Anya

By Alice Gaines

When Unit Commander Anya Baker visits an alien planet in search of a missing crewmember, she finds herself caught in a dream she thought only existed in her favorite childhood fairytales. Colin, king of the wee folk, hardly belongs in children’s stories,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Changeling Press
• Release date: Sep 14, 2018

Alice Gaines

Alice Gaines likes her fiction hot, hot, hot. Alice has a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. She shares a house in Oakland, California, with her pet corn snake and a stray cat that lives in her yard. When Alice isn't making up stories in her head, she spends her time cooking, gardening, and listening to her favorite band, Tower of Power.

Book preview

wanted.

Chapter One

Unit Commander Anya Baker had done this to herself, so she had no one else to blame if this mission -- and she -- ended all fucked up. She glanced around at the planet that had kidnapped her captain and returned him with a wife and some unbelievable tales of what the two of them had experienced. Who knew what she’d have to face here? And she’d have to do it alone.

She took her communications device from her belt and tried it. No signal. The thing was dead. The same had happened to the captain. Because she’d most likely lose all contact with the ship, the captain hadn’t wanted to risk anyone on this mission, but she’d insisted, even if she’d have to go without any security or backup. She was not losing a member of her unit without mounting a search, at least for the person’s body.

She took in a landscape too beautiful to be real. Sunshine, a grassy meadow, and forests all around. Like an advertisement for the ideal vacation spot.

Anya hadn’t taken a lot of vacations in her life, but when she had, the destination had never lived up to its hype. No matter. She wasn’t here to enjoy herself.

She spotted a blotch of color that didn’t fit in with the landscape. The hues of the uniform of a Deckhand Third Class. As she approached the resemblance became clearer. She bent to pick it up. Zara’s. It even had her name embroidered over the left side of her chest.

Anya scanned her surroundings. Zara Thomas. Deckhand Third Class Zara Thomas. If you can hear this, I’m ordering you to appear.

No response came, only the murmur of breezes through the grass.

The planet brought you here, she called. "No charges of desertion if you come back now."

Hopeless. Zara wasn’t here. Her disappearance had mirrored the captain’s. One moment she’d been on board the Wanderer, and the next she’d been gone. Unlike the captain, though, she hadn’t returned. There’d been a moment when the ship’s instruments had picked her up in this location, but then her presence had bleeped out. She’d simply gone… somewhere.

Anya studied the uniform again. No evidence of any sort of violence. No tears to the fabric or any spots that might be blood. In fact, it appeared as if she’d simply taken it off and left it behind. A bit more inspection turned up Zara’s boots and instrument belt. Zara’s communications device didn’t work, either.

Great. Now what?

Zara would have looked for water, food, and shelter. According to the captain, the fruits here were edible and delicious, the water safe. More difficult to credit, he and his wife claimed that whatever they’d needed had materialized. It all sounded like a fairy tale. Those only existed in people’s imaginations and books.

Books. An image flashed through her consciousness. Old and with enough emotional impact to send her reeling back a step. Then it was gone again, but it had hit her with enough of a wallop that she had to make herself breathe.

She found a rock flat enough to sit on, closed her eyes, and rubbed them. It would appear that the planet was already messing with her head. Still, she couldn’t fail to examine what had just come to her or the tightness in the pit of her stomach wouldn’t leave.

For a split second, she’d seen a book she’d had as a child -- the battered cover and the drawings inside. The only item left from her home with her mother and sister, she’d taken it to bed with her on so many nights in hopes of reuniting with her family if only in dreams.

The book told fairy tales, each illustrated with sketches. One in particular had always spoken to her. It told of wee people living in the forest. Each had red hair like her own. She’d loved them because she could blend in with them instead of always being the odd one -- the other.

Tears welled at the back of her eyes. Just like the feeling in her gut, this was nothing more than another emotional reaction to a memory. As a Unit Commander, she should have better control over herself. Still, she couldn’t simply shove the feelings down.

Do you think I’ll fall apart because of a book from my childhood? she asked whatever force or entity controlled this place. Or really, she was asking no one. Of course, she got no answer.

What a pointless exercise. She took a few even breaths. Then the sound of strange music registered in the back of her mind. Perhaps real and coming from… somewhere far off. Perhaps created by her own brain to reinforce the illusion of the fairy tale forest in the story she’d loved so much.

She got up and walked into the forest. Here, the air was cool but not unpleasantly so. It smelled of earth, if that was possible. Did dirt have a scent, or were her senses becoming mixed up? Nothing moved except for the swaying of a fern beside the