The Forgotten Sky

by R. M. Schultz

  “What was that thing?”

  Her dad does not answer.

  Jaycken

  Jaycken’s boots thud against exposed wood as he strides across the pier for the port city of the mercury sea.

  Gulls bray overhead and swoop.

  Jaycken instinctively ducks, his niggling fear at the back of his mind. The gulls land, tilt their heads, and inspect him.

  Jennily, the young lady, is ten meters ahead: slender, shimmery black hair, alone … brave. Where’s Jasmonae? Hopefully Slyth is still back in the carrack.

  Beyond Jennily, a man whose outer cloak is covered with dangling gilded jewelry holds something aloft, but it’s lost to the reflecting light of the setting sun. A group of humans and marcon—gangly gray humanoids with hunched backs whose long arms sway as they move—watch. A woman with lime green hair sings beside a heavy beast of a humanoid covered with pink fur and protruding lower fangs who plays the delicate strings of a harp, their music intermittently lost in the chorus of braying gulls.

  Humanoids of all types pedal trundling carts up and down the walk, shouting in several languages as they hold up packages wrapped in yellow paper. Steam rises from the trays and peppers the breeze with thick aromas of fired bread and sour meats, intermingling with other smells: hot tar and sweat, incense and oil. An aura of barely concealed anxiety or even fear permeates everything.

  This place looks interesting, but where’s Dad? And Kiesen? They’re supposed to be here waiting for us.

  Jaycken glances around, tapping his foot, wanting to tell his dad all about the Frontiersmen and what he’s helping them do, hoping his dad will visit the station. Jaycken needs to return as soon as possible now, to assist in solving this new mystery of the beating sun, to help negate the growing fear it will incite in the galaxy. And bring back the supplies or parts he’s supposed to.

  The murmur of surrounding conversations, most in intragalactic Ridian—the most commonly used language—hover above the area like swarming bats, broken only by the occasional shout or bellow of laughter. Hidden insects chirr from within buildings, and clouds of dark smoke hang in curtains around crowded masses, drifting and melting into the twilight sky.

  Maybe Jaycken’s dad and brother are waiting at the next pier over, or maybe Jennily knows where they are.

  Jaycken jogs after and overtakes Jennily. “Do you know where Ost is waiting?”

  Jennily keeps pacing. “I’m overseeing the longshoremen and unloading of our vessel.”

  Jaycken pauses a moment, and Jennily’s strides create distance between them. She slips away into the masses.

  A vendor rolls by.

  Jaycken purchases a patty of grilled plant root and rushes to the next pier as he sinks his teeth into the meal. Cold pepper spice and turmeric, tender. He washes it down with a bitter nectar drink.

  “It’s the six all around us,” a voice says. “It is their time.”

  A figure in a draping mauve hood sits at the far end of the wharf Jaycken’s on, motioning for passersby to come closer.

  “Come see this,” the purple-cloaked figure calls to someone in a chirruped tone, inhuman, female, piercing through the rumble of discord all around. “You haven’t seen anything like it.”

  Kiesen stands before her, audaciously, unaware of any danger that would threaten the son of Ost Leonbaron, the intragalactic business executive.

  Kiesen?

  Kiesen’s flipping his sandy blond hair and throwing some old game pieces called “dice” onto a flimsy table before the woman.

  A spurt of amber fire flashes on the table before the hooded woman’s folded legs.

  Her cloaked face peers upward, the wearer lost in shadow as dense as the plunging night. She pulls a wax candle from beside herself, and a flame springs to life on the wick. She sets the candle, as big around as a human leg, onto the table.

  Kiesen doesn’t notice as Jaycken steps beside him.

  “The six had to be brought together to change a star into a pulsing mass of energy overnight,” the hooded woman says.

  “The six what?” Kiesen asks.

  Kiesen is wearing a thick, teal v-rim on his brow, although he’s not supposed to be, not here. Ost and Jasmonae would have told him to abandon his v-rim in this city, to blend in. Way out here on this drifter in the outer extremity of the galaxy, any intragalactic news traveling even at lightspeed would not be current, unless the news came from Jasilix itself, from the Frontiersmen in the mountains.

  “Before there was something, there was only nothing,” the hooded woman says. “The elements, the original six that sprang from the big bang of our galaxy’s birth, are the organs of one original god. They are parents of every other element and compound, what everything around you is a made of, after the original substances decay. Stardust. What the Elemiscists feel and utilize for their powers. In the present, it’s rare to find these parents, the fragments of God, in their original form.”

  Jaycken wraps Kiesen in an encircling hug.

  Kiesen jerks in surprise.

  “Kiesen, you made it!” Jaycken grins and roughs up his hair. It always looked messy, thickets of spikes between flattened fields.

  “Hi, Jaycken.” He hugs Jaycken back and pats his cheek, his version of an endearment. “It’s been a while. I even missed you. You don’t look like a big, tough soldier yet though.”

  Jaycken flexes a bicep and pats it facetiously. “That’s because I’m with the Frontiersmen and all my growth is in my head. If only you could see my brain’s biceps.”

  Kiesen rolls his eyes. “I can see how big your head’s gotten. I really didn’t have a choice about coming here.”

  “What do you mean?” Jaycken steps back, holding him out at arm’s length, studying him: a couple of years younger than Jaycken, tanned complexion, brown eyes, downtrodden.

  “Well, our lovely stepmother said Dad would be here, but he’s not.”

  “Where is he, then?”

  Kiesen shrugs. “Do I ever know where he is? He’s never at any of our houses on the cluster planets, which is okay I guess, because he doesn’t get in the way of me and my friends’ festivities.”

  “Still living it up every day?”

  “Life’s not quite what it’s cracked up to be otherwise.”

  Kiesen is always less jovial then Jaycken, unless he’s on something, which then he transforms into an energetic and fiendishly outgoing personality.

  “Let me demonstrate the power of the six,” the hooded woman says. “Surely, you’ve heard of Elemiscists: Striders, Whisperers, Paladins? Unless you were born here, a Strider’s the only way you could’ve arrived on Jasilix—our drifting moon in the extremity—during your lifetime.”

  She reaches out with bird-like hands—bone-white skin and silver nails that come to points—and repeatedly switches the positions of three candles over a period of a minute.

  “Tell me if you can solve this riddle,” she says.

  Is she going to utilize the power of the elements? Like the Elemiscists.

  Something rings in the back of Jaycken’s mind, something Slyth once said. Something twisted. Disturbing tales sink their claws deeper into Jaycken’s memory more than anything he forces himself to memorize.

  A Feeder parasitizes Elemiscists. Some dark souls who can utilize the elements feed off of others with the power.

  “Cheap magic,” a voice says from behind. Jasmonae. She brushes past Jaycken and Kiesen.

  “Do you know where Ost is?” Jaycken asks. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “No.” Jasmonae shrugs. “He should be here tonight though.”

  A string of locals hurries past, carrying overflowing baskets of food and goods away from the wharf.

  “Do we even have time to wait?” Jaycken asks. “With the beating sun event? I need to get back to the station.”

  “Our ship won’t be ready for a return voyage until morning, no matter what we do.” Jasmonae studies Kiesen.

  “I’m just waiting for Ost,” Kiesen says d
efensively. “Not doing anything wrong.”

  “Oh, Kiesen,” Jasmonae says. “I don’t care what you boys do with your time. I’m overseeing the unloading of goods. Then maybe I’ll meet a friend and enjoy a decent meal if your father’s not here yet.”

  “Can we come?” Jaycken asks.

  Jasmonae shakes her head.

  She doesn’t want to have dinner with us? Kiesen’s antics must be wearing her out.

  Jasmonae waves at the cloaked figure with contempt, her coiled locks of obsidian bouncing against her shoulders like seething vipers. “There are so many of her kind in this city. The more backward the civilization, the more of its inhabitants harness these illusions and trickery.”

  Tricks that could entrance a child, or Kiesen.

  “None of them have enough power to accomplish anything of value,” Jasmonae continues. “That’s why they have to resort to street performances to pay for their next meal. And you shouldn’t be wearing your v-rim, Kiesen; it’s a sign saying ‘look at me, I’m a rich foreigner looking to be taken advantage of.’”

  Jasmonae slips between the grotesque belly of a man with no shirt and a silver-skinned, fish-like woman limned by brightening pier lamps along the walk. She disappears into the crowd.

  Jaycken steps away from the hooded woman.

  “You want to see, though,” the cloaked woman says, her voice a musical symphony like the scattering of mercury droplets across the prow of the carrack. “Don’t deny your desires. You’re not one to do so.”

  Jaycken stops dead.

  Images of what he might discover and of besting this street magician at her own game circle in his mind like a galactic carrousel. Had the eagerness been there a moment ago or only once the woman had suggested it or implanted it, sent it tugging at his desires? He feels the thought of discovery like some kind of parasitic worm inching along through his ears and curling up inside his brain.

  Jaycken looks for Jasmonae in the dusk. Faint lights are alive at the base of the walk along the pier. Jasmonae is walking with Jennily along the next pier, laughing, headed for the city.

  Is Jennily the friend she’s meeting for dinner? Why Jennily and not them?

  “Just watch this magic for a minute, Jaycken.” Kiesen wraps an arm around Jaycken’s shoulder. “This woman told me that she knew I was waiting for my family, even specifically for my brother and my dad. Which is true, since I don’t care about Jasmonae. She says she knows where Dad is.”

  Oh, shit, this woman is essentially offering treats to a blubbering baby Kiesen, luring him into a dark passenger ship and closing the doors. “We’re going to see Dad soon anyway.”

  “But I hate this waiting bullshit,” Kiesen says. “My entire life revolves around Dad’s life. Waiting for him to come home when he says he will. Waiting for him to take me on one of his trips. Waiting for a lift to meet him at one of our other houses even though he never actually shows up.”

  The hooded woman stands. “They say the people living in the mountains at the station wait on the universe. They wait to make discoveries about the original elements themselves, wait to explore the dead zone beyond even the drifting planets. They no longer wait to investigate this beating sun.”

  Images of the beating sun, of wonder, of conquests spiral through Jaycken’s mind as if a funnel cloud tore into his head, ripping up visuals instead of buildings.

  Jaycken should find another way to return to the station and assist the Frontiersmen with this new phenomenon. Maybe Kiesen was right—they would only end up waiting here.

  The shadowed opening of the hood focuses on Jaycken. “Now, which candle will burn?”

  Kiesen points to the candle in the center.

  An amber flame extends upward from the wick like a ballerina rising onto her toes, stretching.

  Kiesen laughs, a throaty chuckle, and applauds.

  “That’s it?” Jaycken asks. “You can make a trick candle light?” An act of god, a miracle.

  The hooded woman reaches out her bone-white hand with silver nails, proffering the last unlit candle.

  Jaycken hesitates.

  She drops it, and Jaycken catches the candle in his open palms. He studies the hard wax, turns it over, and notices the gold ring on his thumb is missing.

  “Hey, you took my ring!”

  The woman backpedals, shaking her head. She’s trapped by the end of the wharf, by the mercury sea.

  “Police!” Jaycken shouts as he steps toward her, holding his arms out to block her escape. He would not rough up any woman of any race or species. “Police!”

  “You probably just lost it.” Kiesen shakes his head, his eyes closed in embarrassment.

  A few moments later, two human men in orange uniforms trot up, creaking boards in their wake. They flank Jaycken.

  “She took my ring,” Jaycken says, “a gift from my dad.”

  The police of the port city step over and grab the woman by the wrists.

  She struggles against them. “I didn’t take his ring.”

  “You filthy Manipulator,” one of the officers says, patting her down as the other twists her hands behind her back. “You should all be sent off on a one-way passenger ship.”

  “This is our moon,” the woman replies, but they ignore her, continuing to search her.

  “Wait.” Kiesen points at Jaycken. “Isn’t that your ring?”

  Jaycken looks down. Atop the candle in his hand, encircling the wick is his ring, partially buried into the wax.

  The police stop and glare at Jaycken.

  Heat crawls up Jaycken’s neck and cheeks with creeping fingers. How could it have possibly …?

  “Yes, it is.” Maybe I should work alongside Elargo the rest of my life.

  “Idiot.” An officer shakes his head and stalks off with the other, offering no apology to the hooded woman.

  “I’m so sorry.” Jaycken slides his ring onto his thumb and hands the candle back to the woman. “I—I wrongly assumed you were a pickpocket. I’m not sure how my ring slipped off. It’s never done that before. I sincerely apologize. Let me buy you a meal … or something.”

  The woman is silent for a minute as she brushes off her cloak. “You were almost correct in your accusation. I did take something.”

  She dangles a red v-rim, his v-rim. He keeps it on his person, inside a sealed pocket.

  Jaycken feels his empty pocket, then lunges for it.

  She snatches the v-rim back and sidesteps him.

  “Police!” Jaycken shouts, looking around.

  The two officers glance back but only shake their heads, wave him off, and continue away.

  The woman covers her mouth region and whispers something to Kiesen before handing him Jaycken’s v-rim.

  What is she doing? Why take his v-rim, show it to him, and give it to his brother?

  “You shouldn’t wear your v-rim here, Kiesen. You stand out too much.” She turns to Jaycken. “You should’ve been wearing yours. There’s too much going on. Too much missed information.”

  “Shall we go, Kiesen Leonbaron?” The woman holds out her white palm as she steps around Jaycken. “I can find us a ride, a ship to the station. If you pay the transport fee.”

  Kiesen follows her.

  “Where are you going?” Jaycken grabs Kiesen’s other arm and pulls, a human body tug-o-war.

  Kiesen resists Jaycken. “She said that Dad’s at the Frontiersmen station now.”

  “He wishes to visit the station,” the woman says, her tone turning from musical to raspy, “to find out why the sun’s started pulsing, why its closest inhabitable planet spontaneously combusted only hours ago.”

  Jaycken’s body locks up in tension. A planet spontaneously combusted?

  “All those who fled the system are safe,” the woman says, “but those who remained on Iopenia were burned alive, along with all other life, the environment incinerated. The inhabitants on the second planet wishing to wait out the change in the sun are now evacuating as fast as possible. This could be
come the fate of more systems, more planets, more people. This change in the sun marks a great beginning or end, a point of understanding the galaxy, the universe. Kiesen wishes to aid the curious, those who wish to help. The Frontiersmen.”

  What? “No, he wants to see his dad, and you won’t take my brother there. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I want to go.” Kiesen jerks away from them both. “I was already talking to her about it before you got here, before I knew where Dad was. I’m not a kid anymore, Jaycken. I can do whatever I want.”

  Jasmonae and Jennily approach, appearing to float in the darkness over the lighted walkway.

  “No,” Jaycken says, grabbing for Kiesen.

  Kiesen trips and sprawls out across cracked boards with a thump.

  Jennily bends down and helps Kiesen to his feet.

  “Jaycken, Kiesen may go where he pleases,” Jasmonae says. “I just received a message from Ost. He’s at the Frontiersmen’s station now, and he still hopes to see both of you, but he can’t stay long.”

  “Kiesen doesn’t belong with the Frontiersmen!” Jaycken says.

  Everyone pauses. The pier falls silent.

  Kiesen glares at Jaycken, his lax lips riddled with surprise.

  Jaycken is taken aback by his own words, everything he knows crumbling into the descending darkness all around him. Kiesen is the only real family he’s ever had, and it’s not as much that Kiesen’s work ethic or commitment will embarrass Jaycken in front of his new peers, which it will, it’s that the station doesn’t offer a typical career.

  Working with the Frontiersmen is too dangerous for Jaycken’s little brother. Their parents may not know because they don’t care enough to look into it, but people die from the exposure of wielding the power of the original elements and from the dangers associated with their gathering. Some die in days, some not for decades, but everyone who harnesses too much power, or handles this power for too long, is destroyed, murdered by it.

  Jaycken’s life strobes in his mind: running through a field of yellow poppies with Kiesen, playing with toy pulsers, ships, his dad roasting tubular meats and melting chocolate for both of them at that one campfire he made it to. The faces of the many stepmothers he grew up with, the unseen face of his mother paling and dying shortly after he was born. Starting as a new recruit at the station in the mountains to work with the Frontiersmen.