by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.
Under normal circumstances, Captain Carroway would never have stood for leaving her brand new ship totally empty on an alien world. But there hadn’t been anything normal in her life since she’d stepped aboard The Wanderlust. Everything had just been getting weirder and weirder, and she needed to roll with it or she’d break apart, shattering into a million pieces.
Realistically, Captain Carroway hadn’t known any of the Anti-Ra officers long enough to trust them not to suddenly up and decide to steal her spaceship. But she could rely on the fact that they needed her and the other union officers to effectively fly The Wanderlust all the way home just as much as she and the union officers needed them.
And when it came to the possibility of the Ollallans — who seemed to be sentient butterfly-like aliens — stealing The Wanderlust? Or even Korvax? Well, Captain Carroway would just have to trust that either the Ollallans and Korvax were as peaceful as they seemed or that her small crew would be able to fight back and take care of themselves. You can’t be on guard all the time. Especially this far from home. They had no safe port. Nowhere they could expect to rest and regroup for many months to come. They would have to take what passed for rest and recreation when they happened on it, and this world was too beautiful for Captain Carroway to keep any of her officers locked aboard the ship playing at guard duty. They all deserved a chance to see the world of the Waykeeper first hand.
So, with Ensign Mike’s help, Captain Carroway locked down The Wanderlust’s computers to only respond to orders from higher officers — which meant her, Commander Chestnut, Lt. Cmdr. Vossie, and Lt. Lee — until further notice, and then she accompanied her entire crew outside.
The group of animals and one ambulatory mushroom walked down an extendable plank from The Wanderlust’s main airlock, breathing air that felt crisp and clean, swirling with complex but subtle scents — dew and loam, greenery and the perfume of fruits or flowers, unrecognizable smells and scents that could have wafted straight out of any forest on Earth. Captain Carroway shivered all the way down her spine as a gentle breeze stirred the long fur that flowed from the sides of her face over the shoulders of her uniform. Her tail twitched apprehensively, but in spite of her profound awareness of the necessity of caution, the Norwegian Forest cat couldn’t deny an underlying sense of elation.
She had discovered a whole new world.
How many cats could say that? How many cats would ever do something as amazing as that? As large? As important?
And sure, the world had been here all along, flying through the far reaches of the cosmos. This turtle didn’t need her discovery of it as any sort of validation, but even so, she was the first cat to ever step paw onto the back of an actual honest-to-fishes real life world turtle. And she felt good about that.
The ground felt good under her paws. Mossy, springy, soft and real. In spite of the pleasantly low gravity, there was nothing unsteady about standing on the back of the Waykeeper. She couldn’t feel the turtle’s shell swaying under paw. She could barely see the sky through the glow of the forest canopy above her, but what she could see was a plain black expanse, which ought to have been unnerving — showing just how far away they were from even the nearest stars — but instead, it just looked like the sky above a busy city bursting with lights so bright they washed out the stars in the sky.
“Maybe we should just stay here… forever,” Ensign Melbourne meowed pensively as he stepped lightly down on the loamy ground beside Captain Carroway. The second cat to set paw to the back of a world turtle.
But Captain Carroway had been the first. She’d seen to that. She’d led the way. There ought to be some privileges that came bundled with the crushing responsibilities of leadership.
“You don’t care about getting home?” Ensign Diaz barked derisively at the white tomcat. She didn’t know his background. She didn’t know how much better he had things out here in the middle of nowhere.
Ensign Melbourne shrugged and smiled roguishly, passing his suggestion off as a joke. It hadn’t been. Captain Carroway knew that. But she also suspected Timothy Melbourne would cooperate with getting back aboard The Wanderlust when it was time to leave. He was a pilot down to the marrow in his bones. He wouldn’t be able to resist flying away when the time came.
But Captain Carroway took his comment as the warning it was: she would need to watch closely to make sure none of her other officers tried to defect and stay here. In paradise. The Wanderlust couldn’t afford to begin hemorrhaging officers this early in her journey home.
“Welcome, welcome, welcome!” a familiar voice squeaked, followed by the shuffling appearance of its owner, Korvax, hurrying toward them, practically bouncing in the low gravity. A bouncing ball of spikes. The hedgehog alien had set his tiny ship down right beside theirs. “I messaged ahead! My friends are waiting for you! They’re so grateful! You must come!” Korvax gestured with his strangely delicate paws — more hand-like than most paws — towards a path that led from the darkened clearing into the much brighter forest.
It felt very backwards to Captain Carroway for the crowded parts of the forest, thick with trees, to be brighter than the open clearings. It came naturally from the fact that the trees were essentially lanterns, the only source of light here. Or at least the main one. As Captain Carroway’s feline eyes adjusted to the ebb and flow of light, she noticed that the ground glowed dimly too. Peering down at her paws, she saw tiny blades of grass shining brightly under the loam of fallen leaves and pine needles. Some of the glowing trees in the forest around them were coniferous and while their needles glowed brightly on their branches, the needles lost their shine when they lay discarded on the ground. Still, the living plants beneath the loam of leaves and needles added a dim light to the clearing.
The grass and moss seemed to glow even more brightly wherever one of Captain Carroway’s crew stepped, leaving tracks of glowing paw prints wherever they walked. The Norwegian Forest cat wasn’t an expert on biology, though of course, every cadet at the Tri-Galactic Union Academy had to take at least introductory courses to all of the sciences. However, she would have expected a phosphorescent plant to react in the opposite way to being stepped upon — by dimming its glow, crushed under the weight of a paw. There was something truly magical about how the forest floor here brightened for them, as if welcoming them, encouraging them to step farther in, promising they could find their way back by following a glowing path. It was beautiful, but it seemed too good to be true. Almost deceptive, like old fairy tales where children followed paths of crumbled gingerbread to find their way home.
Captain Carroway felt like she’d stepped into a fairy tale, and she wasn’t used to that feeling. Usually, her life was a series of vignettes interspersed with high stakes, high stress action sequences. Maybe science procedurals. Not fairy tales. Those were for kittens, and she’d grown up long ago.
Being on the back of a giant turtle who was swimming through the depths of the cosmos made Captain Carroway feel young again. She didn’t feel like Captain Carroway here. She just felt like Janessa, a cat with dreams and ambitions and a very silly crush on a golden-mantled squirrel that it would be entirely inappropriate for her to ever act on.
The crew of The Wanderlust followed Korvax as he wended his way through the glowing forest. Commander Chestnut looked like he belonged here, completely at home surrounded by trees. Captain Carroway thought any squirrel might look that way. And Ensign Risqua, with her feathered, wing-like arms, almost looked like she’d be able to fly. Either one of them might decide that staying here was better than the uncertain journey that laid ahead of them.
As they walked, Captain Carroway watched the shadows between trees, listening to the scurrying sounds of footsteps and concealed voices giggling, trying to make out any glimpse of the creatures causing the noise. The Norwegian Forest cat didn’t think that butterfly-like aliens with their wide, delicate wings would scurry through the shadows of the forest floor, hiding and laughing, especially not when the gravity here must make it so easy for them to fly. But then, perhaps what she was hearing wasn’t laughter. Perhaps it was just the sound of an alien creature, just an animal in the forest.
Hurrying her pawsteps, Captain Carroway brought herself up beside the fast-moving hedgehog alien. He moved surprisingly quickly for how short, round, and stubby he was.
“Korvax,” the Norwegian Forest cat meowed, trying to get their guide’s attention. He wasn’t what she would have hoped for from a guide, but he was the guide they had for now. The only contact they’d made so far, and she wanted to begin learning what she could immediately. “We saw beings in the sky — beings with colorful wings — are those the Ollallans?”
The hedgehog alien slowed down, just a little, seemingly surprised by the Norwegian Forest cat’s question. “Well, of course,” he replied jovially. His pointy nose twisting sideways with his smile. “Who else would they be? But then… I suppose, they’re also not quite the Ollallans.”
Captain Carroway’s ears skewed in perplexity and irritation. She now felt like she knew less than she had before asking her question. “Explain yourself,” she said, using all of her restraint to keep from snapping or growling the words.
“Well, now, you see, we can’t quite pronounce the word for who they are,” Korvax looked over at the captain walking beside him and smiled in a tilted way, twitching his pointy nose to one side. “At least, I can’t, and your mouth looks enough like mine, and your voice sounds enough like mine that you probably can’t either.”
Captain Carroway thought her voice was quite a bit less annoyingly squeaky than Korvax’s, but she didn’t think it would be helpful or diplomatic to say so. “Can you describe who they are then?”
“They’re what the Ollallans become after entering their chrysalis forms and metamorphosing,” Korvax said.
Captain Carroway’s ears pricked up tall again. “Then the Ollallans are like caterpillars? And the beings we saw are the adults?” The Norwegian Forest cat peered harder at the shadows in the forest around them, trying once again to spot one of the giggling creatures. She was very intrigued by the idea that they had a complicated life cycle with multiple parts. This was exactly the kind of strange, alien discovery that a Tri-Galactic Union captain dreams of making.
“Yes, yes, the Ollallans are like children,” Korvax said. “But also not.”
In spite of her delight at the concepts she was hearing about, Captain Carroway couldn’t help one of her ears skewing back at the hedgehog’s hedging. She really wished they’d happened upon a different guide. “How do you mean?” she snapped.
Fortunately, Korvax didn’t seem at all fazed by having a much larger mammal snap at him. Captain Carroway supposed that a certain amount of security came along with having most of your body covered in prickly spines. Korvax didn’t seem easily upset. Except, of course, by having his entire world attacked, and that would upset anyone.
“The Ollallans have an entire civilization of their own down here, on the shell, beneath the glowing boughs,” Korvax said, suddenly waxing poetic. “Their elders live separately mostly. Above the branches. So, it’s a sort of childhood, but not the kind of helpless, cared for, looked after childhood that my people have, er, had.”
The hedgehog smiled weakly as he corrected himself to the past tense. Captain Carroway imagined there was an entire story there, which she most definitely didn’t want to ask about. Then she remembered what Korvax had said earlier about the Zakonraptors destroying his homeworld. The Norwegian Forest cat did her best to smile back sympathetically.
As they walked, the trees began to change — instead of growing wild and free, their branches looked ever more curated, like they’d been trained to grow in particular patterns. Eventually, even though they were still walking through a forest, Captain Carroway realized they were now walking past buildings. Entire cozy cottages had been woven out of living branches. And then, suddenly, the captain looked up and realized, they weren’t outside anymore. The forest canopy above them had been woven together into an intricate, complicated, and extremely beautiful ceiling — vibrant, alive, and glowing.
Beneath Captain Carroway’s paws was the back of a turtle, and above her head was a forest woven together into an entire, enclosed village. She was utterly surrounded by life. There was something profoundly cozy and comforting about the sensation of being completely surrounded. A small part of Captain Carroway’s brain was surprised that she didn’t find the sensation confining or claustrophobia inducing. But it didn’t feel that way at all. Just… peaceful.
Deep in her throat, Captain Carroway realized, she was already purring. She didn’t remember when that had begun.
Elsewhere on the Waykeeper’s back, these forests were burning. Right now, Captain Carroway couldn’t imagine a much more horrendous crime than burning down this concatenation of pure, raw life and carefully tended, stewarded, crafted art made from that life. It was a truly, singularly heartless thing to burn down a forest like this one that was at once alive, a home, and a work of art.
At last, Korvax’s guidance brought the motley crew of The Wanderlust to a great hallway with a long table set out in the middle — or rather, it seemed to be constructed from a tree trunk that grew up out of the ground, bent over, and travelled along the ground for some distance before turning upward, tapering to a much thinner width and rising to where it joined the tangle of complicated branches that made up the ceiling. Somewhere, along the way, the crew of The Wanderlust had passed from walking between buildings to being inside of one. The line between inside and outside here had a way of becoming unclear. Regardless, this table was heaped high with bowls of sumptuous-looking foods, and all around the table stood the giggling creatures who Captain Carroway had been straining so hard to find.
Now that Captain Carroway could see a group of Ollallans clearly, she could see why she’d had so much trouble spotting them before.
The Ollallans were long, pudgy, yellow-green worm creatures. Each one had a row of short, stubby limbs running down each side — hands that became feet at some point, although the point when that happened was unclear. So, the Ollallans could rear up and stand nearly as tall as Captain Carroway, using only a few of their lowest limbs as feet, or they could snake more of their lower body along the ground, becoming shorter but steadier, trading hands for more feet. They were very like caterpillars with nearly translucent green skin, speckled with tiny yellow spikes. Though, some of them had darker green spikes or even black or white ones, but most of them had skin in some shade or another of green. They blended in beautifully with the glowing leaves that covered all the walls and ceilings of their home. Perfectly camouflaged. And they were, most definitely, giggling at the funny mammals — and one fungus — who had come to visit them.
Continue on to Chapter 23…