Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

Dani leaned forward, mirroring his movement, his mouth contorting into a new expression. “Well?” The strong and confident version of Cole’s voice sliced through his worrisome thoughts.

Then, in a flash, Cole’s very confusion provided the answer he was looking for. It dawned on him that he was being offered a single answer from Dani, but that didn’t mean it would be the last question he ever asked anyone . Many of the trivial ones would be answered in time, if he was patient. In fact, the reason he had an impossible time choosing was because he didn’t know the trivial from the profound. And that was the question.

Cole’s hand, still frozen in the shape of a cylinder, stopped short of the dripping glass of water. He brought his other hand up and clasped the two of them together. Leaning toward Dani, he forced a calm thought to the surface:

“My question is this — ” Cole took a deep breath. “Which question shouldI have asked?”

Dani froze for a moment, then his mouth changed into something new. A shape with teeth . One of his large, powerful hands shot up into the air between he and Cole and came crashing down with lightning speed. When his flat palm hit the stone table, it rang out like a cracked whip, an impossibly high note ringing in the air for too brief a time to have been so loud. The glass of water leapt up, throwing a small wave over the lip to join the puddle of condensation below.

Dani’s entire body shook, his cooing transforming into a growl as throaty pockets of air moved back and forth through his vibrating cheeks. The Drenard raised his hand from the table, pointed at Cole, then made a fist. He shook his head, which roared with the vibrato of a small engine. He waved his fist in the air and hit the table with it again.

Cole leaned back in his chair, distancing himself from the display. When Dani shot out of the seat across from him, he wondered if he’d been wrong—if he really did have only one question left in him. But Dani didn’t rush around the table in attack, he strode out of the room and into the hallway, fighting to form words through the amplified and gruff cooing sound.

Swiveling in his chair to watch the alien go, Cole felt his body surge with adrenaline, preparing for danger and defense. He heard Dani struggling to give commands to someone outside, the sound of coarse hacks mixing with the forced purring of their language.

Less than a minute later, his interrogator returned and stood in the doorway, a beverage of some sort in his hand. The Drenard took long swigs from it, his physical attack subsiding.

“Dani?” Cole squeezed the mental word through a crack in his confusion.

His interrogator raised one hand and continued to drink. “I am fine. I just haven’t laughed that hard since I was your size. It felt… amazing.”

Dani lowered the glass and tilted his blue head slightly to one side, took a deep breath, then let it out. “There are two ways I could answer your question. If I answer it honestly, I will cheat you, for the truth is: that wasthe question you should have asked. I only realized this as soon as you thought it to me.

“I could satisfy my end of the bargain by admitting this, couldn’t I? I could point out that you didask me the right question and you would get nothing. But your choice suggests something interesting: that you are looking for the beginningof a path, rather than a method of skipping to the end. And even though you will never walk down the trail you seek — not now that you are here with us on Drenard — I would like to reward you with more answers than I initially promised.”

Dani took another long pull from his stone cup, studying Cole over the lip. When he was done, he made a popping noise with his mouth, jerked his head to the side, and formed in Cole’s head what he assumed were the same words:

“Come with me,” Dani thought.

Cole stood, the surge of fear draining away, and followed Dani into the hallway. Two armed guards framed the door, but Dani acted as if they weren’t there. He turned left, away from Cole’s room and further down the long passage. Cole hurried to keep up, having to nearly jog in order to match the alien’s long strides.

As they hurried past room after room, Cole noticed more than half had gold bars lowered in front of the door. He read them as “occupied” signs, wondering which one Molly was being kept behind.

He wondered it too loudly.

“She’s not on this hall,” said the voice in his head. “Males only. Women have an extremely important status in our culture, unlike your own. Ah, so many answers that I feel like giving you now. Even if Anlyn pulls through and confirms our worst suspicions about you, I will always respect you for that single insight.” Dani looked down at the carpet. “And the laughter,” he added.

Cole glanced up at his walking companion, his head just above the Drenard’s elbow. It felt strange to be having a conversation without eye contact and in the near-silence of their bare feet shuffling through the lush pile of the runner.

“You have yet to answer the question,” Cole reminded his unusual captor, “nor have you asked me what you want from us. We just came to drop off a friend and get some supplies—”

“We will sort that out when and if Anlyn recovers—and all of my hopes are that she will—but you will not be leaving Drenard anytime soon. We cannot allow that. Anlyn should know this, which is why we find the story you and your friends are giving us a bit hard to believe. Especially since there are… inconsistencies.”

Cole wondered what this meant as they reached the end of the hallway. Dani paused in front of the massive door that spanned the width of the passage; he turned and addressed the consternation on Cole’s face and in his thoughts. “Forget these things for now.” The alien waved one hand and reached for the door with the other. “You will have many years to dwell on them here. But first, let me show you where hereis,” he thought.

With that, Dani pushed the large door open and entered the next room. Cole followed—and stepped into a prism, a carpeted cube of dancing lights. The wall across from them was identical to the one they had just passed through, yellowish marble bisected by a closed door. Cole scanned for the source of the spectacle. It was the wall to his left, revealed as Dani allowed the door to swing shut. The entire face was transparent glass, or crystal even. His human brain had a difficult time absorbing the view beyond.

It was a sunrise—or sunset—that defied his own understanding of what potential beauty that meteorological event could possess. The colors banded gradually through every hue imaginable. Between neighboring buildings, he spotted a horizon gilded with gold; it turned through the oranges and reds, but there were colors between that Cole’s boy-brain simply had no vocabulary for.

His feet took him closer to the sight, as if of their own accord. He craned his neck up as he neared the glass, watching the last of the deep violets as they were absorbed into the black of space. What made the sight truly unique was the way the colors moved . It was a sunrise or sunset in action . Waves rippled up now and then to make the rainbow shimmer, like the Northern Lights of Earth, but brighter and with more color, all of it sqeezing between towering buildings to all sides.

“Wow.”

It was all he could think. He wondered how it translated in Dani’s head, if it came across as a soothing coo or a baby’s babble.