Earthtaker

by Robert Jeschonek

  “Please help him!” My concern for him welled up within me, more compelling than I’d expected. “Please save him if you can!”

  The woman looked up at me. “Use of the powers of the Mother is forbidden in this place. It is the only way to keep it secret as we do.” She sighed. “Each time we open the channel and reach outside the Niche to tap those powers, we risk discovery.”

  “This man is worth it.” Mid looked haggard as she approached, rubbing her throat. “You do realize he’s the Extinctionist, don’t you, Drusilla?”

  Drusilla looked surprised. “The ender of species?” Her expression turned to one of worry. “Has he come for us?”

  Mid shook her head. “He’s a good man, Drusilla…an ally in our struggle. We need him to see this thing through.”

  Again, Drusilla raised her hands over Ebon’s wound, and her face darkened. “Not much time left until his own extinction now.”

  “Then do it,” said Mid. “In the name of our order, please save him.”

  Drusilla got to her feet. “But our order is not pledged to support your struggle, whatever it is. Why should we take this terrible chance if we might yet declare our opposition to your efforts?”

  “Enough.” Mid turned away, facing the line of huts atop the beach. “Sisters of the Ancestrum! Come save this man’s life, I beseech you! Come in all your numbers and work miracles as you did in days of old!”

  Chapter 23

  Nothing moved among those huts but the stirring of the wind. Though I didn’t know who occupied them, what the Ancestrum was or why they were there, I silently prayed that they would soon emerge and do something to rescue Ebon.

  Silent moments passed. Finally, the huts gave up their inhabitants. Women stepped out of them, yawning and stretching and rubbing their eyes. They all wore the same white shifts, but they looked quite different from each other—some tall, some short, some black, some white, some blonde, some brunette, some thin, some fat, some young, some old. Their hair, when long, was mussed and tangled, their shifts wrinkled from too long in repose.

  There must have been huts in the forest, too, for more women strolled out of the treeline, also sleepy and clad in white. They milled around with the others, dozens gathered at the fringe of the beach, looking in our direction…and then they started toward us.

  “See?” Mid smiled gravely. “I knew they were listening.”

  The women encircled us, staring at Ebon, their expressions unreadable.

  “Thank you all for coming.” Mid gestured at Ebon. “Please save him.”

  A slender woman with long black hair stepped forward, hands folded over her belly. “We don’t object to the saving of lives, but Drusilla is right about the danger of channeling power from the world beyond. Our Niche is only safe as long as it remains hidden from Mother.”

  “Tess is right,” said a short redhead with eyes like shining emeralds. “But…what if he’s meant to play a vital role in something that’s of great interest to us?”

  “He is!” said Mid. “We’ve come because Mother is about to massacre all humanity, and this man, Ebon, can help us stop her!”

  The women of the Ancestrum murmured among themselves at that, looking concerned.

  “That’s right,” said Mid. “Mother Earth is determined to finish them off this time! And she brought back her nastiest war bitch to do it!” She pointed down the beach at the surf, where Gaia 2 was in the process of working on the speedboat while Beatrice sat on the black sand away from the water and watched. “Remember her?”

  Again, there was murmuring among the women.

  When it stopped, Tess nodded at Drusilla. “We should do it. If the stakes are that high, we should take the chance.”

  Drusilla still didn’t look happy. “And if Mother finds us? What hope will we have then? What hope will there be for humanity?”

  “The same as there is now!” I said, sick of listening to their debate while Ebon died. “Zero hope! So what do you have to lose?”

  Tess looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. “A second war-self? What’s going on here?”

  “I’ll explain later!” snapped Mid.

  “It’s about time,” I said.

  Mid scowled at Tess, then Drusilla. “Just save him, please.”

  There was a quiet, tense moment. Drusilla looked around at the crowd—and every woman thrust her right fist up in the air. The vote was unanimous.

  “All right.” Drusilla crouched beside Ebon, placing her hands on his blood-soaked wound. “Let’s get this done.”

  The women all held hands. Tess, at the front of the group, reached down and placed her free hand on Drusilla’s head.

  “Make it as quick as we can,” said Tess. “Reach out, get what we need, and slam the door shut behind us. Don’t give Mother enough time to find her way into the Niche.”

  The women of the Ancestrum all closed their eyes, bowed their heads, and fell silent. None of the rest of us interrupted them, either…though Gaia 2 kept banging away at the speedboat. From a distance, I couldn’t tell if she was trying to fix something or tear something out of the damaged craft.

  The Ancestrum swayed rhythmically, synchronized perfectly. As I watched, they started to glow with a soft, golden light.

  As the tempo of their swaying increased, the glow built also, rising in brightness. Faster and faster they swayed…brighter and brighter they glowed…

  Until all of them suddenly flung up their hands, still joined, and froze.

  It was then that the gray clouds opened directly overhead, revealing a starry night sky. A blazing shower of white light slashed down from the opening, engulfing the women of the Ancestrum.

  They all quivered at once in that pulsating wave, galvanized. Then they swung their hands down, and the light poured out of them, rushing through Tess’s hand into Drusilla’s head…and on into Ebon.

  Surging with golden fire, he twisted on the black sand, making a choking sound. Suddenly, he lunged up, his bloody midsection off the ground while his shoulders and feet stayed down. Golden tendrils swirled around his wound, weaving in and out of the punctured gut with incredible speed.

  The light flared then, obscuring his physical form in a burst of radiance. For a moment, I couldn’t see him at all…just Drusilla’s arms reaching into the flare, her hands as lost in the brilliance as he was.

  And then I heard it. From within the flare, I heard a sound that made my heart beat faster.

  He took a breath.

  The second that gasp happened, Tess broke contact with Drusilla, Drusilla let go of Ebon, and all the women of the Ancestrum followed suit. The light drained from everyone, and the hole in the sky sealed instantly.

  As Ebon’s body slumped to the sand, I could see his clothes were still bloody, but his gut was sealed. The wound was gone as if it has never been there.

  They had saved him.

  “What the hell?” Ebon sat up, then grimaced and clutched his belly. Though his wound was repaired, the pain was apparently still abundant.

  I knelt beside him. “You were shot just before we entered the Niche. The Ancestrum healed you.”

  “At great personal risk,” Drusilla said emphatically. “And the possible ruination of everything you see before you.”

  “I feel like I should apologize.” Ebon chuckled, then gasped in pain. “Sorry for…surviving…”

  “Save it for when Mother Earth obliterates us all in a fit of rage,” said Drusilla.

  “But if I wait till then…we’ll all be dead…right?” He smirked through the pain. “So I’ll just say it now…so we’re all covered.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry for getting us…obliterated by Mother Earth…whoever you are.”

  “Okay,” said Drusilla. “And you’re welcome for all of us saving your life.”

  She started to get up, and he caught her wrist. “Thank you,” he said sincerely, gazing into her eyes…and then he looked around at the Ancestrum encircling us. “And thank all of you, too…from the bottom of my
almost-dead heart.”

  Chapter 24

  It didn’t feel like the middle of July in the Niche. There was a bite in the air, and the lack of direct sunlight kept things from warming up. Walking through the shade of the forest, I couldn’t help shivering, especially when we were near streams or under the thickest cover.

  Maeve, the emerald-eyed redhead who served as my guide, didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by it, though. She wore the light white shift that passed for a uniform in that place, but the thin garment might as well have been a snowsuit for all that the cold affected her.

  “Is it always like this here?” I crossed my arms over my chest to ward off the chill as we walked between walls of dripping wet rock. “Doesn’t it ever heat up?”

  Maeve smiled and shook her head. She seemed like a sweet girl, and I was glad she’d volunteered to give me the nickel tour of the Niche. “It’s always the same.”

  “No seasons?”

  Again, she shook her head. “It’s the best we could do when we made it.” She had a lilt in her voice when she spoke, an accent that sounded Irish to me. “I mean, I didn’t make it, I didn’t exist yet—but those earliest forebears among us, it was the best they could manage.” She stopped to smell a gray-petaled flower on a vine. “And we are lucky to have it.”

  I just nodded and followed her along the path. I intended to learn everything I could from her…and I was sure she planned to do the same with me.

  She’d been assigned by the Ancestrum to show me around in the wake of the chaos on the beach, leading me off while Mid, White Buffalo, and Georgia stayed behind to oversee Ebon’s recuperation. Maybe Maeve was also supposed to buy time before whatever was coming next. Maybe the Ancestrum needed time to think about how to approach the situation…though it didn’t seem to me that it should take any time at all to decide whether or not to save humankind.

  “So, who were they?” I asked as we stepped over a trickling stream. “Who were the earliest forebears who made this place?”

  “The first of the avatars, brought to life in the very earliest days of humankind.” Maeve grinned. “You can meet them later and ask about it yourself, if you like.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Do you mean to tell me that the first Earth avatars in human form are here?”

  “They all are,” she told me. “When their time was up, and Mother had created new avatars to replace them, they came here to this hidden place to commune with each other. They came here to ensure their hard-won knowledge and wisdom would not be lost to the ages.” She raised her eyebrows. “And they came here in case there was a crisis so extreme that their combined power might be needed to avert it.”

  “So you’re saying all of them are here?” I asked. “Every single one of them since the dawn of humanity?”

  She nodded. “Every avatar ever created—well, almost every avatar—is right here in the Niche. Together, they represent tens of thousands of years of Earth-human history.”

  I stopped on the path, stunned by what I was hearing. “They’re all still alive?”

  Maeve flattened her hand and tipped it from side to side. “Not quite dead might be more accurate.”

  We continued onward, winding between gray-trunked trees with odd-shaped pale green leaves I couldn’t identify. I didn’t see or hear any birds or animals at all, as if they, like the seasons, had been left out of the Niche’s design.

  “What do you mean by ‘not quite dead?’” I asked.

  “We’re not truly immortal. We only have a little life left in us.” She pinched a thumb and forefinger close to signify a tiny amount. “We use some of it when we’re needed for something big. The rest of the time, we’re fast asleep in dreamland, saving our energy.”

  “Until someone barges in and wakes you up,” I said, “like us.”

  “Rude.” She cast a disapproving glare my way that I could tell wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. “And I was having such a sweet dream, too.”

  I laughed, enjoying her company in spite of the grave situation hanging over us.

  “You weren’t supposed to get here so soon yourself, you know,” she told me. “That is to say, all avatars come here eventually, but you still have so much life ahead of you.” She cleared her throat. “Hopefully, I mean.”

  “I didn’t even know about this place until recently.” I spread my arms to take in our surroundings. “Nobody said a thing to me about it until Mid.”

  “Well, as I understand it, you’re sort of a special case,” said Maeve. “I guess that’s why you never got the full set of instructions like the rest of us.”

  “Full set?” I snorted. “I don’t have any set, apparently.” I let my arms fall hard against my sides. “I used to think I knew who I was, but I guess I knew nothing about myself this whole time.”

  “The whole war-self thing? Is that what you’re talking about?” she asked.

  “That’s part of it,” I said. “According to my genocidal twin, not only am I Mother Earth’s war-self, but I’m a replacement for her…and now she’s replaced me.”

  Maeve tipped her head to the side and scrunched up her eyes. “It does sound confusing when you put it like that.”

  “You think so?” I blew out my breath in frustration. “It’s been making me crazy, finding out my whole life has been a lie.”

  “Well…not your whole life, right? I mean, you’re still the same person inside, aren’t you? No matter who they say you are.”

  I thought about it. “I guess so.”

  “Then what does it matter?” Maeve smiled as she answered her own question. “It doesn’t. Not one damn bit.”

  I glared at her. “You’re trying to get out of telling me, aren’t you?”

  She frowned. “Telling you what?”

  “The truth. You’re part of the Ancestrum, and you know the truth, but you don’t want to tell me, do you? You’re just like everyone else, aren’t you?”

  “The answer to your first question is no. I have no problem with telling you the truth. As for your second question—hell, no! Don’t you dare compare me to everyone else!” She swatted me playfully on the arm.

  “Then tell me,” I said. “If you don’t have a problem with telling me the truth, just do it.”

  Maeve led me through a low-hanging tangle of vines, then stopped at the edge of a sudden drop-off. Stepping up beside her, I found myself gazing down at a deep ravine full to bursting with greenery that swayed and fluttered in the afternoon breeze.

  “Beautiful,” I said softly. “Just beautiful.”

  “And yet,” said Maeve, “one step in the wrong direction would be disastrous.” She nodded knowingly. “Such is the life of the powerful. It’s easy to go too far.”

  I thought for a moment. “You’re talking about the first war-self?”

  She shook her head. “I’m talking about Mother Earth.”

  We were both silent for a moment, the rattle of the leaves far below the only sound in our ears.

  “It started after World War II,” she said. “Humanity tore themselves to ribbons, and Mother turned a blind eye—until the atomic bomb. That weapon, she realized, could eventually ruin even her. The power at its core, fully evolved and misused by mankind, could kill not just them, but her.”

  I nodded grimly as she went on with the story.

  “Mother decided the avatar at the time was not up to the task of stopping the humans from destroying her. I wasn’t up to that task.” She gave me a meaningful look, her emerald eyes forlorn, and shrugged. “I didn’t have the heart to do what Mother demanded, which was to massacre every man, woman, and child on the planet. To clear the slate so she could be safe and start over.

  “That is why she decided to bring the war-self to life,” continued Maeve. “Gaia Grenoble was her name. A more vicious, conscienceless bitch I could never imagine.”

  Again, I nodded. The date of the photo in Ellie’s scrapbook agreed with the timeframe of Maeve’s story.

  “Gaia was the most powerful
avatar ever created,” said Maeve. “She was primed to wipe out humanity on Mother’s order. Maybe she would’ve wiped me out, too, but I made it to the Niche before she could…and I told the Ancestrum what was happening.

  “They were unanimous in their condemnation. Not one of them approved of Mother’s mass-murder plan. Humanity had just fought the greatest war in history. We all agreed they deserved the chance to dig out of the rubble and start over…to prove themselves worthy of survival.

  “For the first time in millennia, at the risk of discovery and attack by Mother Earth, the Ancestrum took action. They sent a team beyond the Niche—Tess, Drusilla, and I—imbued with communal power and loyal to the cause of saving humanity.

  “Our team ambushed Gaia Grenoble and imprisoned her deep inside the Niche, in a cell that nullified her powers. We couldn’t bring ourselves to execute a sister avatar, no matter what she’d done.”

  “And Mother didn’t find out about this?” I asked.

  “Oh, she was furious,” said Maeve, “but she didn’t know who’d done it, and she didn’t know where to find Gaia Grenoble…so, eventually, she had to let it pass. She gave up the plan to wipe out humanity and moved on.”

  “But why didn’t she just whip up a new war-self?”

  “She waited because she still wasn’t sure what had happened to the last one,” explained Maeve. “The nuclear threat seemed to diminish, so she waited until the next sign of great crisis. That turned out to be climate change, another threat to the world as we know it.

  “Just as before, Mother brought a war-self to life. The first one had been so perfect, she copied it exactly…but we were ready for her this time. We’d been watching from the Niche, waiting for this to happen, and we had a plan.

  “Instead of abducting and locking away another war-self, possibly bringing ourselves to Mother’s attention, we changed her. During her formative early days, we surrounded her with positive influences, including one in particular—a golem with a heart so bright and generous, it drove out much of the darkness in her soul. He became her moon.”