Epilogue
- Callie -
The current is against us, but the wind is at our backs. Still it takes us well over a day to sail to the beach, and then we sail along it for a while until I think I recognize the trees.
When the boat scrapes against the sand, I jump out into ankle-depth water and grab my pack. Crat'ax pulls the boat up on the beach as far as he can. “Is this the right place?”
“Yep,” I tell him. “There are footprints in the sand.”
He frowns. “Those could be from any Small.”
“But they’re not.” I walk carefully towards the clearing with the saucer.
This is definitely the right place, but I’m nervous about what I might find.
I don’t like that the saucer that hovered over us on the ocean didn’t signal, or at least fly to the shore to land.
I made sure whoever flew it could see me, and I know the saucer has cameras and screens to show the crew the surroundings.
We walk past the little sliver of jungle between the beach and the clearing, and then my heart sinks in my chest.
“The Plood ship is gone,” Crat'ax says calmly. “Your friend made it work.”
“I guess so,” I manage, numbed by the anticlimax.
Everything else is still here - the pottery wheel, the kiln, the food storage. There are no people here, but it looks like there’s been someone here recently. As in, within the last three or four days.
There are new things, too. There’s a strange cage without a roof, there’s a hut that appears to be for smoking meat, and the grass has been flattened all over the clearing, as if there’s been lots of people here, or a few very active ones.
I scratch my head. “I don’t know what this means. It looks different from when I was here. Oh…”
One of the trees has something tied to it at eye height. It looks like a roll of thin leather.
Going closer, I can make out letters scribbled on the outside of it: CALLIE
I slide the roll out from the loop of string it hangs from and unroll it.
Dear Callie.
I really hope you’re reading this. I’m worried sick about you! How dare you get kidnapped and not tell me where you’re going. At least, we think that’s what happened. We saw the tracks.
Anyway, I got the saucer working again. It flies, but we’re not sure if it will take us to Earth. That has become less important for some of us, by which I mean me. Because: I’m married. To Kenz’ox, a tribesman who’s really great, and he hasOkay I’m running out of space.
I will be back here as soon as I can. We’re going to Cora’s tribe now, but we won’t stay there long. We’re back and forth a lot, now that we have a private jet.
If you stay right there, we will soon meet.
Theodora
PS: We found Dex, and he can fly again. There’s something weird about him, but what else is new
I read the message a couple of times, then convey the main ideas to Crat'ax.
“Then we can wait here for a while,” he says as he comes up from behind me. “I wonder how we will pass the time.” His hand nudges my butt.
“Did you finish reading?” asks a terrible, screechy voice.
I whirl around. That voice spoke English.
Crat'ax has his spear in his hands before I can react, and he quickly steps in front of me. “Show yourself!”
The drone buzzes as it comes flying out from behind a bush. “I’m not much to look at, but for what it’s worth...”
“Dex!” I exclaim. “What happened to you?”
“I went through a number of events,” Dex says as he flies closer and hovers well away from the reach of Crat'ax’s spear.
“But now that you have read the message, I have only a few things to say before I’ll be on my way.
The first is that Theodora will not be back here for weeks, at best. The Borok village lies far from here.
The second item is related to the first: she no longer has access to the Plood saucer.
It was stolen by your friend Riley, and where it is now is anyone’s guess.
If you see her, you are to tell her that the saucer cannot be used to travel back to Earth.
The third thing I want to say is that I shall now go back and tell Theodora that you are alive and well.
That is likely my final act before I take a longer hiatus from running errands for Earth girls.
I once found that I was partly responsible for stranding you four here on Xren, seeing as I grabbed you all from the space station and flew you here.
Now I feel differently about it, as it appears that some of you are thriving much more than you ever did on your planet of origin.
Perhaps Theodora is right when she writes that I’m weird.
I assume you live in that fishing village I spotted some weeks ago. Goodbye.”
Before I can ask him some of the many questions I have, the drone buzzes off with a high-pitched scream from his rotors, soaring over the trees and going inland.
I’m stunned. Riley stole the saucer?
“What was that?” Crat'ax asks, looking tensely around for enemies.
“That was Dex,” I manage, head spinning. “I told you about him.”
“The artificial Small who flew the Plood ship here,” he sums up some of the many things I’ve told him. “What did he want?”
I tell him what Dex said. “Which means that things changed after Theodora wrote that letter, and we may have to stay here for much longer before she’ll be back.”
He shrugs. “Then we stay.”
I think about it. I’d already decided that if Dorie wasn’t here, I’d go back to the village with Crat'ax and basically settle there. I see no reason to change that now.
This is actually a much better outcome than I could expect. Theodora is safe, the saucer flies, and Dex will tell everyone that I’m okay. Riley having stolen the saucer sounds like total nonsense to me, but it’s probably just Dex being weird. He was built by aliens, after all.
“Maybe we can stay for a day or two, just resting before we go back,” I tell Crat'ax as the last worry I had about Theodora melts away. “We have food, and a pottery wheel. What else does a married couple need?”
“Some juice,” Crat'ax says, picking up a toy-like thing from the little cage, which now looks more like a playpen.
“Yes,” I agree. “Juice is nice, and there’s a lot in our food stores. Also, we can make more. What else?”
“A hut would be nice.”
“And we can build one in a short time,” I point out. “Except it’s not raining now, so we can sleep by the fire like real warriors. Or in the boat. What else?”
He taps his lips. “I now wonder if it’s possible to build a boat with a hut on it. That would make it possible to sail farther.”
“It is possible, and there are many of those boats on Earth,” I tell him. “But you’re changing the topic. So that’s all you think we need? Juice, which we have, and a hut, which we don’t have but agree we don’t need at all?”
He comes over and nuzzles my hair. “Some furs, leather sheets, platforms above the water to keep us safe from Bigs, a totem pole to honor the Deep.”
“Pfft,” I scoff. “None of those are necessary! We’ll only stay here for a couple of nights.”
“We certainly need a spear,” he says, and looks around the edge of the clearing. “There are so many Bigs on the Dry.”
I reach down and stroke his hardness outside the loincloth. “This is a good spear. But I’m not a Big.”
“That wasn’t the one I meant,” he smirks as his purple stripes start glowing in the twilight. “But it means we have two spears. That should be enough.”
“We’ll see, husband.” I take a breath and check how I feel.
Last time I was in this spot, I had that low-level anxiety and fear I’ve always had.
There was no support in my mind, no place to go when I needed to feel good, no reassuring corner of my mind where I was safe, and where things would be all right in the end.
There was no hope of a good future. But now, there is.
Basically all of my mind is safe now. And it’s because of him.
I grab his hand. “I wonder if that beach works for swimming.”
“We’ll need my spear,” Crat'ax tells me. “In case the Deep wants to look closer at you and sends a velan.”
“Maybe the velan just wants to look,” I tell him as I loosen the drawstring around the waist of my dress. “I am the only woman on that beach.”
“You are a wonderful thing to look at,” Crat'ax says. “But that’s only for me.”
I lean into him. “Only for you. Always.”
“Always,” he rumbles, purple eyes softening. “That’s what we promised.”
“Exactly.” I lace my fingers through his, and we walk toward the water together.
The waves curl silver in the late sun. The Deep can watch if it wants.
The sky can change, the saucer can vanish, dragons can lie, and tribes can do their thing, but I am not stranded anymore.
I am not waiting to be saved, not waiting for Theodora to fix the saucer.
I’m not constantly scared, not even of eight-feet tall cavemen.
I’m on the other side of that, and it’s a good place to be.
Whatever comes across that horizon, I will meet it beside my husband, with sand under my feet, and a spear within reach. And for the first time since the galaxy stole my old life, that is more than enough.