The Gardener of Nahi

Chapter 4

Nahi

I am very far from home.

This world – Nahi, the locals call it.  It’s so impossibly remote that it’s not even in Hunion territory.  And appropriately so – there is a stunning lack of technology here.  The pink-orange creature (the sun is setting now) hanging above me and the beautiful nameless girl I cast away are apt reminders of this void, as well as the strange beauty with which it was supplanted.

Back on Cassidian, Myria told me of this place.  She tried explaining she was from here and although I wanted to believe her I struggled with the notion, not ever hearing of this world.  It seemed ludicrous then, but now I know she had been telling the truth.

Her people were slowly becoming extinct, she said.  There were no youth to replace the old.  A blight she said - a sea without tides, a forest thinning.  And although I am cloistered in the upper floors of the palace, enough word gets through for me to know that she was right on this as well.

There are no children here.  They call it the Still. 

In the brief hours we had together on Cassidian she hinted at other darker things besides this.  At the time I dismissed them as the ramblings of a confused yet beautiful stranger, but now I am fraught to remember them again, having faith in her words only now that she’s gone.

She was adamant that I knew of this place.  Myria insisted we were both here together, and that we were imprisoned somewhere underground.  She said the intercessors sentenced me to death.  Of course I told her she was mistaken – that she was confusing me with someone else since I had never been to Nahi (nor did I even know of its existence).

And now here I am.

There is not much else which she said that I can clearly recall.  And who can blame me?  Before coming here, the words describing this place made no sense to me and so they drifted away.  It is as if someone explained colors to a man blinded since birth, and that man subsequently gained his sight.  Would that man remember all of the descriptions previously told to him, or would he be enraptured by the sight of something as simple as a rainbow?

Now I wonder what would happen when that man closed his eyes to sleep every night.  Would he become fearful that the past would repeat itself?  Would the hazy prior descriptions ring around in his head endlessly as he lay there, as if the darkness could return forever?

Perhaps it is only paranoia, but I feel like that man.  Just today Chaliani told me there are many who do not approve of me being here.  He says we must be careful of the intercessors.  He has brought this up before, but now he seems more worried than usual.

I asked him if the intercessors would sentence me to death.

“That’s a strange question, Anon,” he said quietly, but I noticed he never provided me an answer.

Ever since that time there is a gaunt guardsman standing outside my bedroom door.  Akuli is his name.

It doesn’t take an idiot to see where things are heading.

This leads me to a recent decision of mine.  So absorbingly I’ve been caught up in the past, I am reminded that it is the present which will kill me if I am not careful.  And although I started this journal for a specific reason – to sort out my fragmented past – I now see an altogether second and necessary purpose in sorting out my present.

The next logical question is:  when did my present begin?  With the help of my recent writing I now can determine the answer to this question:  it is the moment Myria and I came into this world.  It is the moment our innership crashed on the frozen plateau, which they call the Palm of the Father.  It is the moment she died and the moment I was rescued by Chaliani.

It’s hard to believe that this moment happened only days ago.

The last thing I remembered before the crash was the cloud of dust – the closed timelike curve, or CTC as my Hunion superiors referred to it.  One moment we were climbing for the cloud, Myria and I, in the private Cassidian innership we commandeered on Canopy level.  There were dozens of blacksuits trailing us through the predawn sky like a swarm of fireflies, but then at the last moment they all turned back.  We didn't.

I should mention here that as we flew through that rotating cylinder of dust which hovered over the upper reaches of the Cassidian atmosphere, I began to see things I still can't explain.  I believe it was my future, since it certainly was not my past, and one of the things I saw was Chaliani's hand outside on the innership's window pane (which hadn’t happened yet).  The pain in my head became unbearable until suddenly all was released.  I could feel something accelerate inside of myself, as if my body was catching up with me.  That is the best I can explain it.

Night suddenly became day as we stalled.  Burners fired in panic, trying to slow our ever increasing fall.  We were spinning at an awkward axis, but still I tried to time my blinks in an attempt to see where we were falling.  All I could see was white.  Then we hit something hard.

When I awoke, Myria was dead.

I didn't realize this at first.  She was seated next to me, perfectly still, as if sleeping.  The passenger compartment we were in was cramped, frigid, and in near perfect darkness.  The ship's readouts and environ lamps were off, as if the machine was sleeping as well.  Through the forward window pane (which was slightly above me due to our odd angle) I could see the soft gray substrate which surrounded us.  The faintest of light was filtered through it, offering me a barely visible view of her seated closely next to me.

When I leaned over and kissed her, her lips were cold.  It was then I realized I could not see her breath, as I could see mine in the frigid cabin.  Recoiling, I immediately checked for a pulse and panicked when I could not find one.

"Ship," I said, breaking the silence with my hoarse voice.  I could hear the tremble in it.

Soft orange environ lamps flickered on momentarily, while the ship's female voice filled the cabin.   "Passenger," it only said, before dying off.  The voice was muddled, the syllables stretched out and cracked at the edges, not sounding like a woman at all but rather a wounded animal.  Quickly the orange lamps turned off again, but not before I was able to see Myria's face clearly, noticing that it had taken on a bluish hue.   

Cursing the ship, I told it to engage an emergency bioscan on Myria, not expecting anything in reply.  To my surprise more blurred words quickly came forth, almost too fast for me to comprehend.  "Female passenger lifeless energy dangerously low unknown geospatial location unknown geolocation no electromagnetic activity—"  Suddenly the ship's final word became stretched out until the last utterance of it became a droning "E" which lasted for several more minutes.  To this audible backdrop I climbed through my safety harness and crawled atop Myria in the dark cabin, futilely trying to bring her body back to life using the only means at my disposal – my own breath and hands.

After some time I fell back into my seat, shortly after the ship's incessant droning and my attempts at saving Myria's life drained away.  For the longest time, I sat there in the absolute silence, her cold hand in mine, locked in a dead shell in near darkness.

I fell asleep soon after that.