Reading the Wind (Silver Ship)

by Brenda Cooper

  I reached out and embraced his energy, so that he and I and the ship were together one being, and I held tight, knowing that soon enough it would be just me and Creator, and all of us on board her.

  Maybe we could beat the mercenaries.

  PART FIVE

  THE STRANGERS

  26

  NEW BEGINNINGS

  For the first time in a week, the sun shone warm and strong. We had survived winter. Back home the bands would be gathering without us.

  Liam and I walked slowly, hand in hand, up the path toward home. We’d stolen quiet time together, still vexed by uncertainty over how to treat Kayleen. “So you still aren’t sure what you want to do?” I asked.

  “No. Yes. I hate this.” His face grew softer. “The Kayleen I know now wouldn’t have kidnapped us.”

  “I know.” And he’d been spending more time with her. I decided not to push him, sure that time would draw us all together. Maybe I was ready. “It’s good to dry out.”

  “Survival of the soaked.” As Kayleen had called our experiences this winter. “At least we didn’t starve.”

  “We do seem to be stuck here,” I said.

  “Yes.” He glanced up at the mountains, their snowy tops so bright he had to squint. Sunshine warmed the rocks and called new green shoots out of the damp earth.

  Spring had woken more than plants. The ground shivered under us for the second time that day, knocking me from my feet. Liam grimaced as he offered me a hand up. “I don’t like this.”

  “Me either.”

  We found Kayleen with Windy in the paddock, crooning at the now full-height hebra as if she were a child. Kayleen looked concerned as we came up. “Windy hates the quakes. I’m scared she’ll break through the fence.”

  Liam clambered up on the bars. “She seems pretty spooked. It’s not as if she’s never felt an earthquake.”

  Kayleen worked at a tangle in Windy’s greenish-white beard. “These are worse than the last ones.”

  Liam eyed rocks jutting from the sheer mountainside above us. He frowned. “We should move away from the cliffs.”

  Windy grabbed our attention. She jerked her head up, extending her neck so she looked out above us by almost a meter. Her nostrils distended and she stamped her right front hoof twice. Liam spoke quietly to Kayleen. “Get the long-line. I want to move into the open between the waterfall and the path.”

  Kayleen vaulted over the rails and returned quickly with the longest lead we had. I opened the gate to let her through. The ground shivered again. As Windy bolted toward the opening I kicked the gate shut. The hebra bugled as she fetched up hard against the barrier. Kayleen, who had kept her feet, threw the rope over Windy’s neck and used it to gently tug the hebra’s head down far enough to grab her halter and clip on the lead.

  Before I had the gate more than a quarter open, Windy raced through it, pulling Kayleen quickly behind her. Liam and I scrambled after them.

  We’d only gotten a few meters when the earth heaved. A loud rumble startled me. I looked up just as the cliff above the waterfall slumped, pouring down, mixing with the waterfall, a great clashing and rattling of rocks.

  We scrambled to the biggest open spot in West Home: the small clearing we’d seen the tall-beasts grazing in when we first found the valley.

  Windy pranced, edging away. Kayleen lay on the ground, holding the end of the lead taut, calling, “Windy! Windy! Stop.” The hebra stopped, then bolted the other direction, nearly running over Kayleen.

  A huge rumbling cracked the air open, loud enough that I clapped my hands over my ears.

  Liam pointed west. The sky above the Fire River billowed with black clouds. “Eruption,” he gasped.

  As if to underscore his words, the ground shivered yet again. And continued. We were all on the ground except Windy, who had pulled free of Kayleen but stopped nearby, her feet braced, the whites of her eyes showing.

  We held position for long moments, the ground bucking under us. A tree toppled and fell into its neighbors.

  A gray-black cloud billowed impossibly high before it spread, staining the sky.

  Small rocks rattled down from the cliff. A boulder twice my size landed in the middle of the paddock, narrowly missing the fence.

  The three of us huddled close. Liam put one arm around each of us, keeping his eyes on the sky.

  The earthquakes had stopped.

  We scrambled up, shaking, all of us staring, transfixed by the huge column of steam. “Be glad the wind’s blowing away from us,” Liam said.

  Kayleen recovered Windy, keeping her close. The hebra sniffed at the air, head and ears up, butting close to Kayleen.

  Liam braved a short trip to the house, immediately returning to our side with water. He sat, furiously drawing in his journal, sketching the sky and the clouds, and the way the waterfall now fell onto a huge boulder and splashed to the edges of the pool.

  I moved next to Kayleen, scratching Windy’s flank, trying to soothe the frightened beast.

  A few birds began tentative notes, a sign of calm, but nowhere near the normal raucous chattering.

  Kayleen leaned into me. “I’m scared, Chelo. That’s not too near, but what if the peak above us goes? Does one eruption spawn another?”

  I reached for her hand. “I don’t know. It scares me, too. It’s worse than demon dogs. Did you check the perimeter?”

  She handed me Windy’s lead and closed her eyes. “It’s okay. One node isn’t reporting in, but two others patched around it. I’ll look at it.” She opened her eyes and shivered. “Later. When I’m sure it’s safe.”

  As if we were ever sure of safety here.

  By mid-afternoon, Islandia had calmed except for the great dark cloud eating more and more of the sky. “Come on, Kayleen,” I said. “Let’s put Windy away and make something to eat. I’m starved.”

  She stared up at the ridge above us, shaking her head.

  Liam closed his journal. “I have a better idea. Let’s take some snacks and walk down-valley. We’ll still be in the open that way, and I want to find a place to see better.”

  We followed his plan, except that Windy and Kayleen took off at a run and we raced behind them, making it down to the sea in less than an hour. We fetched up a few yards from the cliffs, looking back toward Islandia’s teeth. Ridges and small hills blocked a clear view. All we could tell was that the eruption had happened near Blaze. Liam snorted. “I think we’d have to go down to where we camped and saw the river for a good view.” He glanced up and down the coastline. “And I don’t think we should do that now.”

  “I don’t want to get any closer,” I said.

  Kayleen nodded, still clutching Windy tight, her brow damp with sweat. “We could camp out here. I can go back and get gear.”

  “No.” The eruption cloud had started to darken the sky above us. “I’d rather risk rock falls at West Home than demon dogs, and besides, I think the wind is changing.”

  Before we made it halfway home, walking this time, white and gray ash fell like snow. It snuck into our noses and mouths so we coughed and spat into the ash-fogged air, which stank of fire. We tied our shirts over our mouths to breathe and stopped from time to time to wipe Windy’s face.

  We saw almost nothing but each other, ghostly and insubstantial, shuffling through ash almost to our ankles by the time we reached the rocky part of the path that led into our hidden valley.

  Once more, we had almost lost each other. The thought made it hard to breathe. What if one of us died? If we had been in the paddock when the rock fell? What then?

  I held Kayleen’s hand as we walked home, soothing its trembling.

  We rigged a tarp over part of Windy’s paddock, using the new rock as one of the anchor points. Liam and I brought the hebra food and water and we stayed with her under the tarp, making a meal of stored nuts, dried fruit, and grazer jerky.

  Liam sat between Kayleen and me. He gave me a tender smile, then leaned over to her, whispering, “Turn around.”
r />   She did, and he gently massaged her stiff shoulders. She leaned back against him, making small sounds of relief.

  As night fell, the wind stopped. Ash still floated down in a thin curtain, like white feathers coating everything in fine dust.

  Windy folded her long legs under her and lay down. Kayleen rose and stroked her head, brushing out thick clumps of ash. She dunked a corner of her shirt into Windy’s water, using the damp rag to wipe the hebra’s eyes and nostrils.

  “We should go in,” Liam said.

  Kayleen glanced at Windy, who sat placidly enough under the makeshift tent. Apparently reassured, she nodded.

  In the cabin, we stripped out of our ashy clothes, leaving a pile on the floor. Liam laughed. “Look at yourselves.”

  “And you.” I blushed. Our skin had whitened with the winter, contrasting with white-gray ash stuck in every place that had been exposed, including our breasts and torsos, bare since we’d used our shirts to breathe though. Kayleen’s dark hair looked gray. I grabbed a drying skin. “Last one to the pool has to make breakfast tomorrow!”

  It wasn’t me. I made it in first, jumping deep into the shivery-cold snow-melt water at the edge, immersing my hair and releasing great clumps of sticky ash from it underwater. Two well-timed splashes told me Kayleen and Liam would both be making breakfast.

  We emerged together, coughing and spluttering from the cold water. A slight breeze blew warm air over my skin. We stood a little apart from each other, naked and small and still slightly ashy. I picked up my skin and began drying Liam’s legs. Kayleen stood, watching us. She picked up her own skin and worked on his back. I glanced up at him to see how he felt, noticing a small smile. He looked carefully at me, a question in his eyes.

  I nodded, and then looked away, briefly unsure. The skin made soft shushing sounds against his calves and then his thighs, and the same sounds where Kayleen worked on his shoulders. Liam’s breath grew faster.

  When we had finished drying him, his voice sounded thick as he suggested, “Kayleen next. She’s shivering.”

  So I was last. The movement of their hands and the soft skins against my body felt like fire. By the time the two of them had finished rubbing me dry, my insides were warmer than I expected.

  Ash still fell from time to time. I looked over at Liam. “We’d best go in before we have to get clean all over again.”

  He smiled. His voice shook slightly. “That might not be too bad.”

  My voice sounded small in return. “Surely we don’t need to set a watch tonight. The perimeter works, and even the dogs won’t be out in this.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t suppose we do.”

  Walking back, we each took one of Kayleen’s hands.

  I had been right. The dogs left us alone and the perimeter remained silent all night as ash fell silently outside the cabin windows.

  We barely noticed it.

  27

  VISITORS

  Our fire licked at the wood, rising two meters into the sky, warning predators away from our kills. The carcasses of two young grazers lay behind me, gutted and cut up to pack onto Windy in the morning. Another year had passed on Islandia, with one more eruption, somewhere on the side of the island we couldn’t reach because of the Fire River, two meteor showers, and one storm so severe it had washed part of the cliff down onto our house, staving in a wall.

  We were trying to finish hunting early this season. Kayleen’s swelling belly proclaimed that her baby would be born soon, sometime midsummer, and my own would be a few months behind, at best.

  My baby kicked, a tiny flutter that I had just begun to feel from time to time. I held my hand over my stomach, barely bigger than normal yet. We hadn’t been sure if we could breed, given how little we actually knew about our own genetic modifications. Perhaps we would end up with a colony here, after all.

  Even if we could get back, Artistos leaders had warned us against having children. The babies were clear evidence of our three-way relationship, which wouldn’t be any more welcome at home than our progeny.

  The thought made me miss home. The sharp pain of loss at all those we might never see again poked at me, and I stood, tending the fire, struggling to feel hope. If only we had gone with Joseph.

  I waited until the sky turned pale with dawn to wake the others. The Fire River had again been taken back by the daylight, its red glow unable to compete with the bright sunlight. We had just finished packing camp when Windy’s ears flattened against her head and she stopped dead in her tracks.

  Nothing seemed out of place.

  There was no nearby cover to hide big predators.

  Liam looked up, and then I heard it too, up and across the river. All three of us all pointed at once. A noisy speck in the sky, growing bigger.

  Windy bugled and stamped. Kayleen whispered to her, calming. I didn’t look—I couldn’t take my eyes from the ship.

  For that was what we saw. A spaceship.

  Perhaps it was Joseph, returning. My heart caught in my throat, then fell again as the speck grew big enough for me to see that it was both wider and squatter than the New Making. Certainly, it wasn’t from Artistos. Maybe Joseph had come back in a different ship?

  It flew over our heads, heading toward Golden Cat Valley, and certainly past it, low enough that it must be looking for a landing site. It disappeared from view. We stood together, struck even dumber by the sight of the spaceship than by the lava river the night before. “It could be Joseph,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Liam said, his voice doubtful. “We can’t know.” He looked down into my eyes. “Don’t hope too much. It wasn’t the New Making.”

  I bit my lip, nodding.

  No need for discussion. We settled into a fast jog that we could keep up for hours, even pregnant.

  We kept to the shore, staying in the open and avoiding the more dangerous forest because of the meat we carried. At one point, we crossed a wooden bridge we’d built over the river Kayleen and I had fallen into the previous summer. At the wide opening where Golden Cat Valley emptied into the grasslands, we stopped at the obvious turn, eyeing the path to West Home.

  “We have to go home,” Liam said. “Windy’s tired, and I don’t want to come up on strangers in the dark.”

  I sighed, noting wryly to myself that the hebra actually looked fresher than any of us. “I so want to know if it’s Joseph.”

  Liam put an arm around me. “Why would he land here? Why not on Artistos? The ship came from very high, from space. So it meant to land here. Joseph would surely have gone home.”

  I leaned into him. “Why would any ship come here? We’ve seen the satellite shots—we’ve left plenty of mark on Jini. Artistos and the spaceport are clearly visible. So the ship must be avoiding Artistos, or looking for us.”

  Liam licked his lips and stared off in the direction the strange ship had gone. “If it’s not Joseph, I’m not sure we’ll be happy to find out who it is.”

  Kayleen and I glanced at each other. She looked shaky as she said, “The last ship that came here brought our parents, and a war.”

  He nodded. “Whatever this ship brought, we can find out tomorrow.”

  We climbed up the rocky entrance to West Home just before dark filled our small valley. It looked just like we had left it. The noisy waterfall caught the last bits of light in its spray.

  We had fallen out of the habit of setting watches all night, every night. It hadn’t seemed necessary after Kayleen tuned the perimeter.

  But that night we did two strange things. We again set up watches, and we didn’t light a fire.

  28

  THE DAWNFORCE

  I always chose last watch for love of the peaceful, pregnant moment of the crack between day and night. This morning, I fidgeted, wanting daylight to come early. I searched the shadows around the corral. Nothing seemed unusual or out of place.

  Except that the whole world had changed. Was this ship from Deerfly, like Traveler, or from Silver’s Home, or from somewhere e
lse? Why were they here?

  What did this mean for our babies?

  The last ships had brought war and death and pain and confusion.

  Did people fight everywhere, or were there planets where everyone got along? We had enough history databases that I knew the former was more likely than the latter, but surely, somewhere, a planet spun peacefully around a gentle sun and no one fought.

  Light crept down-cliff, painting the sharp rocks and soft green vines with gold.

  Liam came blinking out the door, stretching before he walked over to me. He smelled of sleep and sweat and, a little, of Kayleen as he folded me in his arms. “I love you,” he whispered.

  As always, the words tore tenderness from me. And swelling up through my thick throat, the return words, “I love you.”

  He kissed my forehead and pulled away. “You and Kayleen and Windy should stay here. It’s hidden. I can sneak out and take a look.”

  I shook my head. “I want to stay together. We have no idea who these people are. What if…what if something happens and you get caught? What if you get killed, and we never know?”

  He glanced toward the house where Kayleen still rested under the covers, her dark hair visible through the window. “We need to decide together.”

  “I know.” Silence fell for long moments between us, like a pause before a wind storm.

  The door opened. Kayleen called out, “Good morning,” the words sounding like a question.

  I smiled. “Good morning. We were just deciding what to do.”

  She came to us, her hair mussed from sleep, one hand covering her belly. We brought her into our hug. The light had come up far enough to see fear touching the corners of her mouth and filling her eyes. “What should we do?” I asked.

  Windy wandered over, butting Kayleen softly with her head, wanting her share. Kayleen reached toward her, but pulled away, squeezing her eyes shut.

  Her voice cracked the still peace, high and intense. “There’s something in Golden Cat Valley.” When she opened her eyes, all softness had been replaced by the alertness of a wild animal. “I need to go see what it is.”