“Hear what?”
The voices rose, then ebbed. If I unfocused my mind, I could almost understand what they were saying. “I feel like the ghosts’ voices are trying to talk to me.” After all, Jang had spoken to me to make a bargain; maybe the Fourth Colony’s ghosts wanted something, too.
Haneul’s expression became troubled. “Are you sure they’re not trying to lure you into a trap? I’ve never heard that the Fourth Colony’s ghosts were friendly.”
It was a good point. “I don’t suppose either of you have shaman ancestry?” I asked, only half joking.
The others shook their heads. “It’s too bad,” Haneul said. “The ability to banish the dead would be useful right now.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ll try to keep up.” Haneul was right to chastise me: We couldn’t delay. We needed to find the Pearl—and shelter.
Too late. Rain started falling, slowly at first, then pelting us with freezing drops. Water poured down from above and splashed up from the ground. Haneul tried to persuade the weather spirits to shield us from the worst of it. Apparently they were in an uncooperative mood, because we still got drenched. It grew difficult to see more than a pace or two ahead, especially in the dim light, which came from a break in distant clouds through which beams of moonlight slanted, and the occasional jagged flash of lightning.
I stumbled often, not helped by the distracting voices. One of them started to distinguish itself from the others, fitfully growing louder. Despite my inability to figure out what it was saying, it sounded familiar, as though I’d heard it in another lifetime. I tried my best to concentrate on Haneul’s shoulders ahead of me and listen only to the miserable sloshing of our boots in the mud. But the voices wouldn’t go away.
I eventually slipped into a trance. It seemed like we had always been walking with the rain in our faces, and always would be. I was glad enough to drift away and leave the cold water and squelching wetness of my clothes behind for a different reality. For a while the voices quieted. Then the loudest one started up again. This time, however, perhaps because of my half-dreaming state, I could understand it.
“Min,” the voice said. It sounded male. “Min, you have to hurry.”
“Jang?” I asked blearily. Had he left the Pale Lightning to accompany us after all? Or was this an illusion?
“Min,” he said, “I may have all the time in the world, but you’re in danger. You’ve drifted off course. I can show you the way to shelter.”
I jolted back to wakefulness. “Which way are we supposed to be going?” I wasn’t sure whom I was addressing.
Sujin grabbed my arm and shook it, peering into my face as though they could diagnose what was wrong with me even in the dark. “Min? Min, snap out of it!”
“It’s those ghosts,” Haneul said. She stopped, too, and grabbed my chin painfully. “Min! Wake up. You’re dreaming about ghosts while standing up. Don’t listen to them.” The wind rose and howled, obliterating her words.
We’d reached the bank of a creek. The waters rushed past, and while it didn’t look impassable under drier conditions, I wouldn’t have wanted to risk it right now. “No, you’re right,” I said.
“Min,” said the voice again.
This time the wind quieted a little, and Haneul heard it, too. She whirled around, her eyes narrowed into slits. “Show yourself!” she called out.
A pale form coalesced before us. At first it took on the indistinct shape of some four-legged animal, crouching low to the ground. I blinked, and the animal’s outline blurred and shifted, gradually becoming human. Through the disheveled locks I recognized the face—what remained of it, anyway. Half of it flickered with ghostly flames, as though he were on fire. Between that and the hair, I could barely see his surviving eye.
It wasn’t Jang. It was someone else I knew.
Sujin figured it out before I did. “Cadet Jun!”
My brain finally caught up. “No,” I whispered. My heart sputtered in my chest, and for a moment I was afraid it would stop beating entirely. “Jun, you can’t be . . . can’t be . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word, as if doing so would make it real.
The captain had told me that he’d stowed Jun away somewhere. Did he not know Jun was . . . ? Or had Hwan lied to me?
Tears pricked my eyes. How long had Jun been like this? Silently I berated myself for all the time I’d wasted getting to the Fourth Colony, all the hours I’d spent doing silly chores on the Pale Lightning while impersonating Jang. If I’d acted sooner, could I have saved my brother from this fate? My stomach clenched with guilt.
I fleetingly thought of the stupid bet I’d made with my cousin Bora about Jun coming home. I’d lost. We’d all lost.
How would I ever tell my mother?
The tears started rolling down my cheeks, and I reached up to scrub them away. Haneul awkwardly patted my shoulder. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. Sujin made soft comforting noises. I didn’t know how to thank either of them, but I was glad for their presence, warm and solid and alive.
My brother half smiled at me. I forced myself to study him closely. His long hair, the spectral flames, the way his body faded out from the waist down so I couldn’t see his legs . . . I couldn’t deny the truth, no matter how much I wanted to.
“Yes,” Jun said. “I’m sorry, little sister. I no longer dwell in the world of the living.”
I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth against a howl. To come this far only to discover that I was too late, that it had probably been too late before I’d even set out. All my dreams—his dreams, our dreams—were over. We would not serve together in the Space Forces. We would not save our planet or travel the Thousand Worlds. Who would I look up to now?
“What happened?” I asked at last. It was difficult to breathe.
“I agreed to work with Captain Hwan to get the Dragon Pearl away from the ghosts and bring it back,” Jun said. His tone was eerily matter-of-fact. “I came down here with a landing party from the Pale Lightning. We didn’t survive the experience.”
“So it wasn’t desertion,” Sujin said.
“I knew it,” said Haneul. “Captain Hwan misled us all.”
None of this was a surprise to me. I’d read about the captain’s plan in his logbook. But something Jun had said bothered me. I made myself think, despite the stabbing feeling in my heart. He’d said agreed to work with. Captain Hwan had claimed Jun proved to be less than cooperative. Those two things didn’t add up.
Jun’s next words interrupted my train of thought. “Come on,” he said. “The rain doesn’t bother me anymore”—his simple acceptance of being dead made me feel even worse—“but we’ve got to get the three of you to shelter. I can take you to our landing site. Staying in the shuttle will be better than using the few survival items you’ve got, and we have extra supplies as well. If you need to, you can use the shuttle’s comm gear to signal for rescue.”
I glanced nervously at Haneul and Sujin. With Hwan looking for us, signaling for help was the last thing I wanted to do. I was about to say so, when Sujin said, “Show us the way.”
I didn’t argue. Why bother? We could discuss the situation once we got there. Details like this felt insignificant when I’d made it to the Ghost Colony only to discover that my brother was one of the ghosts.
Jun floated ahead of us, his phantom flames lighting the way. I couldn’t help wincing at every flicker. They couldn’t hurt him anymore, but they indicated how he’d died.
Died. As we sloshed after Jun, my eyes stung. How had it happened? If the shuttle was still intact enough to provide shelter and supplies, then he couldn’t have been killed in a crash landing . . . I thought, trying to console myself.
“The rocks are going to be slippery,” Jun warned as we approached a faint trail zigzagging up a hill. Water ran down it in glistening rivulets. We splashed onward. I was pretty sure my toes resembled wrinkled prunes from being soaked for so long, and the rest of my skin wasn’t much better.
Haneul only nodded. If she and Sujin were having any dire thoughts about being lured to their deaths by a fox spirit, as in all the stories the humans told about my ancestors, they were keeping them under wraps.
As we crested the top of the hill, my question was answered. We saw the ruins of a shuttle, half-crumpled, part of it buried beneath layers of upflung earth. A sob of anguish tore its way out of my throat and I stopped in my tracks. I couldn’t stay there, the site of my brother’s death.
Lights emerged from the crash site. Six spirits, including my brother, floated up and surrounded us. All of them had long, tangled hair and were outlined by unnatural fire.