The Society of Misfit Stories Presents...(February 2019)

By Kaye Boesme, F. J. Robledano Espín, Brandon Ketchum and 11 more

The Society of Misfit Stories Presents... is a unique periodical of long form fiction published three times a year. Each issue provides an eclectic collection of novelette and novella-length speculative and literary fiction.

In this issue:

In Hope Endures Where Life Persists, a decades-long feud between mages erupts into the 1906 San Francisco Fire.

In The Raven's Shadow, a woman seeking to help her new husband and his people - and gain power for herself - enters into a binding agreement with the vengeful Celtic deity, Cathubodua

In Ash Shades, two women survive the destruction of their landing site by taking shelter in their ship. They emerge to find a local sentient species salvaging burned seeds and must navigate communication barriers to learn what happened to the rest of their crew.

In New Game+, a serial killer sentenced to Hell finds himself recruited by the devil to work in the new field of video games.

Fourteen long form fiction included in this issue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bards and Sages Publishing
• Release date: Feb 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386572015

Book preview

Ash Shades

By Kaye Boesme

THE FIRE SWEPT OVER Jewel’s dry-prairie hills an hour after the manned rover left, just as dawn peeled back the edges of the night with its pallid fingers. Chloe, asleep again in the tent, awoke to Xinyi pulling her out of the sleeping bag. She blinked as she sorted through a groggy headache, too sluggish at first to notice the thick smoke coming in through the flap.

Xinyi shoved a bag against Chloe’s chest. The latter looked out at the paling sky and coughed. The reality hit her in an instant: Jewel, at least fifty parsecs and gods knew how many centuries from Earth, had no human inhabitants or infrastructure. There was no evacuation protocol for a prairie fire on an alien planet.

She had no time to change out of pajamas and barely enough seconds to shove some of her belongings into the bag: medications, two tablets, food from the ship, water packs. Xinyi pulled her out just in time for the flames to lick beautifully over the closest hill.

They ran at a breakneck pace towards the rock flats, where the lander squatted. The flats ran parallel to the river, in some places nearly a kilometer wide, mostly shale — a perfect place to land a vessel.

The alien prairie plants left a sticky, greenish-blue milk on Chloe’s pants as they dashed through them. Once they transitioned onto the rocks, the dead mosses crunched underfoot. Chloe’s side hurt. The wildfire couldn’t have happened from lightning. That sank in as soon as Chloe closed the ship’s door behind them, sealing them off from external air. Xinyi ran up to the cockpit to engage the life support. Indicator lights on the panels left the yellow standby, shifting to green.

Everyone who knew how to fly a ship was in the rover.

Chloe sank down against the door and breathed deeply. She coughed and did a four-count breath to settle her heaving stomach. The prairie outside, so uniform it reminded Chloe of wheat fields in the glossy Earth textbooks she’d studied in school, consisted of a plant with poisonous seed pods. Chloe didn’t know enough chemistry to do more than worry that she’d breathed something in.

In the ship’s bathroom, Xinyi made heaving sounds. That nearly made Chloe vomit. A few minutes later, Xinyi came back towards the hatch door with a tray of water in space-safe cups. The two drank in silence for some time. Chloe only ran to vomit once.

Do you think the dry mosses will catch like tinder, too? Chloe whispered after she finished drinking.

No, Xinyi said. You can’t think like that. The ship can handle it. It’s designed for atmospheric entry.

The anxiety in the back of Chloe’s mind told her that Xinyi was just saying that to keep her from panicking, but it was a good thought. She redirected the visualizations. The prairie burned around the rocks, not on them.

Do you think everyone in the rover is okay?

We’ll just have to wait and see. Xinyi grimaced and took a deep sip of water, cheeks sucking in.

Jewel only had one continent, albeit in the process of breaking apart. It curled like a child in a fetal position, trailing islands like toes to close off a large interior ocean. It had a spine of mountains that ran up the continent, high, mountainous terrain separating the vegetation in the south from that in the north. The few scientists on the Red River divided Jewel’s continent into north-hem and south-hem. North-hem had flat, open grasslands filled with rivers and lakes. The plants in the southern hemisphere choked the air with pollen-like dust so thick that the scouting crew during south-hem spring had needed respirators. The north-hem plants had less pollen, which made it an ideal settlement site.

Everything they knew about Jewel could fit on a postage stamp. Chloe trusted none of it. The fire had been surprising, but not unexpected. She’d seen fires like this on the news her entire life, viewed in her Anchorage apartment or in airport terminals during flight delays. She trusted the north-hem blue skies, which hardly ever showed a cloud, and the skin-parching wind that rustled through the flat, half-moon seed pods to make alien music late into the night.

How are you feeling? Chloe asked. Better?

The real reason they hadn’t gone with the rover party was Xinyi’s food poisoning episode the day before. Chloe was an HR generalist and the most obvious person to stay behind. Red River wanted a fifty-kilometer-radius assessment of the area before it made its final settlement decision.

I’ll live. Xinyi grimaced.

We could send up a distress call, right? Chloe asked.

Once the fire dies down, we can, yeah. They might have received messages from the others. Xinyi finished her water and sighed heavily. This is such a fucking mess, isn’t it?

Chloe chuckled. I’m so happy I’m down here and not up there, though. All of that sorting.

The Red River, a stolen colonization vessel, had liberated an international prison, Maritime. Its passenger manifest consisted of political undesirables, criminals, and a core group of insurrectionists whom Chloe doubted had ever taken a management course. If they had, it was, Find a New Earth, Figure the Logistics Out Later. A second failed landing mission was almost too much.

Few in the prison even spoke the same primary language. Chloe and Xinyi overlapped in Hindi, Shanghainese, and English. Everyone in this landing party spoke Hindi, most far better than Chloe. The officers’ common language was Mandarin. The Red River could have picked a less logistically difficult prison to liberate at gunpoint.

Chloe knew the other seventeen native-English speakers’ profiles because she’d looked them up onboard: Eight white-collar criminals, five political prisoners, and four other. Chloe had worked at an international conglomerate, a political sacrifice of the executive board because she had no kids, and someone needed to take the blame for a high-profile leak.

Xinyi grimaced and leaned back on her elbows. She studied the door behind Chloe, eyes unfocused, and said, Maybe the rover exploded. It could have lit the prairie. It is so dry here. She shook her head. Nobody discussed what would happen if we needed to perform funerals. Who did what.

"We didn’t discuss a lot of things on the River. Chloe finished her water and set it down on the tray. She gripped both sides of the thick, metal slab to keep her hands from shaking. I’ll take this back to the kitchen."

After cleaning up, Chloe accessed the system computer and a terrain map. She studied the hard, heavy rocks and tried to decode the topographic language. The ship wouldn’t cook them from the inside, she affirmed. She had to trust Xinyi.

The onboard encyclopedia wouldn’t answer when the outdoors would be safe again. They’d have to contact the Red River to see if any natural disaster specialists had pissed off enough governments or corporations to end up in Maritime.

The habitability sensors blinked red. Anyone with a background in natural history, Chloe decided. They couldn’t afford to be picky. She went back to the main cabin. Xinyi had gone into a sleeping cubby. There was nothing to do but wait.

THE Red River had a geologist who’d been sentenced to hard labor in his fifties for an infraction that sounded to Chloe like it had really been political dissent. Sumana, one of the officers, argued against waking him up — they only had limited food on board for the revived. The geologist had frequently been placed in isolation for starting fights in prison.

Chloe and Xinyi listened to these excuses with pursed lips. Xinyi argued back so hard that Chloe’s heart pounded. It didn’t matter if Xinyi was right. They couldn’t afford to have the officers hate them.

The second conversation with the Red River went better. They received data, at least.

Satellite images transferred down from the ship confined the fire to about 30 kilometers between the flat-rocks and the river. The resolution wasn’t fine enough to see the rover, or it’s remains. There was no signal.

Between contacts, Xinyi experimented with local edible root vegetables in the onboard kitchenette while Chloe read every ecology, geology, and land management-related article in the onboard encyclopedia.

On the sixth morning, the satellite images looked promising enough to go outside. Xinyi opened the hatch. The air smelled sooty and fire-raw, horizon line hazy. Chloe held out a face mask and fidgeted awkwardly with her own. The mask cut into her cheeks. Xinyi ignored the mask and let down the stepladder. She went out.

Chloe listened for any sounds that something had gone wrong. The encyclopedia contained stories of Earth wildfires that had burned through peat over months. She didn’t know if this place had peat. That’d be a question for the geologist. Still, she envisioned the fire heating up the flat-rocks from below, like hidden coals.

She took a few steps towards the door and paused before she took her way down. Xinyi stood at the base of the stepladder, motionless. Move, Chloe said in Hindi. Xinyi didn’t. "Move," she said in Shanghainese.

Chloe lowered her mask and opened her mouth to speak. Xinyi turned and raised her fingers to her lips, then pointed out at the scorched grassland below them.

The creatures working in the earth had grayish-brown skin. Each stayed close to the ground, four appendages working into the soil, back two appendages holding them up. The limbs closest to their heads seemed the most like arms. They walked on either two legs or four. Some meandered in small groups. Their spines curved up like pulled-back bows, depending on how they walked, far more flexible than all but the best Earth contortionists. The ones milling around without digging gestured with their arms, making sounds. All wore or carried baskets with straps, some so full that dark, small shapes fell from their limbs when they turned too rapidly.

Only one made a sound loud enough for Xinyi and Chloe to hear it — no, Chloe corrected herself, hir — something intelligent enough to be a person, gender unknown. Hir voice, a high soprano warble broken up with pops and clicks, led to other yells from the gatherers. They sounded like orders.

Chloe sank down to her knees and tried not to fall down the stepladder. Gender neutrality in Hindi would be difficult. Shanghainese, then. Xinyi, come back up?

No, Xinyi whispered. Do you see the baskets?

Of course, I’ve seen them. Shit. Do you think they’ve seen us?

They must have seen the ship. That one over there is yelling very loudly. Xinyi kept her tone even, but her face was filled with worry when she looked back at Chloe. They might not know what it is. I don’t see weapons.

Chloe gulped. Is it a language? Are these people?

"I’d have to study it. It’s probable. Xinyi frowned and put her hands on the guide rail. I’m not that kind of linguist. My studies were in post-English slang."

What do you mean? Chloe coughed. The air was still aggravating enough that the soil-diggers below must either be very uncomfortable or possess some breathing mechanism that made the sooty and slightly toxic air irrelevant.

Xinyi switched to English. I studied how English words persisted beyond its privilege language status — so, how quickly English-based slang dropped out of languages and was replaced by indigenous or new privilege language words.

But you can figure out how to say, ‘Hello, we mean you no harm,’ right? You’re good at languages? Chloe continued studying the gatherers below.

The loud-mouthed one was soon joined by three others, all with full baskets. They set these down by hir feet and clapped their limbs against the ground seven times. Their leader knelt down and ran hir hands through the basket’s contents, too small to see in any detail from the flat-rocks. None of them moved towards the ship.

"No. Linguists analyze language. We’re the kind of academic who eavesdrops on teenagers, Xinyi said in an annoyed tone. I speak Hindi, English, Shanghainese, and Marathi. Not impressive by any means."

"You studied teenagers."

Yeah. Xinyi shrugged. Also, online communities. Shit good it does me here.

Chloe looked back down at the aliens — the indigenous species, she corrected herself, for humans were the aliens — and watched them work. What do you think they’re digging up?

I don’t know. We could send a small robot in. I think there should be two left in our stock. Xinyi climbed up and pushed past Chloe to sit just behind her. She switched back to Shanghainese. We don’t know how long they’ll stay here.

Do you think they set the fire? Chloe’s hand subconsciously went up to her hair. She flipped her long bangs and felt the familiar, comforting noise of the ends of her hair breaking against her index finger like waves on a beach. The orbital survey said there are no cities on Jewel.

Maybe they don’t organize like that, Xinyi said. But baskets and vocalizations don’t make something intelligent or capable of language. We’d have to check first. Maybe the assholes who built our information systems included some dolphin linguistics papers.

Chloe laughed. Dolphin linguistics.

Why not?

It’s not exactly helpful.

They put a hundred and fifty different European bread recipes and only thirteen from the rest of the world in their info system. Xinyi rolled her eyes and sighed.

There are more than thirteen European breads, Chloe said.

Xinyi disappeared inside of the ship. Chloe breathed in deeply. If alien appendages could handle the ground, she and Xinyi could walk on it. She closed her eyes and envisioned leaving the rock to walk out among them. They had no weapons, so did they have stingers? Claws? It was hard to tell from so far away. She and Xinyi would have to escape on foot without the vehicle. If pursued, these strangers could kill them.

And everyone else in the landing party was already dead. Chloe opened her eyes to escape from the mental images: A husk of burnt metal and plastic so damaged that it couldn’t relay up to the Red River, charred human remains within and without. Animals with strange mandibles and many-teethed mouths sucking cooked flesh from bone. Dry wind howling, blowing ash and carbonized human, trailing it along in that plume of smoke visible by satellite.

If anyone had survived, Jewel was an alien world. They would have no way to know what was safe to eat without equipment. No sense of direction, unless by some miracle they’d memorized the pattern of stars here. They could be hurt. The nearest human hospital was fifty parsecs away, perhaps only ruins now with the passage of time. The officers refused to tell anyone the Earth year. The physicist who’d charted the course here had airlocked herself to prevent anyone from going back.

Two gatherers looked up from their work, gazes following a diving animal that flew and hunted in a niche similar to Earth’s raptor birds. It came up with a long, snakelike carcass that the gatherers’ digging had exposed. The bird-like creature flew over the ship. The gatherers stayed upright, staring. One stepped towards the rock-flats, head facing the ship. Shit, Chloe thought. Ze stopped before the flat-rock outcrop that hid Chloe from view.

This close, Chloe studied the pattern of hir four large, black eyes — two facing forward, two above it along a diagonal. Short, stubby flaps covered hir mouth. Chloe’s heart pounded in her ears, and the anxiety flip-flopped in her stomach. The gatherer cocked hir head to the side and whistled musically.

In a science fiction film, Chloe had once seen an alien this close spit poisonous barbs to kill someone on a spaceship. This one just extended a tongue, which flapped like an air-drowning fish. Ze retracted the tongue and gestured back towards the other gatherer. Neither yelled or caught the attention of their leader.

Chloe used that indecision to pull herself back into the ship. She retracted the stepladder and closed the door firmly.

CHLOE NEEDED TIME TO consider how to bring up the gatherers. She went to the kitchenette and reheated some vegetable oil-fried tubers, mixed two gooey protein shake servings, and prepared a serving tray. She found Xinyi in the mechanical room, digging furiously through a maintenance chest while the scouting robot cheerfully repeated, MALFUNCTIONING BATTERY. The scouter looked like an oversized, metallic tarantula, complete with a fuzz of sensors all over its body.

She walked over to the table, set down the food, and shut the robot off. That’s the one Kevin brought back onto the ship.

I know.

Chloe munched on some tuber and drank a bit of protein shake. We should radio up to the others before we try this. The Red River was out of radio contact, now on the other side of the planet.

Xinyi shook her head. Look. Sumana is nice. Vilok is okay. Amanda ... a bit scary, to be honest. So is Celso. I’m not sure I trust what they’d do.

They’ll find out anyway.

Maybe this species doesn’t live in south-hem. Xinyi found a battery and set it down on the floor. She wiped her forehead and reached for the protein shake, drinking only its watery top.

Xinyi tested the battery for charge. Chloe opened up the robot’s guts, so Xinyi could pop it in. As soon as they replaced the case and Chloe hit the power button, it wiggled to life. The data it collected would need to be transferred manually to the ship’s computer once they had finished with it.

Nothing on Jewel looked like a tarantula — at least, nothing that Chloe had seen. Xinyi had more experience with the local wildlife. Chloe just knew about everyone’s constellation of issues festering beneath a sham cooperativeness that any first city would struggle to address.

Two of them saw me, if it matters, Chloe said, right before I came back in. I shut the door.

Xinyi hesitated. They should know we’re here already.

"A ship isn’t people, Xinyi. Not bipedal invaders from another planet."

We’re not invading. We’re moving into the neighborhood. The robot writhed as Xinyi picked it up.

"But we have nowhere else to go. We have to land here. Chloe stepped out of the way. Jewel is it."

Chloe followed her towards the hatch, leaving the lights on in the mechanical room. Xinyi hadn’t answered. Chloe couldn’t stomach what would happen if they died. Xinyi gestured for Chloe to open the hatch. Chloe did.

Two gatherers crouched near the craft’s base, half-full baskets at their feet. Neither moved to attack, but Chloe kept the stepladder in any way. She knelt down and tried to keep her hands from shaking. Enough time had passed that they might not be the same ones who had approached Chloe earlier. This close, they had pebbly, tough-looking skin. Their hand-like appendages had palm-suckers. The one on the right wore armbands on hir front four limbs, along with necklaces made of seeds and stone that draped down hir torso. The one on the left had necklaces with fewer stones.

The left one had a slightly narrower torso than the one in front of Xinyi and a smaller face. Hir mandible-like mouth covers had markings on them, too, dark red with brown spots that trailed down the sides of hir face. The right one’s markings were nearly the same color as hir pebbly skin.

The right one moved. Ze slowly reached into a basket and pulled out a handful of its contents — blackened half-moon seed pods. Ze leaned forward and poured them out onto the rock in front of hir, hesitating as ze stepped back.

Xinyi crouched down beside Chloe. She set the robot down between them. It trained its attention on the new world outside of the craft, oblivious to the gatherers.

The other gatherer started speaking in the tonal, clicking language, flapping hir mouth-covers open and shut as ze spoke. Xinyi closed her eyes. Chloe kept her gaze focused on them. As if answering hirself, the gatherer laid out hir own collection of blackened seed-pods on the ground.

How quickly do you think you could know how to say that they’re poisonous? Chloe asked softly.

Xinyi shushed her. I think you can put down the stepladder.

Chloe shooed the robot back towards Xinyi and went to push down the stepladder. Xinyi descended immediately, keeping her motions slow and deliberate — eyes always on the gatherers. Neither of them moved. A lump caught in Chloe’s throat.

The gatherer on the right leaned forward with one of hir arms. Xinyi held her hand out to touch hir. Their contact solidified against each other. The other one made puttering noises and flailed hir uppermost arms. Xinyi started giggling.

Chloe picked up the robot and helped it down the stairs. It skittered over to the burnt nuts and sampled them. The unoccupied gatherer jumped back when it touched hir. Chloe watched silently. That gatherer tried stepping on it. Chloe shouted, No!

Ze met Chloe’s gaze. No poison darts. No claws. Whatever this creature was, ze seemed safe enough to touch.

Xinyi lowered her hand. She put her hands on her chest and said her name. She pointed at Chloe and said hers. Xinyi repeated both again, brow furrowed. She said nothing else to clarify what she was doing to Chloe.

The gatherers watched quietly. Xinyi sighed and said, There’s no certainty that they know what names are. I mean, dolphins do — but they’re mammals like us. These could be something like people-sized ants.

Do you believe that?

Xinyi shook her head. No.

The gatherers talked between themselves, too. The one close to Chloe pushed the seeds towards her firmly, then chittered. The chittering didn’t sound like their speech.

Chloe picked up one of the pods. She pantomimed bringing it to her mouth and eating it, then made gagging noises and fell sharply onto her back like something dead. There was no telling what this would do. When she sat up, the gatherer scrambled to pick up the blackened pods and throw them back into the basket. Ze thunked down into a crouching position like a disappointed teenager checking out of a conversation.

Xinyi gestured at herself again and said her name. The one across from her hesitated before speaking. Ze did the tonal vowels better than the consonants. She pointed at Chloe and said her name. Ze repeated that. Ze could do y and l, at least. The other one repeated them a bit more awkwardly.

They had names, too — tonal words inset with clicks. Xinyi tested the names by screwing them up. It was hilarious to Chloe how quickly the gatherers corrected her. They were at least as offended as a human would have been. Chloe couldn’t make the click consonants, so she called the one closer to her Teeliki and the one closer to Xinyi Haittaki. They accepted those with about as much comfort Chloe felt to hear what she knew was her name coming out of those alien mouths.

Teeliki and Haittaki used a combination of gestures and flat, wide-mouthed sounds to indicate that they wanted the robot gone. Chloe beckoned it close to her and picked it up. It scrambled, feelers prickly against her skin, as she walked. She turned it off just inside of the ship before coming back out.

The prison records had said Xinyi was a touchstone for some of the barely-adult girls carrying out sentences, even across language barriers. Xinyi was forty-eight, too, with a lot of life experience. Fit. Chloe had confidence in her own ability to read and select people for a cohesive mission.

When Chloe came back out, Xinyi was already making wide gestures, carrying herself confidently. The three stopped interacting when Chloe came to a stop beside Xinyi.

She looked at Xinyi imploringly. What’s going on?

They want us to go towards the camp. I think we’ll have to make our own packs to be safe.

Do you trust them?

They’re not exactly armed to the teeth. Xinyi pursed her lips together. You did hear me say ‘packs,’ right? If they hold us, we won’t have food. Can you go? I think they like me.

Chloe nodded and stepped backward slowly. She found their uneaten food in the mechanical room and ate both of their servings while she packed what she could from dry storage. Most of it was space food, dehydrated and ready to be eaten plain or reconstituted with water. She packed less water than they needed. Unless they went into the plains and away from the river, it was more important to pack a purifier. She added extra underwear as an afterthought. The nano-fabrics kept clean, but she had always packed extra while on Earth. Chloe tried not to flip her hair, but it was a better tic than disordered pacing.

She hid the deactivated robot in her own pack. It could return to the ship if they didn’t come back. The other shuttle up in orbit would either come down to find them missing or abandon the equipment for the south-hem alternate. She put the ship in standby mode to save energy.

Haittaki lifted hir basket when Chloe emerged. She closed up the ship and turned to face them, stomach twisting knots in her belly. Xinyi came for her own pack and snapped the ergonomic chest and belly straps together. Chloe kept hers free just in case they had to run.

They walked to the edge of the flat-rocks and came down into the space where the Red River’s landing crew had once held camp. All around, the gatherers looked up. Some of them held out their tongues and tasted the air. Others followed the four at a distance, mostly walking on four limbs.

It was definitely talking, though — the kinds of whispers that Chloe had often heard as a child sitting among everyone else in the cancer ward where her mother died. We can cure almost everything, but not this, whispering. The knot transformed into heavy nausea. Subconsciously, she reached for Xinyi’s hand and squeezed it. Xinyi breathed in sharply and shook Chloe’s hand away.

Teeliki and Haittaki set their baskets down in front of their leader and indicated the two of them. The three-pointed at them several times while talking among themselves. Xinyi transformed the loud one’s name into Ttattiko, spit from the double-t catching in the sunlight. Xinyi pointed out offhand that both of the last syllables ended in a k-like click attached to a vowel — perhaps a gender suffix or some marker of formality, age, or family. Chloe ignored most of the speculation. She didn’t have a background in linguistics, and it was hard to follow Xinyi while her own mind raced through all the ways the two of them could die.

Ttattiko walked towards the two of them and gestured for Chloe to remove her pack. She did promptly while Xinyi blathered on.

Ttattiko touched her arms and pushed her face this way and that, inspecting the shape of her skull. Hir hands poked at regular intervals from Chloe’s waist and on until ze touched her breasts when ze stopped. Then, ze moved hir hands to the outer edges of Chloe’s breast and poked deep until hir fingers landed against the rib bones. The pressing hurt. Ze spoke quickly, and Haittaki responded. The former took hir hands down from Chloe’s torso and let air out through hir mouth.

Xinyi fell silent when ze started inspecting her. Again, ze stopped at the breasts. Chloe wasn’t about to show her tits to an indigenous alien species like a bad science fiction porno. She grasped her breasts through her clothes and said the word breasts, hopeful that this would be the end of it. Ttattiko still held Xinyi’s, and Xinyi repeated the word.

The leader lowered hir arms. She breathed in and out deeply.

Haittaki and Ttattiko spoke quickly, the former gesturing at Teeliki. Ttattiko knelt down beside the baskets and pulled up some of the half-moon pods. Ze let them slip through hir fingers. Teeliki let out a sound like a deflating balloon and walked to pour hir half-filled basket into the one Haittaki had left behind. Teeliki put the empty one back on hir back. Haittaki caught hir arm and the two of them stood locked together like that until Teeliki broke away.

Next, Teeliki approached Xinyi. Xinyi held out her arms and made a hugging gesture. Teeliki held out two of hir arms, too. Xinyi had to close the gap.

This species didn’t know how to hug. It was the most suspicious thing since agreeing to come down here with them.

THE TWO WOMEN FOLLOWED Haittaki through kilometers of scorched earth. Chloe spent the first few hours of their journey comparing it to the aerial photos she’d seen — none of a high enough resolution to capture a sentient indigenous species or the disturbed and picked-over topsoil.

Maybe the rover didn’t explode. They could have set the fire — I mean, they’re gathering, Xinyi said when they stopped for the night.

Haittaki rolled out sleeping mats for the three of them, all woven out of something a lot like dried prairie grasses. The air chilled at night. Xinyi and Chloe slept together with one of the mats over them, buttressed against the cold. Haittaki didn’t visibly complain.

They walked for three days. Sometimes, the three encountered other groups of gatherers returning, dragging the harvest back using animals that were fatter and more annoying versions of the wild herds that drank at the river. On the morning of the third day, Haittaki veered away from the river and towards the hills.

The crewed rover had exploded, maybe on its own, maybe due to the gatherers. Chloe understood this when she found the first piece of twisted metal on the ground, followed by bits and pieces of equipment that the fire had burned to be almost unrecognizable. Haittaki took them to it and bowed hir head when they arrived, arms facing out.

There was no human remains that Chloe could see. She walked all the way around the rover. It looked as though it had been picked clean of anything useful. The ground around it was as disturbed as everywhere else. She felt a twinge of guilt that it might have leached heavy metals and toxins into the seeds gathered here. They’d inoculated themselves against local viruses and bacteria. None of them carried anything noteworthy from Earth. Still, it was an unpleasant reminder that the leviathan ship in space was an unnatural vessel, its components ripped from Earth’s heart.

Xinyi found fragments of bone not far from the rover’s shell. Haittaki spoke to both of them quickly and pointed beyond the rover. Twenty or thirty meters beyond them lay true, wild prairie. The Red River’s landing crew must have come down in agricultural fields drying in the hot sun. Chloe breathed in and out, wrestling with panic. Nobody on the Red River would believe this. They had to pick south-hem.

The true prairie had many more plants and colors than the cultivated areas they’d landed on. Chloe stared at the back of Xinyi’s head and tried to divine from the way her black hair caught in the wind whether Xinyi felt the same way, too.

Here, strange, violet-tendriled plants stuck against Chloe’s palms. Small nesting animals trilled and bit at Chloe’s shoes when she nearly stepped on their nests. Far from looking parched, the plants’ waxy exteriors held in the moisture. There were even things that resembled trees in the near distance.

Haittaki made wide gestures with four arms, walking on hir two hind legs. Ze indicated a place in the prairie grass. Chloe couldn’t see anything noteworthy — parts had been trampled. It wasn’t that far from the rover. Xinyi knelt down and examined it. Haittaki said a word. Xinyi repeated it.

Interpreting the gatherer was like putting together a puzzle when half of the pieces were missing. Chloe looked away from hir and towards the river, which lay out of sight. Something in the fields smelled amazing. She caught a plant in hand with growths that looked like clusters of metal shavings and found it soft and supple under her fingertips. She brought it close to her nose. The aroma of truffle filled her nostrils.

Xinyi spoke up first. They found something here, too.

I can see that.

What if someone crawled all the way out here and lay in pain for days? Or maybe it was shrapnel. Xinyi shuddered and turned away. The prints on the ground look like gatherer-feet.

Chloe looked at Haittaki. She couldn’t even be angry. But there isn’t a body or shrapnel here now.

Haittaki clapped hir hands together and gestured farther into the prairie. Xinyi adjusted the pack on her shoulders and set out after hir. Chloe lingered behind at a distance and didn’t catch up until one of the trees hid the burned rover from view.

THE GATHERERS LIVED in cave-carved homes several kilometers inland from the river. As the three drew closer to the dwellings, residents clambered out of caverns to greet them. Haittaki made a proud, grand gesture of hir right two arms and said something Xinyi changed into Tta’kikki. The glottal stop in the center of the word was comforting and recognizable.

The same pack animals Chloe had seen among the other groups were corralled in pasture here. Two gatherers carried water up to fill a trough, both arm-banded like Haittaki, while a group of small gatherers the size of human children clustered around baskets filled with fruit-like things Chloe had never seen before. A few others worked outside with trays filled with what looked like papyrus.

Haittaki walked to one of the caves and greeted several people who might be family — four adults and three children of various ages. In the shallow cavern, they had a wall of shelving where blankets and what could have been clothing lay in woven bins. Sleeping mats lay in rolls on the lowest shelves. Torches flickered in standalone holders, far from anything flammable. Woven-spine books lay in baskets on the floor.

Xinyi pointed at one of the baskets, then at herself. Haittaki walked over and picked out a book. When ze handed it to Xinyi, the children came forward and chattered excitedly. Haittaki told them off abruptly.

These look syllabic, Xinyi said. She ran her finger along one of the lines and pressed her lips together. This will be good for the future.

Chloe looked over Xinyi’s shoulder. The script looked like a cross between cuneiform and modern Chinese, but with larger characters to accommodate the shape of the gatherers’ hands. Most had been written in dark brown pigment, inset with notes in green ink.

Xinyi pursed her lips together. I wonder what would happen if we decided to stay here and just let them think that we died.

Chloe shook her head. We have to check in. They’ll meet these people eventually and suspect foul play.

You don’t know that.

Have you met Amanda? Chloe closed her eyes. We need to make sure they decide on south-hem.

Xinyi nodded. Yeah, I know. She closed the book and held it out to Haittaki, who took it back to the basket and set it down lovingly. If they have writing, I wonder why we haven’t seen cities from orbit. It seems like something people with writing would do.

They’re people, but they’re not human.

Haittaki said something to the other adults that prompted a conversation. Eventually, Haittaki took them out of the cave.

More gatherers came out to watch them solemnly as Haittaki led them along. Two gatherers arrived, both bearing torches, and went into one of the caves ahead of Haittaki. They made low-toned sounds, heads bowed towards the ground, as Haittaki led the two humans in.

Human remains had been set out on mats. A writing desk with ink, pens, and blank paper lay in one corner, sketches of the bones accompanied by text in green and black. Most remains were haphazardly arranged, only the ribcage and skull fragments in the correct place. Smaller piles of cremains filled up small baskets beside each. Chloe had never seen fired remains before and was unprepared for this.

One of the bodies was nearly intact. It smelled like decay. The torso looked masculine. Chloe understood what had bothered the gatherer back at the site. If they’d found this set of human remains first, they might not have realized that humans had a variety of physical sex characteristics.

It was impossible to know what had happened. Maybe the gatherers had set oiled cables through the fields, reliant on fire to make their harvests good — it had come on so fast — or perhaps the rover had set it off. Maybe the gathering was their attempt to salvage everything they could from their farmlands.

Xinyi inhaled sharply beside her. Slow weeping filled the cave. Chloe put an arm around her and pulled her close. Hearing the crying made Chloe’s own cheeks feel warm and swollen. Chloe had barely known any of them beyond their prison records. She still cried. Haittaki fell into a crouch and waited.

Xinyi pulled away from Chloe and walked over to the writing desk. Haittaki stood and came to meet her. Ze pressed the papers into Xinyi’s hands and spoke rapidly. Xinyi bowed her head against the pages and handed them to Chloe.

We have to bury them, Chloe said.

I know. Xinyi pulled out one of the blank pages and set it back on the writing desk. She fumbled with the odd-shaped writing instruments as she drew a picture of two humans interring bodies in soil with shovels. She handed it to Haittaki. I hope they understand that.

Haittaki took the drawing and left. Chloe had to look away from the burned bodies. She focused her attention on Xinyi. Why do you think they picked them up?

They might never have seen creatures like us before. Xinyi pursed her lips together. She gestured to Chloe for the scientific pages. After Chloe passed them off, Xinyi leafed through them. This looks like a naturalist text, descriptive. It must be for record-keeping, so they’d know what these bodies were when they saw them again.

"This will look like a deliberate killing to people on the Red River. Chloe put her hands to her head. Such a fucking mess."

What do you want to do about it?

"We can’t tell the Red River that they started the fire or that they have agriculture. Or writing. Or that they took bodies here for examination. They didn’t choose to have us in their agricultural fields. They didn’t know we were there. We’ll say that we went backpacking to find the rover — that we did, and everyone must have died. Chloe glanced towards the door, where two gatherers stood studying them. Neither looked like Haittaki. Maybe we can take samples on the way back, prove that their fields are tinder."

Xinyi nodded slowly. She set the writings back on the table and put her hand over them, head bowed.

It bothers you.

I’m not a xenolinguist, but it would be interesting to learn their writing system and talk to them, Xinyi said. But I can’t do that if we have to cover this up.

Chloe nodded.

Haittaki returned with fresh pages. Ze drew an image of the sunset, then of sunrise, and finally beings made of geometric shapes going outside. The burial would have to wait until morning.

Night among the gatherers was sleepless. Chloe awoke before dawn, cortisol keeping her from returning to sleep. She sat outside and watched the sleeping pack animals, sky paling with daylight.

They prepared to leave after breakfast. Chloe’s skin crawled as she handled the cremains of her colleagues, fragments of bone and ash catching on her hands. She and Xinyi washed their hands free of the dead. Haittaki and two others took care of lifting the pallet with the nearly-intact person.

Haittaki’s cart had two shovels in it, as depicted in Xinyi’s doodle. The two pack animals Haittaki picked responded easily to the lead as they walked out into the prairie, following a well-worn path until the flat-rocks broke up into crumbling boulders. Chloe watched the sun to judge time. They covered five or six kilometers on the road.

Halfway through the morning, they veered the cart into the prairie and followed it until noon. Haittaki stopped close to the rocky flats, gesturing at the shovels.

It took so much time to dig that the sun had set by the time they were ready to bury the bodies. The sky overhead blossomed into stars that were so alike and unlike Earth’s sky that it was jarring to watch them. The Milky Way wouldn’t rise after dark during this season. In Northern Hemisphere Earth summers, it had.

The baskets were easier to bury than the body. The pallet wasn’t firm enough for them to grip without touching the corpse. The hole was deep enough that wildlife wouldn’t disturb it, which meant dropping it in. Chloe envisioned the torso splitting open to jettison up half-decayed goo.

They dropped the pallet directly into the grave. The fall damaged the back of the corpse’s skull. The moon gave enough light for Chloe to see something oozing out behind the head.

Xinyi prayed in Shanghainese and Hindi to a variety of gods and spirits associated with death. The way Haittaki watched them, Chloe knew that ze’d report back, perhaps write this entire experience down. It embarrassed Chloe that there’d be indigenous records of human superstitions instead of — what, exactly? The right path to God? Agnosticism?

Chloe had lapsed out of religion shortly after her mother’s death. She had no coins to place under the dead colleagues’ tongues, no gold leaves. The graves evoked images of pomegranate groves that the sunlight never touched, the darkness visible of Milton’s Paradise Lost and the wandering shades encountered in the Odyssey. In her mind’s eye, she saw the death-goddess of her childhood, obsidian-crowned — the daughter of Demeter, Chloe’s namesake.

The Orphic hymn slipped out of Chloe’s mouth so easily that it was a wonder she’d ever forgotten it. We are all sailing to you, O Daeira, O Sotera, she thought when she finished. The tears cracked open like the ground beneath Persephone’s feet.

Xinyi hugged Chloe from behind at first but slipped into a side hug. Chloe rested her head against Xinyi’s shoulder. Chloe tried to stop sobbing. She managed, Let’s cover them and go back to the settlement before we attract wild animals.

We don’t have to be so fast.

Still crying, Chloe knelt down and set to work in the soil and dirt, picking out stones as she worked. Xinyi and Haittaki resigned themselves to Chloe’s silence. Xinyi grabbed one of the shovels. The night deepened. Animals cried, but never approached. Chloe’s tears lessened as they covered the graves.

They set Chloe’s stones on each of them in cairns to mark the place.

When they finished, Haittaki removed hir necklaces and approached each of the cairns in turn. Ze offered one necklace to each, laying them out gently across the stones. The lamentation cry sounded like a diving bird of prey. Chloe echoed it, goosebumps pebbling her skin.

It’s a funeral template, at least of a sort, Xinyi whispered.

Yeah, Chloe murmured. One out of many.

Their descendants could encounter this people, perhaps long after anyone remembered the landing party and what had happened here or so far in the future that the stories would become ephemeral like shades.

Chloe turned away from the graves to gather their things. Xinyi grabbed her hand and squeezed it. They shared a smile in the moonlight, soft and subtle. All around them, the truffle-scented prairie whispered like a chorus in the wind.

They had come through the fire, and it would be all right.

A Summer’s Eve at Fontainebleau

By F. J. Robledano Espín

IT WAS A CALM NIGHT, with