Burn Bright

After the blackness passed, she woke up on the floor in another bare room. She was alone in it, apart from Markes. He leaned against the wall, hands in his coat pockets, hair curling over his eyes, watching her.

Her tunic had ridden high up her thighs. Embarrassed, she smoothed it down. She wanted to move closer to him, as if proximity might ease the dull throb in her thigh and the sharper, newer, sickening pain in the palm of one hand.

She rose up onto her elbows. Better not. The last thing she wanted was to be sick on Markes.

He came to her instead, kneeling, grasping her shoulders, giving them a little shake.

‘How are you?’ he asked

‘W-what happened to me?’

‘The probes give some people grief.’ He shrugged his hair from his eyes long enough for her to get a shiver from their liquid warmth. Then he moved his face closer, as if he might put his cheek to hers. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re here for a different reason than the rest of us?’

Retra turned her head away from his. His closeness suffocated and elated her; stirred things in her.

‘They put something on my hand. Th-then they tested it and … I woke up in here with you,’ she said.

His fingers tightened, crushing her shoulder bones. His lips hovered near her earlobe, breath so light she could barely … No! She couldn’t feel it.

He persisted with his question. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I –’ Her desire to tell him the truth compelled her to speak, as if confession might absolve her of guilt and the fear, but a sliver of suspicion pierced her consciousness as she opened her mouth.

No breath. He has no breath.

The pain in the palm of her hand snaked up her arm to her skull and stung the bridge of her nose. But Retra knew pain. Knew how to think through it.

‘I-I want to have a good time, that’s all,’ she stammered.

She reached a hand out to his lips, to test their moistness, but Markes and the room dissolved before her eyes. A heartbeat later the pain stopped and the Register released her from the cubicle into the dark.

She stumbled out of the exit, dazed, and was caught by the chill hands of a Riper – the same one who’d pulled her aboard the barge and then watched her leave it. She found herself unable to struggle, as he carried her from the Register to a narrow path strewn with rock and encroached upon by the undergrowth of the darker dark. He knelt, laying her onto the ground.

She had a vague impression of movement in the twilight to the side of them.

Smell good, said the invisible voice/thought again.

The Riper made a hissing noise. He leaned over her, his hair falling across her face, filling her vision with his ashen skin and hollow eyes. ‘The Register is satisfied but I am not. I’ll be watching you. You remind me of someone,’ he said.

His touch triggered a bottomless fear in her. When one long, pale finger looped a strand of her hair, she lapsed into shivers.

‘W-what d-do you m-mean?’

He lifted the strand to his mouth and slid it between his lips as if tasting it.

Growling, unearthly noises crawled into the air around them and the Riper let go of the strand.

Mine, said the thought/voice.

The Riper stiffened and backed away from her then he vanished into the dark.

Retra lay trembling. As her body began to calm, nausea claimed her and she rolled on her side and vomited.

‘Is someone over there?’ called a voice.

‘Here,’ she managed.

Rollo stood on the edge of the lit area, squinting over to where she lay. ‘It’s you. What happened? You’re s’posed to stay on the main paths.’

He walked over to her and bent awkwardly to avoid stepping off the path.

Grateful, and ashamed at her earlier opinion of him, she reached out and took his hand.

‘The Register … made me sick,’ she said. ‘I wandered a bit, without meaning to.’

‘Lucky I heard you. You could have gotten lost.’

He pulled her up and helped her back to the wide, well-lit path, considerately not mentioning the sour vomit smell about her.

‘You all right?’

She nodded, straining away from his contact, now that she was upright and the dizziness had passed.

He didn’t seem to notice her discomfort. ‘Wow, would you look at that!’ He pointed ahead.

Retra glanced up. Despite her nervousness a thrill pimpled her skin as she absorbed and made sense of the view: lights of every colour, some in soaring arcs, some in clusters, others scattered – ruby, glowing cobalt and bullion gold. A streak of emerald snaked through the middle, dividing the vista in two. The light haloes bled into each other, forming misty night rainbows.

‘Are they dirigibles?’ she asked, uncomprehending. ‘Or levia-flies? I’ve heard they come this way.’

He laughed. ‘Those are the clubs. Set into the cliffs.’ He whistled in awe. ‘Must be some big crater.’

She turned back to him for an explanation.

He stuck out his chest as if pleased that he knew more than her. ‘The island is the tip of a volcano. Came up out the sea one day. That was a long time ago, even before the Elders came to Grave.’

‘The Elders wanted to start again and build a better society so they left the Old Place,’ she said, automatically. ‘The Old Place had no rules and Technology was an evil God.’

‘Maybe,’ said Rollo. ‘If you believe our history lessons.’

Retra stared at him, astonished. ‘Don’t you believe them?’

Rollo shrugged. ‘It’s one version of things.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, take this place. Some say that when it rose up out of the sea, people thought it was a holy place. That’s when there was still day and night. Monks from different provinces came here and built churches. They tried to outdo each other and impress God. God didn’t like what they were doing so he took the light away.’

Retra kept quiet, not wanting to interrupt the story by asking him what a province was, or how he knew these things.

‘Another version reckons that all the nearby provinces wanted to claim Ixion as their own land, so they fought over it. Every time one of them won a battle they built their own holy place. Then someone would come and fight them for it, take it and build another church. They say there was so much death that the colour leached out of the sky.’

‘Can that happen?’ Retra didn’t think so, but the stories entranced her.

‘Dunno. Sounds pretty stupid to me. Whatever happened, the monks that lived in the churches vanished.’

‘How could they vanish?’

‘Maybe demons got them.’ He pulled a horrible face at her and she wanted to scold him for his silliness.

‘Don’t make light of such things,’ she said.

‘You Seals take stuff too serious.’

‘How did you know I was a Seal?’

‘Easy. Seals don’t get taught anything much. Your Elders think it’s dangerous and the Council likes it that way too. Plus you’ve got that look. The way you look down all the time. The girls in Grave North aren’t so timid and they look at you when they speak.’ He held out his palm and drew invisible lines on it. ‘Ixion’s like this. The barge comes in on the low, submerged side of the crater and the clubs are built up and down the cliffs of the higher side.’

‘How do you get up there to them?’

He grabbed her hand. ‘Dunno. But let’s find out.’