Tide of Shadows and Other Stories (12 page)

54 days 03:21:22 until drop

She was a hunter, you see. Spear in hand, my mum could best almost anyone else in our settlement at hunting or sport. Unlike some of the largest settlements on Uwe'hhieyth, my settlement, Q'atxin, was small enough that we still relied on our hunters to bring in food from the surrounding land to supplement the rations delivered yearly by Unitarian dropship. Some of these hunters were more foragers—they picked berries, dug through moist earth for the deepest, thickest roots—others were fishermen or farmers, and some, like my mother, were hunters in the purest sense.

Heroes were born that day. Heroes died that day.

Rummage took my hand in hers. "That's why you fight," she said. She looked me straight in the eyes; a small quirk of approval touched her lips.

I still remember the first time I tried to pick up her spear. Was I six? Seven? It was...only a year before the Tide of Shadows.

I nodded. "I think it's what she'd want. She loved Uwe'hhieyth more than anyone else I ever met. She'd do the same if she'd lived and I'd died—she'd be on this ship, full of piss and fucking vinegar."

"Beautiful and fierce," Rummage said with a full smile. "She's a lot to live up to, Sligh."

"I know," I said, more forcefully than I'd have liked. I dropped her hand, started dry-washing mine anxiously. "Don't you think I know that?"

"I meant for me, Sligh. Your mother would be proud of who you are, you know. Not because you're here, fighting for Uwe'hhieyth, but because you're sweet and smart, and you work hard."
 

She silenced my protests with a finger pressed to my lips.

"And the way you touch me, the way you brush your lips softly against mine before we kiss, shows how much you can love."

I took her hand again, feeling like an idiot.

"Tell me more about her," Rummage said.

There was no first contact between us and the shadowborn, at least not in a traditional hey-you-let's-pretend-to-be-friends-before-I-slip-a-knife-in-your-back political sense. First contact happened on a morning, right in the midst of the rainy season.

One moment, we were alone on our new home planet, top of the food chain and slowly recovering from our arduous trip between stars. It might be suitable to think of it as a calm between storms, but I prefer to think of it as the morning-after period for Uwe'hhieyth—hungover and hunched over a greasy plate of breakfast, trying to keep it together, reliving the highs and lows of the night before. The world was sluggish and slow around us.

The first concentrated strikes of the shadowborn crippled us, cutting off communications with the smaller settlements like my own. The attacks on these communities were smaller, less focused. Shadowborn rolled over settlements, swarming my people in such quantities, and with such mindless ferocity, that we stood no chance.

I was outside with my mother, collecting river water to feed our family garden, when I first heard the screams.

At first, I thought the screaming was laughter coming from my friend next door: a girl who was rambunctious and kept a smile on the lips of almost all of the villagers. Then the scream was joined by a chorus of others, and the child's call cut short, left a ringing absence in its place. My mother moved with all the speed and instinct of a hunter. She grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me onto her back. She carried me back to our house and stopped only long enough to grab her spear and the bag of medicine and emergency supplies that she kept by the door.

At a run, the nursery was only three or four minutes from our home, but it felt like an eternity. Each strike of my mother's feet against the hard-packed footpath sent jolts through my whole body. I tried to say something but bit my tongue instead. She held me tighter, her strong arm like steel around my chest. I could feel her heaving breaths, each bellow timed to a footfall.

Outside the nursery, my mother put me down. I tried to fight back the tears that were crawling their way up from my stomach, caught as a lump in my throat. I was so damn scared. She crouched down to my eye level and put her hands on my shoulder. Her fingers were stronger than the fear that coursed through me. She looked me straight in the eyes. "Listen to me," she said. "Whatever happens, listen to me. Do what I say. No questions."

I nodded. The first tear escaped and trickled down my cheek.

"I love you," she said. She kissed me on the lips. So much love passed from her. "So much," she said. She hugged me.

The door of the nursery opened. My aunt stood just inside the threshold, several children of varying age huddled together behind her. They looked as scared as I felt.

"What is happening, Tsetse?" she asked. She didn't have my mother's steel.

"I don't know," said Mother.

My aunt was silent, at a loss. All their life, my mother had always known what to do, how to make the best decision.

"Take him," my mother said, nudging me towards my aunt. "Take them all to the sky pod and go. Now."

"No!" I yelled. I didn't want to leave my mother; I didn't want to go into a sky pod.

"What did I say?" she snapped. "Go with your aunt."

One of the boys behind my aunt screamed. He pointed behind my mother, his scream becoming a high-pitched wail. The other children joined him. My aunt's eyes widened and she stumbled backwards into the children.

The first of the shadowborn rose from the shadows in the darkest corners of the nursery's forested grounds. Like living nightmares, they appeared from nothing, a thickening of the shadow until it was almost permeable. They had no eyes, but I could feel their hungry stare. Six of them.

Seven.

Eight.

They surged forward. My mother leapt towards them, spear readied. My aunt called my name from the shadows of the nursery. My mother's spear stabbed out at the shadowborn, its blade sinking into the forward-most demon. It screeched and flailed backwards, just like any beast of flesh and blood.

I ran after her, forgetting my promise.

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.

From the cockpit of the sky pod, we children watched our world become washed over in shadows. My aunt cried out. We all looked, like children in a classroom gathered around for a lesson. At the edge of the forest where our village hid, where the towering sprawl of Hieyth emerged from the natural landscape, there was fire and chaos. In the centre of the settlement was the main communication tower, our lifeline to the other settlements on Uwe'hhieyth. Shadowborn swarmed it from top to bottom, crushing the enormous structure under the weight of their darkness.

It's difficult to imagine, even for those of us who survived the attack and have seen shadowborn with our own eyes, but the shadows swelled, the way light does as it fills an empty space, and enveloped the buildings with their malice and non-light. When they subsumed, nothing was left of the tower but the acid-burned steel husks that had been shipped from Earth alongside my people.

My mother saved my life the day they came. Saved the lives of me and seven other kids. She earned no posthumous honours, no statue was erected to capture the spirit of the bravery she showed that day, the bravery she showed every day. It was impossible to officially honour all of the heroes who died that day, those selfless men and women who showed fire and strength when all sense and goodness was choked under the Tide of Shadows.

She was
my
hero before the Tide of Shadows; she was
a
hero afterwards.

12 days 03:17:42 until drop

"Be a man, for fuck's sake, Sligh."

Be a man? What does that even mean when the biggest hero in my life—the only person I've ever truly admired and respected—was a woman?

I never knew my father. He died young, but my mother always spoke about him with a twinkle in her eye. She liked the way I laughed like him, full from my belly, so I felt like I'd grown up with a part of him anyways. I knew his spirit watched over me and Mother, knew he did everything he could to save her that day, but I couldn't admire a man who I'd never really met.

A rivulet of water trickled down my back where my hair hung still wet from the shower. I wiped at my eyes, brushing away the water. Then I pressed hard with my fingers, hoping the distraction would make all my troubles go away.

But she was still there when I looked up again, hand on her hip and fury in her eyes. I pulled my hair up off my back, wringing water onto the ground as I twisted it into a low bun.

The ship was thrumming with all the frenetic energy of a struck tuning fork. Combat drills had intensified to the point where those of us soldiers still committed to the mission collapsed into our quarters in the evenings as little more than a quivering mess of gelatinous human being. There were many whose vengeance and hatred for the shadowborn had withered during our drifting existence aboard
The Spirit of a Sudden Wind
since departing Unitarian space. Maybe they'd found new love aboard the ship, or that deep-seated anger that festered in all of us, drove all of us after the destruction of our people, suddenly manifested itself as fear and unmanageable anxiety? Aboard this ship, there was no rigid hierarchy in the traditional sense of the Unitarian military, and no mandatory term of service or legal obligation to serve. Instead, we were united by a common bond that reached back to the furthest beginnings of our history as a people, when our ancestor spirits first placed us on the lush, vibrant lands of Earth. That bond held almost all of us in its thrall, wrapped in the memory of those who had died so that we could live and return to Uwe'hhieyth to bring rest for their spirits.

I made the mistake of telling Rummage that I was among those whose fear was creating doubts. In my mind, my fears haunted me like malevolent spirits who knew my every secret. Nightly, I woke sweating, screaming. When she happened to be in bed with me, Rummage eased my fears, shouted down those demons with soft whispered nothings and fingers running through my hair.

But she would not be with me on Uwe'hhieyth. We would be alone, fighting against the shadowborn, unable to guard each other from the same death that had taken the loved ones of Uwe'hhieyth.

Rummage stood in front of my bed. She'd been in my cabin when I'd come back after showering, ready to collapse into my thin blankets and give into the exhaustion and anxiety that I'd been trying to drown in physical exertion, mindless combat drills, and the stubborn noise of my brain trying to tell itself that everything is okay, would be okay.

I didn't know where to go. Rummage made no move to let me move farther into my room. With slumped shoulders, she wrapped herself in a hug that made it look like she was trying to keep warm despite the perfect climate regulated by the ship's AI. Her eyes were red-rimmed and raw. Tears streaked her cheeks. Rummage bled vulnerability, and, despite my nudity—my own exhaustion and anxieties—I felt like the least naked person in the room. I'd never seen her like that, never seen her as anything but fierce and confident, funny, my rock in a life that needed all the stability I could find.

I hadn't seen her in the two days since I bared my fears among her pillows.

"In twelve days, Rum," I said. "Just twelve days to go, then we find all the answers we've searched for, cried for."

"Twelve days," she agreed.

"We were children then," I said.

"Adults now," she said. "And still you'll let your fears get to you, eat at you. What must she be thinking right now, watching her son hesitate on the eve of her vengeance. We will win this war, Sligh."

If she'd been anybody else, I'd have knocked her teeth out. Instead, I balled my fists, took a step forward. "What do you want, Rummage?" I stepped back, shocked at myself. I'd never raised my voice at her before. "I'm so fucking scared, Rum. So fucking scared."

"We're all scared. That's why we're here, Sligh. We're all scared little kids, with no one to help us with our problems. That's why we're on this ship, and why we're going to run screaming to our deaths in twelve days. We're scared as fuck."

She took a step towards me, then another. She shoved me back against the wall, not playfully but with enough force to make me stumble. I tried to tighten my towel around my waist, but it fell to the floor.