Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Charaid Dreams

Originally published by Apex Magazine, Issue 70, in March 2015

It’s not the cold what kills you. Not the naarg-wolves neither, Maw says, though they’re plenty scary. No, it’s the Dreams what’ll get you in the end. Dreams what wake in winter and sleep in summer. If only summer weren’t so short. Like the song of a chitkil it is, a burst of glory that leaves you colder, darker than before.

But the cold and dark has a song all its own. I got no fancy words for it, but when the moon of long shadows rises over the top of the black ice forest, I get all chokey, like something’s trying to force its way out of my throat.

Maw says I waste too much time staring slack-jawed at the purple horizon. “Close that mouth and get to work, fool girl,” she says, “or a Dream will drift in and eat you from inside.”

Maw says horrible things but she don’t mean nothing by it. She’s been a bit off since Paw disappeared. Into the snowfield he vanished, with nary a footprint for anyone to see. Maw set the dogs to follow him and they didn’t come back neither. Me and Jacob were in town, selling skins. By the time we made it back home, the first storm of the season was howling in our faces, and it were all we could do to throw ourselves inside and bolt the door.

That were a couple of moons ago. Now it’s just Maw and me and my brother Jacob and my sister Hilsa in the wood and stone house Paw built so many years ago. The beams are rotting—every night I breathe the musty smell and think of how Maw were always after Paw to replace them.

Word got around that we’d lost Paw and the dogs, and the mayor came by in his skid. “We can grow you more dogs but it’ll cost,” he said, and then he looked at me and licked his lips like I were a hank of roast gizla.

Maw spat on the ground and said, “Don’t want ’em. Dogs is more trouble than they’s worth, eating half of whatever we trap or shoot.”

The mayor said, “You gone plum crazy, old woman? What’s gonna warn you when the naargs fetch up at your door?”

Maw raised her dart gun and said, “Git your dirty boots off my land,” and that were that. No one’s come by since. Can’t say I’m sorry ’bout that.

Jacob and Hilsa was all for packing up and taking a slow shuttle to Tersis, a research station on the next planet that still gets the occasional longship. But Maw said, “You done lost your senses? You knows how lucky we is to be here? This is our home and if you don’t like it, go bury yornselves in the snow and good riddance.”

They didn’t say nothing, but I knew what they was thinking: fool Maw and Paw to pretend they’d won a lottery when all they’d won were a one-way ticket to exile. No one comes to Charaid now, and the nearest colony with more’n a few dozen families is eleven parsecs away.

Jacob’s nineteen Earth years, and he says he still remembers what it was like back on the old mother planet. Hilsa doesn’t—she was born on the ship—but he keeps telling her stories, showing her these vids of a warm, wonderful place with lots for everyone to eat, and no winter at all.

He tried showing me his vids, but Paw had told me the real story—how the seas had risen and swallowed whole cities, how you couldn’t breathe without a mask. Only a lucky few thousand won the lottery to escape Earth every year.

So I just laughed at Jacob. “If it were all so wonderful, Maw and Paw wouldn’t have left Earth,” I said. “Vids are for fools who don’t have enough work to do.”

Jacob pulled my hair and I kicked his shins and then Maw came flying out of the kitchen and landed us a few with her boots. We slunk out into the cold and jumped up and down trying to warm ourselves.

But then Jacob said something I can’t shake off, try as I might. He said, “You’re not like us, Charyn. You was born here. You’re as alien as them Dreams.”

That’s malarkey and I kicked him again, but he just stared at me like I was some stranger what had come knocking at the door and set the dogs a-barking.

I wish there was others like me—kids born on Charaid. But I’m the only one—the only one what lived, anyhow. The rest died of a burning fever soon after they was born. That’s why the longships stopped coming. No point trying to populate a planet that downright refuses to be populated.

So there’s just the old timers, less of them every year. There’s the graves behind the church—my sister’s too. Janely would’ve been eight if she’d lived.

And then there’s me, the freak. No one can understand it. They studied me when I was a baby and found nothing different, no sneaky stuff that had slipped into my cells when Maw weren’t looking. No matter what that fool Jacob says. Making out like he knows something the scientists didn’t.

The scientists left long ago, so there’s no one for me to ask my questions, not that I rightly know what to ask. No, there’s just folk like Maw, trying to scratch a living from acres of snow and ice and woods what hide things you wish you didn’t know about.

I wonder how long Paw suffered before he died.

*

Jacob and Hilsa tried to take the skid into town. Maw lit into them and then she took out the reactor, what makes the skid work, and now we’re all stuck here, thirteen kilometres from town. It’s like Janely all over again. Maw went crazy then too.

Jacob said, “You want to kill us like you killed Paw?”

I thought Maw would hit him but she didn’t. She just went all quiet and still and then she went into her room and banged the door shut. I wish Jacob hadn’t said anything, but he blames her for letting Paw wander off on his own. As if Paw ever did anything Maw wanted.

Stores are running low. Even the nutri-pills are gone. No help for it but to go out and hunt. Hilsa refused to help—she’s such a scaredy cat—so that left Jacob and me. We pulled on our jumpsuits and sweaters and gizla-skin cloaks, and then we strapped on our snowshoes. Jacob took the traps and Paw’s exploding tip gun, the one we found half-buried in the snow just outside the forest. I took the sled and the knives, and then we opened the shed door and walked out into the cold.

Wind and ice and purple shadows whispering like they was waiting for us. I shivered and clumped my way across the snowfield. Winter twilight’s the best for hunting. And being hunted. That’s why you need two people—one to hunt and one to watch your back. But Paw went alone that day, with not even the dogs for company. A Dream called, and he listened. Or maybe he were just tired of it all. Maybe he got over-confident. I sure don’t know.

Behind me, Jacob said, “Don’t you go running off this time or I’ll peel your skin and hang it up on the door for the naargs to chew.”

I’d have stuck my tongue out at him but that would have frozen it. “I never ran nowhere. I was close the whole time.”

Jacob snorted and kept walking. I scowled at his back.

It was just that one time two years ago when I turned twelve, and they never let me hear the end of it. Paw took Jacob and me into the forest to hunt gizla, and I saw something—no, I heard something—and I took off after it. I couldn’t help myself. It was like a song, but not with words and music and dancing. Not like first summer’s eve at the town hall. I could never explain to anyone afterward what I felt. Like I followed the song but I was also in the song, and then Paw was dragging me home by the ear, red-faced and hollering. Maw thought maybe a Dream swallowed me and I wasn’t tasty enough, so it spat me out again.

Maybe she’s right. And maybe that’s why Jacob looks at me funny sometimes.

We neared the forest. I could tell Jacob was nervous. So many firsts. First hunt of the season. First time without Paw.

I smelled them before I saw them, elongated shadows loping toward us from the forest. I screamed, and Jacob whipped the gun off his shoulder. He took aim and let fly and six bodies dropped to the ground, dark stains spreading on the snow. The rest melted away, back into the ice trees. A stench rose from the ground, and I tried not to gag.

“All that meat,” I said. “Such a waste.” Naargs tasted like death.

Jacob lowered the gun. I could see he was trying not to shake.

“Good shooting,” I told him. He grunted and stared at the trees. “They’ll be waiting for us,” I said. “A pack like that. Should we be going back?”

He gritted his teeth. “No. They’ll just follow us home. Watch my back, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and we walked on. The ice trees closed over us. Black ice twisted into trunks and boughs and tendrils and arches that not even the summer sun could melt. Here the chitkil sang, just before the sun slipped away from the rim of the world. Four moons of summer followed by eighteen moons of winter. How fair is that?

We reached a small hollow with a bubbling hot spring what made crazy shapes around the edges of a pool. We took off our snowshoes and I unloaded the traps. My mouth watered thinking about gizla steak. Then I sniffed the air.

“Naargs a-coming,” I said.

Jacob squatted on his haunches and raised the gun.

That’s when the song started. I found myself standing, turning around, walking away. I could hear Jacob hollering behind me, could hear the gunshots and the snarls, but it was like a vid in another room. It wasn’t real, wasn’t important. The only thing that was important was the song, and getting as close to it as possible.

And if it were a Dream what called, what then?

I didn’t care. If this was how Paw died, then it was a fine thing.

The notes high and sweet, the longing so sharp I couldn’t bear it. I began to run, my boots sinking into piles of fresh snow. Somewhere I lost my hooded cloak. The cold rushed into my ears. Icicles stabbed my face. But I didn’t stop—I couldn’t.

Not until I skidded on the edge of a frozen pond and saw who was waiting on the other side.

Paw.

The song died and something squeezed my heart. The sudden silence was painful—or perhaps it was seeing Paw again that made me feel like blubbering.

“Paw!” I yelled. “You all right? I’m coming.”

I stepped on the black ice, digging in my crampons. The ice would hold—it always did.

But in the middle of the pond, cracks opened under my feet. I had no time to think, to react. I fell, arms and legs flailing. Black water gushed into my screaming mouth.

*

I woke to the orange glow of fire. I stretched my hands to it and sighed. I was all warm and comfy, like I was in Maw’s bed, snuggled up to her side.

Wait, that was years ago. Where was I? I blinked and looked around. The Black Ice Forest. Paw sitting on the other side of the fire, turning meat on a stick.

“Paw,” I said. “Why did you leave us and come here? Maw is worried.”

Paw didn’t answer right away. He tossed me the cooked meat. “Eat,” he said. “Talk later.”

I tore into the meat, burning my tongue. With a pang I thought of Jacob. I was supposed to be watching his back.

“Don’t worry about him,” said Paw, picking up another stick of meat. “He’s home safe.”

How had he read my mind? Maybe I’d spoken aloud. “The naargs?” I said.

“All dead.”

“And what about us?” I couldn’t help asking. “We dead too?”

Paw gave a snort of laughter. “Damn fool girl. Dead don’t eat. Dead get eaten.”

I laughed too because it was funny and I was that dumb. Paw must have saved me when the ice broke under my feet. Though it was weird, the ice breaking like that in dead winter. And I couldn’t figure out why he’d left us to come live in the forest.

And then I looked again and it weren’t Paw at all, just something that were wearing Paw, like a skin.

“Who are you?” I said, although I didn’t feel scared. Not yet.

“Who are you?” it said, and tossed me another bit of meat.

I wolfed it down before talking, I was that hungry.

“You’re a Dream, ain’t you?” I said, and licked my fingers. “The ones what lure people into the cold.”

“A dream,” it said. “A figment of the human brain, not real. Is that how you see us?”

It weren’t talking like Paw no more. It weren’t looking much like him neither. The hair coiled like worms, the face all loose and shiny. I began to shake. It leaned forward and stared at me out of dark, empty holes. “You haven’t answered my question. Who are you?”

“The only one what lived,” I stammered. “The others all died, didn’t they? Fever burned through them in less’n a week. Not me.”

It leaned back and grinned, a dreadful sight what made me shudder. Perhaps it hadn’t got the hang of human teeth. “Not you,” it said. “When you were born, we bonded with your—how shall we call it—with your stem, modifying your body’s reaction to our presence.”

That didn’t make sense. “Your presence? What do you mean?”

“We are everywhere on Charaid. We are Charaid. Every shard of ice, every animal that breathes. We are even inside you.”

Inside me. I tried not to vomit but they came out anyway, all evil-smelling, those bits of meat I’d just eaten. So this was why I had survived. Jacob was right. I was as alien as the thing sitting opposite me.

My throat burned. I wiped my mouth and looked up to find it watching me. “Adult humans could withstand us, but the new-spawned could not, unfortunately,” it said.

“You killed and ate Paw, didn’t you?” I said.

It blurred at the edges, and now there was hardly no resemblance to a human being. “Yes and no. Your father died of the cold well before we absorbed him. Just like we absorb the others that wander too far from the light and warmth of their homes. Just like we will absorb you when you die. But unlike them, you will continue to live in us. Because we live in you, have lived in you, since the beginning.”

“Why only me? Why not the others?” Why am I alone, I wanted to scream.

And then it was Paw again, sitting right beside me, stroking my cheek with callused palms, wiping away the tears just like he used to if I fell and hurt myself or Maw whacked me too hard. “You’re thinking of Janely, aren’t you?” he said. “Such a pretty baby. Your Maw was never the same after. I’m real sorry about that, Charyn. But you see, we had to be sure. Part of us thought of you as an infection. Another part wondered if you were intelligent. We had to talk to an adult, and the only way to do that was to bond with one at birth and wait for it to grow.”

The wind rose and the fire flickered. My eyes watered and I blinked. “So you’ve talked with one,” I said. “What’s gonna happen now?”

“Up to you,” said the thing pretending to be Paw. “Would you like to leave Charaid, now that you know about us?”

“I can’t leave, can I?” I said. “Not with you lurking in my insides.”

“We can purge you,” it said. “It is not impossible, although it would kill some of us. You could leave with your siblings.”

“And Maw?”

“Your mother will refuse to leave,” it said. “You know this.”

I got up and walked away from the fire. I guess I couldn’t bear looking at it no more. Couldn’t bear thinking what it had done to me. It didn’t try to follow me or anything, but a little later I stumbled into a clearing and there it was again, my fake Paw, warming its hands in front of another fire.

“Stop pretending to be him,” I snapped. “My Paw is dead.”

The thing shifted in the firelight, bits of flesh and bone rearranging themselves. I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to watch. When I opened them again, a small girl with pigtails sat by the fire. “So am I,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t exist. Do you not still think of me?”

I swallowed hard. “Janely,” I said. “Wish you was really here.” Tears leaked out of my eyes, froze on my cheeks. I knew it was just a trick, that I was being a fool. But seeing Janely all growed up, the way she should’ve been, just tore something inside me. And the hardest part was knowing that it didn’t have to be this way.

“It’s not your fault, Charyn,” said the Dream. It had taken on Paw-skin again. “You were picked at random. You can leave Charaid, if that is what you wish.”

No. I wouldn’t let it all be for nothing. This was my planet too. I wiped my face. “What do you want?” I said. “For us to stay?”

“Humans are—interesting. We have learned much from our bond with you. But to stay in Charaid, to make it their true home, humans will have to accept us as part of their ecosystem, just as we have accepted them into ours. If you agree to this, you can stay.”

It was asking me to speak for everyone, for all humans on Charaid. “I don’t have much choice, do I?” I said. “And the others may feel right different.”

Not-Paw shook its head. “The strangest thing about you is how separate you are. This will change when we are bonded with all of you, of course.”

I flinched at the thought of being in Maw’s head. “You can enter the adults?”

“It will be sufficient to bond with the new-spawned. Over time, all humans on Charaid will be connected to us.”

“Won’t work will it?” I said. “Hardly no more babies being born.”

“You are a human female. Surely you can find a male to procreate with. When your child lives, others will follow.”

I thought of the mayor slobbering over me and would’ve puked again if there was anything left in me to puke. “I’ll think of another way,” I said.

It stood up. “Take all the time you need. Remember, you are not alone. You never have been.”

Paw disintegrated, pieces of flesh and blood flying apart. The fire died away and the cold crept into me, along with the realization of what I’d just done.

Would I have done it if the Dream weren’t in me already? I thought of Janely, and I knew the answer.

I don’t remember how I made it home. They helped me in some way. I knew they was there by the notes of the song that drifted to me now and then. The song kept me going, kept the worst of the cold away. Through the forest and across the snowfield and by the time I reached home, I even had my gizla-skin cloak on.

I hammered on the door and Jacob flung it open. I stumbled in and fell on the floor. Then it was like I was outside looking in while Jacob and Maw dragged me to the fire and Hilsa stripped me down to my jumpsuit.

For the longest while I couldn’t speak or think. When I’d pulled on some dry sweaters and gulped down a bowl of broth Maw shoved at me, I started to think I might live after all. I looked at my family, at their worried faces, and it hit me then. I wasn’t alien like them Dreams. But I wasn’t like Jacob nor Hilsa neither. I was something in-between. And maybe that was okay. Maybe that was best.

Maw said, “Has a Dream got your tongue?”

“It got a lot more’n that,” I mumbled.

“What?” said Maw. “Speak up, girl, or is it a clout on the head you’re wanting?”

I cleared my throat, prayed to all the gods that didn’t never exist, and began:

“Maw, I ain’t only me.”

Ghosts of Englehart

Originally published by AE – The Canadian Science Fiction Review, Issue no. 17, Winter 2014

I left in the darkness before dawn, when everyone else was still asleep. It was harder than I thought it would be. Zac and Lev looked so angelic, I wanted to bend down and kiss their foreheads. Better sense prevailed, and I just blew them a kiss goodbye before quietly closing the door. Would they miss their big sister? Would they wonder why she’d left?

Fights with Mum were nothing new. But yesterday she’d told me to leave, point-blank. She was half-drunk when she said it, but that didn’t change anything.

I slipped out of the old clapboard-and-fieldstone house that Grandpa had built, back when Sudbury was still a bustling little town. Not the empty, ghostly place it is today, with most men and women conscripted in the war with New York.

Mum was exempted from the draft because of the twins. Dad had died in Englehart along with the rest of the town when the Soliari ship first landed there. We never got his body back, or anything to bury. We were told he evaporated, but that didn’t make any sense to me. How can a human being evaporate? It’s like saying there’s nothing to a person except liquids and gases, and that can’t be true.

At the gate I turned for a last look. Mum would be relieved to find me gone. This thought was like a painful twist inside me, so I walked away fast, my eyes scanning the shadows on either side.

Nothing moved except me—nothing human, at any rate. The aliens were there, of course, but then they were always there, no matter what Mum said. Watching me with their gold-dark eyes, waiting to see what I would do. If I looked at them directly, they always vanished.

I first began seeing them a couple of years ago, just after I turned thirteen. The war had been going on for a while, and we’d settled into a routine of sorts. I’d wake early and scavenge for food. In the right season, there were blackberries and mushrooms and wild apples in the woods beyond the school yard. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I caught a squirrel or a hare in one of my traps.

By the time I got back, the twins were usually awake and hungry. Looking at them, you wouldn’t have thought they were anything special. But I could feel the gold-dark gaze behind their brown eyes. I could see the ghosts of the feelers framing their faces. It wasn’t just the twins. I’d seen the same frond-like extensions on every child younger than five. That was how long the Soliari had been around.

I’d told Mum when I first began to see them. At first she said I was hallucinating, that the Soliari could make you see things even when they were far away. But when I told her about the twins she just screamed at me—crazy bitch shutup shutup—so I stopped telling her anything after that. How Zac and Lev could move things without touching them. How they never cried, no matter how hard they fell.

What would she give them to eat tomorrow morning? There was a little leftover meat, a bunch of fiddleheads and wild onions, but when that was gone, there would be nothing. I hoped she’d be able to pull herself together and find food. It was spring; the season was in her favour. Mine too. I hadn’t fancied walking two hundred kilometres through snow and ice. That was how far it was to Englehart-that-was.

I’d heard there was nothing left of the town but a crater where the main street used to be, and the ghosts, drifting through the ruined Cinema Palace. Perhaps my father would be among them.

Englehart was the closest alien landing site to Sudbury—the only site in eastern Canada. There were more sites south of the border, but most were in the heavy population centres of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

I remembered the news, back when we still had news. Military planes had tried to bomb the crafts and the domes that sprang up around the landing sites. When that proved ineffective—the bombs decimated cities but left the alien domes untouched—people turned on each other. It was like everyone went crazy. Perhaps the Soliari had something to do with it, or perhaps the craziness was in us all along, just waiting for the opportunity to manifest itself. We had been at war with New York for four years—rag-tag bands of conscripted men and women, killing each other bullet by bullet, unless a rare drone took out an entire company.

Oddly, the Soliari never attacked people. The only direct casualties were the population centres where their craft had landed. For the rest of it, they stayed in their domes, oblivious—or perhaps indifferent—to the carnage around them.

The sky lightened and I moved off the pitted road, just behind the trees. Not that any vehicles still ran, here or anywhere else, but it was better not to take a chance. I’d had the sensation of being followed once or twice, but there’d been no one and nothing to see when I turned to look back over my shoulder.

As I walked, I thought about Dad. How we used to play chess and Scrabble and Monopoly, how he used to tell me stories every night, deepening his voice to become Papa Bear or the Big Bad Wolf.

At least I had my memories. At least I had a childhood. The twins weren’t so lucky. Or perhaps they were luckier—it was hard to tell. I felt like I was caught between generations. Sometimes I dreamed of distant suns and the dark spaces between them. Sometimes I woke in the middle of the night to find numerous eyes watching me. In the beginning I’d screamed the house down, managing to wake even Mum from her drugged sleep. Now I was used to it, more or less.

At noon I found a small clearing and decided to rest and eat a bit. I figured I’d covered fifteen kilometres and deserved a break. I had just opened my knapsack to get a bottle of water when I heard voices. I crawled behind a tree, heart thumping fit to bust my rib cage.

Two men in fatigues strolled into the clearing. Deserters? They had guns, bulky backpacks and thick boots. To my dismay, they settled on the grass right in front of me, cutting off my escape. One of them opened his backpack and extracted a stove.

If they were going to cook, they planned to be here a while. I’d have to take the risk of moving. I backed away slowly, planning to make a wide arc around them to get back onto the road.

A few metres into the undergrowth, I straightened up and allowed myself a sigh of relief. I turned around and almost bumped into the solid chest of one of the soldiers. I tried to run but he caught me, grabbing my arm.

“Hey, what’s your hurry?” he said. “Come talk to us. We haven’t met anyone on the road for days.”

He sounded friendly enough, and anyway, I had no choice. I let him lead me back to the clearing, where the other man was cooking what looked like noodles, and smoking a cigarette. When he saw me, he spat the cigarette out.

“Stan, what the fuck you playing at?”

“Come on, Dwight. Found her slinking behind the trees here. Can’t let her report us, can we?”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I blurted out. I was still thinking they might let me go.

The one called Stan grinned. “We know you won’t. What’s your name?”

“Dulia,” I said, hating the trembling in my voice.

“What a nice name.” He jerked his head toward the stove. “Be a good girl, Dulia, and you can share our food.”

The one called Dwight snorted and took the pan off the stove. “We don’t have any extra food.”

“I have apples,” I said. “I don’t need your food.”

“Great. Pretty and resourceful. Here, sit with me and you can have some of mine.”

Stan pulled me down beside him and forced a bowl into my hands. I didn’t want to eat it, but it smelled so good I couldn’t help myself. We hadn’t had real carbs in a while—no rice, noodles or bread. Supplies to Sudbury had dried up and the lone grocery store still open had nothing but empty shelves. I’d seen wild rice growing in the shallow water of streams and ponds, but was afraid to harvest it because the waterways were contaminated.

I slurped the noodles, trying to slow myself and make them last. The men watched me, and the aliens watched them watching me. It was odd: I didn’t feel scared or anything, although I knew something bad was going to happen, the way you can smell a storm in the air before it hits.

When we were finished, I offered to help wash up. Stan said, “Don’t bother. We can do it later.” He leaned against a tree trunk and yawned. “Aren’t you hot in that rain jacket? You should take it off.”

I was wearing Dad’s old rain jacket. “I’d rather not,” I said, crossing my arms. “It’s damp here.”

Stan and Dwight both laughed, and I wondered what they found funny. “Come on over, Dulia,” said Stan. “You’ll be warm and dry in my arms.”

I threw my bag at him and ran. I was fit and strong from all the walking I had to do foraging for food, but I’d covered fifteen kilometres already that morning and the rain jacket slowed me down.

Still I ran, ducking the branches that slashed my face and sucking in great gasps of air. Behind me I heard crashing sounds in the undergrowth. I had a chance, I thought. I could outrun them, especially in the woods.

Until I tripped on a tree root and went sprawling on the forest floor. The men were upon me in moments, ripping off the jacket and pinning my arms down. I screamed, not so much from fear as anger. I loved that old jacket—it was the only thing of my father’s that I’d taken with me.

Stan leaned over me, panting. “There’s nothing I like better than a chase to liven things up.”

Behind him, Dwight screamed. Stan twisted around and rose. “What the hell?”

I scrabbled off the ground and stared. Dwight’s face was melting. His gun had fused to his clothes. He fell down, arms and legs flailing. In less than a minute, there was nothing left of him but a pile of oozing flesh and metal.

Stan’s face twisted with rage and fear. “You did this. You goddamn Soliari witch!” He raised his gun and I closed my eyes, thinking of Dad. Bullets were messy. I was glad he had died clean, the time between life and death vanishingly small. I wished I could go like that too—to be here and then to be elsewhere, almost at once.

There was a gurgling noise and I opened my eyes. Stan had dropped his gun and was clutching his torn throat, eyes wide with panic. Blood poured out of the wound and dripped down his hands. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, even though he would have killed me in the end. But he took such a long time to die, I half-wanted to pick up his gun and shoot him.

I waited until he finally stopped struggling, and then I picked up my torn jacket and put it on.

“Okay,” I said. “Come out. I know you’re there.”

A few moments passed before the twins emerged from the trees, looking half scared, half defiant.

I wanted to scold them, to punish them. But I couldn’t. I looked at the two dead things on the ground—things that had once been human—and tried not to throw up. I had to get away from there. I beckoned to the twins and we made our way through the undergrowth, back to the clearing.

Then I turned to them and snapped, “Why did you do that? Couldn’t you have just knocked them out?”

They exchanged a look. “You did that, Dulia,” said Lev. “Not us.”

“You know I can’t,” I said. “Why did you follow me anyway?”

“Why did you leave us?” countered Zac.

“You have Mum to look after you,” I said. “I wanted to go see Da—I mean, Englehart.”

Lev made a face. “We’re coming with you.”

“You go right back home,” I said. “Mum will be worried sick.”

“We left her a note,” said Zac. “She knows we’re with you.”

“Look, you’ve got to go back,” I said. “No telling what might break in and try to eat her.”

But they both had a stubborn, set look on their faces that I knew only too well. I threw up my hands. “Fine. But it’s a long way to Englehart. Don’t whine if you get tired.”

But I already knew they wouldn’t. They were grinning like I’d just given them the best present of their lives.

We opened the soldiers’ backpacks. There were packets of noodles, rice crackers, even some tinned meat. I loaded up my knapsack and told the twins to take turns carrying it. The rest I stuffed into one of the backpacks, and hefted it on my shoulder.

“Let’s go,” I said. “Still plenty of daylight left.”

But they lingered. Zac said, “Why does Mum hate you? She doesn’t hate us.”

I tried to speak calmly. “Mum doesn’t hate me. I just remind her of Dad, of the way things used to be before the Soliari came, and how different they are now. It’s hard for her to deal with it.”

They mulled over that. Lev said, “So she doesn’t see us?”

“No,” I said. “She sees only what’s human, the bit she gave birth to. She can’t see the other bits.”

“But you can.”

I looked at them sideways, the way I did sometimes. Their features blurred and the tentacles framing their faces waved softly in the wind. For a moment they looked almost identical to the things I saw drifting across the woods and in my dreams.

But it was still them, my brothers. I reached over and hugged them. “Yes, I can. Come on now.”

It took us another nine days to reach Englehart, following the remains of Trans Canada Highway 11. I’ll never forget that walk, that desolate landscape. Ruined smokestacks stood like sentinels over blasted plains. Gigantic striated rocks brooded over poisoned rivers. Halfway through, we were engulfed by swarms of black flies. The twins didn’t complain, even though I wouldn’t let them bathe in the polluted water to relieve their itch.

Close to Englehart, even the black flies vanished. By the time we reached the glass and metal ruins on the edge of the dead town, it felt like there was nothing human left on the entire planet except us. Maybe even including us.

Rising out of the ruins, like something from one of Dad’s stories, was what I had come to see—a monstrous black dome that glinted in the sun. This was what had killed my father.

We picked our way through the rubble to the edge of the crater that surrounded the dome. I found a rock to sit on, and Zac and Lev perched on either side of me.

Zac said, “They didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

There was no adequate response to this, so I made none.

Lev added, “I can see Dad. Can you?”

“Hush,” I said. After a while I saw him too, smiling and waving at me so my heart clenched. And then I saw them all, the ghosts of Englehart, drifting through the ruins that surrounded us. Big and small, happy and sad, just the way they were the day they died. It was a trick of the Soliari, nothing more, and yet how I longed for it to be real.

Zac said, “One day they’ll open their domes and we can go in.”

“We’ll go to the stars,” said Lev. “You’ll come, won’t you, Dulia?”

I made a non-committal noise. I didn’t tell him what I thought—that I wouldn’t be around when the Soliari emerged to show their true selves. Only the kids—the ones who could fully adapt to the aliens’ gift—would survive.

Dad and the other ghosts faded with the light. The sun set behind the dome, giving it a bright corona that almost blinded me. I closed my eyes and I could see him still, the after-image burned on the back of my eyelids.

“Goodbye Dad,” I whispered. Then I stood up. “Time to go.”

“Home?” said Lev, sounding disappointed.

I thought of Mum and her endless, black well of anger. “Not yet,” I said. “Let’s go see the world, what’s left of it.”

The twins whooped. I led them out of the rubble of Englehart, back on to the road.