Iris nodded, choosing to overlook the guard’s placid tone. Yes, yes, it was only through the efforts of others that he was standing here now and had not bled out completely.
“You kept on fighting Yan, muttering something about being attacked by vines or some other nonsense. Kept on saying the ship was alive.”
A cold sweat broke out along Iris’s neck. Flashbulb memories of the rushing vines grabbing at his ankles returned to him in painstaking detail. But the attacking vines were physically impossible. Iris was familiar with the internal structures of many living things, and no plant possessed the necessary musculature that would allow it to move like the ones on deck three had. Memory was a lying thing. The more one remembered, the more they created images out of nothing. Vines, yes, herememberedthem, but whether those vines actually existed was unknown. He remembered Ishtan as unconscious, but was he really that way when Iris found him? After the injuries and the blood loss, Iris’s memory was murkier than usual.
We could have both hallucinated it.
We didn’t hallucinate the wound.
The wound pulsed in acknowledgement of its realness. Taking a step forwards, Iris joined the guard at a respectable distance and observed the body. Muffled by the vines twisting along the walls and the moss on the floor, the room lay in twilight stillness. Only the sound of dripping water echoed from an unseen place above.
“I must have had quite a knock to the head,” Iris finally said.
The guard shrugged. “Either way, it would be nice to know if the thing that mangled your shoulder is the same thing that ended Ordan.” He turned to walk away.
Ordan.Names. Iris had been so preoccupied with self-pity that he had again almost forgotten to ask the guard for his name. “What do I call you?” he asked, his words rushing. “I never got to ask Ordan for his name before he passed. I should have asked much sooner, but—”I don’t want to make the same mistake.
“Eli. It’s Eli.”
At the mention of his name, every feature, from Eli’s light brown skin to the dark curls around his face, the faint blue eyes,and the asymmetrical curve of his nose, joined together into a single identity, one that Iris would carry with him for the remainder of his life.I won’t make the same mistake.
“Yan suspects Ordan was killed by someone who wants the ship more than the academics want it,” Iris blurted out before reason could tell him otherwise. “He thinks Ordan was shot. He’s not ruling out that it was by you.”
You’re terrible at keeping secrets. VIFAI gave Iris a mild shock through the brain stem.
He should know what’s said behind his back.
Eli scoffed lightly, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Yan wouldn’t know a bullet wound if it was in his own chest. He can check my gun if he’s so inclined. I haven’t fired a single shot since we’ve been aboard. He’ll need to find a different scapegoat.”
Yan was quickly on his way to locating such a person.
“You won’t defend your innocence?”
“What’s the use? Yan would talk circles around me, turn the others against me. I won’t give him the satisfaction. He can suspect what he wants. Doesn’t change our situation. Doesn’t change the facts.”
“And what are those?”
“It wasn’t a bullet wound in Ordan’s chest.”
The memories of Ordan’s bloodied chest superimposed themselves over the vines Iris wasn’t sure he had battled. The vines were everywhere on the ship. If they could trulymove, what stopped a bundle from piercing a human body? Anything could be a weapon if it accelerated fast enough.
Iris gave Eli a deep bow, ending the conversation, feeling poorly prepared to continue discussing the potential of killer vines. But instead of leaving, Eli hovered around, half turned towards the door. At last, he committed and faced Iris. “This may be a strange request. Ordan wasn’t Starlit, but given thecircumstances, can you say a few things? Like a prayer? It’s awfully creepy here, and—”
And no one knows how long we have left,Iris finished internally. He certainly didn’t. The transience of life and the ease of death did not comfort him in this moment. No part of his training as a Vessel had prepared him for being trapped aboard a generation ship with a group of academics and a security guard, all in line to die. No passage from scripture appeared appropriate. No sentence. And Eli was rightfully reeling, silently, but reeling, from the complete helplessness each and every one of them sensed. Iris was right there with him. The words that finally found him were his own.
“The Starlit teaches that our salvation will be found in the sutras,” Iris said after several false starts. “By studying them, by reciting mantras, by tending to our duties, we will find peace and bring an end to our collective suffering. I’ve been taught this my entire life. I was taught that there is a correct way to live, a proper order to the way things occur, a right way of seeing the world. I will let you in on a secret, Eli. I think the Starlit is wrong.”
Eli had been standing with his head bowed, eyes shut, and at Iris’s last words, his eyes shot open, and he glared at the monk.
“As I spent more time working away from the temple, as I spent more time in the company of others, I began to doubt the right way of things. My faith in the sutras is waning, in the ritual of it all. Eli, if I may offer a word of advice? There is no right order to things. Ordan was far too young to perish. In the few encounters we had, I did not perceive him to be a malicious man. It wasn’t fair. No sutra, no prayer will bring us solace. No right words will bring an end to our suffering. The only salvation to be found will be found in each other, in the company we share, in bearing witness. That is my piece of advice to you, Eli. Find others and keep them close. They will be your lifeboat.”
“I’m not sure what it all means but that was kind of deep,” Eli said after a few moments of silence. Both men continued to look over Ordan’s body, safely contained in its verdant cradle. The knuckles of Eli’s right hand were scraped and bloodied, and Iris decided it was best not to ask where the man had gone for several hours while they had prepared the body or what had transpired there. Perhaps, like Iris, Eli was not yet ready to find solace in the company of others.
The bioluminescent mushrooms gave off just enough light to highlight the millions of glowing tendrils that punctured Ordan’s body and ran towards the floor, where they disappeared below the moss. Mycelium formed quickly here, as did all other vegetation. It had already run through the body and connected it to the rest of the ship, leaching nutrients and propagating through roots of the vines, the shrubs, and the trees all around theNicaea. Iris had returned Ordan to the One Beginning, but the mycelium would return his body to the cosmos. Who was it that did the Light’s bidding best? Who was the essential one?
“How lovely.” Riyu’s soft voice fluttered from the doorway. “Notlovelylovely, but as far as burials go, this is pretty nice, don’t you think so?”
Eli gave a curt nod. Riyu took a few hesitant steps inside the room and inspected the mushrooms growing atop Ordan’s body. After a few shallow sniffs, she said, “Notice how there’s almost no smell. They’re doing such a wonderful job, so quickly, in the reuptake of the body and all its nutrients into the soil.” Her face turned a shade of academically detached curiosity. “I’ve never seen fungi work so quickly before. This is truly amazing.” She knelt by the body and motioned for Iris and Eli to join her. Only Iris budged and leaned in close, the glow of the mushrooms flooding his face blue.
