Terra Infirma: The Terra Trilogy, #2

By Karen L. Abrahamson

TERRA VARGUS AND RAVI SANGHERA MUST TEAM UP AGAIN TO SAVE DESPERATE CITY IN THIS SEQUEL TO TERRA INCOGNITA.

 

Terra learns that her mother, long lost to attacking marauders, may still be alive. Her rescue depends on Terra. Before they can rush to her mother's aid, marauding deepee, attack Couver, the last city standing on the North American west coast.

 

What the storm torn Earth didn't destroy, the deepee will.

 

Terra's awakening power promises a solution, or may destroy them all.

 

Karen L. Abrahamson returns us to the vivid post-apocalyptic world of flooded Couver and a magic powerful enough to rewrite everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Twisted Root Publishing
• Release date: Mar 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781927753057

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TERRA: Infirma

Karen L. Abrahamson

Chapter 1 — The Weight of a City

2076: The Independent City of Couver

A circle of moons hung above me that transformed to men’s faces. Predators all of them, and I still had night terrors of them and how they’d tied me down and how I’d lost of everything I loved. When I closed my eyes those faces were branded on my eyelids and I still felt the force of them leering down at me.

The storm of acid rain had gone on all day. It drummed the yellow surface of my kayak, sounding like my heart had sounded the day the deepee men tied me down. Rain pasted my slicker onto my shoulders and head now, just as fear and sweat and blood had soaked my clothes then. Rain threatened to eat its way through the protective canvas, just like their taunting had eaten my strength. I shuddered. No. I shook my head. The rain pressed the canvas into me like the need to find my mother ate my resolve to stay here and keep Couver safe.

If Ravi didn’t come soon, I was going to go anyway. I knew it. I could feel it like my heartbeat. Forget the circle of moons. The deepee men were my past and I was no longer afraid of them.

Rain ran down my gloved hands and arms as I waited for the blue kayak struggling across the strait against the southwester wind. It had better be Ravi. Even though there had seemed to be a connection between us, lately I’d begun to wonder whether he really would keep to the plan and come back.

He was deepee, after all. And all we had was what had happened between us. A kiss and a connection and — I didn’t really want to think what it meant. Or how my heart beat a little faster when I thought of him.

Rain played a tattoo on the creaking, rust-covered reef that broke the worst of the wind behind me. More rain made the surface of the ocean a toxic bath so that the two dahl porpoise that usually followed me had abandoned me for safer water.

Not a good day to be out. Through the depressing gloom of the five miles of rain that separated Grandfather Island from Couver, the city didn’t look like much more than a heap of ruins that nobody should be worried about protecting.

The old, mostly-abandoned skyscrapers north east of where I sat formed ragged stalagmites under the roof of the clouds. With their bases in the water, it looked like the rain slowly ate them away instead of building them up. But people still lived there. Beyond them, Couver proper flowed down the mountainside and onto floating villages at the edge of the water like an ugly sludge. From here, with the rain softening the view, it looked like one continuous mass of human habitation, but really it was two cities: Couver with its straight streets, snugly built houses, and despicable mayor; and the Camps, the ramshackle shanty-town home of the filthy deepee—displaced people who had been causing trouble for Couver and my family for the past fifty years. But in the melting rain, most of the camps were hidden in the clouds that hid the mountain peaks. Which was a good thing, I suppose, because every time I looked at those mountains and those camps I got mad and wondered why I bothered to protect them with the golden dome of earth power that held up Couver and kept it safe, while the rest of the Pacific Northwest was torn apart by volcanoes and ravaged by earthquakes. It had been my grandfather’s creation long before I knew we weren’t human, but were something called Cartos.

Why did I protect them?

The answer was one word: Ravi.

The reef groaned behind me and the water shimmied around the kayak hull. Another quake, and I clamped down on my anger to stop it. Quakes’d been a problem ever since I stopped the deepee from killing me and my friends. Stopping them hadn’t stopped the anger.

A smart person would have run Ravi off, even though he wasn’t the worst kind of deepee. A smarter person might even have killed him—not that killing is my way. But it was his fault that I was stuck protecting Couver.

Ahoy, Terra Vargas! I rolled my eyes at the so-correct shout from the still-awkward paddler, but I couldn’t help but smile. He was so unlike anyone I’d ever met before. This kayaker still clung to odd words from his long voyage from India to North America, and still showed he hadn’t grown up with a paddle in his hand. Ravi Sanghera drove the paddle too deep, too close to the hull, and hadn’t developed the effortless stroke like my lost friends Jo and Serena had had.

My smile faded at that memory and I heard him panting.

Still haven’t figured out how to work that thing, huh, I said as he brought his kayak up beside mine and bumped hulls.

I winced, but he caught my gloved hand and before I could respond he leaned perilously over to place a quick kiss on my lips. My heart beat faster and I felt heat rush to my face. I shouldn’t have let that happen. He grinned.

What are you talking about? I am here in one piece. His precise English that could always make me smile when I wasn’t pissed at what he’d got me into, or confused at what he made me feel. His dark eyes peered out from a fringe of long lashes. In the shadows of his slicker it felt as if he’d like to look right into me and a little surge of warmth banished the chill of the wind. That was the trouble with Ravi Sanghera. The dark flop of his hair across his forehead seriously needed someone like me to push it back from his eyes. His golden skin seemed to burn with the Cartos light inside him, even though at the moment it showed a sheen of sweat. Of course that sheen would have looked nice in the sun with his shirt off. I knew. I’d seen.

A slight tingle ran through the stupid connection between us and his gaze seemed to widen. Super. Just what I needed was Ravi Sanghera knowing just how interested I was in him. I had enough problems without inviting a flipping deepee deeper into my life.

But he caught my hand with one of his.

Terra….

I shook my head. You make paddling look like a lot more effort than it is. What’d it take you? Two and a half hours for what should be an hour and a half paddle?

He released me with a nod. So says the one who was born with a paddle in her hands and who learned to paddle at her mother’s knee.

Yeah. But the snark went out of me. Talking about my mom was hard. She’d given up everything for me and I’d never even known it. My granddad and aunt had kept it from me. Now I had to find her. I shifted back to business. So aside from the paddling, what took you so long? Did you find anyone? You’ve been gone almost a month and I expected you last week. Or were you just having too good a time partying it up with your buddy Clint and his father?

Or maybe he found someone else.

I didn’t know why I was being so bitchy. Maybe it was because he was deepee, or maybe it was because I cared about him. Ravi was just another person I could lose.

But he stiffened under his slicker. It could be true. Ravi was friends with the mayor and his son and he was good-looking enough the Couver girls would definitely flock to him. He’d worked with the mayor and Clint when they took over Grandfather Island and forced us to allow deepee on the island.

I was not partying with Clint. His voice was firm.

But you reported in, didn’t you? Had to keep the mayor informed of what his number one problem citizen was doing?

A pause and then. "I saw the mayor at his new fortress near the harbor. He has been working on it since you brought warning of the deepee at Melani Island. His dark gaze met mine. So you see he does not take everything you do as a problem. He is not your enemy, Terra."

Sure. When it works for him. Now did you find someone, or not?

Ravi studied me with those black eyes of his as if he were trying to decide what to say.

Would you just spit it out? You don’t have to walk around me like my aunt does—like I’m an invalid or something!

Behind me the reef groaned again and the water shimmied around us. Ravi’s gaze went hard.

Another quake.

Sure, I said. Another small one. Nothing to worry about. We’re on water, for goodness sake. Nothing’s going to happen to us. But that wasn’t what he was worried about. He was worried about the fact I couldn’t control them, and maybe I caused them. Now tell me what you’ve got. Or do I have to go to Couver and do the research myself and probably get arrested after I deal with Clint and the Mayor?

Vishnu preserve us from any such venture. We have enough problems. He shook his head in that charming little head-waggle that I’d come to learn meant both yes and no. We?

There are no Portuguese speakers in Couver proper to translate the diary. I found a woman in the Camps, however and she….

No. I cut him off. "No deepee." In the midst of everything going so bad in my life, Ravi had found an old diary amongst my grandfather’s stuff. We hoped it contained information about how to make the ancient Cartos maps that could change the landscape so that I would be freed from protecting Couver. Then I could get on with finding my mother, but first we had to have it translated.

But a woman… I thought that would be acceptable. She is very old and both speaks and reads the language.

"No deepee. You know that."

"But Terra, I am deepee as well, according to you," he said softly and caught my hand.

Don’t remind me. I pulled away and turned my kayak toward the too-wide channel that now existed through the reef. Every night I wake up to the nightmare that I’m stuck with you.

And it was true that I dreamed of him, but they weren’t nightmares.

When I glanced back, his full lips were pressed into an irate line. I grinned to take out some the sting, but it was true that I was stuck with him. Ravi Sanghera was the only person in Couver who knew and understood what I was, because he was the same—a Cartos, who could control the landscape.

Terra, wait. Ravi paddled almost even with me, his awkward strokes sending acid-infused water over the hull of my kayak. There was one other person I heard about. Old Man Murphy out on the Chain Islands. Apparently his mother was Portuguese and he learned to read and write it from her, or so the people at the harbor told me.

At least that was something. I increased my paddle strokes, the yellow kayak skittering across the water in front of him as I headed down the channel between the rusting hulks of old metal warehouses for the lagoon inside the reef. Let him chase after me.

Old Man Murphy. Who’d have known? I’d even met the man on one of his infrequent trips into Couver to buy staples for his island. He lived on one of the desolate Chain Islands a good day and a half paddle west, which used to be a larger island off the coast. After the Big One, the few survivors had mostly come to Couver except for a few hardy souls who weren’t about to leave their places. Now they provided a warning system for Couver, sending up smoke signals to let us know when acid storms were coming, or when rogue deepee like those I’d dealt with were on the prowl. Not an easy place to live. Not an easy place to get to, either. A long paddle against the wind and current.

Even with its too-large bevy of canoes and kayaks and rowboats, the sheltered lagoon’s water was a welcome respite from the wind. Above the grass that rolled down to the pebbled beach and the pier, stood my granddad’s weathered, green-painted, Victorian house. Or almost. I’d replaced the house when I’d recreated the island after it sank into the ocean when granddad died. When granddad was alive this place had felt like home and I thought that granddad and I would live here forever. Now, it just felt weird and crowded and empty at the same time.

And vulnerable, because it depended on me to keep it safe and whole and I wasn’t exactly good at that. A little ripple across the smooth water and a creak and groan from the reef’s old warehouse walls showed I still wasn’t controlling the quakes. Or was making them.

Beyond the house and the three windmills, and backed up against the wedge of forest at the point of the island, stood a half-built row of six shanties. Houses, Aunt Kirsten and the Mayor called them, but they were one-room shanties pulled together out of newly-sawn uneven boards milled from trees the mayor’s men and deepee had cut from our island. And I hated them, both for the cutting of the trees and what they represented. Couver had taken over our island.

I hated the deepee who had invaded our house most of all.

I drove the kayak as close as I dared to shore. With the deepee here, there was always junk in the water that might hurt the hull. I tugged off the spray skirt and hauled myself up, but hesitated before stepping down onto the pebbles. Just one more minute of the muffling water. Just a little longer of feeling almost normal.

But I couldn’t live my life like some buoy or fisherman’s bobber. I put my feet down into cold water and faced my place in the world. I touched bottom.

A rush of painful heat flowed up through my legs and torso and exploded like fireworks in my brain. With it came the shivering rush of everything living around me, filling me up so I wasn’t just me anymore. I was the slow green fire of the grass and the trees, the bright sparks of the squirrels huddled in their nests, and the more brilliant spark of Hadrian, the injured bald eagle who’d taken cover in my old shed sheltered in the trees.

Then came the twenty-one flaring candles of the people on the island. I staggered. And then the thousands who lived in both parts of Couver flooded in. I hid the impact by reaching down for my kayak, but it was like being run over by one of the mayor’s precious bulldozers, or being caught in a mud slide. No wonder granddad had always seemed tired.

Too many beings, too much life, and all of it perched precariously on the fragile dome of safety that my grandfather had woven far under the earth’s surface to hold Couver safe when the earth’s tectonic plates gave way.

I struggled to straighten, but a strong hand on my arm steadied me.

Just breathe. Push it back in your mind.

Ravi stood beside me, tall and strong and mysterious looking with that lovely, dark-fringed gaze I could lose myself in, and that black thatch of glistening hair that just demanded to be touched. His touch torched a flame I wasn’t sure I should want. I pulled away.

Easy for you to say. You don’t have to live with it. But I did as he said and it lessened the painful weight of everything and the ongoing drain of holding my granddad’s dome. But it didn’t touch the overwhelming responsibility. I dragged myself and the kayak up onto the grass, then waited for Ravi to do the same.

You are okay? he asked.

Fine. Thrilled even. Always nice to carry the weight of the world.

But his gaze carried too much knowing, almost as if he understood. He caught my gloved hand with his own.

We will find a way to make a map. We will understand. Then it will not be so bad, I think. The landform will not depend on you so much.

The same words he’d said after Jaybird was killed and Serena turned on me, and after granddad died and left me the unending load of keeping Couver safe. The words I’d held on to these past six weeks every time I felt like I couldn’t go on. Of course I had to. Everything, everyone, depended on it.

Except my mother.

We just need to understand the contents of the diary, he said.

Right. Sure. I’m beginning to think this is all a wild goose chase. My granddad didn’t make a map of the area. If he had the book and it contains the information we need, why didn’t he do it and save us all a whole whack of trouble? I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. I couldn’t afford to. And I shouldn’t be standing here, either. I should be half way down the coast searching for my mother.

Terra, please. It is hope we need to hold onto. Perhaps — perhaps he had difficulty getting the supplies. Or perhaps he could not understand it fully. Or perhaps something stopped him.

He tried to gather me into his arms, but I wasn’t going to do that again. I didn’t want him. Or I didn’t want to want him. I’d wasted the past six weeks trying to get Ravi Sanghera out of my head and to get the book interpreted so I could hopefully make a map of power that would set down Couver’s landforms so I wouldn’t have to hold them in my mind. Then I’d be free to do what I really wanted — go after my mother and destroy the rogue deepee who had kidnapped her.

And now my departure was getting delayed again.

Chapter 2 — Fish Stew and Fury

Ravi caught Terra’s resisting gloved hand and led her across the lawn, even though she squirmed like a child trying to get him to release her. Her hand felt small in his, even though she was tall for a girl, and so slim that, as the wind billowed her slicker around her, he wondered how she managed to not be blown away.

That was why he held her so, wasn’t it? To keep her here and to keep everything from falling apart? Terra was too close to the edge, and the quakes were getting worse. He led her up the house’s broad front porch before he released her. Her gaze quivered with anger and it seemed to live in her, like heated iron that had grown the ability to walk around. And worst of all, each time he saw her, the heat had increased. He didn’t know how long she could go on like this, and whatever would come when she could no longer hold it terrified him.

In the porch’s shelter, he stripped off his slicker and gloves, and the warm, damp wind wicked away his sweat. A gift from the Gods, perhaps, even with the acid rains the wind brought. He hiked up his sodden, tan-colored shorts and started to help Terra with her slicker, but she shrugged him off.

I know how to take off my slicker, thanks.

A little tremor ran through the island and the house groaned. He caught her arm as she swayed, and his nose filled with the light scent of her sweat and fatigue and gut-wrenching jasmine that reminded him of everything he had lost. The demand of holding the city safe was showing in her. How her grandfather had done it for all those years was almost unfathomable. Terra sighed and relaxed.

Her shoulder-length copper hair plastered her fine skull and made her grey eyes huge and dark and haunted. Her thin arms might hold corded muscle and she might be tall, but she still looked so vulnerable and alone he wanted to hold her.

Which was insane given he still might have to kill her. The small tremors and the weariness in her eyes made him less certain all the time that he’d done the right thing saving her instead of completing his mission.

Knock, knock, Ravinder. His father’s voice ran like a whisper through his head.

Terra? He ran a finger down the softness of her cheek.

Sorry. It’s just this whole thing. I need to get out of here. All these people are driving me batty.

You do not need to hold back with me, Terra. I know what it is you want to do.

He searched Terra’s gaze. There were ghosts there. Perhaps that was what drew him to her. She had lost as much as he had.

"I will say again: it is too dangerous for you to go after the rogue deepee before we have created a map. They will kill you if they catch you. And if they do, then Couver’s protection will be gone. The city will fall and all these people will die — or most of them."

I know. I know. Between Kirsten saying everything’s too dangerous for someone my age, she hooked her fingers around ‘my age’, and you ranting about the danger to the city, I might as well be five years old. She shook her head, her damp hair clinging to her cheeks. "But I’m not five. I’m seventeen and I am not leaving my mother out there any longer. Everyone else might have, but not me. Besides, I owe the deepee for what they did to Jo and Serena."

He caught her shoulders. You are not invoking a revenge feud, Terra. You must not. Think of the deaths it will mean.

I want to find my mother.

And I know that. You worry for her. You want her back. I would have my father back, as well, but some things are not to be.

She jerked away and the ground rumbled and lurched. "My mother is alive. Your father is not! How dare you even compare our situations?"

The front door slammed behind her and left him still caught in her jasmine as the rain sheeted across the grass and lagoon and drummed a tattoo on the steps. This could not continue. Far away, in the west, a line of lighter grey spoke of the hard sunlight on its way.

Knock, knock, Ravinder. His father again.

He wanted to slam his head against the porch pillar and knock the stupid voice out of his brain, but he knew it wouldn’t work. His father had haunted him far too long and through much more difficulty than a simple knock on the head. The voice had been there on the long voyage across the Pacific, and up through the seething landscape that now was the volcanic west coast of North America. It had been there when Ravi had died — or almost.

Knock, knock.

Enough with the stupid knock-knock jokes! Tell me what you want!

Knock, knock.

He ground his teeth and gave the proper answer. Who is there?

Anger.

Anger who?

Anger enough to destroy a world.

Ravi sighed. Who comes up with these stupid things, Father?

But his father’s voice stayed silent and Ravi was pretty sure he knew the answer. His own stupid brain did, because the worry was getting to him. His mission from the Cartos Council in India — the last in the world, for all he knew — had been to destroy the person he had prophesized would destroy the world. After two years of travel, he had finally found the person with power enough to do what his nightmares had foretold, but instead of killing her, he — helped her. His heart beat a little harder.

All he had to do was go through that door and complete the mission. But if he did kill her, Couver would fail. That was his reason for not doing his duty. He could not be responsible for all those deaths.

Liar. You care about her.

His father’s voice stated what he knew was obvious to everyone around him, including Terra. Ever since she assumed responsibility for Couver’s protection. Ever since she’d kissed him, under the power’s influence. And ever since the Rakhi — the ancient Hindu bonding cord between a woman and her protector — had formed between them. The trouble was, the bond was supposed to be a chaste relationship between a girl and her brother or friend. It was supposed to be a simple silk cord tied around his wrist. But his bond was neither chaste in nature, nor a simple silken cord. His ran from navel to navel and straight to the heart, and he was drawn to her as a man was to a woman. Perhaps it was because they were Cartos. While most others he had met on his journey up the coast held the faint vestiges of Cartos blood that came from millennia of ancient intermarriages, the two of them, for all he knew, were the last of those who carried enough Cartos blood to use the power remaining in North America, unless her mother truly was alive.

He could not kill her today. He wondered if he could kill her at all — even if it meant saving the world. He followed her inside into the large, open foyer with its gleaming wood floor and the set of stairs that wound up the paneled wall to the second and third floors. Old photographs of Terra’s ancestors lined the walls, and above the foyer from the open hall was an ancient map that always made Ravi think of the ancient Indian villa where he’d met the Council and been banished to this journey. The foyer was big: larger than his whole house had been when he was a child in old Delhi.

From the old summer kitchen at the rear of the house came the sound of childish laughter — the deepee children sounding happier than any children ever did in the camps above Couver. The sound of adult voices came from the main kitchen at the side of the house. He took off his shoes and dried himself off with his tee-shirt as best he could, then padded across the hardwood to the kitchen door. The scent of some of Kirsten’s soup sent his mouth watering. She was a good cook and seemed to be able to take the meager supplies of the island and stretch them to feed both the deepee and herself, and Terra — and Ravi, when he was here.

And when are you not here, Ravinder, except when you search on behalf of the girl?

Shut up, Dad. I must keep an eye on her, otherwise she’s just as likely to run off and do something stupid.

Like destroy a world?

The visions have stopped since I met her.

He shoved the discussion away and pushed into the kitchen.

It was a large room, just like the entire house was disturbingly large. The kitchen had walls of bright blue, though the paint peeled in the corners, and faded yellow checked curtains hung at the now-shuttered windows. A battered wood table filled the center of the black and white-checked floor and around it six mismatched wood chairs stood — filled now, with women from the six deepee families sent to the island. How strange this place must be to them.

Everyone looked up, except Terra. She leaned stiffly against the counter, all her attention apparently on spooning soup from a chipped bowl to her mouth, but the cord tingled between them and she finally raised her gaze to his. She was as aware of his presence as he was aware of hers — and her anger and frustration.

Mrs. Vargas, he said, nodding at Terra’s Aunt Kirsten, who stood beside the wood stove and cradled one of the deepee babies as she stirred a huge metal pot that smelled deliciously like fish stew. Her blonde hair hung like bright gold down her back and somehow her brown trousers and shirt managed to look crisp and fresh, though her blue gaze was tired. She worked hard, he knew, managing their small natural resources to feed twenty-plus people, as well as dealing with all the issues that threatened the small island community. And dealing