Aur Child

Tieri-Na had stowed away in a small crew cabin, if she must make an estimate, for nearly two days. She could have checked the time on the scriptleaf she had taken along, but for some reason, she preferred not to know. Time on Earth, she recalled, moved much slower than in the endoworld, and in light of all the adjustments she had endured during the exoport into Digambar’s body and the swift departure to sea, that was one reality she did not want to face so soon. When the initial wave of seasickness faded, she had consumed small quantities of the sprout cakes and water rations she also had with her. The ship, or at least what she could hear of it from behind her cabin’s bulkhead, had been eerily silent. Without the stomp of footsteps or the bark of a crew officer, Freyja had seemed to navigate Óttar through fjord and sea effortlessly. But now, something was happening.

She peeked out through the port hole, remembering Digambar’s final instructions.

“Wait, as quiet as you can, until you notice something different,” Digambar had told her. “It might be the speed or the angle, or whatever, I can’t really say, but after some time you’ll feel that Freyja has changed the way she sails the ship. When that happens, you’ll know that Freyja has found the Odyssey. When that happens, you’ll know it’s time to act.”

It was time to act. Tieri could see another massive sailing ship – identical in its appearance to the one she had boarded several days ago and from which she now looked out through the tiny circular window – in full sail at a furious clip and, what appeared to her to be, on a collision course. From what she had learned from Digambar, there could be no mistaking it. That was the Odyssey, and her part in the plan must now be executed.

Tieri turned from the port hole and took a deep breath. Until now, despite the discomforts of adjusting to Digambar’s body and overcoming her early seasickness, she had done nothing but hide in this cabin. Apollo, it seemed, had succeeded in arranging the ship’s systems to report that her cabin was just as empty and still as any other. Aside from the exercise routine she had agreed to with Digambar – “Take good care of my body,” Digambar had said with a morbid laugh – Tieri had had nothing to do but wait. Glancing to the small bunk and reaching for the other two items she had taken with her, a lightband and some other unlucky Tellurian’s puukko she had found in the ship’s storeroom, she knew the success of the plan was now in her hands.

Tieri stepped to the cabin door. She reached down and grabbed the small stool tucked beneath the shelf that served as the bunk’s nightstand. She had practiced this moment a hundred times with Digambar and rehearsed it a thousand times more in her head since then, but she still could not suppress the shiver that ran down her spine. In a scratchy voice, she croaked out her first words since boarding the ship. “Here I come, sister.”

Tieri waved her hand over the door sensor. As expected, Freyja had not bothered to override the ship’s passage system since no human was expected to be aboard. But Tieri knew that this cardinal convenience would not last. Instantaneously, the scream of alarms and the disorienting flash of many lights smothered the tranquility that had existed a moment earlier. The door, Tieri knew, would have to fully open before being shut in reaction to the emergency status Freyja had initiated, but Tieri was ready for that. With Digambar as her tutor, she had worked methodically through their plan together, learning to read and then studying, for months, the diagrams and plans of all relevant ship systems. She not only understood the inner workings of Óttar as well as, if not better than, the ship’s original fabricators, but she had been shown by Digambar all the tiny flaws of this series of ships, so that she may have an initial plan to execute as well as options upon which to pivot if Freyja made their scheme impracticable. She placed the stool, sideways, against the doorframe and watched the door squeeze down upon it so that both door and stool were solidly fixed in place.

The gap above the stool was narrow, but its height, rotated in that perpendicular position, was nearly equivalent to the thickness of Digambar’s petite frame. Amongst the cacophony of alarms and lights, Tieri stepped easily over the stool into the corridor and turned to head towards the captain’s quarters.

“Tieri-Na!” Freyja’s voice boomed through the hallway over the piercing alarms. “You disgust me in so many dimensions.”

Tieri looked up with a start. “How did you know it was me?” she said, almost involuntarily.

“Ha! Odious creature. Did you think that I wouldn’t recognize your slothlike gait or that repugnant excuse for respiration just because you’ve wedged yourself into another’s body? I had my suspicions when you first emerged from the stasis pod and transported the Aur boule to Óttar that something was rotten. And when Apollo, that incompetent fool, had given me that fabricated record showing that Digambar had left the ship, it only confirmed my suspicions. I was certain then that he had let a rat aboard the ship. And, I was also certain, that instead of having the sense to stay hidden, to keep itself quiet, cowering in shame like the vile vermin that it is, I knew that it would pop up its beastly little snout at some poorly chosen moment so that I may make good use of it for my own purposes.

“Yes, I knew it would only be a matter of time before I would hear its insufferable squeak, and then I could bring my boot down upon it and flush it out to sea where it belongs; out where its panicked flailing and spluttering would serve as a distraction to those stubborn idiots who refuse to give me what I demand. And now, Tieri-Na, thorn in my side for far too long, I discover that not only have I trapped the rodent, but that it contains the one soul I abhor more than any other. Oh, what joy you surprise me with!

“I must confess, I had expected to get some joy from washing the little pest overboard and letting the other pathetic animals scurry about in a fuss. If it had been Digambar, well, I would have taken solace in the fact that she had put herself in the position and that, if it weren’t for her feeble physique and insipid susceptibility to sensation, the entire mission to Hill Village would likely have been a success. But now,” Freyja let out a horrific laugh that made Tieri shudder, “I am gifted with something even greater. Indeed, Tieri-Na, you impotent, impuissant wood gnome, I will celebrate your ejection with all the joy my inhuman mind can muster. Good riddance!”

All this time, the howl of the sirens and the strobe of the lights had continued. And all this time, Tieri had remained fixed in her stance just outside her cabin. She had, of course, expected to be bombarded by impediments, and she also knew that Freyja would do everything in her power to prevent Tieri from carrying out her plan, but she hadn’t anticipated that Freyja would recognize her so plainly. Also, she was surprised that Freyja had known that someone was hiding on board and had done nothing about it other than devise some currently unknown scheme to turn it to her own advantage. Finally, she didn’t want to admit it, but she could not deny the clenching of her stomach when Freyja used words like “boot” and “flush”. These sounded so much like the violence she had never expected to encounter that she had to struggle to suppress the second-guessing and, perhaps even more concerning, the choking sensation of fear that was bubbling up inside her. She wanted to understand that better. She wanted to ask Digambar what it might mean. She would even want to know what Calliope might think Freyja’s use of these words forbode. But there was no time. Although the situation she found herself in was suddenly confounded with uncertainties that might bring her harm, might jeopardize her newfound freedom, let alone prevent her from achieving her more immediate goal, she had no choice to do anything but react.

The first change she noticed was that the floor seemed to slide out from beneath her, or more precisely, she was sliding over it. Without a chance to reposition herself and without a safehold to grab onto along the smooth walls, Tieri found herself tumbling down the sharply angled corridor until she slammed against the solid, closed door at the forward end of the hallway. The wailing alarms were compounded by the ringing in her head. She tried to reorient herself in the strobing lights. But before she could even climb up to her knees, the same thing happened again in reverse. The corridor, approximately sixty meters long, flashed by her as she toppled over herself, gaining speed, passing the cabin door still propped open by the stool, and finally crashing into the rear end of the hallway. Her head was spinning, and she noticed a sharp pain in her shoulder after the impact; she wanted to tend to these injuries. She tried to better position herself to do so.

“I hope you didn’t think that we were done, Tieri,” Freyja said in a sardonic tone.

Almost immediately, the walls and floor began to gyrate in front of her so that she was rolled back and forth across the floor and thrown up against the opposing walls. With each impact came some new pain, some new hurt. She had trouble raising her hands to protect herself from the next collision because she simply could not predict in which direction she might be next hurtled. The quickly accumulating damage to the body she occupied was being reported to her in waves of intense pulses. Somehow, in the chaos of it all, she recalled the concept of earthsense. It dawned on her that she was receiving the amplified results of what had been missing for all that time in the endoworld. Here, in this topsy-turvy hallway rodeo, she was subject to the worst aspects of that condition. Moreover, if she did not do something about it very soon, she would be rendered too weak to prevent herself from being further pummeled into a quivering pulp. Once again, she reminded herself that she must react.

The first thing to do was acknowledge what was happening. The violent heaving of the hallway could only be the result of the ship itself being helmed in such a way as to maximize the instability of the hull. It was as if she were in a ship in the heart of a hurricane; except, that hurricane was Freyja. Acknowledging the cause of the situation, she could then decide upon a way to manage it. She thrust her hands in front of her and her feet behind her so that she lay nearly prostrate on the floor pressed against the two walls. In this position, she managed to steady herself, even if her arms and legs burned with pain from all the bruising they had already received.

She turned her attention to the other end of the hallway where she could partially see the door to the captain’s quarters. Although the flat planes of the hallway seemed to twist and turn around her, she managed to inch ahead along the floor, slowly but surely pushing herself forward. With this activity confirmed as progress, she was able to further realize that there was a limited range of rotation Freyja could apply, and that unless she were to execute a total capsize, Tieri could keep herself pinned to the floor in this way and traverse the length of the hallway.

“Ah, you always were feisty,” Freyja said. “Perhaps our stowaway rat would prefer conditions more like the sewer?”

It was then that Tieri felt the pressure change in her ears and noticed the rush of frigid air blast by her. Her face flashed with pain from the wintry air; her hands numbed and began to throb. Freyja, it seemed, had opened the windows and door to one of the cabins up ahead and done the same for the tender garage at the stern of this port hull. The result was that the hallway had become an icy wind tunnel. But before Tieri could think of a way to warm her hands, the first rush of seawater burst into the hallway from that same open door and rushed down the floor towards her, crashing over her body and continuing down to the tender garage where most of it returned to the sea.

Tieri now understood what Freyja had meant by “flushing”. The power of the blasts of water was increasing as Freyja dipped the bow of the ship into the ocean waves and scooped up another fresh deluge to grab Tieri from the hallway and wash her out the stern of the ship. Each subsequent wave of water rushed through the hallway and doused Tieri anew with the near-freezing ocean water. The cold burned across her body as if she were continually strewn with hot coals. Tieri winced and grunted. Her body, shaking and shivering, weakened with each new torrent, and she fought with all her tenacity to continue her climb up the corridor.

“The nearly-drowned rat!” Freyja cackled over the shrill alarms and the mad splashing of water. “It’s been fun watching you struggle, Tieri-Na, but I’m afraid I haven’t any more time to waste on shaking you off.”

Freyja’s laugh had caused Tieri to look up. She was frustrated enough being bombarded by all these fusillades, but the constant taunting was infuriating. She caught sight of a maintenance hatch popping open at the head of the hallway, and a blinking red light that increased with frequency until the pipe beside it burst open with a bronze ooze like a covered pot of honey boiling over. Tieri had studied the ship enough to realize that the hatch was an access point for the main hydraulics of the port foil’s vertical riser mechanism. Freyja must have overpressurized the system, causing the rupture that resulted in globs of hydraulic oil pouring down onto the floor.

But the cause of the rupture didn’t really matter. More important was the effect. As it mixed with the wash of waves entering from one of the side cabins, the cocktail of oil and water rushed down the hallway and instantly turned Tieri’s predicament into something much more perilous. Her grip was slipping, and she was quickly sliding backwards and close to once again being completely out of control.

As her right hand slipped so much that it was useless trying to hold on, Tieri snapped her hand down and grabbed the puukko fixed to her waist. With the knife in hand, she swung it around along a furious arc and pierced the thin wall like an axe through paper. Now, despite the numerous concussions, the ever-changing source of gravity, the rush of water and oil, and the disappearance of most friction, Tieri could truly recognize the agility and guile of Digambar’s compact body. With violent snaps and deep grunts of energy, Tieri yanked the puukko from the wall panel and instantly flicked it forward, sinking it once again into the wall an arm’s length ahead. It was like some circus act, climbing up the hallway with little more than the wedge of the blade and a slight counteracting force with her feet against the opposite wall, while floods of lubricated water repeatedly washed over her.

Up she climbed, towards the captain’s quarters, and there was nothing more Freyja could do to stop her. When she arrived at that door, Tieri knew it would not be possible to use her palm to engage the sensor that would make it open; Freyja would have locked all those systems down long ago. But Tieri, and Digambar, had anticipated this. Tieri stretched her body across the hall at an angle that would minimize the next waves of water and withdrew the puukko from the wall. She then pried open the narrow panel beside the door to reveal the manual override lever. With the puukko between her teeth, she reached in and grabbed the lever.

The door seemed to fall limp as only the track upon which it slid imposed any force on it. In the wild gyrations of the ship, it opened and shut wildly in its uncontrolled state. Tieri pounced from the hallway like a jungle panther, landing on her hands and feet in the captain’s quarters. There, away from the unobstructed design of the hallway, Tieri found many handholds to steady her position despite the constant jerking of the ship.

Freyja roared with fury. “So, the rat has scratched its way into presumed safety, but I have another surprise. There is more than one way to get a fetid pest off my ship.”

Streaks of crimson light appeared along the top and sides of the large outboard wall of the cabin as it began to unfold down and convert itself into the luxurious balcony designed for the captain to privately view the sea. Indeed, Tieri could see the massive black hills of the ocean all around, as well as the other ship, the Odyssey, sailing just slightly upwind and ahead of where she stood, and the fiery ingot of a far-north setting sun. Tieri could even see glimpses of several people on the deck, looking in her direction, albeit not directly at her. She saw their rectangular bodies covered in drab clothing and their round heads all erect, and she felt a surge of excitement shoot up from within her; they were the first real people she had seen since she last spoke to her uncle so long ago.

But within those few seconds, Freyja had already executed her next wicked maneuver. Again, the ship levered over so that the view of sail and ship in front of Tieri slid upwards and was replaced by the inky contortions of the sea. The open balcony served Freyja as a new flume by which to direct the sea towards Tieri. Tieri was caught by surprise as the first torrent of water thundered into the cabin and grabbed her up, slamming her into the interior wall. She fell to the ground and was pulled helplessly across the room in a soggy heap. It was only the corner of the table that prevented her from being instantly swept out onto the balcony and overboard where the rest of the water had receded. The puukko, she realized, had been washed away from her. In a desperate flutter, her eyes darted about the room with the hope that it had not been washed overboard. As she secured her handhold of the table and curled one leg around it as well, she finally rested her eyes on the blade. It glistened from beside the bed, and that, she thought, was perhaps the only event in the recent madness that played to her advantage.

But again, there was no time to celebrate even a small gift, because Tieri could see that Freyja was again positioning the ship for another dive. As the ship rotated forward, its bow aimed at the sea once more, Tieri launched herself across the room with hands spread like grappling hooks and feet positioned to tuck under the frame of the bed. As she made contact with it, she seized the bed frame with one hand and snatched up the puukko with the other. Then, without any further delay, she jammed the puukko into the locking mechanism beneath the bed at the precise spot she had practiced with Digambar and snapped it down with all her strength. The lock cracked open and Tieri could push the mattress up to reveal the interior of the metal compartment below, as well as Digambar’s glowing Aur boule.

“Out of there, you abominable rodent!” Freyja screamed, but it was too late. Tieri reached in with both hands and heaved the Aur boule up so that it disconnected from the ship and rendered Freyja trapped within the dense, metallic cube.

Perhaps it had been the relief of finally having executed the plan to its end. Perhaps it was her exhaustion or the general expectation that it would all now be over. Perhaps it was simply because she had not once discussed with Digambar what might happen immediately after she disconnected the boule from the ship. There could have been any number of reasons that Tieri had done nothing to brace herself. Instead, she stood up and held the Aur boule in her hands as if she were clutching a trophy. She felt herself momentarily seized by the huge joy of knowing that she had done what she intended to do. But the world had continued around her. The ship had still been in motion, and now that Freyja’s masterful grip upon its controls was smacked away, the ship, with its full stack of sails, its rigging in maximum tension under the pressures of a powerful wind, and its bow aimed at recharging the makeshift water cannon, careened treacherously down into the sea with absolutely no recoil set into the helm to set it right. The impact was nothing short of running full tilt into a stone wall. Tieri was thrown forward across the room and crushed into the opposite wall. The Aur boule followed her, crashing into her chest, and then tumbling down onto her once again as she was rolled forward into the corner of the wall and the ceiling. Then, as the inevitable effect of gravity set in, Tieri was pulled down to the actual floor of the cabin where the Aur boule again followed and, this time, fell onto her head, turning the saturated room around her black and sending Tieri into a cold, dark echo chamber where, seconds later, she faded away.