That Distant Dream

by Laurel Beckley

  “After the mayor refused to talk with him,” Elihu muttered. The ambassador glared at him. Melin sunk deeper into her corner, hoping no one remembered who Zhoki had spoken with last.

  “How about one of the natives we’re detaining?” Undersecretary Calderon asked. “They should be aching to get out and about in a couple of weeks. They’ll do anything to see their families.”

  Dar’Tan smiled. “I was thinking of something a little closer to home.” Melin’s stomach sank. And there it was. “Last month I took Sera Grezzij into the city. She spent time with the mayor and his wife and in the marketplace.”

  The ambassador barely cast a glance at her. “She’s not trained in negotiation. Her tact is decidedly lacking, and from the reports, the marketplace rioted when she showed up.”

  Melin twisted her head toward him. Why had she been brought into this meeting? To be insulted? Shit, she could have stayed in the office for that.

  “A riot caused by street thugs going after a seemingly soft target,” Dar’Tan replied. “Sir, the women of the marketplace drove the thugs away for some reason—maybe it was to protect their mayor, maybe it was because of her. Sera Grezzij can communicate, and she can get in with the people. She’s far more fluent than any of the other interpreters we’ve had. She and the mayor had a full conversation in Saturan.”

  “You can’t trust the natives for anything,” Sorem protested. “He could have been lying.”

  Melin winced. So, it was definitely Dar’Tan who had invited her here. Perhaps she could exploit their disunity.

  “Serim.” Melin leaned forward. All eyes, which had been darting toward her during the exchange between Dar’Tan and the ambassador, were now riveted on her. “Need I remind you that the Saturan I speak is not the current dialect? Sera Bartroilly is right. I don’t understand what the Saturans are saying. Most of them don’t understand what I’m saying, and they won’t talk to me.”

  “The mayor spoke quite extensively with you.” Major Dar’Tan paused, clearly about to present his ace in the hole. He faced the ambassador. “And she’s all we have.”

  Sorem pursed her lips but bowed her head in reluctant agreement.

  “There’s a xenolinguist inbound next week. Bring them both and we can see who interacts better,” the ambassador said, dismissing Melin entirely. “Moving on. I want you to coordinate this raid tonight with the utmost scrutiny. No slipups like the last times. There must be no prior warning whatsoever.”

  “Of course, sir,” Dar’Tan agreed.

  They continued to talk about the raid, deciding on troop orientation and placement, times, and consolidation points. Melin sat back, wondering at the decision to gather up all the men in the city for interrogation. Hadn’t Dar’Tan seen the women and nonbinary people in Zhoki’s guard? Hadn’t he just said the women in the marketplace drove off a mob?

  Her mind wandered again to Anikki’s stories where women had played extremely important roles in the history of Satura. Women had been kings, warriors, mothers, homemakers, university professors, and business owners. She imagined they still played important roles in Saturan society and wondered at their exclusion from the embassy planning.

  She debated mentioning something as Dar’Tan’s briefing droned on but reconsidered. They didn’t care about her insights. She might speak an outdated dialect, but she didn’t know the culture of the situation. She had only old stories and fanciful dreams of dubious reality guiding her, which were less than nothing.

  Why was she here again?

  She refocused on Dar’Tan’s chart. He’d reached the final stages of the brief. Directional lines plotted the planned withdrawal. In between the familiar symbols for squad and platoon sat two inverted triangles with a red-and-white hatched fill. Dar’Tan’s voice faded out again as she focused on triangles, trying to remember what they meant.

  A triangle meant enemy, and so did the color red.

  A hatch mark meant uncertainty.

  But what did the inverted triangle mean?

  Then it hit her.

  She knew what the triangle meant. And she understood why she was here.

  She would be interrogating whoever was brought in.

  Her stomach didn’t sink: it hit the ground and rolled away.

  They would want her—the language specialist—to question the Saturans they found.

  She would be interrogating people. Questioning them.

  In a cell.

  Melin bit her lower lip to prevent a groan as a flashback rolled over her body. She leaned forward in her chair, squeezing her eyes tight. She hadn’t had a flashback in months.

  “Sera Grezzij, are you well?” Elihu asked.

  She waved her hand and stood, grabbing the back of her chair to steady herself. “I believe I might be getting ill.” Her fingers tightened on the chair back as her knees weakened. “Serim.” She half-stumbled, half-staggered out of the meeting room. Someone asked her to stay, but her mind was laser focused on escape.

  Interrogation.

  She couldn’t—it didn’t matter anymore.

  She couldn’t relive—she couldn’t. She leaned against the wall outside Sorem’s office, trying to shut down her mind and focus on breathing. Hearing faded to nothing more than her heartbeat, thudding in her ears and against the base of her neck. Her eyes closed, and she fought for control.

  She sunk to the ground, covering her ears with her hands, but the memories wouldn’t go away. Her mind wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t—

  Screams echoing down the hallway—breathe—Sienna on the table, legless, armless, eyes gaping toward her—a masked form, black rubber stretched over skeletal features looming down—oh shit, oh shit, oh shit—the knife plunging into her scalp—

  A hand touched her shoulder.

  Instinct took over.

  A shriek cut off with a horrible gargle.

  “Sera!”

  “Melin!”

  Several voices penetrated her haze, and she snapped into focus.

  Two people had grabbed her arms and were pulling her off. She blinked again, studying her hands. They were wrapped about the neck of a very young, very scared, very purple guard.

  These weren’t her hands.

  These were her hands.

  They spasmed open, the release of her tension flinging her backward into the arms of the guards holding her. The guard she’d been—she winced—throttling gasped, still lying flat on the floor. His hand crept up and rubbed his chest where she was pretty certain her knee had been as another guard flung her to the ground, pulling her hands behind her back. Melin went limp. Submissive. Meek. No no no no no. Her breath rasped in deep gulps of air that had nothing to do with the boot digging into her right shoulder blade.

  The boot ground the physical part of her into the floor as the other part disconnected, separating until she floated near the ceiling. She was in two places. She was not. She was compliant. She was free. She was—

  “What is going on here?” Dar’Tan snapped. He’d thrown open the door at the commotion outside. Seeing the cause of the chaos, he closed the door on the curious faces inside the meeting room and stepped into the hallway. “Let her go.”

  “Sir, she attacked Private Herring!”

  “I can see that.” Major Dar’Tan crouched beside Melin. “Sera Grezzij, are you going to attack anyone else?”

  It took her a minute to process who Sera Grezzij was. Definitely not someone who would hurt someone. A sera was dignified. Honorable. Not her. Not whatever thing she was or was not or—she found her voice. Came back to the body on the ground just a little.

  “No.” Her voice was shaky, quiet, wild, not hers. The answer belonged to someone else. She wanted to throw up, wanted to throw herself from a window. Interrogation. She moaned. Breathe, breathe, breathe. It was hard to breathe with a knee pressing into her spine.

  Major Dar’Tan must have made a gesture because the pressure let up. The part of her that was on the floor sat up, the part in the air watching as Private Herrin
g did so as well. He was now an alarming burgundy.

  “What the fuck happened?” Maj Dar’Tan demanded. His team didn’t answer. Softer, gentler, “Sera?”

  Her two parts combined. There was a seam where they came together, flesh and soul. Her hands were so strange. “I stepped out to get air and…” She trailed off. Shook her head. A head? Someone’s head. “I-I don’t remember.”

  “Sir, she stepped out of the hallway. We thought she was ill,” one of the guards—a corporal—supplied. “Private Herring went over to see what was wrong, and she attacked him.”

  “He put a hand on my shoulder.” Bile rose in her throat. The acidic sensation grounded her, bringing her closer to whole.

  “Combat stress. Fuck,” Dar’Tan muttered and sighed. Louder, “Do you remember what triggered it?”

  Lights flashed out in the darkness, wrists bound to metal armrests—a grin under a pair of tinted glasses. Something whirred in the dark away from the light. “Don’t worry, this won’t hurt…much.”

  Melin leaned forward, curling into herself. Protecting her soft spots. Covered her head.

  “The War Witch,” she whispered. She closed her eyes.

  The shrinks said she wouldn’t remember it, probably not ever. But she did. Sometimes. It crept back, in flashes here and there. It hadn’t happened in so long she’d convinced herself she was better.

  She wasn’t better.

  She’d never be better.

  She separated again, a fraction. She’d slide apart and be a ghost forever. Would she haunt Dar’Tan like she haunted the people of her dreams?

  “Fuck.” Dar’Tan paused. “Let’s get you up and into the head for some cold water on your face. Cho, Va’try, go with her. Then downstairs.”

  “To medical?”

  Sterile rooms. The smell of antiseptics, metal, and blood.

  “No. Supply. The quartermaster will know what to do.”

  Darkness. Quiet. A tiny part of her mind, the rational part, agreed. Trudi would know what do to.

  Bit by bit, she unraveled, exposing her body, the soft spots she had no right to defend because they were compromised. Everything was wrong. Every ion in her being vibrated, ready to leap to defend her from another attack. No one moved to help. She took five deep breaths, glad no one was touching her.

  The world lost its sharp, shiny focus with each exhale.

  When she’d regained some of her familiar fuzziness, she stood and darted a glance at Herring, being helped up by two other guards. Little whimpers erupted from his mouth as he clutched his chest. She had the horrifying realization that she’d snapped his collarbone if not cracked his sternum.

  “Sorry,” she said as he was led away to medical. The kid was lucky to be alive. She closed her mouth before she could say more. Honestly, he should have been able to recognize and know not to touch someone exhibiting signs of mental distress. It was standard training in her time. Didn’t these kids get taught anything?

  “Sera.” A guard gestured for her to go down the hallway.

  Melin went, Dar’Tan motioning for the guards to not touch her. Melin headed straight for the nearest bathroom, legs shaky and stomach roiling. The guards followed her inside and stood by the door, watching nervously as she splashed cold water onto her face.

  She avoided the mirror, instead resting her forehead against the cool plex-glass as she ran water onto her wrists to calm herself. Her entire body buzzed with the pulse and shiver of adrenaline and fear. But her hands were steady. They always were. The rest of her might be shaking apart into a million pieces, but her hands were solid. Sure.

  The guards didn’t talk the entire walk to the quartermaster.

  Trudi glanced up from her desk when the door opened and rounded the corner faster than Melin had ever seen her move.

  “What happened?” she snapped to the guards, not to Melin. “What the hell happened to her?”

  “She attacked Private Herring,” one of the guards said. Melin didn’t know if it was Cho or Va’try or if they even existed. Melin hadn’t read either woman’s nametag. She was walking through a fog, dazed and entranced. This couldn’t be her reality. She didn’t attack people for no reason. She was still in cryo-sleep. She was galloping across grasslands, a horse underneath her and dragons above. She was aboard the War Witch, blood on her hands.

  “What the hells?” Trudi asked.

  “They wanted me to interrogate Saturans,” Melin said. Her voice echoed hollowly in her chest. More distantly as if coming from someone else, someone three galaxies and twenty lifetimes away, “I had a flashback.”

  Blood on her hands.

  There was blood on her hands.

  Hadn’t she just washed her hands?

  “Oh fuck.” Trudi stepped back, slamming her hand into the countertop. Melin flinched, knees buckling and threatening to send her to the floor. “That idiot. I’m going to kill him.”

  “Um, Sera—” a guard said, looking faintly alarmed at facing another potentially homicidal person.

  “No, no, I’m not actually going to kill anyone. He’s just going to wish he was dead,” Trudi snarled. She stared at Melin. “Sergeant Grezzij, sit down on the chair over there.”

  Melin obeyed mechanically. Her bones melted into the hard plastic. She oozed apart, pieces of herself falling away, becoming one with the chair. The edges of the world frayed.

  “You two can leave.”

  “Sera…will you be safe?”

  “She won’t hurt me.”

  Melin rocked like the world shifted beneath her even though she sat still. Gray overtook her mind, her body. Fuzz crept about, growing from her brain to her eyeballs and muting out everything. A slow and steady buzz filled her ears, leaving only the thrump thrump of her heartbeat. Distantly, she heard the door close.

  “Melin?” A dark form moved in front of her. Melin’s hands gripped the edge of the chair. This won’t hurt…much. Drip, drip, drip, and her skin sloughed off to the floor in chunks. The world was a gray cloud. “Melin, you can come back now. You’re safe. No one here will hurt you.”

  “I need—” Melin’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. She slid to the floor, fully liquid at last. The gray swarmed, muffling her, cocooning her in warmth and comfort and the smell of freshly cut grass, and then there was nothing else as she became two once again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sunlight streamed into her eyes. It was too bright. She brought her hand over her face, squinting and trying to clear her head. She didn’t know where she was. She remembered being in the quartermasters. After that, nothing.

  Shrieks brought her hand down, ready to rush to the defense of the screamer, until she realized these were shrieks of laughter and not pain or fear.

  Melin turned away from the sun and toward the laughter.

  She was in a garden, not Trudi’s office. As she pinched herself—even knowing it would tell her nothing—she stared about, taking in her surroundings. Carefully manicured shrubbery lined a trimmed lawn of brilliant green grass. Beds of unfamiliar flowers flourished artfully in meticulously planned and maintained beds. A fountain trickled in the center of this little paradise, the object of several children’s play. The children splashed about, more focused on the water than the odd half-man, half-horse statues rearing out of the clear liquid.

  The children were dressed in the strange clothing universal within her dream world.

  The children, more than the surroundings, cemented the fact that she was dreaming. There were no children at the embassy.

  Was she dreaming? Her reality was as distant and floating as her noncorporeal body as she drifted closer. This is unfamiliar, she thought, although all her recent dreams had been new, unthought imaginings.

  A group of women sprawled across several blankets and cushions laid out on the lawn, their dresses glittering like jewels scattered haphazardly on a mantle. Baskets of food were placed strategically around them. Apples, cheeses, breads, and other fruits brimmed over the bowls with the detritus
of snacking evident on several plates. There were jugs of an amber liquid that smelled sticky sweet even from where she stood.

  One of them tilted her head with a throaty laugh, waving her hand at her companion as if to say, “You are too much.”

  She lowered her head. Melin stared in recognition.

  It was Mari, but a Mari she had never seen before now.

  Gone was the rebellious woman in the throne room and the downtrodden prisoner from the dungeons.

  In their place was a queen, in every sense of the word. Her red hair was coifed about her head like a crown, and large emerald earrings dangled from her ears, catching flashes of the sun with each graceful tilt of her neck. Her dress wasn’t the finest in the group, but there was an elegance built into each seam. She leaned against one of the propped umbrellas, taking advantage of the shade, despite the splotches of pink on her pale skin either from the laughter or the sun.

  She was the most beautiful woman Melin had ever seen.

  The other women had arranged themselves about her, angling their bodies toward her subtly, respectfully even though another woman was still in the middle of telling a story. The servants hanging at the edges of the garden also focused on her.

  Unable to catch the exact words the companion was saying, Melin turned, realizing this patch of lawn was part of a larger system of gardens, bordered by a larger wall of hedges. She turned again.

  A large rose-red castle rose not much farther than a stone’s throw away, causing her to pause and wonder how in the world she hadn’t noticed it before. Its turrets stretched into the cerulean sky, roofs gleaming copper. Further away, rose-red walls ringed the castle, the garden, and everything else in this little paradise.

  She was in Veskia.

  She stepped forward, running a hand through a purple flower, caught up in wonder at walls so familiar and so different at the same time. How the IASS destroyed this place was beyond her. She swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat.

  Sudden silence brought her attention back to the garden.

  The children had stopped playing as a group of uniformed soldiers entered the garden, clearing through a parting in the shrubbery and made their way toward the women. The group halted at the edge of the lawn, two men breaking off and heading toward the gaggle of women.