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“They called the planet Aliros,” Aiyra sighed.
She was sitting with Konstan on the edge of the dais, with the wind blowing through the empty windows as they stared at the statue. Konstan had filled two ancient glasses with water from a spring well outside, and Aiyra found it useful for hiding her shaking hands. She looked down into her glass for a moment.
“It was a mining planet,” she explained. “The radioactive crystals found in these cliffs were used to power the Marauders’ ships; that is, they probably still use them. It is odd to think that I still exist back then. . . how many times did I have to work with the other slaves to load the cargo bays with crystal, and find that the Marauders were from the future?”
She sighed again and dumped out the rest of her glass.
“Every day was spent in the dark, slimy cold of the mines, with only the phosphorescence of the crystals to light the caves. The work was painful, hard, and dangerous of course, since we had little to no protection from radiation. My mother was kept at home – if you could call it home - working to tend the ills and aches of the nobles in the apothecary. Occasionally Lord Daruth would come down to see that everything was in order. Eventually his visits became too often; he started asking her to visit him, or walk with him, but my mother tried to refuse.”
“Finally, when my mother declined his offer of marriage, explaining that she was still married, he seemed to give up on the idea. My mother was beloved by all of the slaves, for there was no one kinder despite her own condition, and she spent every moment working to make their lives a little better. They called her a queen,” Aiyra smiled sadly. “She should have been!”
“But what happened? Why did they kill her?”
Aiyra let out a shaky breath and shook her head.
“Daruth had a wrath that made all fear him. . . he summoned my mother and I before him and tried again to force her to give in. He even tried to place the crown on her head, which seemed so very odd, and my mother would not let it touch her. Just as he grew angriest, my father had reached the palace gates; and the guards fought with him and threw him out as Daruth-” Aiyra paused with a shudder.
“He ran down from the dais and snatched the sword from the statue,” she whispered, raising her eyes to see the dull blade before her, her eyes glazed as if she were seeing the moment pass before her as a ghostly vision. An ache began in her neck and her head began to throb with a distant memory.
In one instant, it flashed before her as though the curtain of time had been torn –
Her mother thrown down at the statue’s foot –
Her father thrown down from the palace and lost to time –
Her mother’s insistent plea for her daughter not to fear –
Her father’s scream of anguish and the blood-red wrath in Daruth’s eyes –
The sword blade which struck her mother down before it clattered on the stone.
And he killed her before I got to say good-bye.
Aiyra blinked then and found herself on her feet, supported by Konstan. There was no Daruth, but her mother’s cry and her father’s scream lingered in her ears. All else was silent but for the wind in the tapestries and her gasping breath. Slowly the agonizing pain in her head subsided.
“Aiyra. . . Aiyra, are you going to be alright?” Konstan whispered anxiously, looking down into her pale face.
The girl straightened as all the emotion drained from her face, leaving her numb but capable. She looked up. A very faint smile tugged on her lips.
“As I said. . . I will be fine. Like I always have to be. I found my mother’s place at last; and so have I found my father. Let us go. Thank you for bringing me here.”
Konstan looked down at her and wished that he had not complied with her request. He took her arm and they left the cliffs and the softly moaning ruins behind them.
Marc ran along the sidewalk as horses, scooters, and hovercraft swiftly passed him by. Just ahead of him, he kept catching glimpses of the dappled gray cloak, so conspicuous among the brightly colored garments of the citizens, like a wreath of mist on a field of wildflowers. The sun was climbing high in the sky, overcoming the cool breeze so that Marc was drenched with perspiration by the time he stumbled into the shade of the church spire. The cathedral looked as though it had been constructed of rays of moonlight, frozen in time; and wisteria was woven throughout, climbing over its walls as though on a trellis.
Marc paused, breathless, and glanced in every direction. Strangely, the street here was empty, as was every garden, courtyard, and alleyway. He glanced up at the cathedral door, crowned with a set of seven stars.
Unless his quarry had entered the church, Marc had lost the trail. He wondered briefly why he had even been following him. He shook off the strange feelings he had been having since setting foot on the planet, and slipped inside.
He moved down the nave, lined with slender columns of gray and silver; the walls of white stone, pierced with stained-glass windows, blocked out any noise from the outside world and filtered the light.
Shafts of vermilion and sapphire, gold and violet fell over Marc as he crossed the nave and glanced into the side chapels, dotted with candles, carvings of wave-like motifs, and statues painted in gentle hues. There was no one to be seen but a lone priest, kneeling at an altar dedicated to the Virgin.
Marc went on, and crossed into the main aisle of the church. He was studying the marble and mosaic floor when a whisper caught his ears and he looked up.
At first, all he saw was the tabernacle, with its winged angels and silvery curtain. His eyes went to the altar. There the gray-clad figure stood before the gate to the sanctuary, blending with the stones and shadows. A single beam of light caught on the cloak’s hood.
Marc stopped. A shiver crept up his spine and he began to feel that it was more than curiosity that had drawn him to follow this daytime shadow. He drew closer, but dared not pass the last pew.
Seconds – or was it minutes? – ticked by as he waited tensely for the figure to turn.
A bell struck somewhere high above them, tolling thrice. A chorus of birdsong followed, as though their voices had been trapped inside the bell; but there were no birds to be seen, and their song could not have lifted so high as to be heard within the sturdy walls of the cathedral.
The hood fell from the figure’s head, revealing thick brown tresses twined with a golden thread, and she turned to face him.
In that one moment it was as if all time stood still. Marc’s heart seemed to stop with it.
“Talitha!”
The woman smiled, half-sadly. Marc stared a moment longer, then leapt forward to hold her.
“No!”
Marc jerked to a stop, eyes wide, as Talitha stepped away from him, now with her back towards one of the side archways leading outside. She looked at him tenderly.
“My love. . .” she murmured. “You must not touch me.”
“Why?! Talitha, don’t do this to me! I’ve found you, and I’m not letting you go!”
He took a step closer, but Talitha watched him warily.
“Marc, you must understand. . . noli me tángere. I have come not to be with you, but to warn you. You must not try to save me!”
Her voice was urgent, and her eyes searched his, begging him to understand.
“If you save me, my love, each human being on this planet will die, and Aiyra will no longer be ours. She will be destroyed in a way worse than death. If I do not die, the lord who once was of this planet will force my will. . . and then our daughter will perish at his command.”
Marc’s eyes widened again. His heart began to ache so that he could scarcely stand. He leaned against the communion rail and looked at his wife. She was more beautiful than he remembered.
“Then it was you,” he whispered. “You are the one they called Breciendelle! But are you real?”
She only smiled.
“Marc. . . do not fear. You will see me again, indeed, sooner than you think.”
Marc looked bewildered. Talitha laughed softly, but her eyes swiftly dimmed.
“You will find me, Marc, but you must not save me. That is why I must warn you! You will be tempted. . . the fate of a galaxy shall rest on your shoulders in that moment, and you must know my wish and the wish of the God who made us both. Do not save me, Marc. My fate was not your fault, but His Will; you could not have done more for Aiyra and I than you have done. Be at peace! I died willingly for Aiyra, for you, for them. And now, there is one who needs you much more than I, my love. . .”
She studied his face, a soft light in her eyes. She reached out and gently brushed his hair back with her hand, then kissed his brow.
“Let me go. . . let me go, as you must. You have done all you can for me, as you always have. Now, help me to help them.”
Marc began to weep, looking into the eyes of his beloved, realizing that she was beyond his reach. Konstan and Aiyra had been right.
Talitha stepped back.
“Be at peace!” she breathed. She lifted her hood once more.
Marc jumped forward, but stumbled into a shaft of light so bright that he was blinded. When he had blinked away the shadows, Talitha was nowhere to be seen.
Had she been a dream, a vision? Or a hallucination?
But directly in front of him was a painting of the resurrected Christ and Mary Magdalene, and before it, in the doorway, stood Samantha and Aiyra.
They were looking at him, Samantha in curiosity, and Aiyra with a silent look that told him she already knew. All three paused a moment. Marc leapt forward and drew Aiyra into his arms.
The last hour replayed in his head again in a rush as his tears wet Aiyra’s hair. Samantha hung back until Marc sensed that Aiyra, too, was in shock. The engineer related the story given her by Konstan.
Marc looked again at his daughter. The happy sparkle in her eyes was no longer there, as was to be expected; but her face and bearing had changed, as though she was once again the tough girl who had borne five years of slavery alone. Marc stooped and kissed her forehead with an aching heart.
“Come, darling,” he whispered. “We’ll find your mother now.” He put his arm around her and led her to the priest who was still kneeling at the little side-altar. The priest looked up.
“Father, where was the body of the Lady Breciendelle laid?”
Something in his face made the priest arise and lead the captain and his daughter through the nave of the cathedral and down into the crypt. A flight of upward stairs opened upon a blaze of stained-glass windows in a secret chapel, where the colored light fell softly upon an elegant casket surrounded by hidara and violets. The effigy of the lady was carved upon its lid in lifelike relief. Marc took one longing look at it and fell upon it.
Aiyra swept down the hall towards the lobby on the engineering level. It was mid-afternoon; Samantha had returned with them to the ship after several hours of painful prayer in the crypt.
Aiyra had left her exhausted father asleep at his desk, and was hunting for her friend. She found Samantha seated on the floor of the lobby, rewiring an intercom system. Aiyra sat cross-legged beside her. Samantha stopped and returned the girl’s steady gaze.
“’You doing okay?” she asked wearily, flipping a lock of hair out of her eyes.
“Too many memories.”
“I know, Aiyra; I know!” Samantha sighed, putting away her wire cutters and freeing her goggles from their perch on her dark hair. “I wish it hadn’t happened on your birthday, of all days. In the very least, you know now where your mother is, and you can visit her. I haven’t seen my mother in years, either.”
She paused to remove her gloves. They sat in silence for a few seconds.
“I need a mother,” Aiyra said abruptly, “but she is gone. Samantha, I need you to be my sister.”
Her eyes were grave and earnest. Samantha mentally compared her to the Aiyra she had known, and wondered if the change would last.
“If it helps you heal, Aiyra, I’d be honored to be your older sister. First things first: you need to realize that, given the little I heard of Marc’s experience, your mother is safe and happy. She does not want you to hurt like this, Aiyra! She wants you and your father to be yourselves, not living ghosts.”
Aiyra smiled a little.
“You sound like me talking to my father! See, we are similar already.”
“Don’t change the subject!” Samantha teased. “Promise me that you understand the good of this, Aiyra. You have already experienced the whole thing. I fully understand that memories can refresh the pain, especially being in . . . well, almost a haunted place. You watched your mother die five years ago, and finally, now, you can visit and tend her burial place. You know how much she is loved by the people of Maedra for inspiring their freedom; you know that she is safe and happy, and that she loves you. What is more, you have your father! Aiyra, don’t let this shape you more than God desires.”
Aiyra’s eyes were laughing now, and the weight seemed to have left her shoulders.
“You always tell me what I need to hear, especially if it is something I already know,” she told her. “I seem to need an outside source to tell me that I am thinking properly. Thank you, Sahma!”
She rose to go.
“Hang on – how’s your father?”
Aiyra stopped and looked back over her shoulder with a mischievous smile.
“I will help him be alright! Do not worry, Sahma. He is just exhausted; deep down, he was still hoping to save my mother. But now, seeing her, hearing her, and visiting her grave has wiped that hope away. I will take care of him, though.”
With a little laugh, she turned and exited, leaving a rather bewildered engineer behind.
It didn’t take long for Aiyra to locate a now-missing Marc within the Lumenara’s chapel. Aiyra knelt and laid her hand on his arm. He was leaning on the communion rail, his head in his hands.
“A’da?”
He stirred, but did not answer except to cover her hand with one of his. The chapel was quiet save for the faint humming of the lights overhead and behind the stained-glass windows.
Marc raised his head.
“We can bring her flowers now,” he said.
“Mm.” Aiyra laid her head on his shoulder. “I am glad we found her, A’da, even if it did make it a sad day. We can visit her now; she would like that.”
“Hm, lots of people visit her, darling,” Marc replied, still gazing wearily at the tabernacle. “They loved her. . . remember the plaque I showed you in the courtyard?”
Aiyra nodded.
“Do you know why they called her a queen, A’da?” She pushed away the thought of her father’s presence that day, as a chill crept up her spine and pricked her temples.
“Yes; she would have been the queen of Cytha.”
Aiyra stared.
“But – then – but they called her that because she was almost a queen for them because she loved them.”
Marc glanced at her.
“But didn’t your mother tell you she was a queen? Would have been, I mean,” he corrected himself.
Aiyra slowly shook her head. She looked thoughtfully at the ring on her hand.
“But then. . . you would have been king,” she said softly, looking up into Marc’s restless eyes.
“Maybe.”
“And I would be a princess,” she added slowly. “A’da, what happened to our people?”
“Most of them were enslaved or killed that day,” Marc replied. “Some of them escaped to the star Alnilam in the third quadrant of the great Galaxy, where they are out of reach of the Marauders.”
He smiled a little, knowing what his daughter would say next.
“And yes, I know you now want to go to them, and we will, but not yet. We’ll stay with your mother for now.”
Aiyra nodded, feeling that this was a good decision.
“But A’da, I thought the Marauders never went beyond the borders of Andromeda.”
“Cytha was the farthest the Marauders had ever dared to penetrate the Milky Way,” he answered grimly. “It was their first attempt, and their last. They have not tried since, for our retaliation was too great.”
His face hardened and Aiyra knew instinctively that he had led the retaliation once he had returned to his own time.
“Oh, Aiyra!” Marc murmured, shaking himself and holding her close. “Of all the days. . . I’m sorry about your birthday, dearest. It’s going to be hard for a while, but as you say. . . your mother would want us to be happy. And we don’t have all that much of a new cause to be unhappy. We’ll celebrate your birthday tomorrow if that’s alright.”
“But there is the governor’s welcome celebration tomorrow,” his daughter reminded him. “You have to attend.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean you can’t!” Marc smiled, remembering then that they were still in the chapel. He started to arise, but Aiyra gently tugged him down.
“He likes it when we talk to Him about the normal things, too,” she whispered. “And we are alone, anyway.”
They prayed for a time, as night fell on Maedra, and the waves lapped below the Lumenara, docked at the Zaire spaceport. The moon glinted on the walls of the church in the distance, and one could have sworn they saw a figure wrapped in the light; but it faded away with the wind.
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