Blood paths.
And I would think, always, Is this the path of my children, if ever I should have them? Would their feet ever imprint on sand that does not wash away after two turnings of the moon?
The lights scud toward us like falling stars, rolling through the surface of the waves. Impossibly fast. Faster than any Lopo boat. The closer they come, the clearer we see. Not just Umeneni and his far sight. We all see.
The lights do not touch the waters. They fly above it.
“Not the Lopo,” Umeneni whispers, in fear. Umeneni who has killed a hundred Lopo and yet with me his touch is gentle. He fears little. He doesn’t even fear my brother.
I feel our soldiers shifting behind us. What do we do? Run? Scatter?
“Stay,” Hava says, loud enough so it branches through the trees and quiets the others.
The lights come silent. They pour day onto the shore, the trees, our hidden forms among the forest floor. White day. The lights bring wind and heat like a summer breeze, and the shake and growl of a thunderstorm, but only in passing. Only in nearness, like you hear someone breathe in sleep if you are the only one awake.
The lights sweep over our heads like birds and disappear.
And in a flash, my brother chases the beat of their windless wings through the feet of the bowing trees.
I run, Umeneni by my side, our soldiers around us. We follow Hava and the storm of the lights as they skate the top of the forest. If these are Lopo, we must track them. We must get to them before they join the Lopo in our villages and become one.
The ground stabs my feet. The forest is alive with the snap and crack of our fiery path, cut by my brother.
These Lopo fly.
The three words beat a rhythm in my breath. The loud drumming of a death dance.
I want to grab Hava back and keep him still. I want to hold Umeneni to my breasts and say, Wait.
The blood can wait.
These Lopo fly.
Yet if the Lopo had such ability to fly among the clouds like birds, surely we would have known it. Surely you cannot go from water to sky in just a few turnings of the moon. The Lopo are not gods. They bleed, though their blood is golden like honey. But their spirits are not red like my brother’s.
“Hava!” I shout. I don’t care. The lights drown all but the closest noise.
But he doesn’t stop. In his hand flashes the silver of his killing knife. He hunts the lights.
“Rumi village,” Umeneni says, on a gasp. Running as I run.
I recognize the path, even in moonlight and the dying blaze of the beasts overhead.
We are going home.
My brother stops on the edge of our village. What was once our village, where the old women sat outside their homes and braided long leaves into mats for our beds. Now the Lopo lie on our mats, still stained by the blood of our mothers.
Hava crouches at the feet of the trees. Our soldiers gather around in a line of attack, the positions of habit. I barely gather breath enough to speak before Hava turns to me, the red now so vibrant in his eyes that I barely see the white.
“They are friends of the Lopo,” Umeneni says, his voice harsh, his teeth bared.
The lights touched ground in the clear spaces of the village. They are shaped almost like boats, almost like birds. Strange inbetween creatures that bellow the white of bright day over all the scattered homes. Yet the mud roofs don’t melt and the grass of the walls do not burn.
“But the Lopo do not come out,” I say. “Where are their brothers, if it’s true they are friends?”
“The Lopo hide,” Hava says, resting the tip of his killing knife in the earth. “See the shadows move inside that house? They do not come out. They are afraid.”
There is no fear in Hava’s voice. He stares at the inbetween creatures.
A door opens on the belly of one of the creatures. We wait, silent, but no Lopo emerge from the homes to greet the open door. Not a stirring.
A tall figure walks from the creature’s belly, but it isn’t clad in tattered Lopo grey. It wears stitchless black. And it is the shape of us, with arms and legs. But big like our mothers and fathers had been.
Hava sheaths his knife and reaches to his other hip. Soon he holds a Lopo gun and aims it through the trees. Tracking. Umeneni does the same, but I don’t move.
Things that travel inside a flying creature. How will guns help? Better to sneak up on them. Better to jump on their backs and bring them down one by one, and then use the knife.
More figures emerge from the creature’s belly. I lose the count at fifty. Soon the entire village is filled by these black-clad people. They are beetle-shaped on the head and about the eyes, as though they come from insect kin.
A voice calls out. It sounds like language, but not ours. Lopo words. Calling to the Lopo who hide in our houses.
But the Lopo do not come out. They are cowards.
So the beetle people swarm into the houses. Noise erupts, shouting, gunfire, flashes of light and the shake of violence. Some of the beetle people wait outside, not speaking. Not helping. They stand like trees.
Soon the rest of them reappear. The lights from their inbetween creatures reflect on their insect heads.
They hold the Lopo by their long spindly arms. Lopo warriors, men and women, some of them bleeding. They are ugly clean, and uglier in blood. They make a sticky yellow visage and their too-long legs bend deeper than normal, driven to kneel by these beetle people. The beetle people set the Lopo in the middle of our village, like the Lopo had once done to us, and make them sit on the earth. They hold the Lopo guns and they do not say a word. Yet they all move in agreement as though they can read one another’s minds.
Enemies of the Lopo, yet Hava does not twitch or give us a command. Are these beetle people here to return our villages to us? Or will they push us to the ground, smoothing it with our blood?
My hands are cold with the thought. I touch Umeneni’s back to feel his warmth. We must hide. We must pretend we are not here and when these beetle people leave with the Lopo, we will have our villages back. And we will grow old under the sun like the women who weaved and carved and remembered.
But my brother does not move.
One of the beetle people walks away from the others. The insect head faces the trees, turns toward us. It raises an arm. I see now that it has five fingers on its hand. On both hands. It is very much in the shape of our people. Except for the insect head.
But then it removes its insect head, like you would remove a hat. The black eyes go with it too and beneath it all is a face much like Umeneni’s. Like mine.
A woman.
“Come out,” it says, toward the trees. To us. Somehow it speaks our language even though the lilt and sigh of the words are unfamiliar, like when the Lopo speak. Yet we understand. It says, “Come out now, children.”
I want to grip Umeneni’s hand, and my brother’s, but instead we hold our weapons. Hava stands and looks over his shoulder at me.
“Stay,” he says. “All of you.”
“No, Hava.” I try to catch his arm, but he walks out alone toward the beetle people. Toward the one who has a face like mine, and speaks our language, though she flew to us like a bird.
Umeneni tries to touch my shoulder, but I run out after my brother.
The beetle people swivel to face me. I stop, planting my feet, feeling the night air breathe cold up my bare legs. Hava turns.
“Ara!” He gestures sharply. “Go back!”
“No,” the beetle woman says. Closer and I see she is like my mother was, beneath the smooth clothing. She has a woman’s breasts and she is tall like one, broader than me about the hips. Her voice, free of the insect head, is the gentle trickle of river water. “Let her come too. Both of you.”
Hava frowns at me. But he offers his hand. So I take my brother’s hand and we approach.
“You look so much alike,” the woman says. “You must be brother and sister.”
Up close, they don’t smell
like Lopo. They smell like our knives after the rain has washed them clean.
The Lopo on the ground watch us with hatred in their small white eyes. We have killed many of them. They recognize us.
Hava looks at them once, then up at the woman. “What are you?”
They haven’t taken our weapons. They called us children, though we have been without parents since our tenth stride across the sands of life. Maybe they have come to steal our forest from us, to steal our beaches and our near waters, like the Lopo stole our villages.
“What are you?” Hava asks again, louder.
“We are your fathers and mothers,” the woman says.
“Our fathers and mothers are dead,” Hava says. He points to the Lopo. “They killed them. They came from across the waters and wiped the shores of our homes. They let our parents’ blood run with the waters and the rain. Is that what you are here to do?”
My brother’s voice is a kitten mew compared to the smooth strength of the woman’s. She is tall enough to pick him up by the back of his neck like the big cats do with their little ones. Yet Hava doesn’t waver. And I grip his hand to feel him, not for him to feel me.
“No,” the woman says. “You were lost for too long. Now we’ve remembered.”
“How is it that you speak our language?” I ask. “How do your boats fly? Where do you come from, if not from across the waters?”
“There is too much to say,” the woman says, like a sigh. She holds her beetle head in her hand. It is hollow inside, and padded with a strange cloth, one that shines like the moon on the waves. She says, “You must come with us now, children.”
“Come?” Hava says. He lets go of my hand.
“Yes,” the woman says, and lifts her chin.
The other beetle people start to move in, silent like a footstep on the sand.
I see the Lopo sitting on the ground, weaponless. Overtaken. So swiftly, like we have never been able to do for all our attacks and killings. The Lopo just kept coming from across the waters, like fishes spawned from an endless egg.
But now they sit, and can do nothing.
The beetle people are many. Soon they will block our sight of the forest’s edge, where Umeneni and the others wait.
But now Hava raises his gun and that is the signal, and all of our twenty soldiers attack.
Though we fire our guns and stab with our knives, the beetle people do not bleed. There are enough of them to keep the Lopo encircled and still bat us away. They flick us away as though their arms are tails and we are nothing but rodents on their backs.
Soon we are all on the ground beneath the daylight of the inbetween creatures. I ache but I don’t know how I was hit. I remember lightning, though there is no storm, and the sound of it was louder than a summershock. Beside me, Umeneni cradles his wrist in his other hand. It is broken. Some of us cry, little voices in the silence.
But not my brother. He kneels on the ground looking up at the woman. And the lines of his spirit make marks down his cheeks, in red.
The woman’s eyes glow like stars.
“You must understand,” she says. “You cannot stay here. This world now belongs to the mothers and fathers of these people.” She points to the Lopo.
“You say you are our mothers and fathers,” Hava spits out. “Then you should help us kill the Lopo. This is our village. This is our forest. The sands are our sands.” He drives his fist into the earth. It leaves a mark.
“No,” the woman says. “You never should’ve been here.”
She speaks our language, yet I cannot understand her words as they are pressed side by side.
“Where else would we be?” my brother asks.
They have taken our weapons. There is nothing to do but sit.
“You need to be with us,” the woman says. “We are of the same blood. Look in my face. The fathers and mothers of the Lopo will come. This is their world now. We were fighting, and had forgotten, but now the fighting is over and we have found you. And you cannot stay here anymore.”
“Why not?” Hava says. Almost shouts. For this woman’s words are like the wind. As it passes our ears, it makes a noise and yet we cannot hold it.
“We have given this world to the fathers and mothers of the Lopo,” the woman says. Her face pinches as if she tastes something bitter, and she looks to the side, toward another beetle person. Not one of them has removed their insect heads. Only her. “The Lopo will never destroy any more of our villages. I come from a village too, but one that sits among the stars. My brothers and sisters –” She motions to the other beetle people who stand so still, and do not bleed or speak. “They were born among the stars. You were not meant to be born here. Your ancestors and the ancestors of these Lopo fought, and fell to this world, and were forgotten amidst the fighting. We fought as well, as you fight them here. But now it is over and now the Lopo are ours. Here they will all be kept.”
“But this is our village,” Hava insists. I can see in the woman’s unblinking eyes that somehow she does not understand us either, though we speak the same words. “You talk nonsense!” Hava says. “How are we to believe these words? They are written in the air.”
“It’s impossible to sit among the stars,” I say. “Our blood is of the sand. We walk upon the sand and when we can no longer walk, the waters will wash us away.”
But our words fall like crystal grains through our fingers, weightless against these insect kin and their daylight boats.
Another beetle figure steps up and removes the shell of its head. Underneath he is a man with the strong bones of my father. His hair is the dark red of a sunset, like Umeneni’s. His face is bare and there is a scar above his right eye that shines like a blade, not like the puckered pink of healing skin.
And his eyes are Hava’s eyes. Under the bright lights that push back the night, I can see the spirit of blood in his gaze.
This man says to my brother, “There are more years on this world than what passes when we are among the stars. Do you understand?”
“We will understand if you speak with words that stay together,” my brother says. He points to the man’s face. “How is it that you have the eyes of blood?”
I do not know why, but I begin to shake.
The man looks down at Hava. He reaches to his hip and I see a knife there, but it is long and glowing, like his eyes. Like Hava’s eyes. Red.
He pulls it from his side and I am too far from my brother to warn him, or protect him, and Hava does not move. He watches the blade. I want to cry out. Umeneni lets go of his broken wrist and grabs my hand. He won’t let me run ahead again. There is nothing in my grasp but the earth, nothing to fling at these beetle people but my words which they do not understand.
The red-haired man crouches in front of my brother. His black body shines with the light of the false day. He turns his knife blade down and sticks it in the ground. The red glow pools on the brown, as though the earth did bleed.
“You lead your warriors,” he says to Hava, “like I lead mine. So now you must lead them to their true home. It is my home too.”
My brother is silent for a long moment, looking at the ground. His hair falls forward like a wing and covers his eyes. He has led us through so many battles with the Lopo and never feared. Now he puts his finger into the earth and draws. I step closer to see, but only as far as Umeneni’s grip allows. I will not let go. My brother draws a familiar pattern in the earth. It is our forest, the edges of the trees, our shore and the waters.
“This is our home,” Hava says, looking up now. Red with strength. “We will not leave it.”
I feel Umeneni’s hand, how warm it is, surrounding mine.
I feel all the blood of our children, the children we may yet have, waiting to be born but afraid to be spilled. I feel it as though it is growing from the roots of the trees and twining through my bones from the planting of my heels on the ground.
Then the red-eyed man takes the flat of his blade and wipes it across the lines my brother made.
Once.
The blood path of our close futures, gone.
I cannot breathe. There is nothing but silence. Nothing but the smooth step that treads behind the blood. Not even Hava speaks. He is a small body beside the large black shell of this beetle man. He never looked small beside the Lopo.
Around us, blazing with light, the inbetween creatures open up their bellies. Some of the other beetle people begin to walk inside. Most of them surround us and the woman behind the red-eyed man points into the belly, where it shines an unnatural blue.
And I feel it as I feel Umeneni’s hand around mine.
My children will never know the warmth of sand beneath their feet.
“Enough of this,” the beetle man says. “You are children of our ancestors and you are coming home.”
And with the tip of his red knife, he carves it deep into the earth.
After spending most of his life in Los Angeles, Greg van Eekhout now lives in the suburban deserts near Phoenix, Arizona. His stories have appeared in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Starlight 3, Fantasy: The Best of 2001, New Skies, and a number of other speculative short fiction venues. He maintains a website at sff.net/people.greg, and a frequently updated online journal at journalscape.com/ greg.
Native Aliens
Greg van Eekhout
1945
As Papa stands between the two rows of men holding rifles, he stands as a Dutchman. His shirt is starched white, tucked neatly into khaki trousers with creases sharp enough to cut skin. It is not especially hot today, but sweat pools under his arms and trickles down his back. The Indonesians with the guns are sweating too.
Papa’s skin is as dark as the Indonesians’, naturally dark and baked tobacco brown from years spent hammering together chicken coops and pigeon hutches in the backyard. He is a good carpenter, and people come to him for help and advice. But carpentry is not his job. He works as a bookkeeper for Rotterdamse Lloyd, the Dutch shipping company. He is a Dutchman with a Dutch job.
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