Page 4 of Stars in Umbra
He nodded, yawning, eyes still on her face as she canted it to the heavens.
Her eyes dilated, then misted over, and he sighed.
She was remembering again, lost in a dimension far away.
After years of listening to her sleep-talking babble, he had pieced together the reason for their demise.
An affair, a shameful, secret liaison, had gotten them hurled down from wherever they’d been before.
She spoke of a heavenly realm, a place called Sivania, the seat of the one she named Most High; a palace he had no recollection of, no matter how hard he tried.
Having fallen from grace with a three-year-old toddler, she landed in LeCythi and hawked her jewelry to pay for their first few months’ living expenses.
Withnadabut the literal power in her hands, her otherworldly circuitry that flowed from her fingers, she went to work.
She used it to patch wires in damaged hover bikes for street gangs and fixed plasma heaters and electronics for local merchants.
While she eked out their survival one repair at a time, she often made it clear that it washispowers that would fix everything.
‘When you come of age and yourSsignakhtandSsukigratcome to fruition, you will use it to find us a way back home.’
He thought she was clinging to a dream.
Even so, he listened, because he loved her.
Also, because somewhere, in the quiet places of his heart, hewantedto believe her.
He slipped behind the curtain and curled onto the thin mattress in his room.
Soon, sleep dragged him into dreams of grand thrones, towering principalities, and powers he wasn’t sure he wished to claim.
2
Vanishing Like a Ghost
MOLAN,7 years later
The fly-copter hung in the sky like a giant insect, its blades screaming through the dusk haze.
Beneath it, the lake frothed in agitation, its silver-black waves heaving and roiling, caught in the fury of a passing storm.
The roar was deafening, the scent of salt, brine, and foam filling the air, and the cold spray blading the skin.
The young man, just twenty, stood at the edge of the open door, thin, barefoot, trembling.
His hands gripped the frame so hard his knuckles bled white.
Wind tore at his clothes, his hair, and his resolve.
The distance separating him and the water below appeared infinite, an abyss between this world and the next.
‘Jump.’
The voice came from somewhere to his rear.
It was glacial, commanding, and sent a chill down his spine.
‘I won’t do it,’ he choked, teeth clattering, either from fear or the frigid temperature.
