The old woman nodded. “Yes. And my daughter was to be a part of it, she said. But to keep her safe, I would have to send her away.”
Tears were spilling down her face now, and he could feel Mayra begin to shake in his arms, clearly affected by the tale.
“The goddess said that evil forces were conspiring against her and that they’d learned of my daughter’s conception. They knew that one from the line of Arth was fated to hasten the final battle and that she would be gifted with an amazing power. They would find me, the goddess warned, and they would destroy my child.”
The woman turned to Mayra, this time not hesitating to grab her hand. “I had no choice,” she wept. “I never wanted to give you away. But you see, I had to. The danger was too great. The only way to make sure you lived was to send you away. I was too well known, too recognizable as a member of Arth’s former ruling clan. I couldn’t go with you because they’d find me and get to you.”
Mayra was crying now but she said nothing. She stared at her mother in silence.
“So,” the woman finished lamely, “I followed her instructions. I met a nice couple who were heading out to Saturn’s Belt. They were obviously in love, and they’d come to me to see if there would be children to bless their union. The woman was infertile, but they refused to give up hope. You were only a few days old then, but I realized that this was my chance to get you off the moon, to give you a good life. So I gave you to them. And before you left, I put the Eye of Tomorrow around your neck.”
Mayra spoke at last. “A good life? Is that what you think happened? I don’t remember any happy couple,Mother. All I remember is slavery.”
Nojan realized then what must have happened. A young couple headed out to the Belt, probably with little to call their own. They’d probably met a slaver who’d offered them a king’s ransom for the infant. Enough to set them up properly in a new colony where they could continue to hope for a baby of their own seed. A female infant from Territh was prized on many worlds, and somehow, likely as a gift meant to curry favor, that infant had landed on Vanfia.
“I didn’t know,” the old woman said, wiping at her tears. “I prayed to the goddess every day that you would have a better life.”
“Your prayers fell on deaf ears.” Mayra stood and Nojan leapt up after her, putting his hands on her very stiff shoulders.
“Wait a minute, angel,” he said into her ear. “Not so fast. I know you’re upset, and you have every reason to be, but your vision brought us here for a reason, and we need to see it through.”
She was trembling under him, her skin as cold as her tone. “All about the mission, eh, Vartik? Can’t miss out on any little tidbit of information, even if it tears me apart.”
Nojan opened his mouth to speak, to reassure her that he cared and that this was about more than the mission, but before he could, Mayra’s mother stepped in.
“Daughter, please hear me. The Goddess of Light had one more warning. She told me that one day I would come into possession of something that would help you in your struggle against the evil forces who plot your downfall.”
The old woman made her way to the curtain she’d entered through. Before sliding past it, she turned back. “Please stay. This is important, I swear it to you.” Then she disappeared.
“I’m leaving,” Mayra said, pulling herself out of Nojan’s grasp. “You can stay if you want, but I’ve heard enough.
He stepped in her path. “I understand how this must feel for you. To learn how you came to live on Vanfia, to meet your mother, to—”
“Mymother,” Mayra sneered. “At best, mymotheris a talented liar who is pulling our leg for some eventual payout. At worst, she gave up her child to strangers on the basis of a spiritual hallucination to rot alone in these cursed colonies.”
Nojan was taken aback at the hostility in her tone. He realized he didn’t understand how difficult this was for her. He was a treasured son of a stable family, one in which he’d been given every advantage in life. How must it feel to be meeting your family for the first time, to learn that you’d been willingly given away at the behest of a dream?
Still, there were too many connections to Jazmine’s situation here for him to doubt what the old woman had said. He’d met the light goddess’s daughter, had seen the cerulean radiance that she emitted. Nojan believed in the light goddess, believed that Jazmine was her divine offspring. It wasn’t much of a leap to learn that Mayra had her connection to the goddess as well.
“I get it,” he said, his tone soft, well meaning. “And I won’t deny that I do have a commitment to the mission and that I believe this meeting has bearing on it, but I’m also telling you to stay for your own good. While she might have admitted to being a phony, I don’t think she’s lying about being your mother. She knows too much. And you do have her eyes.”
Mayra opened her mouth to retort, but he held a finger against her lips. “Hear me out. Some day in the future, you’re going to reflect on this meeting, and if you leave now, your future self will regret it. And while I might not agree with your mother’s decision to send you away, I do respect her desire to keep you safe. It’s a desire I share.”
She stared at him, her gaze seeming to assess his very soul. He wondered what she saw there. Was it the fast-developing emotion he was trying to hide from himself? Was it the fact that he already dreaded the day they would have to part?
The moment was shattered when the old woman bustled back into the room. “I found this in a market two colonies over, nearly a decade ago. It was from a vessel that crashed on the dark side, some kind of smuggler’s ship I suppose.”
In her hands was a book. Nojan’s pulse quickened. It looked ancient, the cover coated in some kind of grime. “May I?”
The old woman hesitated, her eyes flashing to her daughter. Mayra turned away, her arms crossed over her chest. With a sigh, the woman handed the book to him.
Nojan carefully cracked it open. The pages were uneven, written by hand in some language that appeared totally unfamiliar to him. “You think this artifact has something to do with the light goddess?”
Nodding, the old woman spoke. “As soon as I touched it, I felt it. It was as if it echoed inside me. I had a flash of insight, a memory of the Eye, and then…”
“Then what?” Mayra asked, turning back.
“And then, in my mind, I saw myself stabbing someone, someone who meant me harm. I saw his blood splash my white dress. Then the vision changed, and I was begging a feline man for mercy. And then I was in the dark, with the Eye providing the only light, and a man was begging me for mercy.” The old woman hugged herself, a chill seeming to run through her body.
Nojan looked to Mayra, who was clearly affected by the woman’s words. “Mother,” she said at last, the hard mask of her face breaking to expose anguish. “It’s true. It’s all true.”
The old woman let out a sob and rushed to Mayra, pulling her into her arms. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to give you up. Not for a second. And there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think of you, when I don’t regret everything that happened.”
Nojan smiled, relieved that the reunion was ending in a more satisfying fashion than it had begun. Taking another look at the book, he knew he’d have to wait until he got back to his lab to analyze it properly. He tucked it into a pocket inside his jacket. While the women talked softly and exchanged tearful sentiments, he considered all that they had just learned.
Mayra was the last of the line of Arth. He knew from his own studies that the family line stretched back to Old Territh, millennia in the past. The last king of Territh, Cheden Bel, had been of the Arth line. He had never married, had never bred, so after his passing, his remaining relations had bickered over the throne, leaving them weakened. One of Bel’s relatives made a backdoor deal with the Alliance, a galactic power of that era, and they’d come in, betraying the Arths and toppling Territh’s government. The Alliance takeover was short-lived, however, as the league of worlds aligned against them, ironically created by Cheden Bel, moved in to try and wipe out the enemy. And for the next century, Territh had been contested territory for several different groups.
And now the last living Arth was fated to become the oracle that would lead them to Jazmine’s brother and, apparently, into the apocalypse. The book in his pocket felt heavy suddenly, and he wondered if he wanted to uncover the secrets hidden in the pages. He was beginning to fathom that their quick rescue mission was going to be anything but easy.
Nojan swallowed, feeling as if he’d swallowed a rock. The thought of putting his angel in danger made him sick. Almost as sick as the thought of letting her go.
