by Liz Grzyb
“You were the one who asked to be resettled here.”
“And the board thought the frogs would make short work of me.”
Seong sighed. “I’m here because none of the other dentists would come, and I don’t want you to die from tooth decay.”
Leaving Seong to wrangle with his patient, I settled Sava and Paku in the student lounge and discreetly checked my comms. No signal. I curled up on a couch that smelled of fifty-year-old pizza, and fell asleep to visions of razor wings glinting in the sun.
* * *
I woke before dawn to find Sava gone, and panic twisted my gut until I heard the murmur of voices nearby. Peering into a room of warmly humming servers, I spied Sava and Mason sitting on a bench, Sava’s notebook open on his lap. He pointed brightly from one diagram to the next, and Mason tapped her pencil against the pages, adding a note now and then. There was a gentleness to her that seemed worlds away from the unrepentant woman in the dock.
Sava glanced up. “Morning, Ms Bashir! Doctor Mason was just telling me about her new—”
Mason raised a finger to curving lips, and Sava’s gaze bounced briefly between us.
“Uh, never mind.” He tucked his notebook into his pack. “I’d better get Paku ready.”
He jogged away, and I raised an eyebrow at Mason.
“Should I be worried?”
“Always. If you’re not worried, you’re a fool.”
I bit back a retort. “Sava and I will be leaving with Doctor Seong now. Thank you for your hospitality.” Personally, I didn’t think a fusty lounge that was more fossilised chewing gum than textile counted as “hospitality”, but one thing I’d learned from my travels was, always be polite to your host, no matter how humble the offering. “Just one question. Why did you create the frogs in the first place? You had to know they’d be ineffective against mosquitos.”
Mason’s mouth quirked into a dangerous smile. “The frogs were just insurance.”
“Against what?”
“The madragonflies.”
Only then did I realise why this island brimmed with life amidst a desolate sea. Frogs preyed on dragonflies. And the monstrous frogs of this island kept the madragonflies at bay.
“But why create the madragonflies?”
“You really haven’t figured it out? The Draggers found a new reservoir of petroleum beneath the straits: they were going to drill and burn and make a bad situation hellish. You’re too young to remember when the seas turned to acid and the farms dried to dust, when our forebears filled with world with trash so they could have their smoked salmon and smartphones. They left us with a steaming mess and a teaspoon. ‘Bon appétit, kids, because it won’t be our problem’. The madragonflies kept a billion tonnes of CO2 out of that equation.”
I could feel the righteousness radiating from her, as though she were an iceberg charging an armada. You couldn’t reason with that kind of conviction, you couldn’t explain to her that she’d had no right to make that decision for all the people who’d lived here, for all the people still waiting for their five-yearly “hello”.
“I guess we all live with our decisions,” I said, “and the decisions others have made for us.”
Mason’s expression was inscrutable. An antique monitor began to beep, and she strode over.
“There’s a glider in range. See yourselves out; I have a backlog of shows to download.”
To my surprise, she tossed me her retractable baton. I stared dumbly at her for a moment.
“Don’t you need it?”
She didn’t look up from the flickering screen. “I’m working on something better.”
* * *
We reached The Crown without further incident, but Gus wasn’t answering my pings, and the glider signal was down to two dots.
“Everything all right?” said Seong.
I swung my attention back to the helm. “I’ve entered the coordinates for my destination, but your yacht sits lower than a speeder, so we’ll have to watch out for the reefs—”
My comms beeped, and the words incoming call floated from the screen. I quickly excused myself and slid into the cabin below deck. Squeezing around the full-sized bar, I swiped accept.
The cabin hazed into a sunny kitchen, and I was momentarily puzzled by the layer of dust on the breakfast table.
“Hey, Lani,” said Gus. “All good. Love you.” His voice rasped slightly, and dark circles shadowed his eyes. He cradled a cup of tea in his hands, although the lack of steam suggested it had gone cold some time ago.
“Hey, Gus. All good. Love you. Is everything okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s good to see you.”
“How did your pitch go?”
Gus rubbed his temples. “They’re going to fund my proposal. VisionVale are making it one of their flagship projects next year.”
“That’s wonderful. Right?”
“Yeah, just a lot of pressure.” His grip tightened around the teacup, and I wondered if his hands were trembling.
“You sure you’re okay? Do you want me to come back? I can—”
“I miss you, but I’m fine. Your sensei’s waiting for you.”
I reached over, my hand passing through his insubstantial fingers.
“Miss you too. I’ll see you—”
Gus and the kitchen vanished, leaving me in the silent cabin.
signal lost.
* * *
The deck wasn’t conducive to pacing, so I hovered beside Seong at the helm, pointing out helpful shortcuts on his display.
“No,” he said patiently. “That’s a reef. That’s another reef. That’s a whale shark. Please, it’s extremely distracting to have you twitching over my shoulder like a landed swordfish.”
“Then give me the helm.”
“I know perfectly well you’d drive my sweet yacht like an ice-breaker. I’ve read your reports, and I know what you do to expensive machinery.”
“It’s called field-testing—”
“I’m surprised Argus still gives you anything at all—” He stopped at my expression.
“Look,” I said, “you’re exhausted. Let me take the night shift, and I promise I’ll treat her with respect.”
Reluctantly, he relinquished the controls, muttering as he retreated to the cabin below. Behind me, a leather seat creaked, and Sava leaned against the siding.
“Your friend must be very special,” he said. “You’re going to a lot of trouble to see him.”
“I think that’s what it means, to be friends.”
Sava rested his chin on his arm, eyelids drooping shut. Perhaps contemplating my words, perhaps dozing somewhere not occupied by an alpacamel and a spa-bar.
We sailed through the night, and my eyes were a blurry wreck by the time our destination crept into view. Framed in a gold-dusted dawn, the island rolled with lightly wooded hills and rocky peaks, grasslands sloping into jagged umber spurs.
A thrill shivered over me as I stepped onto the gritty shore, and I could almost feel the island singing Welcome back, we’ve been waiting. The air was a lullaby of lapping waves and distant birdsong, and the serenity, the exquisite stillness, soaked me to the bone. I could see the same easeful wonder lighting Sava’s face as we hiked past towering boulders and into the canyons and crevasses of the central peak. The path twisted and narrowed, and overhead, steel cables stretched taut from rock to rock to form an irregular lattice. Further in, the passages were strung with cat’s cradles of cheese-wire, like the work of a large, drunken spider.
Sava scribbled furiously in his notebook. “Anti-madragonfly systems . . . ”
Paku skipped eagerly ahead, ducking and squeezing past the wires before disappearing over a dip at the end of the path. I chased after him, relief and joy finally bubbling up into laughter as I leapt over the ridge and into Sanctuary Valley. The ground sloped away into a wide bowl of tufted grass and wild daisies. Rocky escarpments cupped the valley, and a network of cables stretched from bluff to bluff, caging the sky. Paku charged int
o a drowsy herd of alpacamels, and after a disoriented moment, they broke into a chorus of delighted humming.
I sprinted towards the humble settlement of wooden houses and patchwork yurts. A sturdy woman abandoned her bucket by the well, rushing to greet me.
“Lani? What are you doing here? The other librarians have been and gone—”
“Ariel, I can’t stay long. Huiza, where is he?”
“He’s in his cottage. But Lani . . . ” I could already see the condolence in her eyes. “Go to him. I’ll look after your guests.”
* * *
Huiza sat up in bed, propped up by a mountain of colourfully woven cushions. His smile was just as keen, his eyes as kind, but his skin clung to his bones as though desperately binding him together.
“Lani, it’s nice to see you’re travelling with friends.”
His window faced the opposite direction, but legend held that as a boy, Huiza had mastered the art of strategically placed mirrors so he could read books and watch his family’s alpacamels at the same time.
I held his frail hands as tightly as I dared. “We have a boat. We can get you to the mainland—”
“You know that if I leave, there’ll be no returning. And I would draw my final breath beneath my father’s stars. My heart is a piece of the sky, as is yours.” Huiza curled his fingers around mine. “Tell me a story, Lani. One more time.”
I bowed my head, tamping down the rising grief.
“There once was a woman with a clouded heart. She was a little angry, a little lost. One day, a storm swept her to a hidden vale, a secret nursery of myths and legends, from where stories were sent out on wing and fin and hoof, to reach the farthest, most forgotten, edges of the world. And so colour seeped into this woman’s heart, and she found purpose and wisdom—”
“And friends. Friends are the best part of any story.”
Sniffing messily, I choked on a laugh despite myself, patting his hands tenderly.
“Yes. Yes they are.”
* * *
I let the warm night dry my tears, and as the sky paled, Sava joined me on the grassy slope.
“Couldn’t sleep either,” said Sava. “Ariel and Pablo told me your friend is sick. I’m sorry.”
“At least I was able to see him.”
For a long while, the only sound was the gentle snuffling of slumbering alpacamels.
“Ms Bashir, I want to stay here.”
My headache thundered a fraction harder.
“You could stay too,” Sava continued. “And Doctor Seong—”
“There are five permanent residents on this island—soon to be four. No schools, no hospitals, no access to the mainland or the cirrus—”
“But I’m happy here—”
“Happiness isn’t a place. It’s the life you build and the people you build it with. If you want to stay, I won’t force you to leave, but this isn’t the home you’re searching for. It’s just another refuge, a place to hide so you won’t have to move on.”
Sava sat, pale and silent. Suddenly, the clicker in my pocket emitted a stream of frantic beeps, rattling out an automated message from the nearest perimeter buoy.
madragonflies incoming.
I sucked in a sharp breath.
“Sava, go to Ariel.” I bolted away down the ridge. “Take care, and I’ll see you in five years.”
* * *
Seong was already unmooring The Crown when I galloped Paku on deck. He raised an eyebrow at Sava’s absence, but didn’t comment.
“It’ll take us eight hours to get out of madragonfly territory,” he said, “and the swarm will overtake us in two. But if we set the autopilot, we can barricade ourselves downstairs—”
“But if they destroy the autopilot controls, then we’re dead in the water. Give me the helm.”
“Lani, you’re—”
Footsteps pounded down the path towards us, and Sava rounded the bend. “Wait!”
“Get back to the valley!” I ordered, the yacht already pulling further from the shore.
Sava raced desperately along the rising cliffs, and with a ragged gasp and a gut-wrenching leap, he cleared the gnashing rocks and thudded onto the deck.
“Sava—!”
“Lani, not now!” said Seong. “Take the wheel.”
Gritting my teeth, I kicked the motor into gear and roared towards open water, picking up speed until the wind screamed past. I engaged the boosters, gripping the wheel as we bore down on the first reef.
“Keep Paku calm and hold onto something.”
The bow lifted from the water and the yacht lurched with a nauseating crunch as we scraped over the submerged building. We charged through reef after reef until the hull of The Crown was a shredded mess. I could hear the hiss and thrum of the self-sealing fibres and emergency pumps, and I made a woozy note to write the manufacturer a favourable review.
We were thirty minutes from the edge of madragonfly territory when the thrumming air took on a dissonant note. I glanced over my shoulder to see a shifting swarm darkening the sky. Cold sweat writhed down my back as I urged the yacht onward, hurtling over another reef.
Ahead, a white plume misted, and a speeder roared towards us before drawing alongside The Crown. At the wheel sat a woman with dark brown skin and an expression like hell on a deadline.
“The madragonflies are on your six!” she bellowed. “Ditch your cargo—legal or illegal—I don’t give a rat’s. Lose it now, by order of—” The woman stopped suddenly. “Lani?”
“Arjana!” I struggled to keep the wheel steady. “Long story. No time. Go ahead, we’ll follow.”
Arjana glanced at the seething horizon, then back at our limping yacht, rapidly doing the maths. “Oh, Lani . . . ”
“One favour,” I said. “Take the boy?”
Arjana pulled the speeder in close, holding out her hand.
“I’m not leaving,” said Sava. “I know what you mean now, about happiness not being a place—”
“You made a promise to your mother, Sava. Make sure Arjana gets home safe. Do that for me.”
He looked ready to argue, but surprisingly, slid into the narrow space behind Arjana without further protest. As the speeder roared away, I poured my energies into keeping the yacht moving. Behind us, closing fast, metallic red carapaces glinted like fire on the waves, wings slicing the air, serrated mouths churning.
We crashed over another reef, and the motor gave a guttural groan before half-heartedly catching on fire. The yacht drifted into a slow spin, and I sagged, breathless, against the dash.
“Care for a drink?” said Seong.
We took Paku and locked ourselves in the leaking cabin. Soon, the rattle of breaking glass and rending wood shuddered from above.
“I’ll bet the bar doesn’t seem so silly now,” said Seong, starting on his second bottle of cognac.
I nursed a beer, trying not to listen as the returning swarm pulverised the yacht.
“Cillian, I’m so sorry . . . ”
“There are worse ways to die. Abscess, now that’s nasty.”
I took another swig of beer, ignoring the seawater inching up my thighs. “Why did you take Sava to Dreamer’s Shore?”
Seong’s bottle paused at his lips. “He was wasting away in that camp. He has a poet’s soul, that boy, a born wanderer. He reminded me of you.”
I swirled my bottle thoughtfully, and finally tilted it towards Seong. “To old friends.” With a wry smile, and a clink, we drank to bittersweet endings.
Suddenly, the yacht lurched, and my emergency radio chittered, stopped, then chittered again.
come up. now.
Seong and I exchanged a glance, but Paku was already staggering up the stairs in response to the knocking at the hatch. I clambered out into a burst of salt spray and a smell like burning metal.
Snap!
A baton lashed past and a madragonfly thudded to the deck, fizzling unpleasantly. A compact submersible bobbed in the water: barely three metres across, it sported articulated
legs and webbed feet uncannily like a frog’s. Electrified tentacles studded the hull, jetting out to fry any madragonfly that ventured too near. Through the curved windscreen, I could see Mason at the controls.
Sava took my hand. “It’ll be a squeeze, but we’ve made enough room for Paku.”
* * *
As it turned out, Paku had to ride in something labelled specimen hold, but I was too exhausted to ask questions. Mason took us to the edge of the straits, where Arjana was waiting with a small flotilla of coracles, medics, and a slightly disappointed mortician.
Details were foggy, but apparently, Sava had used Arjana’s emergency radio to contact Mason, who’d driven the submersible to meet them. Sava had then directed Mason to our location, while Arjana went for help.
We didn’t linger at the isle after that. Just long enough to collect my pod-cart and catch the next helioship out. My thoughts kept turning to gnarled hands, cold cups of tea, and pieces of sky.
“Would you like to see where I live?” I asked Sava.
“That’d make me very happy,” he replied.
“I’m headed that way anyway,” said Seong.
I cut short the rest of my itinerary, stopping only to drop off the books I’d promised each community, although I was surprised by the number of people who had packages awaiting me. As the pod-cart emptied, it filled again with bundles of paper and string and wondrous worlds.
We rode through pasturelands powered by the biogas from ripening cheeses, past rugged bluffs feathered with wind turbines. We soared over the towers of Manhatlantis, a sunken city holding the sea at bay with translucent walls of graphite gel. Mason was partly right—our grandparents had erred, but while some had scorched the earth behind them, others had planted seeds of innovation and hope. Now, we rode on the wings of the sun and built cities tangled in the glitter of the ocean.
Three weeks later, we stepped off a helioship and into the heart of Biophany City. Bougainvillea cascaded from every roof, and lemon trees shaded the community gardens that enfolded every pub and office. Everything smelled of fresh coriander and chives, tomato vines and lemongrass. I could almost hear the creak and wriggle of green things thriving.
