Three buttons pressed, three satisfying clicks, and the Seer’s work was done. She was done and tired and ready to go. She stood, legs creaking audibly now that her home had fallen silent, and she considered crawling back into bed to wait for the floods.
But no, she decided, she would go to the front of the cabin instead, back to her wall of tin and her skinny porch. And she wouldn’t get in the saddle or take her helmet with her. She would go and stand there, stand in the rain with no protection at all. She would raise her arms and wait for the floods to wash away the wicked.
And she would go gladly.
Part XXIV – The Circle Closing
“We are born into this universe.
We live, we play, we war in it.
And over time, it changes us.”
52 · Free
“This is it?”
“Yeah.”
Cole peered out his porthole at the maze of canyons below, at the web of black traces and the tan marble like the latticed skin of a Callite.
“How can you be sure?” he asked. “They all look the same to me.”
“Trust me,” Molly said. “This is the one.”
She lowered
“Be careful,” Parsona said through the radio.
Molly didn’t reply. She unbuckled her harness and left the cockpit without bothering to wait on Cole.
“I’m coming too,” Cole yelled after her. He shrugged his harness off and hurried to catch up.
“Here.” Molly handed him a set of egg graspers as he entered the cargo bay. She kept a set for herself. Neither of them wore any of the rest of the Wadi gear, their flightsuits comfortable enough in the shade. Molly stomped down the cargo ramp and into the eerie howling of the windswept canyons. Cole watched her click the graspers nervously as she went.
“You’ve gotta talk to me about what’s going on,” Cole said, running up beside her. “How do you even know these eggs need rescuing?”
Molly pointed toward one of the Wadi tunnels at the base of the high cliff, then started off toward it. The sight of the large tube, big enough to crawl inside, sent a powerful numbness through Cole’s knees. He remembered his ordeal in just that sort of cave not so long ago. He hurried after Molly, his fears about her deep depression taking a new and more severe turn.
“Molly—”
She ducked her head inside the cave, one hand resting on the upper lip of the smooth hole in the marble. She turned and looked back, her face veiled by a shadow on top of a shadow.
“The Wadi told me,” Molly said flatly. “I saw this place in her mind like I was here. I saw the eggs, what the other Wadi did to her, and what we need to do right now.”
With that, she turned to the darkness and stepped inside.
Cole fumbled in one of his pockets for a glowstick. He cracked it back and forth, then hurried in after her, shuffling along on his knees and knuckles, his egg graspers in one hand and the feeble glowstick in the other. Molly moved ahead of him as if she would’ve slid through the pitch black even had he not joined her.
They crawled for dozens of meters, past holes in the floor and drips from the ceiling. The green light from the stick would fade, Cole would work it back and forth, and a bit more soft glow would keep the cave barely discernable. When Molly stopped, Cole bumped into her, his knuckles scraping on the rough rock.
“Oh my gods—” Molly breathed.
Cole held the glowstick aloft.
“I didn’t realize they would be this big,” Molly said. She moved to the side to allow more of the light to pass, and Cole felt goose bumps surge up his arms when he saw the objects on the other side of her. There were at least three of him that he could see, nestled against one another and halfway reaching the roof of the cave. The colors and patterns were remarkable, even muted by the awful green cast of his glowstick. The shells of the eggs seemed to dance and waver like the skies outside. They were big enough that a fully-grown human could pop out, which had him worrying about what was inside of them, and how safe this “egg canyon” really was.
“Hey, Molly, I think we need to reconsider this.”
She looked back at him and brushed some loose strands of hair off her face. She bit her lower lip and nodded.
“I think you’re right,” she said. “I think we’re gonna have to free them right here.”
“No,” Cole said, shaking his head. “That is most definitely
“Give me your knife,” Molly said. She leaned on one palm and stretched her other hand out to him. Cole’s lightstick ebbed a little, dimming the light in the tunnel.
“Molly, we need to pause for a sec and talk about this—”
“Give me your knife,” she said again. Her voice had not risen nor modulated, but Cole felt himself succumbing. The past weeks had been full of one attempt after another to soothe Molly’s hurts. He knew there was no denying her this, not after what they’d gone through to get permission to fly out there unescorted.
He reached back, pulled his knife from his ankle holster, and placed it hilt-first into her palm.
Molly situated herself in the tight confines, wedging her back against the side of the tunnel, her legs folded up beneath her. She gripped the knife with both hands and slammed its point down into the shell of the massive egg. There was a solid twack, like an axe on wood, but nothing more. She looked over at Cole as she reared the knife back once more.
“In my vision, I saw a Wadi claw doing this.” Molly struck the egg again, harder this time. It left a mark, and she pulled the knife up for another blow. “I don’t think the moms sit on them. I think they guard them, and then they do something like this right before they die.”
She hit the same spot, and a series of cracks appeared, fanning out from the impact. Molly ran her finger over one of the cracks, feeling it. Cole held the glowstick closer, but he was searching Molly’s face. There was a grim determination, a profound sadness there that he wanted desperately to break through. He had high hopes that this day, this mission she had spoken of for weeks, would do her some good. He was suddenly worried that nothing ever could.
“I think it’s trying to help,” Molly said.
Cole moved the light and redirected his attention. Something seemed to stir beneath the colorful shell. Molly scrambled to the next one, the knife attacking with vigor.
“We need to hurry,” she grunted between blows.
Cole extended the glowstick over the first egg to help light up the next two. He watched the creature inside the egg move like an amorphous shadow. Between Molly’s blows, he could feel something striking the egg beneath him, but from the
Molly moved to the last egg. “We don’t have much more light,” Cole warned her. He worked the plastic back and forth, but his efforts did little. Molly struck the egg’s shell, her palm flat on the back of the knife’s hilt, both arms driving as hard as they could. She rubbed the cracks in the shell and whipped her head around to face
