Angie Lofthouse

         Sixteen-year-old Maiya Lemesa first noticed the man at the back of a crowd of mourners around the deathbed of old Mr. Winters.  Perhaps it was the unusual intensity of his presence that drew her eyes to him when she should have been concentrating on the dying man.  He was at least six feet tall with dirty blond hair and a scruffy beard.  He stood at the back of the room, leaning on the wall with his arms folded across his chest.  He spoke to no one and did not appear to grieve.  But it was not his appearance that attracted Maiya's attention.  It was the rhythms of his body, the harsh tattoo of his heartbeat, the tension in his muscles, like something wild and ferocious barely held in check.  His song coursed through the room, twisting its way through all the other melodies.

         He looked up at her and held her in his cold gaze.  His mouth lifted in the merest hint of a smile.  She tore her eyes away, focused on the dying man, and tried to ignore the way her own heartbeat had shifted to match the blond man's.

         She had turned her attention back none too soon.  She took Mr. Winters' withered hand in hers and listened as his heart stopped beating, his cells stopped dividing, the synapses stopped firing.  For one brief moment she heard only his soul song unencumbered by the rhythms of his body.

         She forgot about the blond stranger in the back of the room.  She forgot about the rest of the mourners.  She closed her eyes and sang Mr. Winters' soul song in a high, clear voice.  Into the wordless melody she poured all the joy and the sorrow, the love and the pain, the regret and satisfaction that she heard in Mr. Winters' soul.  She sang until the song, like his soul, simply faded away.

         Afterwards, the mourners pressed around her, crying and thanking her.  As they trickled away, she found herself face to face with the blond man.  He grabbed her hand as if to shake it.  If she'd found him compelling from a distance, up close he was overwhelming.  She had to deliberately control her breathing so it didn't fall into rhythm with his.

         He leaned over close to her face.  "That was a pretty trick."  His breath was hot and sour, and she wondered whether he even knew Mr. Winters at all.

         "It's not a trick." 

         "You really heard all that in the old bastard's soul, then?"  He chuckled without mirth.  "You're fooling yourself."

         "Not at all."  She tried to break away, but he wouldn't relinquish her hand.  He had the ugliest soul song she had ever heard, cruel and cold, all twisted around with pain.  What had happened to cause him so much pain?  "Why are you so sad?" she blurted without thinking.

         His grip tightened painfully around her hand, and his icy gray eyes hardened.  "Don't try and read my mind, little girl," he said, barely above a whisper.  A chord of hatred slammed into her, and he was gone before she could protest that she didn't read minds.

         She couldn't stop shaking as she made her way home in the moonlight.  Ordinarily she loved the walk across Dunbar, with the rolling percussion of the sea below her, the sweet scent of the citrus groves, the humming of the earth beneath her feet.  But tonight she wondered if she should have sent for a car.

         Halfway home, she spotted the blond man on the path in front of her.   She stopped.  He wasn't looking in her direction.  He had his head bent over his hands as if he were praying, though she couldn't imagine him doing that.  She tried to melt into the shadows so he wouldn't see her.

         A Doughball bounced out of the trees and across the path, humming a cheerful song about moonlight and stars that only Maiya could hear.  When the Doughball rolled in front of the blond man, he swung back his foot and kicked it with some force off the path and into a tree.

         Maiya gasped.  When the blond man moved away, she rushed to the Doughball and cradled it in her arms.  "Are you all right?" she whispered, though she could tell it wasn't.  Little trills of surprise and pain danced between them.  A mouth hole gaped open in its pallid, fleshy side.

         "I'll be all right, Miss Maiya.  Thank you."

         "Can you make it home?  I could carry you?"

         "Oh,no.  That won't be necessary, dear.  I just need a moment to recover."

         She held it until its pain subsided.  It bounced off into the trees, humming again, but Maiya could not recover her harmony so easily.  She couldn't imagine anyone cruel enough to hurt something as gentle and defenseless as a Doughball.

         She ran the rest of the way home, for fear of running into him again, and arrived flustered and out of breath.  She found her older brother, Abi, waiting up for her in the living room.  A familiar peace settled over her as soon as she came in.  Soft, white light suffused the room and tall, fragrant plants flanked the couch where Abi sat reading a book.  She could see the full moon shining silver on the clouds through the vaulted windows behind him.

         He set down his book.  "Is something wrong?"

         She sank onto the cream-colored couch.  "I'm not sure."  She told him about the blond man and the things he had said, and how he had kicked a Doughball into a tree.

         Abi frowned.  "You've never seen him before?"

         "No.  Do you know who he is?"

         Abi shook his head.  "He doesn't sound familiar."

         "I don't think he knew Mr. Winters.  I think"—she bit her lip—"he was there to watch me."  A shudder ran through her.

         Abi put his hand on her shoulder.  "If you see him again, call me or Devin right away."

         She nodded.  Devin was Abi's twin, though he was pale as the white sands with eyes as blue as the sea, while Abi was dark as midnight with eyes as wide and bright as the moon hanging in the window.  Her day and night brothers, she called them.  Her heartbeat slowed.  They would never let anything happen to her.

         She went upstairs to her bedroom and filed her recording of Mr. Winters' song with all the others she had sung over the years.  Tomorrow, she would deliver a copy to his family.  Then maybe she and Lali could go shopping in town.

         She snuggled into her covers.  The fear and anger drained away.  She concentrated on the soothing rhythms of her family, her parents asleep in their bedroom, Abi still downstairs.  Sometime before she drifted off, Devin came in.  Familiar harmonies swirled around her.  The night was a symphony of peace.  She slept.

         She awoke to darkness too black for the night.  She cried out and gagged on a mouthful of cloth.  There was some sort of bag over her head.  A hand clamped down over her mouth and nose, pressing the cloth tight against her face.  She couldn't breathe.  Her hands were bound.  She recognized the rhythms of her captor right away—the blond man.  He yanked her to her feet and hauled her outside, his hand still pressed against her mouth.

         Sharp stones cut into her bare feet as he marched her away from her home.  She thought she might faint from lack of breath.  He didn't remove his hand from her face until he had pushed her into what she assumed was a car.

         She landed on her hands and knees against a cushiony seat and coughed and gagged.  Even with his hand gone, it was hard to breathe through the cloth.  She heard her captor speak in low tones, and the car surged forward.  She curled herself up into a ball in the corner and bit her tongue so she would not cry.

         Her captor's melody swirled around her in a furor of noise.  He was nervous, agitated, almost as frightened as she was, but he kept himself under tight control.  His breathing was slow and even and his muscles relaxed.  Only the beating of his heart and the surge of his blood gave his emotions away.  And there was something else, beneath all that.  Something buried under the twisted rhythms of his soul, little trills of uncertainty and longing.  It hurt to listen to the cacophony.

         He did not speak at all except to direct the car in low tones she couldn't decipher through the bag.  It seemed like hours they drove, and she grew dizzy from the lack of fresh air.  Her thoughts grew foggy and all the melodies around her melted into noise.  She must have blacked out, because she hadn't noticed the car had stopped moving when suddenly he was dragging her outside again.  Her feet wouldn't work, and she stumbled along like a drunk.

         He dragged her up a long flight of stairs and inside a room.  She fell to her knees and retched when he pulled the bag off her head.  After a moment, her head cleared and her senses sharpened again.  The blond man sat with his back to her at a table covered with equipment whose function she could not guess.  A bed in the corner was the room's only other furniture.

         She struggled to her feet.  A band of silver bound her hands at the wrists.  She listened to the noise of the mechanisms inside it.  A Doughball could probably sing the binding open, but she could not.

         Her captor bent over his machines.  "Who are you?" she asked him.  "What do you want with me?"

         He turned around.  "Shut up.  Unless you want it back on."  He jerked his head toward the bag on the floor.  Maiya bit her lip.  Through the small window above the bed she could see the sky lightening with the dawn.  She tried to concentrate on the Morning Song, but her captor's relentless rhythms and her own fear drowned out the harmony of the new day.

         A man's face appeared on a screen on the table.  He wore a dark gray uniform with a patch on the shoulder that read Alliance for Humanity.

         "Report."

         "I've transmitted final coordinates," the blond man said.  "Proceed as scheduled."

         "Excellent.  Campaign will commence at 0600 local time.  Good work, Carrick."

         The blond man (Carrick, she supposed) nodded once at the man on the screen and he vanished.

         Maiya's heart quailed.  "What's happening at 0600?" she asked.  Carrick stood and faced her.  She took a step backward, but he didn't tell her to shut up again.  He pulled his lips into a mockery of a smile.

         "Victory."  For an instant, a swell of exultant emotion echoed around her, took her breath away, then he had himself in check again.

         "What do you want with me?"

         He lifted his chin.  "You are not human, Miss Lemesa."

         "Yes I am."

         "Your genetic profile does not match normal human parameters."

         She didn't answer.  She didn't know how he could have access to her genetic profile, but he was probably right.

         He stepped toward her and lifted her chin with his finger.  "You are a rare prize."

         She turned her head away.  A counterpoint of darkness and ugliness swirled through his melody and frightened her more than anything she had heard in him before.

         Abruptly, he turned away and in silence began to pack his equipment.  Maiya sat down on the bed.  He finished packing, picked up his cases and left, pausing only to say, "I'll be back for you," before the door sealed shut behind him.  Without the force of his melody, the room seemed almost silent.

         Maiya tried the door, pounding her bound fists against it to no avail.  She shouted for help until her throat was sore, and stood on the bed to peer out the tiny window.  But she was on an upper floor, too high to get anyone's attention.  The window itself would not open, nor could she break it.

         Defeated, she slumped onto the bed.  The sun had come up over the sea now, a rising crescendo in the symphony to praise the new day.  Compared with the Morning Song, the fear jangling through her sounded like blasphemy.

         Then a dissonance crept into the symphony, an undercurrent of tension not coming from her alone.  She stood up to look out the window again, but couldn't see anything.  The discord grew more pronounced, fear from humans and Doughballs alike spreading like ripples through a pond.  0600.  Whatever Carrick and his Alliance for Humanity had planned had begun.

         She heard an explosion far away, and people shouting and running.  She pulled her knees up to her chest.  An inaudible cry arose, a desperate keening of pain and confusion, a plea for help.

         They were killing the Doughballs.  One by one they sang out in fear and went silent.  Maiya moaned.  Her stomach clenched.  An opus of agony pressed around her until she couldn't hear anything else.  She had to get out.  She had to stop them.  She threw herself against the door and pounded against it until her fists were bruised and bloody.  "Stop it!  Stop hurting them!"  Then a whimper,   "Please, make it stop."  It didn't stop.  She fell to the floor and wept until numbness overcame her tears.

         When Carrick returned, she was staring in silence up at the window.  The battle had ended, but the mourning continued unabated.  She turned to look at him when he came through the door.  "The Doughballs," she said and choked.

         Anger crashed through her, and she launched herself at him, beat her arms against his chest.  "You killed them!  Why?  How could you kill them?"  She sobbed and pounded at him.

         Carrick grabbed her arms, not ungently.  "You don't understand."  His eyes were wide and genuinely distressed.  "We must protect ourselves."

         She wrenched her arms out of his grip.  "Protect yourself from what?"  The words came ragged from her throat.  "From Doughballs?  They're harmless.  They're gentle.  Don't you see?  They love peace.  They love harmony.  You killed them."

         "You don't understand," he said again, and suddenly she did understand.  Something inside his soul unleashed itself in a torrent of pain.  She gasped.  She was drowning in his agony, a perfect echo of her own.

         "Gentle and harmless?"  His voice broke.  "Is that what you think?  Have you ever heard of the Kelaxi?"

         "Yes."  They had destroyed several human colonies before she was born.  She had learned about them in school.

         "I thought they were gentle and harmless.  I thought they loved peace.  I thought they were beautiful and wise."  He scoffed.  "But I was wrong.  I'm not going to make that mistake again."

         "You seek justice," she whispered, "by perpetrating the same crime on others as was perpetrated against you?"

         His face hardened.  He grabbed her arm.  "You don't understand.  Let's go."

         "Where are you taking me?"

         "To remind my brothers why we fight."

         He hustled her into a car, but even if she had yelled for help, there was no one around to help her.  They drove through busier city streets, but the car's windows were dark and no one could see her.

         Fires burned in and around crumbled buildings, and soldiers patrolled the streets.  She was relieved to see they were Dunbar Air Defense and City Militia soldiers and not Alliance men.  Still, no Doughballs bounced among the people, and her heart ached.  She wondered if her brothers were out there among the volunteer militiamen and if they were unharmed.

         Carrick turned away from the city and drove them out to a deserted beach.  When they reached the water, the car rocketed over the sea without waiting for any kind of clearance.  Maiya turned back to look at the receding lights and wondered if she'd ever see her family again.

         Carrick programmed a course into the car and leaned back against the seat with his eyes closed, but he did not sleep.  A storm gathered over the waters and a tempest of rain and waves buffeted the car.

         Maiya thought about Carrick's soul song, distorted by half a lifetime of anger and grief.  He would have been a teenager, she thought, when the Kelaxi attacked.  If she concentrated she could hear the echoes of the boy he had been like a distant, bittersweet descant.

         They drove for hours.  The storm abated and the sun set below the horizon.  At some point, Maiya slept.  When she awoke they had come to rest on a rocky island with jagged peaks shining like steel blades under the moon.

         He led her over the rough ground and into the dark entrance of a cave where an Alliance soldier stood guard.  His melody, like Carrick's, was laced with ugliness and cruelty.  Carrick spoke to him briefly and took her inside through a labyrinth of passageways.  Soldiers slept on the ground all around her.  Some were still awake, talking or fussing with their weapons by the light of dim lamps.  They stared at her as she and Carrick passed, but she kept her eyes down.  Their melodies grated and bumped against each other in harsh dissonance.

         He brought her to a large open space where several men were bent over a portable table.  "I have the prisoner," he announced.  The other men looked up at her.  She recognized one of them as the man Carrick had spoken to that morning.  "She's tainted with alien DNA," Carrick told them.

         A look of revulsion crossed the man's face.  "It's dangerous, Carrick," said another, "bringing her here.  Those alien lovers will be looking for her."

         "She represents everything we're fighting to prevent.  The men would want to see her executed."  Maiya's mouth went dry.

         The man waved his hand in the air.  "Very well.  Call them together at first light.  You're dismissed."

         He took her by the arm again and steered her through another set of tunnels.  She'd never be able to find her way out alone.  And even if she could, she'd never get past all the soldiers.  Her throat tightened.  She didn't want to die.

         Carrick stopped at last in a remote corner away from the other soldiers and pushed her down onto the ground.  He took a small silver rod from his pocket and used it to open the band around her wrists.

         "Carrick," she said softly, rubbing her wrists, "killing me isn't going to help you.  It's not going to get you what you want."

         "How would you know what I want?"

         "You want what everyone wants: harmony."

         "Harmony."  He snorted.  "No such thing."

         "Yes there is."  She wanted to tell him how the Morning Song sounded when the sun rose over the sea, how the wildflowers hummed in the swaying breeze.  She wanted to sing for him all the sweet songs of the Doughballs that she'd heard through the years, and explain the joyful rhythms of love and friendship.

         He wouldn't understand.  It was true she was different from other humans.  Her ancestors had been living on the Dunbar among the Doughballs for six generations.  That association had led her geneticist father to seek out much different qualities for her than those he had chosen for his sons—an experiment that Maiya considered wonderfully successful.  She had always considered her uniqueness a gift from God.  She could hear the great symphony of creation.  She could sing the songs of the soul.

         She closed her eyes and lay down in the dirt.  Every part of her hurt.  Hunger pinched her stomach.  She was never going to sing a soul song again.  She was never going to see anyone she loved again.  She would never talk to a Doughball again.  She was going to die here among these horrible melodies with no one to sing for her when she was gone.  Grief engulfed her.  She was utterly alone.

         Carrick must have felt this way, she thought, when the Kelaxi destroyed his home.  She rolled over.  "How did you survive the Kelaxi attack?"

         He grunted and didn't answer. 

         "It can't hurt to tell me," Maiya said.  "I'll be dead in the morning anyway."

         "Fine, if you must know.  I was on one of their ships.  They accepted me into their accelerated education program."  His voice grew harsh.  "I guess they thought I'd be useful to them."  He didn't say any more.  He didn't have to.  She could hear it all in his soul, the betrayal, the grief, the rage.

         "I'm sorry," she whispered.

         "Don't bother."  He flicked off the lamp and left them in darkness.

         A commotion erupted in the direction of the entrance, shouts and the sound of firefights.  Carrick jumped up and pulled Maiya to her feet.  He dragged her further into the labyrinthine passages so fast she could hardly keep her feet.

         The fighting came closer and the sounds grew more intense, the harsh discord of men trying to kill each other.  The songs of the dying echoed off the rocks and Maiya mourned.

         "I won't let you get away," Carrick said.  They hit a dead end and he cursed.  He tried to double back and take another passageway, but the battle had caught up with them.

         Someone spotted them and gave a shout.  Carrick withdrew into the dead end and drew out a gun.  Maiya screamed.  A dozen soldiers poured into the chamber and Carrick grabbed her around the neck.  "Not one more step," he shouted, and the Dunbar men stopped.

         "Let her go," someone shouted.  He stepped out the crowd.  It was Devin, his militia uniform covered with dirt and blood.  Abi stood behind him, silent and still as stone.  He caught her eye and a thread of love and reassurance stole through the clamor of violence.  Tears crowded in her eyes.

         Carrick's arm tightened around her neck and she reached up instinctively to try and free herself.  "Let her go," Devin shouted again.  Abi put his hand on Devin's shoulder.  A group of Alliance soldiers came up behind the Dunbarans and stopped, looking confused at the tense tableau.

         The rhythms of Carrick's body and soul pounded through her, a fugue of anger and fear and sorrow.  His desperation reverberated around her like a cymbal crash.  She wished that she had known him long ago, had known the boy whose beautiful melody had twisted in on itself.  She could almost hear the man he might have become, and she wished she could find a way to save him from himself.  As it was, she couldn't even think of a way to save herself.

         "Let me go."  She spoke so low it almost wasn't audible.  "Please.  You've already suffered enough."

         His grip loosened almost imperceptibly.  She wondered if she'd only imagined it.  Then again, looser still.  Was he really letting her go?  She could have broken free of him then and run to her brothers.

         But something changed in the tenor of the room at that moment, like a string snapping in two.  She dropped through Carrick's arm to the floor as gunfire sizzled over her head.  Carrick thudded to the floor beside her.  She'd witnessed plenty of deaths, but none like this.  He had a hole in his chest and everything inside him ceased all at once, the melodies shattered, turned inside out.

         She rolled to her knees, put her hands on his shoulders, and heard it – his soul song, free of the clutter of his body but still as potent.  She began to sing a wordless melody.  Tears ran down her cheeks, and her throat was so tight she could barely get out a note, but she sang just the same.  The song was harsh at first, strident and cold, but within his soul she found the echoes of harmony buried under years of grief, and one clear strain of hope that came ringing out at the end just as the song faded into silence.

         The shooting had stopped.  Soldiers from both sides of the battle held their breath, listening to her sing.  The caves shuddered with explosions from outside.

         Someone helped her to her feet.  It was Abi, and she wept into his shoulder.  Behind him, she saw Devin on the floor, and she cried out.  He'd been shot.  Another militia member was tending his wounds.  "He'll be all right," Abi said.  "Are you all right?"  He brushed a tear from her cheek.

         "Oh, Abi, the Doughballs."

         He wrapped his arms tight around her.  "It's over now, little one.  It's over.  No more killing."

         Maiya looked over her shoulder at Carrick's body on the floor.  She did not have her recorder with her and had no way to capture the song again for transcription.  But the essence of his soul song still resonated through her own. She tucked it away in a corner of her heart and clung tight to Abi's hand as he led her away.

 

Copyright 2006, Angie Lofthouse

Angie Lofthouse is a stay-home mom of five children (four sons and one princess, er, daughter).  Her fiction has appeared in NFG, Irreantum, Amazing Journeys, Alien Skin and the anthology Unparalleled Journeys.  She is an editor here at The Sword Review.  To learn more about her, visit her website:  < http://angie.lofthouse.us >. 

 

 

Cover: "Fiery Crash" 

On a rugged outpost planet, the incoming shuttle experiences problems. Will anyone survive?

L. S. King shares her Bryce original creation with us, hinting at stories that might be found in The Sword Review or sister publication, Ray Gun Revival < www.raygunrevival.com >, where King is on the editorial team. 

Copyright 2006, L. S. King