Page 5 of The Brightness Between Us

I guess they do eat people? But if I shift any more to the left I won’t be heading toward the fence at all anymore.

“Turn around, turn around!” Father yells.

I don’t dare look in his direction. I don’t want to see how angry he is.

I’ll have to veer toward the malevors. There’s no other option. I adjust my course to go back toward them, and when I do the two closest horned aliens startle, then charge halfway to me before stopping. They raise and lower their heads; their horns point to the sky, then to me, again and again. The message is unmistakable:Go away.

And yet I have to continue. “Okay, okay, it’s okay,” I say as I pass along the muckland, to myself more than the malevors.

It’s not okay.

One and then another charge toward me.

I break into a sprint. Father’s screaming in my direction, and I’m grateful for his voice, since it means that I don’t have to look up to know where to run, that I can concentrate on keeping my footing over the wet and choppy ground, hummock to the right, hummock to the left, leap over puddle, clutch the skeleton and my spear...

A roaring sort of grunt, loud enough to feel the vibration in my gut, a hoof in the edge of my vision, and then the malevor is upon me. I leap to the side, barely keeping the skeleton pinched in my tunic as I roll. My temple bashes against the dirt, and then I’m bathed in a hot stink as the malevor passes over me. I unstick my spear from theground, get to my feet and back to running.

The fence isn’t far off now. I can hear its lovely lifesaving buzz, the whine of its pneumatic guns. I look up to see Father at the southern gate, urging me on, his face ashen.

I pick up speed.

Father sees something behind me, and his mouth drops open.

Before he can say anything, I feel a weight against my back, not like an animal but like an attack from the landscape itself, like a boulder has fallen on me. It knocks me to the ground, presses all the air out of my lungs. I’m aware only of a great pressure on my waist and hips, crushing them into the slick, glowing mud.

Thwuck, thwuck. Then the weight is off my back. I stagger to my feet, managing to get the tunic back up in my hands with the light bundle still in it, and I hurl myself through the open gateway. Roaring with some emotion that’s too deep and primal for me even to identify, Father slams the gate shut before another malevor can get through. “Seal it, OS!” he cries.

The fence and gateway crackle to life. I whirl around, hands against the pressed soil of our settlement, getting up onto my elbows to look behind me. One horned malevor has stopped a few feet from the fence, grunting, nostrils wide and eyes manic.

Another malevor is on the ground. Or its corpse is. Theshots from the pneumatic guns ripped its body right open. One horn dangles at an unnatural angle from its blasted skull; its rib cage is rent open, white of bone and red of blood and purple of organ. I see a heart, still pumping.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but look!” I’m referring to the alien skeleton, I guess, but of course Father can’t see it, because it’s trapped under my body.

“Owl, stop moving. Just breathe deeply. OS, Ambrose, Yarrow, I need you!” Father calls frantically.

Why does he sound so frantic? A malevor is dead, yes, but I’m not. Right? Then I look down and I see what that weight was, what that pressure was. The tunic at my waist is a wash of blood. It’s my blood. The pain of it is big but not in feeling range yet, a far-off thunderhead.

Numb, almost curious, I press my hand against my flesh. It parts wetly. I’ve been gored. “Daddy, I’ve beengored,” I say. My voice is so soft, my voice is so quiet.

Chapter 3

My body aches from being in the same position too long. I try to roll over on the gurney, but even considering it feels awful. There’s something gurgling and sharp and newly wet on my backside, and ithurts. Only by concentrating do I manage to say something about it. “Oof” is that thing I manage to say.

Dad hovers before me, his face drawn. He’s here. Dad will make all this better. “You’re up, darling.”

“Yeah, I... oh wow, I just remembered what happened. Am I dead?”

“You’re going to be fine,” he says. “You lost a lot of blood, enough to pass out. But I took that opportunity to bandage you up without having to listen to you complaining every second of it. Well, I had help. Rover did most of the bandaging, if I’m being honest.”

Rover—OS’s mobile form, a sphere with various tools that can emerge from its diameter, some of which undoubtedly just saved my life—whirls about the chamber. A tireless nurse. “Your chances of infection are very low,” OS reports in a voice that I’ve been told is the chilled-out version of along-dead pop star named Devon Mujaba. Dad had a bit of a crush on him back in the day, apparently.

“How long was I out?”

Dad taps his lips. “Overnight and into the next twilight. The wound isn’t so bad; the horn tore into the muscle of your abdomen but didn’t inflict any major organ damage. You’ll be lying here for a few days, but it shouldn’t be anything worse than that. Our main concern is preventing infection. You and Rover will be sharing a lot of quality time on that front.”

Dad has his gardening duds on, bioluminescent xenobacteria lighting up the seams of his clothing, rimming his dirty fingernails. We’re not in one of the printed greenhouses, though. We’re in the learning habitat, which doubles as the infirmary. I’ve been told I spent the first weeks of my life here, with Rover as wet nurse. Closest I got to a mother.

“Father...,” I say, my voice trailing off.

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