Star Gods
By
Anne Spackman
Copyright © 2014 by Anne Spackman
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Boris Rasin
Ever in thought returned to me, the days that are no more.
–Manzoni, Adelchi
Chapter One
Death comes to all living things.
The child who knew only her first name, Alessia, would always remember the day her father died clearly.
“Stay away from the sick room!” Her mother Nerena had said in a rough tone many times to her in the last few tendays, as Alessia lingered about her father, who was clearly very ill. Alessia had paid little heed to this order and continued to linger by the sick room of their house, sneaking in to see her father at times, but he was always lying still and unconscious, connected to a life support feed. The android nurses ignored Alessia when she came in to see her father. But when Nerena was there, Alessia had to hide outside the room and just listen to his breathing.
She was very scared. She loved her father very much, and hated to see him like this.
That afternoon Alessia had run home from the lyra forest when a rain shower passed over.
Heavy grey skies hung over the tallest tree-tops. The damp air tasted of the trees, of the smells of the forest around her, long before the first hint of rain fell. Cold drops beaded on her hair and skin as she skidded down the rocky path to their dwelling, an ancient creation of stone once used by the ancients. Their house was very old and had been refurbished year after year with new technology, but it was still ancient stone on the outsde, from an era early in their planet’s history. They lived in the Lake Firien province, far to the North, in a territory outside the weather-safe ring.
So the Firien people were provincial, even backward, in their customs and in their lifestyle, compared to the rest of the planet. Lake Firien’s province contained vast tracts of untouched forest, here where it was so cold blizzards blanketed the land every winter with masses that kept them housebound. It was even unsafe, with wild creatures called delochs that could find men and children and tear them to pieces, if they had no weapon or protection.
Alessia crouched outside by the open clear window of the sick room, hearing nothing but the rising sighs of the wind in the nearby tree-tops. There was no sign of her mother. She was growing cold, her legs scratched up and itching, but she was too distracted to notice the pain. Alessia sat still for several moments, breathing quietly, then summoned courage and peered inside, her eyes rising just above the rim of the windowsill.
There he was, lying on the bed. Her father. And now, he was dying.
Her father’s health had been declining over the past year, but no one knew why precisely, though it was said he had a rare form of anemia that was killing him slowly. The android nurses and doctors had run into difficulty as they attempted to diagnose and treat their patient, for he was an alien, and his anatomy, though humanoid, was not like any they had yet encountered. Alessia didn’t understand any of this.
“Come in, come in.” Inside the sick room, her mother Nerena was ushering in a pair of stiff-necked specialist doctors on alien anatomy from nearby Firien City. To Alessia, they looked around disdainfully as they gazed around at the bare room. What a bother, having to come all the way out here, into a remote area of the Firien province, their expressions seemed to say. Alessia disliked them on sight, but she positively hated them as the doctors regarded her father with an unconcealed mixture of curiosity and dislike.
Alessia’s father was clearly not of their world. He was an off-worlder. Though he appeared like a humanoid of their world in many ways, he was not; his skin was also gray, but he had strange, multi-colored eyes that changed color in the light like a prism, and his hair was white; moreover, his body shape was slightly shorter and more muscular than the average person from their world, which was called Seynorynael.
Why did her mother Nerena always try to bring in doctors when she thought Alessia’s father was asleep? Alessia didn’t understand. Her mother knew that in those brief moments when he was awake, Alessia’s father would always send them away. It seemed that he knew there was nothing to be done about his condition, even if Alessia's mother Nerena wouldn’t accept it.
Nerena loved Alessia’s father with all her heart, and only wanted him to live. She was doing her best to see that he survived his illness. The man himself, however, seemed weak and wanted his suffering to be over.
Meanwhile, the doctors were talking in hushed tones inside the room.
Why did everyone react so strongly to her father? Alessia wondered, watching as the doctors pulled down the covering and withdrew various electro-scanners and instruments from a portable examination case.
Alessia loved her father and didn’t realize how different he was from other people. He had been a strong, well-formed man once, though now in his ailment he had become quite weak.
She loved him so much, she reacted to anything that they did to him with protective feelings; she felt pain and fear each time the specialists drew near him.
Alessia remembered a few times when her father had been strong enough to pick her up and put her on his shoulders to go running around or walking by the lake; Alessia remembered staring down at his shining hair in wonder—he was an alien, with silver hair, not golden like the amber-eyed Tulorians or dark like the raven-haired Kayrians that lived in a nearby settlement.
He loved her so much, his tiny, stubborn, spirited daughter. He had taught her so much in her young life, about science and all kinds of plants and trees. He had spent many long days schooling her in his language, an alien language Nerena couldn’t understand except for words here and there.
He had also been the one who first taught her to walk on the shores of the lake, putting her down at a distance from him and extending his arms out to her.
His strange alien eyes were the strangest thing about him. They were multi-faceted and oscillated in color depending on his moods, like a prism—many people couldn’t look at his eyes.
The doctor Nerena brought that day paused before the door as he left.
“I don’t think there’s anything to be done. He has an alien form of anemia and a wasting disease, the likes of which I have never seen before. It is difficult for us to medically treat alien diseases way out here. His color is too pale–”
“Dr. Egref, he’s always been like that.” Nerena said, shaking her head.
“Indeed?” Egref said, nodding. His eye strayed to the pallid, sleeping form, a creature whose skin was lighter than the pale grey of Seynorynaelians, a creature unlike any other inhabitant of the remote community on Lake Firien. “Still, I’m afraid, Nerena Zadúmchov, that you’d better prepare yourself for the worst. We’ll come back tomorrow to see how he’s doing.”
“Good-bye. And thank you for coming so far out of your way.”
“Not at all. No thanks required, for the daughter of General Zadúmchov.” Egref said pleasantly and gave a curt nod.
Nerena just stared after him, struck dumb by his words.
Of course they had come to her assistance only for the reason that she was General Zadúmchov’s daughter, who had been one of the Council’s right-hand men and who was in the upper echelon of Seynorynaelian society.
“Nerena...” Alessia’s father called unexpectedly after a few minutes had ticked by.
She rushed to his bedside.
Behind the window, Alessia leaned closer into the clear window pane to hear better.
Nerena knelt b
y her husband’s side, and Alessia couldn’t hear what they whispered to each other in those last moments, but somehow she understood that her father was about to die.
Nerena clasped his hand and raised it to her cheek as he mumbled one last word. Then his body stilled, and she threw herself on his chest, grasping his shoulders tightly with both arms and reaching over to kiss his cheek. Her sobs grew wild and unyielding; behind the pane, Alessia’s eyes welled with tears that slipped easily to the rain-saturated ground.
Her father was dead.
Then suddenly a bright burst of electricity emanated from the corpse and engulfed him. The body beneath Nerena dissipated into a fine mist of energy, then dispelled into the open air, leaving Nerena alone with her sorrow.
Alessia fell back from the window in horror, aware that she had witnessed an unnatural death, scratching her knees raw on small, sharp stones as she clambered to her feet. In fear, she ran from the dwelling. But her short, rain-splotched legs, spotted with dirt, gave out beneath her, and she fell to the soft mud in the clearing outside the house.
A long time passed before Nerena came out to find her.
“Alessia!” Nerena cried with some relief. “There you are! Honestly, why do you make me worry so much about you?!”
Remorseful and anguished by this reproof, Alessia held up her grubby arms to her mother. They were caked with a few clinging leaves and smelled of lyra tree sap.
The eyes that looked down at Alessia had lost all expression, all of the light of emotion and heart that had been there. Nerena picked her up, but the dried rivers of her tears felt coarse against Alessia's cheek.
“Go inside and wash yourself,” Nerena said a moment later, once they neared the path outside the dwelling, running an eye over her daughter’s wild, unruly hair. “You reek of rotting leaves.” She said, dropping Alessia roughly on the ground.
* * * * *
That evening, a very severe, somber-faced, and finey dressed stranger arrived at the dwelling. Alessia awoke to the sound of voices but lay still on her sleep panel in order to eavesdrop.
Nerena's father had at last come.
"So he is dead? Where is the body?" The Grand Marshall, General Zadúmchov of the Martial Scientific Force, asked. Alessia had only ever heard his voice on announcements over the global information network. He was famous across their world and across the entire Federation.
There was no answer from Nerena.
"Hmmm, nothing to say. Zariqua Enassa—multi-colored eyes, what a strange man! An alien husband with such strange eyes was not what I had in mind for you. Well, it didn't last, after all, for long. So what will you do now? You aren't going to live here alone with that child, are you?"
"Her name is Alessia, and she's your granddaughter," Nerena said quietly.
"Is she?" Zadúmchov chuckled. "She looks like her father. I see only his alien blood in her. She revolts me."
Silence followed the Grand Marshall's remark. Under her covering, Alessia winced, hating to hear her father and she herself spoken so ill of, her pride taking the sharp bite of her grandfather's rejection. She decided to hear no more and closed her ears. Soon she was asleep. In the bright, clear morning, like cold, saturating evening mist, the Grand Marshall was gone.
* * * * *
Alessia had fallen asleep on a bed of dry lyra leaves, listening to the sibilant song of the wind playing through the sheltering branches above her. Lonely ceiras birds added their mournful melody, wheeling inland over the forest from the nearby shores of Lake Firien.
She was jolted awake by the sound of small black aleia birds squawking nearby.
“What’s that noise?” Alessia thought aloud.
She looked around, startled, but no one came, and the birds gradually quieted and returned to their business. Alessia started to play in the leaves, brushing them aside and drawing pictures in the dark soil. Some time later, her appetite reminded her that it was time to eat something. She hunted around the area for a piece of sherin fruit that she had picked from one of the sherin trees that lined the nearby rocky stream.
She was brushing it off when she heard footsteps approaching, crunching on branches lining the forest floor; startled by the noise, Alessia accidentally dropped the last of the forest’s sherin fruit which she had spent all morning finding in the mostly lyra tree forest near their dwelling. Looking about, she spied a woman lingering on the edge of the clearing just under the farthest boughs.
“Who are you?” Alessia wondered as the odd-looking woman approached her, picking her way over the soft, mossy floor of the clearing. But Alessia wasn’t afraid. The stranger, whoever she was, wore an expression that reminded Alessia of her father, who had died a few years before.
"Wait, don't leave," Alessia called as the stranger hesitated half-way. The woman appeared to be deciding whether or not to approach further, then suddenly stepped several steps forward to pick up the fallen fruit that had rolled out of Alessia’s reach. The stranger walked with it to the stream's edge, cleaning off the dirt for Alessia, then brought the piece back to her.
Who was the stranger? Alessia wondered. The woman's hair was more blond than white, the usual color of Seynorynaelian hair. Alessia’s eyes betrayed her curiosity.
“Sorry to disturb you,” the woman said, giving her the sherin fruit. She then sat by Alessia on the log, and they talked of her life, shared the small piece of sherin fruit; Alessia answered the woman’s questions about where she lived and about her mother.
“So you’ve had a happy childhood?” The stranger finally asked after a while.
“I am only a child still,” Alessia said, screwing up her nose in confusion.
“Do you like living out here in Firien?” The stranger rephrased her question.
“Oh, yes,” Alessia answered bluntly. “But I miss my father.” She admitted, looking around. “He used to take me here. He's gone now. But sometimes as I'm walking over here, I can imagine he's waiting for me in this clearing."
“It’s a lovely place.” As the stranger spoke, they heard a rustling sound of some small creature burrowing in the undergrowth.
“I know. My mother never comes here though.”
“What is your mother like?” The stranger asked, peering closely at her.
Alessia shrugged. “I don’t know. She doesn’t like me to be around too much. She’s very proper. And not too friendly.”
“Maybe she knows how much you like coming out here, so she doesn’t stop you?”
“No, that’s not it. She doesn’t like to spend time with me. Not since father died. She doesn’t touch me unless she wants to punish me for coming home after sunset. She’s afraid the delochs will tear me to pieces, you see. Wild delochs don’t do that all the time, you know, but she says they do.” Alessia added. “Besides, there are none around here.”
“What does your mother do while you’re out here?”
“She mostly stays inside. She works on things at the house, and sells goods across the planet that we make. She has orders from all over the Federation for lyra sap and sherin fruit jams. But she says she hates doing these things, selling things for a living.”
“So she works all day?”
“Yes, but when the sun goes down, she wanders out there by the lake. Sometimes she just stands there watching the waves crash on the rocks. Other times she stares at the sky until both moons have risen. When she comes home, her face is windswept and her hair is a mess. She doesn’t talk a lot to me, except to tell me what to do. The android house-keeper talks more to me than she does.”
“That is a real shame.”
“My father taught me a lot about the land and sea before he died, and I‘ve learned even more at education training.” Alessia didn’t want to add that she found education training dull in general, that she taught herself more by studying the information ava
ilable at the center than any instructor had taught her. The instructors, as a rule, disliked her, since everyone knew her father was an alien.
And every time she went to the center, she thought how much she wanted to come back to the forest, where she could be alone with nature.
The stranger laughed, a sad, empty laugh.
“You’ve got a good memory, I see. That’s wonderful. But it can be a misfortune at times when you would rather not remember.” She said.
“Huh? Why would you say that?”
“It is difficult to explain, why I said that. Just ignore it.” The stranger forced a smile.
“That reminds me. I forgot I’ve got to go to the distribution office today,” Alessia said, rising, then brushed off the leaves from her short, tattered dress.
“Why?” The stranger asked.
“I usually go once a tenday.” Alessia explained. “That’s where we get our food packets from. It’s not really all that hard going there, you know.” She insisted, as though long used to shouldering the responsibility of acquiring their food rations, a task which was usually delegated to adults, even out here in the remote Firien settlement. “They have haulers and loaders and everything, and I can take them with me from Firien City on the transport.”
The stranger gave her a bittersweet smile. Alessia sensed that she had somehow evoked this woman’s pity, and she felt her pride rising in defense.
“I don’t mind doing it,” she insisted. “I know the way. I go to Firien City for training, too.”
Alessia was aware that to the stranger, she was only a five year-old girl by Seynorynaelian reckoning, though by years on some of the other planets she would have been thirty by now! This was because it took a long time for the planet Seynorynael to orbit the star, Valeria. Alessia felt far older than she was at times, especially when she met other children around the settlement. They still played like children, still cried when they scraped a knee. Meanwhile, Alessia had learned how to maintain their dwelling, to take care of herself and her mother.
Alessia was like a little adult. When she wasn't working around the dwelling, Alessia virtually lived in the forest, the only place where she felt truly at home, where she felt safe, free, and happy. But in the last two seasons, she had begun her first years of education training in the nearby cultural center for their area, spending six out of every ten days there.