And because he knew not what might come next, his mind was utterly at peace.
AKHILA, DIVIDED
by C.S. MacCath
Akhila fell out of the sky on Yule’s Eve, by lunar reckoning, and blazed across the icy twilight like a bright thing thrown by a god. She thought about dying while she fell, gave in to the tug of the moon’s mass and plummeted toward its embrace in the peace that precedes a suicide. Who would know, she wondered, that she hadn’t lost her way somewhere between thermosphere and troposphere? Who would be able to tell from the scattered fragments of her corpse that she had chosen to challenge gravity in the hope of failure?
It was only when she sensed a gathering of Organics around a bonfire that she questioned the wisdom of her choice. Her flight path would take her too near them; they might be killed when she crashed. So she slowed, turned and dropped, courting the ground and not crushing herself against it, the reflected light of planet rise illuminating her descent.
She was still a rocket when they approached but was struggling toward a different shape. There was a three-dimensional face on the skin of her silvery surface, and the base of her frame had toes. It was snowing, the first flakes of a heavy fall, and the frozen water evaporated as it fell toward her, leaving the hillside wreathed in mist.
They were naked from the waist up and led by a tall, youngish man with black hair that fell to his hips. She watched them climb the hill with part of her consciousness while she sought the weak, reflected light of the rising gas giant with the rest. It would be morning before she could morph completely, she thought. It was too dark to transform now.
The youngish man turned to wait for the others, and then she knew he was a monk, guessed that all of them were monastics. The skin of his spine bore the mark of each path he had traveled; the Valknut, the Pentacle, the Yin and Yang. After the company crested the hill he knelt down in front of her, too close for his safety, and pressed the tips of his fingers into the frozen grass.
“Don’t be afraid. I’m human.” She used the last of her energy to force breasts from her middle. “A woman.”
“I’m certain you’re many things, and I’m sorry for all of them. What is your business here, Augment?”
“My name is Akhila. I have a name.” I could have already been dead, she thought. “Do you have a name?”
“I do.” He didn’t offer it to her. “And I asked you a question.”
Organics weep when they feel this way, she thought, but I don’t have the energy for tears. Her eyes rolled left, then right. One of the monks was shivering; a fine, white dust covered his blond hair and shoulders. She imagined the snow was ash and then willed the vision away. “I’m not here to hurt you. I don’t do that anymore.”
The youngish man tensed like a predatory cat, or perhaps like its prey. She wasn’t sure. The other monks glanced at one another and backed away. Then she heard a roar, faint at first, louder as it approached the hillside.
“It’s a bomb!” The roaring man crested the hill and leveled the barrel of a hand weapon in her direction. His iron gray beard and hair whipped in the rising wind. “Vegar, get out of the way!” He gestured down the hillside with his free arm, and the mantle of symbols on his back and shoulders rippled as he turned.
Vegar rose, his hair falling forward as he looked from her to the weapon and back again.
“No, I’m a person.” Her desire for life rekindled then.
“Father, wait.” Vegar lifted a hand to block the weapon.
“You don’t know what it can do, what those things have done.”
“She hasn’t threatened us.”
“I said to get out of the way!”
“Sigurd, I can’t let you murder her.”
“I take refuge!” Akhila cried. They would take her in. They were obligated by their oaths. “I take refuge in the spiral that leads outward and in the spiral that leads inward. I take refuge in the one road of many paths and in the company of fellow travelers. I beg the sanctuary of this hostel.”
“You have no right to sanctuary!” Sigurd shifted his aim to avoid the younger monk and fired at the half bomb, half woman, but Vegar turned in that instant and flung himself over her frame. A stream of energy passed above them as they fell, and the sharp odor of burning flesh rose from their bodies. By the time they separated, several members of the priesthood had blocked the older monk’s path.
Sigurd’s lips curled downward, and he spat on the ground, but he didn’t fire again. Instead, he handed the weapon to one of the monks in front of him. “I’ll call the Councilor and let her know we have a problem.” His voice was flat. “Somebody treat Vegar’s burns and make sure that thing doesn’t go anywhere.”
Vegar refused to leave the hillside while a gun was pointed at Akhila, so a medic was dispatched to bring him warmer clothes and treat him where he sat. He also refused pain medication, which would have encouraged sleep. For a while, he hoped she might get up from where he left her, but she remained supine for the rest of the night. She didn’t speak again either, but her eyes continued to roll left and right, up and down until she had cooled enough that ice gathered on their surfaces. Then she stopped moving altogether. After a time the monk with the weapon relaxed, and Vegar withdrew to a place within where there was no weariness and no pain.
Akhila began to transform again when the sun rose. Her rocket body split into a head, torso and limbs while her silvery skin grew caramel-colored and soft. By mid-morning she looked like the person she claimed she was, a full-hipped, brown-eyed woman with black hair cropped short. “Thank you for saving me,” she said to Vegar when she was done.
He stood up from the place where he had kept vigil and began to pace. “I’m not doing this for you.”
“I didn’t think you were, but thank you, nonetheless.” Her voice was low and soft.
Vegar’s wounds were still blistering; he could feel the puffy pockets of fluid ballooning against his bandages. His eyelids felt heavy, and his limbs were weak. The muscles in his jaw knotted. “What kind of refuge do you expect us to provide while your people are butchering ours?”
“I don’t know what I expected, and it’s war, not butchery.” She wrapped her arms around her knees and looked up at him. Her eyes were full of ghosts. “Even so, I’ve done some terrible things.”
Vegar stopped pacing, and his lip lifted back from his teeth. “The Valfather counsels us that the path of strength is to atone for our mistakes, not run from them. I won’t be your confessor.”
“What would you have me do, go back to the worlds I’ve blighted and make amends with the dead?”
“Is that why you’re really here, to ‘blight’ us?”
“Don’t be stupid. I took refuge in good faith. If I had wanted to kill you, you would be dead.” She glanced at the other monk, who had lifted Sigurd’s weapon, and smirked. “Good luck with that. I’m not so vulnerable in the sunlight.”
“I should have let our Godman shoot you when he had the chance.”
“Well, I’ve certainly earned it. Would you like to see how?” Before he could answer, her body began to stretch, thin, and re-shape into a pair of figures; a smaller replica of herself and a small boy dangling in her grip over a rocky outcropping.
The stone under the replica’s feet melted away, and as it dissolved, it was drawn up through her legs and torso, which pulsed in a slow but steady rhythm. Then her mouth opened wide, and a flood of tiny, transformed particles poured from her nose and lips onto the face of the terrified child.