2199 Extinction

I wake up to something hitting my legs. “Ahhh!” I scream, reaching under my pillow for my mini raptor. The blade may only be the length of a finger, but it can do some considerable damage. I pull it out, sit straight up in bed, and look around, knife poised for attack. I look down at my legs to see what is attacking me. A book. I’m being attacked by a book. I look around and see Amlican climbing out from under the bunk next to mine. “What the heck?” I ask. Apparently, he dumped the books on me and then rolled under the bed, so I couldn’t hurt him.

“Read it.” He says, standing up, reaching for more books from the other bunk, and then dumping several more books on my legs. “These as well.”

“Couldn’t this wait until I was already awake?” I ask. “You scared me to death, I could have killed you.”

“No, it couldn’t wait and no you wouldn’t have killed me. Why do you think I rolled under these bunks, over here? I know how you are.” He says.

“So, what’s so special about these books that you couldn’t wait another hour or two?” I grumble, reaching out for one of the books.

“The Disappearing Kalpins. by Drissco Azura.” I reach for another book. “The Dead

Planet by Unea Rouge.” I reach for a thicker book. “Where Did All the Etrava Go? By Igara Nox. I’m sensing a theme here.” I say, annoyed. I carefully pull my legs out from under all the books and swing them around to the edge of the bed.

“Have you read these before?” he asks.

“No, but I do know who they are. Is this about last night?”

“Yes, this is about last night. Time travel is dangerous. It’s illegal for a reason.” he says. “Don’t you remember your history lessons? Don’t you remember this book?” He digs through the pile of books before producing one that is bigger and thicker than all of them combined.

I take the book from his hands and read the cover. “Time Travel, From Creation to Ending. By Ekelman Janis.” Of course, he would pick this book to back his argument. “Yes, I remember reading this book, last year. It highlights the invention of Time Travel and Ekelman’s perspective of everything she witnessed and everything she did, all the way to the outlawing of Time Travel. So, what’s your point?”

“You do remember if you are caught, it’s punishable by death?” he asks.

“Of course, I remember. But as long, as you keep your mouth shut; how will I get caught? It’s not like anyone will ever remember the way things are now. Everyone will think the changes are supposed to happen. So, are you?”

“Am I what?” he asks. He pushes the books out of the way and sits down beside me.

“Going to tell anyone what I’m doing?”

“Astra, I love you.”

“So... Is that a, no?”

“Of course, that’s a no. But I’m still going to tell you exactly how I feel about it. I still want to discuss all of the possibilities with you.” I roll my eyes and sigh.

“Look, there are hundreds of books, written by hundreds of different races, species, whatever you want to call them. And they all say the same thing. ‘Time Travel is dangerous. It’s a bad idea.’ And I agree with all of them. What if you accidentally destroy a rare plant species?”

“So? What difference can one flower possibly make?” I ask.

“What difference could one flower make? Ugh! A huge difference, especially if that one flower were the main food source for an entire species, that species would become extinct. And the loss of even just one species could throw the food chain out of order. Now, the predators just lost a main food source, and they become extinct and so on until the entire planet is dead.” he explains.

“Okay, I’ll just make sure not to step on any flowers. Happy now?”

“No, because you aren’t taking this whole thing seriously. Eradicating an entire species or planet is a big deal. If that doesn’t faze you, then how about this? Maybe you see this really cute little fuzzy creature about to be eaten and you decide to save it. Only problem is, the fuzzy creature turns out to be a pest and saving it means you kept the species from going extinct. Now, they destroy everything they can sink their little teeth into. Boom. Another planet destroyed.”

“Amlican,” I say, laughing. “Do any of your stories have a happy ending?”

“Astra! This isn’t funny!” He shouts, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Amlican, seriously. This is ridiculous. Those are all worst-case scenarios. The chances of any of them happening are slim to none. But if it makes you feel better, I promise not to save any cute little critters, either.”

“These aren’t just random, worst-case scenarios, these have all happened. All of them, and more stories just like them fill the many pages of those books.” He snaps.

“Well, IF, and I do mean IF, time travel is actually, still possible; I can always go back and undo what I did to cause the problem in the first place,” I say.

“You still aren’t listening!” Amlican shouts. He shuffles through the books holding up one and then another. “Read. The. Books! The authors all tried to go back and fix their mistakes, with disastrous consequences!”

“Alright, all right, calm down. Look. I have been thinking. If time travel has been illegal for the past several hundred years, there is no way the jacket is legit. I mean, wouldn’t the governments have destroyed them all?” I ask.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Amlican says.

“It was fun to imagine going back and seeing my mom when she was younger, but the truth is, I don’t even believe that old Copaie. She was probably just messing with me. Giving me false hope. Maybe trying to get me arrested and thrown in jail for the rest of my life. Maybe try to get me killed. Who knows? After all, even attempting to time travel is illegal, punishable by death, regardless of whether or not you succeed.”

“Well, if you feel that way, why did you let me go on like that?” he asks.

“Because it’s fun to watch you get all worked up. And once you get worked up like that, there is no stopping you. And, I might as well admit it, it’s nice to know that someone loves me enough to get all worked up like that.”

He gently grabs my face in his hands. “You’re lucky I love you,” he says, kissing me.

“I think you are the one who’s lucky,” I say, kissing him back. I pull away and send Amlican back to his room, to get ready. Once he is gone, I grab a quick shower and change into a lacey, little, black dress. It’s tight and the hemline falls an inch above my knees. I’m not exactly fond of dresses but my mother deserves the highest honor, and her wish was for me to wear dresses and act like a Talfarian princess.

Of course, she would not be too happy with how short this dress is but at least I’m trying. I walk over to the dresser and brush out my long locks. After playing with my hair a bit, I decide to wear it up, it will be windy by the lake. I look down at the dresser and see where I laid the jacket, last night. What would it hurt? Even though it probably doesn’t work. I grab it and pull it on. It feels exceptionally light, almost as if I weren’t wearing anything at all. I check my reflection in the mirror and do a double-take.

I can’t even see the jacket. I look down at myself and sure enough, it’s there, but looking in the mirror, again, it appears as if I’m wearing the same black dress, I put on earlier, without the jacket. Huh. It’s almost as if it’s invisible on me. I will have to check with Amlican, later. I wonder why the old Copaie didn’t mention this? Oh, well, if it’s truly invisible, I’m sure it will come in handy. Must be how this particular jacket escaped certain destruction.

The cool breeze blows across the surface of the water and into my face, almost as if it were trying to cool my temper as well as my body. I take a deep breath in; the smell of saltwater and flowers fill my nose. I can hear the calling of a lone legov and look up to watch it soaring above the river. That is when I notice that the setting sun has colored the sky a deep shade of orange. It will be starting soon.

The funeral. My final goodbye. A red legov figures I would see one of those, today. I sink back against the rock, let my feet go out from under me, and slide down into a sitting position. To my left is the river, to my right is the woods, my cover, and my safety net. I think back to the conversation my mother and I had about legovs. I must have been four or five years old, at the time.

********************************

“Black legovs are normal but red ones are extra rare. When our people first arrived on this planet, they were very superstitious.” My mother says, sitting down on a large rock.

“What does super… supersti… super stitches mean?” I ask, standing beside her.

“Superstitious. It means that our people didn’t understand the laws of nature on this planet. Instead, they believed in magic.”

“But magic isn’t real, momma.”

“I know that, and you do too, but they didn’t understand that, back then. Instead, they told stories that the appearance of a red legov meant someone was going to die, soon,” she explains. A breeze blows her hair out of her face.

“But why did they blame the birdie?”

“Well, apparently, someone saw a red legov and a few days later a loved one died. And then the same thing happened to a few other people.”

“Did the birdie kill those people?” I ask, searching the skies for a red legov.

“Of course not, honey. People talk amongst their selves and somehow or another it was blamed on the birds, because that was the one thing, they all had in common. Before you know it, all of the red legovs were hunted down and killed. That was supposed to stop all of the bad luck.”

“Well, that’s just silly.”

“I agree. But recently, thanks to breeding programs, the red legov gene has been identified and several Talfarians are in the process of bringing that color line back to life, again. Even with all of the breeding experiments, it’s still rare to run across a red legov.”

“Are they still bad luck?” I ask.

“No, honey, they are just birds. They never were bad luck. There is no such thing as luck. Your life is what you make of it, remember that.”

“I will momma.”

*******************************

I’m starting to get restless; I have been hiding behind this large rocky outcrop for a few hours now; waiting for the funeral to start. After mine and Amlican’s discussion on time travel, and our short kissing intermission, we started discussing the inevitable funeral. I told him I was going, and like a good friend, he insisted on coming with me. That, of course, was impossible. He was going to have to go, but just not in the way he wanted. Being the child of a Talfarian diplomat, he was expected at the funeral. His absence would have been noticed and would have cast a lot of suspicion on him and his family. He reluctantly agreed but then promised to help in any way he could, including distracting anyone who may get close to my hiding place.

I quietly get up to a crouching position and look out from behind the rocks to find out what is going on. Luckily for me, I can see them but where I’m looking out from, I can’t be easily spotted. Amlican and I scoped out this spot earlier before he returned to his family. From here, I can see many Talfarians and a few other alien races, sitting in chairs facing the river. No sign of Malum, yet. On the sandy, shore sits a small wooden boat, the waves lap at it every few seconds, causing the slightest movement.

The boat. I know exactly what it holds, even though I can’t see much of it from this distance. I know it is full of kindling, and on top of that, is something wrapped in a white sheet. That something, being the body of my mother. According to tradition, fragrant flowers were laid all over her body, before being wrapped, to prevent the smell of death and decay. Prayers would have been offered over her body as it was wrapped. Not a single drop of blood would have been spilled as she was prepared because the blood is life and the blood is sacred. This is the Talfarian way.

Anger warms my blood as I think about how Malum cheated me out of my goodbye. It is the duty of the children to lay the flowers, wrap the body, and offer prayers. The only time the husband is involved in the practice if the children are too young or if there aren’t any children at all. I doubt he prepared the body; traditions are not something he abides by. Most likely he had a few of his hand-chosen women to do that. Ugh! The very idea of someone else touching her body! I look and see Malum heading my way. I duck back behind the rocks and wait. You will not get away with this. You will pay for what you did!

Suddenly Malum’s voice fills the air and I look out from the rocks, again. “It is with a heavy heart that I thank everyone for coming today. We will go ahead and begin the ceremony and then I have something to share with you all.” He says.

I scan the crowd, looking for Amlican, wishing he were right beside me, for comfort. Thankfully, hooded cloaks are not required at the funeral, unlike the memory feast. That makes looking for him, much easier. There he is. I easily spot him in the front row, next to his father, sitting straight as a stick, his eyes looking straight ahead.

“Amlican,” I whisper. “I really need you.”

Almost as if he heard me, he turns his head and looks my way. Our eyes lock for a moment before he turns back toward the river. But that quick moment is all that I needed to feel the strength of his friendship and his love. I gaze back toward the boat that holds my mother’s body, and I can hear Amlican’s father reciting the history of our people on this planet and their reasoning behind the lighting of bodies on fire. I duck back down again, not wanting to expose my hiding place, even though the light is growing dimmer by the minute. I wonder why Amlican didn’t tell me his father was chosen to give the history. Such a high honor. But I guess it doesn’t matter.

I listen as he talks about the early days when the Talfarians would bury their dead. This was the customary practice until people started finding dead, rotting, half-eaten corpses laying around the woods and sometimes even in the villages. At first, the ancient Talfarians thought the dead were coming back to life and wanted revenge on the living. Lots of panic ensued, and to combat this, someone came up with the idea of burning the bodies. But where would they burn them? In the villages turned out to be a bad idea, the stench was horrific. In the woods also turned out to be a bad idea, the grass easily caught on fire, almost burning down their homes, before the villagers were able to put them out.

That is when the idea of placing the bodies on small wooden boats came about. The boats would be loaded down with kindling and the easy-to-burn grass; before being pushed out into the river. Later, it was discovered that a creature, native to this planet, called a Slaphner was the culprit behind the dug-up bodies. The large black, lizard-like creature had a taste for flesh and was a sneaky, opportunistic, hunter. I realize that it has gone silent, so I pop my head back out and look around. I see Malum and a young boy walking and watch as they drop a handful of the easy burning grass, into the boat. Malum bends down and picks the small boy up, hugging him tightly. This sight might have brought a tear to my eye if I didn’t know that Malum was the one who murdered my mother. If I didn’t know what kind of monster he was to my mother, while she still lived. I turn away from the scene.

I look around behind me and find a tuft of the same grass. I pick up a handful and slowly sprinkle it on the ground, while I recite the traditional goodbye prayer. It’s not the same as being able to do it over my mother’s body, but it will have to do, for now. I look back out, between the rocks, again. I watch as two of Malum’s guards push the boat into the water, the gentle waves lapping at their feet, and then their knees. They give one big shove and the boat heads further into the river. The guards slowly make their way back to shore. I see three guards pull back the strings on their bows, each one loaded with an arrow.

Another guard comes through, pours liquid on the arrowhead, and then comes back and lights the arrows on fire. “Ready. Aim. Fire!” I hear the head guard shout. Tears run down my cheeks as I watch the first arrow hit the boat, followed quickly by two more arrows. I see a small glow, near the back, that grows until the whole boat is a raging inferno. She is gone. Officially gone now. The fire burns for a while until the boat and its contents are all completely gone. One of the guards turns on some portable lights, and the shoreline is instantly lit up. Guests blink in the bright light, their eyes trying to adjust.

“Now for the announcement, I promised you,” Malum says, clearing his throat.