By the Sea of Sand

by Megan Hart

  “Do we need to do anything to prepare for it?”

  It was an interesting question. She studied him as she answered, wondering if any of this would trigger more memories. “No. Just be prepared for the solar panels to go dark, make sure all the backup cells are full so the lamp doesn’t lose power. That’s the most important thing.”

  He looked out the glass again. “Why do you do this, Teila?”

  She broke again a little at the way he said her name. “The lighthouse?”

  “No. The rest of it.” He kept his gaze focused outside, not on her.

  The truth was, his father had been the one to coerce her into opening the lighthouse to fallen soldiers who needed a place to recover and, in some cases, live out the rest of their lives. He’d convinced her the money she’d get from the SDF would be worth it, but what she’d discovered was that the satisfaction of giving people a safe haven had become more important than the financial security. But again, she was hampered by what she thought she might be able to reveal without forcing something into his mind. Not for the first time, she cursed the Rav Aluf. He’d returned her husband to her in a way that made it nearly impossible for her to ever get him back.

  “There are so many soldiers who come home from battle needing a place to rest, and not enough facilities to house them. I had this entire huge place just for myself and Stephin. Even with Densi and the boys, we didn’t need this much space. It seemed natural for me to offer it to those who needed it, when I was asked.”

  He looked at her then. “I think I’ve been gone a long time.”

  “Yes,” she said before she could stop herself. “I mean . . . yes, I think you’re probably right.”

  He pressed his fingertips to his temples. “There’s this constant stream of data. It’s in my mind, but I can see it.” He gestured just beyond his eyes. “I can’t describe it. Strings of information, pictures, and colors, but they make patterns. Like fitting together a puzzle, only too many of the pieces are missing. This must’ve been useful at some point, but now it only hurts. It’s distracting. I can’t seem to shut it off.”

  They’d both known he would be enhanced when he went into service. They’d talked about it every night in those last few hours before he’d gone into training, in between their sometimes frantic, sometimes leisurely lovemaking. There was no way to know in advance what would be done to him, but because of his father’s rank, they’d assumed he’d get the highest grade of enhancements.

  “It hurts?” she asked now.

  He nodded with a grimace. “Like lights flashing in the corners of my vision, until I focus on it. Then I can see the data stream. If I ignore it too long, the pain starts up. Here.” He tapped his temples. The center of his forehead. Each inner eye socket.

  “I can give you pain relief—”

  “No,” he said sharply, then softer. “I’m tired of being unfocused.”

  “Then . . . I can still help you. Come.” She gestured, pulling out a chair from the small desk in front of the lamp control panels. Sometimes she’d penned letters to him there, the old-fashioned sort with quill and paper, because electronic communications could be intercepted. She’d never had an answer. Never known if her letters had reached him.

  He hesitated, but came with dragging feet. He sat when she indicated the chair again. When she put her hands on his shoulders, he went instantly stiff.

  “This,” she told him gently, kneading at the tight muscles, “is probably a big part of the problem.”

  He’d always carried a lot of tension in his shoulders and neck, and she knew where to find the trigger spots. One on the left side from an old injury incurred before they’d met. There had to be others now. Many others. She worked at the muscles. Slowly, slowly he relaxed under her touch.

  She moved around to the front of him and, without thinking, straddled his lap. She took his face in her hands, meaning to use her thumbs to work at his temples, but both his hands came up to grab her wrists. Her heart leapt at the heat that rose between them. Her lips parted at once, ready for his kiss.

  It didn’t come.

  Instead, he put her from his lap firmly and without hesitation. He stood, moving the chair so he could get away from her. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “If you need help getting ready for the storm, let me know,” he said.

  Stunned and embarrassed, Teila nodded. “Yes. Um, thank you. I think we’ll be fine. But I’ll let you know. Yes.”

  “I’ll be in my room. If you need help.”

  She nodded, turning her attention to the dials and switches of the control panel. Nothing there needed her to fiddle with it, but she did in order to keep herself focused on that and not on him. Only when he’d gone did she let herself sag a little, a hand over her mouth to hold back the sobs threatening to slip out.

  It had been better, she thought before she could stop herself, when he’d been convinced she was a dream.

  Chapter 14

  The storm had teased the horizon for the full of the day, striking hard only as night fell. The others had gathered in the sitting room to watch a viddy program, but shortly into it the picture flickered and sputtered, turning to black as the rising dust outside blocked the signal. No amount of fussing with the tuner would bring in the picture, much to the grumbling Venga’s disdain.

  Thinking of himself as the Rav still felt more right than as Jodah, but it wasn’t quite natural. It was a name others were meant to call him. Not how he should think of himself. When someone said it though, it turned his head.

  “Rav,” Pera repeated. “Do you play cards? How about a game of Golightly?”

  All soldiers did, of course. It was sometimes the only way to pass long hours in transit, when electronic entertainment units were forbidden because the transmissions they used could be picked up by enemy scanners. He’d perfected his shuffle, his deal, even the art of a few cheats that everyone knew and used so they couldn’t really be considered dishonest.

  He took the pack of cards from her, demonstrating until she grinned. “Don’t call me that. What are we playing for?”

  He supposed she could’ve asked him to play for money. Instead, she pulled a bin of colored marbles from a closet and put it on the table, separating them into colors and choosing one set for herself. The other to him. It made the game a challenge, but not a real risk. She won the first. He won the second.

  Outside, the winds began to howl. The lights flickered but came back on. Eventually Stephin came into the sitting room along with his amira, a bowl of milka pudding in her hands.

  Jodah’s stomach rumbled as the child settled in the chair next to him. “What do you have there?”

  Stephin showed him. “It’s good.”

  “I know it is.”

  Pera shuddered. “Disgusting. It’s the only way I won’t eat milka. How can you stand it that way?”

  He and the boy shared a smile. “If you let me eat some of your pudding, I’ll show you how to shuffle these cards.”

  The boy grinned, but gave his amira a look. The ancient fenda waved a languid hand and ambled toward the long, low couch in the corner, where she promptly settled herself and fell asleep. Jodah took a bite of pudding and then handed Stephin the pack of cards.

  “Here. Like this.”

  They passed the time that way for a little longer as the storm began to lash the lighthouse. Pera, abandoning the game now that the boy was involved, got up to look out the windows. Venga grumbled some more about the viddy program he wasn’t able to watch. Adarey and Stimlin, who’d both been reading, went to bed without saying a word.

  Though he’d waited for her all evening, Teila hadn’t come into the sitting room. Now Densi woke and took the protesting Stephin by the hand to get ready for bed. The boy hung back.

  “Will you take me?” Stephin asked.

  “Don’t you bother him now,” said the amira with a shake of her head, though she gave Jodah a curious look. “He don’t need to be messing with the likes of you.”


  “I’m going upstairs anyway,” Jodah said. “I’m tired, too. C’mon then. Let’s see if you can count how many stairs there are.”

  “Oh, I know how many,” the boy said importantly. “I’ve learned them!”

  In the boy’s room, Jodah tucked him into bed after making sure he brushed his teeth and changed into sleeping robes. Stephin’s eyes closed, his breathing soft almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

  “You have a way with him,” Teila said quietly from the hallway when Jodah ducked out of the boy’s room and toward his own. “Thank you. Amira Densi is old and sometimes impatient with him at bedtime. And I needed to check the lamp.”

  Jodah had never considered before why he’d been put into the room in the quarters belonging to Teila and her son, but he was glad for it now. This high, with the lamp sweeping its circle of light out across the sea, he had the best view of the storm. Uneasily, he paced in front of the windows. The pain in his head that had subsided so nicely under Teila’s ministrations had crept back slowly over the course of the night. Playing cards had distracted him from the data stream, but now here in the dark, he was finding it hard to put it aside again.

  And then . . . there was the storm.

  The spatter of grit against the windows set him back a step, though there seemed little chance of anything breaking the glass. In the sweep of light, he looked out to the sea, catching sight of what he thought might be a pair of whales cavorting in the whirling sands. If not whales, perhaps two ships being tossed on the roiling sands.

  A ship in a storm.

  Chapter 15

  “You’re a fool and what’s more, an idiot.”

  The words are no surprise, coming from his father, though the tone is harsher than he feels is necessary. In front of him, shining in the bright sunslight, is the cruiser. He restored it himself, spent hours rebuilding and repairing. It was worth twiceten the amount he’d spent to pull it from the junkyard, even if you included what he’d paid to have it hauled to the docks and the rent to keep it there. He’d done all of this on his own, too. That’s probably what made the old man so mad.

  “She’s a beauty, Pao. Even you have to admit that.” He ran his hand along the hull. “And I can sell it for more than I spent on it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  His father glared. “What I’m worried about is the time you wasted on this project. Time you could’ve spent in training. And now what are you going to do with it? Because for all your bragging about how much you could sell it for, I can see you’ve no plans to do so.”

  “Not right away. I’m going to enjoy her first.” Grinning, he hopped over the railing to stand on the deck. Looking up at the suns, he calculated how long he had until nightfall. Plenty of time to get out onto the open sea.

  And from there . . . freedom.

  “You don’t even know anything about the sea!”

  Those were the last words his father had said to him, and they’d been the truth. Now he was in the middle of the Sea of Sand, the largest sea on all of Sheira. But what was there to know? The cruiser had been built with an autopilot and needed no more than occasional intervention. He had enough supplies to last him for a year if he ate amply and for much longer than that if he were meager in his consumption. And as for company, well . . . the world was a big place. He was sure there’d be plenty of people to meet.

  Then came the storms, a series of small ones. The cloud coverage was just enough to require a few hours of supplemental power from the storage cells every day. Nothing that should’ve mattered much, if he’d known there was a break in the circuitry that was draining the supplementals all the time. To save some power while he worked on the repairs, he let the ship go wherever the sea took it. Far off the course he’d set, the tides and winds took him. And there, the biggest storm hit.

  His cruiser was lost, but he was found.

  Chapter 16

  Teila found Jodah crouched on the floor below his window, the heels of his hands pressed to his temples. When she knelt in front of him, he startled, pushing her away. She grabbed a handful of his robe to keep herself from falling and didn’t let it go, even when he grabbed her arm hard enough to bruise.

  He stared at her with wild eyes. “Where am I?”

  Her heart sunk, but she kept her voice steady despite its desire to shake. “You’re in the lighthouse at Apheera, by the Sea of Sand.”

  “Have I been here before?” His grip relaxed, and blinking, he let himself slide down the wall to sit against it.

  Her mouth opened and closed on the reply. She cursed the Rav Aluf. How could she answer that question without risking Jodah’s mind?

  Outside, the wind howled. The lights dimmed and went out. Teila looked automatically toward the window to watch for the lamp’s sweeping circle of light—it was still on. In a minute or so, if Vikus or Billis didn’t get there first, she’d go downstairs and switch the rest of the lighthouse’s power over to the supplementals. Without the sunslight, the cold would quickly permeate even the lighthouse’s thick stone walls. They needed working heat.

  He stared at her steadily now. “Teila. Keeper of the light.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Jodah.”

  “That’s not my name, and you know it. Don’t you?”

  She drew in a slow breath. “It’s not anyone’s real name forever.”

  With a grunt, he doubled over in pain, hands pressed to his head. She put her arm around him, feeling the heat coming off him like he was his own sun. He didn’t fight her off, though at her touch he definitely straightened his spine.

  “Let me help you into bed.”

  “I don’t need you.”

  That stung, though she tried not to let it. “I know you don’t want to. Let me help you anyway.”

  “I don’t need to go to bed!” His cry echoed.

  She got to her feet. “Fine. I’ll leave.”

  He snagged her by the elbow and forced her to kneel again in front of him. “Have I been here before?”

  “Do you feel like you’ve been here before?”

  “That’s not an answer. Would I be asking if I didn’t feel it?”

  The lamp’s sweep lit his face through the windows. Shadow. Light. Shadow. Light. She wanted to cradle his face in her hands and kiss away the anger and fear in his eyes, lit so briefly. Then darkness. It might’ve been easier in darkness.

  Instead, she didn’t touch him. They knelt in front of each other, only the heat and brush of breath connecting them. If she listened hard enough, could she hear his heartbeat?

  “Where was I before I came here?”

  “In a military medica.” That, she could tell him. Only the parts of his life that had happened before the SDF rescued him from the Wirtheran war ship could set off the nanotriggers.

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “You were sedated,” she said.

  Another sweep of light. His gaze met hers without flinching. She found it harder to do the same.

  “Before that . . . I was somewhere else. Captured. The Wirthera.”

  She refused to allow herself hope. “Yes. That’s what they told me.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Long enough, I should guess.”

  Silence, then, but for the sound of his breathing. In the next sweep of light she could see him pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. She ached for him.

  “Before that, I was on a ship. I was the Rav Gadol. I remember that much, at least I think I do. Was it true?”

  “Yes.” Teila inched closer, still not touching but well within his grasp if he wanted to reach for her.

  “What did they do to me?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart.” The endearment slipped out, bittersweet.

  She felt him shudder and reached for him, unable to stop herself. He let her pull him closer until his head rested on her breasts. She ran her fingers through his dark hair, over and over. They sat that way for a long time in silence marked
by the constant sweep of the lamp.

  Slowly she became aware of the delicate caress of his fingertips on the inside of her knee. Then a little higher. The muscles of her thigh leaped under his touch when he made small circles there on the tender skin.

  She gasped at his mouth on hers, then moaned at the slide of his tongue inside. Her hands threaded through his hair, pulling him closer. He covered her with his body, the heat rising even higher as he unlaced the front of her robe.

  His mouth found her breasts and then her nipples, sucking gently. Teila arched under his touch. When his lips moved lower, his hands pushed her legs apart so he could get to her clit.

  When he touched her, it was like fire. It had always been that way, from the first time he’d kissed her. And this . . . this was more like it used to be between them. Tender, sweet, almost too gentle. Teasing.

  It took a long time for her to get to the edge, but any time she tried to move or shift to get at him, those big hands held her in place, until at last she simply gave in and let him have his way. She drifted on the pleasure until she couldn’t stand it anymore.

  His name, his real name, rose to her lips before she could help it. It was swallowed in her cries of pleasure and became no more than a moan, but even in her ecstasy how close she’d come to slipping frightened her. Shaking, she settled into the afterglow, her heartbeat slowing.

  She waited for him to enter her, but he didn’t. He kissed her thighs softly, then her belly. Her hipbones. Over her ribs, her breasts, and at last again to her mouth where he brushed the taste of her over her own lips. They lay together in the dark and quiet through three passes of the lamplight before he spoke.

  “You’re real.”

  “Yes,” she told him.

  He cleared his throat roughly. “I . . . took you. Before.”

  A small smile tugged at her lips, but she did her best to keep it from her voice. “Yes. You did.”