‘What do you mean?’ said Maggie. ‘We can go. Or stay forever?’
‘A long time I try.’ Ajiro looked away as if seeing across the years, across the universe. ‘But there is no way home for me.’ He sighed. ‘I found a scholar. He told me a story.’
Jupiter and Maggie listened as he told his tale.
Ajiro told how the people who found him brought him first to Qhayuvakham but he soon left the port city, and traveled far across Eoth in search of a way home. He met many people, humans, who had stories of their ancestors. They came from many places on Earth. And from strange times. But none knew of a way home back to Earth.
Then he found himself at a University far from the capital. And there he found a scholar who told of a group that came to Eoth high in the mountains long ago. A seeker from a mountain Zenashkam — moon temple found them wandering lost, but the two-thumbed ones could not speak to them. Nuvra.
The tale told that the group returned every day to the place in the mountains they had first found themselves. And on the next full moon they disappeared. Into a shining orange-white light.
The temple seeker searched amongst the rocks but found no sign of the nuvra. They had gone. Many years ago. It became a legend.
‘The scholar told me that all nuvra come to Eoth on the full moon. And those ancient nuvra had left from the mountain at the full moon. There is no knowledge of what happened to them. But the tale says they returned to their home.’
‘Jupiter. We might get home,’ Maggie said.
‘But why only on the first full moon?’ Jupiter said. ‘How do they know?’
‘The place nuvra walked into light is now the temple Naz’naskam — place of the luminous moon. Many nuvra try to enter, but none see light. For them too much time had passed.’ Ajiro said. ‘The legend says only on the first full moon can nuvra return.’
‘Maybe the passage fades with time. The first month…’ Jupiter said then his voice faded away.
He recalled the path a point on the Earth must take as the planet spins, and orbits the sun, even as the sun orbits the centre of the galaxy which itself is on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy.
‘It might just be too far away after,’ Jupiter said.
‘Why does the moon matter?’ Maggie said.
‘Maybe something like a high tide. The moon pulls…’ Jupiter shrugged. ‘Who knows. But we did arrive at full moon.’
‘We have to go there. To that temple. Before it’s too late.’
‘But do they really return home?’
‘We have to try. We must.’ Maggie said fierce determination in her voice.
‘We might end up in an even worse place. How can we ever know?’ Jupiter said.
‘The scholars at the temple might know more. We have to find out. Then we decide.’
Jupiter tipped his ramen bowl up and drank the last of the soup. ‘We’ll go together. I’ll make sure you get there.’
‘Stay here tonight. You say you are nuvra, but no one will believe you. You have tulanvarqa. No nuvra has. You would be taken away like the other humans.’
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
‘I’m beat. And it’s too late to do anything tonight now,’ said Jupiter.
‘Pariqamtu will be okay And Tamm and Breeze,’ said Maggie.
‘It can’t be helped.’
‘I knew we should not have split up. But they will be fine.’
‘At least we told Breeze the plan.’
‘That we would be there soon? To ready The Jupiter to leave?’
‘But it could not be helped,’ Jupiter said.
‘They won’t take any risks.’
‘We can’t do anything about it.’
Ajiro took them up a narrow set of stairs that would be more suited to a manisaur, but the old man managed well enough. He showed them to a room with a straw floor and unrolled a mattress and bedding.’
‘I will sleep downstairs. To keep guard.’
Jupiter knew enough not to protest. ‘You see. Japanese, even old soldiers, are friendly, helpful, and hospitable.’
Maggie glared at him, but nodded. ‘Yes. But you don’t have to rub it in. I like the old guy.’
‘The war is long past for him and me. You have to let it go.’
They settled down to sleep. It had been a long day, one Jupiter felt glad to be at an end.
His mind raced despite his tiredness. He had last slept on the deck of a skyship, about to be hunted. He escaped the hunt only by jumping from a cliff, running a thousand meters to the bottom of a steep gravel slope where he threw himself in a frigid raging river.
If The Jupiter and his crew had not been downstream on the riverbed he would have been recaptured. But a fast flight along the coast to this busy coastal city had kept him safe. Hiding in a noodle shop near the edge of town. Close to the docks.
The uncertain fate of humans here had imprisoned him and Maggie. Locked up. Only pain awaited him when light returned. Agony and loneliness never ending. He had been born to fly and dive the clear waters with his mates…
Jupiter’s fitful dreams kept him tossing and turning, mirrored by Maggie who slept close by. His confused thoughts gave him little rest.
When he awoke early he screamed.
Maggie screamed with him.
Never before had Jupiter felt such fear and pain and…
He gasped. Light filtered through a window to his right. Maggie sat upright to his left. But so to did a dulling blackness press down on him. Aches and pains from unknown limbs.
‘What’s happening?’ Maggie said.
‘Something bad. Really bad and painful. And close by.’
‘Yes. I felt it too.’
Jupiter slipped to the window, slid open the shutter. Beyond, across the plaza, lay the tall stone wall. The height of Ajiro’s shop house gave them a view to black walled buildings that stood on the edge of a long thin canal.
‘From over there,’ Jupiter said.
Maggie moved alongside him. ‘I felt it. Pain. So strong… but fading…’
A shock of fear, a nausea of agony, a piercing shock. They fell together and away from the window. The rigid, crystalized pain held them for an uncounted time. Then it relented.
Jupiter panted for air.
‘Something terrible…’
‘I felt it last night. And I dreamed.’
‘Yeah. Strange dreams. Of flying.’
‘But not on The Jupiter. Like my arms were outstretched. I had become a creature of the air and sea.’
‘And the others. All around. And ocean…’
They stared at one another.
‘We’ve got to get away from here,’ said Maggie.
‘We’ve got to save them,’ said Jupiter.
Both were right. But they could not decide.
They tumbled down the stairs. An urgency gripped them, compelled them to action.
‘We have to get to The Jupiter,’ said Maggie.
‘Yes. And fast.’
Ajiro roused himself from where he had slept on the straw mats in a dining alcove.
‘I will make tea. Or what passes for tea here.’
‘No time. We have to get to the old trading docks. We left our friends there. And our sailing boat.’
‘Why did we stay here last night?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jupiter said. ‘We just decided. ‘No argument even.’
‘It would have been a lot safer to find our way back last night.’
‘Now we have to return in daylight.’
‘Why didn’t we?’
They turned almost as one to look at Ajiro. The old Japanese man had boiled water for tea and now readied bowls of hot cooked grains and pickled vegetables, unaware of the intense inspection of him.
‘He knows nothing.’
‘He’s innocent. It’s fine.’
They turned and looked at each other and opened their mouths to speak at the same moment. Then closed it again.
Jupiter could not help it. He laughed. Maggie doubled over and gasped for breath between guffaws.
‘Nani?’ Ajiro said in Japanese. ‘O waratteru no? What makes you laugh?’
Jupiter felt a sense of calmness then. He went to the bathroom and washed out his mouth, splashed water on his face.
When he returned to the shop Maggie put down a cup with a bang. Water beaded her lip, she wiped the back of her hand over her mouth.
Ajiro stared at them in concern, if not outright fright. Jupiter and Maggie sat again at the dining bar.
‘Okay. How weird was that?’
‘Very.’
Ajiro pushed the bowls of food towards them and they ate in silence. A calm blankness flowed through Jupiter as he ate. The texture of the grain, the sharp acid of the pickles. The crunch. The hot cooling tea when he breathed out. Mint or a herb like it.
Calm quiet.
A banging at the door made them all start. The shock jolted Jupiter from his musing. He stared at the door. Who could be here so early. Nothing good that’s for sure.