* * *
After the skirmish in the clearing, David Don’Ayghel’s men — those who survived or had not wandered glassy-eyed and incoherent into the Hinterland — were escorted to the very edge of Spectra City. One of them carried a letter addressed to Mrs. Ardith Don’Ayghel, informing her she is a widow and childless, and is now the sole heir to Don’Ayghel Ionic Energy and all its subsidiaries.
Each mercenary will forever bear inside his body a tiny bit of altered biologic alloy that Professor Shinnegal harvested from me and corrupted with something malodorous concocted by the rose woman. The Hinterland remembers those who do harm. If the men return, they will never leave.
David Don’Ayghel remained imprisoned in the professor’s woodshed until his fate could be decided. Then he was taken to the vast desert waste bordering the Hinterland on the west. Five days from the forest but in sight of the northern mountains, he was given food and water, an extra pair of shoes, and one small knife. He was bound, hand and foot, but in such a way that he could free himself in an hour or two, enough for his captors to be long gone, their footprints swept away by the desert wind.
I know this, though I did not see it, because I asked that he be left alive. Bertrand had wanted to kill him in the clearing, in sight of the hired soldiers, as both warning and justice. More fitting, I argued, that he — like me — be forced to walk a new path.
Professor Shinnegal and I are planning to catalog all manner of life in the Hinterland — plants, animals, people. We will learn new languages, songs, and histories, and perhaps build a small museum filled with the professor’s artifacts so the woodlanders can see what life was like long ago, before Spectra City, before the Hinterland, before science attempted to destroy belief.
As for biologic alloys, they may be a worthy pursuit, but there are other scientists than Sam and other test subjects than I.
Yet I am haunted by the possibility there are other experiments like me. Should I, as Professor Shinnegal did, go searching for people who are not there?
Hot wind fans my face, and kicks up a curtain of dust. I wait, just inside the shelter of the trees, straining my eyes to see the sojourners return.
Images move against the billowed sand. I have seen them before, mirages and shadows, but now they emerge into recognizable shapes: Liam dragging supplies on a light sled, Bertrand’s squat form, the centaur Sylvio with a coil of rope slung on his shoulder, Professor Shinnegal in a floppy hat — and a figure with a certain swing to his arms, a cant to his walk, that can only be Sam.
I fill wooden mugs with fresh water, set out a bowl of berries picked this morning, and go out to meet them.
Keanan Brand’s Bio & Links
Keanan Brand is a pseudonym for an author who writes a variety of fiction and poetry. He is also a freelance editor, and the author of the forthcoming epic fantasy duology, The Lost Sword, which titles include Dragon’s Rook (2015) and Dragon’s Bane.
He contributed a short story, “Shooting the Devil’s Eye”, for Raygun Chronicles anthology (2013). The story is a prequel to Thieves’ Honor, a science fiction serial (2008-2012) he wrote for Ray Gun Revival, an online magazine specializing in all things space opera. Prior to that, his post-apocalyptic story “At the End of Time, When the World Was New” was published in the final issue of Dragons, Knights & Angels magazine (December 2007).
He blogs at Adventures in Fiction and at Penworthy Press.
blog1: https://keananbrand.wordpress.com/
website: https://keananbrand.wix.com/keananbrand
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6914471.Keanan_Brand
FB author page: https://www.facebook.com/KeananBrandWriter
Beginnings
Protectors of the Elemental Magic