Tide of Shadows and Other Stories (11 page)

Such surprises make writing an intoxicating experience.

Tide of Shadows

My mother's flat palm slammed into my chest, hard enough to send me tumbling backwards, gasping for breath as I hit hard-packed ground. Pain shot up my arm as I came down on my slender wrist, shattering bone.

"Go," she yelled. Her back was turned to me now, and her spear stabbed at darkness, keeping at bay the tide of shadows that rolled over our village. The shadow beasts cried out as she struck out at them, with all the force and precision of a master hunter, but there were so many. Too many.

"Go!" Her spear stabbed and stabbed. She screamed something else, but her words were lost before they reached me. I scrambled up from the ground, clutching my broken wrist against my chest. The beat of thumping footfalls, running as fast as any eight-year-old ever had, joined the sound of my racing heart, of my mother's cries, and the wet stabbing sounds of her spear.

I ran through the nursery, all the way to the back where the small sky pod had sat unused for as long as I'd been alive.

I was the last of the children to scramble into the sky pod. The door shut behind me, airtight in seconds. Engines engaged. All the children were crying, calling for their parents. Tears tickled my dirt-streaked cheeks.

Airborne. Space-bound. Uwe'hhieyth fell away beneath our feet.

15 years later

438 days 00:01:23 until drop

"She's beautiful," Rummage said. She held a holophoto of my mother, who was laughing in that full-bellied way that only happens in the company of loved ones. Her brown eyes were a lot like this girl's, who I'd brought back to my quarters after a date on the solar deck. I hadn't noticed that until then, but the similarity was startling.

"She was," I replied. The constant hum of the starship filled the space left by the word. Like a living thing, the ship had a rhythm that filled its every corner, a warmth and security as fleeting and illusory as the lives of the men and women who crewed her—captain, engineers, medical staff, cooks, quality-of-life coordinators, soldiers like me.

"Was..." Rummage bit her lip as the word trailed into regretful nothingness.

"She was taken in the Tide of Shadows," I said. I thought about her every day, sang to her spirit every night—but the thought of her right then, of describing her to this stranger, put a lump in my throat. The hair on my arm prickled in response to Rummage's warm hand brushing against my own. She wrapped her fingers in mine, transferring heat and affection.

Human companionship was not difficult to find on a spacecraft. After four and a half years aboard
The Spirit of a Sudden Wind
, and nearly eleven years before that flitting from station to station as refugees, we were all desperate for whatever social norms we could establish in the rote routine of daily life aboard a military vessel. Wake, mess, training, mess, training, free time, sleep. Wash, rinse, repeat. Free time, at least for me, was often spent seeking comfort with fellow spacefarers. I didn't date other soldiers—too many shared demons, and there were enough auxiliary staff aboard that we could mix freely. But Rummage, well... I couldn't ignore the way she looked at me.

I reached over and turned off the holophoto. "I'll tell you about her someday," I said.

Rummage crossed her arms in mock offence.

"What?" I said. "I have to make sure you're the type of girl she'd like." I smiled, then winked.

Damn it, Sligh. A wink? Who the fuck winks?

Instead of laughing at me or turning heel and leaving me to wallow in embarrassed misery, she winked back at me.

We both laughed. I reached out and gently trailed my fingers along one of her arms, tracing the outline of her lean muscles. With that touch and the devilish twinkle in her eye, I finally allowed the tension to melt away. It felt so good to let it go.

"Should we go get a bite?" she said. "I know just the place..."

397 days 16:42:04 until drop

We fucked. Fucked 'til the morning lights blushed pink on the luminescent circadian walls.

Rise and shine.

Then the morning alarm blared, crashing through our calm, sated entanglement. No rest for the wicked.

We both dressed and were in the mess in minutes.

220 days 08:57:12 until drop

Uwe'hhieyth.

It was home. You could ask anyone outside of our system, and they'd shake their head, mutter something about how they'd never heard of it.

We were happy once, when no one had heard of us. Uwe'hhieyth gave us a chance to create a world that did not forget itself at every opportunity. On Uwe'hhieyth, we found the spirits who had fled Earth. Did the spirits flee that scorched world alongside us, or did we find new ones waiting on Uwe'hhieyth? We haven't found that answer. If you ask me, though, they're one and the same. Ancient as anything in the universe, vaster than the entirety of the blanket of stars, and newborn by the strengths of our beliefs, our need for something good and pure. One and the same.

In the dark days following the Tide of Shadows, many wondered why the Unitarian government, whose very existence is based on the idea of a unified, amalgamated human race, would gift a planet to a group of people who had been so long trivialized. Our culture, history, and origins were, for so long, ground under the heel of bureaucracy and societal values that we didn't fit into or care for, yet Uwe'hhieyth was given to us. No strings attached. Except that our departure meant that the small corner that still remained of our once-vast homeland, unblemished by the cumulative horror of capitalism's avalanche of “progress,” could finally be covered in concrete and steel. Our green planet gone grey.

Uwe'hhieyth was a second chance. And, doubly important, we colonized it without displacing another group of people. That was very important to the leaders of my people. Chief Hul'qim'ee demanded it, and, for once, our voice was heard. My ancestors, the last of whom lived until the Tide of Shadows, settled an uninhabited planet. Swampy and rich in precious gasses, Uwe'hhieyth, we were all alone in a solar system with two suns and a near-impenetrable belt of asteroids. Let peace reign. Let us heal.

My family was third-generation colonials and damn proud of it. On Uwe'hhieyth, the culture and practices of my people flourished. This quiet corner of space was filled with our songs, and the asteroid belt that protected us shook thunderously with every step as we danced.

The Unitarian government didn't exactly have a great track record for peaceful expansion. Most colonials pitched their first tents on blood-soaked soil and built their societies on the broken backs of survivors. Life is good when you're better armed and (if you swallow the gruel your commanding officer forces down your throat) more intelligent than the prey lined up in your sights.

The Unitarian government loves conquest, loathes the conquered.

We weren't alone on Uwe'hhieyth. Just blind to our neighbours.

They came from the ground. Not from caves, crevasses or valleys, literally up from the ground, like locusts. We were not armed—civil war did not exist yet on our young planet—and could not defend ourselves. They were darker than a starless night and brought shadows with them; shadows that somehow drowned out the light of Uwe'hhieyth's twin moons. Imagine fighting shadows whose very touch would chill the blood in your veins and freeze you from the inside. Imagine fighting thousands of them, endless waves, night after night. We did not last long.

Those few of us who survived fled. We were mostly young men and women living away from their families in one of the three airborne academies that all Unitarian citizens were required to attend from ages ten through thirteen. Like cowards, we fled. No more than twenty thousand or so made it to the ship.

Five thousand six hundred and thirteen days later, after a stop of several years on the massive Unitarian refugee station,
Cygnus 3118
, our ship,
The Spirit of a Sudden Wind
, was on course back to Uwe'hhieyth with a simple mission: recovery.

78 days 17:03:38 until drop

Her ruby-coloured skin seared my fingertips as my hand trailed from her navel to her breast. Bioluminescent light followed my touch, ecstasy and pleasure on the visible spectrum, like starlight sparkling on midnight waves. She shivered, and I sighed. I lay down beside her, nuzzled into the crook of her arm.

There's a certain peace that comes with the forgetfulness that envelops you as you lay beside your equally blissful and sated partner. Ear pressed against skin, the beat of her heart is all that exists; our little room shrinks until it is the only thing in the universe, a warm womb that promises to protect you and nourish you. Forget about everything outside the door. Breathe. Sleep.

On a ship fuelled by vengeance and anger, any relief can be lifesaving.