She pushed the empty water bottle back in her pocket, folded the empty bag and shoved it in too. She didn’t want to hurry for fear of hearing her name called in a familiar voice. She couldn’t stay for fear of missing the dogs. There wasn’t a perfect answer, but she didn’t need a perfect one. Good enough was good enough.
Making her way home was harder than leaving had been, which made some sense to her. Going away from a point, there were any number of paths, and all of them were right. Going back to the point, most paths were wrong. The rock-deer trail wasn’t as clear, now that she was walking back along it. Branches and turns she hadn’t noticed on the way out confused her now. And as the sunlight changed its angle and warmth, the colors under the forest canopy changed. Twice, she backtracked to a place she was almost sure was part of the right way and tried again, making other decisions.
The sunlight had started to shift into gray and orange, the air to grow cool, when she came around a stand of trees and the dogs were scattered there, legs tucked primly beneath their bodies. Their embarrassed, apologetic eyes shifted toward her as she came forward. Excitement or fear or both raced through Cara’s body like an electrical shock. And then Xan sat up, his head turning toward her.
He was changed, that was obvious. He was still wearing his funeral whites, but a long black stain ran from his left shoulder down to his belly. His skin had a grayness where the red of blood should have been. His eyes had gone pure black. When he moved, it had the same utter stillness broken by considered action as Momma bird, like every muscle that fired had been thought about for a fraction of a second first. But his hair still stood out in all directions the way it did when he’d just gotten up in the morning. His mouth was the same gentle curve that he’d inherited from their dad.
“Xan?” she whispered.
He was still as stone for a moment, then he shifted his head. “I feel weird,” he said, and his voice was his own.
Her grin was so wide it hurt her face. She rushed the last meter between them and hugged him, lifting him up in her arms. For a moment, it was like lifting the dead weight of his corpse. Then his arms were around her too, his head against her neck.
“I was scared,” he said. “There was something wrong. And someone was talking to me, only they weren’t talking to me.”
“There was an accident,” Cara said. “You got hurt. Really hurt. Killed-hurt.”
A hesitation. “Oh,” Xan said. She stepped back, but she kept hold of his hand. She didn’t want to let go of him. He blinked. “I feel pretty good for killed.”
“I brought you to the dogs. They fix things.”
“Like me,” Xan said. And then, “There’s something wrong with how things look.”
“I guess they had to change you some,” she said. The nearest dog shifted and looked away, as if chagrined by the limits of their powers. Cara shook her head. “It’s okay. This is wonderful. Thank you.”
“There are things I didn’t see before,” Xan said. The words sounded faint. Like he was speaking them from farther off than right here in front of her. “There are other things here. I don’t know what they are.”
Cara tugged on his hand, pulling him along with her the way she used to sometimes before.
“Come on. It’s getting late. We should get home.”
“What does it mean to be in a substrate?”
“I don’t know,” Cara said, tugging him again. “Let’s go ask Mom. If I can figure out how to get there from here.” She turned to the nearest dog and bowed. She didn’t know why that seemed like the thing to do, but it did. “Thank you so much for bringing my brother back to us. If there’s anything I can do to help you, just let me know and I’ll do it. Really.”
The dog made a chirping noise, and then they all rose as one, walking away through the forest on their strangely jointed legs. She half expected them to start their ki-ka-ko song, but they didn’t. They only faded into the forest again, as if it was the place where they most belonged. Cara started out for what she was pretty sure was the south, and Xan followed along behind, his cool gray hand still in hers.
She didn’t find the pond, but a break in the trees opened up on the road to her house. The charcoal sky of twilight glittered with stars and the stick moons. At least now she knew where she was and how to get where she wanted to be. She just hoped no one would see them along the way. She wanted her parents to be the first to see what she’d accomplished.
A soft breeze came from the north and set the fronds of the trees clacking against each other. They walked the same way they came home from school every day, all of it familiar even through the changes. Cara was already imagining a bowl of barley soup and her bed and waking up in the morning to the amazement and wonder of the town. Xan asked how he’d died, and she spent the walk telling the story of his death, his funeral, everyone who’d come, how she’d made sure his body had stayed there for her to steal. He listened more intensely than he ever had before and hardly interrupted at all.
“The head of the soldiers really came to see me?” Xan asked when she was done.
“He did.”
“Do you think he’ll want to see us again now that I’m back? I don’t want to get them in trouble.”
Them. He meant the dogs. Cara felt a moment’s unease. The soldiers would want to know about the dogs, about Momma bird and the drone and Xan. Especially with the dogs showing up after the stick moons came alive. She’d have to talk to her parents about what to tell the soldiers and how to tell it to them.
She thought of Winston. The way he listened. I need your family to be well.
“The admiral understands,” she said. “He knows that Laconia’s not like other places.”
Xan thought about that a beat too long, then nodded more to himself than to her.
The house glowed from every window. Every light in every room had to be burning. It wasn’t like her parents to run the power down like that. And they were there too, framed in the window like it was the screen of her handheld. Her mother standing in the kitchen, hands on the counter. Her father sitting at the table. They looked as tired as Cara felt. She wondered if they’d been searching for her all day. If there were still people out there looking.
Xan stopped, staring at the house with his newly black eyes. His face was all stunned amazement, as if he was seeing it all for the first time. In a way, he was. Cara squeezed his fingers gently. He didn’t follow her right away when she walked toward the front door. Cara stopped and waved him forward.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said.
When she opened the door, her mother startled as if Cara had fired a gun, then rushed at her and grabbed her by the arms hard enough to hurt.
“What did you do?” her mother growled through rage-bared teeth. “What the fuck did you do?”
And then she pulled Cara close in a hug so tight, it felt like drowning. Her mother’s sobs shook them both. Cara put her arms around her mother and found she was crying a little too. Guilt and joy and the echoing sorrow of Xan’s death and the triumph of his return all washed together in the moment, and she held on to her mother’s body like she hadn’t since she was a baby.
“It’s okay, Momma,” she said through her tears. “It’s all okay now.”
Her father said her mother’s name. Dot. One low syllable, but with alarm in it louder than a shout.
Xan stood just outside the open door in the space where he wasn’t exactly in the darkness or in the light. His funeral whites carried so much dirt and stain they were like camouflage. His bare feet were filthy. The angle of his eyebrows over his black wet eyes reminded Cara of the dogs—uncertain, embarrassed, apologetic. He stepped through the doorway into the house and went still. Then, in a flicker, lifted his hands toward them all like a baby reaching for an embrace. His fingernails were dirty. The grayness of his skin made his face seem smudged even where it wasn’t.
Cara felt her mother gasp, a sharp, sudden inhalation, and didn’t breathe out. Her arms went stiff around Cara,
grabbing her in so much it hurt. Xan tried a smile. His gaze clicked from Cara to their father to their mother and back to Cara, as fast as an insect leg twitching. He spread his fingers wider, took another step forward.
“It’s okay,” Cara said. “I got him back.”
Her mother yanked her back, grabbing Cara up and away with a violence that hurt her neck. Cara was back behind the counter, her feet off the floor, her mother’s arms pressing the air out of her almost before she realized they were moving. Her father pushed them both behind him. She didn’t understand why he had a knife in his hand.
“Gary?” her mother said. “What the fuck is that?”
“I see it,” her father said. “It’s real.”
Cara couldn’t speak. She didn’t have the air. She wriggled against her mother’s grip. She had to explain, to tell them what was going on. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
“I want a hug too,” Xan said.
Xan took another awkward step forward, still and then the flicker of motion, then still again. Her father yelled, a deep, ragged sound too big for the man she knew. He lunged toward Xan, knife shining in his fist, and terror flooded Cara’s blood. She kicked at her mother hard, and felt the blow connect. The grip around her released a little.
“Stop it!” Cara screamed. “What are you doing?”
Xan blocked the knife with his hand, the gray skin opening and black blood pouring from his palm. Xan’s eyes went wide with shock. Her father barreled forward, still shouting wordlessly. He grabbed Xan’s funeral whites and lifted the little boy off the floor. Cara pushed against her mother’s neck hard, and stumbled to the floor. Her mother was keening now, a high, tight sound of panic. Her father had the pantry door open. He threw Xan into it and slammed the door shut, still yelling. There were words in it now. He was shouting, Leave my family alone.
“What is the matter with you?” Cara shouted. She punched her father’s back and then froze. She’d never hit him before. She’d never hit anyone before. He didn’t even notice. He grabbed one of the kitchen stools and used it to jam the pantry door closed. Xan banged against the door harder than Cara would have thought he could. Her mother yelped and started cursing fast and low, almost under her breath. It sounded like praying.
Tears were streaming down Cara’s cheeks, but she wasn’t sad. All she felt was a powerful, growing outrage.
“I brought him back!” she yelled. “He was dead and I took him to the dogs, and they fixed him!”
“Dogs?” her father said. “What dogs?”
“The dogs that came after the stick moons turned on,” Cara said. There was so much they didn’t understand, and the words were like trying to drink through too thin a straw. The meaning wouldn’t all fit. “They fixed Momma bird and the drone and they fixed Xan because I asked them to, and he’s back. I brought him back and you hurt him!”
She heard her mother somewhere behind her, talking into her handheld. I need the military liaison. It’s an emergency. Cara’s outrage and impatience felt like venom in her blood. She pushed at the stool, trying to get the pantry door open again. Her father grabbed her shoulders, pulled her close until his face was the whole world.
“That’s not your brother,” her father said, biting off each word. “That’s. Not. Xan.”
“It is.”
“The dead don’t come back,” her father said.
“They do here,” Cara said.
“His eyes,” he said, shaking her as he spoke. “The way he moves. That’s not a human, babygirl. That’s something else wearing my little boy’s skin.”
“So what?” Cara said. “He’s knows everything Xan knows. He loves everything Xan loves. That makes him Xan. How can you do this to him just because he’s not perfect!”
Her mother’s voice came, hard as stone. “They’re sending a force from town.”
“The soldiers?” Cara said, pulling away from her father’s grip. “You called the soldiers on him? You hate the soldiers!”
She grabbed at the stool again, but her mother lifted her from behind, hauled her feet off the floor and carried her back toward her room. Xan was calling from the pantry, his voice muted and rough with tears and confusion. Cara tried to twist back toward him. Tried to reach for him.
Her mother pushed her into her room and blocked the door with her body. When she looked down at Cara, her expression was blank and hard. “It’s going to be all right,” her mother said. “But you have to stay here until I get this under control.”
A rush of thoughts fought for Cara’s voice—It was under control and Why are you making this a bad thing? and You let Daddy cut Xan—and left her sputtering and incoherent. The door closed. Cara balled her hands, screamed, and pounded the wall. Her parents’ voices came from the house in clipped, hard syllables that she couldn’t make out. She sat on the edge of her futon, bent double, and put her head in her tingling hands. Her blood felt bright with rage, but she had to think.
The soldiers were coming. Her parents were going to let them take Xan away. Make them take Xan away. They’d say the dogs were bad. Dangerous. They might hurt them.
All because it didn’t work like this on Earth.
The room was filled with her things. Her clothes—clean and folded in the dresser and worn and scattered on the floor by the hamper. The picture over her bed of dinosaurs running from a man in a big pink hat. The picture she’d made when she was seven from Laconian grass and paste, with Instructor Hannu’s note—Good work!—beside it. The tablet with her book on it. She scooped it up, turned it on. It was still open to the page of Ashby Allen Akerman in Paris. The old woman feeding bread to the birds. She put her fingertips on the picture. It wasn’t a real woman. It wasn’t even a real painting. It was just the idea of an idea. It didn’t have anything to do with her life, and she didn’t lose anything by letting it go.
She closed the book and opened the recording function. She felt the time slipping past, but she took a long look around the room all the same. Her whole life was here, written in little notes and objects that added up to a story that only she would understand.
Or else no one would.
The window was easy to open, but the screen was harder to rip than she’d expected. Once she’d gotten a hole big enough for a couple of fingers, it got easier to pull it apart, but it still hurt her fingertips. A little puff of dust came off the fibers when she ripped the hole big enough that she could squeeze through it. The empty water bottle slipped out of her pocket as the climbed out, clattering onto the paving outside her window. She didn’t go back for it. She ran across the road to where the underbrush started getting thick. High clouds interrupted the stars in streaks, as if giant claws had ripped strips out of the sky.
The light in the house and the darkness of the world let her see her mother and father in the main room perfectly. Her father had a length of metal as long as his arm held in both hands like a club. He was crying, but he didn’t wipe the tears away. He wouldn’t put the weapon down long enough for that. Her mother stood at the door, ready to usher the soldiers in when they came. It would be soon. Town wasn’t far away when you had military-transport vehicles.
Cara started the tablet recording. She took a deep, slow breath, waited fifteen seconds, and screamed.
“Momma!”
Her mother’s head came up sharply as she looked out into the darkness of the night. Cara tapped the playback and loop, threw the volume to max, and then flung the tablet as hard as she could into the brush. Her mother came out the front door, scanning but blind from the light. From the brush, Cara’s voice came again. Momma!
“Cara?” her mother said. “Where are you?”
Her father came to the door. She heard him say, “What is it?”
Cara started running. She heard her own voice again, behind her, and her mother screaming for her. And her father now too. She didn’t have much time. She looped around the back of the house and in the back door, opening it carefully to keep from making noise. Both her paren
ts had gone out the front to find her. To save her. Their voices reminded her of the search party that she’d avoided. All the ways they wanted to help her, but never asked how she wanted to be helped.
She kicked the stool away and hauled open the pantry door. Xan was kneeling in the darkness, his legs folded under him just like the dogs. Wet tracks of tears marked his cheeks. His black eyes took her in. She held out her hand.
“Come on,” she said. “We have to warn the dogs.”
The front door stood open. Across the road, the brush crackled and hushed as her parents crashed through it, calling her name. They sounded frightened. Cara felt sorry for them, but they’d made their choices. She’d made hers. Xan took her hand with his uninjured one, and she hauled him up.
Then they were running out the back, into the night, toward the dogs, wherever they were. Xan matched her stride for stride, never letting go of her hand. Her parents’ voices faded behind her. She didn’t know if they’d found her tablet or if she’d just gotten far enough away that the sound wouldn’t reach her.
It didn’t matter.
Xan laughed, and the sound was just like the joy he’d had playing a game with his friends. She felt herself smiling. The feeling of freedom lifted her up. Even with the knowledge of the soldiers following behind her. Even with the grief just starting in her heart that she’d never go home. The night was hers, and Laconia was hers, and that was joyous.
Her legs burned and she felt light-headed from hunger. She hadn’t had anything to eat since the fruit and rice in the forest. And there wouldn’t be anything for her out in the world. All the plants that Laconia grew were indigestible for her at best. Poison at worst. The sunbirds, the blue clover, the grunchers, the glass snakes, everything alive knew, at a chemical level, that she wasn’t one of them. But that didn’t matter either.
The worst that could happen was she’d die.
The dogs would fix her.
extras
Meet the Author
James S. A. Corey is the pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. They both live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.