Pellen’s looks were nothing, and his conversation was just as plain, but he was kind and brought me flowers at every visit. I grew ill, I thought with the Disease, and would often retch immediately after he left.
“Marry him and move to your own flat!” Embo ordered. “Your malaise is making me ill.”
I assumed my days were limited, and grew indifferent to how they would be spent. Within a week, I was married to Pellen, and six months later, instead of dying, I produced a tiny and sickly infant boy.
The Disease didn’t take me after all, although it eventually claimed the King, on the same night as the fire’s embers flamed bright, and my son nearly died during one of his odd spells.
Chapter 19: Sandy
When I was fifteen, my dad walked away from a non-illustrious career in the SpaceForce. He’d been turned down for several promotions, probably because he wasn’t all that great of an officer. He was argumentative and opinionated, filled with ideas that weren’t politically correct and happy to argue about them long after everyone else had moved on. In addition, Dad had a chip on his shoulder the size of a battlecruiser because my mom was more successful, having been a captain already for many years.
“What do you think, Sandy?” he asked, showing me a pic of an old freightplane that looked like a deathtrap and was worth more in metal scrap than it ever would have been hauling goods in space.
I responded with some kind of noise, neither happy nor sad, not that Dad would have cared what I thought. He had already made the decision.
I was offered a chance to go live with my mom, even though she hadn’t communicated with me beyond a birthday card since she dumped me at the age of eight.
However, we considered it briefly. In fact, Jill and I went on a vacation to Earth and made our best effort to reconnect. Unfortunately, we failed miserably at it.
If I had been given a choice, I would have preferred to have been cut loose, left to wander the galaxy on my own, searching for the place I was supposed to be, because it sure wasn’t with either parent.
Ever since my earliest memory, I had always felt like I didn’t belong. Maybe, I was a mental case from my mother’s inattention, or the lack of paternal figure in my infancy. Or, maybe, I was just a mental case, hearing a voice in my head, who whispered whenever it was quiet, calling to me when I tried to sleep.
When I was ten, Dad showed me an old Imperial coin, and when I first touched it, the whispering voice started to scream. In the back of my brain, an old memory, an old feeling appeared from nowhere.
I knew someone related to this coin, but who it was appeared fuzzy and just out of reach. These sensations both frightened and intrigued me at the same time.
“Sandy’s always got some weird thoughts going on in her head,” Wen used to say whenever I would zone out during a conversation to listen to the mysterious voice that no one else heard.
Noodnick would nod. He understood. Sometimes, I thought the voice was speaking to him, too.
As I grew older, these confusing sensations abated, for the most part. By the time I was well into my teen years, I decided that I had been nothing more than a totally messed up little kid. There was nothing calming about the coin and it didn’t really work with my fashion statement, so I stopped wearing it and found a skull and spiked dog collar to wear instead.
Dad purchased the freightplane from a guy on the Internet, who sent him the door codes and told us to pick it up at Spacebase 41-B. Although, he used all the funds he had saved for my college tuition, I didn’t care as I wasn’t going to go to college anyway.
“Don’t worry, pumpkin,” Dad assured me. “Hauling freight, we’ll make the money back in spades, and if we don’t, you can always go to the SpaceForce Academy for free.”
The last thing I wanted was to follow in both Mommy and Daddy’s footsteps, so attending the SpaceForce Academy, even for free, would be an option that ranked lower than death. I wasn’t about to tell Dad that though as he was stressed and very busy dealing with his new freightplane, The Flying Mule, otherwise known as a piece of junk with engines and a cargo bay.
“It’s sound...sort of,” Wen said, gazing up at the hull. Like Dad, he had resigned his commission, and along with Noodnick, they made up our crew. “It flew here, didn’t it? It’s got all of its safety equipment on board.”
Noodnick nodded, even though he was also rolling his eyes.
“I think it’s great,” Dad exclaimed. “Now, all we need is some cargo. Let’s go up to the bar and see if we can round up some business.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” Wen cried, knocking his heels together and saluting.
In the meantime, in my head, I heard Noodnick, “What a farce.”
I laughed and he smiled because only the two of us were in on this joke.
As Dad and Wen began to walk away, I called after them, “What about me? I’m not exactly old enough to go in the bar.”
For a moment, Dad looked confused as if he couldn’t quite remember who I was. Then, reaching in his pocket, he pulled out a ten credit note.
“Go get yourself some food and meet us back here in two hours.”
So there I was, alone on a spacebase, with money in my pocket. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to buy me a ticket to anywhere else. Frankly, all I could afford was a chocolate milkshake and large order of French fries.
Having acquired both, I wandered the base, searching for a quiet spot to sit and listen to my music. The arcade and shopping decks were overcrowded with too many creatures and too many smells. All I wanted was to be alone among the stars, rocking out to the tunes blasting in my head, briefly, letting me forget both who and where I was.
I wandered up to the observation deck, only to discover it was blocked off with scaffolding and yellow tape. Not one to be deterred by a Do Not Enter sign even though it was written in one hundred and forty-seven languages, I slipped beneath and strolled along the base’s topmost deck.
Gazing down at the hordes of people loitering in the shopping mall, I briefly considered what would happen if I climbed upon the rail and took a dive. Not that I would ever really do it, but I wondered.
“You will fly,” a voice said.
“What?”
Now, the voice laughed, which irritated me to no end since it was doing so entirely inside my head. I could hear him even though I was wearing my earbuds and my tunes were cranked on high, blocking out all external noise from my surroundings.
“Come here,” he called, interrupting a song by one of my favorite bands.
I tried to ignore him, because after all, he was an integral part of my self-diagnosed psychosis. However, he was persistent, calling to me even louder than the bass drumbeat in the song.
“I’m busy,” I protested, eating my fries and drinking my shake.
“No, you’re not.” That obnoxious figment of my imagination broke into hysterical peals of laughter. When he had finished yucking it up, which incidentally, coincided with the end of the song, he very loudly proclaimed in the back of my brain to come hither.
“Where?” I demanded, relenting, because there was only so much fighting I could do with my fabricated demon.
“Up,” he said.
“Up?” Up, as in the top of the scaffolding on the very rooftop of this spacebase near the air conditioning vent?
Actually, I wasn’t really surprised to see a guy sitting up there. At this point, I was so well into my mental illness, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a gorilla in clown suit, or a donkey sitting on an elephant’s back.
Abandoning all reason, what little I had left, as well as the remains of the milkshake and fries, I climbed up the scaffolding’s girders as if this was a perfectly natural thing to do. The transit took me about ten minutes, and as I reached hand over hand, rung to rung, it occurred to me I might be suffering from a form of space sickness instead.
Supposedly, I was immune to it, having been raised completely in space, but strange things still happened now and again, and this mi
ght have been one of them. I resolved that when I returned home, which I guessed would now be the Flying Mule, I would google everything I could about space sickness and interstellar psychosis in teenagers of human genetics.
“Hello,” he said, smiling broadly with straight white teeth and the strangest multi-colored eyes I could ever have imagined.
“Hello.” I greeted him as well, trying to perch upon the girder in the same way he did. The metal beams were not only uncomfortable, but icy cold, cutting into the back of my legging-clad thighs.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked as I studied his face, trying to recall if we had ever met.
I’d known a lot of guys over the years, having been raised on two starships and enrolled in the SpaceForce educational system. However, a guy with his wavy black hair and weird eyes, I couldn’t recall. Yet, there was something about him that was niggling at the back of my brain, and for some odd reason, that old coin kept coming to mind.
“Nope.” I shook my head. “But, you know who I am, apparently.”
“I do.” Then, he smiled again and I decided, whoever he was, this guy was pretty hot. Probably, he was too hot for a red-headed, freckled, geeky girl from space, even though now I was still in the midst of my Goth phase.
He was strongly built with long limbs and muscles, and his black hair looked a lot more natural than mine. He also had the coolest bird tattoo on the back of his left shoulder.
“I am waiting for you,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Why? I’m already here.” I held out my hand, but wasn’t sure I wanted to touch him.
“I am waiting for you,” he repeated, placing his palm against mine. It shocked me like a tiny lightning bolt, which sent a wave of electricity into the middle of my brain.
For a moment, I thought I was going to fall off the girder and into the crowds far below. My heart began to race as my head flooded with vague images, sounds and smells, all familiar, yet forgotten from somewhere else.
“Hey,” I gasped, once my eyesight had cleared. “Tell me who you are! What do you want from me?”
Unfortunately, I discovered I was completely alone, at least as far as this girder was concerned. I sat there and took deep breaths, counting to a hundred, until my heart returned to a somewhat normal rhythm. Then, even though my hands were shaking and my knees were weak, I managed to safely climb back down to the floor.
Once my feet were on the ground, I tossed the greasy fries and melted shake into the trash.
“Never again,” I decided, “will I eat fast food in space.”
“There you are, Sandy.” Dad waved as I stepped off the lift, returning to my new home, the Flying Mule.
Noodnick was overseeing pallets of sealed crates as they were loaded into the Mule’s freight bay. On the side, in seven languages, the pallets were stamped with ‘Cantaloupe’ or ‘Watermelon’.
“Fruit?” I murmured, coming up beside Nood. “Won’t it go bad?”
“Guns,” Noodnick replied inside my head, prompting me to wonder if Noodnick was acquainted with black-haired guy who also spoke directly into my mind.
“Sandy, I want you to meet our new navigator,” Dad called, pulling me away before Noodnick had a chance to respond. “This is Taul. He knows this sector inside and out. Taul, this is my daughter, Sandy. She’s fifteen years old.” Dad said this last part with a little chuckle as if to warn Taul against making a pass at me. Not that he would. Taul looked at least twenty-four or twenty-five.
“Sandy?” Taul repeated with his eyes wide open. “Your name is Sandy? But...”
“But what? You’ve got a problem with that?” I interrupted, tired of guys who apparently knew me from a past life.
“It’s short for Cassandra.” Dad wrapped his arm around my shoulder, just as the last pallet was loaded aboard. I shrugged him off and glared at the both of them, crossing my arms and daring anyone to violate my personal space.
“I have something for you,” Taul said, digging into his knapsack and producing a pair of chess pieces, the black king and white queen from a fancy marble set. “I was asked to bring these to you. He said specifically they are for Sandy.”
I took them, and held them in my hand, feeling the marble warm to my touch. On the bottom of each piece, stamped in gold, was the same crest on the backside of Dad’s antique Imperial coin. Something stirred in me, a distant memory, an image obscured by fog, voices, sounds and feelings that I knew I didn’t want again.
“No, thank you.” I handed the chess pieces back to Taul.
“But,” Taul insisted. “I brought them all the way from...”
“I said no thanks!” I nearly shouted, as Wen waved from the cockpit door.
“We’re ready to go, Captain Lancelot! Time to release this pony from her stall.”
“All aboard, crew,” Dad ordered, ending the discussion by pushing me up the boarding steps. “Let’s take all these fruits to space.”
Chapter 20: Ailana
Embo, foolish woman that she was, came back for me instead of escaping into the woods with my husband and our children. Why? I didn't know. I certainly wouldn't have done the same for her.
“We're sisters,” she said, even though we weren't. “I would never leave you behind. Get up. We must hurry.”
I was still sitting upon the floor where Pellen had left me after carrying my son away to a cruel and certain death. Why didn’t he see how much better it would have been to let me be the one to take my child’s life? Amyr would have died peacefully, warm in my embrace, leaving from my arms to the afterlife, secure in my love.
“I am not going to the forest,” I declared, rising to my feet. The floor was dirty and beneath the sofa was a thick mat of dust and crumbs.
“What are you doing?” Embo shrieked. “Have you gone mad? Sweeping at a time like this, when the Korelesk army is but steps away from our door?”
She rushed at me, while I was taking the broom from the closet, before I had even begun to brush it against the filthy floor. There we stood fighting for it, each of us grasping at the handle, wrestling, and yelling as we did when we were children.
What a sight to see we must have been for the Korelesk army, when they burst through our door moments later. Here were two crazy women battling over a broom, ignoring them completely though they pointed their guns at our chests.
It was only when one man started laughing so raucously, we heard his voice over the noise of our own shouts, that Embo let go of my broom and began to scream in fear.
“Oh, shut up, Embo!” I snapped, now sweeping the floor as if my life depended upon it.
I didn’t pay any attention to the men in my living room, as I was already lost in my own world, lost in time and space. When they proclaimed Embo ugly and shot her twice through the head and chest, I thought only of how her blood was making a mess.
Me, they thought beautiful, and me, they decided to use, but I didn’t care for my mind was far away. I couldn’t have stopped them in any case. A broom handle was no defense against a gun, so compliantly, my body let them, and I lived.
My memories of what happened next were vague, unformed shapes, and distant feelings of coldness, stifling heat, rancorous smells, hunger and thirst. With others in a truck, I was taken from my village in Farku to a camp somewhere in the countryside of Korelesk.
There, I recalled stumbling across frozen ground in shoeless feet. I was washed in a frigid shower, clothed in rags that had belonged to someone else. After which, I was guided to a dorm and a cot, where I sat, preoccupied with my garment’s holes.
If I only had a bit of thread, I would have repaired this torn blouse, for the holes were large and though the fabric was thin, it would mend well. Grandmother would never have let me go out in something as poor as this. Grandmother would have snapped at me and thrust a needle in my hand.
“Fix it immediately!” she would have ordered. “Sew them up! No child of mine will go out in public looking like a pauper. Recall that I have a Royal Seal upon my d
oor from the Empress Sara. Neither you nor your cousin Embo will disgrace it in this way. If you do, I shall throw you out upon the street.”
“I am already on the street, Grandmother,” I replied, following a long line of women to a workroom that was filled with tables and chairs.
Now, once again, I had in my hand that familiar needle and spool of thread.
How long I remained in this place, I could not say, but neither was it much different from my years spent at the Imperial Palace. Each day, I arose and sewed uniforms for Korelesk, and each night, I returned to the hard wooden bunk I shared with another woman.
I aged, and my bones ached. My hair grew thin and I lost three teeth, all of which were in the back so they did not tarnish my once beautiful smile. I grew thinner still, until the rags hung like empty shirts on a drying line. Despite my appearance, somehow, I drew the attention of the Duke, who summoned me one day while surveying the workroom.
He had been standing with our foreman, conversing quietly among themselves, when the foreman raised his hand, his finger clearly pointing at me.
“You,” he called. “Come here. Bring your needles and your thread.”
I looked about me, and behind me. Surely, I was not the one so singularly designated.
“Are you stupid, Karut?” the foreman taunted. “Or, can you not hear my voice? Choose another, m’lord. That one clearly has no clue.”
“No,” the Duke replied, his familiar leering smile seeping across his face. “You have said she stitches better than any other. I will have the best, or none at all.”
Slowly, hesitantly, I rose from my chair and pocketed my tools. Although, I held no love for the workroom, or the many men’s uniforms on my table, at that moment, I would gladly have forfeit this honor to another girl.
The Duke was little changed from the last time we had met. His belly was still large and overbearing, his hair long and thin, and in need of a wash. His eyes were cold and colorless, with no sign of recognition at my face. This calmed me a bit, for though my task may have only been to sew, I feared he meant to use me in the manner he had once professed.
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