It was a spaceship of unimaginable proportion, silently prowling the halogenic green waves of light that splashed across Earth’s curvature until the day of its fateful departure. Until then, it remained as a peace offering to humanity. A final gesture to save as many as possible. We called it the Anemone—the Windflower. A flower petal torn from its place of birth, and so the Windflower would carry us to our new home.
Our shuttle, an insignificant fly in comparison to the hulking grey body before us, docked at the Anemone’s port where a fleet of other craft were arriving by the hour. The security check-ins bustled with long lines of people clambering forward, their breaths restrained and eyes darting uncertainly.
I didn’t even notice the security guard as he scanned my ID, and for a brief moment, I was prepared to fight my way through should my past be brought to bear. My eyes were trained ahead, and as soon as the guard’s approval was given, I drove into the crowd before me.
And wandering the halls of that ship, amidst the daily arrival of thousands of stragglers—travellers, tourists, and unwanted denizens from across the globe, all bound together in search of lost hopes and forsaken dreams, and a new life that awaited us all on the other side—I kept glimpsing Ayla’s face. She was just as I remembered. How long had it been—a year already? But she was too quick, a glimpse here or there, like lightning crackling through the night sky. Blink and she was gone.
My grief played a tune I could not forsake. Each appearance of Ayla brought about a new trail, a new set of clues, and yet more stories and gossip from those who had witnessed her appearance. They knew her only by the red hair that peeled through our collective conscious as a single binding truth.
It spurred me further into the belly of the Anemone where shapeshifting corridors seemed to imprison my endless searching. Time again my imagination was betrayed by my frightened gasps in the forbidding vaults of the ship where few dared to venture, a place where only the ghosts of conquered civilisations survived. They said I was riven by space sickness, that I was wayward, clinging desperately to any sliver of news of the red-haired woman. But over time, as each appearance faded more with every full orbit, I realised I could hardly recall the face of the one I chased after.
It was like the memory of Ayla was fading from my mind. She was a ghost with only her most memorable features remaining—her fiery-red hair, a slip of her pale white skin, the outline of her nose and chin as her figure brushed past me in the crowd, or did she really? I tried to turn around fast enough to catch her in time, but all I could see were the backs of strangers, the nonchalant stares of people passing me by. They knew not of the turmoil gripping my heart.
There was an empty feeling burrowed deep inside. It was a distant beating heart. A dull ache, incessant, driving this endless searching. I tried to bury it, layer over it with mindless toil, forgetting, a betrayal of the man I was, who she once knew me to be. Only brief periods of light shone through, bringing life to memory where now only darkness remained.
I wanted to cry out after her, chase after her into those endless depths, if only to tell her I was sorry. Perhaps then I could find a salve for this grief once and for all. Did I even have that right? And yet it was everything I felt.
My heart carried a coat of the heaviest rocks, and it became a struggle to rise from my bed each day, just to continue the search. It was a gruelling journey under water, a clambering shadow in the dark as thick as the starry night outside my room’s window. Only to rise and repeat the same daily cycle—a cruel joke waiting to see if I finally understood the punchline.
After everything, I returned to the small chamber assigned to me, one of thousands lining the Anemone’s hull, and I fell asleep with the weight of a mind too exhausted for life. It was a deep sleep, fitful and troubled, robbed of any peace. And I dreamt of fire. I dreamt of her.
It was a cloud of fire that filled the sky, both consuming and majestic, terrifying and alive. Fiery tendrils like the hands of judgement wafted slowly toward me, as if playing out in slow motion, or to simply torment my already broken heart. I tried shielding my face, but my hands would not budge. I opened my mouth to scream, but no words came. Fear had relinquished my body to whatever fiery fate awaited me.
I awaited the silence, the sentence of my guilt.
A dark figure emerged through the fire, steeped in shadow as if scorched by the billowing heat of the flames. And I at once saw the figure’s tangle of hair, bright and luminescent like the light of the sun, at once feminine, almost divine. Like someone I had known.
There was the flicker of a hand, an arm, raising toward me, and then my handset was ringing. My hands were suddenly unbound, and yet they trembled as they clutched the small device. The screen flickered and hummed to life, and there, on the profile, I saw her name: Ayla.
My fingers hovered over the incoming call slider. Slowly, cautiously, I raised the device to my ear.
‘Ayla?’ My voice trembled.
There was a barrage of silence, then broken static, a voice puncturing the electric code like morse.
‘Keenan!’ A woman’s voice came fast and sudden, but it was so faint, barely a whisper, a salvaged pleading.
But before I could say another word, the cloud of fire ensnared me, a sudden ignition that stole the air from my lungs, turning my despair, and the world, into ash.
I snapped awake, sensing another presence in the room, ‘Ayla?’ I cried aloud.
There was a hoarse chuckle, deep and throaty. ‘No—afraid not!’
I raised my head to see a tall, dark figure entering the chamber. There was an indifferent menace in the man’s eyes, and his heavily bearded face hinted at someone who had been living off the land for months. A large mastiff followed obediently at the man’s heels, yet its dark pupils were trained squarely toward me. Unnerving.
‘What? Who ar—’ I was slow to rise, to awaken to this new reality. I saw the large rifle resting in the man’s gloved hands. A bounty hunter, there could no doubt about it. My heart sank. I leant back on the metal bed head, sitting upright, but poised to act at any moment. I thought about the sidearm hidden beneath the blanket, but I resisted the urge to wield it. ‘Do I know you?’
‘In a way,’ he said and there was something about those words. ‘I am Frakes Theson, and I am here to bring you to justice.’ His hands tightened around the rifle barrel.
‘Justice? For defending one’s home? Don’t make me laugh,’ I spat. ‘Besides, I thought the Neithan Accord granted everyone pardon?’ Even then, the words made me want to spew. Pardon? Peace? I had a good idea where to stick those words.
‘The Neitha have granted asylum, but for men like you, the bounty stands.’ The man’s voice was edged with agitation. He had clearly been on my trail for some time.
‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ I grated defiantly and after a moment I swallowed. ‘I am searching for someone.’
‘Someone? Would that someone be Ayla?’ Frakes quipped, a wry smirk scowling the edge of his shadowed face.
‘How do you know that name?’
‘Don’t you remember? She’s gone. Dead.’
Those last words cut deeply. ‘Gone? Dead?’
‘You were both meant to be on board that ship. Had you left with her, we wouldn’t be standing here today.’
There was a flash of fire in my eyes. A cloud of orange flame searing my mind. And I saw her pale face, her hair bright in the sun. I winced, before I slowly came back to.
‘No—it was another ship. There were others in the air!’
But Frakes didn’t reply. Instead, he smiled knowingly, as if he knew a truth I knew deep down myself was true. But in my heart, she was still out there in the stars.
A dead weight burrowed deep inside, pitting itself in my stomach, a bottomless vortex. Threatening to drag me in.
As if sensing the realisation dawning over my thoughts, Frakes smiled even wider. ‘Good. I’m glad it hurts. You have no idea what I’ve had to sacrifice just to find you. I’ve lost so of my compatriots to your kind.’
His hand rested on his rifle, tightening around the grip, his fingers itching for the trigger. But he wanted me alive, if possible.
My grip loosened around the sidearm. I thought then to hand myself over, to succumb. But the flickering light emitted by my handset caught my eye. A pulse of red—a beacon.
A missed call.
And I saw Ayla’s face again, her hair alive in orange sunlight.
The bounty hunter stepped forward, but he did not anticipate the sidearm clutched firmly in my hand. The room was shadowed in darkness, the pale light above not enough to illuminate the whole room. His eyes sprung open as I revealed the weapon from beneath the blanket.
And then it was too late.