42 Origin
Origin
A thrum of shock ripples through the air at Adele’s words.
“When the Beasts came, when your kind left the planet and all the creatures on it to rot and ruin in the Beasts’ clutches, you never stopped to consider all those you left behind. Your species never deigned to consider the rest of us, me and my kind.”
It doesn’t hurt any less the second time around. Adele paces as she speaks. Calm as if she’s told this story a thousand times, although I know she’s only once spoken it aloud.
“The Chupacabras knew of our species but never considered us as advanced as they were. When the Helpers came from the sky, they, too, ignored us, discounted what we had to offer.”
“Who were you?” Orion asks.
“My species was interconnected. Individual organisms, distinct and unique from each other, yet far more interconnected than either Chupacabras or humans would understand. Like aspen, like fungi, connected by roots and mycelium. We were small and lived our lives unobtrusively.”
Me. She describes the life I was made for. Tethers outstretched, living to appreciate merely existing.
“But we had two things the other races didn’t. Magic. And each other.”
For a moment, Orion looks at her with pure wonder at discovering he’s not alone here. And my heart breaks anew at how thoroughly she’s going to destroy that.
“My name? I have no name to give you. It was untranslatable; it was a state of being, shared and ever-changing and understood only by those of us who were part of it. Thoughts, history, decisions were all made as one. A hive mind, a collective consciousness, a family stronger than any other. It made us adept at tethering. We could perform magic on a scale you have never dreamed of on this planet.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Zara’s head swivel toward me. We know a little of this interconnectedness, this codependency.
“And we were overlooked. We were peaceful, but we were the guardians of the planet. The oldest race, older by far than the Chupacabras, perhaps older than the Helpers. Certainly, we were there on that planet first. The prosperity the Chupacabras and the Helpers experienced on my home planet was due largely to the work and magic my family put into the planet. We were like the bees. You benefited from the sweetness of our hard work, but you’d swat us away without a thought. ”
Adele looks skyward, toward a home lost long ago. She frowns at the Mothership that hovers in the distance.
“When the Beasts came, we fought back. We tried to save as many of you as we could. But our numbers dwindled quickly. Barely noticed by any of you, though we tried to shield you with our magic, tried to hide you, convince you to run. You never listened to our warnings, never heeded our advice on the rare occasion you managed to hear it. We were never even noticed by the Beasts unless it was to shake off our corpses from the bottom of their feet like messily squashed bugs.”
They say trees can hear sounds. That jumping spiders can dream. An octopus can feel pain. I don’t know where Adele fits on the rungs of this ladder of sentience, but I know she doesn’t fit at the top, and her story is all the more horrifying for it.
“You may know what it’s like to lose member after member of your family. But you don’t know what it’s like to die every death with them. Every. Single. One.”
Eldi’s face is buried in Orion’s chest as he curls protectively around her. But there’s nowhere for them to escape to, no place to hide, and I know they are both reliving the deaths they witnessed.
“I was young when the Beasts came. The deaths I’ve lived number greater than every second I’ve lived on this planet.
Something broke inside me. I always struggled to tether properly.
After the Beasts came, after they killed so many of us, I could no longer tether at all.
But I clung on like stray thread to a sweater, not fully connected, grasping for any connection to my family, to myself and my life.
When that last thread snapped, I was more alone than I’d ever been and had only death to look forward to. ”
I know this feeling. It’s years ago, and Luca has been ripped away from me, and I’m standing at the edge of that magical void, accepting my end. Letting tether after tether slip through my fingers, letting go of my soul. I’m running from Agency 51, leaving my sisters behind, cutting myself off.
“But after I thought they were all long dead, after I believed myself alone, right when I was poised to give in and let the Beasts have me, the cruelest thing happened. It was then that I heard echoes, the remaining members of my family, the few remaining members of my species. I hadn’t realized anyone was left, and they were planning one last stand. ”
Hear me; hear us. I finally do.
“With immense effort, I listened in despair, unable to communicate with them, though I tried and tried. Catching only fragments and crumbs of their last conversations. Their last moments of bravery as they planned and said their farewells. I watched as the last of your ships limped away, leaving us alone on the half-dead planet.”
Orion and Luca hand in hand, walking away from me as I cowered, hidden inside the Winnebago. Alone. I am alone. My sisters huddled together, waiting for me to come back for them like I promised. Eldi disappearing into a helicopter.
Alone, alone, alone.
“I threw everything I had into a tether, trying to hold on to them as together they ripped open the magical realm and tumbled in. Their last sacrifice. Made to save the race of creatures that left them behind for the Beasts. They gave everything, every last soul, every remaining piece of themselves, over to that dark void where magic originates and ends.”
I heard them. I heard them call to me from that void as I stood on the edge, begging the universe to let me feel something. Now I would trade to feel less, know less.
“In exchange for their sacrifice, the void, the magic took the Beasts too. Dragged them and the remnants of the planet into a great black hole. Nothing remains in that corner of space. Only the cowardly creatures who fled early enough escaped.”
“It was survival, not cowardice,” Orion says, clutching Eldi like a life raft, anguish in his voice.
“I saw the planet burn and die. My only home. I could barely save myself. I barely saved Eldi. I made the choices, picked which of us had the small chance to live. Which of us were left to the Beasts. It wasn’t malice; it was triage.
I tried to comfort every creature left to die, anyone I found along my way.
The adults, my species, I don’t believe they would knowingly condemn anyone to the fate the Beasts brought to the planet.
I don’t believe they would have abandoned anyone. ”
Adele pauses, turns dead eyes on Orion, who is on his knees. He’s reliving and reorganizing a past he didn’t realize he shared with Adele. I feel sorry for him, and I feel a great clawing horror for Adele too. That feeling, dead, numb, too much, is back.
“I don’t care what you believe. It happened.”
“I’m sorry. If I could, I would have helped, if I’d known—”
“You should have known! Your ignorance is no excuse. Their ignorance is no excuse.”
“It was the Beasts’ fault,” I cut in. “Your own fate wasn’t Orion’s fault; it wasn’t Eldi’s fault.”
“How?” Orion breathes. “How did you get here? How do you exist? How did you escape?”
“As I said, I clung with all my might to the last of my people. I slipped into the void with them, expecting the end. Longing for it, in fact.”
And oh, that hurts. I know that feeling. But I had Zara, I had Meredith to pull me back. Adele had no one.
“But I was broken. I lost hold of them somewhere along the way, and I fell. I fell a long way before instinct took over. Survival became the only thing that mattered for a very, very long time. Humans live such short lives. But I wasn’t human then.
You humans simply can’t grasp how long I clung to my own soul.
How long it took me to climb up after such a fall.
” She glares at Orion. “You might, but you spent much of that time in stasis, sleeping and safe.”
He blanches, imagining it. I can’t grasp the time frame for myself. Centuries? Millennia? My human brain can’t comprehend it. I suck in a sharp breath at the thought. Because I am not human. But I feel so human. How can I be anything but human?
“Keep talking,” I rasp, looking at no one. Watching the way the light reflects off the blade that I hold instead. Wishing I were somewhere, someone, else.
“I thought I was alone before, but I had no idea. I experienced true loneliness then. True solitude. At least there’d been scraps of life among the ruins of my home planet.
I thought about letting go. But then their sacrifice would be wasted.
No one would remember my species. My fuel became vengeance, a desire to make their sacrifice known at the very least. For that purpose, I would crawl out of the void.
I had all the time in the world, and I had a purpose.
“Then, a creature appeared. Falling from far above, just as I had. I reacted without conscious thought. I reached for the creature. An instinct to connect that I thought was long buried.”
Instinct. The first reflex even a newborn baby can’t escape. Fling out a limb, reach out, grab hold of whoever is willing to catch them. Do whatever must be done to survive.