Under a Starless Sky novel Chapter 55

Shen was sitting at the end of the stone peers when Loxy joined him. He acknowledged her presence with a dopey smile, like someone who had been smoking a week’s worth of cannabis- minus the paranoia. When it came to cannabis, Jon would claim to be unaffected, except for the munchies. The truth of it for him was more complex. This wasn’t cannabis- but it felt similar in some ways.

“You doing okay?” TL asked.

“Yeah, I am great,” Shen asked. “How are you?”

“Fuck, you’re still high as a kite,” TL said.

“No, no,” Shen said. “I am just sitting here resting my bones, this loneliness won’t leave me alone…”

“Well, come on, Otis,” TL said. “We’re ready to head out.”

“Oh,” Shen said. He stood. “I should go say goodbye.”

“What?”

“I am going to stay here,” Shen said.

“The hell you are,” TL said.

“I have gone two thousand miles just to make this dock my home,” Shen said.

TL snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Wake the fuck up, Jon. You’re not a Jedi. You’re not going to tame that beast.”

“She’s lonely,” Shen said.

“Loneliness is an illusion,” TL said.

“A deadly one. I can help her,” Shen said.

“Help yourself first,” TL said.

“She loves me,” Shen said.

“She wants to eat you!” TL said.

“Oh, it’s mutual then,” Shen said.

TL slapped him. “Snap out of it.”

“You seem angry,” Shen said.

“Getting there,” TL said.

“There is a gate in Sinter that can take me home,” Shen said. “We could go home. I need her to get there. I need her to operate the gate.”

“She lied,” TL said.

Shen seem confused. “Why would she lie to me?”

Loxy rolled eyes heavenward. “Seriously? Because she wants you dead,” TL said.

“I can’t die,” Shen said. “I am immortal.”

“What?”

“Think about all the worlds we’ve been in together,” Shen said. “All the past lives. Me, but not me. Here, but not here. She can’t hurt me. No one can hurt me.”

Loxy grabbed him by the shirt, and before he knew it, he was laying on his back and she was on top of him, knee pushing into his chest. She held his uniform tightly, commanding it to constrict. Landing on his back had taken out his air. He couldn’t expand his lungs. He couldn’t move his limbs. His eyes widened, but there was confusion on why he couldn’t breathe.

“Do I have your attention now? You can die. You are not immortal,” TL said. She looked deeper into his eyes. “Back off, Jazmyne. You have no authority here.” They both hear a whispery voice respond: ‘if I can’t have him, no one cane. Jon, Shen I love you to death…’ “Jon!” TL shouted over the whisper. “Step up. 3, 2, 1… Now!” She snapped her fingers.

Shen’s eyes focused. There was fear. He couldn’t gasp. TL eased up her grip, allowing him to breathe. When he had his full wits and air, she let go. He got up, took in the environment, avoiding TL’s eyes. His head was bent towards the earth. The ocean heaved around him and the dock and he was nearly sick. He closed his eyes and hugged TL.

“I have finally lost it,” Shen said.

“For believing someone might help you? For wanting love?” TL asked. “That’s not a fault. That’s hope. Come on, let’s go.”

Shen silently agreed, accepting her hand. They walked together. He paused to look back at the city.

“Jon,” TL said.

“It has occurred to me, she has a Torch now,” Shen said.

“Yeah,” TL said. “But that’s all she has. I was able to disable everything else.”

“The psychic amplifier?” Shen asked.

“Time to go,” TL said.

“Okay,” Shen said.

It took effort to walk away. His legs felt weak as if he had been sick with fever for a week. They were still close enough to the ocean that its movement bizarrely affected him- his awareness of its swells seemed surreal, as if it was the parachute game and he was an island that others were trying to dislodge. TL hugged his arm and leaned into him. “I love you.”

“Why?” Shen asked. He stopped. He couldn’t get the ocean out of his peripheral without traveling in the wrong direction. TL wouldn’t let him change course. He resisted the urge to be sick. “No. It’s not the right question. Better: why do I question you but I don’t question Jazmyne?”

“Because what I give you is love and freedom,” TL said. “She give you love and death. Being loved to death is in no one’s best interest, neither the one coveted, or the one coveting. Both remain equally lost.”

निर्मित

They weren’t thirty minutes out from land, first by rows, then orientated to catch a wind, and driving up and down waves, when Shen was taken by his sickness. He hurled over the side of the boat. He held his position. He heard laughter, but was too sick to care. TL tried to comfort him, patting his back, and offering him water to rinse.

“How about a Dramamine?” Shen asked.

“You just experienced a psionic attack, and slept twelve hours,” TL said. “Not giving you that. This will pass.”

Torny came round and gave him a stick to chew on. She was very forceful in communicating: ‘this will help.’ TL shrugged, told him to listen to her. He chewed on it. It had a feel and taste of cinnamon. He recovered shortly after.

“What’s in this?” Shen asked TL.

“Nothing harmful,” TL said.

“But what’s in it?” Shen insisted.

“It’s working,” TL said. “Let it be.”

He stood, took inventory of himself and his surroundings. Erico was sleeping. Jerica was attending to a crow with blue eyes, which she made airborne. She closed her green eyes and oriented forwards, arms out, catching the wind as if she were the crow- as if she were Kate Winslet’s Rose. “Bird’s Eye View leaves my head…” a snippet of a song told him what she was doing and how. He felt the stirring of lust and realized he had recovered and turned to find something else to occupy him. TL smiled at him and his urgency transferred from Jerica that quickly. He felt embarrassed and wanting simultaneously.

“There is a place in the hold if you want to play,” TL offered.

“No,” TL said.

“Virtual play?” TL asked.

“No,” TL said.

“Might help shake her off,” TL offered.

Arne and Torny came to engaged him. Some of the crew gathered in ear shot.

“Welcome back, stranger,” Arne said, hitting his arm.

“I feel like I have been sick in a fever dream for weeks. I am forgetting something important,” Shen said.

“That’s normal,” Torny said. “Your ordeal was much more severe than you imagine. I know of no one who has ever gone up against a fully grown daughter of Hel and remained themselves.”

“Hel?” Shen asked

“The psychic plant succubus chic,” TL said. “Lanore called them Fermon, they call them Hel. Hel, Viking goddess of the underworld. Persephone Plant. I have also seen reference to her as Hecate, Ninkigal, and Irkalla, though technically Irkalla is the place Ninkigal resides, and where you go when she takes you. The statues on the island where we encountered her were Shala and Nakasi. All of them hold connections with the Earth, water, and the underworld.”

Shen shrugged. “I have encountered worse.”

“No,” TL said. “You have not. You’re human, Jon. You’re not going to go up against a telepath and coming out unscathed. Especially not that one.”

“I have come up against lesser plants,” Arne said. “That one must have been a thousand years old. I think the only thing that saved us was your magic sword.”

“And its obsession to hold you,” Torny said.

“It wants tech,” TL agreed.

“I have heard that they can get fixated on a person, objectify them to the point they will enslave them instead of eat them,” Torny said.