The Far Dawn (29 page)

It is going to happen in an instant. I grab for anything, but my hands only slap off other broken shrapnel. Everything spins. . . .

“Hang on, Owen.” I feel a current enter me that resists the cold and the vacuum and it is Rana, filling me. “I can get you to the ship, I think.”

We right, and I am gazing forward at a gaping hole in the ship's layers and the glitter of space beyond that. We shoot forward like a missile, along with the broken glass and chunks of machinery. Flashes as Lük and Kael blur past me.

Cold wraps around me and seems to squeeze, and at the same time my insides want to expand, my eyes to freeze, my breath to disappear, and I feel like I'll surely be crushed, but Rana's energy is there like a candle in a blizzard, keeping me with her.

And then we are out. Into space. Black in all directions except down. There is earth, the beautiful blue and green and brown, shrouded in wisps of clouds.

Ahead I see the Atlantean ship, hovering with a glow of blue fire beneath it. It is an impossible sight, an oblong shape of gleaming ancient metal reflecting the brilliant light of the sun. We are racing toward it, toward an open hatch in the back. Lük and Kael are already there waiting, phantom arms outstretched.

“Almost there,” says Rana, and she reaches and finds Lük's hand, and he pulls us into a small chamber barely big enough for us all to stand in.

The Terra
, I try to say, but there are no words in the vacuum.

Kael is pointing, too.

Rana and I turn to see the Terra's cage floating among the debris. Kael shoots out to it and puts his shoulder to it, pushing it in our direction.

As we watch, the entire front spindle of the
Egress
detaches, its compartments one by one going dark. There are little bursts here and there along its arms, survival pods, jettisoning. One is clipped by the tumbling carcass and explodes.

I see, too, starlike shapes spinning among the wreckage that I realize are people. Those who didn't make it to the pods in time.

Beyond them,
Egress
spins on, serene in the light of the sun, and I wonder what will become of those people, now, without their heart.

Lük pulls on Rana, and we float up to the ceiling as the cube lands in the compartment with us. Kael flies in and Lük shuts the door, twisting a lever in a circular motion. Then he pulls another lever, and there is a hissing sound, and a feeling of warmth.

The compartment is filling with air, and I feel my lungs wanting to work again. Lük opens an inner door and we float inside, Lük and Kael moving the Terra into the center of the cabin, between the ancient chairs.

“Okay,” Lük says. “Time to head home.” He shoots through the forward door and into a pilot's chair. Rana and Kael join him and I push off the wall, floating after them. Kael spins the wheel and pulls levers. There is a hum from beneath our feet and the craft shoots off, angling downward. The wide curve of the earth appears out the front windshield.

“Now we just have to hope these tiles still hold up to the heat of reentry,” says Lük.

I look at Rana. “Thank you,” I say. I float back, pulling Lilly's skull from the bag. I want to feel its smooth crystal in my hands. The skull grins back at me, dark, a cruel joke.

“I did not mean for her to speak to you like that,” says Rana, “but it has maybe turned out better this way.”

I nod but couldn't feel less sure. For a moment I feel a surge of anger at Lük for blowing the ship open to rescue us. If it wasn't for him . . . but the thoughts stop there. Lilly didn't want to be brought back. She would have hated me if I'd gone through with it. Living on
Egress
with a Lilly who hated me might have been a worse fate than whatever would happen now. Maybe.

“Lük, watch out!” Kael shouts.

Lük slams pedals and works the wheel and the ship spins. I am tossed against the ceiling as the first missile from
Egress
barely misses us.

“There are more!” says Rana, pointing out the crystal windshield. “Apparently the good people of
Egress
are not content to let their Terra go.”

Two more streaks of light curve away from
Egress
.

“Okay . . .” Lük pushes a large main lever forward and up, while depressing floor pedals.

“It's too slow,” says Kael as the missiles close.

I look at the second seat in the cockpit, at the second wheel. I grab the back of the ancient leather seat and slide myself in. “Maybe it needs a second pilot.” I hand Rana the skull and affix a leather belt across my waist.

I feel a flood of relief as my fingers touch the wheel and my feet hit the pedals. Flying feels like some kind of home. I test the wheel in front of me. “I think it controls a lateral set of thrusters.”

“That will help,” says Lük.

“Hurry,” Rana urges.

I see the closer missile bearing down on our port side, and I steer while pressing the rightmost of the two pedals at my feet.

We roll into a steep sideways dive and the missile sails by.

“Well done,” says Lük. He pushes us into a climb, and I add a roll to the left, and the second missile sails under us.

“This is cool,” I say, feeling simple excitement for the first time in who knows how long. No worries, just the calm of action and reaction, doing the thing I love.

“They're coming back around,” says Kael.

The missiles draw fiery curves in the dark.

Lük and I share a glance. “Down,” he says.

He pitches the craft and the earth comes into view. We angle toward it, the foggy blue of the atmosphere getting closer.

I check out the window and see the first missile closing. “And . . . ,” I say, and roll us sideways. The earth appears above us as the missile sails beneath. Before it can turn, it skims the atmosphere, lighting up bright red and disintegrating in a trail of embers.

“Where's the other one?” Lük cranes his neck as we right.

“If we can't see it . . . ,” I say, rolling us back over and trying to look behind us.

Lük yanks the lever and we spring upward.

Too late. There is a hideous explosion and a twisting of metal that all too quickly becomes silent, sucked away by the vacuum of space.

I look back and see the ship contorting, little moments of fire bursting and sucking out.

“The hull is breached,” says Lük matter-of-factly. Maybe that's not an issue for someone who can't die, but for me, it's a problem. He works at the controls but we begin to arc downward, the earth rising to meet us and filling our entire view.

“At this steep an angle,” Lük adds, “we'll burn.”

More twisting and contorting behind us. Out front, the hull starts to glow red. Ahead of us, clouds and blue sea, but we'll be a shooting star long before that. I jam at the pedals, spin the wheel, but nothing happens.

“No use,” says Lük. “Systems are wrecked.”

“What do we do?” I shout.

The windshield begins to glow. Sparks shoot from the controls in front of us. Flames ignite in front of the ship and create a curtain of fire. I can feel the heat on my face.

Owen, to me.

“The Terra!” I flail to get the belt off. “Come on!” I grab Lilly's skull back from Rana and shoot out of the cabin, but now there is suction from the back of the craft. I see fissures opening in the metal, their edges melting. Everything is beginning to glow in a molten red, the craft disintegrating on all sides.

The suction makes my speed too great, and my hand glances off the Terra. Suddenly I am past it, careening toward the collapsing back of the ship.

“Owen!” Rana grabs my hand. She is holding on to the Terra. Kael helps to drag me back until I am against the side of the crystal cage, trying desperately to hold tight to its smooth edges with my fingertips, while still keeping Lilly's skull under my arm.

The question
 . . . says the Terra.

“I don't know it!” I shout.

That is because I must ask it, and you must do what the world has forgotten how to do . . .
what was oldest must be new, and what was lost must be found. The secret remembered by the true.

Like the Terra's first words to me, beneath Lake Eden.

All that is required to free me is the power to resist all that you know I offer and to believe in what is right. The question is simple. As is the answer.

The ship is on fire around us. The heat all consuming. I feel my skin starting to blister.

“Hurry,” Rana urges. Her grip on my arm is slipping.

Ask me,
I say.

The Terra's ancient eyes meet mine. And she asks:
Will you let me go?

It is a simple question, but when she asks it, I know why it has never been answered. If I let go of the Heart of the Terra, I must let go of life, eternal life, of the ultimate power. I must accept my own end, and the end of others, and of . . . I look down at the skull.

This is me, letting you go.

If I say yes, this will be good-bye for real.

Not just the Terra. Lilly. Elissa. The past. But also the future. The chance to have Lilly back. This is . . . letting go.

All of it.

And when I think of everything, the good and the bad, I wonder almost cruelly if all the suffering I've endured has actually made me ready for this. Because . . .

I am ready. I look into the Terra's blinding, ageless eyes.

Will you let—

“Yes.”

There is so much heat and fire and wind already from the last breaths of air escaping our doomed ship and the light that bursts from the Terra blinds me completely.

The geometry of the crystal cage melts away, and the light shoots in all directions, and there, free, is the ancient girl who found me on a lake bottom, who called me through the depths. She opens her eyes, her old and new eyes, and smiles.

Thank you.

She is radiant and warm or maybe that is the heat of us burning, and I feel like I am light and she is light.

Come close, my children, and I will bring you home.

The Terra spreads her arms and somehow she is wrapping Rana and Lük and Kael and me within her light, and the heat of reentry recedes, and the need for oxygen recedes, and the black of space and the smell of melting leather and the feelings of emptiness and despair and loss and the orange of melting metal fade as we become a star falling to earth. . . .

I feel a weightlessness as my legs and arms seem to lose meaning, but this sets off a distant panic on the shores of my body and I gaze down to see that I am no longer holding the skull, Lilly's skull. My hands are still there, sketched in light, but the skull no longer inhabits them, it is weightless and dissolving, its polished surface ceasing to be, and inside, the complex alchemy of its circuitry is finally revealed in rainbow blooms of color, reds and blues and yellows with green and violet margins, blossoms connected and mingling, essence and intelligence, and it is bleeding into the white light that is now me, is now all of us.

I know that is Lilly, that energy, that color, but it is dissipating and I would panic if I had a heart or nerves or chemicals anymore, but I am just light and warmth, and it is peace.

Thank you,
the Terra says again.
Now tell me, children, what do you wish?

To linger no more
, says Rana, and I feel Lük and Kael agree. The three, who have finally succeeded.

What do you wish?
she asks me.

I can't. What I wish is impossible. All I do is look down at the colors, separating, the skull melted and gone. Lilly.

I wish . . .

And then all is a rush of air and light and a deafening sound like the wind from the dawn of the universe in my ears and there is light, light, and a whisper . . .

Good-bye . . .

Good-bye . . .

Good-bye.

26

WE ARE BREEZES, ROAMING THE EARTH, OVER SEAS and mountains and wastelands and jungles.

The Terra is no longer a girl. She is pollen made of light, riding the currents of wind around the planet, drifting down like snow, landing on every surface, skin, rock, and sea, and melting into it in tiny bursts of color. Blue, yellow, red, with lavender and green and orange margins.

In the parts of the world that are awake to see it, they name the passing cloud of light and its magical rain Tears of God, Rain of Souls, or solar magnetic anomaly.

In the wreckage of Heliad-7, they believe it is the Brocha de Dioses, and they hail the victory of the Three.

Everyone and everything is touched, and that day, we are silent, and we think. We wonder. We question.

A man has a conversation with a turtle and starts a religion.

Most people's reactions are more down-to-earth.

Life spins on. In the cells of infected humans, the latest pandemic continues to multiply and spread. In the milky Pacific, the nanoglobules of plastic continue to coalesce in a foggy sludge. In a severe concrete conference room in New Helsinki, politicians still bicker over the definition of “genocide.” In a shadowy alleyway of the sunken Manhattan technopolis, a knife pierces a heart in a scuffle over a can of food.

But.

The wind keeps cycling, and the light keeps falling, the colors absorbed as the Terra returns, her song coming home to every cell; and in another place, a scientist sees the vaccine for the pandemic in the pattern of a leaf bud. In the silted depths of the Mariana Trench, a bacteria mutates and its offspring develop a random protein that allows them to metabolize plastic sludge. In the bloodstained palace of the warlord known as the Butcher of the Black Sea, a waking dream leads to a shed tear. In the alleyway in New Manhattan, the assailant still flees but calls for help before she does.

Around the spinning spheroid, its existence and qualities a coincidence of size, distance from a star, and galactic location, there is more silence and more knowing.