The Navigator, page 58
"I'm Khoi. I don't belong here. I'm different. I always wanted us to grow up together. I wanted to look after you as you grew, but I can't do that. I age really, really fast. I don't want you to remember me as an old woman. Remember me as I am now. . .And Quill?" Petal turned to her. "Can you raise Junk for me? I know you're going to have your own baby soon, but can you raise her too? She needs a family. She needs a mother."
"I'd love to." Quill closed her eyes. They stung. "But I don't think you should leave. You belong here - not up there. This. . . Ea is your home."
"But it's not."
"A home is wherever you make it. That's what the Seer was trying to tell me. I get it now. Trust me. I'd know."
Petal nodded. She turned her eyes up to the ceiling.
"Seraphim?"
"Yes?"
Quill, Junk, and Sejanus followed Petal's gaze to the ceiling lights, searching for the source of the strange, alien voice none of them could understand.
"Can you use a trellis to drop them off?" Petal rattled off the words in her native tongue.
"Affirmative. I have located a suitable drop zone high up in this continent's central mountains. All three humans will need to disembark. You are the only being who can remain aboard."
"I'm sorry I lied to you about Junk. I needed to make sure she was okay. I'm sorry. I hope you understand."
"Acknowledged. The deception allowed me to verify Cynax-8127's illegal acts. Your dishonesty was justified, under the circumstances."
Petal lowered her head, staring intently at Junk and Quill. They were holding each other's hands now. Junk was enamored by Quill's pregnant belly. The two of them looked like a mother and daughter with a new baby on the way. Sejanus loomed behind them like a strange, doting uncle.
The image made Petal's heart flutter. She blushed and wiped her eyes. She felt warm. Her body tingled. For the first time, she felt at home.
"Can I go with them?" Petal muttered in Khoi. "Can I stay here? On Ea? Do I have to come with you, Seraphim? Will you let me go?"
"You may remain on this planet if you wish. I will lower this trellis momentarily. If you want to accompany the humans down to this planet's surface, then prepare for descent. You will not be able to change your mind, and you cannot expect to be evacuated in the future. You will be stranded on this planet for the rest of your life."
Petal continued to stare at her new-found family.
"Good."
With a loud rumble, the hangar doors opened and the trell began to descend through the clouds. The ground below was a craggy landscape of snow-capped mountaintops and verdant valleys. The air was cool and fresh. It seemed to bathe Quill's skin as she passed through it.
Quill clung onto Petal and Junk's hands as they came closer to the mountains. The steep landscape was broken up into neatly spaced terraces, held in place by red stone walls. Among the terraced gardens were little livestock pens and beautifully crafted red, orange, and gold houses.
As the trell closed to within a few hundred feet of the ground, Quill could see a large village less than a mile away, spiraling around a mountaintop. She was definitely in the Kingdom of Roc. The ground was carpeted by waist-high elephant grass that smelled like spices and lemon. Peasants were tilling their terraced gardens with yak-powered plows, heads hidden under straw, sedge hats. Golden prayer wheels lined the ridge tops in the distance, chiming softly in the wind. A triple terraced pagoda stood between the prayer wheels on the ridge top; its uppermost tier capped with two hand-carved dragons.
Quill and the two girls jumped off the trell, into the waist-high elephant grass. It billowed around them in the mountain wind, flowing like a river down toward the ocean. A sea of white and yellow flowers separated them from the village beyond. The natives had already noticed the newcomers' arrival. They abandoned their plows and pack animals and approached them.
Quill had never seen a landscape more idyllic or beautiful. These were the mountaintops she'd gazed up at during her childhood, back in Dhaj Njang.
This was the hidden, heavenly kingdom of Tian Shri Ha.
The girls strolled through the flowery meadow running their hands along the tops of the succulent mountain grass. The villagers bowed to them as they approached, thinking them visiting goddesses.
Junk paused in the grass, just behind her sister, twirling around in the flowers, knocking their heads off with her fingertips, staining them bright green with chlorophyll. After a moment, she tugged on the edge of Quill's shirt.
Quill turned to the little girl with a smile.
"Isn't it beautiful here?"
"Uh-huh." Junk nodded. "But where did that strange man go?"
Quill crinkled her nose. She looked around in every direction, scanning the elephant grass for Sejanus, but he was nowhere to be found. She turned her eyes up to the sky, and watched as the Kingfisher faded into just a faint twinkle, indistinguishable from the thousands of other stars far, far above.
Ab Mare ad Astrum
-Epilogue-
Sejanus examined the fish tanks surrounding him. He'd spent almost an entire day counting the thousands of tanks out of boredom, having little else to do. Very few of the doors on the Kingfisher would open for him, leaving him confined to the hangar, the lounge, and the massive fish tank room. He was starving. He'd searched the length of the deck but had been unable to locate a drop to drink or even the smallest scrap of food.
"What shall I have for dinner tonight?" he mused, walking along the rows of tanks. "It's time for a meal – my first repast in the heavens. On which one of you creatures shall I dine?"
Sejanus turned his assault rifle over, now holding its barrel, preparing to use its stock as a club. He continued to walk along the fish tanks and then paused next to one that held a scaly, green, four tentacled, monkey-looking creature.
"Perhaps you, queer creature." Sejanus smiled at the strange monkey-fish, almost pressing his face against the tank glass.
The monkey-fish slammed one of its tentacles against the glass, trying to grab Sejanus and pull him in with its suckers.
Sejanus jumped back with a smirk.
"Or perhaps something more familiar to the palate. . ."
A large grouper was swimming around a tank to Sejanus's right. He walked over to the tank and studied it for a moment. He then backed away, and began to bang on the tank glass with his assault rifle's heavy stock.
A loud female voice echoed through the room.
"Do not damage C.G.G. property."
Sejanus looked up at the towering ceiling. "Ah, the heavenly voice speaks once more. It's been nearly a day by my reckoning. And now it speaks my language."
"I have no wish to communicate with you," Seraphim crackled. "You are an illegal stowaway on a C.G.G. vessel."
"I very well may be, ethereal voice, but do you expect me to just sit here quietly and starve?"
"I will provide you with enough food and water for you to survive the journey to the Terrelian Markets, but until your arrival, you will remain confined to this area. If you damage C.G.G. property, I will not provide you with nourishment and will ensure that the rest of this journey is very, very uncomfortable for you."
"Agreed! Who are these Terrelians? How long is our great voyage? And how will they treat an ambassador from a lesser world, such as myself?"
"Our ETA is five hundred hours. Upon arrival, you will be detained by C.G.G. immigration officials. They will decide whatever happens to you from then on."
"Splendid! Five hundred hours? That's only twenty days. Ah, this shall be an amazing journey, and with such a beautiful voice to accompany me. Tell me, invisible nymph, do you like to sing? Your voice would sound like honey when accompanied by a melody."
"I do not intend to communicate with you unless it is a reprimand, and I will not do so more than once."
"Ah well." Sejanus shrugged, still giddy. "Then I shall make new friends." He turned around to face the blue whale. "Perhaps you there, fine whale. You can be my first new acquaintance. I shall name thee. . .Frum. I like that. Hello, Frum."
The whale stared at Sejanus blankly, eyes open, never blinking or making the slightest movement.
"Not very lively company to be sure, but company none-the-less." Sejanus glanced up at the towering stacks of fish tanks on the right hand wall. "Hmmm. To pass the time, I think I shall name all of you!"
Sejanus pointed at every sea mammal, serpent, and alien-looking fish in the room, giving them each a name in turn. Slowly, his voice became more melodic and dramatized. He began to dance between the tanks, tapping on their glass, and running his fingertips along them, breaking out into a merry song.
"Dance with me,
All sea creatures,
Large and small,
During this long,
Lonely voyage,
Across the spiraling spine,
Of the Milky Way.
I shall take the lead in our waltz,
Grasp you by your flipper,
Or by your dainty, webbed hands,
Hold you fast by the waist,
And twirl you around by the tail.
The stars shall swirl around us,
Above us, beside us, and below,
Our great ship sails across the sky,
Worlds streaking by in seconds,
Too fast for even light to catch-up.
Our craft is guided by a pleasant voice,
I hear, but cannot see,
I yearn for,
But cannot touch or behold.
In five hundred hours - nay - twenty days,
Perhaps that voice and I shall meet,
Embrace each other in a long, lover's kiss,
Oh voice so sweet, it makes me swoon.
You, my dear, are the loveliest nereid,
In the great ocean of the sky,
A nymph too beautiful, too stunning,
Too fair, too sweet, to ever see.
Let me hear that honey voice once again,
Chide me, call down to me, scold me,
Hearken to me, sing to me,
Ask of me,
But who are you, and what am I?
And I shall answer thee,
My goddess,
That I am but a king, a knight,
An officer, a sinner, a Grand Barrister,
An utter madman. . .and a lowly fool."
***
By Benjamin Goshko
See my other works:
"Diary of a Dead Muse"
"The Ant King: A Humorous Apocalypse"
"The Book of the Nine Ides"
Benjamin Goshko, The Navigator
