

Plato's Cave During the Slicer Wars

And Other Short Stories

By

Terri Kouba

Copyright © 2011 Terri Kouba

All rights reserved.

Smashwords edition

ISBN-13: 978-1456532444

ISBN-10: 1456532448

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Plato's Cave During the Slicer Wars

The Devil Dwells in a Red House

Variable Time

Through the Terrace Doors

Fahevial

Rendezvous in Ashland

To Wear Your Grief Upon Your Sleeve

Walk with God

Vega One

#  Plato's Cave During the Slicer Wars

The first time I laid my Irish eyes upon Plato's Cave, I was half starved, the bullet wound in my leg was infected and everything was seen through the orange haze of pain. I remembered they carried me through the entry tunnels on a gurney; it must have been one of theirs because we didn't have any left in the caravan. Everything else is lost to the clouds of pain and the lost memories have been replaced by the thousands of times I have walked through the welcoming entrance to Plato's Cave since that day.

It is a sight to behold. A fortified castle on the coast of the Aegean Sea, near what used to be Thessaloniki, in the shadow of Mount Olympus. I have been told my eyes are the color of the Aegean Sea but I do not believe it. The Aegean Sea has not one color; it has every color. White sun sparkles off a blue sea reflected in a blue sky reflected in a blue sea in a continuous circling dance of the gods.

Slate grey waves crash upon yellowed stones during storms that once pushed Odysseus past these shores. Dolphins splash in the green azure of its tepid waters. During the gloaming it is the color of dark wine, spilt by careless gods. During the algae blooms the sea turns red and against the pink clouds of a setting sun it looks like the inside of a fig, freshly picked off a fig tree.

But that is now. When I first arrived at Plato's Cave, the Aegean Sea, like the entire world during the Slicer Wars, had no color. All we had was pain and fear and death.

As I write this, fear pounds against the walls I have built to hold back the memories of those days. I want to record them, to tell you, my children, what we have done, what it was like during the Slicer Wars, but I fear you will condemn us for our mistakes. I fear that you will read these words and think of all the things you would have done differently, knowing what you now know.

You know the facts of how the Slicers were created, how they killed so many, how humans and animals barely survived. You read the facts and will not hear our confusion, our fears, our intentions.

Do not be deceived by the words, by the facts. They hold little meaning in and of themselves. The meaning comes when you turn away from the facts, when you turn away from the shadows against the wall and see the things that cast the shadows.

The fears I face now, though, are translucent apparitions compared to those liquid metal fears I faced in my youth. My fears today are like the sounds of bat wings in the corners of my mind, whispered reminders of my failures and follies. The sounds of the Slicer's wings, though, even today the memory of that sound fills me with terror that crushes my lungs and dulls my eyesight. Those sounds whir in my ears, those fears pound in my head, but for you, my children, I will once again confront my fears so you can hear the words and learn the meaning behind them. Beware, though. Do not write the words on your hearts, my children. The words themselves are illusions. Their meaning is reality.

The first time I saw Marla was three days after I arrived at Plato's Cave suffering the woes of an infection fever. I won't tell you of my young days other than to say that from the age of ten to thirty were difficult. They were more difficult than you can imagine and more difficult than I would ever want to tell you. Mankind had descended into that beastly state where might makes right, where the strong took from the weak and let me just say that my father and I were weak. We were physically weak, but in the end, we learned we were stronger than most others in the ways that truly mattered.

Marla had come to welcome me to Plato's Cave. They had removed the bullet in my leg and given me medicine the day I arrived. My fever broke the next day and I slept for twenty hours. When I woke, she was there with the sweetest tasting water. I have never known anything to taste as divine before or since.

She had come to speak with my father. He was the lead scientist in our caravan, but he would not leave my side until I woke and so she came to him. She came to him. That was her way. She was called many things. Marla the Magnificent by those who studied her outstanding science. Marla the Miracle-worker by those who directly benefited from her technology but didn't understand it. Marla the Monster by those who felt her unerring, steely gaze. She has become a legend, something larger than she really was.

If I strip away all the legend, all of the accomplishments, all the fame, she was, under it all, average. She was an average woman, of average height and average beauty who was thrust into horrific circumstances and, when everything else fell away, she was better than the best of all who remained.

I often wonder what would have happened had the Slicers been more discriminating. Slicers gorged on flesh good and bad alike. They killed sweet grandmothers as quickly and easily as they killed murdering thieves. They made no distinction between the positive and negative forces in a society. If they had killed only the bad people, only those who broke our laws and were users of society, rather than benefiters of society, I don't think we would have wiped the Slicers off the planet. I think we would have justified their existence by convincing ourselves that our society was better off without those who were dragging us down.

But then my musings bring me to the question of, if everyone in society is "good" and we are only good or bad when compared to each other, who would be the "bad" people? Would all "bad" people be eliminated until there was only one human being left alive, only one person without others to compare against and deem good or bad?

Marla was good. She was the best we had in those days. She will continue to be the best for many generations to come. Eventually, though, someone will be smarter than she, for she was, after all, just average.

She was an average scientist, an average thinker, thrust into circumstances that no one in their most horrific nightmares could have dreamt of, and she shined. She rose above her circumstances to save not only herself but all of humanity. She is the reason why all of you are here today.

Through it all, though, she retained her modesty, which is why she came to my see my father instead of demanding that he come to see her. She could have, you know. She was that important. She was the reason why we came to Plato's Cave. Of course, we didn't know that then, not yet. It wasn't until later that we realized that she was the savior of mankind.

At the time all I knew was waking up in a bed. A bed! I hadn't slept in a bed, a real bed, with down pillows and soft, clean sheets and warm wool blankets for twenty years. The Slicers came when I was ten. My father and I hid from the Slicers in an underground military bunker in Ireland for fifteen years. We spent five years in a caravan travelling from Ireland to Greece, to Plato's Cave. To the sanctuary. To the place where my head rested on a soft, downy pillow.

She leaned over me, looked into my Irish eyes and smiled.

"Sweetie, we're so glad you're awake."

Her voice jarred my ears and I thought my hearing had been damaged.

She slipped her hand behind my neck and lifted my head slightly so I could drink from the wooden cup she held before me. The water was cool as it ran down my parched throat. And it was clean. I could taste that it was clean, clear water. I had been drinking muddied water for so long that I had forgotten that this is what water was supposed to taste like. Not laden with salt or heavy with a mineral after-taste or full of silt that gritted in my teeth. That's when I knew that we were someplace different, someplace special. I don't think the others knew it then. They didn't figure it out until a few months later.

One sip of that water, the feel of her smooth hand under my neck and I knew. I hadn't felt a smooth hand since before the Slicers came. Everyone I knew had calloused hands from hard manual labor, dirty hands from not enough washing, or Slicer-ravaged hands, scars so thick they looked like knuckles. I remember, though, how her cool hand felt as it slid around the back of my hot neck. It felt like silk. It felt like your hands feel today, my children, soft from years of being caressed with olive oil. It felt like the hand of a goddess.

My father turned toward the window to wipe away tears of relief.

"Welcome to Plato's Cave, Eliza" she said, her voice scratchy and old.

She wasn't old yet. She was only forty-three when I met her, but her voice sounded like it was a thousand years old. I learned later that she carried her pain in her voice and it would sound that way for the rest of her life. Robert says her voice changed the day her husband died.

That's when I returned my gaze to my father; to where my father stood. A window. My father was standing at a window. It was a clear window. I could see through it. We hadn't seen a window in over fifteen years. The Slicers broke through windows and walls alike in their flesh-consuming quest. I could see them outside, their metal wings catching the sunlight, flashing bright sparks in my eyes as precursors to the daggers their wings would become. Yet the Slicers didn't break through the windows. The Slicers dove and darted through the air, with their uncanny ability to not collide with each other even though there must have been five Slicers for every square foot of air, with a speed that made them blur together in a stream of metal, but none of them paid any attention to the flesh on the other side of the window.

My father turned toward me and knelt at my side. "How are you, my daughter."

I stroked his hair. It was clean. He had washed and smelled slightly of olives. "I will be well soon, oh father of mine."

"I am pleased." His Irish eyes smiled upon mine until he bowed his head and laid it against my hip. "I am very pleased." He breathed out heavily.

"Dr. Chandler says you'll..." Marla started to say, but I dozed off again, exhausted from my one sip of water.

I woke hours later to hear them discussing their science quietly as they stood over a paper-strewn desk. The chairs were pushed back and they leaned over the desk, writing on some papers, pushing others out the way.

"No, it doesn't work like that. Think of the glass as a mirror on one side and glass you can see through on the other. The Slicers can't see us but we can see out the window," Marla explained to my father.

"But the Slicers don't have eyes. How can they see anything?"

He picked up a dead Slicer and I shuddered. I had never seen a dead Slicer below. He held it in his fingers as if it wasn't all the evil in the world encompassed into a shiny marble the size of my eyeball. Its silver tendrils drooped lazily down the sides.

"They don't see like you and I do, with our eyes," Marla admitted. "But as you know, we humans don't really see with our eyes anyway. Our brains interpret the signals our optical nerves send to our brain and that's how we understand what we are seeing. With the Slicers, they don't have eyes per se, but they have sensors that their brain centers interpret as sight."

My father pulled on the marble and it broke in two. "I didn't even know Slicers had organic brains."

"It took us a long time to capture one and contain it before it disintegrated. It was even longer before we were able to dissect it. Their metal is the hardest substance on the planet. Even our diamond-tipped drills broke against it."

"How did you dissect it?"

Even from across the room I could see her eyes flash with excitement. She sat in one chair and pulled the other one closer with her foot, motioning for him to sit. "It's a long story, but fascinating. I think you'll like it."

My father looked to my bed and my eyes were too slow to close. "El."

Marla followed him over to my bedside. "I'll get you some warm soup, sweetie."

Father sat on the edge of the bed. "You look better." He touched my cheek. "You have your color back." I was about to argue with him, to remind him that my skin was as fair as white snow because I hadn't seen the sun in twenty years, but I was too tired.

"We finally arrived, three days ago," he whispered. It was then that I noticed that I wasn't alone in the large room. All of the beds were occupied. I recognized all of the sleeping people.

"I wish you could have seen it, El. They just opened their tunnels, took us all in, mended, fed, washed, clothed us. They didn't ask questions, they didn't send us away, they didn't shoot at us."

He blinked tears out of his eyes. "It was like we had been trudging through a rainstorm at night and when we arrived the dawn broke the clouds and the sun shone through."

I smiled wearily.

"You may have the brain of a scientist, but you have the heart of a poet," Marla said from behind him in her gravely voice. She set her hand gently on his shoulder and he didn't flinch. My father always flinched whenever anyone touched him.

My father helped me sit up in bed and she set a warm bowl of soup in my hands. "You hold it. I'll feed you," she said.

I started to object but my father shook his head slightly.

Her steady hand ladled soup into my mouth without spilling a drop. She whispered to me, telling me about Plato's Cave and how happy she was that we had arrived. She, the one whose mind saved all of us, sat there and fed soup to a sick woman with her own hand. That's the kind of woman she was. Not the legend of Marla, which would have you believe she walked on water, but just Marla. Modest Marla. Average Marla.

It wasn't until much later that I would realize how outstanding average could be.

For the first four months my father and I spent most of our time at Plato's Cave in Marla's laboratory. We were the only two scientists who had survived the trip. When our caravan left the Irish Isles, we were one hundred strong; twenty scientists, twenty humanists and sixty soldiers. Only twenty-two of us limped into Plato's Cave and two died of their wounds after reaching our destination. Two scientists, eight humanists and twelve soldiers survived the trip. Marauders had killed seven, three soldiers died when they were attacked by a colony which wouldn't let us in, accidents took five of us, disease took four, but the rest, fifty-nine from our caravan died a Slicer death. Can you imagine, my children, of the one hundred attendees at your school, only twenty of you being alive for school tomorrow. The hole that leaves in one's heart can never be mended.

Marla would say that it shouldn't be mended. The hole is what reminds us of what we have lost and why it's important to fight for what we want. I think she is wrong. She would be the first to admit she was wrong about many things. I have carried this hole in my heart for a long time. It is something that should have been mended a long time ago, so I could have some semblance of peace. Instead I have a void which cannot be filled, cannot be covered, cannot be hidden. I hope I can fill the void by telling you, my children, of Marla and my father. Of what they have done, how they have loved, what they have lost. Maybe in their losses we can find what we're looking for.

And we have all lost so much. On the caravan trip alone we lost eighty souls. At our underground compound in Ireland we heard about Plato's Cave from the nomads, the travelling singers and traders. For fifteen years they arrived, every couple years, to tell us the news of what was left of the world. From them we heard about the unattended nuclear power plants in France and Germany leaking. We heard from them that the large cities were crumbling, abandoned ghost towns, that the fields of Holland were run amuck with tulips, that the River Ganges once again ran clear. Every year we would ask of news from the Americas and every year they would shake their heads. It was a great puzzle to us. Did the Americas fare better or worse than us? Was anyone else alive half way around the world, across the great seas?

With every visit by the nomads we became more obsessed with the number of humans on the planet. You, my children, will not believe me; even I have a hard time believing the world was once filled with seven billion people, jostling elbows, fighting over water, taking weekend excursions to the moon. Yes, my children, the earth's population was more than seven billion people. I have lived almost ninety-five years and in that time I have seen the earth's population fall from seven billion to less than one percent of one percent of that, to less than seven hundred thousand. But now we are rebuilding and by last count we are up to a little over a million people on the entire planet. A million is a wondrous number, considering how effective the Slicers were. Having seen the Slicers in person, having felt their metal daggers cut my own flesh, I am amazed even that many people survived.

In the early years the nomads named each of the newly-founded colonies, their population status, each colony's areas of plenty and need. We tried to send what we could, but we had so little ourselves. As the years grew to a decade, the list of colonies grew shorter, the population count shrank, the list of needs exploded while the areas of plenty were reduced to an afterthought, often mixed with a joke. The Norwegian colony had a lot of snow. The South African colony had a lot of sun. The Arabian colony had a lot of sand.

They spoke of the colonies in the same colorful voices that they told the tales of life before the Slicer Wars began, but when they spoke of the colony at Plato's Cave, their voices took on a softness usually reserved for pillow talk. They spoke with tenderness and respect for the people at Plato's Cave. Plato's Cave prospered while every other colony decayed. Plato's Cave grew, they were well fed, they had electricity, furniture, children. Every other colony was shrinking but at Plato's Cave they had children. Healthy children. One nomad wept as he spoke of holding a newborn in his arms. I could hear the baby's cries echo in his voice as he strummed his lyre and described touching each tiny finger and toe.

That was why we selected Plato's Cave as our destination. We knew we couldn't stay where we were. It wasn't working in Ireland. Every year our colony was fifteen percent smaller. Our food was scarce and getting scarcer. Our water was dirty, disease took our children before they reached the tender age of ten. We had one child live to be twelve but a Slicer got to him.

The colony voted and selected the brightest and strongest to make the trip. I can tell you that while most of us wanted to be at Plato's Cave, not one of us relished the task of getting there.

We spent three years building the train our caravan would use to travel from Ireland to Greece. Once we crossed the strait, the train ran on conveyor belts, like military tanks, instead of rails. It was powered by solar power and dirt instead of steam or coal or electricity. It was heavily fortified to keep out the Slicers. Not fortified heavily enough, we learned later, but there were many things we learned later.

The trip was difficult, even harder I think than staying in Ireland would have been. There was less food and water than we had in Ireland and more danger from marauders and Slicers. For me, though, the hardest part was leaving behind my three children; two boys and a girl. The oldest was six and they had to pull him from my arms at our departure. Feeling his body stripped from mine is part of that hole in my heart. I never again saw my first three children. The youngest boy survived the Slicer Wars but was killed in a farming accident a year later. Sometimes the gods can be cruel. To make him live through the Slicer Wars and then to take him in an accident. On my bad days I believe the gods are punishing me for my many mistakes.

But for all the cruelty of the gods, mankind is even more cruel. At the time we didn't really know how many people had died or survived but we knew the survival number was horrifically small. Still, humans treated each other with such cruelty that you would have thought we had an abundance of ourselves. I can understand killing another for food, I have done it myself, but many of the people we saw during our trip killed for no purpose other than the sake of killing. It was as if they wanted to die but didn't have the courage to kill themselves, so they tried killing someone else until they eventually lost the fight. Many lost their fight at our hands.

Once we reached Plato's Cave, though, everything changed. I could almost forget, for a few days at a time at least, that I had seen men cut each other's throats and felt their warm blood splatter across my face. At Plato's Cave, with Robert and Marla, things were different. It's not that they didn't have tension or dissent; they did, most of it between their leaders, Robert and Marla themselves. That was back in the days when he loved her fiercely and she still mourned her dead husband and children. And then my father arrived. Throwing him in the mix stirred the tensions even higher.

"We have three rules here in Plato's Cave by which everyone, including guests, must abide," Robert said at the welcoming meal a week after we arrived. It was the night of the full moon and they had pulled back the covers from the skylights and we ate by the light of the moon.

Honor the moon, my children, every night it grants you the privilege of seeing its face. During the hiding of the Slicer Wars it is true we hardly ever saw the sun, but what pained me the most was not seeing the glorious moon. The Slicers skin, that liquid metal that transformed into scalpel-sharp knives to pierce flesh, it captured the moon's glow and flashed silver daggers at us in the darkness. During the day, at least, we could see death approaching on the metallic wings of the Slicers, but at night, in the darkness, the only things people saw a moment before death enveloped them were flashes of mercury, nature's cruelty as she transformed the sweetness of the silver moon into destructive knives of death.

"We don't take other people's belongings." Robert hung his head at this next part and his voice sounded like it was pleading. "We each have so little that belongs to us, individually, that this rule is so important that it's the first rule. " He looked up again and his eyes were sad. I knew then that he had many belongings before the Slicer Wars and he remembered how much he had and he coveted his current meager belongings all the more so because of it.

"With the death of so many, monogamy has died with them. Those who wear the yellow bands around their wrists are willing to share themselves with another. You may offer, but if that person declines, a no is a no. Do not try to convince them, do not attempt to force them." He glanced at Marla's wrist and the sadness of his lost belongings transformed into a pain of never having had that which he longed for most. "Those who wear a black band on their wrists are in mourning and request to not even be asked."

"And lastly, there are some doors downstairs that are locked. These doors are off limits to our guests." He looked at Derrick, our Irish military commander.

"We are not hiding anything, it's just that behind these doors are our most precious belongings. They house our library. Books we have gathered, at great cost of life, so to retain the knowledge of our ancestors for our children. We will gladly escort you through the libraries, but we ask that you do not attempt to pass through any locked door."

Derrick rose, winced, and glowered at his few remaining soldiers. "You will abide by these three rules."

"Yes sir," they answered in unison.

Derrick looked to his left. "That goes for you bookish people too. I know the temptation of books will be greater for you than it will be for my soldiers. Just respect their rules while we're in their house." Derrick sat down with a grunt. His back had been sliced from shoulder to waist outside of Prague and hadn't healed well.

After a meal of goat curry and rice with raisins the Platonists performed their monthly ritual. Every full moon, just like we still do today, my children, they portrayed the Allegory of Plato's Cave. They gave us pears for dessert. Real pears. Fresh pairs, not from a can. I was so amazed I didn't even stop to wonder where they had grown them. I don't think any of us Irish did.

While we ate our dessert, six of their members were shackled to the floor, facing a blank wall roughed to look like a cave wall. Behind them roared a fire and between them showmen danced with puppets, casting shadows upon the cave wall.

The prisoners were unable to turn their heads and so were unable to see these puppets, the real objects that passed behind them. What the prisoners saw and heard were shadows and echoes cast by objects that they did not see. They mistook appearance for reality.

A man named Frank read Plato's Allegory, each paragraph first in ancient Greek and then translated in English. His voice was smooth in the moonlight, burnished in the firelight. He stood behind us and his voice came from nowhere and everywhere. It washed over us and under our feet and enveloped us with the timbre of gravitas. His words seeped into my bones and though I didn't really understand the words, I felt the importance of their meaning.

A masked man rushed onto the stage and swung at the prisoner's shackles with a hammer, freeing them. The prisoners turned around and saw the puppeteers behind them and they looked wildly between the showmen and the shadows their puppets cast. The prisoners realized that what they had thought was real were only shadows and they ringed their hands and pulled at their hair. A few of the prisoners raised their fists at the showmen and threatened to advance, but the masked man pulled them back. He turned his masked face away from the showmen and waved his hand at them, dismissing them as unimportant artifacts of the past.

He directed the prisoners to an opening in the cave where they saw sunlight for the first time. He nudged the prisoners forward. Some were reluctant to walk into the brightness and looked back at the cave wall with melancholy, bare now of shadows except those cast by their own bodies. Two of the prisoners returned to their seats and willingly put the shackles around their own ankles. The showmen raised their puppets and the prisoners smiled and rocked back and forth like children at the shadows dancing on the cave wall.

The remaining four freed prisoners covered their faces with their arms, protecting their eyes from a sunlight they had never before seen. The light they used to see was pale compared to the real light of the sun. They stepped through the opening and into a world of color. Music started to play and the freed prisoners danced in delight on a carpet of green grass.

Soon everyone in the audience had risen and was dancing on the grass in the sunlight. I looked down and saw that the grass was real. I looked up and saw that the sunlight was a special kind of lamp. Even so, I felt its heat pulsate through me. I danced with my father and laughed in the sunlight and I was happy. I had been at Plato's Cave for less than seven days and already I was happy. I remembered my children back in Ireland, in the underground bunker, dank and dark. They were cold, hungry and frightened. Hunted by the Slicers. Maybe sick and dying for all I knew. I fled the stage for a dark corner and began to weep.

Robert found me there. He put his hands on my shoulders and squeezed them for comfort. "Do not cry, my child. Tonight we celebrate the living. The remaining thirty days of the month are long enough for us to mourn those we have lost or left behind. But tonight the full moon blesses us with its light and we dance."

He took my hand in his and guided me back to the stage where he wrapped his strong arms around me and we swayed to the rhythm of the music in the glow of the full moon while soft grass tickled between my bare toes.

Many people slipped yellow bands on their wrists that night and shared their beds with another. I myself laid for the first time with Jeremiah, a man originally from Israel. My father left with a woman named Sarah. Marla left early and alone, twisting at the black band around her wrist as if it was a protective shield. Robert started to follow her, stared pointedly at the black band and turned away, heading downstairs instead. I thought he would find solace in his books. I knew so little then.

I think my father realized how much he loved Marla that sunny day when he risked his life for hers. She had taken us down to the Library of Metals. Even then Plato's Cave had so many books that they had to store them in different underground rooms. They categorized the rooms; the Library of Metals, the Library of Chemicals, the Library of Wood and so on. I had personally seen twenty different Libraries, but there were even more locked doors behind which I had not yet peered.

My father and I were trying to understand how the metal could so quickly transform between liquid and solid. The Slicers were created by man, in a sense, but that's giving us too much credit that we actually knew what we were doing. If we had known what would happen, not one of the seven billion alive at the time would have made the choice to create the Slicers. We weren't trying to create Slicers. We were just trying to build stronger, lighter trains and tractors and patio furniture. We had created liquid metal. It was stronger than forged steel and yet as thin as one strand of a spider's web. We had enough knowledge to modify its DNA so it would remain stable at room temperature and then bind solid when we showered it with a mist of a special chemical wash made with chameleon DNA.

It would have allowed us to create incredible things. Cars used to weigh at least a ton and would buckle at the slowest of speeds; we would have had cars that weighed less than I do and yet would have protected its occupants at speeds of over five hundred kilometers per hour. Our spaceships were lumbering dinosaurs; the new ones would have used almost no fuel to eject themselves from our atmosphere. Ah, the possibilities, the opportunities, the things we could do and didn't stop to ask whether we should. They say that justice is blind but I think hubris is blind also. We were blind to the things that, in hindsight, were apparent. Whether they showed their faces to us while we were creating the Slicers, I'll never know.

I was only ten when the Slicer Wars started but I say we because if it was 'we' who solved this mess, I feel it must have been 'we' who caused it as well. One person does not arrive at any destination on his own. He builds upon the foundations of his ancestors, upon their mistakes and successes alike. I was there, in the very room of scientists who developed the method by which we obliterated the Slicers. It was my idea to use the particles in the atmosphere to refract Marla's Eigengrau wavelength, but I did not develop the solution on my own. I had but one small part in its development. All of mankind had a hand in building the knowledge by which we destroyed the Slicers. And I have to believe that all of mankind had a hand in building the knowledge by which we created the Slicers as well.

And so in our prideful blindness we created something that became something else, something which none of us ever intended. These accidents have happened many times in our past, often with positive outcomes. This outcome was not positive. It was dreadful. The metal formed itself into a round marble. Out of that round center sprouted five-inch-long tendrils which flattened and curved, spinning the center, allowing it to fly almost as fast as the speed of sound.

The center had sensors, I cannot bring myself to call them a nose or eyes, that sought out flesh in which to plant its cloned particulates to reproduce. Upon finding the flesh, any flesh, that of humans, birds, horses, it didn't matter, the tendrils reshaped into metal points with edges so sharp they could cut clean through a tree trunk. The Slicer would burrow its way into the flesh, plant its clone, retreat and die. Upon death the liquid metal disintegrated and all that would be left would be the decaying dust of a silver marble. The clone would emerge within twenty-four hours and in the birthing process, the newborn Slicers created a mucus that dissolved every iota of the host's flesh.

In a way, in a very strange, unsettling way, the loss of most of the earth's inhabitants through Slicer death was a blessing. Had seven billion people died by nuclear war or a virulent biological agent, those of us remaining would have been overwhelmed with rotting corpses. The Slicers dissolved the flesh and left the bones. Bones don't decompose like bodies, leaving festering pulp full of parasites and disease. Exposed bones are terrible to look at, we see them still, even after all these years there are just too many to collect or cover, but at least the bones didn't kill us. At least the bones didn't harm our bodies. What seeing that many bones of our own species does to the human mind I cannot say. There are those who speculated, but even they admit that their musings into how our social psyche has changed are speculations at best.

In the library Marla brought six or seven books over to a set of soft chairs and showed us how to use the electric light. They generated electricity by undersea turbines turned by the motion of the waves. I don't know why we hadn't thought of that when we were in Ireland. We were close enough to the coast, we knew the Slicers didn't go underwater, we had the equipment. Now I know why we hadn't thought of it, but at the time I just hit my forehead and said "We should have done that."

I can tell you the reason now, my children, but do not think the answers came as quickly as I can write them. It took months for us to realize the difference between Plato's Cave and every other colony. To say the difference was Marla is to buy into the ideal that she was as great as her legend makes her out to be. In truth, the difference was a simple one. Plato's Cave had hope. They had hope that they could conquer the Slicers, that they would survive the devastation we visited upon ourselves. That hope honed their focus, enabled them to create things to serve a purpose, to accomplish a task. That focus allowed them to build things that the rest of us, in our shock and despair, couldn't even imagine.

Many people who didn't live through it say that it was Marla's hope which gave Plato's Cave hope, but that is because they had never seen her in the darkest of days. She was not an optimistic woman, she was not a Pollyanna, a person who looked for the silver lining. She carried the grief of humanity on her shoulders and like Atlas, even while she struggled under its weight, she refused to set it down.

I believe it was her willingness to carry the grief for all of us that inspired the rest of us to have hope. Hope that we could, actually, make things better. Hope that we might actually survive. Hope that one day the Slicers would be gone and, even though we couldn't reset things to be like they were before, at least we could make them better than they were now. It was not her hope that gave us hope, it was her sorrow.

Her grief was palpable. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't morose. She laughed at the simplest of things. I bet she laughed at least once an hour for most of her days. She could find a reason to laugh in the most dire of situations, if only sardonically.

I swear to you, my children, her smile was brighter than the sun. We, all of us, were drawn into that smile. We wanted her to smile so we could bathe in its warmth. Her eyes would sparkle and her teeth would flash and we could feel the warmth spilling from her. But as I said before, she carried her sorrow in her voice and when she laughed, it was like hearing a child laugh in this room, her voice bubbly and fresh. But underneath that, far away as if they were in a room at the other end of the house, you could hear a thousand children crying. If I could close my ears and see her face, her smile could make any horror flee, but when I would close my eyes and hear her laugh, it made me want to weep.

She carried the grief so we wouldn't have to. We didn't ask her to. She didn't ask us if she could. Of all the things she has done for us, my children, all the science, the death of the Slicers, all the food, water and animals we have because of her, the greatest thing she did for us was to carry the collective grief of all of humanity. That alone enabled us to carry hope in our own hearts. That is why Plato's Cave progressed while every other colony decayed. Her sacrifice is what gave Plato's Cave its hope.

Marla had taken us down to the Library of Metals and returned to her lab to check on the latest tests she was running. She trusted us enough to leave us down there alone, sure that we would not try to sneak through any of the locked doors. If we had known what was behind them, her confidence would have been misplaced, but ignorant as we were, we followed their rules. After three hours of reading, our stomachs grumbling, we wandered upstairs to find Marla before seeking out lunch. We had missed the main lunch serving and would have to make our own lunches, which suited my father fine because he thought Marla was the best cook in the world.

We passed Jacob, her apprentice, in the hallway and he said Marla was in her lab. He asked us to tell her he would return after a quick game of ball. We entered her lab and didn't see her there. A flash of light caught my eye out a small port window. I grabbed my father's arm and ran to the window. Through the tiny window I could see Marla standing on her balcony, Slicers swarming around her.

"Marla," my father shouted. He yanked the door open and entered an alcove no more than four feet across. He ran to the door on the other side of the small room and pulled at the handle, calling her name.

"No, Father!" I shouted to be heard over his strong voice. I was riveted to the place where I stood, in the first doorway. I could see the Slicers swarming around Marla, their metal wings transforming between wings and knives, wings and knives. They swirled around her naked body. She was clothed but I say naked because everyone knew that to go outside without multiple layers of metal armor was walking naked and meant certain death. Only those who wanted to end their lives went outside without protection. I thought of the grief in her voice and felt I should have realized she would eventually want to end it all. I didn't realize then that she did want to end it, just not through suicide. She wanted to end it by killing the Slicers.

Father seemed oblivious to the fact that he, also, was not wearing any armor. He tugged at the door handle but by the grace of the gods it did not open. If it had, a swarm of Slicers would have entered Plato's Cave and would have killed everyone before a minute had passed.

Father pounded at the door, shouting Marla's name. I have to assume she could not hear him through the thick steel door for she remained standing with her back to us. Her black hair was bound in a tight braid that reached her waist. Her hands and feet were bare and her shirt flapped gently in the sea breeze. She stood with her face upturned toward the noon sun. She raised her hands and waved them slowly, as if trying to reach for a Slicer in the air. The Slicers moved away from her touch. They didn't attack her, they didn't slice her, they didn't kill her. They moved away from her.

I wondered then if the Slicers knew she wanted to die and wouldn't grant her wish. Or maybe they, too, felt how special she was and were reluctant to kill the most perfect thing remaining on the planet. I know now that it was neither of these foolish things, but such are our thoughts when fear has turned our bowels to water and our fingers to ice.

Our shouting caught the attention of Derrick, our military commander, who was passing by. He hobbled into the room, pushed past me and grabbed my father's arms. He pulled my father away from the door.

"Donny. Get a hold of yourself." Derrick's voice was loud, louder than either mine or my father's.

My father looked into Derrick's eyes and pleaded his objection. "They'll kill her."

"If you open that door, you'll kill us all."

We looked out the port window and our initial panic subsided slightly. The Slicers hadn't killed her. We couldn't understand it, but we had to accept what our eyes were telling us.

Marla was able to stand, unarmored, in the sunlight, unscathed, with Slicers swarming around her. It was an incredible moment. You, my children, of course, know about the invisible force-field she wore, but picture in your minds, if you can, that moment without that knowledge. For twenty years the Slicers had killed everyone they encountered. Everyone. And there stood Marla in the midst of a swarm and they ignored her.

I was sure she was protected by the gods. I wasn't sure whether she was a goddess herself, though I would have easily believed it at that moment. She was doing what no one else had done before and I was a witness to it.

Marla turned around and saw our faces through the port window. She smiled. I couldn't hear her sad voice, I could only see her smile and she made the Aegean Sea sparkle behind her. At that moment she truly looked like a goddess.

She walked toward the outer door and motioned for us to move back into the lab and shut the inner door. We did and we saw the light above the outer door turn green. She opened the door and the Slicers flew into the room before her. She closed the door behind her. Even in that small enclosed space the Slicers were careful not to get close to her. I could hear their metal wings glancing off the metal walls, sounding like metal fingernails clipping against a shale blackboard. Marla pulled a pair of black goggles off the wall and put them over her eyes. She pressed a button and the room was flooded with a violet, almost gray light. In mid-flight the Slicers fell, their metal bodies clanking against the floor. I looked down and saw the inert metal pieces disintegrate, leaving behind small mounds of silver ash.

Marla released the button and the violet light faded. She removed the goggles and looked around the room, checking for any errant Slicer that might have escaped. She pulled at her clothing and ran her fingers through her hair and along her braid. No Slicer survived her chamber of violet light. She pushed another button which unlocked the inner door.

My father pulled the door open and enveloped her in his arms. "Marla! Thank the gods you're safe." Relief was heavy in his voice.

She hugged him back.

"Did you see it? It worked. It worked!" Her heavy voice was as light with excitement as I would ever hear it; it sounded like sandpaper against tree bark.

My father was reluctant to let her go but she pulled herself out of his arms, looking at the three of us.

"Did you see? It works." She held out her arms to inspect them. "Not even a scratch." She ran her fingers down her legs, feeling for fabric tears. "They never touched me. Not once."

Jacob entered the lab and she ran to the young man. "It works, Jacob. It works."

Jacob's eyes grew large. "You tested it? Yourself?"

She jumped up and down lightly on her toes. "Yes," she giggled like a child and it sounded like pebbles falling on a pile of autumn leaves.

Jacob's face turned ashen. "We are in so much trouble."

She ruffled his hair. "Ah, Robert will be fine. It worked!"

Derrick touched her wrists gently to calm her. "That was amazing. Now can you tell us what it was that we just saw?"

She took a few deep breaths and motioned to the stools. She removed a broach from her belt. It looked like a purple stone, about the size of a large olive. She tossed it to Derrick who easily caught it.

"That..." she winked at Jacob, "...is your new armor."

Derrick held it up between his thumb and forefinger and looked at it suspiciously.

She leaned forward and pushed a button on the broach. Derrick's image shimmered before my eyes and then he returned to normal.

Jacob turned off the lab light and turned on another, special light.

A diaphanous violet light enveloped Derrick and the stool he sat on, casting him in a grayish purple glow. It was practically invisible in regular light but was distinct, if not dense, in the darker light.

"This particular wavelength, the Eigengrau, in the indigo/violet spectrum, is fatal to the Slicers," Marla said simply, as if it wasn't the most important discovery of all of humanity.

"Eigengrau?" my father asked.

"Intrinsic gray light," she replied. "You know. When you sit in a completely dark room, but you can still see things? When you close your eyes but you still see brain gray. Dark light."

Derrick dropped the broach from one hand to the other and the field around him didn't waver. He handed it to my father and the field enveloped both of them. When Derrick pulled away the violet light left Derrick and enveloped my father and the stool he sat on.

"What does this do?" Derrick's voice shook.

My father handed it to me and I played with it, switching the light off and on again. The field enveloped me, disappeared, enveloped me again. I waved my arms wildly and the violet light outlined my body where ever I moved it.

"You saw what happened when I turned on the Eigengrau light in the sequestering chamber. It kills the Slicers."

Derrick rose to his feet. She couldn't hear it but his voice was full of warning, like the soft hiss of a caged cougar. "You can kill Slicers?"

We had never been able to kill Slicers. We'd shoot them but their liquid metal would just reform and mend itself. Burning them didn't work, liquids, chemicals, acids, crushing them, nothing could kill a Slicer. The only dead Slicers we had seen were after they had implanted their clones in our friends' mutilated bodies. Only then did the Slicers shrivel up and die.

Marla shook her head. "No. Well, yes, but no." She tried to explain. "We discovered a wavelength of light that kills them, but we don't have the means of distribution. Right now, it's like killing a swarm of house flies with a dart, one fly at a time. We can lure them into the chamber, but we can only kill a couple dozen at a time. That's nothing compared to the number of Slicers flying around out there."

Marla took the device from me and Jacob turned the regular lights back on. "But this. This will allow us to walk outside without fear."

"Why didn't you tell us you could kill the Slicers?" Derrick asked. His tone did not hide his accusation.

Marla looked at his quizzically. "We've theorized about the Eigengrau for four years." She shrugged. "I've been working to stabilize it so it can protect us as we move about, protect our vehicles, our boats, our animals."

She grabbed my father's hand. "We'll be able to put this on collars on our cows and they'll be able to wander the meadows again."

"We didn't know anything could kill a Slicer," my father said gently.

Marla stopped moving and cocked her head. "Oh."

My father blinked back tears. "If they can die...."

"It means we can win," Derrick finished.

Marla shook her head apologetically. "I didn't know you didn't know."

Derrick jumped off his stool and let out whoop. Derrick had a very loud voice. "Wait until I tell my men." Derrick started to leave the room. He turned back, grabbed Marla's head in his large, calloused hands and kissed her on the forehead.

He released her and pointed to my father and me. "Learn how this works." He left the room. The way he walked with his injured back made it look like he was skipping.

Jacob took the device and put it in a box on the table. "When they find out, half the people here are going to love you and the other half are going to be as mad as hell."

"Only Robert," Marla corrected him.

Jacob looked at her and raised his eyebrows. "But he gets fifty-one percent of the vote." Jacob turned and looked at me. "Make sure Robert knows that I was not here when she did this." Jacob turned to leave. "And I'm not going to be around when he finds out, either."

"What was that about?" my father asked, turning to Marla.

Marla waved her hand. "Ah, nothing. Just a long-standing disagreement between Robert and me." Marla pulled a sheaf of paper onto her lap and started scribbling. "If we can boost the power source, we could build a dome of Eigengrau light around Plato's Cave."

I picked up a pencil off the table and drew on her diagram. "You don't need to increase one power source," I said. "All you need to do is place four of five power sources in strategic locations, like here, here, here and here. You saw how the light meshes. The light from each beacon will combine with the others to create a completely sealed dome."

She looked at me with sparkling eyes. "You are so right."

I felt proud. Proud to have been a witness to her accomplishment. Proud that she said I was correct. But her voice, as always, also made me feel sad, made me remember that so many had died before we got to this point. I don't think there is a moment for any of us who lived through the Slicer Wars when we are completely happy. We carry this loss with us where ever we go, every day, with every breath. My only hope, my children, is that you, and if not you, then your children, will be able to experience pure joy one day. Joy without sorrow. Only joy. Only happiness.

Later that night I came to understand why Jacob made himself scarce following the afternoon's successes. There were ten of us in one of the smaller eating rooms with Marla. From the Ireland colony there was me, my father, Derrick and Pappy, Ireland's lead humanist. The Platonists included Deidra and Peter, two of the better cooks, the carpenters Paul and Zia-Lau, the biologist Pasquale and his companion Sarah. We were just finishing our desserts, a lemon sponge-cake slavered in quince-flavored whipping cream, when Robert entered the room. I have seen men's face dark with rage before and I set my fork down and picked up my knife. I hid it in my lap, under my napkin.

"Tell me what I hear isn't true," Robert said to Marla as if she were alone in the room.

Marla smiled with mischief and started to respond "I do not know..."

Robert cut her off. "Do not toy with me." His lips were two straight lines.

Marla sighed and set her fork across the top of her plate. "Yes. What you heard is correct. Today I figured out how to attach the Eigengrau light to my belt and I stood outside on my balcony, in the sunlight, without traditional armor, and the Slicers didn't touch me."

Deidra sucked in her breath and glanced at Peter .

Paul let out a whoop that echoed in the silence that followed.

I didn't think was possible but Robert's face turned even darker. A vein in the middle of his forehead pulsated intensely. "You tested it personally. On yourself."

Marla rose to her feet and stood with her fingers barely touching the tabletop. She looked directly at him. Her voice was level. "Yes, I tested it myself."

Robert picked up the only empty chair and flung it against the wall. The wood shattered, sending splinters everywhere. "Damn it, Marla. I told you not to do that."

Everyone at the table jumped to their feet and stood with their backs pressed against the walls. I tightened my grip on the knife hidden under my napkin.

"And I told you that I was going to," she countered.

Robert kicked at a broken chair leg and shook his head. "We've had this fight so many times, Marla. I just don't know what to do anymore."

Marla reached out but Robert pulled his arm away and he turned his back on her.

"Just let me be," she replied.

Robert spun to look at her. "Just let you be?" he asked incredulously. "Just let you be, so you can continue to test these experiments on yourself until one day one of them doesn't work out quite as you expected and it kills you?" His voice caught at the end. He cleared his throat. "You are too important to us. I can't let you do that."

"I keep on telling you, Robert. I'm no more important than anyone else here."

He looked at her levelly. "And I keep on telling you how very wrong you are."

She started to speak but he cut her off. He pointed at Paul who winced visibly. "If Paul has an accident and dies, Zia-Lau can take over for him. And even if we lose Zia-Lau and all of our apprentice carpenters, we can sit on the floor if we have to. But if you die, Marla, there is no one who can do what you do."

"I'm training Jacob. Soon he'll take an apprentice himself and teach some else."

"Jacob is years away from catching up to you, much less surpassing you. I'm not sure anyone can."

Marla shook her head rapidly as if she didn't want to hear the words. "No one person should be valued more than another."

Robert grabbed her arms in his hands. "Marla! Don't tell me what should be. If we lived in the world of shoulds we'd still have seven billion people on the planet. I know you want to believe that every human life has the same value, but in this case, it's just not true. You are the reason why Plato's Cave exists. It is because of you that we can harvest new wood to build new furniture. It is because of you that we have fresh fruit and fish to eat, that we have..." Robert caught his words and looked around at the four of us outsiders.

He shook his head slightly and continued. "You may not want to be more important than anyone else, but you are." He released her arm and placed his hand gently on the side of her cheek.

"It is your burden." His voice was barely over a whisper. "You don't want this any more than you wanted to be a widow. These are your burdens, Marla. You cannot fight them. You must carry them."

"You are too concerned for the individual, Robert. You should be more concerned for the future generations." Her voice did not carry the conviction of her words, though. She said them as if reciting past arguments.

"And without this one individual, there will be no future generations," Robert reminded her.

She looked at Robert for a long time and then squeezed her eyes shut before opening them again. Her shoulders softened.

"The rational part of me knows that you're right, Robert, but I cannot ask someone to do something that I am not willing to do myself."

Robert closed his eyes too and his jaws clenched tightly. "I know. You don't have to. I will." He sighed and opened his eyes. "I will decide who tests your new inventions."

Marla pulled away from him and walked toward the wall. "Phff. You expect me to come to you and say 'hey, I have this new idea but I'm not sure if it's going to work. Why don't you have Paul here test it and we'll see if he dies or not.'" She looked at Robert. "Come on, Robert. I can't do that. It's the same thing as asking Paul to do it myself."

"No, it is not the same," Robert said sternly. "As leader of Plato's Cave, I am telling you to do this, Marla. You will cease to test inventions yourself. As of now you will have a guard with you at all times, to ensure you follow my rules."

"What? You're going to have me followed?"

"Protected. Twenty-four hours a day."

"When I'm in my lab."

"And when you're in your home. And when you're in the library. Where ever you go."

"You treat me as if you don't trust me." Marla challenged him to refute it.

"With your antics today, you have proven to me that I can't trust you," Robert admitted.

Marla's face hardened. "Are you so afraid of losing me that you're willing to drive me away?"

The remark stung Robert as much as if he had been slapped. "Yes," he whispered. "It would break my heart if you died, Marla." His voice gained strength. "Strangely enough, because of what I have lost before, know I can live with that. But it's not just you and me, Marla. If you die, everyone else here dies too." He looked at his friends as he swept his arm over them. "If you died, all of them would be dead within a decade. And that I cannot allow to happen."

He looked at Deidra. "I'm responsible for all of them, Marla. I have to do whatever it takes to keep them alive. And that means that you will not test any experiments on yourself."

Robert turned his gaze to my father and me. "I expect you two to inform me when she tries to sneak something by her guards. You also have a vested interest in keeping her alive. In addition to your scientific pursuits, this is also your new duty."

"I cannot..." my father started to object.

Derrick placed his hand on father's arm. "We accept this as our duty. We will do this," Derrick told Robert.

Robert nodded. He turned to look at Marla but she had turned away and was leaving the room. He followed her out of the room but turned left out the door, away from her direction. The guard outside followed behind Marla.

The room was silent. We still stood with our backs pressed to the walls.

"So, he has chosen," Deidra said quietly, breaking the silence.

Paul turned toward my father to explain. "Robert has struggled for four years, not wanting to choose between his love for Marla and his duty to his people."

"Today he has truly accepted his role as our leader," Paul stated, not without pride.

"Today he has accepted the fact that he will be alone," Deidra added. She squeezed Peter's hand.

The next morning, Derrick said he needed my father and I to do some maintenance on one of the cars in the caravan. We left the tunnels after breakfast and darted to the closest train car. A Slicer cut through Derrick's armor and nicked his skin but he covered the open wound with his armored hand and made it safely to the first car.

"Let me see that," my father said after he slammed the door shut on the Slicers.

I helped Derrick unhook the overlapping panels on his coat lined with metal plates and hung it up on the hooks near the door. There were already six coats hanging there. I looked at my father and motioned to them with my head. His surprised showed in his eyes but he quickly narrowed them and inspected Derrick's new wound.

"Just a scratch," Derrick said.

"We were lucky," my father agreed. "You should have Fitz mend your armor, though."

"I will."

My father laid his hand on Derrick's arm. "Can you tell us what this is about before we go inside?"

It was Derrick's turn to look surprised. "How did you...?" Derrick shook his head. "No, we'll discuss it inside."

We moved from the front car, through the second and into the third, which had been the community seating area when the train was our only home for five years while we travelled from Ireland to Greece. After living in Plato's Cave for three months, the car looked disgustingly dirty and dingy. The seat cushions were worn thread bare. Springs drove into our backs when we sat down. The room was lit only by battery-operated torches and I already missed the sunlight that streamed in through the protective glass in Plato's Cave.

Already waiting for us were Pappy and his assistant Charlie. In the seats closest to the ones we chose were Gretchen and Theo, also humanists. Ralph and Herbie stood guard, one at each door.

"I brought us here so we could talk in private," Derrick started.

"This doesn't seem right," my father interrupted. "For us to talk in private when they have been so open with us."

Derrick faced him. "That's why we're here. Have they been so open and truthful with us?"

"Have you noticed..." Pappy began but Derrick held up his hand and Pappy stopped.

"Before we begin, though, I want us to reaffirm our oaths. We've been three months at Plato's Cave and I want to make sure this conversation stays between us." Derrick looked at me and then at my father. "I want to make sure you won't run back and tell her what we've been talking about."

My father hesitated. "You have control over that," he admitted. "If there's anything that you want to say that will imply you wish harm upon anyone in Plato's Cave or that you wish to deceive them or take from them, I suggest you don't talk about it front of me or my daughter. Anything else you say will remain between us and us alone."

Derrick nodded. "They're hiding things from us."

"Is this about the fact that they can kill Slicers?" my father asked. "She told you, she didn't know you didn't know."

"It's not that," Derrick admitted, shaking his head. "I believed her when she said she didn't know. She's a lot like you – can't lie worth beans."

"It's the others," Pappy spoke up.

"They're lying to us," Charlie said.

"Well, not really lying. It's just that they aren't telling us everything," Pappy clarified.

"How many people do you think live in Plato's Cave?" Gretchen asked me.

I shrugged. "I don't know. I think Marla said they had two or three hundred."

"And how many have you seen?"

I shrugged again. "I don't know. Maybe ten or twenty. I spend most of my time in the lab or the library."

"Ask me how many I've seen," Gretchen challenged me.

I moved my hands to signal she should answer.

"I counted them, made notes of the people I've seen, what they look like, their names. I've recorded over six hundred and ninety two." Gretchen sat back in her chair with a pleased smile on her face.

"Maybe you lost count," I suggested.

Gretchen looked at me with scorn. "I'm a humanist. Paying attention to people is what I do."

I nodded my head in acquiescence.

"And the children. I've counted a hundred and fifty-three children under the age of fifteen," Theo added. "But they said they have only a score of children."

"And I've counted the rooms. There are only three hundred and six bedrooms in Plato's Cave," Charlie added. "Where do the rest sleep?"

"There must be more rooms downstairs," I concluded.

"Yes, downstairs, behind the locked doors." The doors being locked clearly rankled Derrick. "In the library. Books are the only things down there, they say. As if books are important enough to lock up."

"Say here, now," my father objected. "Books are that important. We've learned more in the last three months than we did in the ten years prior. The information in those books is essential to our future generations, if we're lucky enough to have any."

"They are," Pappy agreed with my father. "But the food."

"Oh, yes, the food," I interrupted. "With every meal I am still amazed at how good food can taste."

"But have you thought about where it comes from? I mean, fresh pears? Apples. Olives." Pappy looked concerned as he said it.

"Oh, Marla said they have an orchard a mile or so away. Near the stables where they keep the cows and other livestock," I answered, not knowing my answer would trap me with my own words.

"And the fish?" Pappy asked.

"Fishermen," I answered confidently. "I've met John and Paulo and what's that woman's name?" I turned to my father.

"You know the one with the..." I stopped in mid-sentence and heard the trap spring shut.

"We've seen no boats," my father admitted, realizing it for the first time. "We've seen no caravans to or from the orchards."

"I sent the UAVs to look for the orchards and livestock stables," Derrick informed them. "I found nothing within twenty miles."

"You used the unmanned aerial vehicles? Without the council's permission?" My father looked concerned.

"The council voted," Derrick said, looking away. "Two yes with one abstain."

My father's face clouded. "It's not an abstain if I'm not informed there is a vote," he replied icily.

"We know. We were wrong. Which is why you are here now," Pappy admitted. "We weren't trying to usurp your position, we just weren't sure we could trust you anymore."

"And what's changed?" my father asked.

Pappy hung his head. "Guilt." He looked up at my father. "We know who you are. You have done more for the Irish colony than almost anyone. Our doubts clouded our judgment. We had no reason to distrust you."

"We were wrong," Derrick admitted. "We know we can trust you. And your daughter. We were fools for a moment. It passed."

"But our doubts about them remain," Charlie added.

"Tell me where your doubts have taken you," my father requested. "What are your conclusions."

Charlie rose and began to pace the room. "My conclusion is that they are hiding something from us. They've lied about their population numbers, they've lied about their food source. What else have they lied about?"

"Don't forget the basement is practically off-limits to us," Derrick added.

"I've been in over twenty different rooms in the basement," I interjected.

"But what is your conclusion," my father continued to press Charlie.

Charlie sat on the chair puzzled.

"So they've lied to us about the number of people here. Maybe they're telling us a lower number because they're afraid they can't trust us. Maybe they're concerned we'll be afraid if they tell us they are a thousand strong, or ten thousand strong."

My father swallowed. He turned and looked pointedly at Derrick.

"If that was the real number, would you be happy that many humans were alive in one colony or would you see that colony as a threat?" My father could reason very well.

"Do you remember the food we received from the other colonies we visited on our trip here?" he continued. "In Prague they killed three of our soldiers and outside Berlin they gave us rancid radishes and water with feces floating in it." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Here they give us whipping cream with bits of quince and you are suspicious of them?"

He looked at Derrick sideways. "I think your idleness has turned you into an old man sitting outside the pub all day, suspecting the sun for rising."

Father rose and took up Charlie's pacing space. "Do you remember when we arrived? We limped in here. We crawled in on broken knees and scraped fingers and they took us in. They could have just as easily pushed us into the sea. We would have been helpless to stop them. We were entirely at their mercy and they healed us and fed us and moved out of their homes so we would have places to sleep."

He ran his finger along the wall board and it came away covered with dust. "If they had something horrific they were hiding, it would have been easier for them to send us right into the sea the day we arrived."

He sat down and looked at Pappy. "Do I think they're hiding something?" He shrugged. "Sure. Everyone who lives through these times is hiding something or another."

He turned to look at Derrick.

"Do I think what they're hiding is a threat to us?" He shook his head. "No. They had their chance to kill us when we were at our weakest. If they're hiding anything, they're doing it for their own protection, not to harm us."

The room was silent for a moment until I broke it. "I have to admit, if I was in Robert's position as leader of this place, I would be inclined to build a big wall sheltering Plato's Cave from the rest of the world. I would be tempted to let the rest of the world die, because I would be afraid that if I let the world in, the visitors would destroy everything I was trying to protect."

"I am amazed at how open he is in sharing what they've done, their mistakes and successes alike," Theo acknowledged. "He told me the hardest thing he had to do was convince his council that they needed to set standards for eviction. His face actually turned green when he told me about the day they made the decision. They know that the likelihood the person they evict is going to survive is very, very small. Yet he knew that it was necessary to maintain the, what did he call it, the balance in Plato's Cave. I think he meant law and order, but he used the word balance instead."

"Marla too," Derrick conceded. "If she's trying to hide their military prowess, she's doing a piss-poor job of it. And Kendra, their head of security, she's shown me many of their defenses. She's taught me how they handle strangers, how they deal with criminals, how their trial system works. She's shown me their jail cells."

"They have jail cells?" I asked.

"They were empty every time I've been down there." Derrick frowned. I bet he was remembering the overcrowded, filthy cells he ran in Ireland.

We sat in silence for a bit, remembering Ireland, the horrid trip down here. As the peacefulness of Plato's Cave continued to seep into my bones, the absolute horror that was ever-present in my life before was starting to fade. I didn't miss it. I sometimes woke screaming, sure the Slicers have broken in like they used to in Ireland. The familiar feeling of watery guts and that hand gripping my heart fades after I turn on a light and read a book for a while. The desire to retain the normalcy of this place was strong inside of me and I wondered if it was clouding my ability to determine whether they were, in fact, hiding something from us.

I briefly wondered how far I would go to be able to stay here at Plato's Cave. How much would I forgive them if I discovered their secret? How horrific would their secret have to be to make me turn my back on them? In the brief silence I was not able to find anything that they could to do make me leave the safety of Plato's Cave.

"So where does that leave us?" Gretchen asked. "If they haven't been truthful but we don't think their lies are a threat, where does that leave us?"

I turned at the sound of metal fingernails tapping against a metal table. "What is that?" The sound was familiar but I had buried it and couldn't identify it immediately.

Herbie turned around and put his hand against the door. His face lost its color and he spun around. "Slicers," he shouted.

We all ran for our protective gear and climbed into the armored suits. We buckled each other up as quickly as we could but we were not fast enough. I was right; the three months of peace had dulled my mind and slowed my fingers. A Slicer flew past my faceplate and dove under an open flap in Gretchen's coat. It slammed up through her chin, ripped off her face and embedded itself in her brain. The inside of her faceplate splattered with blood and bits of flesh. She fell heavily against me and I lowered her to the floor with a thud of metal against metal.

I turned to find my father, to make sure he was protected. I saw Charlie's chest burst open in a flowering bloom of red before he, too, fell to the floor. I felt strong hands on each side of me, lifting me to my feet. My father's face blurred before me and he pushed me toward the train car door. Just like in the old days, he kept his hand on my back so I would know he hadn't fallen.

We ran out the train and into the tunnel leading to Plato's Cave. The doors opened and we fell through. We crawled to the far end of the room and heard the doors slam shut. I looked up to find only three of my friends; my father, Pappy and Derrick. We had lost another five.

Four of their soldiers, fully covered in their armor burst into the room. "How many are in the train?" Kendra barked at Derrick who was still leaning against the wall.

"Five." He shouted to be heard through the suit.

"If they still live, we'll rescue them." She slapped her hand against his helmet and motioned for her team to follow her. I watched them disappear through the door and into the tunnels before I broke into tears. Except for nightmares, it had been three moths since I had felt this fear. Three months without my knees buckling or my ears ringing with the sound of metal scraping against metal. Three months without fear sucking every drop of water from my mouth and my heart pounding in my throat and vomit backing up into my esophagus. Even now, safe in this room, fear squeezed the air from my lungs. My arms and legs started to shake uncontrollably. I knew what was happening; I was hyperventilating, but I was helpless to stop it and I'm not sure I wanted it to stop. I was relieved when the darkness took over my vision and I blacked out.

I woke to find my helmet off and my head resting against my father's leg as he leaned against the wall. More soldiers ran through the room and into the tunnel.

"Marauders," my father whispered.

Robert rushed into the room and helped us to our feet. "We have to get you out of here."

"Why?" Derrick asked.

Robert paused and looked at Derrick. "It's not going well." He hesitated. "They have your weapons."

Derrick hesitated less than a second before pushing Pappy, my father and me after Robert. "Go and go fast."

We ran through empty hallways and past Marla's lab. It was the first time I had seen her door closed and hadn't realized before how solid her door actually was. We paused at a corner. "Your men are suiting up," Robert told Derrick. "Third door on the left." Derrick jogged down the hall and disappeared through the doorway. I heard a distant cheer as he entered the room.

"This way," Robert said, leading us to the basement.

My father nudged me forward and we descended the stairs and ran to the fiction library. Marla and my father hugged. "Thank the gods you're alive," she said and pulled me into the hug too. She pulled away and held us at arm's length.

"What you are about to see is our most protected secret." She looked at my father. "Forgive me for not sharing it with you earlier." She reached behind a bookshelf and pulled a lever. The bookcase slid forward to reveal a dimly lit tunnel. She ushered us into the tunnel. Robert closed and locked the outer door to the library and joined her at the bookcase. Giving one last look around the room, they stepped into the tunnel and closed the secret door behind them.

She stepped around us and led us through the tunnels. Robert broke off at one of the tunnels to our left. He hugged Marla. "Be safe," she whispered.

We walked for five, maybe six minutes more. We could hear the muffled sounds of cannon-fire and machine guns and knew the soldiers still fought the marauders. I didn't know if I should be happy knowing our soldiers still lived, or angry knowing the marauders still lived also. Most of all, I still felt the fear in my bones. Fear of the Slicers.

We came to a large, thick metal door. It had a combination lock like they had on bank vaults before the Slicer Wars began. I've seen them because we've had to hide in them before. We couldn't hide in them too long, though, because if we chose one with ventilation, the Slicers could get in. If we chose one without ventilation, well, we could usually identify those by the dead but unmutilated bodies inside.

Marla entered the combination and the lock sprang open. She moved the door lever downward and my father helped her pull it open. We walked into a room that looked just like a bank vault. It was metal on all sides with another door opposite the one we just opened. Marla closed the door behind us and I heard a hiss as the air seal locked in place. She knocked on the opposite door and looked up into a camera. The camera moved to see the entire small room and then the door in front of us opened.

My father, Pappy and I stood there, our mouths open, our eyes wide. Before us was their secret, the thing they had been hiding from us, and it was a doozy.

Oh children, my children, imagine if you can, being in a dark room. Now picture yourself knowing little other than that dark room for a full twenty years. Imagine Slicers in the darkness with you, striking at you, unseen until the bloom of pain flowers behind your eyes.

Imagine someone removing a dark curtain in front of a window. Diffuse light filters in. You cannot see out the window – the window covering is too thick – but for the first time in twenty years, light filters through into the room.

Then imagine, if you can, my children, having someone fling open wide not the window, not a door, but the entire wall of the room. Sunlight pours into the room and suddenly there are no Slicers. Color returns to your world. The cool blues of cold streams, the lush greens of grassy plains, the soft yellows of sand dunes.

That is what is what we saw, my children, when we saw the caverns for the first time. Not only had we never seen them before but we didn't even know they existed. We didn't even know such a wondrous thing could exist, not in a world wracked by the Slicer Wars.

My knees buckled and my father tried to catch me. His knees buckled too. Marla came up behind us and braced us. She helped us over to chairs that sat on a platform, high above the caverns.

We didn't know where to look first. Our eyes wanted to drink every sight in at once.

"What is this?" Pappy asked barely above a whisper. He had managed to get to a chair on his own. He looked up and blinked a dozen times.

"Is that the sky?" Pappy asked.

"No," Marla answered, pulling up a chair behind us. "We're underground. Our artists have painted the roof of the cavern the color of a summer's sky."

"This is underground?" my father whispered. "But that has to be..."

"The cavern stretches forward a mile. At its apex, the roof is six hundred feet above the ground. That same point is three hundred feet below the surface of the earth."

"My god," Pappy whispered. His fingers trembled at his lips, wiped at his eyes.

"This eco-system is the smallest. We call it The Park," she told us. She placed her hand on my father's forearm. "We have three others."

Pappy's breath caught in his throat and he started to cough.

I won't tell you what we saw, my children. You have seen it a thousand times. You grew up with it, as do your children. For you it is something duller than the real world up top, but for us, coming from such a dark place, it shocked our senses. The sights, the sounds, the smells, they overwhelmed us. I won't tell you what we saw, but I will try to tell you what it meant to me.

I don't remember much of what I saw anyway, so shocked I was at the sight. It was completely and utterly unexpected. One moment we were fleeing the Slicers, the marauders, death itself and the next moment we burst into this room that held everything beautiful in the world. The dichotomy was jarring. I felt it rend the air from my lungs, and when I breathed in again, I was sucking in everything good, everything right. This was the way the world was supposed to be. Everything up on top of the world was wrong, with the Slicers and the blood they spilled, but down here...down here is what the world was supposed to be like. Trees and flowers and birds and laughter. This is where humans were supposed to be, not hiding in dank metal boxes, but running barefoot through soft grasses along winding streams.

For me, my children, it was going from a place where everything was wrong to a place where everything felt right. Even though I had never been there and was more than a thousand miles from where I was born, I had come home. I had arrived where I should have been all along.

We sat in silence for more than hour. There was nothing to say. We were where we wanted to be and words weren't necessary. At that time, we didn't care how they had built an entire world beneath the world. We didn't care how she managed to manufacture the sunlight that brightened everything. We watched a cloud form over a copse of trees and laughed when rain fell upon the beeches. We felt a soft breeze against our cheeks, carrying the warmth of the sun and a slight mist from the rain shower and didn't wonder how they made the wind. None of the details mattered. We didn't want to know how it worked for we were afraid it would break the spell. All we wanted to do was sit there and enjoy the most magnificent vision any of us had ever seen.

After a while Robert came through the door. I didn't hear him until I heard Marla whisper a ragged "No".

I turned to see Robert's face a terrible shade of grey. He pressed his fist deep into his stomach and winced as he walked to her. His eyes were red-rimmed. He knelt at her feet.

"The marauders are dead," he said quietly. After the sweet sounds of bird chirps and gurgling brooks, his voice sounded loud. He knelt by her chair.

"You did not do this," he told her. "I made the decision to use it. The burden is mine, not yours."

She shook her head. "No, no, no," she repeated before she started to cry. Robert wrapped her in his arms and they held each other, weeping on each other's shoulders.

Please don't think badly of me, my children, but I wanted nothing of their sorrow, nothing of their tears. I rose and walked to the balcony railing to escape their pain. They had shown me the light of peace and I wasn't ready to be pulled back into the darkness. My father and Pappy joined me. I'm sure they thought I was showing Robert and Marla respect, leaving them alone in their private moment but in truth they were a toxic sludge I wanted to flee.

I took my father's arm and we walked down the many stairs to the base of the eco-system. We removed our shoes and stepped onto a carpet of grass. I looked up at the same moment a gust of wind blew spring petals off an almond tree and the soft pink blossoms showered over me. That was the happiest moment of my life, my children. It was then, at that moment, that I truly believed we would actually survive. I didn't know whether we would win the Slicer Wars. All I knew was that in that shower of pink flowers I had found something worth fighting for. And that was worth everything.

When I found out later what had so pained Marla and Robert I have to admit I didn't understand it. When I first met them I just assumed they had seen as much horror as I had. But they hadn't. Or maybe they had but it wasn't for such a prolonged time. Or maybe it was because they had been living with the knowledge of the caverns for too long, but I thought they were overreacting. I never told her that, of course, but I never understood why she was so torn up over the deaths of people who were trying to kill her, people who were trying to take this wonderful place away from her.

Derrick told me the story later, after he overcame the shock of seeing the underground caverns for the first time too. In the early years of the Slicer Wars, before they had completed the first cavern they called The Park, Marla and her husband had spent most of their time on building the defenses of Plato's Cave. They designed the tunnels through which we could gain access without the Slicers getting into the living quarters. They invented the transparent polycarbonate material used for the windows. They designed the alarm systems, communications systems, everything, really.

To hear others tell it, Marla and her husband worked together better than the three of us, Marla, me and my father, did.

At the time, the council debated for a month whether to install a last resort defensive system. Eventually the council approved it, but even while creating it, Marla objected to it. In the end, though, Marla was a pragmatist and she designed the delivery system while her husband created the chemical gas that would be delivered through it. She made sure it had strong safety mechanisms so that the poisonous gases wouldn't leak and that the system couldn't be accidentally activated. They didn't have to use the system for seventeen years. Some forgot about it, others didn't even know it was there. But Marla knew. And Robert knew. And when the marauders breached the tunnels and our soldiers were forced to retreat to the libraries, Robert made the decision they had hoped would never have to be made. He released the poisonous gases. Over thirty-five marauders died within less than a minute. And Robert added another burden to his sack.

Marla carried the burden too. She stayed in her room for a week after the attack. I don't think she was avoiding us as much as she was trying to figure out how to carry this new, very heavy burden, in addition to the heavy burden she was already carrying. She may have been average, but she was very, very strong.

We spent the week in the caverns, along with almost everyone else. Believe it or not, my children, but in the caverns we could actually forget that there was a world outside of this one. I could walk among the trees for hours and forget about Slicers. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I could ride the horses and forget about my children too. They say that those with few belongings are the most selfish because they have so little, but they are wrong. In the caverns beneath Plato's Cave we had everything we could ask for, and having everything is when I found out how selfish I really was.

The next time I saw Marla, two months later, she had lost over ten pounds. The lines on her face were deep, but not as sunken as her eyes. Knowing that she had created that weapon of destruction, now that it had been used, had eaten away at her and she was less than she was before.

Marla and I passed each other in the hall. I saw her trembling fingers lightly touching the wall, following it down the corridor. Before she could raise her head I ducked into the first room I came upon and quickly closed the door behind me. I actually braced it with my foot, in case she had seen me and attempted to follow.

My father had told me that she had become obsessed with finding a way to kill the Slicers. She had ceased all of her efforts in building the new underground eco-system and had, in fact, stopped maintaining the existing systems, which is why we had to restart the weather system three times in the last two weeks.

When my father brought her food, she would eat it only during a pause in her work, not even noticing that the fats had congealed on top of her soup. She started sleeping in her lab, wasn't changing her clothes, wasn't showering. She became erratic, shouting at people, talking to ghosts. People started whispering about her, avoiding her.

This was my first time out of the caverns in over a month and I would have never come up except I could hear the urgency in father's voice when he called.

As I walked through the hallways my eyes avoided the windows. Real sunlight held no favor with me after seeing the manufactured sunlight in the caverns but what my eyes really avoided was what flew in the sunlight, their flashing silver wings a precursor of their menace.

I stood there, my foot pressed against the door, literally trembling from dread that she had seen me and would try to open the door. Blood froze in my veins when I heard the animalistic scream. It was like the dusk scream of the cougars downstairs, or the early morning scream of the peacocks in the eastern ecosystem. It was visceral and base and my ears closed of their own volition.

A voice inside my head said that she had seen me and my avoidance had broken her. Then I heard a thump and the door budged against my foot. I pressed against it harder, resisting the force. The door handle turned and shook and I heard a sigh as a heavy weight slid to the floor.

It was then that I saw a trickle of blood flow into the room underneath the door. I flung the door open and Marla slumped into the room, unconscious. Sarah stood white-faced against the wall, the knife in her hand dripping blood onto the floor. I looked again at Marla and saw her clothes covered in blood. I pulled her shirt away and saw her lifeblood pumping out of a three-inch gash in her belly.

I am ashamed to admit that I closed my eyes. This is exactly the reason why I didn't want to come upstairs, why I didn't want to leave the safety of the caverns. Life up here was terrible, full of blood and torn flesh and death. Life down there was idyllic, free of fear, full of wonder.

I cursed my father for wrenching my peaceful life from me and throwing me once again into this hell on earth. I hope now in the afterlife he has forgiven me for those first thoughts. It was a terrible thing to do but seeing Marla dying, her head in my lap, reminded me of how terrible my life had once been.

Marla's guard came around the corner and skidded when he saw her on the floor.

"Get a doctor, quick," I shouted to him.

"Which one?" he asked.

"All of them. Quick. Quick." I removed my outer shirt, rolled it up and pushed it firmly against Marla's wound.

I looked up at Sarah. "Put the knife down. Sit down," I told her sternly.

She looked down at the bloody knife in her hand as if seeing it for the first time. It slid out of hand and clanged against the floor. She slumped against the wall and slid to the floor.

"What have I done?" she whispered. She looked at me with glazed eyes.

I looked away, thinking that I could have just as easily done this to Marla. Marla embodied everything I wanted to forget. I wanted to live the rest of my life safe in the caverns beneath the earth. Marla was directly threatening that dream.

The next few hours were a blur of doctors carrying Marla away to surgery, followed by incessant questions by Derrick, Kendra, Robert and especially my father. I was sure my father, he who knew me best, could see that while I did not wield the knife this time, it certainly could have been me who stabbed Marla. The more I hid my eyes to hide my secret the more he mistrusted my words.

When we were alone later that night, in my room upstairs, Dr. Martin came to deliver the news; Marla would live. She had lost a lot of blood – because I barred the door I secretly told myself – but they were able to repair the nicks on her stomach and intestine. She would be back to normal again a month or so.

A horrid thought flitted across my mind; if I had waited to open the door, if I had hid in the room until everyone was gone, Marla would have bled to death and I would be able to spend the rest of my life in the splendor of the cavernous gardens. Instead of blaming Sarah for harming Marla, I blamed myself for saving Marla's life. I fled to the bathroom and vomited.

I sat in a sweat-soaked chill, my head resting against the toilet seat. I hadn't killed her, but I had wanted her dead. Marla, the woman who built Plato's Cave and rescued us from the Slicers, the woman who gave us Eigengrau fields impervious to the Slicer's sharp blades, the one who gave us orange groves and clear streams and lilac bushes.

I had wanted people dead before. I had killed people before, with my own hands. But never before had I wished death upon one who had given me so much.

I knew why my stomach rebelled. Even without all that she had created, I had come to love Marla like a sister. We had laughed together at my father's terrible jokes, we had caused a small lab explosion when we were experimenting with recombinant DNA on different metals. After my father, she had become the most precious thing to me, even more precious than my distant children. And I had wished her dead.

My body convulsed and I slipped to the floor, my body involuntarily flopping around, sweat streaming from my pores. I hit my head against the base of the toilet and darkness enveloped me. When I awoke my father was kneeling at my side, patting a wet cloth against the dried blood on my forehead.

I had been such a fool. I didn't want Marla dead. Because Marla spent all of her time upside, out of the caverns, I let myself be convinced that she and the Slicers were one and the same. I can laugh at my foolishness now but then I was horrified. I had prided myself on my scientific mind, my rational thought, my logical solutions. To realize that I had let my thoughts get twisted into such emotional knots was shocking.

That was when I saw it for what it was; the true face of fear. The fear I felt when I saw the Slicers kill my brother was a visceral reaction. The fear I felt when I had nightmares of the Slicers attacking my children in their beds was a concern for their well-being. The fear that turned my belly to ice when I was raped the first time, the fear when the marauders descended upon our convoy the first time, the fear that freezes my blood when I hear the flapping of thin strands of metal, all those fears were illusory compared to what fear really looks like.

Real fear is what drives a person to do the reprehensible in order to keep the other fears at bay. I was willing to kill she whom I loved, just to keep my world in the safe, peaceful state that I had come to know in the last month in the caverns.

I looked at my father and saw on his face that he knew. I buried my face in his shoulder and cried harder than I had cried since I was a newly-motherless child.

I had faced fear, the real fear, and I had failed. I had barred the door against Marla and everything she represented. In the end I opened the door, but I tell you, my children, it was a closer call than it should have been. I know you will never look at me the same, that you will wonder how could someone you love have come so close to almost killing the venerated Marla, but all I can say, my children, is that I hope you never have to face fear, real fear, for it tests you in ways you cannot imagine. Nor would I want you to be tested.

My father and I were at her side when Marla awoke in the room in the medical wing. She lay in the same bed that I did when I first arrived at Plato's Cave. Her first words were "And what of Sarah?"

Her hoarse voice made me think there was more vitriol than there was. I gave her a sip of water.

"She stands before the tribunal as we speak," my father informed her. "It's been two days and she refuses to defend herself and won't let anyone else defend her, so we expect the tribunal to make a determination before the day is out."

"They can't." She started to sit up in bed but grabbed her stomach in pain.

"Don't sit up," my father told her, pushing her prone.

She grabbed my father's hand tightly. "It is not our way. The tribunal has not yet walked in her shoes. They cannot make a determination."

My father shrugged. "I don't know much of your trial system but it seems an admission of guilt when she refuses to defend her own actions."

Marla shook her head. "The actions themselves are indefensible. It's the reason that the tribunal must hear." She looked to me. "Go, quickly. Tell the tribunal I wish to speak for Sarah."

My father laughed. "That's absurd. You're the victim here." He placed a firm hand on her shoulder to prevent her from trying to sit up again. "Besides, you're in no condition."

She looked at me again, her eyes burning into mine. "Tell the tribunal I will speak for Sarah. If I cannot come to them, then they will come to me." She pushed her chin forward. I looked quickly to my father, who softly nodded his head and I returned my gaze to Marla. I nodded and turned to seek out the tribunal. As I left I heard them arguing about Marla's decision. I was pleased. Pleased that Marla had lived, pleased my father had someone he loved in his life, with whom he could argue about things.

The tribunal agreed to postpone the trial for a week until Marla was well enough to be wheeled into the courtroom. They spent a day arguing whether a victim could speak for the accused, but in the end they agreed that it was more important to uphold the law of learning than it was to argue the fine point of victim and victimizer.

Marla sat before the tribunal. The sash of the defendant adorned her left arm, the sash of the victim on her right.

The audience chambers were filled and people crammed into doorways to hear what Marla would say. They weren't so concerned about Sarah, for her fate seemed clear – she would soon join the outcasts from Plato's Cave - but to hear a victim speak on behalf of the criminal, now that was something they had never heard before.

"I come before you, venerable tribunal, in our court where to mete justice our laws say we must walk in the perpetrator's shoes, to tell you that to convict this woman, Sarah, of this crime is to convict all of us, even me, of the same crime."

The room erupted in shouts.

Robert pounded his gavel to quiet the room. "Proceed."

Marla sat at the table in front of the tribunal. She spoke into the microphone which not only recorded the proceedings but also projected her voice to the corners of the room and to the hearing room in the caverns. She began with what had become the legal recitation that most lawyers of Plato's Cave had used since the second year after the Slicer Wars began.

"Once we were many and our courts were concerned with the act of commission; proof of committing the act was enough to result in punishment. Then came the Slicers and we were few. Proving the commission of a criminal act became secondary to understanding why the act was performed."

"When we were many, a man who stole a loaf of bread was a thief. When we became few, a man who stole a loaf of bread and ate it was selfish. A man who stole a loaf of bread and gave it to his hungry child was a father. Only a man who stole a loaf of bread and threw the bread away was a thief."

"Intent became important and so we try today to understand the things that drove Sarah to commit the act. Today we will walk in Sarah's shoes. I warn you, though. Her shoes will be as comfortable as your own."

The crowd murmured their objections to each other as Marla took a sip of water.

"The facts of what happened are not disputed. Sarah stabbed me with a knife. Sarah herself does not deny this. She has, however, refused to explain her actions, for to do so would reveal to each of you what you know in your hearts but have hidden from your heads. Sarah stabbed me, with the intent to kill me, and now I will tell you why Sarah has done what each of you has secretly wanted to do."

The crowed noise surged as Marla's friends denied the accusation. A few people jumped to their feet, their hands waving in the air. Marla sat still, knowing that while their brains were denying her words, their hearts were reluctantly agreeing. My brain and heart were already in agreement and it made me blush. Robert banged the gavel again until the room quieted.

"We have called this sanctuary Plato's Cave since Robert, my husband and I formed it over twenty years ago. Every month on the full moon we recite the allegory of Plato's Cave. I come before you to tell you we have failed. We speak the words, we hear the words, but we no longer understand the words. I know that in her heart Sarah loves me like a sister. But Sarah, like most of you, loves her life here in Plato's Cave more, and I have threatened to destroy Plato's Cave."

Robert was ready for the crowd's murmurings this time and banged the gavel before they could begin in earnest.

"The Slicers killed most of us twenty years ago. Twenty years we've been living with the Slicers. Twenty years we've been trying to figure out how to make our lives better within the confines of the cave into which the Slicers have driven us."

The room was silent while people remembered their personal flights here. Everyone had lost more than they had gained.

"I am to blame most of all. When my husband was alive and we were two scientists at Plato's Cave, we argued all the time about whether we should spend our time creating things to make our lives within the Cave better, or spend our efforts on killing the Slicers. He wanted one, I argued for the other, but when we were two, we balanced each other, we ultimately did both. And then there was only one scientist in Plato's Cave and to my shame I forgot the lessons my brilliant husband taught. My attention was no longer divided and I devoted all my attention to those things that I thought were most important; the caverns, the underground eco-systems, the shadows on the cave wall."

She coughed and winced. "My heart was in the right place; I wanted to preserve not only mankind but animals, plants, insects, every species that was being killed off by the Slicers. In my hubris I acted as only God should act and tried to create a Garden of Eden. And because God has given me many gifts, I succeeded. I created a sanctuary so perfect, so pleasing, so peaceful that not one of you wants to leave. I have created Maya, the illusion. Sarah is on trial, but it is I who has committed the greatest sin of all by creating an illusion so perfect that you believe it is real. You stare at the shadows dancing against the cave wall and because the view on the wall is so much nicer, so much safer than the view outside the cave opening, I have made you turn your back on the cave opening. I have deluded you into believing that your lives can be lived out in the underground gardens. It is not Sarah who should be turned out of Plato's Cave, but me. I am the one who did this to you."

The audience jumped to their feet, shouting their objections, gesticulating wildly. Robert banged his gavel against the noise in vain. Marla took another sip of water. She raised her hand and the room dropped into silence.

"Even I fell under my own spell and became enthralled by the peacefulness of the gardens. I spent almost a full year underground tweaking the eco-systems. I spent two months improving the wind currents so the meadow grasses waved the way I remembered from my childhood. I worked on making clouds that held enough moisture to bind but not enough to rain, so dew could form every morning. I even convinced the council that we needed a new, larger eco-system."

"The tribe from Ireland arrived and I spent more hours upside but it was bearable only because I knew what waited for me underground. I could leave Paradise only because I knew that soon I would return."

"Then the marauders attacked." She hesitated and cleared her throat. "They killed eleven of us and we killed thirty-five of them. We have so few humans left and forty-six people died that day and for what?"

She let us think about the question while she refilled her glass and took another drink.

"The marauders attacked us because they wanted what we had, but it wasn't to take it away from us, it was because they longed for it too. We were happy and they wanted to be happy again too. We killed them using a device that I helped build and it was then that I realized that the Slicers had won. They hadn't killed us, but the Slicers put us in a box, in a cave, and we had stopped struggling to get out. The Slicers have trapped us here and we have become willing occupants of our own prison cells. Worse than that though..." She cleared her throat again.

"Worse than that, I had turned my back on all other humans; let them live their lives and I'll live mine, I reasoned, forgetting that mine was much, much better than theirs. I realized this and, in my shame, I was too embarrassed to reveal it to any of you." Her face reddened.

"Instead I just started working in my lab on a way to kill the Slicers once and for all. And in doing so I neglected my duties to Plato's Cave, my duty to you, my fellow cave members, which then turned me into a threat to your way of life. The grid became temperamental and started to fail, the tigers snuck into the emu's ecosystem and killed four before you were able to restrain them."

The audience mumbled quietly amongst themselves, some nodding their heads in agreement.

"Sarah did what she did to protect all of you from me. I am the person at the cave entrance, beckoning you to turn away from the wall, to come outside, to the real world. I understand why you don't want to; I have painted the cave wall gloriously, your seats are warm and comfortable, the food tasty, the water fresh. And, most importantly, there are no Slicers on the cave wall. If you stare at the cave wall long enough, you can almost convince yourself that Slicers don't exist at all."

Marla motioned to my father and he unlocked the wheels of her chair.

"I know I did," she said as he wheeled her out of the silent room.

It was after Sarah's trial that most of the members of Plato's Cave who didn't have small children moved back above ground. We pulled our eyes away from the cave wall and focused again on eliminating the Slicers. Marla, my father and I spent long hours in the lab, trying one thing or another. We all had a good foundation of knowledge about defensive systems, how to defend ourselves from the Slicers, so we spent weeks as Derrick and Kendra taught us offensive systems, how to attack an enemy, tactics, strategy. We pored over old military, metallurgy, biology and genetics books. The next three months were a thrilling time of no sleep and too much new information.

The tribunal had unanimously decided that Sarah acted for the good of the community and, while her actions would have hurt the community immeasurably, she was not to be expelled. She had broken the rule of taking drastic action on her own, but that was mitigated by the fact that it was in response to Marla breaking the same rule.

Sarah chose as her act of contrition to serve Marla's interests for seven years; whatever Marla asked, Sarah would do. The problem with this was that Marla asked for too little, which left Sarah's guilt un-assuaged. Sarah began taking it upon herself to do things for Marla unbidden. Sarah always served Marla her meals, even during those rare times she ate in the commons. Sarah washed and mended Marla's clothes and tidied her room, but Marla spent most of her time with us in the lab, and so Sarah spent most of her time in the lab too. Which is how it came to be that it was Sarah who suggested the method of how to eradicate the Slicers.

We had hit another dead end and this one demoralized us more than the others. It's not that we hadn't been making progress; in the last three months we had developed all sorts of amazing devices. The first thing Marla wanted to do was convert the personal armor she had tested into something the animals could wear. While the devices were successful, we couldn't get the animals to contain their fear of the Slicers long enough to realize that the Slicers couldn't harm them anymore. The cows sent outside were skittish and produced sour milk. The horses bucked their riders and one even ran wild-eyed off the edge of the cliff and drowned in the Aegean Sea. The chickens fared a mite better after we placed blinders over their eyes, but topside chickens produced smaller and fewer eggs. Eventually Marla conceded that the animals were happier in the underground caverns and we could keep them there until we had rid the world of Slicers completely.

Derrick insisted my father work on perfecting the personal armor for the soldiers and within a month he had produced enough Eigengrau light belts that everyone in Plato's Cave had one to call their own. After they had showed us their greatest secret, the underground caverns, the Platonists had no problems answering the questions that had so concerned us before the marauders attacked. Gretchen would have been pleased to learn that Plato's Cave had over eight hundred members, with over two hundred children, but she never made it off the train alive. Charlie would have been happy to learn that the Platonists did indeed have fish farms but instead of using above-water boats, they collected their catches using submarines, but he, too, had perished on the train.

Marla gave me the most important job of all though. She said it was my idea so I should just continue working on it. That was just like her. She, the brightest scientist, worked on Eigengrau light bells for the cows and I, the weakest scientist, was to design the Eigengrau lights in a mesh dome that protected Plato's Cave. Just about the time she had conceded to the animals and my father was finishing his last personal armor belt, I was turning on the mesh dome to protect the colony.

Indulge me for a moment, my children, while I immerse myself in the memories of my greatest achievement. It wasn't my greatest idea, that would come months later, but designing and building the dome to protect the colony was the greatest thing I have done in my life.

The month was filled with frustration and elation as one idea that I was sure would work, failed miserably, and the weakest ideas turned out to be the correct solution. I don't remember being hungry or tired during that month, though I know I barely ate or slept. None of us in the lab did. We were in our element. We were in the zone. We were focused on killing the Slicers and it was a very, very happy month.

We turned the protective dome on the night of the full moon. They had a ceremony in my honor after we acted out the Allegory of Plato's Cave. I know it can't be true but my memories tell me that I danced with every one of the eight hundred that night.

I left with Jeremiah, the same man with whom I left when I saw their ritual for the first time. We watched the sun rise and I cried as I leaned against the window. I could still see the flashes of the Slicers in the sunlight but they were far away. Very far away. It was like a shroud was removed from over the colony and finally, after all these years, we had breathing room. Jeremiah and I took very deep breaths that morning.

The following month we spent training others to mass-produce the personal armor belts. The nomads were ecstatic when we asked them to distribute the belts to the other colonies. They turned suspicious when we said they didn't need to trade for them. There was something in Marla's face, though, that convinced them that we weren't tricking them. It was a good thing she didn't speak much that day, for I think her voice would have changed their minds. I didn't think it was possible, but after Robert used Marla's poisonous gas to kill the marauders, her voice carried even more sorrow. It sounded like boulders scraping against glacial ice.

The third month, though, is when we started to hit high stone walls. We knew we had to develop a method to kill the Slicers rather than just protect ourselves from them. We made guns that shot the Eigengrau light. While shooting the Slicers was like shooting fish in a barrel, a barrel the size of the planet was just too large for a single gun to be effective. We tried to enhance Marla's Eigengrau light laser. When the laser beam was tight, it killed the Slicers but only a few with every sweep. If we diffused the beam it covered more Slicers, but it lost its effectiveness and brushed over them harmlessly. We created Eigengrau light bombs but when we launched them in the air, they killed at most forty Slicers at a time.

We tossed around hundreds if not thousands of ideas and discarded them all. We struggled with the transition from defense to offense but mostly we struggled with the transition of scale; from killing dozens to killing billions.

"What we need is an airplane that will beam the light downward, blanketing them, killing them."

My father nodded at Sarah when she brought our lunch.

Marla shook her head. "You've seen how easily they move away from the personal light shields. Anything covered in the light becomes a dead zone to their senses and they just move away, avoiding it. If we had an airplane, the Slicers would just move out of the way of the beam and then return when the airplane passed. We need something that will hit everything, all at once." She nodded at me. "We need your mesh dome, but large enough to cover the entire planet."

"Impossible," I said. "You know the light beam limit is three hundred yards. We'd have to have hundreds of thousands of beam sources, spread all over the world. We'd have to have them in the middle of the ocean there's nothing to anchor them to, so we'd need boats every three hundred yards. Mountains would block the dome, so we'd need to cover the tip of every mountain and every crevice in every valley. Impossible." I shook my head violently.

"That's why beaming the light downward, from above, is better," my father persisted.

"If we can't get enough stationary beam points, we certainly can't get a hundred thousand airplanes into the sky to all turn on their Eigengrau light at the same moment," Marla snapped.

"We don't even know if there's anyone who knows how to build an airplane anymore, much less fly it," I conceded.

"We have a few books downstairs on flight, but I don't know if they're enough." Marla took a bite of the sandwich Sarah brought.

"Did I ever tell you that my brother Jonas is still alive," Sarah spoke.

We all turned to look at her. She rarely spoke in the lab, and then it was to ask whether we were finished with the plates or what we wanted for dinner. She had never spoken to me of anything personal before.

"What?" Marla asked. She turned to look at Sarah. "No, I didn't know you had a brother." Marla was like that. She could switch her mind from one topic to another without losing her train of thought. I couldn't do that. Introduce a new topic and I quickly forgot what I was thinking about before. "Would you like him to come here?" she surmised.

Sarah shook her head. "He is happy with his comrades in Moscow. He is a man of great responsibility there. He remotely adjusts the satellites, so they remain in stable orbit. Even though they aren't transmitting now, he still keeps them ready. Ready for the day when they will be needed." She was very proud of her brother.

Marla had a funny, far-away look on her face before she broke into a broad smile. "Satellites. We used to have hundreds of satellites in stationary orbit around the planet. I had forgotten all about those." She grabbed Sarah and hugged her. "That just might work."

"But how are we going to get the Eigengrau light devices up to the satellites?" my father asked.

Marla darted toward the door. "We might not have to. I think we have some books downstairs on satellites," and she was gone.

The next two months were a flurry of activity, learning all about satellites, geostationary orbit, drag, decay, orbital velocities, apogees and perigees, inertia and gravity. Derrick and Kendra led the team to create a new caravan, salvaged from the parts of our Irish caravan, but improved by Marla's technology. Robert didn't say a word when Marla told him she was leading the expedition to the Moscow colony. He just looked at her and a light behind his eyes silently extinguished. He nodded once and walked out of the lab. He continued as leader of Plato's Cave, some say after that he was a better leader, with more clarity and purpose than he had before, but he was a man who had lost that which was most dear to him. His Marla was leaving her cave.

A storm blew in the day we left and stayed with us for the first two weeks. You all know the tale of our trip from Greece to Moscow, so I won't tell it again here except it say it was both better and worse than our trip from Ireland to Plato's Cave. It was in what used to be the Ukraine that I met your father and we were married the week after we arrived at the Moscow colony. The oldest of my second set of children was conceived on that caravan, on the roof of the train, under the light of the full moon, the Slicers wings flashing high above us.

Sarah came with us and was instrumental in convincing her brother to experiment with his satellites. He had lost his six children to the Slicers and the satellites had become his surrogate children. He doted on them, checking their orbits and running diagnostics multiple times a day.

We spent five months running calculations. We determined that we could, in fact, remotely tune the satellites' lone beacon light to the same frequency as the Eigengrau wavelength, in the indigo/violet spectrum. Where ever it cast its violet-grayish glow, Slicers turned to gray ash. But it wasn't enough. The Slicers just avoided the beams. We still had the same problem as we had in Plato's Cave; how to create a mesh dome that could cover the entire planet all at once.

"I cannot believe we travelled all this distance, and have lost as much as we have lost, just to end up at the exact same place we started." Marla threw her half eaten sandwich on her plate. She glanced at the empty chair next to her, picked up her plate and threw it against the wall. It shattered in a dozen pieces and fell to the concrete floor. She dropped her head in her hands. "It hurts too much," she whispered.

Marla had gotten to the point where she hardly spoke anymore. And when she did speak, her voice was the sound of hardening lava. Sometimes I could hardly make sense of her words, so overwhelmed were my ears by the depths of her sadness. This grief we shared, though, and I placed my hand on her arm, covering her black arm band. "I miss him too."

My father had been killed by marauders as we rode through the Giurgeu Valley at the southern end of the Carpathian Mountains. To call them marauders, though, is to insult marauders. These things that were once people had devolved, into something less than human. They were brutally savage, even by the lowest standards, and they had descended on our caravan at dusk. They killed twenty of our guards, two humanists and my father. They used weapons but they had lost all ability to speak anything more complicated than grunts and howls.

It was at our peril that we had ignored the whispers from the nomads about the Olts. We thought them horror stories, tales told around the camp fire, insane stories of cannibalism, vampirism, actual worshipping of the Slicers as gods with rituals of human sacrifice. We had chosen the shortest route over the safest route and had paid for it with more than a third of our group.

She sat in the moving caravan in a stupor for more than a week after my father was murdered, as if the cannibals had eaten a piece of her heart along with my father's. Then she created a new black armband, dried her eyes, and plunged herself into work. It had been six months and she still cried herself to sleep every night, when she slept, that is.

She pulled her arm away from under my hand. "It is still too early to speak of that," she whispered harshly, her voice like a bucket of gravel thrown over broken glass. Her eyes glared at mine, as if to say 'you know better'. She was right, I did know better, but she dealt with her pain by carrying it with her in silence and I dealt with mine by letting it out.

She rose and stood in front of the model Jonas had built. He had taken a globe and attached a metal skeleton around it. On the metal cage he had placed tiny models of each of the three thousand six hundred and twenty four man-made satellites. The more than sixteen hundred Russian satellites were distinct models; the rest were just malformed globs. Jonas had access to the Russian satellites, but not the others. He wasn't even sure they flew anymore. She placed her finger on the metal skeleton and it moved in the same direction and speed as the globe itself. "We can't launch more satellites; what else can we use that can cover the entire earth at once?"

I looked outside the window at the white Russian sky. One of the first things we installed was an Eigengrau light mesh to cover the compound and the Slicer's swarmed around the compound at a distance of three hundred yards.

I looked at the white sky and mumbled, "The ozone."

The room was silent, everyone lost in their own thoughts, trying to solve our conundrum.

Marla turned away from the globe.

"What?" she asked. Granite hit marble.

I looked up at her. "Huh?"

"What did you say?" she repeated.

I thought back. "I said 'I miss him too'."

Marla returned to the lunch table. "No, after that." Sandstone slid across limestone, crumbling.

I shook my head. "I don't know. Did I say anything?"

"You said the ozone."

"Oh, that's right. You asked what covers the entire planet. The ozone does," I replied.

"What's the ozone made of?"

"What do you mean? Ozone is a molecule," Pavel, the lead Russian scientist responded.

"Ozone. Trioxygen. O3. Consisting of three oxygen atoms." She had a smile on her face that I didn't understand.

Pavel's face joined hers in that crazy, wild smile. "Ground-level ozone is an air pollutant. But ozone in the upper atmosphere filters potentially damaging ultraviolet light from reaching the Earth's surface."

"Ozone is present in low concentrations throughout the Earth's atmosphere," she added. "And it filters and refracts."

"The entire atmosphere," Pavel emphasized.

Marla hugged me. "That might work."

"What might work?"

I still didn't know what they were talking about.

"That certainly might work," Pavel added.

And that is how I came up with the idea that destroyed every last Slicer. I'd love to have it recorded that I studied and thought and experimented and labored under the glow of midnight oil before discovering the solution in a Eureka moment, but I can no more rewrite history than I can take full blame or credit for the idea. If Marla wouldn't have phrased it like a casual trivia question, I wouldn't have answered while not listening to myself.

It took us six months to figure out how to make the Eigengrau light be absorbed by the atmosphere long enough to condense; to make the particles sticky my father would have said. I miss him so.

We learned how to adjust their magnetic field so the particles would spin and the Eigengrau light was refracted downward, covering the planet in a violet-gray glow. We probably needed to keep the sky glowing only for ten minutes or so, but we wanted to be sure every Slicer died, even the new hatchlings that were still dissolving their hosts, so we kept the beam going for a full seven days and seven nights. During the first ten minutes, anyone outside was covered with the grey ash of dissolved Slicers as their remains fell from the sky. I relished standing outside the doorway and having my hand coated in their death ash.

It felt strange, like we had traveled in a cosmic circle. We had created the Slicers and now a little over twenty years later we obliterated the Slicers. Our world was, not as it once had been, but at least it was absent a living nightmare. It felt good, liberating. It felt right.

The end of the seventh night was a full moon and our rendition of The Allegory of Plato's Cave took on a new meaning. When we cast off those shackles and turned from the shadows playing on the cave wall, in our hearts we were turning away from the Slicers, putting the last two decades behind us. The cave opening never looked so good, never held such promise. It was that night that my second eldest, Menacius, was conceived, on a hillock under the full moon, with a slight breeze in the air.

I would like to be able to tell you that the trip back to Plato's Cave was carefree and full of smiles, but even though the skies were free of Slicers, marauders still swarmed the ground. It was beyond comprehension. We had freed the world from the scourge that haunted us for twenty years and we were still haunted by ourselves. Humankind did not show its best face, even after the Slicers were annihilated.

Why he didn't tell us I'll never know. He has tried to explain it to me since then, but I cannot accept his reasoning. He says he didn't want us to worry. He says he didn't want to distract us from our mission. He says he didn't want to be the one who called Marla back to gaze at the cave wall. But no matter how well he tries to explain it, Robert's words cannot assuage the shock and horror we felt upon returning to Plato's Cave.

We saw it as we drew near, an indentation in the rolling hills. We stared at the concave crater as our caravan drove by.

"That's where we were building the underground extension when we left," Marla said. She turned to where I sat.

My feet were swollen in the last month of my pregnancy and I had to slightly lift myself and my full belly off the chair to see the crater. I fully rose to my feet and shook my head.

"It can't be." I lowered myself gently back into the seat.

Marla closed her eyes and I recognized the set of her face. She was bracing herself to absorb more pain. I didn't think her voice could hold any more.

We were greeted with shouts of joy, tempered by averted eyes. Marla was the first to notice the small numbers. "Where is everyone?" she asked.

"Robert wants to be the one to tell you," Peter, the cook, replied, putting his arm around her shoulders. "Come, I'll take you to him."

He slipped his other arm in mine and we walked to the library. The main library had been moved upstairs, now, and overlooked the Aegean Sea. The setting sun had turned the world the color of a peach and library ceiling refracted the glow into the room.

Robert stood near the fireplace, they had added a fireplace since we left, and he turned to face us as we entered. He cast a silhouette against the flames and his shape caused my footsteps to falter. I hoped it was the angle at which he stood or maybe a trick of the eye caused by the flickering evening shadows.

My swollen feet stumbled but Marla marched across the room in strong strides. She slid her arms around Robert in a hug and buried her face in his neck. By the time I arrived at the fireplace I could hear them both softly crying. Their tears were a mixture of sorrow and joy.

Peter helped me into a chair and retrieved a footstool for my feet. Robert placed Marla in the chair next to me and he pulled a chair forward for himself, to face us. His back was to the fire and his face was lost in shadow. As he sunk into the chair his entire body was almost lost in the shadows cast by the wide chair back.

"Three months after you left there was an accident in the far eco-system," he began. His voice sounded like it came from nowhere and everywhere at once. It bounced off the books and returned to my ears from behind.

"The cavern ceiling was unstable and caved in." He hesitated, letting us work out the implications in silence. "It was a relatively small hole, ten feet by five feet, but it was large enough for the Slicers. They flew into the cavern in a swarm. We lost ninety percent of the workers in the cavern; forty-nine of us died." I heard him swallow thickly.

"They weren't wearing their belts?" Marla asked, her voice like rocks smashing together under water.

Robert shook his head. "Underground? Most saw no need." He took a deep breath. "The cavern doors were open so we could transport materials." He paused again, letting us work out the implications again in silence. The sun was swallowed by the sea and the shadows overtook the room.

"The Slicers got into the living quarters." Silence again. Neither Marla nor I rushed him. Neither of us wanted to hear it sooner. "We lost almost two hundred that day before we contained the Slicers." His voice sounded eerily like Marla's. "Seventy-one were children."

The room's silence matched the darkness. It rolled over our feet and seeped into our bones. I started to cry, tears silently dropping into the dark pool of my lap, above my bulging belly. Marla rose to her feet and had to steady herself against the back of Robert's chair. She lit a piece of kindling and brought it to where we sat in the shadows. Robert turned his face away.

"Yes, I was in the far cavern that day."

"But you were wearing your personal armor shield."

"Yes." I was having difficulty telling their voices apart. Both sets of voices sounded like tectonic plates shearing apart.

"You tried to shelter others by pulling them into your field."

Robert nodded.

"But so many bodies caused the field to weaken."

Marla touched her finger to his chin and Robert allowed her to turn his head. The kindling brought light to what he had kept in shadow. Robert had lost his left ear and his left arm at the shoulder. A scar ran across his left cheek to his chin. Marla's fingers gently followed the scar to the empty side of his head.

Robert's face shifted in surprise and I turned to look at Marla. Her face glowed in the firelight. Her lips broke into a slight smile.

She handed me the kindling. "Leave us."

Peter helped me rise as I saw her reach for Robert with both hands.

I heard her whisper to him as Peter and I left the library. Her voice was the light swish of sand flowing through a sieve.

"Every time I looked at you, I saw your brother's face and felt only the pain of my loss." I knew her fingers were on his face. "Now I can finally see the man whom I have loved for these many years. Now I can finally see you, Robert."

As you know, my children, the Aegean Sea swallowed them both during a wicked storm, some twenty-five years later. But by then the light they had both brought to the world was so bright that even their deaths couldn't dim it.

The End

#

#

#  The Devil Dwells in a Red House

I stood up in the back of the red truck that had picked us up at the train station. Pa held on to my skinny legs at the knees, his rough hands large enough to wrap fully around the knobs. The truck bounced down the dirt road, rocking from side to side as the wheels skipped in and out of the ruts made from a thousand passings before. Black air whipped at my face and my eyes watered as tiny particles of coal dust became trapped in their tears.

I refused to close them. I could not tear my eyes from the row upon row of red houses stacked like sugar tins against the side of the mountain coal mine. The rusty, tin shanties leaned precariously against each other. If I sneezed they would topple over. Their rusted sides billowed in the explosion from deep within the mine and then settled back against each other after a release of black dust.

The truck lurched to a stop. I pulled my legs from my father's grip and leapt from the back. I fell and scraped my knee but ignored the pain and ran to the gate that was quickly closing. I wrapped my fingers around the blackened wire and struggled to push it open.

"We can't live here," I shouted. "Let us out!"

My father's hand crushed my shoulder.

"The devil dwells in a red house. We can't live here."

I pushed and pulled at the locked gate, trying to rock it open.

I looked over my shoulder at the row of red houses. They smiled in anticipation.

"Hush, child," my father's gravel voice whispered behind my ear.

"Nana said! Nana said we should never live in a red house. The devil dwells there."

"Nana's dead," my father said. His fingers pressed against my collarbone. He pulled and ripped my tiny fingers from the wire fence. A barb caught, digging a deep gash into my left palm. I held it up and saw my hand grow as red as the devil houses.

I spun around to stare at my father's thighs. "Nana's dead because you didn't want her anymore!" I had heard him whispering to my mother on the ship. Nana had turned sick the day we set out to sea and after three weeks she barely had enough energy to breath.

I dipped the edge of my skirt in water and wrung it dry over her parched lips. Sometimes the water trickled down her throat. Other times she coughed and vomit out all of the water I had spent the last hour feeding her, drop by drop.

I had heard my father ask my mother why her mother was still hanging on. Nana had heard him too. I saw her eyes flash black. Her body was cold when I woke along side her the next morning.

My father's eyes flashed black like Nana's at my words. His hand hit my cheek and my thin body sprawled across the black dirt. I rolled and hit my head against the truck's tire. It was still warm from the friction of the ride from the train station.

My father was big, but he was fast. It was deceiving to look at his huge body and then see him move. His hand had snapped out and hit my face even before my eyes had seen his fingers twitch. To look at his arms, as big as tree trunks, a body would think he'd be as slow as he is big. But it was just wasn't true. His body was thick but he moved like the wind.

On Sundays after church we used to all stand behind Pa. All of us. My four brothers, Nana and me. Mama would call for us and call for us, wondering where we could all have gone. Then we'd jump out from behind Pa and we'd all burst out laughing and Mama would pull my head into her waist and I'd smell the anise cookies she had baked earlier that morning.

That was before my brother Antov had died. And Nana. And before we had to pack everything we owned into a bag we could carry and come across the huge ocean to America. To a place I couldn't pronounce called Pennsylvania where they had rows and rows of red houses in which the devil could dwell.

I pulled myself to my feet using the truck to steady my legs until the white balls left my vision. I looked at Pa's red face and I knew that the devil had scurried out one of the red houses and had found a new place to dwell. I spat at Pa's feet and ran to a clump of trees behind a big black rock.

I had lost Nana. And now the devil had Pa. I had to live in a red house and my dress was streaked with red blood. I clenched my tiny fingers around the gash on my palm, sheltering it. "I won't let the devil inside me," I whispered. "I'll die first."

"My daddy killed me."

I spun around, thinking the devil had heard me and wanted to trick himself inside me through my bloody wound. Before me sat a girl no older than I. She clutched her knees to her chest and I could see dried blood streaked on the bottom of her dress. Her eyes were as dark as the coal strewn across the ground but her face was as white as a snow goose. Her face said she was six, maybe seven. But her eyes were older than Mama's. Maybe even older than Nana's.

She patted the dirt and I sat down next to her. I leaned my back against the rock and a tree trunk pressed against my side. She picked up my hand to inspect the wound. The blood had slowed to a trickle but the gash was stuffed with pebbles and leaves and dirt. Coal dust made my blood a red so dark it looked like the coffee Nana used to drink; black and thick.

She reached into her sock and pulled out a knife. It wasn't very sharp but it would do if it had to. She looked into my eyes and pulled the knife across her hand. At first nothing happened but then I saw red blood well out of the new wound. She clasped my hand tightly in hers. "Together. Against the devil." Her voice sounded like a goose in pain, the words honked from her raw throat. She had been crying.

I thought about the devil in the red houses. In my Pa. In her Pa too, since he had done something to make her feel like she had died. I felt her hot blood mingle with mine. I felt it enter my body, move up my arm to my elbow and past my shoulder. It tickled my belly and warmed my shoeless feet. Her blood swirled around in my head and I looked into her old black eyes.

I felt power in her blood, in her words, in her eyes, and I knew we would win. The devil might dwell the red houses. He might be in our Pas. But he would never, ever be in us. As long as we stuck together, clasped as tightly as our hands were at this moment, the devil could never get in us. He would never reach us. We would win.

Darla and I became inseparable. We ate at our own houses, for neither of our Pas wanted to feed another mouth, but we were together at all other times. We sat next to each other at church and when the room wasn't used for blessings, the altar turned into the teacher's desk where we learned our letters and numbers together. We spent most nights at my house and sometimes I spent the night at Darla's, but never when her Pa was home. He spent a lot of nights at the bar or over at his girlfriend's house. A couple of times he had stumbled home, drunker even than my Pa, and Darla had woken me up and made me crawl out the crack in the tin wall in her room and run home. In the middle of the night! When I was ten I found out why.

"My Pa killed you," Darla whispered, her hot tears joining my own. I vomited into the pail she kept in the corner of her room. My skin felt on fire but my bones were as cold as ice. I shivered and sweated at the same time. "It's not your fault, Petra." Darla stroked my gnarled hair away from my wet face. "The Devil is inside my Pa. That's why he does it."

I shuddered as I remembered Darla's Pa inside me. He put his hand over my mouth and his eyes flared red. His body was heavier than a tree when he forced my legs apart and rolled on top of me. He stank of coal and cheap moonshine and old sweat. He smelled red.

The room turned dark but as he moved on top of me his red eyes lit up. I cried no and pleaded with him to stop but every time I told him it hurt, his red eyes would get brighter. His eyes turned into red lanterns and the room was cast in a pink glow. Then he rolled over and the lanterns blinked out.

Afterwards Darla said she was sorry, but her eyes were pink when she said it so I knew she was lying. She just wanted someone to share her shame. And now I had her shame too. I bled down there for three weeks before I got all of the devil out of me. Or so I thought. Two years later the devil started to visit me once a month and I would bleed his red juices to remind me of my shame and of his power.

The devil never got inside Mama, but his darkness did and she'd just spit him right out. I came home from school one day and she was lying on the floor, propped up against the kitchen cupboard. Her face was the color of our bed sheets right out of the wash; a grayish yellow that made me think of boiled chicken bones. She struggled to breathe and her glassy eyes barely saw me. Her entire face was streaked with the devil's black spittle. Most of it had already dried and it flaked off as I wiped it away.

She coughed and left another wad of black phlegm in the towel. Mama said it was her asthma – she never called it the Black Death - but I knew what it really was. The devil had been sitting on her chest again, trying to get inside her. That's why it was hard for her to breathe. Mama fought him for a year, but one day the devil sat on her chest so hard that she just stopped breathing.

I guess the devil became bored with Pa because he killed him the next year in a mine blast. But I wasn't fooled. The devil didn't die with Pa. He scuttled into my brother Andrei. The day we buried Pa, Andrei came home late and staggered into our rusty shack, banging around like a pebble in a tin can, his breath smelling like bad vinegar and his fists itching for my face.

On my thirteenth birthday, Andrei came home with gifts. Expensive gifts. He wore a long yellow jacket – he called it suede – and he wouldn't let me touch it until I washed my hands. Twice. Then he gave me my present: a pair of warm mittens. He held them in his large hands as if cradling a chicken egg.

"For my Petra, who deserves more than she gets."

I thought he was going to hit me again, but he just ruffled the hair on my head instead. I sneezed in the loose dust. They were warmest, softest thing I had ever felt. I put them on and rubbed them against my face. They tickled my cheeks. They were the first things I had ever owned that didn't belong to someone else first. They were a nice gift, except they were red mittens. The devil would hold my hands all winter long.

That was my last winter in the coalmines. Andrei had paid for these expensive gifts by selling me to a man in St. Louis. I was to go there in the spring – Andrei had already purchased the three connecting bus tickets I would need for the trip. Andrei said the coalmine was no place for a woman and in St. Louis at least I'd live long enough to see my own children grow up. But I clutched my fists inside my new red mittens and knew the devil was behind it all.

I left in May. Andrei, my brother who used to try to protect me from my father, beat me for the last time the night before I left. He didn't hit me on the face, so no one could see what he had done, but the devil wanted me to carry him with me when I left in the bruises on my ribs and back. Andrei left for the mines like it was a normal day, except he turned back at the door, pecked me on the forehead and wished me good luck. His eyes flared red before he could turn his face away.

I got in the back of the Red Sun delivery truck and it dropped me off at the bus stop. It wasn't a real bus station. It was a Texaco gas station, with their red sign and red gas pumps and red cola box, which served as a bus stop too.

The bus came four hours later, right on time. The driver asked me if I wanted to clean up in the restroom before I boarded, but I just shrugged. Everything I owned was caked with rancorous coal dust and I had nothing clean to clean up into.

Twenty hours later I stepped off the bus in St. Louis. The man behind the counter told me to get on another bus and get off at Main and 23rd. I watched his eyes, but they never turned red. I hoped I could trust him, despite his red vest.

I hopped off at the stop the friendly bus driver said was mine. There was a park across the street. The colors! They were so bright that they hurt my eyes. The trees were green instead of coated in black. Children played on swings. And they were laughing. I had never heard so many children laughing before.

I heard a noise and looked up in the green tree above me. A bird sat watching me. He was blue. A blue bird. Who could have dreamt such a thing?

My knees knocked against each other as I sat on a smooth wooden bench. I felt the grime from the mines slough off me like an old ratty coat. I took a breath so deep that my ribs threatened to burst out of my skin and I let it out without a cough – something I had never been able to do in the hills.

I reached inside my bag, which was really the pillowcase mama had died on, and pulled out Andrei's gift. I gently set the red mittens on the bench beside me. I stared at my past life for a long time without blinking, until my eyes dried up and then started to water.

I stood up but could not walk away. My hand hovered over my red mittens, my trembling fingertips barely caressing the fluff rising from their lushness. I closed my eyes. I could hear the devil whispering, urging me to pick up my precious, supple mittens. They belonged to me. I couldn't just leave them on the bench. They were the only things I ever had that were truly mine.

No! I wasn't going to do it. I curled my hand in a fist so tight that my fingernails dug into my palm. They left white crescents but didn't draw blood. I bit my lip but no red flowed forth. My legs jerked as I forced myself to walk forward. I walked away and left the devil behind me, sitting on a park bench.

I turned when the street sign read Chestnut and gasped. It was beautiful. The house on my left was white with blue trimming and the house on my right was blue with white trimming. The next house was the color of this city's sun; a bright yellow that hurt my eyes to look at it. I saw a house made of wood and another the color of peaches.

Every house was surrounded by lush, green grass. It reminded me of the churchyard back home, before we came to America. It reminded me of the last time I was happy.

All of the houses had flowers blooming in more colors than I could name. Their doors had shiny knockers and some houses even had white fences around their yards. The colors swirled around my eyes, overwhelming my senses and making me so dizzy I had to stop walking.

I leaned against a tree with purple leaves and delicate white flowers with yellow hair in the center. They looked so fragile that I was afraid to touch them.

"Move along, little girl." I guess the owner didn't like the dirty girl who smiled and giggled under his tree.

I turned on Rose Street. My footfalls stopped. My sweaty hands dried cold. I touched my pocket that held the street address of my new home but I didn't need to look at the piece of paper.

I knew which house was mine.

In the middle of the block, in a sea of white and blue and yellow houses, was a big red house. The devil dwells in a red house.

The End

#  Variable Time

"Hey, Brad. Nice to see you again."

Sereeta followed Brad through the hospital security checkpoint.

"Are you my timebroker today?" she asked.

Brad handed her the case file and pushed through the crowd in front of the hospital elevators. Sereeta scanned it while Brad whispered the highlights in her ear, quiet enough so no bystander could hear.

Daryl Carpenter. Twenty-nine. Born in the Bronx. Moved to the streets of Philadelphia at the age of fourteen after his mother died of AIDS. In and out of juvie halls. Busted for grand theft auto at the age of nineteen. Did four years upstate; extended sentence for bad behavior. He was released three months ago. That was when the little boys started to disappear.

The elevator door opened and she stepped out.

"Dad?" Sereeta was so surprised she almost dropped the case file.

The young man in the wheel chair looked up. His assistant pushed the wheelchair to the far wall, out of the hallway traffic, and politely stepped away to give them privacy.

"Pumpkin, is that you?"

"What are you doing here, Dad?" She bent down and kissed him on the check.

Brad nodded to the man in wheelchair and said, "Sereeta, we have to go."

"Jesus, Sereeta. You look like hell. If you aren't going to get plastic surgery, the least you could do is style your hair so it doesn't look like someone set a dirty gray mop on your head."

"Dad, are you sick? Why are you in a wheelchair?"

She knelt beside him and rested her hand on his arm. She felt his strong forearm muscles, honed from daily tennis games.

"Cancer. Can you believe it? I'm only thirty-two and I have prostate cancer. It's completely curable, but, Christ, I'm only thirty-two." He adjusted himself in the wheelchair.

Sereeta knew her father would be fine. Getting cancer these days was like catching a cold.

"You're thirty-two only in adjusted-time, Dad. In real-time you're fifty-nine years old."

She laughed.

"I'm sixty-seven in adjusted-time. Hey, Dad! Your daughter is older than her father." Her smile deepened the wrinkles on her face. She knew it would get under his skin.

"Sereeta, I'm sorry, but we really must go," Brad interrupted. "We don't have much time left. And you have to get Daryl to tell us where the boy is before he dies. Before they both die."

Sereeta handed the timebroker the case file and her bag.

"You go ahead and get set up. I'll be right there."

"No wonder you look like a god dammed dried apple. Sixty-seven! You're a fool, Sereeta, wasting your life on other people's time. And you're about to go off and do it again, I see."

Brad hesitated, then shook his head. "Please hurry, Sereeta. Room 1126." He rushed off with a sad look on his face.

"Why didn't you tell me you had cancer, Dad?" She stroked the side of his smooth, unwrinkled face.

"It's not serious. I'm having surgery tomorrow and then seven months of treatment after that. Not to worry, though. I'm going to spend all of it in fast-time so I can miss it all." His eyes lit up in anticipation.

"Surgery!" The doctors almost never did surgery anymore. "Is it that serious? Do you think spending it in fast-time is wise then, Dad?"

Her mother had died in fast-time and Sereeta had always regretted that she hadn't had the chance to really say goodbye. She had been thirteen when she had a fight with her mother and Sereeta had stormed off to the movies.

By the time the movie was over, her mother had already been dead for four days in fast-time. Her heart had spiked during fast-time and the shop at the mall didn't have a doctor on staff to pull her out and revive her.

"Not to worry, babycakes. The time brokers tell me I'm not going to miss anything important."

She lowered her voice. "They've been known to be wrong."

"I haven't missed anything important yet."

"You missed my valedictorian speech at graduation, Dad."

"OK. So they might have messed up once."

"High school and college, Dad."

"You always remember the things I wasn't there for."

He sighed deeply and motioned for his assistant to push the elevator button again. "Off you go, little pooh bear. You have an appointment to turn eighty before I turn forty, I'm sure."

"Dad..." She jumped up, stood in front of the wheelchair and blocked his path.

"Go on, darling. I'm going into fast-time and I'll be out in just a few days. A week, tops."

Sereeta did the calculation in her head. The fast-time serum worked on a fixed ratio of one to thirty-nine. For every thirty-nine seconds in fast-time, one second passed in real-time.

The ratio in slow-time was more flexible, however. It was easier to stretch out time from the present to the past than it was to compress time from the present to the future.

"You mean nine-months, Dad."

"Only in real-time, baby. For me, it'll be less than a week."

She bent down in front of him again. "Dad, I don't think you should. I don't want something to happen to you while you're in fast-time."

She almost added, 'like Mom', but she didn't. Neither had mentioned her mother's existence since that day when her father urged her mother to join him in fast-time while their daughter grew out of her rebellious stage.

"You worry too much, starling. Always have. Even as a little girl." The elevator dinged.

She rose and crossed her arms in front of her. "How would you know? You spent every weekend and most week-nights in fast-time. You weren't there when I was growing up."

"Don't use that tone with me, little girl." He motioned for his assistant to push him into the elevator. "I don't have time for this."

"You never did, Dad. You never did," Sereeta said to the closed elevator door.

"What's he still doing in real-time?" Sereeta asked, throwing her coat across the chair in room 1126.

"You know the rules, Sereeta. I can't put your client into slow-time without you going in at the same moment."

Brad lowered his eyes and studied the monitor. "Just like I can't tell you about your future or your father's so don't even ask. I'm not going to put my job on the line just because you're having another family crisis."

Sereeta pushed up her shirtsleeve. "I'm here now, Brad, so let's get it on. How's my client, as you so eloquently call him?"

A man burst into the room. "I'm Dr. Knowles and I'd like to voice my objection to Mr. Carpenter undergoing this type of interrogation. The man is about to die and needs medical attention. He doesn't need the likes of you."

"Have you filed your objection with the Time Broker Association and your hospital's Patient Rights Administrator?" Sereeta asked without turning around.

"Yes, but I feel..."

Sereeta cut him off. "Has Daryl refused life saving treatment in slow-time?"

"Yes, but I'm sure if I go in with you I'd be able to..."

"You've done all you can, then, Dr. Knowles. It's Daryl's right to refuse treatment. You have to abide by his wishes."

"And you don't? You're..."

Sereeta spun around and moved so close that her nose was less than an inch from the doctor's. "Daryl is a suspect in a serial murder case."

The doctor backed away.

"Twelve boys under the age of fourteen. He kidnaps them, beats them and then watches them while they die. He took his thirteenth boy two days ago. We think the body is still alive, but we don't know where Daryl has hidden him. Only Daryl can tell us. But Daryl only has..." she looked at the time broker.

"You have seven minutes and twenty seconds," Brad said, blanched and looked away. He ducked his chin and intently studied the monitor on his time-charting equipment.

"...Seven minutes," Sereeta continued. "I'm going to take Daryl into slow time and stretch that seven minutes into seven hours. No, give me ten hours, Brad. And I'm going to make Daryl talk. He will tell me where that kid is buried and if we're lucky, we'll get to the child before he runs out of oxygen, or before the tank fills with water, or before the wick burns down to the TNT or whatever sick trap Daryl has staged for us this time."

She moved closer as Dr. Knowles tried to back away.

"And you want me to let Daryl die in real-time with that secret locked in his pea-sized brain? All because you think I'm violating his rights?"

She took another step closer.

"If you want, I can arrange for you to be the doctor who has to examine the boy's body if we ever find it. And you can look the boy's parents in the eye and tell them their little boy is dead because you didn't think it was right to stretch time. You tell them that you thought this sick bastard's right to death was more important than their little boy's right to life." She reached for her phone. "Here, let me take the time to arrange that right now."

"It's not that, it's just..."

"It's just what?" Sereeta waved her hand in disdain.

"If you don't like the law, then change it. Until then, get out of my way. I've got a little boy to save."

She turned her back on Dr. Knowles. "Is everything ready?"

Brad double-checked the feed from the computer Sereeta would use in slow-time to the computer he used in real-time. She'd type in any information she obtained from Daryl and Brad would dispatch the officers to the little boy's location.

The technicians were working on a machine where each side could talk to each other, but they still hadn't figured out how to get a voice to transmit over the time-barrier without being distorted on the receiving end.

Brad set two syringes on a piece of felt. In them was enough serum for ten hours of time.

"Who's the donor?" Sereeta asked. "Please tell me you got someone other than a prison inmate to donate his time."

"These are from the minimum security county jail. I know how you dislike time serum from the max sec prisons." He smiled into his shirt collar.

"It's not just the residue, Brad, though that's bad enough." She shuddered as she remembered the time serum she received from a nutcase on appeal for death row. She couldn't speak a sentence without using a swear word for a week after that case.

"It's just that we catch criminals, the courts convict them and they get sentenced to twenty years. Then they go into fast-time and they really only spend five months behind bars, with sentence credits for donating their time, of course. Five months is a blink of an eye compared to what some of these assholes have done."

"Maybe the Senate will pass the bill to change that. It's coming up for vote next week."

"And where will you get your time from then?" she asked.

"I believe there's a cancer patient downstairs who is giving up nine months of his life. Maybe I should get you some of that time serum instead." Brad smirked.

Sereeta grimaced. "Ha ha. I'd rather have a mass murder's residue than my father's, thank you very much."

"Five minutes left. Ready to go into slow-time?" Brad asked. His hand shook as he handed a syringe to Sereeta.

"You OK today?" Sereeta asked, really looking at Brad for the first time. His eyes were sad.

"Yeah, I just..." Brad hesitated. "It's nothing. I'm just glad you're on this case with me."

"Thinking of your own little boy?"

"Must be," Brad agreed unconvincingly.

Sereeta injected herself at the same moment that Brad injected Daryl with the time-serum.

One moment she had been in a hospital room with three others and the next moment she was alone with Daryl and a curtain separated them from the rest of the room. She knew that if she pulled the curtain back she would see the Brad and the doctor, but their bodies would be a blur as their time moved so much faster than the time she was in. She had done it before, peeked around the curtain, and the headache it gave her hadn't subsided for two weeks. Real-time.

"I'm not telling you anything, bitch."

They always started slow-time in one of two ways: either promising not to spill the beans or calling her names that would make a drug dealer blush. It looked like Daryl was going for both.

But Sereeta had been at this for a long time. She might only be twenty-five in standard-years but she had spent a lot of time in slow-time and had over forty years of experience interrogating criminals. She didn't think she would need the entire ten hours with Daryl.

She was surprised by Daryl's condition. His face was ragged and his entire torso was covered in bandages, but the pained look on his face didn't match that of her other clients who were close to death.

Daryl's face held no fear.

"I hear gut-shots are the most painful," she said. "Your stomach acid and toxins from your kidney and liver eat through your flesh and other organs, until the toxins build up in your bloodstream and eventually poison your heart. Is that true, Daryl? Do your wounds hurt?"

"I told you, I'm not telling you anything, bitch."

With five minutes left in slow-time, Sereeta concentrated on typing the young boy's location into her computer with a smile on her face. One of these days, as she had promised herself multiple times before, she'd learn how to touch-type.

She felt more than saw Daryl move. It must be the throes of death, she thought. She couldn't pay attention to him now. She had to save the little boy. She hoped the kid was still alive in real-time – it depended on how fast the officers could get to the cave. The tide started rising forty minutes ago but if they were near, they could rescue the boy before the cave was entirely submerged.

Sereeta felt a blinding pain and then lost all feeling in her legs. They collapsed under her.

Daryl had stuck the needle from his IV into her central spinal nerve and temporarily paralyzed her from the shoulders down. Daryl straddled her and brought his hands to her throat.

It was then that she remembered what Brad had said.

The time broker had said "You have seven minutes and twenty seconds."

She had dismissed it, assuming that it was Daryl who had only seven minutes.

But it wasn't Daryl who was going to die in seven minutes; it was she who had only seven minutes, extended to ten hours, of life left. Her father had been wrong. She wasn't going to live to see eighty years.

She blinked slowly and Daryl increased the pressure against her throat. Had Brad planned to have her bump into her father? She wondered if the time broker had told her father that she was going to die while he was in fast-time. Had her father thought that her death was one of those unimportant things that he could miss?

The End

#  Through the Terrace Doors

1I was sixteen when I left home, the day after that first night he came to me. He was bold and brash and took me almost by force. I was sixteen; what did I know of these things? Now, almost fifty years later, he still comes to me and takes me, but I realize it's not by force but with force. I am powerless in his grip. I have always been powerless before him.

People ask me, "Don't you get lonely, living by yourself?" I smile a sly, secretive smile that startles them. They take a step backwards, surprised, but I just shake my head and say, "No, I don't get lonely." I don't tell them it's because he comes to me at night. When I'm alone. And then I'm not lonely anymore.

I keep the terrace doors open for him. I don't worry about burglars. Firstly, because I'm on the third floor and there's no easy access to the terrace. Secondly, he's always there. He protects me.

There was that one time when that wiry guy climbed up the trellis and on to the terrace. He snuck in on quiet feet and walked over to where our limbs where entwined. We woke, startled. He leapt and was on the scoundrel in a flash. He yanked the strange man by his shirt collar through the terrace doors and flung his skinny body off the balcony into the flower garden below.

The police said the burglar must have slipped while trying to climb the trellis and broke his neck when he fell into the rose bushes. They couldn't figure how he fell so far away, on the other side of the garden, though. I didn't tell them any different. I certainly didn't tell them about him. They wouldn't have believed me if I had. They couldn't have understood. They wouldn't have believed that he could have carried the man, his feet dangling, not even touching the floor, across the length of my apartment. They wouldn't have believed how the man hung in mid air off my balcony, his lips forming a circle so perfect that I couldn't have drawn a better one with a cup. I didn't tell the police any of that. I don't tell anyone about him. No one would believe me.

My apartment is small. One wall is the kitchen with the sink, stove, and refrigerator that makes so much noise I have to turn the TV up until Mr. Krenshaw below bangs on his ceiling with a broom handle. My bed is against another wall and the couch is in the middle of the room, so when I sit on it, my back is to the terrace doors.

I don't mind the small apartment – I didn't get it for its size. I took the apartment because of the terrace doors. I come home in the evening and I fling the doors wide open so he can enter unrestrained except by the billowing curtains that catch the wind and fool me into thinking he has arrived. I can't bear the idea of him entering though an open window, of him having to crouch his body, put one leg through, shift his weight, then pull the other leg through. Just thinking about it makes me cringe.

That's how he came to me that first night at my parent's house, pressing his long torso to his knees, crawling through the open window. I watched him leave the same way, just before dawn. I thought about his hard, muscular torso, his sinewy legs, his bulging shoulders. I thought of his body, stretched out, pressed next to mine. And then I saw him curl up to fit through the small window and I knew. I knew I would find a place where he could come to me standing tall, in his full glory, not crouching, moving like a criminal in the night.

I always smell him before he enters. He smells of the night. Of darkness. Of the wind that precedes him and lifts the curtains before his wide shoulders. In the spring he captures the essence of newly bloomed flowers, just before they close their petals for the night, and he brings their aroma to me as a present. In the fall he enters in a flurry of pussy willows, their soft downy center surrounded by rough, woody shells. In the winter he rides the beams of the blue moon into my darkened apartment and smells of burnt birch wood.

He brings me the scent of lightening flashes across a wild sky, of blueberries kissed by the sun. He smells of the river, bathed in starlight and of moss, wet with evening dew. I keep the terrace doors open even when Mr. Krenshaw knocks on my door and reminds me to close them before I go to sleep. When it's raining I put down layers and layers of soft towels to soak the water off the tiled floor and to cushion his bare feet when he finally arrives.

One mid-winter night he came to me smelling of summer barbecue, of grilled meat dripping fat onto hot sizzling coals. One whiff of him he made me ravenous for barbecue ribs, even though I had just polished off a large bowl of fettuccini alfredo. He laughed when I told him this and his hot barbecue sauce breath encircled me. Snow hit the window like grains of sand and he smelled of barbecue sauce.

He reached into the refrigerator and pulled out some baby-back ribs. I asked him where they had come from - I knew I hadn't bought them - but he just smiled at me as we stuck the thick meat on metal skewers. We cooked them over the open fireplace flame. Juices dripped off the red meat, spitting and spurting as they fell against the hot, burning wood.

Sometimes I sit and read in the evenings and can feel him outside, waiting, watching. I can smell his scent of pinewood and sap and know he spent the day in the forest. But he does not enter.

I do not ask why he waits outside, what he is thinking of or if he is waiting for something or someone. I try not to hold my breath and I pretend not to notice he is there. I release my breath when I feel his strong fingers slide across my shoulders and down my arms. They gently close the book without marking the page and it falls to the floor, forgotten.

Other times he sneaks around in front of me without me noticing. His soft lips move up my bare leg and around to the crook of my knee where his hot tongue pokes and prods, nudging incessantly, giving me a taste of what is to come. He turns off the light and the room is plunged into shadows.

I cannot see his face. I have never seen his face, only his silhouette in the moonlight. In the darkness he is a shadow, made solid. I have never looked into his eyes nor seen the color of his hair. But I have felt him. I have touched every inch of his body, every crevice, every curve. As he has mine.

I wake in the morning, when the sun beams through the east window, and I am alone. He has gone with the night, melted into the darkness from which he had sprung. But he has left me the memory of him, of his touch. And his smell. His scent grows inside of me. Sometimes it grows until it fills the room. It continues to grow, sometimes until it overpowers me and I rush home at noon to take a shower to douse it. But it continues to grow until he comes the next night. With a new smell. Honeysuckle. Five-fingered ferns. Hay. Mountain spring water. Wherever he has spent the day, he brings me that scent at night. And I carry it with me until the next night, until the next smell.

At work people comment on my perfume, asking where they can purchase it. Or they ask if I was at the beach earlier, or if I live near a garden of sunflowers. I smile a sly, secretive smile. It startles them. They take a step back in surprise, but I just nod and say "Thank you."

I turn to leave. I can feel them taking a step forward to stand in the place I have just left, to smell a valley of violets or a meadow of wheat. To smell me. To smell him.

The End

#  Fahevial

"You must fight." He closed her hand around the hilt and held it.

Her hand clasped the well-worn hilt, her fingers sliding into their grooves like a glove long thought forgotten. Heat spread from her wrist, up her arm and into her shoulder; the sword comforted her like a warm blanket. She slowly shook her head. "I cannot. I will not."

"The enemy gathers at our gates," Anrew said. "He numbers not in the tens. Not in the tens of tens. The Glagremels are ten thousand strong. We are not even five hundred. We need every sword we can get."

"A month ago you jeered at a keep whose master swordsman was a woman," she reminded him unkindly.

"A month ago we thought there were a thousand, maybe two thousand, Glagremels. Ten thousand to our five hundred, Fahevial. We need you on the battle line."

"I cannot. I made a vow. I teach the sword, but I will never again kill with it." She dropped her chin to her chest. The memories were too fresh, even now, twenty years later.

He pulled her chin between his thumb and forefinger roughly. "Look at them."

Her eyes scanned the women, children, sick and elderly who clung to the cave walls like drowning rodents.

"They will die. We will all die. I have watched you train the keep men and children. I have watched you win every tournament each night. You wield the best sword in the keep. Without you, they will all die. All of us will die." He shook his head. "No vow can be worth all of our lives."

She looked into his eyes. When desire ran in his blood, yellow swirls spotted his brown eyes. And his eyes flared yellow now. "Then it is our fate for my people to be wiped from the face of this earth under the Glagremel's blade."

"No," he shouted. His anger echoed off the cave walls. Children stopped crying. Women stopped whispering. The elderly scuttled into the shadows, turning their shoulders against his rage.

"You cannot believe that. You cannot just sit here when you know you can help. One sword, your sword, could turn the tide of this battle. I know your husband died on the battlefield but even he would not want this. He would want..."

She grabbed his wrist and pulled him down to his knees.

He resettled on the rock but the yellow spots whirled wildly in his eyes.

"Do not presume to tell me what my husband would or would not want. Likewise," her voice hissed in the tall cavern, Ado not presume you know what desperate measures have brought me to where I am today."

He closed his eyes to calm himself. "I'm sorry, but I cannot..."

"I was sixteen when I had married my childhood friend, my sparring partner, the other part of my soul. We had four children before the Houdon Clan was split in two, parted by my father and his."

Her eyes showed the pain of that day long ago.

"He chose his blood over his wife and joined his father. I stayed with my bloodline."

She watched a drop fall from a stalagmite into a puddle and become indiscernible from the other drops that had fallen before it.

"At first there were just skirmishes by each side, cow raids, sabotaging each other's dams and irrigation ditches. But then, on the first black moon of the year, Donodar declared war against my people. He attacked a farm, massacred the farmers, torched the land, poisoned the water. Women, children. Made no matter to him. He killed them all. And my husband, the man whom I loved more than anyone who walked this earth, was at his side. He plunged his sword into the belly of my people and our blood gushed forth, soaking into the burned ravages of the arid sand."

Her fingers shook and she pressed them tightly against her palms.

PI joined the battle. My mother begged me to stay in the keep, to stay safe with the women and children. But rage flowed in my veins. My friends, people I had known since childhood, had died on my husband's blade. I rode with my father and on the day of Midyear, the two sides joined in what would be the last battle for Houdon Valley. Even then, a mere twenty years old, I was the best swordfighter on the field. I fought with fury. I was relentless. With each stroke I recited the name of someone they had killed. With each stroke, my rage increased until it roared in my ears and colored my vision red."

Anrew was still. He could see the strain the telling of the tale was taking on her. Her face was white, as if she walked with the ghosts her tale conjured.

"A new enemy rode up. I knocked him from his horse and he rolled to his feet. I lunged and he turned my blade away. He thrust and I saw that he left his heart open, unprotected. I knew his style. I had sparred against it my entire life. But I could not recognize it through the fog of my rage. I waited, knocking his blows aside, until he thrust again. I stepped forward. I knocked his blade to the side with my sword and with my right hand I plunged my knife into his heart. I felt a little pop and his legs collapsed underneath him. The hilt of my knife caught on his rib bone and it pulled me to the ground on top of him. I looked into his blue eyes. His beautiful blue eyes. The eyes that were once the sun and the moon to me. I watched his azure eyes fade to nothing. I had killed my husband." She closed her eyes. "I had killed myself."

She looked up. Her gaze caught and held his. "I will never fight on the battlefield again."

Anrew gasped for air. He turned his eyes away and stared at the puddle instead. After a moment he rose and left the cave.

****

She had listened to the sounds of battle for two nights and what was becoming the third day. She clasped her hands to her ears but the sounds seemed only to echo inside the enclosed space. On the first day she waited for the wounded to arrive. But they never did. Those who were wounded continued to fight until they died.

Every scream, every cry sought out her ears and became the sound of her husband's last breath. Every sword clash became the thunderous clash of her sword against her husband's. She relived her own battle a thousand times in those three days, each time ending the same; her husband's azure eyes fading to nothing.

She wanted to join them, to join her sons, to join Anrew. She couldn't make her legs move. She wanted to fight the Glagremel, to defend her people. She yearned to again fight by her father's side, to hold her sword up high and have the warriors chant her name. But her feet would not support her.

Menos' little sister brought her water but Fahevial's trembling fingers could not support the cup. The child brought the cup to Fahevial's lips and poured the tepid water slowly into her mouth. It tasted like copper, like her husband's blood, like her blood.

She struggled for half a day to move her hand to the hilt of the sword hung at her side. Her hand burned as it closed around the hilt. Rage seeped into her bloodstream and clouded her eyes. She could not fight through the rage but she could not join the battle as long as the rage coursed through her body. Her husband's face floated in front of her as a reminder of what happened the last time she lost control of herself, his azure eyes fading and flaring and fading again.

She had scolded Menos for weeks, not granting him the Silver Sword until he could contain his rage. She had seen first hand what unchecked rage could do and she wasn't about to let Menos go through what she had.

The women whispered to each other and pointed in her direction. They cast evil eyes upon her, spat as they walked by and muttered under their breaths how the blood of their husbands was now upon her hands as well.

She had raised her four sons to be great warriors, wasn't that enough? They stood on the battle line, members of the Silver Swords, and even without seeing them she knew they fought hard and well. Her Silver Swords would take more than their share of the enemy. She had taught them how to fight with a sword, yes, but she had also taught them battle tactics and strategy. As a child she had loved sitting on her father's lap while he and his soldiers strategized battle plans and defensible fortresses.

She had heard stories, told late at night around the fire, about the battle that terrible day twenty years ago. She remembered none of it, save her husband's eyes. They say she flew through the enemy ranks, destroying everything she touched. She left in her wake a river of blood, strewn with body parts and pulverized armor. The enemy's weapons were useless against her, like petals against steel. She whirled through them, driving a wedge to the center where their king fought. She killed their king as if he were a green foot soldier. Then his cousins and uncles. Then she killed the king's son, her husband.

The enemy surrendered and she stood on the battlefield, bodies fallen around her in circles, blood coursing into the wheat field, running into the streams, turning all the water red. The sun set, its red rays nothing compared to the red on the ground and still she stood stock still.

Her father came to her and pulled her sword from her grasp. It made a sucking sound as it left her fingers. He ushered her toward his tent where his wife cleaned her. She had lain in bed for ten days, her body healing from its cuts and bruises. Her mind, however, took longer. Never a night would pass that she would not see her husband's azure eyes fade to nothing.

How could she raise her sword again? Would it take the last of her, what little there was left of her? The sword spoke to her, humming against her palm, itching for action. It had been dormant for twenty years and it yearned for its rightful role. Training and tournaments were necessary but it longed for the cut of battle.

A screech echoed around the cavern. She looked up and saw a Glagremel enter the cavern from the back tunnels. They had guards posted at the escape route through the mountain mines; they had not called the alarm. Women screamed but under it she heard the Glagremel's steel bite into the bone of a child.

She leapt to her feet and ran toward the Glagremel. Her sword sang as she pulled it from its scabbard. It shuddered in pleasure as she separated the Glagremel's head from its shoulders in a single stroke. She glanced at the mangled child, barely six, and she felt anger bubble in her heart. She turned into the escape tunnel and found a dozen more Glagremels, their steel ready, their teeth bared, breath leaving their mouths in noxious green clouds.

Rage burned through her body at the sight of the creatures and her vision clouded under it. She shook her head and bit her lip, enough to draw blood. Not again. She would not be overcome by her rage again. She took a deep breath, sucked the rage out of her veins and thrust it into her sword.

Her sword took on a life of its own as she entered the tunnel, biting through limbs and organs.

"When they fall, ensure they never rise again," she shouted to the nearest woman, and continued deeper into the tunnel.

Her sword thrust and cut and swept and sparred. She hacked and stabbed and gouged through the Glagremel warriors. Rage bubbled in her heart and she channeled it into her sword. Her sight never dimmed, her senses didn't grow cold. She controlled her rage and fought the Glagremels back, away from the women and children and elderly, away from her people, away from her home, away from herself.

****

It had been three days since Anrew left the cave and headed to the front line. His body was in tatters, he couldn't hear out of his left ear and he had broken six swords against Glagremel steel. But they had prevailed. The mighty fortress itself, with its high gate and thick walls, had cost the Glagremel half its number. And the Huodon warriors took the rest.

The thirty-seven Silver Swords, those trained and christened by Fahevial, had proved to be better than their reputation. He had never seen such skill, such mastery, such determination. Even Menos, the newest Silver Sword, with his fury and his phantoms, had proven his mettle. On the battlefield Menos had learned to reign in his fury and cast it against the enemy with deadly effect.

Anrew returned to the cave, to tell the women to find their husbands and mend or bury them. He stood frozen, blinking in the half light of fags, the fire licking the cavern walls with yellow flame and black smoke.

He had fought for three days and finally on the third night the Glagremel had been defeated, driven back, out of the Huodon Valley and over the Nitenfard Ridge. And now he returned to the safety of the cavern, to the women and the children he had fought to protect, only to find them in no better shape than he himself.

There had been fighting in this cavern; he saw the dead Glagremel bodies strewn across the ground at the back, but only Glagremel bodies. He followed the raw scent of blood through a tunnel and grabbed a burning fag from a tired woman heading toward him.

The tunnel walls were coated in the black blood of the Glagremel. It dripped from the ceiling and ran down the back of his neck. His feet sank into a warm river of Glagremel blood as he stepped over body parts that littered the tunnel. He had watched almost ten thousand Glagremel die on the castle wall and in the keep after the wall had been breached. But the sight of so many bodies, in so tight a space, made him shudder.

"There must be a thousand bodies here," he mumbled to the dead.

Another woman came toward him, her dress soaked up to the knees with the black sticky blood of their enemy, a baby strapped to her back, it's face protected by a silk cloth.

"What happened here?" Anrew asked.

"They breached the back wall and snuck in through the escape tunnel. They surprised us this morning." It was all she could say before she stumbled on her way.

The tunnel opened into a small cave and his fag caught a fresh breeze. It flared and lit the walls, streaked with black, oozing blood. Again he found no red blood, no bodies of men or women or children.

He found the tunnel the Glagremel had breached but it was bare; none had escaped through here. He followed another tunnel and heard the sounds of battle. There were still Glagremel inside.

He rushed forward to help his comrades, slipping on the broken bodies and slick rivulets. The wail of a Glagremel pulling his last breath echoed down the tunnel toward him before it was cut short with a slap and a grunt. Its armor clamored as it fell.

Anrew burst into a silent cavern, his sword ready to fight or fend. Neither was required.

A woman knelt in the middle of the room, her head almost touching her knee. Three old women surrounded her and poured clear water over her head to wash away the black blood that coated her body. She bled from cuts across her arms and legs. Her clothing had been hacked almost clean from her body. She cringed when an old woman poured water onto a deep gash in her leg.

He tried to see her face, to see who had brought such carnage against the Glagremel, but he knew who it was without looking. He did not need see the face to know who had saved his people.

"Fahevial." His hoarse voice was barely above a whisper.

Her head twitched but she did not look up. Glagremel blood dripped from her hair that hid her face.

An old woman came up from behind him and ushered him back into the cramped tunnel.

"What happened here?" he asked.

The old woman refused to look at him.

"She broke her vow," the old woman answered in a whisper, talking to the cave walls.

"She saved us, but Fahevial broke her vow."

The End

#  Rendezvous in Ashland

I've been happily married for eleven years. He's thin, a little stoop-shouldered, starting to lose his hair in an oddly-shaped patch on his crown. But he has held my heart in his hands since the first day we met when he dented my fender in the Safeway parking lot. He now says that I dented his fender. Maybe his hair isn't the only thing that's starting to go. But for three weeks every year, another man cradles my heart in his large, thick hands.

"Come hither, you wretched wench!" he growls. He pulls me to him roughly, leaving white imprints on my arm. He pulls my breasts tightly against his chest, his arm a vice around my small waist. He smells of turkey legs and red wine. His lips, slick with turkey grease, slide across my neck. He leaves wet fingerprints on the front of my dress.

"I asked for ale, dark and deep. Not the piss of a goat!" His laughter roars through the inn as he flings me toward the kitchen. "And make it quick, wench."

His fingers reclaim their prints moments later as he follows me into the kitchen and pushes me out the back door. He presses my back against empty boxes in the alley. One grimy hand raises my skirt as the other tears away my blouse. His turkey-greased lips slide across my breasts, his wine-stained tongue probes my erect nipples, staining them red. He pours himself into me, my body protected from the rough alehouse bricks by layers of cardboard. He finishes and pulls away. My dress drops to my knees and hangs still. "You've earned yourself a good tip tonight, wench!" He ties his pants around his thin waist and emerges from the kitchen to a roar of cheers from the alehouse patrons, a full dark ale in one hand and a dripping turkey leg in the other.

My husband is an accountant. A numbers man. A man who needs his ledgers balanced, his socks paired, and his morning coffee in his blue cup. He rarely initiates sex, preferring it done by me, but when he does, it is always in the dark. He doesn't realize I can feel his burning cheeks against my bare skin.

Our campfire burns in the woods. "When beggars die there are no comets seen," he says, watching sparks weave in between redwood branches before joining the stars.

"The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes," I reply, quick as him with the next line in a Shakespeare play. It is a game we played, only in the southern corner of Oregon.

"What potions have I drunk of Siren tears?" I ask, gifting him with an easy one.

"Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within." He squints his eyes and points at my neck. "All is lost. This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me."

"My fleet hath yielded to the foe," I say.

"Men, wives and children stare, cry out and run as it were doomsday," he says. He thrusts a branch yanked from a birch tree into the fire, stirs it and watches the sparks fly.

"Fates, we will know your pleasures: that we shall die, we know; 'tis but the time and drawing days out, that men stand upon," I say, gazing at the shadows he casts upon the blueberry bushes behind him. We spend the night outdoors, under twinkling stars, trading Shakespeare quotes.

My husband is a man governed by reason. A rational man who is moved by logic, persuaded by the criteria of validity of inference and demonstration. He calls me his only flight of fancy. I can weep at the drop of a pin, laugh on a dime, and I reason with my heart, not my mind.

He scowls at me from across the room. "You have enslaved me. Give me a man who is not passion's slave and I will wear him in my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts." His fingers scratch at morning stubble on his chin.

"Will you take a woman who is passion's slave? Will you keep the heart of my heart in your heart's core?

He slumps into the hotel chair. "Are dothest sure yeah haven't betrayed me?" His chin trembles, a fat lip balanced on a thin line. "Wonth thouest betray me, soeth I can enact revenge? Revenge, revenge, best served cold."

"Drink your coffee, before it gets cold." I pull a thick sweatshirt over my shoulder-bare blouse to hide my smile. Fog had snuck into the valley over night and the damp clung to the ground as if Macbeth had screwed not his courage but his fog to the sticking place.

My husband hates the fog. We moved from Berkeley to the plains of Kansas just to get away from the wet blanket that crawled across the land, blotting out the sun, seeping into his bones until they hurt. I was born in the fog, grew up in its mist, rose with its lifting. But I left the fog and followed the man who carried my heart.

"Have some soup," I suggest, setting dinner before him.

"Bubble bubble, toil and trouble."

"No dear. Double, double, toil and trouble. The witches were brewing double trouble for Macbeth, not bubble trouble. No Bazooka Joe in the old days."

"Fire burn and cauldron bubble."

He reaches for a spoon and throws the napkin to the floor. He clutches the spoon in his fist like a club and shovels hot soup into his mouth. It dribbles down his bearded chin, onto his ruffled shirt and he wipes it away with a rough swipe of his sleeve.

My husband keeps his beard neatly trimmed, going to the barber with our five year old son every Saturday. Most kids watched cartoons on Saturday mornings. My son's Saturday morning ritual was time with his father. They'd ride their bikes the six blocks to the barber. Each would sit in a chair as a voluminous white sheet descended upon them and was wrapped tightly around their necks. They'd talk about their week as the scissor snipped and the razor buzzed. They were set free with a flapping of white billows and a dusting of clipped hair. My son proudly tipped the barber each week.

The sword hangs at his side like an extension of his body – he is a mutant who had grown not legs to crawl out of the sea to land, but had sprouted a metal sword and leather scabbard instead. His large left hand rests lightly on the hilt. It reminds me of the last months of my pregnancy when I sat with my hands resting on the top of my jutting belly. I have never since felt a more comfortable resting position for my fingers.

His hand grabs mine like a vice from which I cannot pull free. He tugs me to a grove of redwood trees, their sharp smell making my eyes water. Five-finger ferns are trampled beneath our feet, releasing spores that make me sneeze. His hands, large, strong, and callused, became feathers as they caress by face, my neck. Dirt from under his fingernails fleck onto my pale skin, leaving a trail of his passing, a witness to his presence. I take his hands, bring his fingers to my mouth and roll them around my tongue like a ripe grape. I taste turkey grease, mead, metal cleaner. Underneath, I taste my husband; his precision, his neatness, his tenderness. I kiss the tips of his hands and can almost taste my own heart.

I look over at my husband, sitting in front of the fire, reading a leather-bound book written by Shakespeare. The book is old, its pages yellow and brittle. My husband cradles the book gently, careful not to wet his fingers as he delicately turns the pages.

"Read to me," I say. My voice comes from far away, as if the words were spoken by someone at the edge of the universe.

My husband looks up and blinks sharply. His eyes narrow as if he's looking at me across a great distance. The firelight catches in his eyes and for a moment I think I see the man from Ashland, Oregon. Then a sheepish grin creeps onto his face. "I could never read Old English out loud." His cheeks turn red and he buries his head in the old book.

A snort escapes me before I realize he's right. The man sitting across from me, with his trimmed moustache and manicured fingernails, this accountant who dutifully puts on his helmet before riding his bike from the garage, who in the evening reads fine leather-bound books with gold edging while rocking our new sleeping daughter gently with his foot – this man could never speak old English with the flourish, the rhythm, the realism of the man I know at the Shakespeare festival in Ashland.

My husband leaves Kansas and travels with me to Ashland and somewhere during the trip he changes. He stops being the accountant and he becomes the ruffian. They are one and the same, that man and this, and yet they are worlds apart. Or at least centuries apart. But they both hold my heart in their hands.

The End

#  To Wear Your Grief Upon Your Sleeve

"Hey, stop that," she shouted. She broke into a run. Clumps of damp sand flew out behind her as she ran down the beach. "I said stop that," she repeated, louder. She ran up to the children and stepped in front of them. "What do you think you're doing?" She waved her arms and advanced toward them.

The two boys, aged nine and twelve, backed up.

She was breathing heavily from her sprint through the sand. "That's a wild animal," she said between gulps. "He's dangerous. You need to stand farther back."

"Hey, get away from my kids," a large, burly man shouted. He ran to them and pushed the kids aside. The smaller one fell to his knees with a whimper. He spit sand out of his mouth.

"What do you think you're doing?" He towered over the woman. He had at least ten inches and a good hundred and forty pounds on her. His fists were balled but he held them at his side. "I said, get away from my kids."

She held her ground and craned her neck to look up at him. "Your kids, kind sir, were dangerously close to that." She pointed behind her. "That's a wild animal. It may look slow, but it can move surprisingly fast."

The man peered over her head. "That? It's a cripple." He tore a stone from his older son's hand and threw it at the sea lion. His aim was good and he hit it squarely on the side. The sea lion grunted and hid its nose.

She took a step closer. "Stop that! You're worse than your kids. You, at least, should know better."

"Ah, it's just a dumb seal." He turned and laughed at his youngest son who was brushing sand out of a scraped knee.

"It's a sea lion," she corrected him. "And it doesn't deserve to have rocks thrown at it while it's resting on the beach." She stepped forward to force the family to move backwards. "You're visiting its home. Now move back and give it space."

The man stepped forward, almost stepping on her foot. "Or what?"

She blinked. "What?" She scrunched her face. "What do you mean 'or what'? This isn't kindergarten. Leave the wild animal alone." She looked at the grey sea and rolled her eyes.

"Excuse me. May I be of some assistance here?" a second man asked, moving closer. A third man, bulky, taller even than the father, stood behind his left shoulder.

"You don't want to get involved in this, stranger," the father said. His voice was low and the warning was clear. He turned to look at the stranger and his face broke out into a smile. Two of his teeth were missing.

"Hey! Aren't you Ken Richards?" He looked more closely. "You are Ken Richards, aren't you?" He turned to his oldest son. "Hey, Jimmy, look, it's Ken Richards." He reached down and grabbed the man's hand in his and pumped it.

Ken nodded and smiled politely.

The father positioned himself in between Ken and the woman.

"What in the hell are you doing out here on a wicked day like today?"

He pulled his oldest son by his collar. "I want you to meet my son, James. He's a fine boy."

He dropped Ken's hand and slapped his son's in it. "A fine boy indeed," the father said.

"It's nice to meet you, James." Ken smiled his movie star best. "And who is this?" he asked, looking at the younger son still sitting in the sand.

"Oh, that's just my baby brother, Todd." The boy kicked sand at his brother. "Quit your sniveling."

"You were great in American Terror," the father said.

Ken smiled and bit his tongue. If only he had a penny for every time he heard that one.

"Jeeze, Dad, that was Donald Deeter." Jimmy's face turned red. "This is Ken Richards. You know. The Annihilator. The Gladiator."

"Oh yeah. You were great in those too," the father said. "Hey, wait a minute. I wanna get a picture with you." He turned to his youngest. "Quit your sniveling and go get the camera. And don't break it or you know what will happen." His arm flung out in the direction of their backpacks.

The youngest son took off like his pants were on fire.

"You were great in Motorcycle Mayhem," Jimmy said. "Is it true? Did you really ride that hog?"

Ken nodded. "Yes, I did most of my own stunts in that one." He flexed his shoulder. "And I have the x-rays and months in rehab to prove it." He chuckled.

"All of the stunts?" Jimmy asked, his eyes wide.

Ken shook his head. "All but one. The only one that wasn't me was the death scene, when the motorcycle went off the mountainside. That was a stunt man flailing in the air."

"Oh man! That is so cool." The boy's eyes sparkled.

The father turned around to stand next to Ken and put his arm over the actor's shoulder. "Don't you mess this up or I'll have your hide," he said to the youngest son positioning the camera.

"OK. I got it." He took the picture.

The father pulled Jimmy in front of him. "And now one with my son." He tightened his arm around Ken's shoulder.

The youngest son took a second picture. "OK."

"Well, that was something else running into you, all the way out here," the father said, pumping Ken's hand again. "Wait until I tell the guys at the club."

"How about one with me and the little one?" Ken offered. He knelt down by the boy and handed the camera to Jimmy. They waited until they heard the shutter open and close.

"It was nice to have my picture taken with you Todd," Ken said, rising. He shook the youngster's hand. "You have a nice day at the beach."

Ken watched as the family of three walked back to their packs, Jimmy and the father exchanging high-fives. He turned to the woman.

"Ken Richards," he said, holding out his hand.

"Tina." She shook his hand. "You certainly defused that situation smoothly. I guess fame does have its benefits."

She looked confused. "Though, I'm not quite sure how it got so out of hand so quickly, but I thank you. If you ever give up acting, you should try your hand at diplomacy." She turned toward the silent man and held out her hand. "Tina."

The large man looked at Ken first and then stepped forward and shook Tina's hand. "Matt Brown."

"What was the commotion about?" Ken asked. He was curious why a five-foot-two woman would confront a six-foot-five man.

"Oh, those nasty kids were throwing rocks at this poor little creature." Tina pointed over her shoulder. "And they were standing much too close to him. I think people forget that these are wild animals, not pets."

Ken looked at the creature sitting on the sand just out of reach of the largest waves. "Is that a seal?"

"Sea lion," she corrected.

"How can you tell?" Ken asked.

"For me, mostly by the ears. It's not exact, but sea lions have ears and seals are earless."

She waved her hands. "Well, they aren't really earless. They're just called earless because they lack ear flaps. But they aren't deaf. Seals have tiny openings, pinnae, that serve as ears."

Ken looked closer at the sea lion's head. He wondered if the woman was a wildlife expert and that's how she knew about 'pinnae'.

"But most people tell the difference by looking at the flippers," she continued. "Sea lions' front flippers have only a partial fur covering, unlike the seal, whose flippers are covered entirely by fur. Sea lions' first toes are longer than the other toes." Her hand motions enhanced her words. "And their hind flippers are extremely flexible, and can actually rotate forward and beneath the body. This enables sea lions to move around on land with ease, unlike the seal. That's why I was so concerned with those kids. This lion can move quickly on land."

Ken smiled to himself. She was thorough in her explanations, if nothing else. "Do their backs always look like that?"

Tina shook her head. "No, this one is injured. It could have been a propeller or most likely a killer whale, in which case he's one lucky sea lion. The wound is old. You can tell because his fur has started to grow over where the scar is. I'm guessing he's probably five years old and has been a cripple for at least four of them."

"Man, that's tough." One of the stunt safety consultants on The Annihilator had been an active stunt man before he became paralyzed from the waist down in a stunt accident. Ken had been impressed with how well the man seemed to have adapted to his new life after the accident.

"It looks like he gets around well enough to eat, but given the way his spine curves, swimming long distances must tire him out easily." She looked up and down the stretch of beach. "He was probably swimming up the coast with his herd but he had to stop and rest." She scowled. "And then he had to face the indignities of them." She pointed toward the family.

Ken could hardly see them as they walked along the beach, returning to their vehicle. He looked up and down the empty beach. "Are you here alone?"

Tina glanced at Matt. "No, I'm here with a friend." She pointed north. "He's waiting by the car." She stepped aside so neither man was at her back.

Ken waved in the direction of the sea lion. "You saved his life, now you have to name him," he said with an exaggerated flourish of his arm.

Tina smiled. "Is that how it works?" She thought for a moment. "Charlie."

"Charlie?"

"Charlie. King of the sea," she elaborated, mimicking his arm flourish across the ocean.

Ken narrowed his eyes. "Wasn't he a tuna?"

Tina raised one eyebrow.

Ken put up his hands so his palms faced her and acquiesced. "OK, OK. Charlie it is."

"Well, there goes Charlie," Ken said, pointing to the sea lion as it hobbled back down the beach and slipped into the grey water. "Here's hoping he's more graceful in the water than on land."

"Creatures are designed for where they hunt. Sea lions may seem to spend a lot of time lying around on land, but they hunt in the water, and that's where their bodies perform best." She waved. "Bye, Charlie."

"Bye, Charlie." Ken joined in, smiling. He pointed toward the parking lot. "Returning?"

Tina looked at the sun sitting just over her shoulder in the sky. It was about to dip under the thick bank of fog sitting just off the coast. "I see it's that time of day already, so I guess I am."

"May we join you?" Ken asked. He would have already been back at his car if he hadn't felt the need to intervene. He shoved his cold fingers into his pants pockets.

"I'd be delighted," Tina replied. "Though I'm disappointed I don't have any books for you to carry." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

"Ha ha."

"Would you like my scarf?" she asked, pulling it out of her coat pocket.

Ken considered and then took it and wrapped it around his neck. "Thank you. I can't believe how cold it is here. We were in Marin and it was baking hot, so we figured we'd take a drive to the beach." He was wearing only a long-sleeved dress shirt. He rubbed his hands up and down his arms to warm them. He licked his lips and tasted salt.

"Well, in about thirty seconds it's going to get a whole lot colder," Tina predicted. She stopped to remove her coat and held it between her knees. The sun dipped below the fog bank and the wind picked up, pushing the cold, damp fog onto land. She pulled off her sweatshirt and handed it to Ken before she quickly donned her coat and buttoned it. She wore a turtleneck sweater on underneath it.

He accepted her sweatshirt but knew he couldn't wear it. He couldn't take the clothes off the woman's back. The wind kicked it up a notch and Ken's teeth started to chatter. "That wind is like ice." He held out the sweatshirt. "Are you sure you don't need this?"

Tina shook her head. "Not as much as you do."

Ken hesitated and then pulled the SF Giants sweatshirt over his head. "That is much nicer." He pressed his fingers underneath his arms to shelter them from the biting wind.

"First time to Northern California and Point Reyes North Beach?" she asked.

"Yeah. Is it always like this?" He had to contract his leg muscles to keep his knees from knocking.

"In June, yeah, pretty much so. Up and down the coast can be socked in by fog for most of the month." She turned around to look at Matt who walked slightly behind Ken. "Your first trip too, Matt?"

"Yes ma'am," he replied. He was wearing a dress shirt and suit coat, but showed no signs of being affected by the weather.

She walked backwards. "Sorry, but I wore only one sweatshirt today, Matt."

"Not to worry, ma'am. I'll be fine."

She turned front again. She dipped her chin under her coat collar.

"I take it you live around here?" Ken asked. She had clearly been here before; at least she knew how to dress for the beach. He thought about the beach in Southern California, where dressing for the beach meant shorts and sandals and sunscreen.

He looked at the woman walking next to him. She looked like a thousand other women he had seen once he got out of Hollywood.

At home, everyone was sculpted and buffed with perfectly applied makeup and form-fitting clothes.

Next to him was a woman who wore a sweatshirt under a coat, and the sweatshirt was large enough to fit him with room to spare. Her dark brown hair was pulled haphazardly into a braid that ran down her back, as if she had braided it facing the wind, which, now that he thought about it, she probably had. She wore no makeup and her nose was slightly crooked. Her skin looked smooth, but that just could have been the fresh ocean air. Her teeth were normal, not the polished, blinding-white of Hollywood.

Tina brushed a stray hair out of her face. "Not any more, but I used to. I lived in Berkeley for twenty years. My husband and I used to come to Point Reyes North Beach every other weekend. We'd stay at a friend's place in Inverness. You passed it on the way here. Vladimir's Czech Restaurant. I highly recommend it."

"And what did you do in Berkeley?" Ken asked.

She was curious. She didn't fawn over him, like most people did and yet she clearly knew who he was. She hadn't even told him yet which one of his movies was her favorite.

"I was a Physics professor at Cal and my husband, Jake, taught history at Berkeley High School. We moved to Boise, Idaho five years ago."

"Boise, Idaho? What do you do in Boise, Idaho?" He went skiing one winter in Sun Valley, Idaho. He pictured her riding a horse, herding cattle.

"Still physics, but I no longer teach. I work for a research company now."

"And your husband? Does he still teach history?"

"No, he died unexpectedly a year after we moved."

It felt like someone punched him in the gut. "I'm very sorry."

Ken thought of his own wife and child. He quickly pushed the thought away.

Tina shrugged. "People die every moment of every day." She took a deep breath and pushed it out through her nose. "It's just that this one affected me a wee bit more than the other ones do." She looked out to sea. "And what brings you to Northern California?" she said after a while. "Shooting your next movie?"

"Just vacationing. I needed to get away from Hollywood for a while." What Ken really needed to do was get away from his concerned friends in Hollywood, but he wasn't about to say that out loud.

"Well, you picked the right spot to vacation. Northern California is gorgeous."

"If not a little cold." Ken pulled his elbows in tighter. The wind seemed to find every opening to get in next to his skin.

Tina chuckled. "You know what Samuel Clemens said. 'The coldest winter was a summer I spent in San Francisco' or something like that."

He had heard that quote before. "Yeah, and now I know what he meant."

They climbed up the hill to the parking lot. There were only two cars left; his limousine and a new navy blue Tesla.

"Is that yours?" Ken asked. He would have never guessed a physics professor would drive that kind of car.

"Yep. And I take it that one is yours," she said, pointing to the limousine.

"Where's your friend?" Ken asked.

Tina winced. "I'm here alone," she admitted. She looked up at him. "Come on, give me a break," she said defensively. "A woman, alone on the beach, and two men walk up and ask her if she's alone." She waved her hands in the air. "Of course I'm going to say no."

"Oh, but you'll confront the knuckle-dragging behemoth by yourself." Ken reminded her.

Tina shrugged. "Getting one right out of two isn't bad."

Ken chuckled and shook his head. "I've never ridden in a Tesla before." He had seen a few of the electric sports cars on the road in L.A. and liked the lines of the sports car.

"Would you like a ride back?" Tina asked.

"Oh no, I didn't mean it like that." He felt like he had stepped in it now.

"I'm only going as far as Inverness, but I'd be pleased if you would join me."

Ken thought for a moment. "OK, Matt can follow with the car."

Tina laughed. "Your limo is not going to be able to 'follow' my Tesla."

She turned to Matt. "We'll meet you at Vladimir's Czech Restaurant in Inverness, An eighth of a mile or so past the Golden Hinde. You can't miss it. It's the big white building on the right."

Matt stepped forward and leaned near Ken's ear to speak quietly. "Sir, I don't believe this is a good idea."

"It'll be fine. I'll be fine," he assured him.

"You'll be too far away. I won't be able to do my job, sir," Matt countered.

"Thank you for your concern, Matt. It's duly noted, but I'm going to ride in Tesla." he shouted. He grabbed Tina by the arm and ran towards it. "Any chance I can drive?"

Tina shook her head. "Not my Tesla." She smiled broadly. "You'll have to get your own to do that."

"Tina Steward as I live and breathe!" The portly man wiped his hands on a towel and enveloped the petite Tina in his fat pink arms. "Marjeta, come quick!" he shouted to his wife.

Tina had parked her Tesla in back and entered the restaurant through the kitchen door, with Ken following closely behind her.

A woman entered the kitchen. She was a female version of the man; portly, pink and oddly going bald in the same place as her husband, though not quite as advanced a case.

"Tina, you're here." She hugged Tina tightly. "Now all is well, once again."

She motioned toward one of the sinks. "Quickly, wash your hands." She handed them a drying towel when they were finished. She took hold of Tina's hand and pulled her out of the kitchen. "I have just the table for you, by the fire. You'll have warm bread before you can remove your coat."

"Viktor," the man said, thrusting his hand into Ken's.

"Ken Richards."

"Any friend of Tina's is a friend of ours. Welcome to our home." He directed Ken out of the kitchen with a push against his shoulder.

Ken didn't think Viktor recognized him.

Marjeta kissed Ken on the cheek. "Anything you need, love, you just let us know. Our house is your house." She directed him into a chair in front of the fire. "The fire will warm your skin. What you like to warm your inside?"

"Mulled wine or mulled apple cider?" Tina clarified for Ken.

"I've never had either. Whichever she is having," he answered, nodding at Tina.

"Mulled wine it is, then," Marjeta said, rushing off to the kitchen.

Ken looked around quickly. There were seven tables in the restaurant, all of them full. The lighting was soft and the tables were covered in alternating maroon and gold tablecloths. People had looked up from their meals when the cook and his wife ushered in the pair, trying to see who the new guests were, but no one had risen to rush to where Ken sat. He heard none of the whispering and giggles he usually encountered in public.

"Tina!" A teenager pushed through the front door.

Tina rose and returned another hearty hug. "Jiri." She held him at his shoulders and looked him up and down. "You've grown almost four inches in a year, young man. What are they feeding you?"

"Six, but who's counting." Jiri turned to Ken.

"Ken Richards." Ken shook Jiri's hand.

Jiri's eyes widened. "The actor?"

Ken nodded. At last, someone recognized him.

"Nice to meet you." Jiri turned back to Tina. "Please tell me you're staying more than just two days, this time. There's someone I want you to meet, but she's won't be back in town until next week."

"She?" Tina rubbed Jiri's hair.

"Yes. She." Jiri beamed. "Ana Marie Stovich."

"The red head from the store?"

Jiri nodded.

"I met her last year, remember? She was dating Paul, if memory serves."

Jiri nodded again. "But now she's dating me."

"And Paul? Are you two still friends?"

"Paul's family moved to Kansas, if you can believe it. They said it was too expensive to live out here."

"I can believe it," Tina said, sitting down.

"Jiri, be a dear and take their coats at least," Marjeta requested, returning to the table with a tray. She set down their drinks and a basket of bread next to a cup of honey-butter.

"You aren't allergic to shell fish, are you son?" Marjeta asked, resting her fleshy hand on Ken's shoulder.

"No ma'am." He tried to remember the last time he had been called son when he wasn't on a movie set.

"There'll be a third person joining us," Tina informed them. "Ken's friend, Matt. He should be here in fifteen minutes or so."

"I'll get another mug ready." Marjeta sighed and looked disappointed.

"He doesn't drink. Mulled cider will do," Ken told them. He looked at Jiri who was waiting, holding Tina's coat. "I think I'll hang onto the sweatshirt a while longer, until I warm up a little."

"First time to Northern California, huh?" Jiri asked.

Ken nodded and shrugged. Apparently the natives could easily spot the tourists.

Marjeta stroked Tina's cheek. "My dear, you look as radiant as always. I tell you it does my heart good to see you again."

Tina squeezed Marjeta's hand in her own. "As it does mine."

Marjeta and Jiri hurried away, Jiri with Tina's coat and Marjeta to take an order from a nearby table.

Tina handed Ken his mug of mulled wine. "It'll warm your fingers. But be careful, Viktor keeps his mulls hot. You may want to let it cool for a bit before you taste it."

Ken wrapped his fingers around the warm mug and let the heat penetrate his frigid bones.

Tina tore off a piece of bread and swiped it through the honey-butter. She stuck it in her mouth and smiled. "Ah, I've returned to heaven," she said with a smile that lit her entire face.

She repeated the action and held the bite up for Ken to eat. "Here, try this."

Ken hesitated and then leaned forward and ate the bread from Tina's fingers. "Delicious."

Ken took a sip of the mulled wine. "As is this." He could feel the warm liquid sink into his belly. Suddenly the heat burst out and spread to his extremities. He took another sip. "Just what I needed." He felt his face flush. He pulled off the SF Giants sweatshirt.

"I'll take that," Jiri said, walking by.

Tina rose half way and waved. "Matt's here."

Jiri walked over to the door and shook Matt's hand. He pointed to the table where Tina and Ken sat.

Matt shook his head and spoke quietly into Jiri's ear.

Jiri looked at the full tables and shook his head.

Tina rose and walked to where Matt and Jiri were standing.

Tina took Matt's hand in her own. "Come."

Matt pulled back. "I'm not supposed to sit at the same table with him. I just need a table in the corner, but within sight of him." He pointed to a table on the other side of the fire. "That one there will be fine."

"If you haven't noticed, that one is occupied." She pulled on Matt's hand and led him to the table. "Tonight, you sit at our table. We're all just friends, here." She nodded to Ken. "And you can call me Tina the Leveler."

Jiri took Matt's coat. Matt looked quizzically at Ken.

Ken shrugged. "It's like the lady said. We're all just friends tonight." He pointed at the empty chair. "Have a seat. I have a feeling we are in for a treat."

"I'm sorry I couldn't get here any sooner, sir. The corners on this road are like hairpins. I hope they didn't cause you too many problems." He motioned to the other eaters in the restaurant.

Ken laughed loudly. "Nothing, if you can believe it. I don't remember the last time that I walked into a room and the ensuing commotion was about someone other than me."

He took another sip of the hot wine. He looked at Tina. He didn't know whether to be offended or relieved.

"Ah, you must be Matt. Marjeta," she said, introducing herself. "Here's your mulled cider. The pudgy man in the kitchen, besides being the best cook in America, is my husband Viktor. And I believe you've already met our son, Jiri." She squeezed his shoulder. "Welcome to our home. We'll see what we can do about getting the rooms upstairs ready."

"We won't be staying," Ken interrupted. "I've rented a home in Sausalito."

"How many rooms will you need?" She looked Tina expectantly, a sly smile playing on her lips.

Tina laughed. "Three rooms, Marjeta," she said in a scolding voice. "There'll be nothing for you to gossip about tonight. I've just met these two gentlemen on the beach less than an hour ago."

"One can always hope," Marjeta said wistfully.

The smile left Tina's face. "You know why I'm here, Marjeta." Tina's voice was sad and full of warning.

"Yes," she said with a sigh. "But hope springs eternal," she said pointedly and walked away.

"Tina!" a scrawny man with glasses shouted from the doorway.

"Herbert!" Tina shouted back, rising to her feet. She hugged him when he reached their table.

"You rascal. You said you wouldn't be here until tomorrow."

"The Tesla," she explained, lifting her hands. "It is fast."

"Herbert, meet Ken and Matt."

Despite looking like a true impression of Ichabod Crane, the man had a firm grip. "Good to meet you," Ken said.

"Ken. Matt." Herbert talked very fast.

He turned back to Tina. "I hear congratulations are almost in order."

Tina pointed at him. "Shush! Don't you jinx it."

Herbert held up his hands in defense and changed the topic. "Darlene is pregnant. Sixteen weeks next Friday."

Tina brought her hand up to her throat and then clutched Herbert's hand. "I'm so glad you both decided to try again. Give Darlene my best."

"Out of the way, you wretched old man. Your food is at the door." Marjeta said to Herbert. She carried a sizzling platter in heavy pot holders. She set the platter of oysters on the table. Jiri followed carrying three plates and sets of utensils.

"Ah, my food is ready and the mistress of the house is unceremoniously tossing me out into the cold, foggy night." Herbert motioned to the box of food to go at the door. "See you tomorrow night, Tina. Nice to meet you gentlemen." He turned to leave.

"Until then," Tina said, raising her mug.

Marjeta pointed to the platter. "Deviled oysters, oysters Rockefeller and oyster puffs." She turned to Tina. "Viktor wants to know which you like best, so he knows which to serve on the fourth of July."

"I don't know," Tina replied, looking up. "His scalloped oysters that he made last year are going to be hard to beat. The ones with bacon and asparagus."

"That's what I said, but you know how stubborn he can be." Marjeta returned to the kitchen. "Cooks and their quest for the perfect meal," she mumbled under her breath.

"So do you know everyone here?" Ken asked after washing down his oyster with wine.

Tina looked around the room. She shook her head. "I don't think I know anyone in the restaurant." She failed to keep the smile off her face.

"You know what I mean."

"You try going somewhere twenty-five times a year for twenty years and see whether or not you can remain anonymous," she challenged him.

Ken thought for a moment. "I don't think I've ever been in the same place long enough to do that." He ate a oyster puff. "We moved all the time when I was a kid. I lived in Santa Monica for three years, once." He shook his head. "When I go out in public, people call out my name, but when people know me, I don't know them."

Tina nodded. "Such is the price of fame. Where everyone knows you, but you know no one."

"But here people meet me, shake my hand politely, and then turn their attention to you." He still didn't know if he should be jealous.

"I'm like family here. After my husband died..." She trailed off. "They worry about me too much."

Marjeta returned with a large soup tureen; white glazed porcelain with blue flowers in the detailing.

"Fleur de lis garlic soup," she said. She scooped the liquid into bowls.

Tina fingered the tureen. "A new French lily. Gorgeous."

"It was a birthday gift from Jiri," Marjeta said proudly. "But he spent too much."

Tina dipped her nose and sucked in the odors.

"Ah, my favorite."

She turned to Ken. "It's like drinking tan silk."

Ken's eyebrows scrunched. Drinking fabric didn't sound appetizing.

Tina waved her hand. "Try it."

Viktor burst from the kitchen and stomped to their table. "Well, what is the consensus?"

Tina set down her spoon. "Oysters Rockefeller; familiar, comforting. The deviled oysters were brash, bold, exciting. But the oyster puffs, now there was a hidden surprise. Delicate pastry on the outside, creamy on the inside, with just a hint of...." Tina tapped her upper lip with her index finger. "Tarragon was it?"

"Ah ha! I told you she'd discover it," Viktor shouted to his wife.

"Oyster puffs win the day," Tina concluded. "Well done, Viktor. Well done."

Viktor remained at the table staring back and forth between Ken and Matt.

"Matt? Which did you like best?" Tina asked.

"I like the bold and exciting. Deviled oysters for me. They were spicy-hot!"

"Ken?" she asked.

"How can I disagree with the guest of honor? The oyster puffs were sublime." He nodded to Viktor. "As she said, well done."

"Bah!" Viktor said and stormed back to the kitchen.

"He wanted to make oysters Rockefeller," Marjeta confessed. "But he just can't seem to find the ingredient that will make them stand out as unique."

"Have him cut wedges into the oysters and marinate them in lime vodka for six hours," Tina suggested. "I tried it once and Jake loved them."

"Lime vodka? I don't think Viktor would ever use lime vodka." Marjeta laughed and her entire body jiggled.

"Then it will be a challenge to see just how adventurous a chef he is," Tina suggested.

Ken took a sip of soup. "Now I understand when you said 'drinking tan silk'. This soup is so smooth and delicious." He took another sip. "But now you have to explain 'Tina the Leveler'."

Tina nodded. "There were different groups called the Levelers throughout history. The first Levelers were a mid-seventeenth century English political movement. They were labeled 'Levelers' by their enemies, who claimed that they were intent on bringing all down to the lowest common level. Their own manifesto was more socialistic and spoke of how everyone had the same God-given rights. It was more egalitarian than the lowest-common-denominator that their opponents claimed."

Marjeta returned with a full roasted duck on a silver platter, surrounded by bundles of sage and lavender and covered in long lengths of orange peel. Viktor followed her, his hands full of cutlery.

"It smells fabulous, Viktor." She nodded in the direction of the other tables. "But I think your other guests are going to go home and spread rumors about how you spoiled the movie star with your personal attention." She quickly drank the last of her soup. "This is going to become 'the place to be' pretty soon if you keep up this special treatment." She smiled at her friend.

"Ha!" Viktor said loudly. "Movie stars? No. Let this become 'the place to be' for physicists and professors and then I'll be a happy man."

He sliced off a duck leg and placed it on her plate. "For you, my little Tina."

Marjeta scooped on honeyed yams, asparagus in an orange sauce and a spoonful of wild rice with cherries while Viktor served the men their fowl.

Viktor poured them each a glass of a deep red wine. Matt tried to cover his glass but he wasn't quick enough.

"Bah!" Viktor said. "You cannot fully appreciate my duck with just water. You must have the wine. Enjoy," he said as he and his wife retreated.

"Then in sixteen-forty-nine there were the Diggers, which were thought of as the True Levelers," Tina continued. "The Diggers attempted to reform by leveling real property and the existing social order. They wanted an agrarian lifestyle based upon their ideas for the creation of small egalitarian rural communities."

She swished her mouth clean with a large gulp of wine.

"There were the nineteenth century Levelers in Hudson Valley, New York. That was a property tax protest movement. And in Colorado today there is a Medical Marijuana advocate organization called the Levelers and also a British music band called the Levelers."

Ken looked up and raised his eyebrows. "And we should call you Professor Tina the Leveler because you like to smoke pot and listen to British music?"

"I'm getting there," she said. She set down her fork and pushed her empty plate back slightly. She waited until Viktor arrived at their table. "Deliciously succulent, Viktor." She rubbed her belly. "You are the greatest of chefs."

Jiri cleaned away the dishes and removed the gold tablecloth, scooping up their crumbs in it. Then he placed silver plates on the maroon tablecloth. The firelight danced across the edges of the silver plates.

Marjeta brought out a platter and set it on the table. "Italian tiramisu cheesecake."

"Yum, a new recipe." Tina rubbed her hands together and turned to Ken. "Viktor may be the master chef, but Marjeta is head chef of pastries and desserts."

Viktor gave each of the generous slices. He poured each a glass of light dessert wine.

"Mary Macaulay was the wife of the historian Thomas Macaulay. In the early eighteen hundreds she held a dinner party, one of many, of course. Now Mary thought herself to be a Leveler, a person who believed there should be no social barriers, that everyone was created equal. And throughout dinner she went on an on about how social structure is bad and that she should be able to sit at the table of the King and Queen."

Tina took a bite of the dessert and savored it.

"Now you have to remember," she continued, "that in England in the early eighteen hundreds, social structure is what kept the royalty apart from the plebes. The aristocrats ruled in Parliament, in business and in life in general. Toward dessert, one of her guests couldn't contain himself any longer and called her bluff. He pointed out that if she didn't believe in social structure, then she should call in her footmen and let them partake of dessert at her own table."

"What are footmen?" Matt asked.

"Footmen are the men who rode on the back of the horse-drawn carriages. When the carriage stopped, they would put the wooden stairs down outside the carriage door and offer their hand as support so the carriage riders could step gracefully out of the carriage rather than jumping the three feet down to the ground."

"Well, Mary Macaulay was horrified at the thought of lowly footmen eating at her table and she was said to be speechless throughout the rest of the meal. When the evening ended, on the way out the door, one guest supposedly said to another "That's the problem with these Levelers. They always want to level up, not down."

Ken and Matt laughed. She was a good hostess, Ken thought to himself. She had kept them entertained throughout the entire meal.

"Rumor is the guest wasn't invited to any more dinner parties in that social circle."

Matt smiled and picked up his wine glass. "This evening has been fabulous. Incredible food. Even better company." He held his is wine glass. "To Tina, the great Leveler."

"To Tina," Ken agreed.

She showed Matt the same respect she showed him. He stumbled over his thoughts. And why shouldn't she? He was an actor. Matt was a bodyguard. Neither made one better than the other. Maybe the tabloids were right. Maybe he was arrogant.

The three clinked their glasses and emptied them.

"Father asks that you three join him in the library," Jiri said. "He saved his most recent purchase of his beloved amber blond nectar just for your visit, Tina."

Tina rose. "Ah, cognac. Just what we need to close out the night. This way, gentlemen."

Ken and Matt followed her through the now-empty restaurant. Ken didn't remember seeing everyone else leave. He went the entire night in a public area and no one asked for an autograph, no one had propositioned him, no one tried to touch him. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so unfettered.

The library was on the second floor, or, more correctly, was the entire second floor. Here, as downstairs, a fire roared in the oversized fireplace. Marjeta and Viktor sat in leather chairs on each side of the fire. Tina walked in and kissed first one then the other on their cheeks.

"Perfection personified," she said simply.

She sat in one of the three empty chairs and Ken and Matt filled the other two.

"I've eaten in some of the most expensive restaurants all over the world," Ken told them. "And never have I had a better meal than I've had tonight."

"The night is still young." Viktor handed each of them a tulip-shaped glass of cognac.

Tina held it up and peered at the firelight through the golden fluid. "Good legs," she said.

She held it up to her nose multiple times, sniffing it. "Pleasurable aroma."

She took one sip, held it in her mouth, and then took a larger sip before swallowing her mouthful.

"Ah," she released her breath.

"Round, soft bouquet. Fruity," she added.

She set the glass base against her knee.

"It must be Grande-Champagne, from the hillsides just south of Segonzac."

Ken turned to look at her. You've got to be kidding, he thought to himself.

Viktor leaned forward to the edge of his seat. "How did you know?"

Tina twirled the glass and gazed at the firelight reflected in the cognac. "It is a talent. An art, really."

She looked up at Viktor and struggled to keep the smile off her face. "I saw the label on the bottle when I entered the room."

"Oh, you!" Viktor threw a small foot-pillow at her and sat back in his chair. "You almost had me."

"Oh no," she corrected and pointed at him. "I had you."

She set the pillow underneath her feet. "I just can't lie to those I love."

Marjeta reached over and squeezed her hand. She laughed and nodded. "You got him that time. That was a good one."

They talked for an hour before Jiri appeared at the door. "Everything's done. I'm turning in."

He looked at Tina. "It's good to have you here."

"It's good to be here," Tina said. Everyone in the room said their good nights to the boy.

"Take it easy on them." Jiri nodded in the direction of his parents. "You know what happened last time," he said. He closed the door without waiting for a response.

Tina eyed Viktor. "I do remember a certain burnt breakfast, yes."

"Bah! The gas burner was broken, don't you remember? We had to call that guy, what's his name, out to fix it three times before he got it right." Viktor finished his cognac.

"Yes, dear," Marjeta said simply. She winked at Tina when Viktor wasn't looking.

Viktor rose. "I'm going to start the breads. You three can stay here and enjoy the fire."

Tina jumped to her feet. "You're trying to weasel out of it, is what you're trying to do." She motioned to Ken and Matt. "Come on, boys. We venture from the fire lit amber hollows to the icy frozen tundra."

Ken and Matt shrugged and followed Viktor, Marjeta and Tina to the kitchen.

Viktor started measuring the ingredients for his bread. Marjeta set out five shot glasses. Tina walked into the freezer and brought out three bottles of Stolichnaya vodka. "Straight from the frozen tundra."

Ken looked at the blue label.

"Ah, that wretched building is the Hotel Moskva," Viktor informed him. "Red label is seventy-five proof, gold is eighty proof, but the blue label, my personal favorite, is one hundred proof vodka."

Ken's eyes grew.

Tina filled the five shot glasses.

Ken shook his head. "I don't think Matt or I should drink any more. We've got an hour's ride back home."

"Bah!" Viktor shouted. "No one is driving anywhere tonight. The fog is heavy and both of you have had too much wine for me to even think about letting you drive."

He pushed a glass toward Ken. "Jeta has made up three rooms, she tells me."

He looked pointedly at Tina. "And so all there is to do, is drink." Viktor took his glass and swallowed the contents in one gulp.

"Viktor, you know the rules," Marjeta scolded him.

"I'm baking. I make my own rules," Viktor replied in a cloud of flour.

Marjeta turned to Ken and Matt. "Before you take a drink, you have to tell everyone something you've done since the last time you were together." She took her glass in her hand. "For you two, just tell us something you've done in the last year." She turned to Tina. "I started reading my old books in Czech again." She drank the vodka in a gulp.

Tina picked up her glass. "I bought a Tesla." She slammed her shot back.

Ken picked up his. "I sold my house in Southern California and my house in the Bahamas and my house in Tuscany." He drank his shot.

Matt picked up his. "I got a puppy." He drank.

"Aw, what kind?" Tina asked, refilling the glasses.

"A Dalmatian."

Viktor was up to his elbows in flour. "Pass," he said.

"I found Jiri's collection of Playboys and did nothing." Marjeta drank. "He doesn't even know I found them. He's almost an adult now," she said sadly.

"I made a breakthrough in my research. I was able to stop a photon in mid-air, hold it in place, and then send it on its way again." Tina drank. "The article was published in last month's journal and it's been one interview after another since."

"Is that why Herbert is convinced you're going to win the Nobel prize in physics this year?" Marjeta asked.

"Herbert is just vying for a free trip to Switzerland. There's another six months in this year and a lot of new breakthroughs can happen in those six months," Tina said.

Ken looked at her. He didn't have any idea how to stop a photon in mid-air. He wasn't even sure what a photon looked like. "I turned down six movie contracts."

"I got married." Matt drank.

"Getting married came after getting a puppy on the list of important things you did last year?" Tina asked, ribbing him.

"I'm going backwards chronologically," Matt defended himself. "I got the puppy last month, I got married six months ago."

Tina refilled the glasses. "Wait until I tell your wife about this," she threatened with a smile.

Viktor reached for his glass with flour-covered fingers. "I found a lump on the back of my neck. Had it excised and the doctor said there's nothing to worry about." He drank his vodka and slammed the glass down on the table. "It's good to be alive."

Marjeta held the glass up in Ken's direction. "I spent a night drinking vodka shots with Ken Richards." She blushed, laughed and then drank.

"I published a book." Tina drank.

"Congratulations!" Viktor told her. "What is that, book seven?"

"Nine," she replied.

"Well, I wish I could say I've read them all," Marjeta said. "But even though I have bought them, I have to admit I don't understand them."

"Physics is a language unto itself. You already read in English and Czech and Russian, I think that's good enough." Tina squeezed the rotund woman's shoulder.

"I bought my daughter a tricycle." Ken drank his vodka and slammed the glass down hard.

"Oh, how old is she?" Marjeta asked. She looked quizzically as Tina shook her head no.

"She would have been three on May 5th, but she was still born." Ken gripped the table and hung his head. He was starting to get really drunk. He couldn't remember the last time he drank this much.

Tina quickly refilled her glass. "All right! New game!"

"No," Viktor and Marjeta said in unison.

Tina ignored them. "I bought Jake a birthday present. A Cambridge manuscript from the 15th century with the Agincourt Carol on it."

She took a drink.

"Jake's been dead four years," she said.

She slammed her glass on the table. She leapt from the table and ran to the refrigerator.

"Foul! Out of turn," Marjeta shouted.

"Oh no. We are not playing that game. Not this year." Viktor followed her into the fridge for the eggs. "We're playing the 'what have you done lately' game, remember?"

Tina pushed past him. She rolled up Ken's sleeve and squirted a blotch of ketchup onto his arm.

"Arg. What are you doing?" he asked. Was the woman insane?

She pulled up her sleeve and squirted a larger blotch onto her own arm. "I think I spent more on Jake's manuscript than you did on a bike."

Marjeta refilled the glasses. "This is the woundology game," she explained to Matt. "One of Tina's favorites. To see who has the largest wound. To see who has been wounded the most, or feels the grief deepest." She turned to look Tina in the face. "Or who hangs onto their grief the tightest."

She pushed the shot glass to Matt. "You don't want to play that game. Not with this woman. Now tell me what you did last year."

"I learned how to scuba dive." Matt took a drink.

Viktor reached in. "I vowed never to play woundology in my house ever again." He drank quickly.

"Never make vows lightly, dearest Viktor," Tina told him. "Especially ones over which you have no control to keep or break."

"I promised to support my husband and his vows," Marjeta said pointedly before drinking.

"I fired my assistant after I caught him selling my research to a rival company." Tina took a drink. "Actually, my company caught him, but I fired him."

"Cut-throat business, physics," Matt commented dryly.

'You'd be surprised," Tina told him.

"I go to my daughter's grave every Sunday. I take a chair and sit and talk to her for hours." Ken took a drink.

Tina squirted his arm with more ketchup.

"I am drunk and am going to bed, if someone would be so kind to point in the right direction." Matt took a drink and set his glass upside down on the table.

"I'll take you, dearie." Marjeta took his arm and they left, swaying slightly.

"Good night, Matt. See you Mañana," Tina said. She turned to Ken and looked at him through the clear liquid in the shot glass. "Every night while I eat dinner, I tell Jake about my day." She took another drink and squirted more ketchup on her arm.

Ken took over refilling the glasses.

"I lost my little girl, even before she was born." He took a drink and Tina squirted ketchup on his arm. "After her birth, I held her dead body in my arms." He had cried for hours, holding her. "She never took a breath. Not one." He had never said that out loud before. He blinked as the words returned and echoed in his ears.

Tina stared at the shot glass of clear liquid.

"I lost my husband of twenty years." Her voice was little more than a whisper. She cleared her throat.

"We were walking along a trail that winds through the city, holding hands as we always do. Used to do," she corrected herself. "And a boulder just rolled down the hill, hit his head and crushed his skull. Just him. Not me. Not a scratch on me. Killed him instantly." She stared at her right hand. "Ripped his hand from mine and he was gone."

Her left hand shook as she took the drink.

Ken reached over and squirted ketchup on her arm.

"My wife committed suicide two months after our daughter was born dead." The words came slowly as his tongue struggled to form them. Ken drank.

Tina squirted the ketchup.

"I don't go any new places. I only go where Jake and I have gone before, so where ever I go, I know that he was once there with me. I would betray him if I were to go somewhere he couldn't." Tina took another drink.

"I left Hollywood because my friends kept on trying to make me leave my dead wife and child behind." Ken drank. "And I won't do it." His stomach cramped.

"I don't have any friends." Tina drank. "People can't handle that I still want a life with Jake, even though he happens to be dead."

"I haven't been on a date in three years." Ken drank. "I'm afraid they'll die and I just couldn't survive that again." His head swam. He hadn't told anyone that before either. What was he doing?

"I haven't been on a date in four years." Tina drank. "No one alive is as interesting as my dead husband."

Ken looked at the ketchup splotch on his arm. "I have ketchup on my arm." He took a drink with a lopsided grin and half of it dribbled down his chin.

Tina looked at her arm.

"So do I."

She sounded surprised. She drank another shot and braced her hip against the table to remain upright.

He looked at the red paste on his arm and then at Tina's. "I think mine is bigger than yours." He drank. He blinked his eyes slowly.

"Not even close. I was with Jake for twenty years." She drank.

"But I had two people who I loved die." He drank. What was he saying? Was he speaking out lout or were these words just inside his head? In what kind of morbid contest was he competing?

"But I've been hanging onto mine for four years. It's only been three for you." She drank. She slammed the glass down onto the cutting board but her hand wasn't flat and it skidded off the counter. The glass shattered on the tiled floor.

"Alright you two," Marjeta said, returning to the kitchen. She handed the three empty bottles to Viktor. "Time to get you up to your rooms." She reached for a cloth to wipe off the ketchup.

"No," Tina shouted. "This is my wound. I won't let you take it away from me."

She stepped away from Marjeta and banged into a stack of pots. Marjeta caught them before they fell to the floor.

"It will get all over everything, Tina," Marjeta pleaded with her. "You can still be morose and hang onto Jake, just let me clean up the ketchup."

"No, don't let them take it from you, Tina," Ken rallied. He wouldn't let them take his wound from him and he wouldn't let them take hers from her either. He tried to stand but his legs were like gelatin. The room started spinning and he slammed his palms against the counter for balance. The sharp noise made him jump.

Tina moved away and stumbled against Viktor. "No. It's mine."

"It's alright, Marjeta," Viktor said. "We'll clean it up tomorrow," he said to his wife. He stepped over the glass shards on the floor. "Come on, Tina. I'll take you upstairs. We all see your wound." He sighed deeply.

Marjeta took Ken by his arm not covered in ketchup. "This way, Ken. Your room is down at the end of the hall."

"Wake me at four if I'm not already up," Tina shouted to Marjeta.

"In the morning?" Ken asked. "What time is it now?" He tried to focus his eyes but he could barely make out that there was a wall in front of him. He felt Marjeta tug on his arm and he changed direction to follow her.

"She means four in the afternoon." Marjeta pushed against the leaning Ken. "And you should follow her lead on this. The best way to deal with a Vodka hangover is to sleep right through it."

"Hello boys," Tina said, sliding onto a lounge chair next to Ken and Matt as they sat on the rooftop balcony. "Isn't it just a gorgeous early evening?" She laid her head back and turned her face to the sun.

Ken's head lolled to the side. His eyes were covered by dark sunglasses. "Oh shut up," he said quietly. His head pounded.

Tina sat up quickly. "What?" She thought for a moment. "Uh oh. Please don't tell me I did something last night that I don't remember." She scrunched her eyebrows. "Or, please tell me I didn't do something last night I don't remember." She shook her head. "Yeah, something like that."

Ken swallowed thickly. "Do you remember forcing me to take vodka shots with you?"

Tina nodded. "I remember us drinking vodka shots, but not so much so the forcing part."

"Do you remember playing what Marjeta lovingly called the woundology game?"

Tina smiled. Its brightness hurt Ken's eyes.

"Oh yes," she said. "You were by far the most fun partner I've had in years."

Ken grimaced. "Then you remember everything you did. So shut up." His tongue felt like a bloated potato in his mouth. He felt different but his head hurt too much for him to know why.

Tina sat back against the lounge chair and faced the sun again. She couldn't help but smile.

"Let me guess, you got up before noon."

She shook her head.

"You should have slept through it. It's the only way to deal with a Vodka hangover." She reached over and patted his hand. "Poor thing."

Matt smiled but kept quiet.

"You missed my poppy seed kolache that I made this morning," Marjeta said. She brought out fresh glasses of lemonade for the three of them. They were alone on the patio, except for a squirrel who chattered incessantly at them from a high bough.

Tina beamed at her. "I did not."

Marjeta looked askance. "Did Jiri sneak you some?"

Tina smiled. "No. But I know that you saved me at least two." She waved her fingers in expectation.

Marjeta snapped the dish towel hanging on her apron at Tina's arm. "You know me too well, my dear." She pulled a package out of her apron pocket and handed a kolache to each of them.

"Dinner's in two hours. Are they joining us?" she asked Tina.

"Have you asked them?" Tina countered.

"I thought it best to leave that for you." Marjeta said, walking away.

"Ask us what?" Ken mumbled with a mouth full of pastry. Anything to get rid of the rancid potato taste. He wasn't sure his stomach was going to like it as much as his taste buds did.

"Tonight's the Full Moon Kayak and we were wondering if you wanted to join us?" She sat up and faced them, wiping crumbs from her chin. She pointed to her right.

"We leave from the Golden Hinde and paddle on Tomales Bay out to the ocean, around Tomales Bluff to Bird Rock. If you've never paddled before, you'll probably want to stop at Avalis Beach and not venture out into the ocean." She brushed a stray hair away from her cheek.

"When the moon is full and the fog is nowhere to be seen, it's an incredible evening." She looked up at the sky. "And it looks like the fog is being kind and sitting off the coast tonight. Let's hope it holds." She shook her head. "When the moon comes up, it's all big and fat and so close you can touch it. And it reflects off the water and turns all of the leaves gold and then silver." She looked specifically at Ken. "I would really like it if you would join us tonight." She looked at Matt. "It's a wonder to see."

"Are you up for it?" Ken asked Matt.

Matt snorted. "You had more vodka than I did. Are you up for it?"

Ken raked his hand down his face then looked at Tina. God she was beautiful. She practically glowed. When did that happen? She was sitting so her face was half in sun and half in shadow. The shadowed eye was gray but the blue eye in the sun was full of greens and yellows and browns. He realized he would do anything those eyes asked of him. "I guess we're going on a midnight kayaking trip."

"Moonlight," she corrected. "We'll have an early dinner and leave at eight." She cocked her head. "But you're right. We won't be back until well past midnight." She smiled and reached over to squeeze both of their forearms. "I'm really happy you're both coming." She jumped to her feet. "I'll go tell Marjeta. And see if I can't find a few more kolaches that I know she's hidden somewhere."

Ken pushed up his sunglasses and held his right palm over his eye. "How can she even move, much less jump?"

"OK. Everyone turn your kayak so it faces east. Lock your paddle under the lip and grab onto your neighbor's tow tether on each side of you," the kayak trip leader instructed them. He pointed in front of him. "The moon will be coming up over that ridge in about ten minutes. We'll just get situated here and wait for it."

They had left the Golden Hinde on time, but there were nine beginners in the group of twenty kayakers, including one eight year old girl, and they had only paddled to Pelican Point so far. Tina sat in her kayak with Ken and Matt on either side. Matt was too large for a kayak and he sat in a small canoe. Jiri was on the other side of Ken. Marjeta, then Viktor were on the other side of Matt.

"How are you doing?" Tina asked.

"Doing OK," Matt responded.

Ken rubbed his fingers together. "My fingers are a little cold, but other than that I'm doing OK." He flexed his shoulders. "I'm surprised how well this drysuit fits. When you handed it to me I didn't think there was any way I was going to get into it."

"It's getting out that's difficult," Jiri said.

"Put on your gloves," Tina suggested.

Ken shrugged. "Uh, I don't think I brought them."

Tina started to reach over into Ken's kayak pouch then pulled her hand back.

"You'll probably find them in the small bag on the outer edge of your left leg. In with the wool cap and scarf in case it gets colder." She thought for a moment. "There are probably three bags there; the gloves are in the middle bag."

Ken pulled up his spray skirt from the cockpit rim and reached inside with his left hand. It was as she said; three bags were snuggled against his left leg. He pulled on the middle one. As he pulled it out, it caught on his hip pad and moved it. He set the bag on his lap and readjusted his hip pad. He opened the bag and found a pair of Rapid Gloves. He returned the bag to its snug position and resealed his spray skirt tightly to his cockpit rim. He had just put the left glove on and was starting his right when Tina whispered.

"Here it comes."

He looked up in time to see a tiny sliver of light break over the top of the ridge. It was as if someone had taken a knife, cut through a dark piece of cloth and shined a golden torch through the slit. He watched it as the slit grew, his glove clutched in his hand, forgotten. The moon had risen half way before the first person spoke.

"It's so much bigger here, Papa," the eight year old girl said with wonder in her voice.

The adults chuckled in agreement.

Tina had been right; it was so large and so close that he felt he could reach out and touch it. "I thought they could do that only in Hollywood," he whispered.

They watched for another ten minutes as the moon cleared the top of the hill. The color changed from a golden yellow to the more silver and white he was accustomed to. It shrunk in size as it rose and soon it was the moon he had known all his life.

"Well, let's everyone turn to their left and we'll continue out to the mouth of the bay," the kayak trip leader instructed.

"I'm going to stay here for ten minutes or so," Tina said. "I'll catch up to you."

"Do you want some company this year, love?" Marjeta asked.

Tina shook her head. "There are some things that need to be done alone, Marjeta, and this is one of them."

She back-paddled slowly. "You go on, now. I'll join you in no time at all."

"I'm going to wait for her," Jiri said under his breath to his mother.

"No you aren't," Tina said, overhearing. "I don't need an audience for this. I need solitude."

"Come on," Viktor said, ushering everyone away. "What she needs is a good knock up alongside her head, but, baring that, we'll leave her be."

"I heard that, Viktor."

"You were supposed to," Viktor replied.

Ken watched as Tina paddled in one direction and the rest of the group paddled in the other. Their paddles made much more noise than hers.

"We love it when she visits," Marjeta told him. "But we hate to see her in June around the full moon because we know what it means."

"Drinking, lamenting and saying goodbye to Jake. Again." Viktor slapped his paddle against the water. "She said last year that it would be the last time."

"Viktor, you know her better than that," Marjeta scolded. "She never makes promises she can't keep. Last year she said she thought it might be the last year she would need to say goodbye to Jake." Marjeta sighed. "That leaves a lot of wiggle room for her to come back and do it again this year. And next year. And the year after that."

"What is she doing?" Ken asked.

"She brought a thimbleful of her dead husband's ashes and is releasing them into the waters. Again," Viktor said.

"Maybe she'll run out of ashes soon," he said wistfully.

Marjeta slapped her husband's arm. "That's a wicked thing to wish for."

"Something has to jar her back into the land of the living," Viktor objected. "She talks to the man as if he's still here. You should have seen her last night. When I took her to her room, I opened the door. She took one look inside the empty room and said 'Jake, honey, you weren't sleeping were you?' I had to look twice to make sure he wasn't there, her voice held such conviction. It was like she saw him, lying on the bed or something."

Marjeta looked uncomfortably at Ken. "That's enough, old man," she scolded her husband. Her voice carried the warning that the conversation better be over. "When I die, you'll still talk to me out of habit too."

"Ha!" Viktor's voice carried over the water.

"I already have my eye on that little blonde at the spice store in Vallejo."

Marjeta slapped his arm again. "Lucky for me that young thing doesn't like old men and she detests fools. That's two strikes against you already, love. And it's not like you have a ton of money hiding in your mattress."

Jiri laughed at his parents and paddled ahead to lead the group.

Ken looked away. He wondered if his friends held conversations like this behind his back. He talked to both his dead wife and the daughter he had never known, but he was sure that he never did in front of others. Pretty sure, anyway. He tried to be careful, but his family was such a large part of his life, with him wherever he went, that maybe he, too, slipped sometimes and talked to them even when he wasn't alone.

He grimaced. He could see that Marjeta and Viktor loved Tina like a daughter. He heard the concern in their voices. He tried to remember; did his friends say the same things? He was offended the first time Johnson told him to 'get over it already'. So offended, in fact, that he hit him, knocked out his tooth and hasn't spoken to him since.

Then Carly. She said she was just trying to help him put his grief behind him, but he knew that all she wanted to do was sleep with him so she could brag to her friends.

And Michael. He's kept setting up appointment after appointment with that funny-looking shrink. Appointments Ken always managed to miss.

He fired Peter after his agent said that he better get his head on straight or, how did Peter phrase it? 'Ken's reputation would precede him' and it wasn't in a good way. The articles in the tabloids; he just assumed it was the same old garbage about how Ken Richards lived with the ghosts of his dead wife and child, how Ken Richards spoke to the 'other side', how Ken Richards had lost his mind and saw dead people. He had stopped reading them years ago.

"Should we wait for her?" he asked quietly.

"No, she'll come when she's ready," Marjeta said. She reached out and patted Ken on the forearm.

"It's not as bad as Viktor makes it out to be. She's not insane, she's just..." Marjeta trailed off.

"Grieving," Ken supplied, recognizing it.

"It's a powerful thing, grief," Viktor acknowledged quietly.

"All consuming, if you let it," Ken agreed, not realizing he had spoken out loud.

Is that what he had done? Had he let his grief consume his life? Why would he do that? He had a good life. Why would he let grief take it over?

Because it was easier than figuring out how to live without them, he answered himself. He was lost when they died, first his child, then his wife. And it was easier to live in the past, to continue to live with their memory, than it was to figure out how to create a new life without them. He didn't want to create a new life. He didn't want to figure out how to live without them.

He wanted to live with them. And this was his way of doing that.

Why did everyone think that was so wrong? Tina did it. She excelled at her work and then went home at night and spent the evening wrapped in memories of the man she loved. Was it so destructive? Sure, it wasn't what most people did, but that didn't make it wrong.

Ken bought his dead daughter a tricycle on her third birthday. She would never ride it. No one would ever ride it. But so what? What did it hurt? Why were his friends aghast when he showed it to them?

Ken stopped paddling and rubbed his right temple. Why couldn't they understand that he just wasn't ready to let them go?

'When will you be ready to let them go' Diana had asked him. Her voice was so plaintive at the time that he thought she was whining because he wouldn't kiss her. Maybe she had meant it as a serious question.

What was he waiting for? Was he waiting for some sign? Some signal that enough time had passed? Or that he had felt their loss deeply enough, long enough, hard enough that now it was time for him to let them go? Was he waiting for some signal to prove that he had loved them well enough?

He shook his head.

No. He didn't need to let them go. Just because everyone else had moved on, that didn't mean that he had to. He could stay with them for as long as he wanted to stay with them.

He looked at the worry in Marjeta's eyes as she scanned the water for a sign of Tina's arrival. Why couldn't they understand that it wasn't so bad living with the memories, real or made up, of his loved ones. It wasn't a bad life at all.

"Here she comes," Matt informed them.

"How are you, sweetie," Marjeta asked with love in her voice.

Tina's eyes were red rimmed and she sniffled. She took a deep breath. "I'll be fine."

She paddled ahead of them. "But you laggards are letting the line get too loose. Put your backs into it. We're almost at Sard Point." She sailed past them and Ken started paddling faster to catch up with her.

"Are you going out to the ocean?" he asked.

She smiled brightly in the moonlight. "Oh yeah. Wouldn't miss it for anything."

"How long are you going to be?"

"Oh, half hour or so, maybe," she said.

She pointed at the beach.

"Jiri already has the bonfire set up. It's just waiting for a match. I'll be back before it burns low."

She smiled.

"Besides, Marjeta's making smores over an open fire. I don't want to miss those."

"Are you going alone?"

"Oh no. Six or seven of us will go. Maybe five; it depends on how Viktor feels tonight. The damp tends to settle in his joints now. Herbert, Joe, Donna, Darrell. Maybe Jiri will join us. Though he likes the bon fire more than the ocean, at his age."

"Come on shore with us," Marjeta said to Ken.

"No, don't turn it like that!"

Ken turned to see the father of the eight year old reach out and pull on the nose of his daughter's kayak. She was trying with all her strength to turn the kayak toward shore. The nose bobbed below the water line as she turned. It flipped onto its side. The little girl fell with it, hit her head against her father's kayak, slid out of the kayak and into the water. She lay in the water for a moment, face down, her life vest keeping her afloat, before her thin body slid out of the life vest and she sank out of sight.

Before Ken even realized what was going on, Tina dove into the water, her legs sliding out of the kayak while it was on its side.

"Flashlights!" Viktor shouted. "Shine your flashlights in the water."

"Karen!" the father shouted. "Where's Karen? Karen, where are you?" He looked in every direction but couldn't find his daughter. He water frothed and churned under his chaotic paddle.

Darrell, the kayak trip guide unbuckled himself and slid in to dive for the girl. Matt was already in the water.

Tina came up for air. "Stop him. He's making it too hard see," she said, pointing to the father who was stirring up the water. She slapped her hand on the closest kayak. "Flashlight," she demanded.

Donna handed her the flashlight and Tina dove underwater. Matt took the paddle away from the girl's father and squeezed his forearm tightly to calm him.

"Everyone, back away and form a circle," Matt told them.

Ken watched as the torchlight became dimmer as Tina went deeper and deeper. Darrell came up for air and went down again.

"Does anybody see her?" Viktor asked. "Shine your lights across the surface. Does anyone see her?"

Ken couldn't see Tina's light anymore. He looked to where he thought she last was, but he couldn't see anything. The full moon reflected wildly off the churning water, refracting into a thousand moons, a thousand circles of light.

They all turned when they heard a splash to their right. It was Tina, coming up for air. She gasped for air and took a mouthful of water instead. But she had the girl. The current must have pulled her, pulled them both, out toward the mouth of the bay.

Tina flipped on her back and pulled the little girl up onto her body, clutching her around her shoulders. Tina coughed water, sank below the water line and pushed with her feet to rise to the top again.

Matt swam over, pulled Tina into a lifesaver hold and pulled them both shore. At the edge of the beach Jiri took the little girl from Tina.

Jiri laid Karen on the sand and checked for a pulse.

"She has a pulse but she's not breathing," he shouted.

He cleared her mouth and pushed a large breath of air into it. He kneeled back, took a deep breath and did it again. The little girl started to cough and then coughed up water. Jiri turned her on her side so she wouldn't swallow the water again.

Matt helped Tina crawl out of the water and over to the side of the sand bar where she vomited buckets of water. The retching stopped and she rolled over onto her back, sucking the cool night air into her lungs. She started to cough again and rolled onto her side as she coughed up more water.

It all happened so quickly. Ken and Viktor and Marjeta were still in their kayaks, in almost the same positions they were in when Karen first fell in. Karen's father was paddling furiously with his hand to get to shore but wasn't making any headway.

"Breath slowly," Matt cautioned Tina. "Shallow breaths. You have water in your lungs."

Darrell swam ashore. He knelt next to the fire and ripped open the bag that had been strapped to the back of his kayak. He pulled out an emergency space blanket and ran over to Karen.

"Wrap her in this and get her close to the fire," he told Jiri.

He tossed another blanket to Matt. "Her too."

Darrell took the lighter and starter torch that Jiri had prepared to light the bon fire. It flared in the night and then settled down to a hefty burn.

Matt struggled to open the space blanket packaging with his gloves on. He swore and then struggled to get the gloves off. He finally succeeded in both and wrapped the blanket around Tina's shoulders. "Come on," he said, helping her to her feet.

Tina leaned heavily against Matt as she stumbled toward the fire.

Karen's father scrambled up onto the beach and knelt at her side. "Karen, honey," he murmured repeatedly.

Darrell held his cell phone and shined the flashlight on it. "Damn. I have no reception."

He looked around.

"Does anyone else have a cell phone?" Darrell asked. "Do you have reception?"

Jiri fished his cell phone out of his pocket and tossed it to Darrell.

"Great." Darrell called 911, told them where they were and what had happened.

"Does she have a head wound?" Darrell asked Jiri.

Jiri looked at Karen's head with a flashlight. "A bump, but no bleeding."

"Tina's leg has been cut. She's bleeding," Matt informed them.

Matt took his pocket knife out and cut through Tina's dry suit to expose her leg. "The wound is six inches long, looks like an inch at the deepest. Throw me some water," he commanded.

Ken ran it over to him.

"Pour it over her wound."

Ken opened the fresh bottle and poured it over Tina's leg.

Tina sucked in her breath and started to cough.

The water diluted the blood. When the water stopped, the wound started to bleed again.

"Persistent bleeding, but no artery damage," Matt told Darrell, who informed the emergency dispatch.

"Give me something dry and cotton," Matt said.

Ken unzipped his drysuit and took off his t-shirt. Matt wrapped it tightly around Tina's leg. He ripped it at the knee and tied it on each side. "That should hold you," he told her.

"That hurt," Tina whispered. Her voice was raw and she immediately started coughing again.

"You have water in your lungs. Don't talk. Don't breathe heavily. Take only shallow breaths," he reminded her.

Matt turned to Ken. "Stay with her. Remind her to breathe slowly and shallowly. Make her sit partially upright and leaning onto her right side."

Matt went to talk to Darrell. "Tina's having problems breathing. I think she got too much water in her stomach and lungs. She was underwater for a long time. I think the air sacs have collapsed in her right lung and her left could go at any time." He turned to look at Tina. "Tell them to get here quickly. Ask them what we should do."

Darrell looked at Matt wide-eyed for a moment and then handed Matt the phone. Matt detailed the situation and then listened. "They say it's going to take the Coast Guard twenty-five minutes to get here. They can have an ambulance here in ten if we can get her to the Pierce Point Ranch. Anyone know where that is?"

"It's about a ten or fifteen minute walk from here, at the Tomales Point Trailhead," Darrell told him.

"I can carry Tina. Can you carry the little girl? Have Ken and Marjeta help?" Matt asked.

"Oh yeah," Darrell said. "We can take the girl, but are you sure you can carry Tina that far? And should she be moved?"

Matt spoke into the phone with the emergency operator and then he motioned for Marjeta. He handed her the phone. "Stay on the line and relay any information."

Marjeta nodded.

"Here's what we're going to do," Matt said, corralling everyone. "The ambulance will meet us at the trailhead. But we have to get there."

He pointed to the girl's father.

"You're coming with us. Ken and Darrell will carry Karen. I'll take Tina. Marjeta will come with us and stay on the line with emergency services."

He pointed to Viktor.

"Viktor, can you put out the fire and then take the rest of them back in the kayaks?"

"Yah!" Viktor replied, nodding.

"There's not enough room in the ambulance for all of you, so you'll have to go back on the water. We'll send word when we've reached the hospital," Matt told the group.

He walked over to Jiri and shook his hand. "Excellent job on the CPR. You saved her life. You should be proud. Now go help your father get the rest of these folks back safely."

He wrapped the blanket around Karen. "How are you doing, little one?" He picked her up and handed her to Darrell.

"Walk fast, but carefully," Matt said to Darrell. "Marjeta, hold the flashlight so Darrell can see where he's going."

He walked over to Tina and Ken.

She started to stand. "I can do this," she whispered.

Matt scooped her up in his arms. He narrowed his eyes and spoke sternly. "Shut up. Don't talk. Just breathe shallowly." He looked at Ken. "Hold the flashlight so I don't stumble and fall on her."

He carried her away from the fire, following Marjeta, Darrell carrying Karen, Karen's father and Ken. "You're shivering," Matt said to Tina.

Tina grunted in agreement. She fought back a cough.

"Ken, give me the light." Ken put it into Matt's hand. "Go back and get the wool cap out of your kayak. Another blanket or coat. Anything to keep her warm."

"I'll be right back," Ken said.

"Just stay on the trail and you'll catch up to us," Darrell told him.

Ken ran back to the camp. The full moon lit the trail well enough so he could see and not stumble or turn an ankle. When he arrived at camp, Jiri gave Ken his cap and Viktor gave Ken his wool sweater. They found two more blankets in an emergency pack.

Ken caught up with the walkers quickly. He gave one blanket to Karen's father, who wrapped it around the child's legs and tucked it under Darrell's arm. Ken put the wool cap on Tina's head and put the wool sweater in the bowl of her belly to trap the heat. He wrapped the remaining blanket around her legs, careful not to touch her wound. He wrapped the scarf around her neck and tucked it up until it reached the bottom of the cap. Tina's face was very white in the moonlight.

"Do you want me to take her?" Ken asked.

"I have her. Go spell Darrell," Matt replied.

Ken took Karen from Darrell who dropped back to hold the flashlight for Matt.

It took them eighteen minutes, walking quickly but carefully, to reach the trailhead. The ambulances were there waiting for them, their red lights bouncing off the sand dunes. Matt, Ken and Marjeta rode with Tina while Darrell and Karen's father went in the second ambulance with Karen. They reached the hospital in thirty minutes and the two patients were checked in and hooked up to fluids and monitors within the hour.

The doctor came into the waiting room. "Is anyone here family?" he asked.

"We're all family," Marjeta replied. "How is she?"

The doctor turned to Matt. "Well, you were right about the collapsed alveoli. Are you a doctor?"

Matt shook his head. "No, but I've had some emergency medical training."

"Is she going to be OK?" Marjeta asked again.

"She's stable. She's getting fluids to stabilize the salt content in her blood. I gave her a sedative so she can sleep. Her leg wound has been cleaned and stitched and I see no complications from that. She'll have a scar as a reminder, but the wound will heal."

He rubbed his hand over his bald head. "Her lungs, though." He shook his head. "If she makes it through the next forty-eight hours, she'll be fine. She won't be winning a shouting match any time soon, but we'll have to monitor her closely until then."

"What are the possibilities?" Matt asked.

"In most near-drowning victims, the laryngospasm is what saves their lives," the doctor explained. "That's how little Karen survived. Upon water entering the airways, the larynx or the vocal chords in the throat constrict and seal the air tube. This prevents water from entering the lungs. Due to this laryngospasm, water enters the stomach in the initial phase of drowning and very little water enters the lungs. This is why Karen coughed up water; it was water from her stomach."

He motioned for them to sit down. "Tina, however, wasn't drowning. She was holding her breath, trying to save Karen. People can voluntarily hold their breath for some time, but the breathing reflex will increase until the victim will try to breathe, even when submerged, which is what Tina did. The breathing reflex in the human body is weakly related to the amount of oxygen in the blood but strongly related to the amount of carbon dioxide. As the level of oxygen in the blood decreases, the level of carbon dioxide increases. Increasing carbon dioxide levels lead to a stronger and stronger breathing reflex, up to the breath-hold breakpoint, at which the victims can no longer voluntarily hold their breath. If water enters the airways of a conscious victim, the victim will try to cough up the water, or swallow it, thus inhaling more water involuntarily." He fiddled with his scrub cap.

"Tina gulped a lot of water in her stomach and in her lungs. Water damages the inside surface of the lung, collapses the alveoli, the air sacs, and causes a hardening of the lungs with a reduced ability to exchange air. This may cause death, even hours later."

He reached out and held Marjeta's hand. "I'm not trying to scare you, just trying to tell you why the next forty-eight hours is so important."

"Salt water is much saltier than blood, and due to osmosis, water will leave her blood stream. The thicker blood requires more work from the heart, leading to cardiac arrest. This is why it's important for us to rebalance the salt level in her blood, to prevent cardiac arrest."

"So you see, even though she didn't drown, she still isn't out of danger. Her lungs could become so damaged that she could stop breathing. Or she could go into cardiac arrest. We're going to keep her for a couple days to monitor her. You can go home and get some sleep. She's not going to wake up until late afternoon. I'll call you if there are any changes."

"I'll stay," Marjeta and Ken said at the same time.

"No, really. It's better for her if no one is in the room. Go home, change your clothes, change out of your wet suits, get something to eat and at least wait for the sun to come up before you return." He rose.

"Call me. The second she wakes up, I'm the first to know," Marjeta insisted.

He nodded. "You know I will."

Ken settled into the lounge chair and gazed up at the stars. "I could never tire of this sight," he said with a comfortable sigh.

"Me neither," Tina agreed.

He pointed to the cup of tea on the table. "Marjeta said to make sure you drank that. You aren't supposed to be out here, you know. The doctor said to stay inside when it was damp out, at least for the first couple weeks."

He heard her take a deep breath and then hold in a cough.

"It's a clear night. There's no fog. It's not damp out," she argued.

Ken shook his head. "You'd quibble about whether the sun rose in the east."

Tina smiled. "Well, actually, there is no east in space. It's an irrelevant direction imposed by..."

Ken held up his hands. "OK, OK, you win." He laughed. "How did you do today on the spirometer?"

"My ventilation rate keeps improving. After I sent the results, Doctor Eastwood emailed that he's happy with the results and he'll come up this weekend to check on me." She turned to Ken. "He really just wants to eat a real meal at Viktor's. I shared some of the meals Viktor brought to me in the hospital with the Doc."

"Uh hu," Ken replied. Doctor Eastwood really just wanted to see Tina again, outside of a work capacity, but Ken wasn't about to say that out loud.

"He says that if my breathing keeps improving at the same rate over the next week that I just might escape without any lung damage at all."

'And your leg?"

"Oh man! My leg is like a magnet for every object I walk by. A tree can be two feet away and somehow I can hit my leg against it. And it's only my wounded, leg, you know. The other leg doesn't bump into anything." She readjusted her leg on the lounge. "I smacked it a good one going around the kitchen corner." She snorted. "I thought I was going to pass out."

"You have to keep walking." Her lungs needed to be flexed now so they didn't scar. He heard her take a deep breath and hold in another cough.

He turned to look at her. He could barely see the outline of her head against the black forest behind her. "And how are you doing? Marjeta says you've been quiet all day."

Tina picked at her fingernail. "What's new with the find?"

Ken shook his head. She wasn't subtle about changing the subject. "Matt is having a blast. He went down today with his scuba gear. It seems they're having trouble finding lights bright enough to penetrate the darkness. They found a ship down there."

"What?" She took another deep breath and held it.

"A ship. A very old, wooden ship."

"In the middle of Tomales Bay?"

"Yep. They ran some deep-level sonar tests yesterday and found a narrow but very deep chasm in the middle of the bay, running along the San Andreas Fault. And in that chasm, down very deep and somewhere very dark, is a ship. Matt poked around and he said ship is well settled in there. The keel is covered in silt, in some places silt goes over the top of the deck."

Ken snorted. "So now we've got the Drake Navigators Guild, the Point Reyes Preservation Community and the Oceanic Society squawking. Every Treasure Hunter Bob and his brother have come out to claim a piece of the ship."

"You thought the press was thick when they found out that a friend of Ken Richards saved a little eight year old girl's life?" Ken snorted again. "They are lining up layers deep to talk to you now that you've discovered what may be Sir Francis Drake's lost ship."

Tina lifted her hands. "Me? I didn't have anything to do with this."

Ken tilted his chin at her wrapped leg. "The speculation is that you scraped your leg against the broken mast of the lost ship. It's the only thing we've found down there."

"Uh uh," she objected. "I read on the internet this morning that I survived an encounter with the Tomales Bay monster."

Ken laughed. He had read the same article, with child-drawings for pictures and everything. "We really don't know what you scraped your leg against," Ken admitted. "The mast is thirty meters below water. Matt says there's no way either of you could have gone that deep and survived."

Tina shrugged. "Remember the tide was going out that night. That's why we were pulled toward the mouth to the bay. The mast would be higher in the water at low tide than high tide."

"That still doesn't explain how you could have come up, from that depth, without blacking out."

"I think I did," Tina admitted.

"What?"

Tina stared at the stars. "I think I may have blacked out. There are parts I don't remember very well."

"Doctor Eastwood says it's not uncommon for people to forget traumatic events."

Tina shook her head. "No, it's not like that. I remember going down and seeing Karen. She was caught in a deep underwater current and she tumbling through the water, slowly rolling over sideways."

Tina took a sip of the tea before it cooled too much.

"I swam to her. I turned her around and hooked my left arm over her shoulder and under her right armpit. That's when I felt it. The current. It was strong. And the water was cold. Really really cold."

She shuddered and looked at Ken. "You have to remember, I had a drysuit on. It shouldn't have felt the cold. But it was colder than frigid. It felt like ice, not water."

She took another sip of tea.

"I kicked off, and that's when I hit the mast, or the monster, or whatever was down there. I didn't feel pain, it was too cold for that, but I felt my leg hit something. It caught for a moment and then I yanked it free and kicked toward the surface."

She set the tea cup down as her hands started to shake.

"The only light I could see was the moon. And it was small, like a nickel. It was small and dim and so very far away." She cradled her elbows in her hands.

She shook her head. "I kicked and I could see the moon getting a little larger, but I wasn't getting to the surface fast enough. I desperately needed to breathe. I was fighting my body, trying to convince it not to gulp in anything because I knew I'd only get a mouthful of water. And then the moon started to turn orange, then pink, then red and then my sight started to go grey at the edges. And then I think I took a breath. And then..."

She looked away into the darkness of the forest of Bishop pines. "And then I saw him. I saw Jake." She closed her eyes and smiled slightly. "God, he was gorgeous. His skin was tan and his teeth were white when smiled at me. There was a soft light behind him and his blond hair was long, down to his shoulders, and it wafted through the water, swirling around his head like a nimbus."

A tear ran down her cheek. "I looked at him and he looked just like he did right before he died. Happy, Contented. Calm. But this time he had a smile on his face as if he knew something I didn't know, but was about to find out." She wiped at her nose. "And then he nodded. He moved his chin up and pointed to the surface." She mimicked his motion.

"I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to go up. But that's not what I wanted. I didn't want to rise to the surface. I wanted to go to him." She took a rattled breath and coughed slightly. "His smile changed, like he knew what I was thinking. But he knew something else, too. He knew the right thing to do and he knew that I would do it. With his chin he pointed to the surface again. And this time, I looked up." She blew out the air raggedly from her lungs and coughed.

"And the next thing I remember, I saw the moon, big and bright in full clear air. I was up out of the water. Karen was still in my arms. Everyone was shouting and I couldn't breathe and then Matt and Jiri were there, pulling both of us ashore. And then Matt was holding me as water drained out of every orifice." She hesitated. "And Jake was gone."

"Why didn't you tell anyone? Before now?"

"Because they wouldn't understand," she motioned to the house where her friends were. "They would think I was doing what I've done for the last four years; holding onto Jake." She wiped her eyes with the edge of her blanket. "They wouldn't understand that I wasn't hanging on. I was letting go." She started to cry again. "For four years I hung on to Jake, not wanting to give him up. I didn't want to live my life without him."

"But down there," she whispered. "When push came to shove, I had two options. Stay with Jake and drown, or live and leave Jake behind." She shrugged. "We know which one I chose. Now I just have to figure out how to go on without him."

Ken rose and squeezed onto the lounge chair with Tina, careful not to kick her wounded leg. She laid her head on his shoulder and cried lightly.

"I haven't spoken to my wife and daughter since that night either," he told her. It had been ten days since the full moon. He thought of them every day, but not with the same compulsion to clutch their memories and hold them tightly in his mind. "It was time for me to let them go, too."

That night, on the water, his eyes had scanned the water surface for any hint of Karen or Tina. It had seemed like an eternity. And in that eternity, he had realized that he had been concentrating so hard on holding on to his dead wife and child, that the living people around him were slipping through his fingers.

That night on the bay he didn't even know the child's name before her father called it, but the thought of her death frightened him more than anything he had ever known. It wasn't her death, not her specifically, but it was then that he realized he was trying to live in a world that didn't exist any more. And, even worse, he was rejecting the world around him; the world that did exist.

He had been living in the past and that night, on the water, before Tina rose, it hit him. It hit him like a Mack truck coming out of nowhere at a hundred miles an hour. It hurt. Physically hurt. His entire body had felt like it had been jarred. He had been sitting in one spot and then, without physically moving, he was ripped out of that spot and was thrown into another spot. His head spun so violently that it had made him nauseous. And then Tina surfaced and a new commotion started and he was in a different world. He was no longer living in the past. He had been ripped into the present.

He pulled Tina closer.

The present wasn't bad at all.

The End

#

#

#  Walk with God

"How long have you known me, Buck?"

"You brought me a Bible my first night here. Almost eight years ago." Buck made his opening move: white pawn to king-4. He pointed with his head to where the bible sat alone on a bookshelf, unopened since their first meeting. Buck couldn't bring himself to throw it away. "You're the only one who stayed with me."

"God was with me while I was with you. So God has been with you for these eight years too, Buck."

She opened with black pawn to queen bishop-4. Her sleeve brushed against the bishop. She rolled the wide sleeve of her habit up and tucked it in tightly.

"We are never alone," she said.

Buck glanced at the watch she had placed on the table near the chess board. He moved his second pawn to queen-4.

"In less than an hour I will be alone."

She moved her pawn to king-knight-3.

"No, Buck, in less than an hour you will be with God." She fingered an ancient wooden crucifix around her neck. The curve of Christ's feet was worn smooth.

"Sister Mary, you know I don't believe that shit. You'll go to heaven, but you won't see me or any of these sorry-ass inmates there. We'll be rottin' in hell."

Buck moved his knight to king bishop-3.

"As we should be," he said.

Sister Mary took Buck's pawn with her own.

"If you take God into your heart before you die, Buck, God will accept you afterwards."

"I keep telling you, God doesn't exist!"

Buck took Mary's pawn with his knight. He slammed his conquest on the table. The pieces rattled.

"If God existed, he wouldn't of let me rape that woman." Buck closed his eyes. His voice fell.

"And he wouldn't of let me go back and kill her when I found out she was preggers."

"But the child lived, Buck." Mary moved her knight to queen-bishop-3. Her thumb worried Christ's feet.

"And what kind of life did that child have? An orphan, shuffled from one abusive foster home to the next. She probably ran away when she was old enough, just like I did." Buck moved his knight to queen bishop-3. "Did you find her yet?" It was the tentative voice of a scared child.

"The child walked with God, Buck." Mary moved her bishop to king-knight-2. "She had the best life a person could wish for." Mary reached up and unclasped her habit at the throat.

"You found my baby?" Buck's eyes widened. "Is she here?" He looked at the nun across from him. His eyes narrowed. "What'cha doing, Sister Mary?"

"The doctors were able to save the child because you called 911, Buck." She removed the white throat piece and set it on the box for the chess pieces.

"Sister?" Buck backed away from the chess board. He squeezed his fingers under his arms.

"She was sheltered in the Sister Magdalene Orphanage. She never knew a foster home, Buck. Only the loving home of Christ." She unpinned the long black veil that hung down her back and folded it neatly onto her lap.

Buck watched the nun from the side of his right eye. The left kept a lookout for the night guard.

"She took her vows at seventeen and began visiting prison inmates a year later. She liked working with the men on death row. Especially one."

Mary removed the cap that covered her cropped hair. She straightened the matted mess with her fingers.

"Especially you, Buck." She cornered his king with her queen.

"Checkmate, Father."

Buck jumped as if he had been hit. His foot knocked the chess board off the table. The pieces rattled around the small cell. A white queen and a black rook bounced between the bars and into the walkway. Buck fell heavily against the wall. The ten by ten cell closed in on him, pushing air from his lungs. A tiny woman stood in front of him, her visage shadowed by the hallway light streaming through the bars behind her.

"Jesus Christ! You look just like her!" Spittle ran down his chin and he brushed it away with trembling fingers.

"How come I didn't see it before?"

Mary smiled. "People tend to see the habit, Buck, not the person. A bride of Christ's should be invisible to others. Especially to other men."

Mary picked up the errant board and set it softly on the table. She looked at the clock. Thirty minutes remained before they would take her father away.

"How long have you known?"

"I've always known. There are no lies in God's house. I requested a transfer to an order near San Quentin the day I took my vows." Mary sat on the edge of her chair, her back straight and rigid. Her eyes sparkled.

Buck ran his fingers roughly over his face. "Why didn't you tell me? All those years you pretended to search for my daughter..."

"Things happen on God's time, Buck, not ours. I told you in time to save you. So you, too, can walk with God." She ran her forefinger along the back edge of the crucifix.

Buck leapt to his feet. "How can you not hate me? I killed your mother!" He turned his back on her and leaned both hands against the only bare wall.

"God has filled me only with love for you, Buck, not hate."

She rose and went to him. "You are my father and I will always love you. No matter what you may see, remember that." She placed her hand on his hard shoulder.

Buck turned and collapsed into her arms. Mary toppled under the big man's weight and they fell to the floor. They held each other like two people lost on a wild sea, clutching to a lone life preserver. Tears streamed down Buck's face.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he repeated over and over.

Mary rocked her father in her lap. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks dry. Her lips moved silently in the Lord's prayer.

The guard's key rattled in the cell lock. "It's time."

Buck's strong arms tightened around the small woman. "No! I need more time."

Sister Mary gripped his broad shoulders, strength emanating from her thin fingers.

"Walk with God, Buck, and I will always be with you."

Buck turned away from his daughter as he was shackled. His face burned. When they escorted him into the hallway he turned and asked, "Will you be there?"

His daughter, conceived in violence, was once again hidden within the folds of her habit. She nodded.

"You promise?"

"It won't happen without me."

It was one minute before midnight and still he did not see her. The guards had removed his shoes and strapped him into a hard chair with a straight back. They opened the curtain but Buck couldn't find her eyes in the sea of grinning faces before him. The guard started to put a black hood over Buck's head.

"No, we have to wait. Sister Mary's not here yet." Buck struggled against the restraints. He heard the click of the P.A.

"I am with you, Buck."

Buck turned and saw his daughter. She wasn't in the audience. Sister Mary was in a side room. One hand caressed the worn crucifix around her neck, the other clutched the handle of a large red circuit switch.

Darkness enveloped him as a guard put the hood over Buck's head.

"Walk with God, father," was the last thing he heard.

The End

#

#

#  Vega One

"Vega One is in your hands, Vyr." Gare Jolen pressed a blue button and the door sealed behind him with a hydraulic hiss. He quickly strapped himself into the pilot's seat and began the takeoff checklist.

"Preflight check has been completed, sir," the First Officer said.

"Thank you, Poular," Gare said and continued with the check. "No slight against you, but I'm piloting her today and the preflight checklist is all mine." A large grin showed his white teeth.

Since becoming captain seven years ago he had been able to pilot the shuttle pod only twelve times. He loved being captain of the Vega-One, but wished he could fly his own shuttle pod more often. He had to command Vyr to remain on board and his Security Officer did not hide his displeasure. Not that Gare had ever seen his Teggan friend suppress an emotion in the fifteen years he had known him.

The First Officer turned and winked at the other passengers. "Hold tight," Poular joked just before Gare lifted the shuttle pod from the docking clamps.

"That's one bleak looking planet," Harpe said as he gazed out the pod window.

"Don't you think it's odd that doesn't have a name? In the ASP star-system map, it's just called P9-263A. Every planet should have a name." Bazat twitched her nose. "Maybe it's because it smells funny."

"You're inside a hermetically sealed shuttle pod, Bazat. The seal is tight enough to keep out the vacuum of space. You can't smell the planet." Harpe shook his head at her statement.

"You may not be able to smell the planet, with that virtually useless Legian nose of yours. But my Kodorian nose can smell the planet. And I'm telling you, it smells funny. Stale. Moldy." Bazat sneezed. "Musty."

Gare settled the shuttle pod near the foothills of a long mountain range.

"The planet's air is suitable but the gravity will be a little heavier than you're used to. Make sure you take frequent breaks when you're walking." Poular looked up into the cloudless sky. "Especially in this sun's heat," she added. Poular checked Harpe's and Bazat's packs for food, water, medical supplies and functioning communications gear before she handed them over.

Gare set two large urns on the dry soil. "Harpe, how far are you going to have to drill to get to the Plenium?"

"Not far at all, Cap. Plenium is practically drifting in the topsoil," he said with glee, rubbing his hands together.

He set up the automatic Plenium extractor and switched it on. He studied the display panel. "This is some rich Plenium. Our hyperdrive will be happy, once it gets a taste of this batch."

"We'll be back here in six hours to pick you up," Poular shouted from the hatch before closing it.

"Don't be late," Harpe replied and slapped the side of the pod with his hand. A fine layer of dust billowed upwards. Harpe sneezed. "You're right, Bazat. This planet smells funny."

Gare settled the shuttle half a mile from what appeared to be a decades-old crash site. He handed a pack to Poular. "We'll pick you up in five and a half hours."

"See you then." She slapped the side of the pod with her hand.

Gare and Revva flew to the other side of the planet. The map system said the planet was uninhabited and they had found no life signs, but from orbit the ship had detected a small heat signature and they decided to check it out. The map system had been known to be wrong before.

"Looks like an encampment," Revva said as they walked closer. The building looked like it once had four walls but the front and left walls were missing, replaced with hanging tarps that billowed in the dust-filled wind. The remaining two walls were rusty but well secured both to each other and to the square mobile foundation.

Gare checked the sensors. "No life signs. It's the source of the heat signature, but it looks abandoned."

Revva ducked inside and pushed past the tarp with his gloved hand. He spied a pot of stew simmering over a fire. Water boiled in another pot near it. A makeshift bowl sat on a shelf attached to the rusted wall. "Guess again," he said. He peered deeply into the dark corners, looking for the home's host.

"Do you hear that?" Gare asked, resting his hand on his weapon.

Gare and Revva ducked out of the makeshift building and turned right, walking behind the structure. Gare heard a rhythmic pounding, followed by a rattle. Then the rhythmic noise again for four beats, followed by another rattle. Gare looked at Revva. Revva shrugged and Gare pulled his weapon out of its holster.

They walked south, toward a rock wall. The sound stopped. Gare poked his head around the wall. Behind the natural wall was a rectangular box canyon; three high walls with the only opening where he now stood. There was a ball in the middle of the rectangle. The canyon ground looked unnaturally flat, its dirt packed hard. Gare saw no one as he walked to the center of the yard.

Gare holstered his weapon and picked up the ball. He bounced it once, testing it. "Not bad." He dribbled toward a makeshift hoop anchored into the far wall and took a shot. The ball went through the hoop, which rattled.

"I guess that explains the sounds we were hearing," Revva said.

Revva spoke with most of his body still hidden behind the wall. He carried no weapon but as a Beppar he needed none. His teeth were as sharp as any sword and his four arms acted as a vice strong enough to crush any biped's spine. His jaw held pockets of poison which he could pool in the hollow of his tongue and eject outwards over fifty feet. His body was covered by a leathery skin six inches thick which acted like a hard shell. He had ten fingers on each of his four hands and each hand held two fingers tipped with claws strong enough to slice through most metals. He wore a choke collar around his neck, though there was no chain through the control loop. Instead, a circle separated by a squiggly line hung from a thin gold chain, displaying his allegiance to The Spirit Order.

"The ball's a little soft, but the court's nice. Level. Firm." Gare took another shot. He appeared nonchalant but his eyes scanned the box canyon, looking for the cook and basketball court maker.

Revva entered the box canyon cautiously, also looking around for whoever made the noise before Gare started making it. He stopped in mid-stride when he saw the head of a woman peeking out from a crevice in the wall. Revva watched her. She had glanced at Revva once, but her attention was quickly drawn back to Gare who was bouncing the ball.

"I wonder who made the court?" Gare asked, turning toward Revva.

"Her?" He nodded his head to where the woman stood.

The woman stepped out from the crevice and casually leaned against the wall. She stared at Gare for a moment, squeezed her eyes tightly and then re-opened them. She shook her head roughly from left to right as if to clear it. A cloud of dust billowed from her long, tangled hair.

The crevice she came out of was angled perfectly to remain hidden from where ever any one else stood upon the court. Gare knew it wasn't a natural formation. Someone had designed it. Someone who wanted to hide very effectively. Gare wondered if she was that someone.

Gare bounced the ball to her. "Play a game?" he asked.

Gare wasn't sure what species he was looking at. She was a biped, two arms, one head, but that didn't tell him much. She was a thin, almost emaciated woman. Tattered rags billowed away from her body in the strong wind. It was hard to tell the color of her skin beneath the layers of dust that covered her. She carried a knife at her side but her hand didn't flinch toward it.

The woman caught the ball easily. She held it in front of her for a moment, her eyes wide with shock.

"So it's come to this, has it?" she said.

She stood considering the situation for a moment and then smiled an impish smile.

"Cool!" She shrugged and stepped onto the makeshift court.

She turned to Revva. "Joining us?"

Revva settled onto a rock. "I'll just watch for a while, thank you."

The woman stopped and looked at him quizzically.

"Why would you be here if you're not going to play?" she asked.

Revva cocked his head to the left. "Gare once told me that this was a spectator sport."

The woman shrugged. "Suit yourself."

She dribbled the ball around Gare and put it through the hoop. They returned to the dark line on the ground at center court. She bounced the ball to the new player.

"My name is Gare. What should I call you?" he asked and bounced the ball back to her.

She shot and it went through the hoop with a swish.

"Like you don't know," she responded. "You know everything I know."

Gare caught the ball and shrugged his shoulders at Revva. Gare stood in front of the dark line on the ground and bounced the ball to her.

The woman darted out and around Gare. Gare went left and came up in front of her below the hoop. The woman ran right into him, as if thinking she could run through him. Her body collided heavily with Gare's. She bounced off and fell backwards onto the hard-packed dirt. She rolled over and leapt into a crouch, her body balanced lightly on the balls of her feet. The ball skidded across the court and settled into a hollow near the wall.

"Sorry," Gare said and reached out to help her to her feet.

The woman scuttled away in fear. She whipped out her knife and held it in front of her. Her eyes flitted wildly around the court.

"You've never done that before," she whispered.

She thrust the knife in Gare's direction. He retreated.

"It's OK," Gare said. "I won't hurt you." He held his hands out in front of him to show her he wasn't holding a weapon and that he meant his words.

Revva walked toward them and motioned for Gare to move back. The woman looked quizzically at her bleeding forearm, keeping one eye on the strangers. She flicked a piece of rock out of her arm with the knife tip and then pressed her arm tightly to her pant's leg to stem the bleeding.

"Let us help you," Revva offered. He walked slowly toward her with his hands in front of him. He kept his sharp claws tucked under their protective fold of skin.

The woman's eyes twitched from Revva to Gare and back again.

"I got it," she said, standing up. She walked toward Revva, holding the knife at his throat level. With her wounded hand she reached out and squeezed his left forearm. She grunted, shook her head and walked away from them, toward the encampment.

"What was that about?" Gare asked Revva. They followed her inside.

The woman dipped a piece of cloth into the boiling water. She removed it with the tip of her knife and waved it through the air to cool. She took the still-steaming cloth and wrapped it securely around her forearm, gritting her teeth against the heat and the pain of her raw wound. She saw Gare and Revva in the doorway. "Oh, please. Do come in." Her voice was polite, almost mocking.

"You'll have to excuse the sparse accommodations, but I'm transferring everything to the new location. But then you already know that, don't you," she stated without asking. She sat on the floor and motioned for them to follow.

Gare looked quizzically at Revva. "I'm Captain Gare Jolen, of the Association of Planetary Systems starship Vega-One. And this is Revva." Gare and Revva sat down across the fire from the woman. "And you are?"

The woman looked up at him with sarcasm on her face. "You can stop pretending you don't know who I am. I understand why you want to do it. You hope it will keep me occupied, but it's just irritating."

Gare looked at Revva who nodded. "Actually, we don't know. We just entered this solar system two days ago," Gare explained.

"If that's the game you want to play...." She sighed. "You may call me Milial." She scooped some stew into a bowl. She poured the boiling water into a cup over a thin cloth with herbs inside. "I'd offer you some, but I only have one bowl and cup." She held it up as evidence.

She held her palm to her mouth and a thin piece of silver slithered out between her lips and straightened into a needle. She set it on her knee and began to eat.

"Do you eat?" she asked.

Gare smiled. "As often as I can."

"I wonder....if I gave you some of this, I wonder if I would find it buried in the latrine tomorrow. Or maybe behind the court." She shook her head.

Gare sniffed the stew. "It smells pretty good. I don't think I'd bury it."

The woman chuckled. "I know you wouldn't," she explained. "But I would, to cover up the fact that you're not really here."

"Ah, I'm not following you," Gare told her.

"I believe I can help," Revva interrupted. He leaned forward and looked into her eyes. "We are real. We are not your imagination."

"Ah huh," the woman nodded, unconvinced.

Revva reached over and pulled the bowl from between her fingers. "Could your imagination do this?" he asked.

"Yes." The woman nodded and retrieved her bowl. "You used to just talk and flit about from place to place, just to drive me crazy. But I have to say I like this change, you having a solid form. It has a lot of potential."

"And would your imagination conjure up someone like me?" Revva asked, holding his hands out. Beppars were from a remote corner of the galaxy and most of the other species wished they had remained there. Revva was an excellent example of an average Beppar. He was five feet tall, had four arms, the top two short and nimble, the bottom two thick and strong. He kept his tail safely under his cloak but his clawed toes stuck out from the cloak's edge.

"I saw a vid of your kind once. You're called the...Beggars....Bemmars..."

"I am a Beppar," Revva supplied.

She moved her face closer to Revva's. "You have Yankel's eyes." She turned to look at Gare. "And you have my husband's hair." She reached over and ran her dirty fingers through Gare's hair. She pulled her hand back and closed her eyes. "Hmm. I haven't felt that in a long time," she whispered. A melancholy smile appeared on her face. "This is a really good change."

She took a deep breath, opened her eyes and nodded. "Yep. Figments of my imagination. You've never been able to return the ball before but it's nice that you can now. That's very nice. Now we'll be able to play some real games, rather than you just goading me while I shoot."

"You've imagined people before?" Gare asked. "Can the other people of your village see your imaginary friends?"

The woman scoffed. "Now you're just pissing me off." Her voice was low and hissed in warning.

Gare looked around the room. He saw one bed roll, one cup, one bowl. He saw only one daypack, one pair of shoes. He turned to the woman.

"There are no other villagers, are there?" he asked.

The woman finished eating. She placed the silver needle back in her mouth, in between her jawbone and cheek.

"I'll clean the bowl and then you can eat, if you want." Her voice sounded like she was testing them, to see how far her sense of reality had really fled.

"You are alone here." Revva stated softly.

Milial returned and filled the bowl. She handed it to Gare. "Go ahead. Let's see if you can eat," she challenged him.

Gare looked at Revva, who nodded his support. Gare took a bite.

"This is good!" he said, surprised.

"How long have you been here?" Revva asked gently.

Milial looked at scratches in the metal ceiling. "Nine years," she began. She looked at one wall and then the other, reading scratches in the metal. "Eleven months, and six days. Common Time."

"You've been alone on this planet for almost ten years?" Gare exclaimed.

"Maybe I should ask you instead. What's the date in Common Time?" Her smile told Gare she was once again testing them.

He told her the date.

Her face fell. She set her tea cup on the floor with trembling hands. "You are evil figments of my imagination to try and play such a vile trick on me." She glared at Gare. "You know I think I'm losing it, that I may have lost it a long time ago, and now you're trying to mess with me even more? I try very hard to mark one notch a day, and only one." She shook her head.

"I should have only counted the seasons, but I never thought I would be here seasons and years instead of just days or weeks."

She rubbed her hands across her face. Her face came out refreshed, calm.

"I can play your game." She raised her chin. "Fifteen years, then, by your calculations."

"You've been alone on this planet for fifteen years?" Gare exclaimed with even more surprise.

The woman looked at her hands twisting in her lap, seemingly of their own volition. She looked up with a small smile. "I haven't been alone. I've had my friends like you."

Her face turned to stone.

And my enemies."

"Was it your ship that crashed to the west?" Gare asked. Poular was investigating the area as he spoke.

"It was the ship of my people." She gazed to the west and her eyes shifted, focusing momentarily more on memory than on sight.

From orbit Gare had seen a crude layout of SOS, or at least the beginning of it. The first S and O were complete, but the last letter was only half-done. This encampment sat on the spot of fourth point in the partial S letter, which had led Gare and Revva here.

"You built the SOS?"

The woman laughed. "My latest attempt. It gets destroyed every now and then."

Gare looked at Revva. The woman had clearly lost her mind from isolation. Could she be destroying the SOS as soon as she builds it and not realize it?

From orbit they had also seen a series of graves, positioned in the formation of a ten-plane squad. There were nine graves with one spot left blank. "And the graves. They were your protection squad?"

"Yes." She nodded her head slowly. Her face turned sad. "None of their ships made it to the surface intact. Mine didn't either, exactly, but somehow...." she trailed off.

"You were in an escort plane?" Gare asked.

"I was a fighter pilot. We weren't so much escorting the passenger ship as protecting it." She rested her chin on her hands. "And we failed." She closed her eyes. "They all died. Every one of them died." She sighed deeply.

"Captain Jolen, this is Poular. Come in." Gare's radio crackled to life.

Milial jumped but then smiled. "Oh, more friends. I guess my imagination is expanding."

"Jolen here. What is it Poular?"

"Everything all right? You were supposed to pick me up ten minutes ago."

Jolen looked at this watch. "Hold," he spoke into the radio. He turned and motioned for Revva to join him outside.

"Please excuse us for just a moment." Revva spoke to her gently, as if speaking to a child.

"We can't just leave her like this," Gare told the Beppar. "She's alone on the planet, half out of her mind. The planet has no visible signs of food, water. I don't know how she has survived this long, but now that we know she's here, we have to take her with us. We'll drop her off at the first station we find." He ran fingers across his face to brush off the layer of dust that had already accumulated there. "We can't leave her here."

"I agree. But we also can't force her to come with us," the priest reminded him.

"Do you feel safe with her?"

"I feel safe anywhere." His smile, with its four rows of sharp, jagged teeth, reminded his old friend that while the Captain was seven feet tall, Revva was a Beppar. "But especially with her. I don't think she'll try to hurt her new company."

"I'll go pick up the crew and return for you within the hour. Your job is to convince her to come with us. We are not leaving her alone here."

"You'll want to hurry back," Milial said from the doorway. "The fog will start to form in a half an hour and within an hour you won't be able to fly. I wouldn't want my new friends to crash. Not like my old friends."

She turned and stared at the rusted doorjamb.

"Oh, that would be nasty for my imagination to conjure up such wonderful new playthings only to make me relive them crashing over and over again."

She raked her fingers across her face, contemplating the new horror.

"I think our shuttle pod can make it through a little fog," Gare commented on his way to his shuttle.

"If only it were a little fog," Milial replied, mostly to Revva. "It's thick enough to coat your shuttle with a honey-like substance that causes the gravitational force to square every ten minutes until you are pinned where you lay. You are unable to move until the fog lifts with the morning sun."

Revva looked at the blinding sun settling against the southern mountains.

"This isn't a very hospitable planet, is it?" he asked.

Milial ducked inside and added another black rock to her fire. It sparked, flared green and then settled into an orange glow. "You'll get used to it."

She took another sip of tea. "Except for the nights. If I could change one thing and only one thing, I know which one I would choose."

She settled her back against one wall.

"The winters are hot with no rain and a wicked wind that can move boulders. The summers are even hotter but no wind, not even a breeze. In all my time here, I've seen neither animal nor bird. Insects? Every planet has insects, but not this planet. There are no trees, no bushes, no flowers. No water springs forth from the ground. I have learned to live with all of that."

She tipped her head upwards.

"But I would give anything, anything I tell you, for just one minute to look at the stars again." Her shoulders drooped. "That blasted fog settles over the land every night. Summer, winter, it makes no difference. Every night for almost ten years. Ah, fifteen," she corrected herself.

She lowered her head to look at Revva. "You have to understand. I spent my life on a space station. I spent my life rotating, surrounded by stars. I could look at the stars night and day. And then we were forced to this planet. This planet where the fog hides the stars from me."

She spat into the fire and it sizzled.

"No matter where I go, how high I climb, the stars are kept from my eyes."

She squeezed the end of her cloak in her fingers.

"You are a priest, no?"

Revva nodded.

"To keep the stars from my eyes is to keep your god from you. It is the stars which feed my very soul. And my soul hasn't been fed for ten...fifteen years. That is the one thing I would change, if I could. I'll take everything else, even the visits from my enemies, but I just want to see the stars again before I die."

"Come with us and we'll take you to the stars," Revva offered. "You've seen our shuttle. We have another ship in orbit. A large ship. You'll be free of this planet which has held you prisoner. Your eyes will feast on more stars than your imagination can conjure."

Milial shook her head. "The other one I wasn't sure about, but I thought you were from the good part of my imagination. Now I see you are here to taunt me too. You offer me things that you know I cannot have. You are evil to play with me so."

Revva took her hand in his. "I am a priest of The Spirit Order. We speak only the truth. Always the truth. And I tell you that I am real and you can once again see your stars."

She pulled her hand from his warm grasp. "I dare not believe you. It will take too much out of me. Hope? After all these years?" She snorted. "Better to die without seeing the stars again then to let hope resurface inside my heart."

Revva reach inside his robe. "Have you ever seen the Tiger Eye from a planet called Suurie?"

She shook her head.

He pulled out a round orb and placed it in her palm.

"Do you think your imagination can conjure up something that you've never seen before?"

"How can I be certain?" She rolled the polished stone around in her palm. "If I have never seen a Tiger's Eye, how can I know if this really is one? I could have the tawny color wrong and its warmth and the heavy weight. I could have all of it wrong and I would never know, now would I?"

"Even if I tell you that this is a Tiger's Eye?"

"When I fall asleep and dream, I go to places I've never visited before. I go to planets which have blue suns and green sand. I taste berries that make my mouth water. I even name them, like Bilioxoberries. But I've never eaten a Bilioxoberry anywhere but in my dreams. They don't really exist, at least that I know of. And the only way that I really know that I'm dreaming is that eventually I wake up."

Milial pressed the warm stone against her cheek.

"I might wake up any moment now and all of this would just melt away. This stone. You. Your friends. Your offer of seeing the stars."

"But that's not what you're afraid of," Revva predicted, watching her twitching eyes.

Milial shook her head.

"No, I'm afraid I won't wake up at all," she whispered to the stone. "I'm afraid that I have finally lost my mind completely and I'm really sitting unprotected in the hot sun on this damnable planet, about to die of heat stroke and I don't even know it."

She set the stone in Revva's hand.

"I'm afraid all of this is just my imagination and I won't even know when my body dies and then I'll be trapped in this dream forever, not knowing that my body died long ago. I might have died years ago already, I might have never even survived the crash, and not know. Not ever know. I'll live out eternity in this dream I've constructed." She sucked the air in between her teeth. "I assure you, it's not even a pleasant dream. It's my own personal hell."

Revva was silent for a while. "Priests of my order, we study many texts throughout our lives. One of my favorites is that of Mencochou. 'He did not know whether it was Mencochou dreaming that he was a butterfly, or whether it was the butterfly dreaming that it was Mencochou.' I have studied that for many years." Revva nodded in contemplation. "It seems I need to study it more."

Revva placed his hand on her shoulder. "It sounds as if Captain Jolen has returned. Please come with us, my little butterfly." He rose and held out his hand for her. "Even if it is a dream, isn't better to dream of the stars than of this planet?"

Milial smiled. "Your logic is impeccable, though we'll see if it floats on the wind."

She poured a bucket of sand on her fire to douse it. She placed her hand in Revva's and let him help her to her feet.

"Milial, I'd like to introduce you to some of my crew," Gare said, holding the tarp open.

"This is my First Officer, Poular, my Science Officer Harpe, and my Medical Officer Bazat." The room became cramped with everyone in it.

Milial's eyes scanned their faces in order. Her eyes bulged when they fell upon Bazat.

"Bazat is from the planet Kodor," Revva offered.

Bazat was six feet tall with no hair anywhere on her body. Her skin changed color to match her surroundings. Milial moved closer to get a better view. She reached out and placed the tip of her finger on Bazat's bare arm. Bazat's skin turned the same color as Milial's dust-covered finger.

A beaming smile broke out on Milial's face. "I could never imagine anything as beautiful as you, Bazat."

Suddenly the smile left her face and fear filled Milial's eyes. She pulled her knife from its holster and held it front of her, pressing her back against the metal wall. She waved the blade through the air. "You're real," she said, finally convinced.

Revva motioned for them to back out of the room. "Yes, we are real. But we won't hurt you. You have my word on that. Come with us. Back to our ship. Back to your stars."

Milial's face turned red and she hung her head. She lowered her knife and returned it to its holster. "I'm embarrassed," she whispered. "I thought you weren't real." She tugged on her cloak to straighten it and ran her fingers across her matted hair.

"It's all right," Revva took her by her arm and steered her toward the door.

"I was rude to both of you." She met Gare's eyes and quickly looked away.

"Is there anything you want to take with you? A keepsake or something?" Revva asked.

Milial snorted. "Nothing. I don't want to remember this place." She walked out of her home without a backwards glance.

Fog started to rise from the soil and coiled around the legs of the shuttle pod. "We better hurry." Gare could feel the fog dragging his feet down to the ground. It was an effort just to walk.

They filed into the shuttle pod. Revva relinquished his window seat to Milial.

"Come on, let go of us, you rotten sticky stuff." Gare needed more than twice the normal thrust in order to pull away from the fog.

"I guess this planet doesn't want to give you up," he said to Milial over his shoulder.

Milial stared out the window. Her view changed from yellow barren soil to yellow sky to darker sky. Tiny stars twinkled in the darkness and they grew as the shuttle pod broke out of the planet's atmosphere. Milial started to cry. Revva rested his hand on her shoulder but her eyes never left the stars.

"I don't care if all of this is my imagination," she whispered. "This was worth it, no matter what price is asked of me later."

Gare negotiated the shuttle pod into Vega-One's bay and opened the door.

"We'll all have to go through quarantine. I'm afraid that means you, too, Milial," Bazat told her. Bazat's skin was the color of the bay's grey walls.

Milial let Bazat take her hand and the chameleon led her into a small room.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know how to work this," Milial admitted.

Bazat helped her undress and placed her in the decontamination chamber. "Close your eyes and mouth. A fine spray will settle over you. Then water will clean you off." Bazat pushed a button. "Press this button up to make the water hotter and down to make the water cooler. Push this for cleaning fluid. I'll be in the next chamber and then I'll wait here until you come out. Take as long as you want."

Bazat waited ten minutes before she opened the door. "Is everything OK?" she asked. Her voice sounded worried.

"Oh," Milial said, startled. She turned off the water. "This is the first shower I've had in a long time. Fifteen years according to your Captain."

She blushed.

"It never rained on the planet. Not once. The running water...I guess I lost track of time."

Bazat helped Milial into a new set of clothes. "I don't think we'll be able to comb out these tangles," she said, touching Milial's hair.

"Shave it."

"I don't think we'll need to do anything that drastic." Bazat reached for a pair of clippers. "We'll just get rid of the worst tangles here at the end. Then we'll try and brush the rest out."

Ten minutes later, a pile of wet hair lay on the floor and Bazat turned Milial around to look in the mirror.

Milial jumped backwards. She peered forward and turned her head from left to right, keeping her eyes on her reflection.

"I'm sorry," Bazat said, realizing her mistake. "When's the last time you looked in a mirror?"

Milial poked at the wrinkles around her eyes and her hollow cheeks. Darkness ringed her eyes. Her finer followed a scar that ran from her forehead down her left cheek to her neck bone. "Since before I crashed," she whispered, captivated by her reflection. "I look like my mother, but with my father's nose and chin." She ran her fingers through her drying hair. "This is the length that I used to wear it, before the space station fled in the chaos."

Bazat set her hands on each of Milial's shoulders. "You're quite beautiful yourself." Bazat's hand disappeared as her skin changed to the color of Milial's blue shirt.

Milial rubbed the leathery skin on her face. "My grandmother would be horrified. On the space station, we were never exposed to direct sunlight. Over the generations, our skin became quite smooth. Not even the elders had wrinkles. That's how we identified planetarians, those who had walked in the sun and the dirt. I'm glad my grandmother never had to see me walk in the dirt, with my wrinkled skin."

"I'm going to run a couple medical scans and take some blood to check for parasites or viruses," Bazat told her, reaching for her kit.

"We used to have checkups every six months on the station," Milial told her. "In a closed environment like a space station, viruses could run rampant if they got loose."

Bazat ran her scans. "Nothing shows up on the scans; you're cleared to be released. Are you tired? Would you like to go to your quarters?"

"Does it have a port window?"

"No. None of our quarters have windows."

"Could I go to someplace that does?" Milial asked.

Bazat smiled. "Let's go to the solarium. You can see plants and stars both at once."

Milial smiled.

"She's been here for ten hours, just staring out at the stars," Bazat whispered to Gare. "It's like she's afraid that if she looks away they will disappear. I can't even get her to eat anything. While she was in quarantine I ran some scans. She's rather healthy, considering the length of time she has been on the planet. But she's malnourished and dehydrated. We have to get some food in her. And fresh water."

Gare held up an orange box. "Instead of making her leave the stars to get food, I brought the food to her. I'll stay with her for a couple of hours. You can fetch your soil samples from the shuttle."

"I was able to run a couple scans from in here," Bazat whispered. "That thing which she called fog? It's actually an elemental."

"A life form?" Captain Jolen asked, surprised.

"It's the reason why the bones of the dead are stripped clean but not otherwise disturbed. And why no other life forms have survived on the planet; elementals consume everything."

"How did she survive?"

"That's the mystery question, now isn't it. It appears that not only did the elemental not consume her, the elemental cared for her. It deposited water, it's own blood, into her bowl every morning. It let her grow meager tubers to eat, watering them again with its own blood. From what I can gather from the scans, it even mended her broken bones and sealed her open wounds when she was injured."

"Does she know?"

Bazat shook her head. "I don't think so. And at this point, until she regains more of her strength, I don't recommend we tell her, either."

Gare nodded. He wondered if Bazat meant Milial's physical strength or her mental strength. Gare was more concerned about the latter. "I'm inclined to agree with you, at least for now."

Bazat put her hand on Gare's forearm. "I've never heard of an elemental not killing another life form before. There are stories, myths, about elementals saving the lives of someone, but no one in science takes them seriously."

Bazat raised her eyebrows and left the room in silence.

"Come join me, Milial," Gare said after he had laid the food out on a small patch of grass.

Milial turned in surprise.

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear you come in." She looked around. "Where's Bazat?"

"She had to go. Come sit down and eat. You can still see the stars from here."

Milial walked to where Gare sat, swinging her head back and forth to make sure she could still see the stars. She settled on the grass and ran her fingers through it.

"That feels nice. There was no grass on the planet."

"Ever?" Gare asked. "What did you eat?" He put a cup of milk in her hand.

"I learned how to grow some tubers and some grain. I had to build my garden inside a metal foundation or else the plants wouldn't grow. Then I had to build sides on it because the wicked wind would tear the plants from their shallow roots."

She took a sip of milk. "I had to cover the plants with a tarp before noon or else the sun would burn all the moisture out of the dirt. The fog would leave enough morning dew on the plants to grow them into tough little things that had to cook for three days before they were edible."

She reached for a large red berry.

"Eat, but eat slowly. Your stomach isn't used to this type of food."

She stared at the stars, rubbed her bare feet over the grass and nibbled on food. "It's hard to believe this is real, but it appears it is."

She turned and looked at Gare. "I cannot thank you enough for returning me to the stars. I can never repay you in full but please let me know if there is ever anything I can do. I owe you."

Gare shook his head. "You don't owe me anything. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Anyone would have done the same."

Milial shook her head.

"Not everyone. What do you call this?" She pointed but didn't touch.

"It's called a grape." Gare popped one in his mouth. "You can eat the entire thing. Except some kinds, which have tiny seeds inside." Gare pulled one off the vine and placed it in her hand. His fingers touched her palm. Her palm darkened and the base of her wrist turned a dark purple.

Milial pulled her sleeve down over her wrist to cover her coloring. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's been a long time since I touched another living being. Not in combat," she added.

Gare held out his hand, palm up. "Go ahead. It's OK." He smiled and tried to catch her eye on her bowed head.

Milial's finger snaked out and slowly came to rest against the tip of Gare's middle finger.

"Hmm."

She moved her finger across his until three of her fingertips rested on his middle finger. Her breathing became shallow. She inspected the base of his wrist, her fingertips tracing his bluish veins.

Suddenly, she pulled her hand away.

"What is that?"

She pushed herself a foot away from Gare.

"What?" Gare looked at his wrist.

"There," she pointed at his wrist. "Something moved under your skin."

Gare looked at his wrist for a moment and then smiled. "We call it a pulse." He moved closer to Milial and took her hand in his. "It won't hurt."

He placed her fingers on the inside of his wrist and applied pressure. "It's my heartbeat."

Milial snorted. "Your heart is in your wrist?"

Gare chuckled and pointed to his chest. "No, my heart is right here. But you can feel my pulse in my wrist, as my heart pushes the blood through my arteries." He moved her fingers to his neck. "And here."

Her eyes lightened to a dazzling violet.

Gare moved her hand and placed it against his chest. "And here."

Milial closed her eyes and she sat still for a moment. When she opened her eyes, they were almost completely white. She pulled her hand away and cleared her throat. "I have waited a long time to feel someone else's heartbeat." Her eyes regained their color.

"I used to wake up in the middle of the night, screaming. I'd frantically check for my own heartbeat, just to make sure I hadn't died in my sleep."

She reached out and placed her hand against Gare's heart. "You have a strong heartbeat. It makes very solid thumps."

Gare chuckled. Years ago, back when he was in the academy, one of his courses was how to deal with sensory depravation for short periods of time. They had placed him in a sensory depravation chamber filled with water the same temperature as his body. They closed the door to seal him inside and turned off the inner lights. Lights flashed in the absolute darkness but Gare knew it was only his eyes playing tricks on him.

After a while he became bored and fell asleep. When he woke he was disoriented and had a moment of panic until he remembered where he was. For years afterwards the thing he remembered about the sensory depravation chamber was that when he couldn't feel or hear anything else, he could feel, hear and even see his own heartbeat. His heartbeat was all that had existed. There was nothing else.

Gare couldn't imagine living like that for fifteen years.

"Aren't you going to introduce me to our new guest?" Vyr, the Security Officer, entered the solarium.

Milial jumped to her feet. She grabbed the food knife and ran toward Vyr with a scream.

"A Teggan!"

She held the knife in her right hand above her head. Vyr grabbed her elbow and spun sideways, using her own momentum to push her past him. She rolled across the floor and jumped to her feet. She kicked at Vyr with her left foot, planting it solidly in his stomach. He doubled over and she brought her elbow down across his shoulders.

Vyr rolled away and jumped to his feet. He blocked her blow with his left forearm and kicked at her knee with his right foot. She blocked it with her left foot and spun, swiping the knife across the middle of his body. He bowed his back and the knife sliced through his clothing but missed his skin. She overextended herself in the lighter gravity and Vyr reached forward and grabbed both of her forearms with his hands. She struggled but could not release herself from his vice-like grip. She kicked at him and he blocked each kick with his feet.

She moved her tongue inside her mouth, pulled her head back and prepared to spit.

"Stop that," Gare said, moving in between the two fighters. He shoved his hand between their faces.

Milial spat her silver needle at the Teggan. Instead, it punctured Gare's hand. Gare watched as it changed from a straight piece of metal into a squiggly wormlike thing. It bored into his hand, expanded in size and started to move through his flesh toward his wrist. It hurt worse than a straight silver needle should.

"Crudinski," he cursed in surprise.

"No," Milial shouted. She twisted her left hand out of Vyr's grip and clamped it onto Gare's forearm above the wrist.

"Shellan gaol," she spoke. The metal device stopped moving and returned to its thin, needle-like size. It punctured Gare's skin from the inside and squirmed out of his flesh. It wiggled to where Milial's hand rested on Gare's arm, punctured Milial's hand and settled under the skin, growing hard and straight again.

"I am so very sorry, Captain Jolen. The Piercer was not meant for you." She pulled her right hand from Vyr's loosened grip and punched the Teggan in the face. "It was meant for that evil piece of slime."

Gare moved his body between the two, with his back to Milial. "Vyr, leave us," he commanded.

"But sir, she is a danger."

"Apparently only to you. Leave us."

"Let me kill him." Milial reached over Gare's shoulder. He turned his head. "Stop that," he shouted.

Milial looked at him and slightly nodded her head. She backed away, her eyes burning hatred at Vyr.

"As you wish," Vyr said, leaving the solarium.

"What was that all about?" Gare said, his voice louder than he intended. He pressed a napkin against his bleeding forearm.

"I am sorry to repay your hospitality with violence, but I was unaware you had a Teggan on your ship."

"Vyr is my Security Officer and a damn fine one I might add."

"He is a vile Teggan and he must die," Milial responded.

Gare pointed to the grass. "Sit down and give me that weapon. What did you call it? A Piercer?"

Milial sat on the grass but stared at the stars. "I am sorry, but I cannot give you my Piercer."

Gare held out his hand. "Give it to me."

"I apologize deeply, but I cannot. It is my only form of protection and without it, I would have been dead many years ago."

"You have nothing to fear on this ship. You are under my protection now. You don't need it."

Milial was silent.

"I cannot have you wandering around my ship, endangering my crew. I must insist," Gare said.

"I give you my word that I will not hurt any of your crew who is not a Teggan."

"Vyr is a Teggan and he is a valued member of my crew. If you want to stay aboard my ship, you must relinquish the Piercer," Gare demanded.

"Very well." Milial swallowed thickly. "When do I return to the planet?" Her voice broke but her eyes never left the wall of windows and stars beyond.

Gare rose. He stood with his arms crossed and his feet placed shoulder width apart. "I'll take you back now."

Milial shook her head sadly. "Remind me never to play a game of bluff with you, Captain Gare Jolen." She pulled the silver needle from her mouth and set it on a plate. "Shellan Giet."

The silver needle pulled its ends together to form a hollow metal cube.

"It has been deactivated."

Gare knelt near Milial. "You are just as good at a game of bluff as I; I just had a better hand to play."

He looked at his still-bleeding wound. He was silently impressed with how she made her voice break in the middle of the sentence. It was very effective.

He cleared his throat, smiled at her and rose to his feet. "Now come with me to see the doctor and then you can tell me how you came to be stranded on a planet a hundred light-years from any civilization and why you want to kill my Teggan."

Milial put her hand into Gare's offered one and let him pull her upright. She slipped, fell slightly and then pulled herself up to stand next to him. "I guess I'm not accustomed to this gravity." She smiled at Gare and slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow as they walked toward the door of the solarium.

Gare held his free hand in front of her, palm upward. "I'll take that."

"I'm sorry. What will you take?" Milial asked, her face a jumble of confusion.

Gare smiled. "Give it to me, or we'll just take a left turn when we exit this door and go to the docking bay." The woman was good. She was very good. He doubted anyone else on his crew except for Vyr would have noticed.

Milial sighed. She tugged the hollow metal cube out of her sleeve and set it in Gare's upturned palm. She had surreptitiously palmed it when she pretended to slip earlier.

Gare set it on the edge of a nearby bench. "If I'm going to let you wander around my ship, I have to be sure that my crew will be safe."

She opened her mouth.

"All of my crew, including Vyr," Gare added before she could say anything. "Promise me you won't activate that again."

With resignation heavy on her face, Milial nodded. "I give you my word that the Piercer will remain inactive while aboard this ship. Until, that is, your ship is swarmed by depraved Teggans, which it will be, soon enough. They will come, you know."

Gare nodded. "I expect someone will."

They had seen the satellite orbiting above the planet. Poular found that it transmitted images but she couldn't follow the transmission any further than eight light years. Whoever was monitoring the planet was doing so from a very long distance.

Gare pushed the button to the left of the door and it opened. Vyr pushed himself back from the wall, where he had been leaning, waiting for his captain.

Milial spun away from Gare and pulled another picnic knife from her sleeve. She rushed at Vyr. Vyr spun and pushed Milial forward but not before the knife sliced along the outside of his forearm. Milial circled and came at Vyr again, bringing the knife downward from above his head. Vyr caught her arm and held it at the wrist. She tugged against his grip but Vyr was twice as strong as she was in her malnourished condition.

She swept her leg outward, trying to clip Vyr's heel to unsettle his balance, but Vyr held firm. Vyr slammed her hand against the bulkhead two times until she dropped the knife. It clattered across the hallway floor. Vyr spun Milial around like a tattered piece of cloth and entrapped her in his strong arms, pressing her back against his chest, his biceps pinning her shoulders to his body.

"Stop that!" Gare shouted.

"She has been subdued," Vyr told him, tilting his head forward slightly.

Milial was panting from the exertion while Vyr hadn't even broken a sweat.

Gare stomped to where Milial struggled in vain against Vyr's tight embrace.

"You will stop attacking Vyr. Do you hear me?" His face was red with exasperation.

"He is a Teggan."

"Give me your word or you're going back to the planet."

Vyr scoffed but quieted under Gare's glare. Gare watched Milial chew on the inside of her cheek in indecision.

"Very well." She nodded once. "I will die here on your ship, killed by this filthy Teggan, left defenseless by my vow to you." She exhaled. "I will not kill your Teggan."

Vyr released his grip and she fell forward onto the floor. She gingerly poked her wrist and winced.

"Did you have to break her wrist?" Gare asked.

"She tried to kill me," Vyr objected.

Gare shook his head. "Looks like all three of us are going to the infirmary, now." Gare helped Milial to her feet. "Let's try to not injure ourselves any more on the trip there, all right?"

They started walking in the direction of the infirmary. Gare supported Milial, with Vyr applying close vigilance from behind.

"Why do you hate me so, when we have never even met?" Vyr asked as they turned a corner.

"I do not hate you," Milial objected. "I fear you." Gare felt her body shiver.

"Fear me?" Vyr laughed. "I will not hurt you."

Milial lifted her limp wrist and raised her eyebrows. As she turned and caught a glimpse of Vyr out of the corner of her eye, she could not suppress the scowl he brought to her lips.

"Unless you pose a threat to us," Vyr added, returning the scowl.

They opened the door to the infirmary. "Bazat, you have some patients." Gare helped Milial up onto a cushioned table. "Start with her."

Milial shook her head. "This wrist has been broken before by a Teggan. More than once. It can wait until your wound has been wrapped."

Milial turned to Bazat. "He was impaled by a Piercer. It's a silver needle when it's in stasis. Upon command, it enters flesh, expands to a three inch long rod, half an inch in diameter. It sprouts jagged edges and bores a wide path through the flesh. It acts as an awl digging through flesh until it reaches the heart, then it turns into a tiller that mauls the heart muscle. It returns to its stasis form of a silver needle for its path home to its keeper."

"Lovely," Vyr said, sitting on a hydraulic gurney.

"It penetrated Captain Jolen's forearm at the wrist and traveled three inches before I deactivated it," Milial continued. She turned up her lip in a sneer at the Teggan.

"If you don't have the means for mending his flesh, I can command the Piercer to stitch his flesh together from the inside," she offered.

She nodded in Gare's direction. "With the Captain's permission, of course."

Bazat held a medical device above Gare's wound and studied the readout on a nearby screen. "It came close to your nerves but it doesn't look like it damaged anything beyond muscle," Bazat told her captain.

She pulled another device out of a drawer and handed it to him. "Press this against your wound and hold it in place for two minutes. It will mend your muscle."

Bazat walked over to Vyr and pulled away the towel he held against his forearm. "Knife wound, courtesy of our new guest," he said, barely keeping the growl out of his voice.

"You're just lucky it sliced your arm and not your side, where I was aiming," Milial retorted.

"I am a Teggan warrior. Luck had nothing to do with it." His eyes narrowed at the edges as he glared at her.

"Tell that to the Teggan skeletons littering the planet." Milial looked like she wanted to fly off the table and strangle Vyr. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the edge with one hand.

"Enough!" Captain Jolen shouted. "You two are like Kazian rats. Stop it already."

"Hold that still," Bazat reminded Gare.

Bazat pushed Vyr's chin with her finger to direct his gaze away from Milial. Her finger became the same color as his chin up to her middle knuckle. She ran another device down his forearm and his skin healed under its reddish glow.

"Just a scratch," she said when it was all mended.

"And now for you," Bazat said, turning toward Milial. She scanned Milial's wrist with a device which showed her bones on a nearby screen. "You've broken this wrist before."

"Despicable Teggans broke my wrist," she corrected the doctor. "Twice before. Three times now." She glowered at Vyr.

Bazat put her finger under Milial's chin and turned her eyes away from Vyr. Her finger changed color again.

"Tell me why the Teggans broke your wrist," Bazat said.

Milial looked at her knees.

She glanced at Gare and quickly returned her gaze to the floor in front of her.

"The first time they came, they surprised me." She winced as Bazat picked up her wrist and slid a cool plate under it.

"I had just buried my wingman and had been on the planet four days. I thought they were coming to rescue me. Or imprison me. Or kill me. But I never expected them to..." Milial broke off. She looked up at Vyr.

"I had never met a Teggan before. I had seen pictures and vids of them, of course, but I never saw one in person before." Her eyes bore into Vyr's. "The Teggans are a savage, brutal people. There were five male Teggans. My leg was broken from the crash. I was still bleeding from a gash along my side. Five of them came. They tortured me in unimaginable ways, then they...."

Milial shook her head. Her jaw muscles contracted and heaved.

"The second time they came, two months later, I ran. I ran and hid and ran some more. But they had sensors to find me. And they were better fed. And I was still recovering from their brutality during their first visit."

Bazat put another plate over Milial's wrist and connected the two plates together with a clasp.

"The third time the Teggans came, I was ready. It was then that I learned that the planet's dust masked my life signs from their sensors. I spent the next decade and a half covered in dust. On purpose." Her chuckle with filled with melancholy. "My mother would have been mortified seeing her space daughter covered in soil from a planet." She took a deep breath. "One of the dead had a computer which taught me much about the contemptible Teggans, including how to command the Piercers, which I took from their corpses."

Bazat turned on a machine and it turned the plates orange with a low hum.

"Now they come every five or six months. It has turned into a ritual, a rite of passage for military personnel about to become officers."

Bazat turned the machine off and the orange glow began to dissipate.

"They come to fight me in groups of five or ten. If they survive, apparently they return and rise in the Teggan military ranks." Milial narrowed her eyes. "But not all of them return."

Bazat nodded. "We counted over a hundred Teggan bodies on the planet. Some were recent and were still decomposing, most were years old."

"A hundred," Vyr exclaimed. He quickly looked away.

"There was one," Milial continued. "The Coward. He begged for his life, pleaded on his knees. He slobbered all over my feet. He's the one who told me why the Teggans came. Why they tried to kill me one-on-one and yet would never just blast me from space. They wanted to kill me individually but as a culture they wanted me alive, to remember. He promised me that if I let him go he would return and make sure no one ever came again. He said they would turn off the satellite camera and they would leave me to die in peace." Milial swallowed sourly. "That was more than five years ago."

Bazat gave Milial a glass of water and she drank it with a shaking hand.

"The Coward told me they have a satellite in space to beam images of me to the Teggan home planet. School children watch me to learn the face of their enemy. The foul Teggans show them my picture so children can learn how to hate."

She swallowed thickly. "And when the hunters come they position the satellite camera on the other side of the planet so the Teggans back home don't see what the barbarians do to me."

Bazat unclasped the plates and removed them from around Milial's wrist.

Milial flexed it. "I wish I would have had one of those on the planet. I can't tell you how many broken bones I've had."

Bazat pointed to the monitor which still showed Milial's skeleton. "I can."

Milial shook her head. "No, I don't want to know. It was rhetorical."

Bazat smiled. "I figured as much."

"And what did you do to earn such a revered status from people you had never even met?" Vyr's lip curled but Gare heard respect in his security officer's voice.

"I am Doxial," she replied. "Apparently that was enough."

"And?" Vyr pried.

Milial shrugged. "Is there anything I could say that could rationalize the Teggan's atrocious actions?" She glared at Vyr. "They brutalized me, left me on an uninhabitable planet and then, when I wouldn't die, they sent hunting groups after me. What tale could I weave that would make that acceptable behavior?"

Milial flexed her wrist.

"Probably none," Vyr acquiesced. "But humor me never-the-less."

Milial snarled at the Teggan. "I am a Doxial," she began, looking like she'd rather kill him than speak to him. "I was born on a space station seven light years from here, in the Doran sector. My family had lived on space stations for fifty generations. Space station Doxials never held slaves, but planetarian Doxials did. The planetarian Doxials enslaved the Teggans with Piercers for a thousand years. The Piercers respond only to a Doxial voice. Once implanted, they replicate themselves in the fetuses and Teggans are born with their own Piercers. Within two hundred years, there wasn't a Teggan in the sector who wasn't bound to a Piercer, and, through it, to a master."

"We didn't agree with what the planetary Doxials were doing but we weren't willing to start a civil war over it either, Doxials killing Doxials, even if they were planetarian Doxials. So my great-great-grandfather's generation moved to the Doran sector where we could live the way to wanted to, with the societal norms we believed in. We moved not only ourselves but our space stations, too. We almost went to war over that, us taking the space stations, but apparently the planetarian Doxials weren't willing to start a civil war over losing their space stations any more than we wanted a war over slavery."

She pulled up her knees and hugged them. "Little did we know the slaves were planning a secession of their own: a secession through annihilation. They had secretly developed a biological weapon which sought out and attacked only Doxial DNA. Very advanced. It disintegrated our flesh and from what I've seen, it was very painful. Very effective. Very deadly."

She turned her eyes from Vyr and rested her forehead on her arms. "The gel swept across their home planet in two days, disintegrating four billion Doxials. It wiped out 300 million Doxials on twenty-one space stations within the week. We fled. There were other species living on our space stations and to stay would have meant their certain death. As it was, thousands of members of other species died just in the initial hull breaches. We weren't about to commit them to our fate. We evacuated to a spaceship and fled. The Teggans chased us. Their ships were faster than ours and they caught up to us just as we reached this sector. We fought them, but they outnumbered us fifty to one. They shot their bioengineered gel and it covered our ships. It ate through the hull before we could safely land, causing hull breaches just as we entered the planet's atmosphere. The ships crumbled. Almost everyone burned up during entry. Only two of us survived the landing. Two. Two Doxials out of more than one hundred thousand. And Damel's injuries were too great. He didn't last three days."

"The Teggans wiped out my people and left me on that planet. And even that wasn't enough for them."

Bazat rested her hand on Milial's shoulder. Bazat's hand and forearm took on the color of Milial's clothes.

"There was something on the planet, maybe the dust, I don't know, that ate the gel, otherwise I would never have lasted this long. The gel should have killed me, too."

Bazat and Gare shared a glance, both remembering the elemental Milial called the fog.

A red warning light began to blink in the corner.

"Captain to the bridge," Poular spoke over the intercom. "We have visitors."

"The Teggans have arrived." Milial's voice was cold as ice. Her tongue poked at her cheek where she used to keep the Piercer.

"Bazat, stay with Milial," Gare commanded.

He jumped from his gurney. "Vyr, you're with me."

They rushed from the room to the bridge. The image covering the screen showed a very large warship sitting off Vega One's bow. The image changed to a Teggan dressed in military regalia with a nasty scar across his right cheek.

"Surrender or die," the Teggan commanded. "The choice is yours. You have one minute." The screen went blank.

Poular replaced the image with that of the warship. "He's not in the mood to chat," she stated dryly.

"What's his firepower?" Gare asked.

"It would be an even fight," Vyr replied after checking the screen.

The screen flashed back to the Teggan commander's scarred face. "What is your answer?"

"I'm Captain Gare Jolen of the Association of Planetary Systems," Gare began.

The other ship's captain cut him off. "I don't care who you are. You have taken our property. Surrender and return it or you will all die." The Teggan lifted his chin slightly.

"Incoming," Poular shouted. The torpedo shook Vega One slightly.

The Teggan on the screen peered closer at the image in front of him. "Who are you?" he asked, pointing over Gare's shoulder.

"I am Vyr, eldest son of the Phoenix clan, from the planet Xixi."

"You are a Teggan and yet I have never heard of your clans or your planet. Show me." The Teggan crossed his arms across his massive chest.

Gare nodded to Poular. She transmitted their star map.

The Teggan paled considerably. He staggered and caught himself by resting his hand on the back of a nearby chair.

"There are many Teggans in your system?" His voice shook slightly.

Vyr nodded. "Hundreds of millions."

"And are you this one's slave?"

Vyr growled. "We are slaves to none but our own fate."

The Teggan commander looked to his second in command. "None of the Teggans in your system are slaves?"

"None are slaves and none have ever been slaves. Teggans in my system would die before we would serve another."

"How far back can you trace your line?" The Teggan captain's hand trembled slightly.

"Over fifty thousand centuries," Vyr responded, jutting his chin outward. "There are old, old legends of how Teggans came to the Fife sector to find a better life, to leave behind a sector devoid of life and joy. But those are myths, not to be believed."

The Teggan captain looked like he believed them. "We have legends of those who escaped, but we, too, thought they were just myths to give hope to the young, not to be believed."

Milial, escorted by Revva, entered the bridge, walked down the far aisle and came to stand next to Gare.

Gare turned to nod his approval and gaped.

"Kill her. Kill her immediately," the Teggan captain said.

Gare barely heard the other ship's captain. Milial had donned a flowing lavender gown, held at her shoulders with thin pearl straps. She had covered herself demurely in the solarium but she clearly wanted to face the Teggans in all her Doxialian glory.

She had a deep purple patch at the base of her throat. It spread into two lines, following her collar bone, across her shoulders, down the back of her biceps, around the inside of her elbows to her wrists where a deep purple pool faded into a light lavender on her palms. Her eyes, as purple as her markings, slid over his and firmly settled onto the Teggan's image on the screen. Gare saw her tension as her jaw clenched but her face was a blank slate, calm as the night sky.

"Commodore." Her voice was calm and strong. She nodded her head slightly.

"I demand you kill this, this thing immediately."

Gare blinked at the Teggan. He held a polite look on his face but said nothing.

The commodore pointed over Gare's shoulder at Vyr. "You are a Teggan. It is your duty to kill her."

Vyr started to respond but Gare cut him off with a curt shake of his head.

"I am Milial, formerly of Space Station Seventeen. And you are?"

Gare turned slightly away from the screen so the Teggan wouldn't see Gare's smile broaden. Milial's voice left no doubt that she was in command of the situation. On the side panel, Gare watched the Teggan's face turn a bright yellow. The scar running down the side of his face pulsed in an orange glow. Gare could see hatred in the Teggan's eyes, but he also saw fear dancing at the corners and heard a strange sort of reverence hidden under his gruff tone.

"I am Commodore Forty-Eight and I demand your surrender. We will board your paltry ship and escort this abomination to her death chamber."

The image on the screen widened and Gare could see the Teggan's bridge and crew.

Milial raised her arm and pointed over Commodore Forty-eight's shoulder. "I know you." Her purple lines turned darker, almost as black as the night sky. "You are a coward and a liar." She moved forward and dug her fingers into the railing. Her breaths came in gulps.

Gare placed his hand on her elbow to calm her.

After a moment, her dark lines lightened to a deep purple.

"Impossible," the Commodore said. "You are as insane as you are evil. My First Officer was still a youngster when we escorted you to the planet."

His crew laughed with derision.

Milial's fingers dug into the railing as she bristled at his description of the crash that reduced the entire Doxial species to one. Her gaze never left the First Officer's panic-stricken face.

"You promised me that you would stop the hunts," she said. "You groveled on your hands and knees. You begged for your life and I gave it to you. And you broke your vow."

The commodore's head turned from Milial to his First Officer, clearly more confused by his officer's reaction than by the Doxial's words.

"You crawled to the shuttle, sputtering and slobbering, snot running down your chin," she continued. "You closed the doors, even though you saw your friends running towards you. They called your name. They were close enough for you to see the green of their eyes."

"She's insane," the First Officer objected. His face told a different tale.

"Don't listen to a Doxial." His hands shook violently.

"They sighed in relief when you turned the ship around. They thought you were returning for them."

Milial's jaw muscle twitched.

"But instead you opened fire on your own kind. You shredded their bodies, leaving no credible witnesses. You are a coward and a murderer. You are without honor. May your family never learn of your shame."

"She is a ghost. Is she real?" he asked no one in particular. The First Officer began to cry. "You were never supposed to get off the planet alive," he wailed. "You were supposed to die down there. Alone." He wiped at his running nose. "You did die down there. I killed you with the same finger missiles that killed my crew. Your body was as mangled as theirs."

Gare remembered Bazat telling him that the elemental which Milial thought was fog had saved her life. Apparently it had resuscitated her as well. Gare wondered if Milial was aware she had died and an elemental had brought her back to life.

Commodore Forty-Eight grabbed his crewman by his throat. "What are you babbling about?" He shook his First Officer and slapped him across his face, but the man had collapsed in convulsions.

Commodore Forty-Eight spun to face the screen. "What lies is she spreading?"

"My lines are solid. I speak no lies," Milial replied. She held her head high so he could see her neck coloring clearly.

"Scan the surface. You will find the bones of Teggans. Those who came to hunt me and failed."

The commodore flicked his hand at one of his crew. "Hunt her? We would never hunt her." The commodore refused to address Milial directly and instead spoke to Captain Jolen.

"We already had her trapped. We kept her there as a symbol of our victory, our dominance. The last Doxial in existence." His eye slits grew in pride.

"We agreed not to kill her, but to allow her to live, to exist as a living memory of what her people did to us. We would bring our school children and have them watch her from space, like an animal in a zoo exhibit. But our people were forbidden from stepping foot on the planet."

"And yet you sent assassination squads," Vyr accused.

"No, no. The planet is forbidden. No one is allowed to land there – they must stay in orbit and observe her only."

Gare watched Milial study the old Teggan's eyes. He saw her lines turn a softer shade of purple.

"Shellan Giet, et ack so meil."

"No!" Vyr shouted and lunged toward the Doxial.

Gare turned to the screen in time to see every Teggan crew member clutch his chest and fall to his knees. Screams of pain filled the air.

Vyr grabbed Milial from behind and clamped his hand over her mouth to prevent her from speaking. He was too late. Her command had been issued.

The cries of pain lessened to sobbing and were interspersed with exclamations of surprise.

Vyr removed his hand as the Teggan crew members climbed to their feet.

"I am Milial, whose name means 'of the stars', and I have set you free."

Milial's lines were almost the same color as her light lavender gown.

"You have the recording of my voice, the last Doxial voice. You can now free all of your people. You have my word. The Piercers will remain inert and no Teggan will be born with a Piercer again."

Milial shrugged out of Vyr's grip.

Vyr grabbed her hand gently. "Why did you release them? After what they had done to you? You had the power to kill all of them with a single command."

Milial snorted. "What would you have me do? Continue this? I am the last of my kind. What is there left to fight about?"

She tilted her chin to look up at the tall Teggan. "Do you understand, I am the very last Doxial." She pulled her hand out from under Vyr's.

"They could have restricted it to their planet," she continued. "We wouldn't have retaliated. It was a planetarian issue. They are the ones who brought their hatred to the stars. It is time for it to end. And I have ended it."

She nodded to Revva, placed her hand on top of his and walked next to him as he escorted her off the bridge.

"You were supposed to die down there," the First Officer shouted. He pushed two buttons and the Teggan ship let loose a volley of projectiles. Commodore Forty-Eight pulled out his weapon and shot a laser beam at his First Officer's heart. The man's body slid to the floor, dead.

Vega One shuddered under the assault.

"Shields are holding," Poular stated after checking the panels.

"Hold fire," Gare commanded his crew. He wasn't going to go to war because of one guilt-ridden Teggan.

They heard a crackling sound, like firecrackers behind a closed door. Vyr checked his panel. "Shields are failing."

"They fired some gooey gel at us," Poular said.

"It will breach our hull in..." Vyr check the panel. "Hull breach on deck twenty-eight, section Omega. Sealing it now." He punched at his panel, tension growing in his fingertips. "The seal is broken. The hull breach is spreading."

"What in the hell did you shoot at me?" Gare asked.

"I apologize, Captain Jolen. You need to abandon your vessel, while you can. There is no protection from the gel. It will eat away at your hull until it finds and kills the Doxial on board. Then and only then will it turn inert and harmless."

The lights flickered.

Milial stopped Revva in the hallway and sucked in her breath. "The Teggans have fired the gel." Her eyes turned black in memory. "Take me to the nearest docking port."

Revva started to object but Milial cut him off. "Quickly, or your ship will join mine on that blasted planet. And I am not going back there."

They turned left and walked a few feet. "There must be another way, my little butterfly." Revva opened the docking port door.

Milial turned to look at the priest. "At first, I thought you were my imagination but now I understand why the fates brought you here." Milial rested the inside of her wrist against Revva's. "It was to deliver me to the stars. You have done your task. I have done part of my task by freeing the Teggans. Now it is time to finish it." She stepped inside. Revva helped her into the space suit.

"Please disconnect the communications device," she requested. "The gel was specifically designed to be very painful."

Revva nodded and turned a switch on the space suit's panel to receive incoming communications only.

He slid the helmet over her head and it sealed with a hiss. He made the sign of his order over her nose with his finger; he drew a circle in the air and cut it in half with a squiggly line.

"Your species may cease to exist today, but you will not be forgotten. The Teggans will remember the Doxial who freed them. They inflicted a thousand years of revenge upon one Doxial and still you released them from their imprisonment."

He bowed deeply. "My heart will remember you forever, my little butterfly."

He stepped out of the docking port into the hallway and closed the door behind him. He punched in the code to open the docking port. His body unconsciously moved backwards, away from the imagined hiss of the vacuum of space.

Milial placed one foot on the doorjamb and thrust her body away from the ship, sending her body floating into space without a tether. She used the suit's tiny directional jets so she faced away from both ships and away from the planet. Her view of her stars was unobstructed. In her mind she looked past them, all the way to the Doran sector, to the stars of her grandparents.

"What have you done to my ship?" Gare shouted at the Commodore on the Teggan ship.

"Hull failure on decks twenty-eight through twenty." Vyr's voice was tight. "There were over a thousand people in those sections."

"Issue the order to evacuate." Gare spoke the lockdown command and confirmation.

"We will do everything we can to help," Commodore Forty-eight said. "I will send rescue ships for your..." he listened as his crewman spoke. "...seven thousand personnel."

"Captain, it appears the hull failures are slowing," Poular said, bending closer to read the panel. "The gel...it's still moving through the ship but it's not causing any damage."

"My Doxial is no longer on board your ship," the Commodore told them.

"No longer on board? Where is she?" Gare asked.

Vyr scanned the area and brought an image onto the screen.

A body in a space suit drifted through space. A line of gel flowed in globs from Vega One to the figure.

Gare watched as the green gel latched onto her ankle, covered her foot, then her entire calf. He saw the gel breach the suit and the suit depressurize. Soon, the entire suit was covered in green gel. Milial's body disintegrated and the gel spread outwards, as if she had sprouted wings along her back. The gel, going inert with her death, turned purple. Revva's purple butterfly floated amongst the stars.

The End

