Anacordia

This telescope is a wondrous thing.

With it, I pierce dust clouds and clusters, seeking something impossible. My eye passes those lesser stars, the giants and dwarfs alike, until I find what I seek. It is a star within a cloud of carbon, grown so old that it is crystallizing into stone. What a thing. A gem that is a thousand miles across, lit from inside by its dying brilliance. In my country, we would call it Astradia, but here aboard the Fletchnor, I must use Anglish.

“Aha! I have found it. The diamond star.” I flash my best grin to Ana, who does not look up from her seat at the display. “You will not even spare a glance? Come, see the rarest of stars, my beautiful Anacordia.”

She rolls her eyes at this, and spins her chair around. “Don’t call me that, Eric.”

“I will try ugly Anacordia, yes?”

“My name is Anastasia, not whatever that is in Bicrenyi.”

I put my hands together, tipping them down towards the floor. “His Highness Eric does not speak Bicrenyi. He speaks Bellanto, best of all the languages of the Phryllian sea! Surely you must know that, most wise Anacordia.”

She spins back around, raising a dark brow. “Has His Highness ever considered learning woman?”

“I am blessedly ignorant. If I were to learn this forbidden tongue, I would understand all the wonderful compliments the basha are paying to me, and then my head would not fit in this sky ship with you. And then we would be dead.”

Ana snorts. “I have heard Bicrenyi women are fond of large noses.”

I fake a pained expression, feeling my very ordinarily sized schozza. “You are hurtful, my dear Anacordia! Be careful, lest you offend His Highness, and he desert this sky ship.”

“What would I ever do without you?”

“Mmm, yes. You would steer yourself into a solar flare and incinerate the Fletchnor right out of existence!”

“That was sarcasm, Eric.” Ana blows a few floating locks away from her face, then scowls and bats away more. Long hair must be a smotena up here with no weight, but she would not cut it.

“Pfah. Basha trickery.”

She collects her hair into a yellow tie and pretends to ignore me, though I see her jaw working and I know she is flustered. I should not tease her so, but after so long with no one else to speak to, I break the monotony in any way I can.

I am fidgeting in my chair trying to think of if and how I should apologize, when Ana speaks up. “Do you think we will make it, Eric?”

Ana’s voice is even, but I think she is concerned by the way she taps her foot. Anacordia is not restless like I am. “Why are you asking me this? You know I do not understand numbers and calculations, wise Anacordia.”

She does not say more. I cannot divine the thoughts that flash behind her eyes.

“His Highness thinks that with the brain of Anacordia, and the hands of Eric, we cannot fail. We must not fail Dinravis.” I smile in that confident way that always got my friends to go along with my ideas on the streets of Vallatoso.

Anacordia is absorbed in her tekniks and charts and does not react. Across the dull, glowing rectangles spiral infinite numbers and symbols—readings and distances of both time and velocity. Measurements taken from a series of waypoints marked for our journey.

Even though I am the one whose hands move the controls and adjust the rockets, it is Ana who guides my every motion. If she mistakes even a single figure, we will careen millions of miles off course in a matter of seconds.

I remember how she explained it to me, when we first met.

Anastasia sighs. “We’re charting a course billions of miles long.” She makes an expansive motion with her hands, and pauses.

I roll my eyes. “I know of this word billions. It will still be an easy task for the steady hands of Eric!” I sit back into my chair at the low, dark table, and fold my arms across my chest.

“I don’t think you get the concept.” Her eyes search the academy hall, as if looking for something upon which to express herself. There are no writing materials, and none of the tekniks favored by Anastasia’s people. “This ship needs to fly at speeds we’ve never attempted before. Ever. The margin for error is so small, that if the pilot goes wrong by a hairswidth, the entire mission will be obliterated before your neurons could fire.”

“Then why do you not make a…” I struggle for the Anglish word. “Why do you not make a path now? So you can check it against your tekniks before you even leave the ground.”

“We can only see so much with our telescopes. Things don’t stay still out there, they move. Yes, we’ve flown it before, but that was a miracle.” She sighs again, and this time I feel it is not for me. “And the only man to ever make it happen is slowly freezing to death unless we make lightning strike twice.”

She forgot the part about suffocating as well, but I am wise enough not to notice.

“You are going to make hole in floor if you keep going.” I point to her foot, which has been tapping faster and faster through our conversation. “You are like… ah! Anacordia, the kind of bird which taps on my window in morning.”

“That’s nice. I’m a bird.”

“Yes, you are bird.” I point at her, “It is smart bird, and knows when storms come. This is why we call it anacordia.” I shrug my shoulders and tip my hands downwards. “Also, it is beautiful bird.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

I fold my hands behind my contozza and lean back, smiling in the way the basha seem to like. “I know you are scared, but Eric is… what is word? What is word for the one who wears the gold on his contozza?”

“The king?”

“Ah, yes! Eric is king of flying. You will see.”

“I’m so reassured Your Highness.”

“You will see!”

Anacordia has just told me of another comet in our path, swinging onto her teknik scanner from behind a cosmic dust cloud. She shows me. It is made of two symbols that scrape across the dull display. One symbol changes; the distance then.

“And what is us?” I unstrap my restraints.

She points.

It is close. A surprise visitor.

I launch from my seat, swinging my legs backwards over my head and floating—no, I move fast, careening—down through the narrow corridor that bisects the Fletchnor.

The sky ship is shaped like an arrow, as if it were a javelin thrown by a colossal god across the expanses of darkness. I must reach the controls. They are just before the monstrous rockets the Fletchnor possesses. I wish I could hear them roar, but Ana’s tektos did their job well; no sound comes through the engine compartment, and space is quiet.

“Ow! By the Maker’s schozza…” Had that hatchframe been there always?

“Yes, Eric,” Ana’s voice echoes down after me, “it’s still there.”

Basha trickery!

“I am going and you don’t need to tell me to hurry because I am already hurrying!”

Most of the sounds out here in space are made by me.

I speed past the narrow bunks where we sleep, and the larger bays that hold the necessities for life. There is also the cargo hold, full of the life-saving equipment we carry, and Anacordia’s closet, which she emptied and took over a few days into our journey.

I remember saying;

“But where are the cleaning things going to live? You are most strange, Anacordia.” I put my hands on my hips, even though it means I float away a little.

She looks back over her shoulder as she wrestles with a tub of something that must weigh as must as she does. “I’m not strange, I’m..” she grunts and shoves the tub, the effort knocking her backwards onto a shelf, “practical.”

“Are we certain of this, most wise Anacordia?”

“See! This is exactly it. You’re driving me crazy, and I need space.”

I shrug. “You have spaces all around you. Anacordia must be very happy on the sky ship.”

“Eric!” Ana’s voice is scratchy over the intercom.

And my boots hit the floor of the control room.

“Yes, I am here.”

“On my mark, we need to deviate two degrees estward for seven minutes and then correct.”

The control room is round and has twelve levers on the wall, each connected by great metal arms and wires to the control panel. On the control panel are built the most complex pair of pilot’s gloves known to man, save perhaps those used by Dinravis on his miraculous journey. They control the twelve great rockets of the Fletchnor, which even still accelerate us.

A spasm of my thumb would end the mission.

I put the gloves on anyways.

“Mark.”

For my convenience, the rockets are labeled to mimic the points of a compass. A scanner on the control panel shows each of their attitudes as straight lines drawn through hologram circles.

Two degrees estward is a twitch of my first finger. I do it, and watch the symbols—Bellanto, for my convenience—on the scanner change as the line moves near imperceptibly.

I hold for an eternal moment, wondering whether I was too fast or too slow, and my life will end before I can realize it’s over. Or even worse, if we clip a piece of the comet’s debris, and spiral endlessly until we die of starvation.

In some ways, I empathize with the comet. It is also an arrow through space, not quite knowing where it will end up, or if it will ever return to where it came from.

Just like me, it is at the mercy of forces beyond it’s control.

“Mark!”

I change our course again, this time four degrees wistward. If the Fletchnor is an arrow, then I ride upon the tail feathers.

We both resist the urge to sigh in relief. I have spent too long on this sky ship with Ana; I know what she is doing without seeing her.

“Mark.”

I correct, and draw my fingers out of the pilot’s gloves like they bit me. A long shuddering breath leaves me, as it always does when I do this.

We are safe. For now.

The Fletchnor continues on its grand leap through the cosmos.

I spend my days peering through the telescope at wonders and sights no man has ever seen before. Have you ever pondered the infinite detail and beauty of a supernova? I watch as lashes of plasma a million miles long caress planets with their fiery touch, and even the other stars shudder, as if they feel their fate and their mortality.

I feel as if the Maker himself is speaking directly to me.

See what I have made, he seems to whisper to me. See how I made every little thing with beauty and care.

Beyond the necessity of our mission, I discover the wonder of exploration.

Ana teaches me the numbers and symbols of her people, but even these cannot describe a single object I view without spiraling into unrelatable meaning. They are too small, and meant to be used on small things.

The cosmos sends stones the size of worlds hurtling at us and they appear as pebbles on Ana’s displays.

To give us the best chances, we take turns sleeping.

I wonder what she does, when I am asleep.

Anacordia becomes more and more… drawn into herself, as if she were a flower, withering in the dark and the quiet cold. I do not think she feels the wonder and the awe that I have embraced.

Or perhaps, she senses a storm coming.

The telescope is a wondrous thing. Today I do not need it.

“Have we reached it, most excellent Anacordia?” I slap my thighs with both hands, leaning forward in my chair.

Ana smiles. A rare thing. Careful, like the first flowers that blossom after the ice. “Yes. We’re halfway.”

There is hope in her voice. Purpose again, maybe.

I smile too. Not wide and cocky, but genuine, almost as if I am embarrassed to show it. Perhaps I am, for I did make a fool of myself many times with my grin.

To celebrate, we elect to make a close pass of a nearby star. It is a supergiant, a golden, gargantuan monster of a thing. Our solar system would be a pimple on its surface.

I created this all with a word, the Maker whispers to me.

Our new heading will take us within some few millions of radia of the star. Dangerous, but my brain is numb to the fear. There is no room for that now. If the Maker has blessed our mission, we will succeed.

If not, I will go home.

Ana is wide-eyed in her chair. For most of the journey the great gulfs of emptiness made our windows useless, but now the tinted glass on our estward side is filled by an eternity of swirling light, dimmed to a bearable, fiery gold. Twinges of plasma jump and play across its surface, twirling and diving and breaking and reforming.

I am hit by a sudden surge of feeling for my home on the Phryllian sea.

I may be numb to the fear, but the sadness will never leave.

“Do you believe in the Maker, Anastasia?”

She frowns, and her eyebrows scrunch together. “I… don’t know.”

That is perhaps a first for her.

“Did you call me by my name?” She doesn’t take her eyes off the star. Neither of us do.”

“I guess I did. Perhaps you have stopped reminding me of bird.”

Her eyebrow raises and her smile twitches. “Speaking of which, I think we should name this star.”

“And what would we name it?”

“Why ‘Eric’ of course.”

“Because it is beautiful?”

“No,” she finally looks back at me, “because it reminds me of your head. Big, and filled with hot gas.”

I make a pained expression, but cannot help but laugh. “You are not so bad, Ana. The Maker was wise when he sent us on this mission.”

“No, you chose to come. Why?”

I tip my hands downwards. “And can I do a single thing without His permission? Look at this he has made, with but a sentence the writings say. It is… it is…”

“Ineffable.”

“Yes! I like that word.” Though I cannot quite pronounce it the way Ana does, clear and sharp.

She says something more.

I am not listening.

I am looking beyond her.

The solar flare reaches towards us like the malevolent hand of a golden demon.

Cold adrenaline. Everything sharpens. It is like a wave striking a child’s toy boat. We are thrown away from the star in an uncontrollable trajectory. Displays, once dull, suddenly flash, and alarms blare hoarsely.

I feel a rush of blood and black out.

I wake up.

I am alive. My chest heaves, and my heart pounds. These are the signs of a man not yet taken to meet his maker. I am able to blink through tears and can just make out that Ana’s chest still rises and falls. The walls of numbness I’d built within myself are gone and hot emotion rises within my throat. Not one, but many.

Sobs escape me, raw and loud.

Ana wakes at the noise. “Eric. Eric! Are you alright?”

I babble something in Bellanto that not even my mother could’ve translated.

Impossibly, Ana laughs, erupting into great peals of laughter. What humor could she possibly be deriving from this? She is still choking on tears of her own.

“What is funny?” I try to fake an indignant expression, but I am still shaking, and this only causes her to point and laugh all the more. Basha trickery!

“Eric, we just got blasted across this solar system by your big head.”

I hold it in, but then I am laughing with her. The Maker knows I needed this.

We are still laughing when Ana notices the flashing blip on her display. We shift into crisis mode with a concerning smoothness. The radiation and hot gasses from the flare caused our main oxygen generator on the estward side to blow its seals and rupture. The explosions were dampened by the Fletchnor’s hull, but the precious gas is even now leaking out into open space through micro gaps in the same external shielding that just saved us.

The equipment is… irreparable. Without it, we cannot manufacture enough oxygen for both Ana and myself.

“Hold,” bright hope flashes into my mind. “We have another generator.”

“Eric, we don’t. That was always the risk with this mission. There wasn’t enough time to build backups for everything.”

“Aha! But you are missing something, most forgetful Anacordia. Surely Dinravis will not mind if we borrow his.”

I expect her to see the revelation, but her face only darkens, and she draws within herself again. The awe and wonder I thought I’d seen is now gone, absorbed into her darkness.

“Ana?”

“Eric, I…”

“I can install it.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I will figure it out.”

“No you can’t.”

“I can learn.”

“Eric. There is no equipment.”

What?

“It was…” she bites her lip, “It was viewed as a waste, for a mission that could never succeed. That bay is empty.”

Something dies inside me, and the world begins to turn gray. “Then why send us?”

She does not answer.

“Tell me!” I roar. “You, you… planned this?”

“It had to be convincing, to satisfy the public.”

“Satisfy?”

“We did all we could to cheapen the cost, but without the best and brightest…

…we had to sell the lie.”