Under a Starless Sky

Chapter 55

Shen was sitting at the end of the stone peers when Loxy joined him. He acknowledged her presence

with a dopey smile, like someone who had been smoking a week’s worth of cannabis- minus the

paranoia. When it came to cannabis, Jon would claim to be unaffected, except for the munchies. The

truth of it for him was more complex. This wasn’t cannabis- but it felt similar in some ways.

“You doing okay?” TL asked.

“Yeah, I am great,” Shen asked. “How are you?”

“Fuck, you’re still high as a kite,” TL said.

“No, no,” Shen said. “I am just sitting here resting my bones, this loneliness won’t leave me alone…”

“Well, come on, Otis,” TL said. “We’re ready to head out.”

“Oh,” Shen said. He stood. “I should go say goodbye.”

“What?”

“I am going to stay here,” Shen said.

“The hell you are,” TL said.

“I have gone two thousand miles just to make this dock my home,” Shen said.

TL snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Wake the fuck up, Jon. You’re not a Jedi. You’re not going

to tame that beast.”

“She’s lonely,” Shen said.

“Loneliness is an illusion,” TL said.

“A deadly one. I can help her,” Shen said.

“Help yourself first,” TL said.

“She loves me,” Shen said.

“She wants to eat you!” TL said.

“Oh, it’s mutual then,” Shen said.

TL slapped him. “Snap out of it.”

“You seem angry,” Shen said.

“Getting there,” TL said.

“There is a gate in Sinter that can take me home,” Shen said. “We could go home. I need her to get

there. I need her to operate the gate.”

“She lied,” TL said.

Shen seem confused. “Why would she lie to me?”

Loxy rolled eyes heavenward. “Seriously? Because she wants you dead,” TL said.

“I can’t die,” Shen said. “I am immortal.”

“What?”

“Think about all the worlds we’ve been in together,” Shen said. “All the past lives. Me, but not me. Here,

but not here. She can’t hurt me. No one can hurt me.”

Loxy grabbed him by the shirt, and before he knew it, he was laying on his back and she was on top of

him, knee pushing into his chest. She held his uniform tightly, commanding it to constrict. Landing on

his back had taken out his air. He couldn’t expand his lungs. He couldn’t move his limbs. His eyes

widened, but there was confusion on why he couldn’t breathe.

“Do I have your attention now? You can die. You are not immortal,” TL said. She looked deeper into his

eyes. “Back off, Jazmyne. You have no authority here.” They both hear a whispery voice respond: ‘if I

can’t have him, no one cane. Jon, Shen I love you to death…’ “Jon!” TL shouted over the whisper.

“Step up. 3, 2, 1… Now!” She snapped her fingers.

Shen’s eyes focused. There was fear. He couldn’t gasp. TL eased up her grip, allowing him to breathe.

When he had his full wits and air, she let go. He got up, took in the environment, avoiding TL’s eyes.

His head was bent towards the earth. The ocean heaved around him and the dock and he was nearly

sick. He closed his eyes and hugged TL.

“I have finally lost it,” Shen said.

“For believing someone might help you? For wanting love?” TL asked. “That’s not a fault. That’s hope.

Come on, let’s go.”

Shen silently agreed, accepting her hand. They walked together. He paused to look back at the city.

“Jon,” TL said.

“It has occurred to me, she has a Torch now,” Shen said.

“Yeah,” TL said. “But that’s all she has. I was able to disable everything else.”

“The psychic amplifier?” Shen asked.

“Time to go,” TL said.

“Okay,” Shen said.

It took effort to walk away. His legs felt weak as if he had been sick with fever for a week. They were

still close enough to the ocean that its movement bizarrely affected him- his awareness of its swells

seemed surreal, as if it was the parachute game and he was an island that others were trying to

dislodge. TL hugged his arm and leaned into him. “I love you.”

“Why?” Shen asked. He stopped. He couldn’t get the ocean out of his peripheral without traveling in the

wrong direction. TL wouldn’t let him change course. He resisted the urge to be sick. “No. It’s not the

right question. Better: why do I question you but I don’t question Jazmyne?”

“Because what I give you is love and freedom,” TL said. “She give you love and death. Being loved to

death is in no one’s best interest, neither the one coveted, or the one coveting. Both remain equally

lost.”

They weren’t thirty minutes out from land, first by rows, then orientated to catch a wind, and driving up

and down waves, when Shen was taken by his sickness. He hurled over the side of the boat. He held

his position. He heard laughter, but was too sick to care. TL tried to comfort him, patting his back, and

offering him water to rinse.

“How about a Dramamine?” Shen asked.

“You just experienced a psionic attack, and slept twelve hours,” TL said. “Not giving you that. This will

pass.”

Torny came round and gave him a stick to chew on. She was very forceful in communicating: ‘this will

help.’ TL shrugged, told him to listen to her. He chewed on it. It had a feel and taste of cinnamon. He

recovered shortly after.

“What’s in this?” Shen asked TL.

“Nothing harmful,” TL said.

“But what’s in it?” Shen insisted.

“It’s working,” TL said. “Let it be.”

He stood, took inventory of himself and his surroundings. Erico was sleeping. Jerica was attending to a

crow with blue eyes, which she made airborne. She closed her green eyes and oriented forwards, arms

out, catching the wind as if she were the crow- as if she were Kate Winslet’s Rose. “Bird’s Eye View

leaves my head…” a snippet of a song told him what she was doing and how. He felt the stirring of lust

and realized he had recovered and turned to find something else to occupy him. TL smiled at him and

his urgency transferred from Jerica that quickly. He felt embarrassed and wanting simultaneously.

“There is a place in the hold if you want to play,” TL offered.

“No,” TL said.

“Virtual play?” TL asked.

“No,” TL said.

“Might help shake her off,” TL offered.

Arne and Torny came to engaged him. Some of the crew gathered in ear shot.

“Welcome back, stranger,” Arne said, hitting his arm.

“I feel like I have been sick in a fever dream for weeks. I am forgetting something important,” Shen

said.

“That’s normal,” Torny said. “Your ordeal was much more severe than you imagine. I know of no one

who has ever gone up against a fully grown daughter of Hel and remained themselves.”

“Hel?” Shen asked

“The psychic plant succubus chic,” TL said. “Lanore called them Fermon, they call them Hel. Hel,

Viking goddess of the underworld. Persephone Plant. I have also seen reference to her as Hecate,

Ninkigal, and Irkalla, though technically Irkalla is the place Ninkigal resides, and where you go when

she takes you. The statues on the island where we encountered her were Shala and Nakasi. All of

them hold connections with the Earth, water, and the underworld.”

Shen shrugged. “I have encountered worse.”

“No,” TL said. “You have not. You’re human, Jon. You’re not going to go up against a telepath and

coming out unscathed. Especially not that one.”

“I have come up against lesser plants,” Arne said. “That one must have been a thousand years old. I

think the only thing that saved us was your magic sword.”

“And its obsession to hold you,” Torny said.

“It wants tech,” TL agreed.

“I have heard that they can get fixated on a person, objectify them to the point they will enslave them

instead of eat them,” Torny said.

“To what ends?” Shen asked.

“To maintain a constant source of meat,” Arne said. “To make you the progenitor and the bearer of her

seed. Hel must have human seed to procreate daughters.”

“They can create psychic avatars but can’t deliver their own seed?” Shen asked.

“If by avatars you mean spirits, yes. The plants have a limited range of projecting. A human can extend

their range. They take form from the mind of human and they push that,” Torny said. “That avatar tends

to be infertile. Sometimes, if they are particularly obsessed with union, as she seemed to be with you,

they can produce hybrids- that is another way to extend their range.”

“They don’t like hybrids. They have their own minds and can be as equally manipulative as any human

or plant for their own agendas,” Torny said.

“In many ways, they are like the Sleeper Tree. They are the gatekeepers to the underworld. They can

offer insight,” Arne said.

“They can lie,” TL said.

“Oh, they can lie,” Arne said. “Many men have gone to lie with her kind, and not gotten up.”

“Men are stupid,” Torny said. “They’d tear up a melon if you shape it right.”

Shen bit his lip, having once or twice carved a melon just so.

“A cored fruit can be fun play,” TL said, touching Shen in a comforting way. Loxy had cored a peach,

brought him off with it, and then ate it.

“You’re trying to change the subject?” Arne said.

Shen seemed distant. His mind was on fruit and Loxy and sex and there was Jazmine…

“She’s still calling you,” Torny said.

“They’re sentient,” Shen said.

“I don’t know this word, but if it means they’re awake, yes. They are aware and they know. They like to

sleep, but once awake, they’re on. If they eat a goat, they have the awareness of a goat. Ghostly goats

will come forth, calling for more goats. If it eats an Irk, it will call Irks. If eats a human, it wakes up super

bright. The more humans it consumes, the smarter it gets. Stop feeding it, its intelligence wanes in

time. It goes back to sleep.”

“That’s scary,” Shen said.

“Not as scary as the rumor that a person devoured will tarry there, captive in a shared dream with the

plant for a thousand years,” Arne said.

“That’s nonsense,” Shen said.

“That’s Star Wars,” TL said. “Where do you think Lucas stole it from?”

“What’s a star?” Torny and Arne asked.

Shen and TL continued on, without addressing stars. “There is no way a person could live a thousand

years. You’d die as soon as you’re swallowed.”

“Not according to Preston G Waycaster,” TL said.

“That’s fiction,” Shen said.

“Our present reality juxtaposed to his explains my understanding of it.” TL said. Shen heard ‘scans’

instead of ‘understanding.’ “It eats flesh, usually whole. Once swallowed, the creature arrives in an

oxygenated, digestive liquid. That means, they won’t drown while they’re being digested. Filaments

along the inner wall, not only carry and position food, but connect to the food, like tiny umbilical cord to

ensure continued blood flow if the heart stops. The plant shares and maintains the blood flow, replacing

it with hers. They remain alive while being digested. Nerve cells are not digested. They’re preserved

and moved. The whole nervous system is moved as one thing, kept intact- stimulated by plant and one

with plant, for shared processing. If I assume the combination of all the nerve cells are from things it

has eaten, intermixed with its own, then it will hold all the memories of everyone it has ever eaten. Over

time, personality boundaries would fade and the super personality become a gestalt of all consumed. A

super computer comprised of multiple functioning, bio-organic brains.”

“They are one with the plant, forever,” Torny said.

“Did I say that’s fucking scary,” Shen said.

“And you want to go back to that,” TL said.

“I do?” Shen asked.

“You’re still in danger of being summoned,” Torny said. “Only distance and time will relieve you of this

burden.”

“That, and Loxy’s love and magic,” Arne said. “I have never met anyone who recovered from the call of

a Siren so quickly. Bedding Loxy would help shift your focus away from the other.”

“Yes, bedding her would hasten your relief, if she can tolerate you. People under the spell of Hel can

find an unquenchable appetite and increased endurance,” Torny said.

“Why, yes, Jon. You should bed me now, or lose me forever,” TL said.

Shen frowned at her.

“Oh, I like that,” Torny said. “Would you care if I use it, too?”

“Sure, why not,” TL said. “It is copy righted, but in this context, it’s just fun movie quotes.”

“Movies?” Arne asked.

“Copy righted?” Torny asked

“Information considered privileged by someone who thought they were so clever they needed to profit

from sharing because they may not originate anything else,” Shen said.

“Nothing new under the sun,” Arne said.

“If the plant thing is so crazy dangerous, why didn’t we kill it?” Shen asked.

“You want the list?” TL asked. “You never kill a telepath when it’s holding its prey. You kill a vampire

while it’s attached to a neck of a victim, you kill the victim. They’re also very difficult to kill. Killing the

surface of it won’t kill it. Scorched earth policy will cause it to retreat deeper into the earth. These

creature enmesh itself into the surrounding ecosystem. A nuclear bomb might kill it, but you’d be taking

out everything on the surface and in the earth with it. If one cell of it survives, it will eventually return.

Even if you kill all animals and insects, it will return. As long as there is a sun, it will live. Also, you kill

everyone it has ever consumed- they’re in there, still. They are not recoverable with our present tech. I

suppose if she were agreeable, she could ‘tulpa’ them out and they maintain a semblance of

autonomy…”

“Then we have to go back and reason with it,” Shen said.

“Yeah, because you were clearly rational enough to negotiate,” TL said.

“Brother, once she illuminated, you dimmed,” Arne said.

“It can draw on your intelligence,” Torny said. “When fully entrained, it sees what you see. It knows

what you know.”

“It didn’t try to kill Arne,” Shen said.

“Not while it was focused on slaving you,” Arne said. “Killing me might have broken your trance.”

“Jon, stop trying to figure this out. Let it go. The encounter is over. We are safe,” TL said.

“And I am grateful to you,” Arne said. “Erico, Jerica, and I owe you and Loxy our lives.”

“There is no debt here,” Shen said. “I am grateful you helped me. This is a wash.”

“A wash?” Torny said.

“Balance,” TL said.

“You spin the strangest phrases,” Torny said.

Shen removed the thing he was chewing on. “What’s in this?” Shen asked.

“I promise, it’s not Lotus stems,” Torny said.

“We should go back there,” Orton mumbled in the background.

“That shit will kill you,” Arne said.

“I bet its okay if we smoke it,” Orton protested. “You could have let me keep the leaves.”

“I swear, Orton, the longer we’re away from home, the stupider your men get,” Torny said.

“They’re not drinking from led cups, are they?” TL asked.

“No! What kind of barbarian drinks from led?” Arne said. “Everyone knows that will kill you.”

“There has to be something in this,” Shen said.

“It has no medicinal value,” TL said. “Though, I see variety of ways to use it in food preparation.”

Shen seemed puzzled. “So, it’s a placebo?”

“Placebos work,” TL said.

His color was changing before them.

“Go feed the fish,” Arne said, turning him quick and shoving towards the spot.

“I am fine,” Shen said. He changed his mind with a frown and ran back to his position, hanging his head © 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

over the ship.

“Fish have eaten well today,” Orton said.

“Yeah,” Torny said. “I remember your first days at seas.”

“Not fair. Those seas were rough,” Orton said. “The fish were sick that day…”