Madness! Madness! And yet... Atsushi sat down on the soft grass, suddenly weak and dizzy. It was happening again—in his mind’s eye, he saw his wife enveloped in a blazing blue light, returning to rescue Osamu from the flood, to sacrifice herself to save their son.
Could it be? Memories rushed back, cascading through his thoughts like the rampaging waters of the Sakawa. He lowered his head into his hands, gasping at the intensity of the images filling his mind.
Yes, yes. He did remember! By all that was sacred, what Michiko’s spectral message told of was true!
The third and final stage—Atsushi must now do the same to save all three of them as Michiko had done to save Osamu. Could he really do it? Could he? “Amaterasu,” he whispered, reaching out despite his disbelief. “Help me.”
A dull grayness enveloped the landscape as the sun vanished behind a gathering of thunderheads. Atsushi stood in the quiet, hearing only a beating of drums and a ringing of bells. He quickly walked to the road where, just at the crest of the hill, a procession of samurai, musicians, and a palanquin being borne by four attendants appeared, the palanquin’s occupant a white-maned man garbed in a black robe.
Just like the first time.
I know this, he thought, breathing quickly. I have seen this before. And now I must do what needs to be done. Joyous laughter bubbling in his throat, his spirit soaring, Atsushi ran to meet the majo.
✥
The heavens above Sagami province shone a brilliant blue. Small, fluffy clouds scudded here and there, adding their feathery shapes to a glorious morning sky. Birds flitted from tree to ground and back again. Insects buzzed and the sun warmed the very air itself, shining shafts of golden light everywhere.
Atsushi and Michiko stood in the doorway of their house, watching Osamu at play. “The wooden sword you made for him is being put to good use, it seems,” Michiko said with a playful smile. “He is pushing back the enemy attack.”
Atsushi laughed, admiring his wife’s beauty and pleased at her witty remark. He thanked the gods and the kami every day for her! “Perhaps he will become a samurai,” he said.
Michiko’s face darkened. “I pray not but who knows what the gods have in store for us? The terrible wars continue and remember the flood of last year. If not for you, we would have all perished.”
“How can I forget? But we have survived both, have we not?” Atsushi glanced away then. Something tickled at the back of his mind, some memory trying to surface, some image of the past that lurked there and then, just as abruptly, was gone.
He said softly and slowly, the reason for the words a mystery, “It may be that Osamu will grow up to help bring peace to all of us.” He turned to see Michiko staring at him strangely.
“Perhaps,” she said with a nod, a faraway look in her eyes. “Perhaps. That would be a good thing, yes?”
Atsushi nodded as he and Michiko clasped hands and turned back to look with pride upon their son.
………………………………………………
Larry Ivkovich’s genre work has been published in over twenty online and print magazines. He has been a finalist in the L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest and was the 2010 recipient of the CZP/Rannu Fund award for fiction.Published novels include urban fantasy The Sixth Precept (IFWG Publishing), and fantasy Blood of the Daxas (Assent Publishing).Larry lives in Pennsylvania, US
The Spiral Moon
Alex Barr
I’m off on a world tour before I die. This little world is mine alone now. I’m leaving Ernesto, with his leprous head, stiff as a statue. I’ll know when I’ve been right round because he’ll be sitting there.
It’s good to be moving. And to feel calm. It has to end? It has to end. And, oh! The stars! Collecting samples I was too busy bending, but now there’s no point I can look up. Sirius is just above the horizon like the world’s biggest diamond. Not twinkling of course, just . . . there.
The horizon is less than a hundred metres away. Earth should rise over it soon, between Perseus and Auriga. It was so clear from the cabin window, blue and white, oh yes. As my world sweeps towards Jupiter, Earth will shrink to a star, with no-one here to see. Ah, there’s Rigel! And off to the right, the Milky Way, like a necklace of—
Aah!
Falling. No, floating like in a dream. Off a big escarpment. A crater in fact. Thirty metres deep, at a guess, and a half mile across. Now I’ve reached the floor. Rocky hummocks like country loaves. But I’m not hungry, ha ha. Rigel and Sirius have gone below the rim. I’m travelling quite fast now. It’s like being on an invisible bike. Hey, think of a name for this crater. When you find this recording, folks, remember Letitia saw it first.
Climbing out. Phew. Harder than I thought despite tiny gravity. Sweating already. Soon I’ll see Sirus again and . . . Oh God. Oh God, no. Visor misting. I’m losing the stars!
✥
I’m scared. I’m alone. For a moment I forgot what’s coming. Sorry folks, I’ll be all right. Well, I won’t be, but still . . . I’m sitting on a rock, resting. Mum, Dad, Elsa, Earl, Anna, love you all. Not forgetting Mark. Yes you, Mark, no hard feelings. Don’t any of you be sad, I had my adventure. Who could have thought a small meteoroid would end it?
There must have been a scattering of them, like bird shot. And suddenly our bird was dead. Escaping oxygen froze to a cloud of pearls. Beautiful. Sad wires like severed nerves. Natasha would have died instantly from decompression. No sense of horror—more like a movie, or breaking down in the car waiting for recovery.
Over the intercom the collision nearly cracked my eardrums. Guess it’s left me with tinnitus because now there’s a swishing, like the sea in a seashell. Communication was routed through the crew capsule, so I’m cut off. But help would arrive too late anyway. Oh well, you’re all here in my head, Mum, Dad, Elsa, Earl, Anna, Mark, so Letitia’s not alone . . . but my head will end up like Ernesto’s, and where will you all be then?
Ernesto couldn’t wait. Sat on a rock, waved, made a throat-cutting gesture, unsnapped his helmet and took it off. It drifted down slowly, turning, sun glinting on the visor. His dark skin turned white, like a line of subzero washing. His black hair turned to grey wool. His sample bag is beside him. Does it hold the iron, nickel, or platinum he hoped for?
I’ve left my own samples near him. If they show signs of living organisms I’ll never know. What a joke—I come looking for life, and the looking ends my life. And is knowing whether life came from space going to solve the Earth’s problems? Anyway, didn’t life on Earth begin in rock pools? Where are the rock pools here?
But hey, if I have found traces of organisms I’ll be famous, a twenty-first century Darwin. Ha ha. What a price for posthumous fame! Does Shakespeare know he’s a phenomenon? Does he wallow in his success? No-one there to wallow. And what about all my memories? Sunrise from a mountain ridge. That night on the little island with Mark—the smell of our campfire, the smell of your skin against mine. Being picked for this mission, desert sun through the minibus windows on the way to the first briefing. I’m labelling boxes no-one else can open.
But here’s one I want to open for all of you. You never knew why I changed. Complained that I was driven, full of my new direction, no time for any of you. You didn’t know failure was what drove me, a very public failure, though even you Anna, dear Anna, in the audience, never knew the full story.
✥
Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. Act One nearly over, the prima ballerina slips and pulls a muscle. As company physio I lay her out in the green room and massage her wonderful thighs.
She sobs, “Will I get back on, Letitia?”
“Hope so.”
“I must. That cow Amelia, my understudy—she’ll be rubbing her hands.”
“Well I’m rubbing your legs, Carmen, so let’s hope.”
She makes a gesture of despair, so elegant you’d think despair was beautiful, like excavated bones.
“What the hell did I slip on? Had nobody swept the stage? What time is it?”
“Ten minutes to Act Two. Try standing.”
A few steps, then a few pliés.
