by Anthea Sharp
In the end, it didn’t matter. Ruby was glad the queen was gone, and Cayden was reunited with the woman he loved. Even if he could only spend three days a month with her in a human form, it was better than a life alone.
“Thank you, Ruby.” Cayden’s words echoed in her head.
“You’re welcome. Maybe now I can find peace in my own world without you pulling me away from my reality.”
“You’re free.”
That was the last time Ruby ever heard from Cayden, or even dreamed of him. Whatever their connection had been it was broken with the death of the queen. She still thought about him on occasion, and sincerely wished for his happiness.
It wasn’t long after that strange day that Ruby met Prince Xavier. Their attraction was of course forbidden, yet neither could resist. Nor could Ruby deny that Xavier bore a striking resemblance to Cayden.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I love all the fairy tales, and who doesn't like the idea of throwing a little galactic energy into these stories? Little Red Riding Hood needed a happier ending. I've always had a soft spot for the Big Bad Wolves of the world. Why did they turn out this way? Can they be redeemed? I hope you enjoy my twist to this classic tale.
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julia Crane dreamt of elves and teen androids long before she captured them and put them on paper. From science fiction adventures to succubus, Julia's fresh voice is imaginative and easy to read. Widely known for her Keegan's Chronicles series and IFICS series, she has hit numerous bestseller lists on Amazon. Visit her at juliacrane.com, and sign up for her newsletter!
The Star Dragon’s Curse - Alexia Purdy
Clink.
I pulled my hatchet from the earth, perplexed. Was that metal? Was it stone? I shouldn’t be at the hull yet. I should have at least another two feet to go. I tossed my tool aside and dug through the dirt until my hands uncovered the hardened metallic hull beneath the roots of the trees. Another tree had fallen, and I was in charge of finding out what was killing our precious forest.
On the archaic ship the Star Dragon, I was a horticulturist and arborist. I was the only one the ship had, ever since my parents had both entered the forest one day to later be found, hand in hand, having drunken poison cultivated from our herb garden. I’d been fifteen years old. They’d taught me all they’d known by then, drilling the myriad uses for plants into my brain until it turned to mush. They filled it with facts about roots, medicinal herbs, and edible plants and how to grow just about anything in the ship’s artificial greenhouse domes. Everything there had been saved from our origin planet, Earth; now almost a hundred lightyears away. It was a place I’d never see.
We knew we’d never return. People had destroyed it, and it’d take too long to salvage any of it. Unfit for life, the history logs said. No longer sustainable. Now it was thought to have long since withered into a dead planet. It’d been so long since we’d been there, we no longer knew the fate of our home world. For now, we lived on this metal floating city until a new and suitable planet was discovered. After nearly two and a half centuries of traveling, none had been found. The most promising nearby planets had all been inhospitable for one reason or another. So we continued the search. Even though we were moving at faster-than-light speeds, the universe was unimaginably large. We survived by keeping the ship intact, growing our own food, and making oxygen.
The ship was massive. One hundred and fifty football fields in length and at least half that in width. It had dozens of floors where the few thousand living and breathing on this ship worked and thrived. Mental illness was prevalent, and intermittent oxygen deprivation was the main cause. My work was to keep the plants and trees in the forest-filled dome alive, providing precious oxygen to all areas of the ship, but I was failing at my job. The trees were dying at an alarming rate.
My work barely gave me enough time to sleep, but I was all right with that. There was no resting when lives were at stake. It had taken my parents from me. I wouldn’t let it happen to anyone else.
The dirt on my hands was red, nearly blood red, from the darkness of it. Like the oxidized, iron-fortified dirt I’d read about on the ship’s database. Places back on Earth called Utah, Arizona, and Oklahoma had boasted such landscapes. But here, the dirt should have been a dark brown color, not the color of dried blood mixed with iron ore.
Star Dragon Forest was about thirty acres in area and the main source of oxygen for the ship. The aging air scrubbers did their best, but the ship had not been designed for this long a journey. And now my trees were dying, and I didn’t know why. The reddened earth stained my skin as I rubbed it between my fingers. It made me wonder what had happened to the once rich, life-giving earth.
“Creedence.” The crackle of the radio dangling from my neck echoed loudly in the still forest. I reached to the button at the side of the mic, ready to respond. “Any luck finding out anything about the diseased trees?”
I cleared my throat. “Creedence here. That’s a negative.”
I peered around, suddenly feeling very alone. The trees never rustled here unless the fans were on to circulate the oxygenated air throughout the ship. Right now, they were still, and the forest remained silent. I peered up at the canopy above me, the artificial light shining down from above, simulating sunlight. I shaded my eyes.
* * *
“The light just isn’t the same,” my mother would say. “I feel like I’m in a coffin, Derrick. I need to get off this ship.” She’d tear at her hair. Patches of skin showed through her once luscious mane.
“It’s just for a short while longer, May. We’ll find a new planet soon.” My father would always reassure her, but she’d shake her head violently, unconvinced.
“And what if we don’t? I can’t stay here.”
* * *
“Creedence?” The radio crackled once more. Thomas, my superior, must have asked me something else I hadn’t paid attention to. A biologist and environmentalist, he usually left me to my own devices, but any threat to the ship’s oxygen stores was a serious matter and concerned everyone.
I snatched the rectangular device, pressing the button to speak. “Can you repeat that, sir?”
“We need to resume the circulation. Are you wearing gear for the noise?”
“Affirmative.”
“Nothing new to report?”
“No such luck yet, sir, but I’m taking more soil samples to test. I should find out what’s going on soon.”
“Understood. Fans on in two minutes.”
The radio crackle faded, and I scooped more of the dark, blood-red earth into the sample containers, stuffed them into my belt pack, and wiped off my hands. I placed my noise-cancelling headphones on before climbing out of the hole I’d been digging. The noise from the circulating fans was deafening and could cause damage to my hearing without protection.
I had to get results as promptly as possible. Testing more soil samples was the only option, but so far, the other samples I had back in the lab had yielded nothing. I grabbed my things, which were strewn across the mossy forest floor.
A movement in the woods caught my eye. I scanned the surrounding area, my heart jumping in my chest. The silence with my headphones on chilled me to the bone, and I removed them for a moment before replacing them as the fans shuddered as they kicked on up above. I heard nothing, as usual. The faint feeling that someone was watching me was unsettling. I glanced at the nearby base of the glass dome and approached it.
Stars shone like brilliant diamonds in the blackness beyond. The forest sat at the edge of one of the massive domes that lined the top of the Star Dragon. The universe appeared undisturbed and disinterested in our plight. I pressed a hand to the cold glass and immediately jumped back as a misty swirl swam by.
What was that? I scanned the window to find what had just passed but failed to locate it again. Whatever it’d been, it had known I was there on the other side of the glass. Was it alive? Was it just space matter? It had wavered, as though
swimming through the ocean of space, so it had to be alive. But no matter how long I stared out the glass, I couldn’t locate the anomaly.
A bloody handprint sat where I’d placed my fingers a moment before. I peered down at my hand, noticing that the red clay dirt had liquefied on my sweaty palm. It looked like blood. Dark red, fresh blood.
Sighing, I stepped away from the glass and turned back toward the main entrance to the forest. I was scaring myself and had to get back to work. There was so much to do and so little time.
Shaking the test tubes, I eyed the liquid within it, wondering what was causing the change in the dirt. I’d been at the lab all day and had concluded nothing. Yes, there was more iron in the soil, obscene amounts, but it didn’t explain where it had come from or if it was the root cause the diseased trees.
“Any luck?” Jameson, my new lab partner, asked. He peered over the other test tubes, curiously examining the work I’d done. Shaking my head, I leaned back in my chair and blew out a breath of frustration.
“No. I’m getting nowhere. The only thing I can think of is maybe the soil is contaminated from erosion of the hull and has leached iron out of it, but even that alone doesn’t explain why the iron content is so high. It’s elevated at an alarming and impossible rate. There’s not enough iron in the ship’s metal to have seeped that much into the dirt. It’s about ten feet deep in most areas, maybe more. There’s no way there’s that much iron to contaminate all that soil to kill the trees.”
Jameson shook his head, cursing under his breath. “Seems like you’ve got a real mystery here. It’s odd. Reminds me of something from a few years ago.”
I perked up at his comment, furrowing my brow. “What do you mean it reminds you of something?”
“It was when I was younger. In my old sector of the ship, there was this rumor going around about there being iron and rust randomly contaminating different parts of the garden and walls. It’d show up in spots in the shape of a footprint or handprint, full of iron and rusty clay.”
I leaned forward, curious. “Did they ever find out what was going on?”
He shook his head. “No. They never did find out what was causing it. They kind of forgot about it when it stopped happening. I just remember there was a lot of chaos and fear back then due to a disappearance… or a few disappearances. I don’t really know. It was kind of shielded from the kids. No matter how many times I asked my parents about it, they didn’t want to tell me anything. None of the kids knew what was really happening.”
I sighed, rubbing my eyes before shoving wispy strands of my long dark brown hair back. I was exhausted. I’d been testing the soil samples all day to no avail.
“Hey, listen.” Jameson sat on the counter and studied me, concerned. “Why don’t you go rest or something? You’ve been working hard for days. Something will pop up soon. Trust me.” His bright blue eyes gleamed behind his glasses. I had to admit, he was a looker. I turned away, blushing.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. I’m worn out. Maybe a couple hours won’t hurt.”
He winked. “Don’t forget to eat something first.”
I agreed as I got up. Peering over at him, I was glad for his sympathy. “Hey, how’s your father doing, by the way? Is he still pretty ill?”
“He’s been better, but for now, he’s at the care home level, resting. He’s been having a lot of delusions and some hallucinations. I don’t know why, he just says things like, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know where it is. I swear.’ And he just cries out in the night, says he doesn’t know, or something like that. I’m not really sure what he’s trying to say. He’s confused, you know? Dementia hit him really hard. The stupid oxygen rations are making it worse.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry to hear that. I heard he was a very special man.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, it’s nice that you guys moved here to help me with the botanicals. Since Lisa got hurt, it’s been a full-time job. I’m really glad you’re here.” I smiled at him, and he returned it as I walked out and headed toward my quarters.
I was ecstatic to be working with Jameson. He had transferred from another garden sector of the ship. I had never met him before now, which was odd since he was also a horticulturist, as was his father. The colonists were spread out thinly across the ship, and it was as though there were several small towns on the large vessel. This had been intentional. The designers knew it might be several generations before a new home was found, and they had allowed room for growth. Interaction between sectors was minimal. Only the leaders of each sector met to discuss issues and trades.
I wasn’t sure my apprentice, Lisa, would be coming back to work with me in the forest and gardens. She had expressed unhappiness with horticulture and had mentioned she would probably choose a different profession when she healed from a nasty fall she’d taken while trimming some orange trees. She swore someone had pushed over her ladder, but surveillance cameras had shown her to be quite alone.
Losing an apprentice wasn’t unheard of. Losing one so far into their training was devastating. I would have to get Jameson up to speed quickly, but luckily he already had experience from working in the smaller gardens in his old sector of the ship. For now, he was better help than none.
I stood in the forest, now darkened for the artificial night, my hands dripping the strange red color from sifting through the dirt and clay. What was I doing back here? There were tests needing completion in the lab. No… I should be in bed, resting. Why was I here? Had I sleepwalked back to the forest? Confused, I peered around, noticing the glass wall to the outside world. Again, I approached it to peer at the stars beyond, bright and beautiful. I pressed my hands to the glass once more; the freezing cold permeated the transparent but steel-hard composite material. One couldn’t touch it for long without getting frostbite.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
I jerked around, searching for the voice echoing from behind me, and saw nothing. The forest sat silent, a quiet monster. But I could not shake the feeling that something was watching me.
“Who’s there?”
A ribbon of mist moved before my eyes, and I followed it, feeling a shudder run through my spine. It was alive, intelligent… and circling my body. It gathered together, forming into two entities: a space horse and its rider.
Spacewalkers, dressed in pressure suits, patrolled the exterior of the ship, making repairs. They often used space horses, long seahorse-looking entities able to survive in the vacuum. We’d encountered them in our travels and found them to be friendly and docile and now had a stable full of them. Spacewalkers kept the ship together, so they weren’t an uncommon sight, but I had never seen one wearing his suit inside. And this one… he was missing his helmeted head.
I screamed, stumbling backward and tripping on a root. Down I went, into the blood-red earth, my hip screaming from the impact. I hoped I was dreaming, but I could see this was all very real. The apparition moved closer, and I broke past my fear, breathing hard as I reached out to touch the snout of the space horse. It nuzzled against my hand, a cold mist steaming from its nostrils. Then the space horseman’s body came into view again, and I stared wide-eyed down the gaping hole of his neck where his head should have been.
I gasped for air, withdrawing my hand as his voice somehow boomed from his missing throat. “Bring me my head, Fräulein, and I will return this forest to life. Fail, and I will kill everyone on this ship. My body remains desecrated. You know where it is.”
I shook my head. “What? Who are you?”
The apparition leaned closer, his steamy breath floating into the air from his neck. I could see blood staining his tattered white spacesuit. He wore an antique Hessian soldier’s badge beneath the patch of the Star Dragon. His use of German confirmed his heritage.
I’d know only one man who’d ever spoken the archaic language, and that was years ago, when I was but a child. I gasped once more as his freezing breath chilled my face again. His hand reached out toward me, wrap
ping around my neck, but I couldn’t move. As my oxygen ran out, I came out of my stunned state, but he continued to squeeze, cutting off my airway.
“Bring me my head, Fräulein. Hurry.”
I sat up, choking and grasping at my throat, but there was nothing there. I glanced around my quarters, a small room with an even smaller window to the outside. So it had been a dream after all. But I’d felt so certain it had been real….
I coughed. The air felt thin. Were we running out of oxygen again? It was then that I realized the oxygen alert system had been activated, flashing lights in every room and hall to warn of low oxygen levels.
* * *
“Warning! Warning! Oxygen levels approaching critical. Warning! Warning! Oxygen levels approaching critical. Backup carbon dioxide scrubbers have been activated. Repeat. Backup carbon dioxide scrubbers have been activated. Approximately ninety-six hours of oxygen available.”
* * *
The voice turned off as the alarms kept flashing silently, warning us that the oxygen reserve was low. It’d been fluctuating throughout the past few months but had never dropped long enough to turn on the backup carbon dioxide scrubbers. The air scrubbers were so old they would not work for long. Immediately, I felt better as fresh oxygen circulated once more into my room, the fans whirring back to life. Soon they would stop circulating to the entire ship, and everyone would have to consolidate into a smaller area. More than likely, it would be near the forest.
Once the forest died off completely, there would be nowhere to go.
I stood up and pulled on some slacks and a shirt before running a comb through my tangled locks. I had to get back to the chemistry lab. Time was running out. I had to figure this out right away.
