Fervor

Chapter 1

He does not harm me. He has never touched me. He only calls for me.

I’ve been drawing him the same way since I was a girl: A void, shadow against shadow, an encroaching darkness with a pair of glowing eyes. That’s how I still see him, this being who walks the darkened edges of my daydreams. He doesn’t scare me. In fact he entices me, this nameless creature.

My notebook sits open on the dash before me.

I don’t often sketch when I’m at work, but sometimes I see him when I’m not expecting it.

And every time, I draw him. This time my pencil moves almost frantically, my movements too slow to keep up with my mind.

He had been so vivid when I saw him out of the corner of my eye, frightening in his sudden appearance in my periphery, his eyes flashing blood orange.

I have to draw him now. If I don’t, the memory will fade like a dream, and I’ll start to believe that I never saw him at all.

‘Midonia?’

My heart launches into my throat, and I slam the notebook shut. Exhaling through my nose, I spin away from the ship’s console, my chair squeaking with the effort. ‘Sister Irena. Can I help you?’

Sister Irena watches me with a hopeful gleam in her eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. But I really do think you’ll love it on my planet. If you decide to stay.’

I cross my arms, the leather of my too-large jacket creaking. I’ll give Irena one thing, she’s stubborn as hell. ‘I guess we’ll never know.’

It’s not the first time we’ve had this exchange.

Not the first time she’s tried to sell me on this idyllic colony, as if it’s a multi-level marketing scheme.

I’m starting to wonder if she’s practiced that expression, the soft upturn of her brows, the almost imperceptibly quivering mouth, the sheen of unshed tears across her gaze.

Her pale hands are folded before her, a silent prayer perhaps, or maybe that’s how she feels most comfortable: her fingers interlaced in a facsimile of worship.

‘You must stay,’ she persists gently. The pulsing dash lights paint her face in blooms of yellow, then orange, then white.

Her eyes reflect the light in miniature haloes, like a pair of tiny bright galaxies.

‘There is no other place like it. The peace you’ll feel. The respite. It is transcendental.’

‘I have to make a living somehow,’ I protest, the vision of my flame-eyed shadow already fading. Already becoming dreamlike and hazy. ‘If I took a vacation at every drop-off point, my boss would kill me, and I’d be unemployable.’

‘Midonia.’

‘Irena.’

‘You deserve a rest. The sisters and I can give you that. More than that. You would be an honored guest, you would be allowed to dine with us. Not many visitors receive such treatment. And …’ her mouth quivers. ‘I’ve grown so fond of you, these past few days.’

‘I’ve grown fond of you, too.’ I have, to some degree, though I question whether Irena’s fondness expands beyond what constitutes normal. Her attentions are almost too intimate, her words hushed and delicate like butterfly wings, as if each word is a secret imparted with ultimate trust.

It unsettles me.

Even so, Irena isn’t the strangest passenger I’ve ever had.

And despite my skepticism regarding her choice of such a remote home, I have no basis for disliking her.

She paid up front with universal credits.

She’s polite and kind, asking questions about me and seeming to be interested in the answers.

Most importantly, she is the least threatening demographic of passenger: a middle-aged woman.

But her frequent prayers put me on edge, and she has a tendency to pop out of nowhere and startle me, even on my small ship.

‘Haven’t you ever been to a place where the air is clear?’ Irena draws closer.

I find myself leaning back against the dash, where it gouges into my lower vertebrae.

‘Well, yes. I’m from New Earth, don’t you remember?

’ I say it proudly, despite the fact that it’s one of the cheapest and most over-populated planets in the colonies.

At least I don’t live on some cramped space station, breathing recycled air.

Irena makes a small sound of disapproval. ‘So you haven’t. You’ve never tasted air like our ancestors used to, cool and clean. Free of chemical pollutants. With skies so blue you could see the color all the way to the horizon, where birds used to fly.’

‘I’ve seen birds.’

She shakes her head. ‘Imported creatures, bred to withstand harsh bioenvironments. Those aren’t birds.

’ Here she speaks her deity’s name, which I haven’t seen written down, is completely incomprehensible to me, and which sounds vaguely like Anguish.

‘Anguish hasn’t touched the birds you’ve seen.

He has not infused them with his life, his love. ’

Irena always finds a way to bring any topic back to this Anguish of hers. I bite back a sigh. I guess it’s irrational trying to get any sort of normal conversation out of her. She’s utterly devoted to her religion.

From what I’ve gathered, this particular religion isn’t popular.

Irena’s colony, where we’re heading now, houses forty-three souls.

Irena hasn’t been shy at all in telling me about her isolated settlement – a sort of hub, I gather, where other worshipers of Anguish go to take up permanent residence.

The only reason Irena would ever leave, she’s told me, is to visit family.

Which is what she was doing when I picked her up.

It seems incomprehensible to me that there could be such a utopian community living in relative safety at the edges of this remote system; surely there’d be traders, other colonists seeking residence, and the claws of industry and capitalism scraping at its soils.

When Irena initially described it to me, the colony sounded too good to be true.

Quiet, all women, no machines, no crime, just …

farming and needlework, apparently. How could such a peaceful place exist, untouched by the rot of the universe?

I’ve asked several times. Irena insists their Anguish keeps them safe.

Which is, of course, complete nonsense. Gods don’t exist; they never have.

A bright ding arises from the dash.

‘Excuse me.’ I spin away from Irena, checking the display. As I’d thought. We’re approaching our destination.

‘How much longer?’ She cranes over my shoulder to see.

‘Not long. You’d better start prepping for landing.’

Irena drifts away toward the passenger bay.

Tension coils out of my shoulders and neck.

I’m relieved the journey will be over soon.

We’ve been cramped on this ship for days.

And I don’t know what it is about Irena, but she makes the back of my neck tingle.

She’s pleasant enough, and kind, but being around her feels like standing in the cold until all your muscles seize up and start to ache; when you know the chill won’t flee your bones for hours.

I study the display.

What I see there doesn’t register at first. Instead of a grid indicating my location within a span of coordinates, I see a planet. It’s black, a void, moving swiftly toward me.

I want to look away. I want to move away from the dash. But I can’t. Somehow this planet evokes the same wonder, the same want, as the being in my drawings. The planet rushes toward me and my thoughts flee.

My hands, splayed on cold metal, seem bolted in place; my body, frozen.

When the black sphere is about to fill the display completely, it halts its approach.

Impossibly, an enormous shadowy hand reaches out from the console screen – no, not a hand but claws, curving from monstrous fingers, scraping across the buttons of my dash, leaving blood-red gouges in their wake.

I blink.

The grid glows before me, a flashing circle to indicate my ship’s location. There is no planet, no clawing hand emerging from the viewscreen.

A chill grips my heart.

A memory fills my mind: The jangle of metal. Bile in my throat. Blood, staining the cockpit. Blood staining me.

No. This isn’t real. It’s never real.

I exhale slowly. I’m safe now, I remind myself.

A memory is just a memory, no matter how immediate it feels.

This is what I’ve learned since the incident; I just have to breathe through the recollections when they take me by surprise, when they lodge in my throat waiting to choke me.

I repeat the same refrain, hoping one day it might stick for good: It’s not real. It is not happening.

The memory abates, but my breathing is unsteady.

Maybe I do need a break.

And maybe I’d take one, except my boss really would kill me.

There’s a reason I took this inconvenient job, and it’s not charity.

It’s not even for the money, which is good.

Normally I’d have turned down the request; this kind of multi-day gig is for more stoic types, the kind who don’t mind being cooped up in a tiny transport with a group of strangers for that long.

I took the job because my boss insisted.

He said it was the least I could do after …

well. He knew I was in no position to refuse.

I was told with no room for interpretation that if I didn’t take this job, I’d have no job at all.

But deep down I’m kind of grateful to get out of the most populous part of the system.

Everything there is crowded. The air at home has started to taste bitter and stale.

I only really stay on New Earth because there’s nowhere else to go, and not enough jobs in the outlying systems. But now, finally, I have a valid excuse to get away for a while, to let myself breathe.

To leave it all behind, and hope that what happened never comes back to haunt me.