Rajnar Vajra: Her Scales Shine Like Music

The big question now: Could I actually get the device rolling on the harder surface I’d uncovered? I had to answer that one before doing any more digging.

I stepped into the trench behind the artifact, positioned my flat rock under its curve, and jammed the shovel’s handle on top of the rock and as far under the device as I could. Then I stood on the shovel’s blade and let my weight work for me.

My shout of joy when the device began rolling was instinctual, but heartfelt. And then it kept rolling. I trust my eyes, but this time it took an effort. The barrel shape didn’t stop when the trench did, as I expected, but leapt free, accelerating, spinning and skidding along toward the beach. It finally slowed when it hit several large rocks, doing them no good, and eased to a standstill where the dirt became deep sand.

I politely asked my heart to descend from my throat. Evidently it didn’t approve of having something resembling a massive power supply get violently shaken in my vicinity. Understandable.

As I calmed, it occurred to me that the accident had saved me and my back most of the remaining digging. It seemed possible that the longest of my friend’s tendrils could just barely touch the artifact where it had settled.

“How about that?” I called out to her, climbing out of the now obsolete trench. “All part of my plan!”

Her response came as another struck gong, and she reached out. I’d been right: She could touch the device with a few tendrils. What I didn’t expect was the way she used them to slide the thing a bit closer and effortlessly lift it into the air, then into the water beside her. What I really didn’t expect came next.

She lit up like a cruise ship on party night. Small, bright lights suddenly ringed her, and blazing strips of them ran along her back underwater. You learn something new every day. She gonged again, so loud it seemed to shake reality, and slowly vanished with her new treasure. For quite some time, I could trace her progress downward until she’d dived too deep, or quenched her illumination.

I walked down to the sand, and stared into the lake until it occurred to me that bare skin wasn’t keeping me warm. Besides, I was ravenous.

She failed to appear for the following two days, although I kept waiting by the lake from morning to well past midnight. Loneliness chilled me more than weather, and depression became my new companion. Sometimes, I’d sense more than hear a faint rumble, and when this occurred in daylight, the lake’s surface would become unnaturally agitated, wavelets running in all directions. I kept asking myself the same questions: What had I done, and why had I done it? If rescue came, however improbable, the consequences felt more real to me than whatever benefit I’d provided my wet pal. What was that artifact, really? Why would a kaiju-size fish want it?

By the third day, I wondered if I’d ever see her again. Maybe she’d wanted nothing from me but the device. The thought of breakfast appalled. I’d taken to adding water to whatever food I had that could be converted to soup. This helped fill my belly and stretched supplies, but the dilution meant lukewarm or colder meals. My coffee reserves were nearly exhausted, so I’d sacrificed my morning ritual to conserve what I had. That dawn, I decided to make an exception, brewed a cup, and sipped it in my lakeside chair. I made an attempt to savor it, but when hope fails, everything tastes bad.

One of the mysterious rumbles gave me the only warning.

For a crazy moment, I thought the entire lake might be levitating. Then the object, perhaps a kilometer from me, fully emerged from the water and seemed enormous enough to contain a medium-size lake. It rose into the air with smooth dignity, dripping a Niagara or two, and I stared out at this hollow, intricately faceted crystal sphere and thought: God’s own diamond. Sunlight scintillated from every facet it struck, but enough globe remained shadowed that I could see clear liquid inside, not quite filling it, and God’s own whale drifting near the bottom.

Incredible. It hadn’t occurred to me that something her size might be a fellow stranded traveler.

A spaceship. What else could it be? But so insanely huge that it reduced my evening companion to the scale of a neon tetra in a twenty-gallon aquarium. It eased slightly higher and in my direction until the ship floated, unmoving, directly over my head. Was she saying goodbye? From beneath her, I witnessed an unexpected version of flippers, hundreds of massive tendrils, each wider than a jet’s wings. I squinted hard and even then could barely make out clouds of tiny, shrimplike creatures in there with her. Food? Hints of massive structures lurked deeper within the vessel.

In open air, whatever propelled the vessel produced remarkably little racket, but its soft whine made my teeth itch.

I wondered if she would hear me if I called out to her, but then the behemoth resumed rising, not so rapidly but steadily. Neither gravity nor wind seemed to impress it, and minutes later it became a mere dot in the sky.

All this affected me profoundly. I kept gazing up at that dot as if in a glorious dream, wrapped in a memory of magnificence, my spirit so nourished that, for this blessed time, I didn’t think what her departure would mean for me.

But the dot didn’t vanish into space as I expected it would. It just hung there as if glued to the atmosphere’s edge. Then I realized it was getting larger, a lot larger. Not falling, but descending as patiently as it had ascended. I’d already forgotten just how immense it was; maybe my imagination couldn’t stay that stretched.

It eased into the lake so gently it seemed to melt, and the lake’s water level rose just a little. A minute of rumble then total silence.

Maybe peak experiences always leave a hangover in their wake. A padded sledgehammer of exhaustion hit me, along with a dull headache. I staggered up to my shelter and did something I never do: take a daytime nap.

The sun hadn’t yet surrendered when I awoke, but was getting discouraged. I slurped some lukewarm improvised soup, and still feeling groggy, ambled down to my favorite and only chair. I waited…

A second moon ascends, painting extra sheen on the lake’s wavelets. Should I give up and call it a night?

One of the great bubbles rises and I hold my breath, waiting. Yes! The motion is seconded by an even larger bubble and my heart leaps. She is here! Her lights flash briefly as if in greeting as she glides to the shore.

“How do you do that?” I ask casually, hearing the joy in my own voice. “Must be useful for hunting at great depths, right? Glad you could make it, but I sure wish you could let me know why you returned. Mind if I tell myself you came back for me?”

Her only reply is to reach out with those delicate tentacles until a handful rest so gently against my legs, a few drape across my shoulders. I’d seen how strong her tendrils are, but they comfort me. Unbidden, that poem I’d begun days ago, when I’d lost inspiration after the first line, comes to me, already complete and polished. A nub of a poem, and it rhymes, but it feels… just right. At this moment, I am content.