Artis, p.1
ARTIS, page 1
Artis
The Firebird’s Gift
Alex Hayes
Shaking the Tree Press
THE FIREBIRD’S GIFT SERIES
Artis (A Prequel Novella)
Prisoner Zero - (A Short Story)
Beyond the Red Forest (Book 1)
Before the Black Tower (Book 2)
Behind the White City (Book 3)
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Artis
An idiot prince on a suicide mission.
What makes her think she can keep him alive?
After a wild boar nearly kills him, Max wakes to find his savior is an unsophisticated woman living alone in the forests of his father’s poisoned kingdom.
The girl tells him to rest, but Max won’t listen. He’s hellbent on completing his urgent mission to the old city and proving his worth to the king.
Artis doesn’t know what to make of the hot-headed man who spent three nights in her bed. He’s rude and impatient. And he doesn’t want her help.
But she knows he won’t survive without it.
Our task must be to free ourselves...
by widening our circle of compassion
to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature and its beauty.
Albert Einstein
1
Artis
FIVE YEARS EARLIER
“Look!” little Tora squealed. “She’s bleeding!”
The Children were picking plums from the ancient trees of an overgrown orchard near the central park of the old city.
Artis glanced down from her perch in the leafy branches of a squat tree. Tora was a bony girl, not more than six, with limp brown hair and green eyes that dominated her pixy face.
Ignoring the girl, Artis directed her gaze to a cluster of plums and reached for fruit on a higher branch.
“She’s bleeding!” Tora squealed again, from her spot on a patch of flattened grass.
Artis peeked through the gap between her knees, below the hem of her torn skirt, and noticed a thin trickle of blood running down her inner thigh. “I just scratched myself!” she shouted, and dropped a handful of dark red fruit into the tall weeds to distract the other Children.
A drunken wasp bumped into her cheek on its way to a cluster of fermenting fruit.
Artis jerked away and pricked her wrist on a thorn. “Ouch!” she cried.
“Don’t freak us, Tora,” Malcolm growled as he stuffed plums into the pockets of his oversized shorts. He was ten with a mane of dirty blonde hair and a face that looked angry even when he wasn’t.
Artis jumped to the ground and wiped her leg with a fistful of dead grass, ignoring the cramps in her belly. The day was humid and her limbs felt heavy. She was almost fourteen and surprised she’d lasted this long.
Bunching her tattered plaid skirt into a pouch, she filled it with plums.
As the Children headed along the rubble-strewn avenues between crumbling high-rises toward their camp, Malcolm whispered to Artis:
“It’s the Change. You gotta go.”
Her cramping stomach churned, and a wave of nausea dragged the blood from her thin cheeks. “Go where?” she whispered, her heart sinking. Malcolm was her friend. She thought he’d stick by her, but even he wanted her gone.
“Anywhere but here,” he told her, his aquamarine eyes resolute. “Be gone by dawn tomorrow, peaceful.” He took a bite from a ruby-colored plum, then wiped the juice off his chin with a dirty sleeve and shifted away.
Artis spent the rest of the day steeped in isolation and denial. She followed her routine, searching derelict buildings and overgrown parking lots for firewood, picking edible greens from the riverbank and exploring office buildings for paper clips, safety pins and other small treasures.
By the wee hours of the next morning, she had reached some acceptance of the situation. Nothing would sway the other Children into letting her stay. Being one of them, Artis understood that. Their intolerance of adults was extreme. Grown-ups were bossy and dictatorial and mean. And they couldn’t be trusted not to die.
Artis grabbed an empty drawstring sack off the dirt floor of her makeshift hut and crept out while the rest of the Children slept.
The campfire had long faded to a pile of cold ashes, like her heart, but the sky glowed with just enough light to see. She navigated the junk piles that littered the camp and said a silent goodbye to her home of five years, before slipping from the blind alley into the derelict streets beyond.
As the day yawned its way to wakefulness, Artis zigzagged through crisscrossing avenues toward the municipal buildings. Nothing she owned was worth taking from this dead city, but there was a book she wanted to check out of the Library.
Up the rusting stairwell to the fifth floor, she ran, to an aisle marked “Natural Science,” where she found a giant clothbound book entitled Medicinal Plants and Herbs. The book had become her medical go-to for the treatment of bee stings, cuts and rashes. The Children were forever hurting themselves, and Artis wondered how they’d manage without her. But they would. They always did.
She slipped the heavy book into her worn sack and hooked the string handles over her shoulders. As she stepped out of the Library’s dilapidated front entrance, she heard a shout.
“There she is!” Malcolm. Yesterday, she’d been his friend; today, she was his enemy. “Get her!” he shouted. These were words she’d heard too often over the past five years. But this time, Artis was the target.
Two or three seasons back, when Camila’s time came, the amber-haired girl had cried and screamed and begged to be allowed to stay.
Artis had decided she wouldn’t go out that way, and she was just as determined about it now as she had been then. She would preserve her dignity.
The swarm of screaming Children raced down the avenue toward her.
Artis ran.
The old city was an unrelenting home and the Children a wildly dysfunctional family, but together, they’d been something.
Now, she had neither.
She sped toward the Fun Fair. From there, she’d head down the riverfront to the Metal Bridge and leave the old city. For some who saw the Change, leaving took weeks. Not her. She’d get it over with.
Artis lost Malcolm and the other Children among the falling-down structures of the Arcade. She slipped past the crippled roundabout, with its graveyard of broken circus animals, and slunk into the woods beneath the rotting deathtrap of a towering roller coaster.
Water from a moss-edged pond quenched her thirst. She washed away the blood sliding down her inner thighs and hurried on toward the river.
Her flight was easy. She assumed Malcolm expected she’d get on with it. Artis had never been a procrastinator. She wondered what he would be like when his time came. The same, probably. She’d miss his angry-looking face. Maybe she’d see him on the other side in a few years—if she survived that long.
The Metal Bridge didn’t frighten her, although the river running under it did. She hurried along its center so that she couldn’t see the swirling water. When she reached the other side, she stopped and looked ahead into the Beyond.
Tall grasses led to rolling dunes that stretched into the foothills and cliff faces of the Gray Mountain.
She headed straight for them.
Artis climbed from the cave entrance, blinking in the intense light, and brushed the dust from her hair. Behind her, a slender shaft of sunlight glinted off the crystalline surfaces of the stalactites hanging from the cavern ceiling.
She‘d been wandering the tunnels for days. Fate had been merciful, and she’d found several underground streams that saved her from dehydration.
The call from the Well had superseded her commonsense.
When Artis first entered the system of passages, she’d been cautious, marking her route on the walls with no intention of wandering far. But the irresistible urge to go deeper had crept over her without notice. It reached inside her: something warm and welcoming, yet unquestionably dangerous in its power to draw.
A counter summons saved her, a higher intelligence inside Artis that seemed to grow stronger the closer she came to the Well. A sense that told her she had work to do, a world to save. The opposing forces had pulled her taut. One drove her toward the Well, the other away. But the inner wisdom to leave the deep passageways and return to the outside world won.
This time, whispered the Will of the Well. Come back when your work here is done.
Caught by the harsh sunlight, the bones in her hands protruded through her pale skin. Artis was half-starved.
An aged woman found her asleep in the long grasses that winnowed in the hot summer wind. Her name was Yeva. She brought Artis food and helped her stay hidden from the Trilittera men.
“The Light has touched you,” Yeva whispered as the sun slipped behind the crags of the Gray Mountain. “Life for you here would be a fate worse than death.”
She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the mines where her people dwelled. “As soon as you’re strong enough to travel, you must go. Follow the voice that called you from the caves. Find your animal familiars and stay safe until the Cet summons you to fulfill your destiny.”
Three days later, Artis arrived at a wide bridge over the river. A higher sense urged her—the Cet, Yeva called it.
But Artis had no idea what that meant.
2
Max
Keep running! This road has to go somewhere!
Max wove a serpentine path among the towering dead pines that lo
Behind him, footfalls hammered the forest floor. He was a hundred meters ahead, maybe less, but the pounding steps drew closer.
Have to get out of here!
A laser blast flashed overhead. The fiery pulse exploded into a needle-less pine.
Max somersaulted over a prostrate tree and slammed into the ground amid a tangle of vines. He lifted his helmeted head in time to see the top half of the tree collapse into its base, balance a moment, then arc toward him with a splintering screech.
He launched himself under the plunging giant and rolled back to his feet.
Keep running!
The undergrowth grew thicker, and the broken blacktop of the old road he followed became harder to see. And he was losing ground to that mass of a maniac.
Where the hell is that asphalt?
A bolt of light flashed through the air. It hit an invisible surface and fizzled out.
Max made for the clearest passage through the trees, disturbing wisps of the strange fog that hung over everything as he ran. He slammed into something solid. The force knocked him to the ground as another laser shot streaked overhead and glanced off the same invisible barrier he’d struck.
Staggering to his feet, Max lurched sideways. He shook his head and ran forward. Bam! An invisible wall.
What the hell!
The shooting stopped, but the pile-driving steps came closer.
Max took off along a perpendicular path through the dead forest.
When he’d first spotted the robot, he thought his father had sent it to help him—until the machine started shooting.
Max ran. He hid. He searched for a way out.
Eventually, he tumbled down a hole, flying past roots and vines that did little to break his fall. He crashed to the bottom, landing on a heap of composting pine needles, and lay there stunned.
A shadowy figure broke through the mist above him. A weapon lifted.
Rolling sideways, Max found himself in a narrow fissure hardly wide enough for him to pass. A good thing, because that meant the machine shooting at him couldn’t follow.
Unhooking his backpack, Max shimmied into the narrow tunnel that grew smaller and lower until he could barely fit through. The underground passage reminded him of Alice’s strange journey into Wonderland.
His shoulders were the widest part of him, which made for a struggle. For all the vitriol his father gave him for being a lazy oaf, Max never missed a session at the gym. Not to say he did much else. Well, not much else that qualified as work, but he treated his body like a temple. Which only added to his disgust at being sent on this mission alone.
His father could have deployed an army or at least a few guardsmen. “This mission couldn’t be more straightforward,” the king had blasted. “Get off your damned ass and get those energy cells!”
The curse of the second son. Make that the curse of the unwanted son. In the eyes of his father, Max was superfluous. His older brother, the crown prince, had five kids already, all in line ahead of him to ascend to the throne. That made him expendable.
Max huffed as he squeezed and crawled. Fine. He could do this. It would be easy. He’d prove to everyone he wasn’t a complete waste of space.
Not that he had a choice in the matter. His father had ordered him not to return without the energy cells. They, apparently, were more important than he was.
Even his mother had shaken her head. He swallowed, remembering. She’d loved him once. If she disapproved of him now, then that was his own doing, his own dissipation. The only person in whose eyes he could do no wrong was Emma, his younger sister. To her, he was a god.
He sighed softly. If he was like any god in the eyes of the rest of his family it was Veles, a shapeshifting trickster.
Ahead, Max saw a sliver of light and wriggled toward it until he’d almost reached its source. Dislodging a loose rock, he discovered an exit just big enough to wriggle through. He stretched and contorted.
Finally, the second of his solid shoulders twisted through the opening, and Max flopped forward onto a bed of damp grass.
After taking a moment to uncrumple his body, he retrieved the backpack he’d dragged behind him. Hooking the pack onto his shoulders, he crawled up a short embankment that brought him to the top of a low rise.
His jaw went slack at the sight before him. The sun was setting beyond a living forest to the west, spreading pinks, oranges and reds across the horizon—a sunset.
The stunning sight was one he’d never witnessed firsthand. Visuals outside the City of Reflections were muted at best, given the interminable fog that circled its domes.
The Great Disaster had contaminated the world. The nuclear accident had cost countless lives and left those who escaped into their biospheric city the sole survivors of the planet.
Eighty years had passed. The single energy cell fueling their city was specified to last a hundred years, but no one knew for sure. His father was certain their time was running out.
Paranoia, Max decided. Although it crossed his mind that the king had sent him early so there’d be time for someone else to try, should Max screw this up.
His older brother had plenty of kids. Not that Max would wish his last twenty-four hours on any of his young nephews or nieces. He found himself lifting his chin at the thought. He might not have made much of a son, but he prided himself for being one hell of an uncle.
As he rose from a crouch, exhaustion swept over him. He’d been running from that robot’s firepower the whole day. In the process, he’d lost all of his equipment and supplies, save what he carried on his back, and he was lucky to still have that.
Now he had the chance to catch his breath, thirst and hunger gripped him. He was relieved he had food enough to last a week.
He started down the hill but hadn’t made it ten paces before his foot twisted on the uneven ground. He lost his balance and tumbled headlong down the embankment, landing face down under a sprawl of wild rhododendron.
Max wasn’t a klutz. What he lacked was fuel.
With a groan, he sat up and looked through the evening shadows. He hadn’t seen or heard anything since emerging from the tunnel. He hadn’t even thought to check the poison level.
To his amazement, he found the poison had dropped below three hundred micro-gens, safe enough to take off his helmet.
After breathing in the chill air brimming with the scent of soil and humus, he grabbed his bag and pulled out water and food, glad of the chance to sustain himself and rest.
Max revived with a jump. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep.
The sky had changed, and the light now came from the east. Somehow, he’d slept right through the night.
His rad-suit was sodden. Its thermostat must have malfunctioned because his body felt chilled to the core. An icepick to the heart would have felt warmer.
Half sleep-drugged, Max’s thoughts drifted to Emma, and a thick breath laced with regret escaped him. He’d fallen into the trap of acting like he didn’t care, and he’d let his sister down.
Guilt turned to anger, and Max clenched his teeth. His father had sent him on a suicide mission. Maybe the king had sent the robot too—to get rid of him.
He bottled his resentment and crawled to the edge of the bushes.
Grasslands stretched to the horizon, a stunning mix of gold and tangerine in the early morning light. His first look at what lay beyond the City of Reflections, and it was beautiful.
If Emma could see this. Damn our father. She will see it! As soon as I get this mission done.
When Max returned, he’d make sure they investigated the strange energy field binding the City of Reflections inside that interminable fog.
A rustle erupted among the leaves behind him, jerking his attention back to the underbrush. Two gimlet eyes shone out of the darkness.
His heart faltered.
