of the vessel. It looked like a thin bus, but was nicer than any she’d seen the time her father took her to Vijil City. She wondered if it could fly too.
“K?” Verily carefully peered through the debris from the store alongside the vessel, looking toward its front.
“Verily?”
The sound of her voice helped Verily’s heart expel what felt like ten kilos of unwanted weight. But when she saw her sister, and the blood that covered her face and most of her sea lion pajamas, her jaw dropped. K didn’t move a millimeter. She looked rooted in place, likely still in shock.
The wolf?
Verily stepped closer, and turned to look at the aerodynamic nose of the vessel. The spray of blood covered its nose and up onto the windshield. Eyes wide, she turned slowly, taking in the sight of more blood as it soaked the sand in a wide arc.
“You and your sister will remember this.”
The brown-eyed man’s voice was near, but he wasn’t. And the way K reacted made Verily wonder if she heard it to.
“I visited her dreams too,” he said.
K nodded. “He told me to hide here until you arrived to kill the wolf.
Verily started for her sister.
“Wait.”
The man’s voice halted her steps.
Floodlights atop the vessel bathed the area in bright white light. “Get a look at every drop.”
Verily turned away from the light, pressing fingers to her eyes to rub out the blindness. When she opened them, there was still an afterglow. As it slowly faded, she took in the painting of blood on her sister, on the sand and the vessel’s front. The minute of silence in the cool morning breeze felt like a powerful lesson spoken without words. Whatever purpose lay behind this moment of obedience, she had faith in its great importance. Every drop whispered of a message she might someday need.
K held a look of fear at her still observance, but not one that was more than she could handle. Her lower lip hung and trembled slightly as her composure began to break.
“Your vision is complete.”
And as his words ceased, so too broke the presence that held her in place. Verily rushed toward her sister and fell to her knees. K leapt and straddled her legs around Verily’s
waist as they embraced. Their wet, warm faces pressed together as Verily struggled to vocalize the relief and joy at holding her sister in safety.
“You killed the wolf,” K said. “Just like Jesse said you would.” K sucked in trembling breaths as she rose to look her older sister in the eye. Tears glistened in her eyes and on her cheeks.
Verily wiped them clear. “Jesse?”
“The man from our dreams. He told me you’d fly the ship first, but that I’d get a chance, too.”
“Fly?” Verily twisted to see the ship.
“Yeah,” K said, as though this were obvious. “We’re going to the stars, V. Together. In that.” She pointed at the ship. “I’m calling her Sister Take Me, so you don’t forget.”
Verily didn’t think she’d ever forget—not this night, and how the Ancient, Jesse, had swept them out of their isolated little home and opened up a flight-plan to the stars. Verily kissed her sister and the taste of wolf’s blood on her head. She wiped her mouth. “I might call it Sister Stay in Bed Like I Told You.”
“No,” K said playfully. “Sister Take Me.” And she meant it, with all the power of a three-year-old speckled in wolf blood. She held Verily’s gaze until Verily cracked into a laugh, then giggled and shook back and forth in a mini-dance. “Yeah! Let’s go now.”
Verily picked her sister up and cradled her little body against her own. “Not now, sweet girl. We have to wait for the waves to take us.”
She found a pen and paper on Mr. Grange's toolbox and wrote, "Dear Mr. Grange. Keep my ship safe and some day I give you a ride." She signed her name in pretty block letters, smiling at the thought. Then she ripped some tape off a spool and stuck her message on the side of her ship.
On the way home, swinging hand-in-hand with her sister, she dreamed of the places they would fly to, knowing there would be many.
THE END
* * *
A Note from the Author
Thank you for reading this prequel short story to the novels I have planned in the Cipherverse. Book One, Ultras, is in the Dominion Rising box set. That story takes place hundreds of years later as we follow a native to Verily’s land who must use his memories to pullspace home before the mighty Osuna fleet invades. The goal of this story was to give a little background on the first pullspace vessel discovered on Vijil. Verily and her sister K will become legendary heroines, and forgive me for teasing you with only their beginning, but I’m just as excited about the story of Ultras and our character cast there. My love for space opera is heavily influenced by the Dune prequels, Ender’s Game and Stargate SG-1. There’s plenty of story to tell in the worlds I’ve created, and Lord willing, Verily and K will get their screen time eventually.
