Born of Sand (Tales of a Dying Star Book 5) (2 page)

I promised them I would come. A lie to bolster their fortitude, to ease the journey. When they reached Oasis, the space station orbiting between the two rocky planets of the Sarian system, how long would they wait? How long until they realized their mother would not come? And worse: how long until they resented her for abandoning them, for breaking her promise? They'd hate her, forgetting everything else, focusing on what they believed to be abandonment. Would their memories be tainted, replaced with bitterness and confusion?

And with that in mind, at the top of a dune with yellow haze blowing away in all directions, the woman decided to die.

She held strength in neither body nor mind, so she rolled onto her back, accepting the oppressive sun onto her skin. "I'm ready," she whispered to the sky, to the birds circling and screeching. The pain in her chest came from love, not exhaustion, and it grew until she could barely breathe. She cried for a while, though she'd long since become too dry for tears. Memories surrounded her, and she pushed away all but her daughters, pulling those thoughts close to envelope her like armor: Kaela learning to read by the single functioning streetlamp that illuminated their apartment window; sitting on the floor playing memorization games that required clapping and touching hands; Ami smiling bravely as she received the medicine that opened her lungs and allowed her to breathe.

"
Am I fixed, mama?
"

"
You were never broken, sweet girl
."

No one would ever know. No one would remember. But her daughters would live, even if they resented her their entire lives.

The woman took a deep breath of the scalding air, exhaling slowly. "I am ready."

A shadow blocked the sun, and a man's voice asked, "Ready for what?"

Chapter 2

The sound alarmed her so much that she jumped, leaning forward on her elbows.

"Don't move," the man warned in a muffled, low voice. He stood over her, a silhouette, featureless, with a rifle held lazily across his body. Not aimed directly at her but in her general direction.

They've come for me.

She leaned back on the sand and closed her eyes. The desert was supposed to be her escape, her path away from the clutches of the Melisao who occupied the planet.
No. I can't let them take me.

"Not safe at the top of the dunes," the man said. "Shit's dangerous."

A bounty hunter
, she decided. She'd stolen the credits from the foreman's office to help her daughters. She
needed
them, and he had plenty, more than one man ought to have. One hundred and fifty credits wasn't much. Why would they send someone to find her just for that? Why couldn't they let her die?

"What's your name?" the man asked.

"Mira," she whispered, defeated. There was no use lying. He knew who she was, what she'd done. He would take her back regardless.

"Mira," he said in that muffled voice. The sun reappeared as he crouched down to get a closer look. He wore a long coat despite the heat, with two bags strapped over the opposite shoulder as his gun. Straw-colored hair mixed with sand, and sharp, green eyes. A dirty cloth covered his mouth. "The shit are you doing out here, Mira?"

"Leave me alone," she begged. "Let me die."

He cocked his head, considering her words. "Why are you
here
?"

"Please. All I want is to die." She knew begging was useless, but the words came anyways.

He rose and took a few steps away, looking around. He stared to the south, then the east, as if searching for something. Then he returned to Mira and said, "Get up. Let's go."

"Go where?"

"I'm taking you back."

Mira said, "No. Leave me. Please. Nobody would ever know."

"Get up." He aimed his rifle. The wind flapped his coat around his ankles as he stood, waiting.

No. You cannot make me. I'm ready to die, I've decided.

Finally he cursed. He bent to grab her arm, pulling her roughly to her feet. Mira's legs held her upright of their own accord. The ground swayed in her vision from the sudden rush of blood away from her head. With one hand he patted her down, feeling underneath her armpits, down her back, in between her thighs. Quick and thorough.
I have nothing
, she wanted to tell him.
Nothing but my life. And that's not truly mine at all.

He gestured to the south with his rifle. "March."

Mira stood in place, pleading with her eyes.
I was ready. This was the place. I've decided!

He jabbed her forward with the barrel of his gun. Mira began moving. She didn't have the energy to fight or resist, so her legs carried her forward, slow and shambling.

"How long were you out here?" he asked as they descended the dune in slow, careful steps.

"Three days," she said.

"Three days," he repeated. "Shit. A long time for someone who claims all they want is to die. You could have done that back in the city. Thrown from a building, or cut with a blade."

"I thought if I walked far enough nobody would find me."

"Why would it matter if anyone found your shitting body?" he asked.

"It just would," she said. Someone loyal to the Melisao Empire couldn't understand what she was feeling.

"You don't need to lie," he said. "All I want's the truth."

"It is the truth."

"You must have made some sort of exchange," he said in a sudden change of subject. "What did they give you? What shit did they promise you?"

He cares about the stolen credits.
He probably wanted them for himself, so he could turn her in for a reward and collect what she had taken. "A journey for my daughters," she said. "Safety for their futures, away from this wretched planet. That's what I bought. It wasn't promised, it was given."

"And now you are here fulfilling your end of the bargain."

What? He wasn't making any sense. "And now I am here to die."

He sighed in what sounded like frustration. They walked in silence for a while.

"Where are we going?" Mira eventually asked.

"I'm taking you back," he said. "There will be questions."

"I don't want to go back," she said.

"Shit if I care."

"Please..."

"Sorry."

She whirled toward him. "You aren't sorry. You're a bounty hunter. How many innocent women have you hauled away to be tortured?"

For some reason that made the man laugh. "
We
don't torture anybody. And shit, you are far from innocent. You know what you've done, what you intended."

"Everything I've done, I've done for the safety of those I love."

The man put a hand on his chest in mock surprise. "Why, that is curious. I have done exactly the same." He glanced at a device on his wrist and then gestured with the rifle. "Shit. Keep moving. We have a while to go, yet."

Mira continued marching through the sand.

The sun rolled across the yellow sky. The birds continued circling, until the man aimed and fired a beam, plucking one of them from the sky and scattering the others. He led them over to the beast, which had a stooped back and hunched shoulders, and a long neck that stretched away from its yellow-grey wings like a worm. The man tied a cord around its neck and slung it over his shoulder before they moved on.

If she goaded him, would he kill her? A rifle blast would be a quick way to go. She turned to glance at him. If she lunged for the knife at his belt, would he defend himself by instinct? Or would he simply knock her away with an arm? Although not bulky, he appeared far stronger than she, with a lithe, concealed strength.

"Stop it," he said, reading her mind. "I would encourage you to be as cooperative as possible. Shit'll go better for you."

"I am going to be punished," she said. "It will not go well for me in any case."

"Maybe," he admitted.

Mira said, "I have no regrets. Everything I did, I did for them. They are safe, and that is all that matters."

"I understand," he said.

"What's your name?" Mira asked.

"Farrow."

"Do you have children, Farrow?"

"No."

"Then you do not understand at all."

He snorted. "Shit on that. I understand love. I would do anything for the woman I love, especially in a moment of desperation."

Mira shook her head. "That is not the same. Not the same at all. A person chooses a partner, decides they have attractive qualities. They spend time with them, learning about them, being with them. Knowing them. That love builds slowly, a mutual connection tended over time.

"The love for one's children is different. It requires no fostering. From the moment Kaela and Ami were born into this world I loved them with every fibre of my being. It blossomed in my heart immediately, a fire that has never diminished. It needs no reciprocation. My daughters could hate me and curse me and it would change nothing for how I feel. Tell me, your partner. Can you envision a future without her? A world where you two are separated, by either death or choice? Where you continue on alone?"

"I can," he said gruffly. "We've both accepted we may die at any time. A necessity, in our profession."

Mira nodded. "For a mother, there
is
no future without them. They are all that exists, the sole motivation and reason for being. I would kill for them. I would steal for them." She gave an exasperated sigh. "I would have died for them, if you had let me."

Farrow considered that. "I don't know whether or not that is true, but you make a compelling case. You should save it for the others."

"Others?"

Abruptly the ground trembled, shaking the sand all around them. "The coiled sand beasts," she blurted. "We're back in their territory. I passed it earlier."

Farrow laughed. "Coiled sand beasts?"

The vibration grew closer. "
Yes
," she said. "Unless you don't believe in them."

"Shit, I believe in them," he said, still not showing any alarm at all. "But we call them stingers, and they do not coil. Why are you so scared, if you want to die so badly?"

"I wanted to die by my choice, not in the belly of some monster, and certainly not at the hands of some bounty hunter who carried me off to a peacekeeper prison cell."

He pulled away the cloth covering his mouth and gave a rich laugh. Without the cloth his voice seemed more real. More human. "Peacekeeper? Shit, woman, you have no idea who I am and where we're going, do you?"

Mira hesitated. "You said you were taking me back." She looked all around. The ground shook so roughly that she thought she might lose her footing.

"Sure, I'm taking you back. But not to the city."

Mira bolted. Her desperation had grown intense enough, and she moved with fresh strength.

"Shit, wait!"

The sand seemed to give way before her, trembling in the quake, moving across the ground like water. She could not hear Farrow following, with the noise clogging her ears.
He may chase me down and tie me up, but while I can move I will run.

The sand parted in front of her. It sunk into the ground like the inside of an hourglass, falling into an unseen crevasse. She stopped as the hole spread, suddenly giving way, forming into a circle ten feet wide, then twenty, then fifty. It moved toward her, an expanding blackness. She stepped back from it, too afraid to run. Did one of the sand monsters wait inside, ready to appear?

It is a better death than by the hands of the Melisao.

The hole stopped expanding. Sand along the rim drifted and fell inside in tiny streams like waterfalls. Farrow called to her but she couldn't hear the words.
If I jump will it all be over?

A new roar grew, deep within the ground. Mira stared at the hole longingly.
I'm sorry Kaela, Ami. I did my best. I did the only thing I could.
She waited for the monster to emerge and swallow her whole.