A Red Sun Also Rises

3. YATSILL AND YARKEEN

I look back upon the man I was prior to that ritual on Koluwai and I see a pathetic individual. I see a man who professed faith when he felt secure but who had none when he felt threatened.

True faith is steadfast. When mine was tested, it failed instantly and completely.

The Tanner family, the women of Whitechapel, the abominable crimes of Jack the Ripper, and the ghastly ordeal I suffered on the island, these things convinced me that God is a figment of the human imagination, for surely if He existed, He would not allow such iniquities to be visited upon one of His advocates.

So I was born again, a non-believer.

I was born again, under the palest of yellow skies and with a citrus fragrance in my nostrils.

I was born again, and I was lying on my back on the ground.

A voice said, in Koluwaian, “By the Saviour! Look at this one!”

Panicking, petrified, I turned over and scrambled away on my hands and knees. Then I stopped and sucked desperately at the air, my eyes fixed on the grass between my hands. It possessed a peculiar bluish-green hue and its blades were tubular with minuscule white flowers at their tips. I began to tremble all over. A mewl of mortal terror escaped me as my body was consumed by the unendurable agony of the witch doctor’s torture, except—

Except it wasn’t.

The pain was but a memory.

A second voice exclaimed, “Suns! What is it? Look at its colour!”

The first voice: “An aberration?”

“By virtue of there only being two of them, yes, of course. When before have so few been delivered to us?”

“Is the other awake?”

“It is moving.”

I fell onto my side, drew my knees up to my chest, and hugged them. In a quavering whisper, I recited, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy—be thy—”

I swallowed and felt my lips drawing back against my teeth.

The words had emerged as empty sounds. Meaningless. There was no comfort in them. They didn’t alter the fact that it was no longer a stifling tropical night but a bright and fresh day, or that the air smelled not of the jungle but of lemons, or that when I turned my head and blinkingly looked upward, I saw, directly above me through the branches of a pink tree, four small moons in a cloudless cadmium sky—three of dusty red and the fourth, the smallest of the spheres, purple with a dark blemish in its centre.

Four moons.

I broke into hysterical laughter, uncurled, clambered to my feet, and looked around. Pastel colours slid past my eyes. Nonsensical shapes. A bizarre forest. Long shadows.

Plum-coloured fruits, shaped like pears but the size of a man, hung from gargantuan trees. The nearest to me emitted an incomprehensible mumble.

I flinched away from it, turned, and saw Koluwaians standing around me. Koluwaians and . . . other things. One of the latter was bending over the prone form of Clarissa Stark. It said, “This one appears to be damaged.”

My laughter rose in pitch and became a long, despairing wail. I toppled to one side and hit the ground in a dead faint.



° °



I was aboard a ship, on a voyage to the other side of the world. I was on a stretcher being carried up into the jungled hills of Koluwai. I was being shaken back to consciousness by a hand on my shoulder. I yelled and pushed myself away from it, bumped into warm bodies, and lashed out with my fists and feet.

“Aiden, is that you?”

Clarissa Stark. Clarissa Stark!

I opened my eyes and looked down at myself. I was naked. The grease Iriputiz had smeared over me was dry and breaking off in large glittering flakes.

Then I looked up and saw figures. There were the—the things I had seen earlier, there were Koluwaians, and there was Clarissa.

She was still wearing the clothes I’d last seen her in—the trousers hanging over misshapen legs, the shirt pushed up by a humped and twisted spine. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, with tears streaming from them.

“Clarissa, where are we? Where are we?”

“I don’t have my goggles, Aiden. I’m blind. Were we rescued?”

“I don’t—I don’t think so.”

Though I tried desperately to avoid looking at anything but her, I couldn’t help myself, and glance by fearful glance I took in the immediate environment. We were sitting among a group of Koluwaians, five plump men and three fat women, in a forest clearing. The trees were the same as I’d glimpsed before—of phenomenal size, raised up on mangrove-like roots and heavy with enormous purple fruits from which faint sounds issued. The air was filled with the muted whispering and mumbling, which reminded me of the noise one hears in a theatre during the brief seconds between the lights going down and the curtain going up.

Six creatures were busy around the edges of the glade. They were pushing sharp hollow sticks, similar to bamboo, into the fruits and collecting, in what appeared to be skin containers, the juice that ran out through them.

One of the things noticed that I’d regained my wits, stepped away from the trees, and approached us. It looked down at me. It was so dreadful in aspect that it was all I could do to suppress a scream.

In terms of species, it resembled an amalgam of mollusc and crustacean, with a carapace of slate grey. Its body was reminiscent of a mussel shell, standing on end with the seam at the front. From the base of this, four crab-like legs extended, while the top of the torso curled outward in a frilled and complex manner to form wide armoured shoulders. The arms—which like the legs reminded me of the limbs of a crab or lobster—had two elbows and ended in three extremely long fingers and a thumb, all of which moved without cease. A fluted shell—shaped like a hood—protected the head. A revolting “face” bulged out of it. This was the only visibly soft and fleshy part of the creature. It had the appearance of a snail or a slug, in that the skin was grey and wet-looking, with no bones beneath it to give a defined shape. It was, in fact, almost entirely mouth—the long opening dividing it vertically—with outer lips fringed with small red feelers, like a sea anemone, and a further set of flexible inner lips which slid over a hard beak, just visible at the back of the orifice. There were four eyes, two to either side of the mouth, the upper pair being the largest. They were like black beads, circular and carrying no expression. A small bump was located above each upper eye, like nascent horns.

The creature was about seven feet tall and wore nothing but a leather harness, which held five long wooden barbed spears against its back.

“I am Yazziz Yozkulu,” it said, in Koluwaian. “You have been delivered, as these others once were—” It wiggled its fingers at the islanders. “This place is the Forest of Indistinct Murmurings. Your appearance is very curious. Are you damaged?”

I couldn’t answer. With each word that emerged from the creature’s horrible maw, I seemed to recede from the world, until I felt that, rather than participating in it, I was merely looking on as a spectator.

“We are not injured,” Clarissa said. “Forest, you say? Where is it located?”

“It is where it is. Where else could it be?”

Another of the loathsome things scuttled over. It bore a jagged gouge running down the left side of its body—an old wound.

Yazziz Yozkulu turned to it. “Have we gathered enough Dar’sayn, Tsillanda Ma’ara?”

“We have. I will be glad to depart. I find the forest repellent.”

“As do I. I always feel a sense of trespass when we come here. However, the Saviour demands it, and the Ptoollan trees have served us well, so I suppose the diversion was worth the effort. Look at these misshapen things, though!” The creature gestured at Clarissa and me. “I don’t know what to make of them!”

“I think we have encountered a potential dissonance, my Yazziz.”

“Perhaps so. You have greater sensitivity to such matters than I. Should we withdraw from the Ritual of Immersion?”

“If you will it.”

“Do you advise it?”

“No. I recommend we proceed as normal. These new ones are curious but the dissonance I sense is fledgling. Let us take them with us. When we return to Yatsillat, we can present them to our fellow Wise Ones.”

“Very well. Saviour’s Eyes, but they are peculiarities, though!”

The Yazziz—it appeared to be a title rather than a name—lifted the hollow rod it held and very gently prodded Clarissa with the blunt end. “The other ones will feed you if you require it.”

“The other ones?” my friend asked.

One of the Koluwaian women leaned forward and touched my companion’s shoulder. “Us. Do not be concerned. We are children of the Saviour, and the gods are kind.”

“That is true,” Yazziz Yozkulu said, then addressed the woman. “Take your people back to the Ptall’kor. We will join you presently.” The beast scurried away with the one called Tsillanda Ma’ara following behind.

A shrill giggle escaped me, and I heard a sharp edge of madness in it.

Clarissa reached out, groped for my hand, and held it tightly. “Aiden, what’s wrong? I don’t know where we are, but at least we’re not with Iriputiz, and the people seem well disposed toward us.”

“People!” I screeched. “They’re not people, Clarissa! They are—they are—monsters! And this place—it’s a nightmare! A nightmare!”

The islander who’d spoken before said, “My name is Kata. This is Ptallaya. Those with us are the Wise Ones. Come. I will lead you to the Ptall’kor.”

She stood, as did the other islanders. I helped Clarissa to her feet and we followed the group through the trees.

“How far are we from Koluwai?” Clarissa asked.

“As far as can be,” Kata responded. “Ptallaya is where the gods dwell.”

A few moments later we came to the edge of the forest, and here I was confronted by yet another paralysing sight. It was a living thing, floating in the air, but whether animal or vegetable I couldn’t say. In shape, it was similar to a mermaid’s purse—the egg case of a shark or skate, dried examples of which I’d seen in bric-a-brac shops—but a powdery brown, and massive, at least a hundred feet long and thirty wide. Seaweed-like ribbons rose high into the sky from its corners, buoyed up by gas-filled sacs, and from the thing’s underside a great many tendrils dangled to the ground, about twenty feet below. Each of these had finger-like appendages at its end, which gripped the grass, appearing to hold the thing down.

“It is a Ptall’kor,” Kata explained. She emitted a trilling whistle and the thing responded by sinking down. There were Koluwaians and more of the mollusc creatures sitting on its back.

Following the islanders, I guided Clarissa up onto it and we settled on its chitinous hide. My companion let go of my hand and pressed her palms against her eyes. “It won’t do. It won’t do at all. I need my goggles. You must detail everything, Aiden. I must know our circumstance. Tell me! What is around us?”

Feeling drunk and remote, I started to speak mechanically, my emotions disengaged. I described the weird forest and its mumbling fruits, the Ptall’kor, and the landscape beyond the trees.

“The sky is pale yellow, Clarissa. There are four moons overhead and two small suns close together and very low, just above the horizon, which, incidentally, is too far away.”

“Atmospheric illusions?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What else?”

I looked down at my limbs and, at last, emotions registered—embarrassment and humiliation! I was naked! Completely naked! But my exposure also revealed that my body was covered from head to toe in small, thin white scars—Iriputiz and his knife, but healed already? How could that be possible?

“Reverend Fleischer!” my companion barked.

“I—I can’t. It’s too—too—”

She gripped my arm, almost viciously. “Be my eyes!”

Her voice was sharp and assertive, but I suddenly became aware that she was trembling, too.

I gave a deep, shuddering sigh. “The forest is at the mouth of a valley, which opens onto a wide savannah. I see a narrow river winding through it. There are mountains on one side of the valley and low hills on the other. All the colours are of a soft hue. There are exotic plants and giant trees, and herds of—of—I don’t know what they are.”

“Antelope, like in Africa?”

“No—similar, but not antelope. And a lot of flying things. They don’t look like birds. More like sea life, but floating in the air with—um—buoyancy sacs, I suppose. Here come the—the—” My voice failed me as the “Wise Ones” scuttled into view and clambered aboard the Ptall’kor. They placed bulging and sloshing skins into a pile and the one called Yazziz Yozkulu announced, “Only two new ones delivered to us—and strange ones at that—but at least we have plenty of Dar’sayn and can now leave this accursed place. On with our journey, and Saviour protect us!”

Our “vehicle” rose into the air and pulled itself past one of the colossal trees. At my companion’s request, I described it in greater detail: the raised roots, so tall a man could easily walk among them; the trunk, silvery grey, at least thirty feet wide but proportionately short; and the feathery fern-like leaves that arched outward from its top. They were of a soft pinkish hue and comprised of ever-thinning filaments that became so slight as to be almost invisible, causing the edges of the fronds to melt into the air. This was common to much of the flora that I subsequently observed—the thinning of foliage to the point where it became a nimbus around its parent plant. Together with the dominant pastel shades, it gave the landscape such a lack of definition that it might have been a dream.

Perhaps it was!

Wake up, Fleischer! Wake up!

“I’m so drowsy,” I mumbled as the Ptall’kor glided out over the grassy plain.

“Probably shock,” Clarissa said. “I daresay I’d be the same if I could see. Apart from that, how are you—your health, I mean?”

“I feel heavy and lethargic but—but I’m all right.”

“No traces of fever?”

“No! Apart from this dragging weight and tiredness, I feel physically fine.”

“Perhaps gravity is a little more powerful here, and that’s why you feel so sluggish. But the kichyomachyoma is cured?”

“I’d forgotten about that! Yes, it appears to be. Gravity? What do you mean?”

“Isn’t it obvious, Aiden? This isn’t Earth.”

“I have to sleep now.”

I lay down, closed my eyes, and shut it all out.



° °



When I awoke, Kata, the Koluwaian woman, pushed an object into my hand and said, “Eat.”

The thing, which was the size of a grapefruit, looked like a perfectly spherical nut with a single groove running around its circumference. It was green, and firm to the touch. Following Kata’s lead, I bit into it. It had the texture of an apple but tasted like a cross between a melon and pear. It was delicious.

“For how long did I sleep?”

Clarissa answered. “It’s hard to say, but I’d estimate three or four hours. What time of day is it?”

I looked at the twin suns. They hadn’t moved at all. Our shadows were still long.

Kata said, “We are early in the sight of the Saviour.”

I examined her more closely. She was a short, fat woman of indeterminate age with a very broad and flat forehead, a crooked nose, and a protuberant jaw.

“Kata has been telling me about Ptallaya,” Clarissa said. I saw that she now had a cloth wound about her head, like a blindfold, to protect her eyes. “The things you called monsters are Yatsill. They are divided into the Wise Ones and the Shunned.”

Kata gestured toward the front of the Ptall’kor, where the six creatures who’d been in the forest with us stood. “The Wise Ones,” she said, and then pointed to the rear where nine more squatted, “Those are children. We are taking them to Immersion, where some will be made Wise and others Shunned. All the newly born Yatsill make this journey when the Eyes of the Saviour open. The rest are on other Ptall’kors, which are far ahead of us. We will be last to Immersion, for we travelled first to the forest to collect Dar’sayn.”

I didn’t comprehend any of this.

I took another bite of the fruit and chewed it, the sweet juice quenching my thirst. We were drifting past a slow-moving river. I watched as little cone-shaped animals with long spidery legs and flat circular feet scampered across its surface. They looked comical. They looked like nothing on Earth.

The rising suns were directly ahead of us, in what I instinctively considered to be the East, even though the points of a compass may have been meaningless on this world. There were low hills to either side of us. At our rear, at the edge of the now distant Forest of Indistinct Murmurings, a range of jagged mountains rose up and stretched away “southward.”

Kata saw me looking at them and said, “They are the Mountains That Gaze Upon Phenadoor.” She passed a strip of material to me. I put the fruit aside, stood up, and wound the cloth around my hips. My goodness, what comfort I gained from that simple rag! Adam’s fig leaf!

“What is Phenadoor?” I asked.

“It is the sea. Phenadoor: the Place of No Sorrow or Pain, of Indescribable Joy, of Eternal Bliss. The Shunned enter it when it is time to die. It is their recompense.”

“For what?”

“For not being Wise.”

“And the ones who are Wise?”

“They are denied Phenadoor.”

“Why?”

“Because the Saviour is not the only god.”

“I don’t understand.”

Kata shrugged.

I examined the so-called “children.” They looked identical to the other Yatsill except they lacked the little bumps above their upper eyes, were not armed with spears, and were very quiet, squatting motionlessly but for the constant movement of their fingers.

Clarissa asked, “So it’s decided at Immersion which of the creatures will enter Phenadoor and which won’t? Where does this ritual occur?”

“In the Shrouded Mountains. The children will go into a pool there. It is tradition.”

As the seemingly interminable journey went on, I continued to describe the scenery to my friend. Gradually, I began to feel a little more in the “here and now.”

“It’s actually quite beautiful,” I said. “Can you imagine, Clarissa, the subject matters of Hieronymus Bosch but painted, instead, by J. M. Turner?”

“Frankly, no. And I would hardly classify Bosch as beautiful,” she responded.

“True, but there is so much to take in, and all of it so queer, that the effect is the same. I feel overwhelmed and mesmerised by it; my eyes can barely make sense of it; yet, undeniably, there is an allure in its softness and luminosity.”

“Unfortunately, I can neither corroborate nor refute your impressions, Aiden. But I’m pleased to hear you sounding more yourself.”

“You’re right! A little sleep has done me a world of good!”

“An interesting choice of words,” she responded.

I glanced at the group of Yatsill standing at the “prow” of our bizarre vessel. “Then we really are on another planet?”

“Can you doubt it?”

I watched a creature float through the air nearby. It was a hollow, transparent ball, about twelve feet across with a hole on opposite sides. The opening at the rear expanded, moved forward, enveloped the creature, then, having moved to the front, shrank, while the opening that was now at the back started the process all over again. The thing thus moved along by turning itself inside out.

“No,” I said. “I don’t doubt it at all. But how are we here?”

“A more pertinent question might be why.”

“You think there’s a reason?”

“If Iriputiz wanted to get rid of us, he could have killed us with impunity. Instead, he caused us to be transported to this place.”

“Or—or—” I struggled with the idea that had just occurred to me.

“What?”

“Or he did kill us, Clarissa. He killed us, and we are in Heaven—or Hell.”

“As a priest, surely you’d recognise which?”

“The landscape might be Paradise, but its inhabitants—” My voice trailed away.

Clarissa massaged the calf muscle of her right leg. “Why would Heaven have a heavier gravity? Why would the atmosphere of Hell have a citrus tang? If this is the afterlife, why do my legs still pain me? No, Aiden, this is undoubtedly a world of the flesh rather than of the spirit, and I suppose the reason for us being here will emerge in due course.”



° °



In Earthly terms, day after day must have passed as the Ptall’kor pulled itself over the rolling grasslands, but on Ptallaya the twin suns barely moved at all. I ate, I slept, I examined the extraordinary flora and fauna, I even became bored, and still the journey went on.

Eventually, when I shaded my eyes and peered ahead, I saw, rising from the horizon, a wall of white vapour bubbling high into the air. The Ptall’kor, making straight for it, entered a valley and pulled itself alongside a wide river, gliding over an ever-thickening forest of purple-leafed trees, transferring its gripping fingers from the grassy ground to the upper canopy and disturbing flocks of weird flying—or floating—creatures as it passed. It was becoming plainly apparent to me that many of this world’s animals were tremendously buoyant, and used their long tendril-like limbs not to take to the air, but to hold themselves down. A large number of smaller animals, dislodged by the groping hands of the Ptall’kor, slipped out of the foliage behind us and shot upward before jerking to a halt at the end of silken threads, which they’d obviously attached to twigs and branches. Looking back the way we’d come, I could see hundreds of them, like oddly shaped balloons marking our passage, slowly drawing their bodies back down into the leaves.

“Soon we will stop so the Wise Ones can hunt Yarkeen,” Kata told us. “After we have eaten, we’ll travel through the Valley of Reflections to the Shrouded Mountains and the Cavern of Immersion.”

“What is Yarkeen?” I asked.

“That is.”

I followed her pointing finger and saw, between us and the wall of steam, a huge balloon-like gas sac floating high in the air. It was semi-transparent—which is why I hadn’t noticed it before—and resembled an upside-down teardrop in shape. From its base, a long cord descended and, about thirty feet above the ground, flared outward like the mouth of a trumpet, forming into a broad disk, which—as became evident when we drew closer to it—was at least a mile in diameter. Multiple translucent tentacles extended from the edges of this and were probing about in the foliage below.

“How can something that size be hunted?” I exclaimed.

“What, Aiden? What is it?” Clarissa interjected.

I told her about the creature. She banged the palms of her hands against her blindfold in frustration.

“Hunting a Yarkeen is dangerous,” Kata said. “When the Eyes of the Saviour are upon it, it will not purposely attack, but if it realises that it’s in danger, it will defend itself, and it is very powerful.”

“But why bother hunting it?” I asked. “It’s gigantic! We couldn’t possibly eat it all, and I see plenty of smaller creatures all around us, not to mention fruit-heavy trees and bushes filled with berries.”

The Koluwaian nodded. “Only a small part of the Yarkeen is edible but traditions must be followed.”

I don’t know how long it took us to reach the massive creature. Time was stuck. Perhaps I slept again, I’m not certain.

Awareness returned to me when we drew close to the beast. Its vast disk lay off to our right, above low, forested hills. I saw that, high above, around the thing’s buoyancy sac, a cloud of smaller things were flying. They were at such an altitude that I couldn’t make out any details, but I guessed the individual creatures to be about the size of a man. They swooped and turned about each other the way starlings do, forming complex patterns of light and shade, somehow—almost inconceivably—avoiding collisions.

“They are Zull,” Kata told me. “Usually there are more of them. They come to the Shrouded Mountains to die. Look.” She pointed at the ground and I saw there the hollowed and desiccated remains of something that had once been rather humanoid in shape, though multi-limbed. It was lying beside a stream, partially obscured by a dried flap of skin. Tiny maggoty things were crawling from the carcass and disappearing into the fast-flowing water.

The corpse, I realised, belonged to the same order of being as the one I’d discovered in the glade on Koluwai.

“Are Zull dangerous?”

“No. They won’t approach us.”

By means that escaped me, the Yatsill caused the Ptall’kor to pull itself down to ground level, where it settled in a grassy clearing. They then took up their spears, and Yazziz Yozkulu stepped over to us. “You will remain here with the young ones. We will return with Yarkeen meat for you.”

“We shall keep them safe,” Kata answered. “May the Saviour grant you success in the hunt.”

The Yazziz nodded and rejoined the other five adult Yatsill. They jumped from the side of the Ptall’kor and moved away toward the hills, where one of the Yarkeen tentacles was pulling leaves from the treetops. It reminded me of an elephant’s trunk, but with teeth in the opening at its end.

I was surprised by the speed at which the Yatsill moved. With their four oddly jointed legs, they looked somewhat ungainly and walked jerkily, yet progressed rapidly across the sward.

Once they reached the treeline, Yazziz Yozkulu threw one of his spears up at the long appendage. He missed it. One of the other Yatsill made the attempt and also failed. However, a third spear hit its mark, and the Yatsill immediately huddled together and started moving in a manner which caused me to realise that, although I couldn’t see it, a thin cord must have been attached to the end of the spear.

With much straining and shouts of encouragement, the creatures hauled on the line and pulled the Yarkeen’s limb out of the foliage and down to the ground. The tentacle looked strong enough to send them all flying, yet put up no resistance whatever.

I’d been reporting the action to Clarissa, but now paused and turned to Kata to ask, “Why does it not struggle?”

“Because it doesn’t know anything is wrong yet. The Yarkeen is very slow and stupid. If the hunters work fast enough, they will be able to kill it before it’s even aware of the danger.”

The Yatsill grabbed at the limb and pushed spears through it and deep into the earth, pinning it down.

Looking up at the disk, I could see that it was now leaning toward the hunters and watery ripples were playing across its surface. It seemed impossible that something so colossal could be pegged down with what, to it, must be nothing more than splinters, but it was fast becoming clear to me that the Yarkeen possessed even less substance than a jellyfish.

After ensuring the spears were all secured, the hunters left the edge of the clearing and disappeared among the trees. Nothing more happened for some considerable time, until one of the Koluwaian men cried out, “There! They have another!”

I saw that, farther around the circumference of the Yarkeen, a second limb was being drawn taut, causing the edge of the disk to dip so far down that it brushed the foliage.

Some moments later, I spotted the six hunters swarming into the upper canopy. The Yatsill do not by any means appear arboreal—far from it, in fact—yet they sped through the branches with all the ease and confidence of monkeys. Upon reaching the edge of the Yarkeen’s disk, they hauled themselves up onto it and ran toward its centre. It sank and wobbled beneath their weight until they reached the slope where the flesh of the vast creature rose into the central cord.

The Yarkeen finally began to react. The tentacles around its edge flailed about in a distressed manner. The two that were pinned down tore themselves loose.

“They must work quickly now,” Kata commented.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

“They are using their fingers to cut through the cord.”

I looked at the young Yatsill and noted that the inside edges of their long, restless fingers were sharp and serrated.

“There!” Kata announced.

I turned back in time to see the Yarkeen collapsing downward onto the forest like a silken shroud, while the gas sac, high above it, shot up and rapidly vanished from sight. The Zull that had been circling it wheeled away and disappeared toward the cloud-obscured mountains.

The Yatsill dropped with the disk, but the fall was slow—it floated down rather than plummeted—and as it descended, its tendrils retracted into it, and the entire expanse of flesh withered and shrank before disappearing into the trees.

“They will now cut out the edible organ,” the islander said. She rubbed her stomach and smiled. “Excellent! Yarkeen tastes good!”

A short time passed, then the Yatsill returned and clambered aboard the Ptall’kor. Yazziz Yozkulu was holding a long strip of rubbery flesh: a honeycombed diaphanous glob from which a clear jelly oozed.

While the Ptall’kor got moving again, the Yazziz crouched and, with keen-edged fingers, cut the meat into thick slices. These were then distributed among the children, the Koluwaians, and the Wise Ones.

I held the dripping slab that had been handed to me and looked at it doubtfully. Clarissa raised her piece to her nose. “It smells like lavender flowers.” She tested it with her tongue. “Mmm! It’s sweet! Taste it, Aiden!”

“I’m not sure—” I began, but stopped when my friend took a bite, chewed, swallowed, and sighed with satisfaction.

“It’s very good!” she exclaimed. “Aren’t you hungry?”

I couldn’t deny it. I took a cautious bite. Clarissa was right—it tasted delicious.



° °



The Ptall’kor dragged itself over the forest, following the course of the river. The purple-leafed trees were gradually supplanted by a taller but more widely spaced variety of plant, the base of which resembled a perfectly spherical cactus, about fifteen feet in diameter, out of the top of which grew a thin and high-reaching trunk that divided at its top into horizontal branches. These divided again and again, thinning until the tips were almost invisible. The lower portions of the plant were the colour of suede leather; the upper parts a creamy white.

Gripping at the thick central branches, our vehicle slid over them and entered a second valley, through which the river flowed more rapidly. Its banks were thick with big white flowers that sent clouds of yellow pollen into the air, making the atmosphere misty.

Something was happening to the Yatsill. They’d started to twitch in a peculiar manner. I mentioned this to Kata, and she told me, “The reflections surround them. We will see them soon, too. It normally takes a bit longer for us. The meat is more difficult for us to digest.”

Clarissa asked, “What do you mean?”

“Our sight must adjust. The future is—”

Kata suddenly stopped talking and her face went slack. Her shoulders jerked. I looked at the other islanders and saw they all bore the same blank expression and were making inexplicable movements.

“Clarissa,” I said. “I think we’ve been drugged.”

Her reply, whatever it was, sounded like the deep chime of a bell. Its tone soaked into my skin and took the weight out of me. My will to move became entirely insignificant. The atmosphere wafted straight through my body and I saw, all around, intersecting planes and angles, as if the pollen was settling against invisible surfaces. The rays of the suns filled my eyes with gold, and the ringing in my ears merged with the light as my senses blended together. Suddenly I could see the lemony tang of the air; feel the lingering flavour of the Yarkeen meat like petals brushing my skin; smell the sunshine; taste the colours.

Parts of the air became reflective, as if shattered fragments of a giant mirror were floating around me. I saw myself in them, a tall, skinny man with untidy blond hair and pale blue eyes, stumbling along in a fogbound alley. Its surface was cobbled, but with seashells rather than pebbles, and the tenement buildings to either side of it were eccentrically designed and leaned inward in an exaggerated manner.

The atmosphere darkened, the yellow becoming the deepest of reds.

I was in fog. Very dense. I was lost in it. I began to feel afraid.

The soft glow of two gas lamps—or twin suns?—shone through the pall and illuminated the legs of a Yatsill. The creature was on the ground, lying face up. It had been wearing woman’s clothing, but these garments were now rent and tangled, ripped away from the body, the front of which had been shattered. I felt, heard, smelled the crushed splinters of its carapace, the ripped innards that had been torn from it, the red blood that puddled outwards, oozing along the channels between the inset shells of the road.

A large broken section of the thing’s torso swam into sharp focus. It bore a long mark on it—the furrow of an old wound. The corpse was that of Tsillanda Ma’ara.

I looked down and saw that my hands were wrapped around the grip of a long sword. Its guard was fashioned with ornately carved and curved quillons, and its pommel was large, heavy, and studded.

Blood dripped from the blade.

Darkness pressed against me.

The weapon. Tsillanda Ma’ara. The blood.

“I can’t be!” I moaned. “I can’t be!”



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