Evershore (Skyward Flight: Novella 3)

When we returned to the feast area, we found FM sitting cross-legged at one of the tables, rolling melons the size of her head through a machine with many coordinated blades that cut them into precise slices. Nedd and Arturo sat behind her, loading citrus fruits onto small spindles that spun around a sharp blade, which removed the peel in a long, thin strip. Nedd deposited the peels into very small waste canisters, which two kitsen replaced with empty canisters and then scurried away to offer the full canisters to a pen filled with miniature goats, about the right size for a kitsen to ride as a mount. Kimmalyn and Sadie were seasoning fish with very small seasoning shakers, while Catnip and T-Stall knelt next to the ovens, using handheld controls to remove the fish from the conveyors with acclivity-empowered spatulas.

“I’m sorry,” Kauri said to me. “You are our guests. Your people shouldn’t have been asked to prepare the food.”

Hana ran up, sitting at my feet. “We didn’t ask them,” she said. “They volunteered. In fact, FM insisted.”

FM raised her eyebrows at me from across the sandy pavilion.

“We take no offense,” I said. “Thank you for allowing us to serve you.”

FM smiled.

This was kind of brilliant of her. We were trying to convince them that we weren’t invaders. I bet the humans who’d marched in and declared them a colony didn’t offer to help them with food preparation.

“What can I do to help?” I asked.

Alanik and I were brought to rotating spits where squashes roasted over a fire. We were instructed to use miniscule spray bottles to hydrate the turning vegetables with a brownish liquid that smelled both sweet and spicy.

I sprayed a bit on my finger and tasted it. Stars, it was delicious.

Not long after, Goro arrived. His champion rode on the saucer beside him, her sword tucked into a sheath and strapped across her back.

Goro didn’t look happy to see us all helping prepare the food. He gave me an especially affronted glare. I was supposed to be the enemy, the invader he was here to defeat.

Putting FM in charge of diplomacy had clearly been the right decision.

When we finished the food preparation, several kitsen carried away the remaining waste and cooking implements, and Kauri returned with another kitsen riding a second, smaller saucer.

“This is Juno,” she told me. “One of our lorekeepers. He has offered to dine with you, though he will wait until after the senate meeting to impart knowledge.”

“I am sorry this is necessary,” Juno said, “but there are some among us who find our lorekeeping to be superfluous or even threatening. It was only the will and continued patronage of the Most Honored One Who Was Not King that sustained our order. We do not wish to go against the will of the senate or attract the ire of—”

“Humans!” Goro bellowed from the head of one of the large tables. “It is time to begin to feast. I will not offer you welcome! You come as invaders, and so we give you the greeting fit for those who dare think to conquer the Den of Everlasting Light Which Laps Gently upon the Shores of Time! A full belly to make you sluggish, so that my champion may more easily pierce you with the sword!”

“Well that’s disturbing,” FM muttered beside me.

“At least he’s upfront about it,” Alanik added.

“Let us feast!” Goro shouted, and the kitsen all echoed these last words with their fists raised in the air.

I was beginning to wonder if I’d made a grave tactical error by dining with these creatures. I thought we were doing the right thing by being diplomatic and trying to prove we weren’t here to conquer them. But now I worried they would discover some weakness they might use against us.

“Juno,” I said as one of the kitsen brought me a small plate—it must have been an oversized serving platter to them—piled high with fish and nuts. “I know you don’t want to share your knowledge with us until the senate agrees to it, but may I ask if any of this food is poisonous to humans?”

“Certainly,” Juno said. “The photophores of the flatfish are mildly venomous, but those have been removed. Our records show that humans ate most of our foods, and indeed put a great strain on our resources, trying to export some of our most prized delicacies for their own gain. To answer your question, the only foods we eat that would be poisonous to you are a few varieties of berry and some of our summer shellfish, and none of those have been offered to you this day. Make no mistake, Goro means to kill you, but he will only do so with senate permission and in the way that is most advantageous to him.”

Over at Goro’s table, I heard him comparing his fish to a worthy foe slain in battle. That seemed like a stretch to me, but I’d once heard Spensa muttering something that sounded a lot like “fear the wrath of my very soft socks” on requisition day, so she probably would have approved. I wasn’t sure how fighting one of us with a sword could be advantageous to him, but clearly he had some kind of endgame in mind.

FM poked at her own fish, then took a bite. “This is delicious.”

“Eh,” Nedd said, settling down cross-legged on the sand by Kimmalyn. “It’s a little fishy.”

FM blinked at him. “It is literally fish.”

“Right,” Nedd said. “But…fishy fish.”

“Totally,” Catnip said. “I hate it when my food adjectives its own noun.”

“Exactly,” Nedd said.

“It’s like the Saint says,” Kimmalyn added. “You are what you eat.”

“Hey, look!” Sadie said. “There are boats out there!” She pointed out onto the water, beyond the waves. The noise from the ocean was fainter this far up on the beach. And out on the blue-green expanse that seemed to go on and on forever until it melded with the sky…scud, she was right. There were ships out there. Sailing vessels that couldn’t have been much longer than a meter or two, bobbing up and down in the waves.

“I understand the basics of how boats work,” I said. “But how do they do that? How do they sail out there on all that water, without worrying that it’s going to swallow them up?”

“Sometimes it does,” Juno said. “The water is dangerous, especially for sailors who are caught in a sudden storm. As for how they brave it—how do you fly into the blackness of space? It seems just as unknowable to me, and a great deal more vast.”

That…was a really good point.

“I don’t know,” Arturo said. “You can’t drown in space.”

“But you can asphyxiate,” Nedd said. “Which sounds just as unpleasant.”

The food suddenly felt heavy in my mouth. I set down my fork, which might have originally been some sort of gardening implement.

“Or freeze to death,” Catnip added. “It’s cold in space.”

“The ocean can be cold,” Juno said. “Depending on the currents and the time of year.”

“You don’t depressurize if you jump into the ocean though,” Nedd said. “That scud sounds nasty. Did you know it can make your saliva boil in your mouth?”

“Ew, Nedd,” FM said. “We’re eating.”

The Superiority ship exploded before my eyes. The bodies of my parents were flung into space, fluids voiding, their eyeballs boiling.

I shook my head and set down my plate. That hadn’t happened. They’d been torn apart by the mindblades first.

Hadn’t they?

“The ocean does the opposite,” Juno said. “The pressure in its depths is so great it can crush you.”

“Whoa,” Nedd said. “That’s awesome.”

Stars. Why did everything in the galaxy feel like it was trying to kill us? I had started this conversation, but now I had to get away from it. “Excuse me,” I said, and I got up, leaving my food behind. I moved away from the city, down the beach toward the water.

A projectile shot over the ocean, and I flinched. Was the water attacking us now?

But no, it was a bird—a whole flock of them, wings tucked against their bodies as they shot like bullets into the waves, and then flapping to give them lift again, carrying them into the air with fish in their mouths.

Stars. I’d seen pictures of birds, but watching them glide over the water like so many starfighters…

It was incredible, but it didn’t stop my hands from shaking.

I wiped cold sweat from my forehead. Scud, I’d walked away from the feast. Was I ruining our diplomatic relations? Offending the kitsen somehow? Would they perceive this as a threat?

It didn’t matter. I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t breathe. As I stared out at the ocean, the whole of it pressed down on me, all the weight of what felt like millions of miles of water bearing down on my body.

It was too much.

“Jorgen?” FM said. I wheeled around to find her watching me with concern.

Scud, not concern. Anything but concern. I wished she’d look at me the way she had back on the platform on ReDawn, when she’d been pissed at me for telling her she shouldn’t have liberated the slugs from Detritus. She’d been so angry at me, when I’d simply pointed out the obvious—she’d broken the chain of command, violated our orders, and put our comrades in danger.

You are not my flightleader, she’d said.

That had gutted me then, but I found it infinitely preferable to what I knew she was going to say now.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Jorgen,” FM said. “You aren’t fine.”

“Yes,” I said. “I am.”

“That’s ridiculous. You can’t be fine. Your parents—”

“This isn’t the time!” I said. “We are in the middle of a diplomatic mission! We need to talk to the senate so we can get Cobb and Gran-Gran home.”

Once we brought Cobb back though, Stoff was definitely going to declare him indisposed. There was no avoiding that. In fact, according to protocol, I should have already told Stoff that we’d found Cobb and he was indeed unconscious.

I…didn’t want to. As soon as I did, Stoff would be fully within his rights to start acting as admiral. I had no idea what he would do, but whatever it was…I didn’t trust it. Cobb knew what was best for the DDF, for our people, for Detritus. He should be the one in charge.

He would get us through this.

FM stared at me with her lips pressed together like she was trying to hold in all the things she wanted to say.

“This isn’t about Cobb,” she said finally. “It’s not about Gran-Gran, and it’s not about our diplomatic mission.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And those are the only things that matter right now.”

“That’s not true,” she said. “You matter, Jorgen. What happened to you, it matters.”

I balled my fists, turning away from her to look out at the sea. A particularly large wave washed up the beach, and I wished it would come all the way up and wash me out to sea and be done with it. I imagined the water pulling me down, crushing me the way Juno said it would, all that weight blocking out the questions, the demands, the needs of everyone else.

Moments ago all that water had seemed terrifying. Now it felt like release.

“Jorgen,” FM said, “you need to talk to someone. It doesn’t have to be me, but have you said anything about your parents? To anyone?”

I hadn’t. I couldn’t. Not until I knew everyone was safe.

“We need to be prepping for the senate meeting,” I said. “Go ask Kauri what we can do to support her in convincing the senate we’re here in peace.”

“I don’t think—”

“Do it, FM.”

“Jorgen—”

“That’s an order.”

I looked back at her, and she stared at me. There was some anger there now, and that was good. Much better than pity. For a moment I thought she was going to tell me off again, announce that I wasn’t her flightleader and I couldn’t tell her what to do. Say what we both knew: that I was only pretending to be in control, that I’d never known what I was doing, that I was incompetent to be in command, and that I was failing at everything—even this.

“Fine,” FM said, and she spun around and marched back up the beach. Past her I could see that the rest of the flight had finished eating. Kauri escorted them down to the water, where Nedd and Kimmalyn took off their shoes and rolled up their jumpsuits, letting the water wash over their feet. Alanik and Arturo sat in the sand, laughing.

I couldn’t remember what it felt like to laugh.

I wondered if that meant I had already drowned.