BEGINNINGS

My dearest Mary,

Before this note reaches you I shall have fallen as a soldier in the cause of Irish freedom. I write to bid you a last farewell in this world.

If you really love me teach the children in your class the history of their own land, and teach them that the cause of Caitlin Ni Ual-lachain never dies. Ireland shall be free from the centre to the sea as soon as the people of Ireland believe in the necessity for Ireland’s freedom and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to obtain it.

—SEAN HEUSTON,                                    
Unit Commander of the Irish Volunteers,
letter to his sister before his                    
execution, May 1916                             

 

VOICE:

Ishiko Allen-Shimmura of the Rock

I DON’T KNOW WHAT I EXPECTED IT TO LOOK LIKE, though of course I’d had it described to me several times, starting with Ely’s breathless tale on his arrival at the Rock. The picture painted for me by all the words had been different somehow. Certainly nothing had prepared me for the tremendous scale of it all.

Ghost’s Lake was two kilometers across, and nearly circular. The Ibn Battuta’s tank had come down directly on the wide river winding through the valley leading to TeNon, gouging out an impossible divot in the veils of greenery, shattering an ancient highroad bridge, and laying waste to the trees for another few kilometers around the jagged circumference of the impact crater—deadwood littered the landscape, scattered like tinder. The crater had quickly been filled in by water rushing down from North Lake, creating a new body of water.

A black lake, silty and nearly opaque with the dirt and debris.

Somewhere under the still waters, under the waves ruffled by the wind’s hands, were Caitlyn and RenSa.

The two Sa Beneath The Water …

I’d heard that some of the Miccail have already come here, visiting this valley as they once had the Black Lake near the Rock, venerating it as a sacred place. I suspect that some of us humans may do the same.

I know I will.

In the twilight, I saw a Miccail emerge from the ruffle of quick-growing reeds near the river’s entrance, stepping out onto the stair-stepped, muddy flats around the lake. A nasituda stood close the shore where she walked, carved with Miccail symbols that I could not read. I waved to her; after a moment, she gave a wave in return. I wondered whether she might be QualiKa, and I felt an urge to go and talk with her, to have her tell me what the speaking stone said. The child jumped inside me, and I cradled my swelling belly, watching the last sunlight turn red and orange on the tips of the wavelets—since the devastation here a few months ago, our sunsets have been particularly gorgeous. Strange to see such beauty deriving from such destruction. I started to call to the Miccail, but when I looked again, she had gone back into the reeds.

Perhaps that was just as well. There will be time for words later. There’s still much healing to be done between our two species, and there are those (like Gerald and probably Geema) who will never come to forgive or forget, even if they eventually submit to change. In the fading light, I went back to the tents where Linden and the others were camped, by the foot of the hills. As I approached, I saw two people waiting for me near the SaTu’s tent, one of them illuminated by some unnatural light. “Ishiko,” Linden called. “Ghost’s here.”

Ghost wore the appearance of O’Sa Anaïs. Ke was wrapped in an orange shangaa, white hair wisping over the shoulders from a wrinkled, timeworn face that spoke of an open heart. “Ishiko,” ke said. “You’re looking well—and bigger. I wish I were going to be around to see your child.”

“I wish you were too, Ghost. I still get startled every time I see my profile in a mirror, but I’ll get a lot bigger yet.” I rubbed the mound beneath my coat. “I was out looking at your lake,” I told ker.

Ghost glanced toward the dim shores of the lake, where a flock of migrating sand skippers rested near the reeds. Life was resilient, if nothing else—in another year, this place would be fully alive again, green and noisy. “I’m sorry,” Ghost said, giving me a soft, sympathetic smile. “I wish this could have ended differently. I really do.”

“Caitlyn wouldn’t say that. Ke’d say that things have come out better than ke had hoped. Our first meetings with CosTa went well enough, and most of the Rock Elders understand that we need to keep the dialogue going. I think Linden and our delegation will make even more progress.”

“I’m sure you will,” Ghost said. We didn’t say anything for a time, listening to the quiet sounds of the river and the lake, the soft muttering of the sand skimmers as they settled for the night, the nickering of the konja by the wagons and the muted conversations of the other people with us. “Well, I guess it’s time,” Ghost said finally. “I’m glad I could say good-bye to the two of you. I hope you understand—I did what I believed I had to do. That’s all.”

“We understand,” Linden and I said together, nearly in unison, and we smiled at each other with the serendipity. Ghost’s body shimmered, and ke morphed again, this time changing to the image of Gabriela Rusack, wearing the Ibn Battuta dress uniform. She seemed to take a deep breath, lifting the wide shoulders of the dark blouse. Static was starting to flicker through her body and we could hear a hissing rush like a great wind in the audio. The snout of the holographic projector, set on the ground near the tent, pulsed erratically with shifting colors that played over her body. “We’ll miss you, Ghost,” I said to her.

I don’t know if she heard me or not. “Watch,” she said in her static-garbled voice. “Over there.” She pointed to the sky above the eastern hills. We both looked up. In the purple twilight, a shooting star burned, arcing across the sky toward the west. In a moment, the fireball sputtered, then shattered into three separate pieces, each streaking silently westward, their passage burning in our eyes. Only a few seconds, and they had moved overhead and vanished again, beyond the valley walls toward their eventual destination well out in the vast ocean.

“Ghost—” I started to say, turning to her, but the projector had gone dead, just a hunk of metal and plastic and circuitry that would never work again, our last link with old Earth. We were truly aliens now, our fate tied to Mictlan. I patted the cold metal. “Rest well, Ghost,” I whispered. Linden was still staring at the sky, where the myriad stars were appearing one by one as the sky darkened. The moon Faraway—Quali—was rising, full and bright. I touched Linden’s shoulder, and ke patted my hand. As I moved away from the firelight, ke called out to me.

“Where are you going, Ish?”

“Back to the lake,” I told ker. “I think … I just want to sit there for a while.”

“Ke loved you, you know.”

I smiled at ker. “I know,” I said.

I left Linden and went to the shore again. In the moonlight, I sat on the rough bark of a fallen amberdrop and listened to the sound of the waves lapping at the shore, and I tried to hear in their rhythmic serenity ker voice.