There were more stars in the sky than she’d ever seen from the surface of a planet—she knew that without being able to remember. It was so dark that it felt like she could see forever. Centrallia had two moons and that night, one was eclipsing the other, leaving only a bare silver of blue-white light to blot out a few stars. In truth, she barely noticed the difference.
“If you look up toward the top of the canopy there, you’ll be able to see part of the Seal.”
She twisted slightly, looking up at him. He was drying his hands with a dish towel, leaning in the doorway, his gaze on the sky. The evening was warm, though there was the barest hint of a chill breeze heralding the change of seasons to come.
Dinner had been quiet, almost subdued, as if both of them had retreated into their thoughts. She’d been trying to sort through the bits and pieces of what she’d learned about him, about herself, about where she was and where he’d found her. The fragmented portrait was starting to scare her worse than being in the cell and knowing that someone might come to interrogate her at any moment had been. The fact that she couldn’t even remember what they’d asked her, what they wanted to know didn’t help matters any, either.
“Have you ever seen it up close?” She asked as her stare shifted back to the sky, searching for the traces of the nebulae in the sky that had been called the Seal for as long as anyone could remember.
He slung the towel over his shoulder and sat down next to her on the step from his porch. “A few times. Never crossed more than a couple of light years in. No one really does.”
“Why do they call it the Seal anyway? I don’t think I’ve ever known.” It was a faint ribbon in the darkness, shimmering with colors she didn’t have names for—every shade of a rainbow and everything in between, glittering out there in the distant sky with faint iridescence.
“There are a lot of legends about that.” He hooked a bare heel on the edge of the step, leaning against his upraised knee as he stared up at the sky. “I couldn’t tell you which one is true, or which parts of them are true. I can tell you that the name makes sense, though. There’s never been a ship in recorded history that’s crossed into those nebulas and come back out. There’re gravitational anomalies and storms and things in there that just tear ships apart before they can get in too deep. So far as anyone knows, those bands are at least fifty light years wide at the narrowest point. No ship dares go more than about seven or eight light years in. Anything deeper and bad things start happening.”
“Like hulls getting pulled apart?”
“Among other things,” he said quietly. There was a haunted note in his voice, a hushed and almost reverent tone. “There are stories about people going crazy, about them hearing things—sometimes songs, music, sometimes gibberish, sometimes actual voices saying things that do and don’t make sense—about people just dying without any real explanation. There’s enough documented that I’m not willing to tell you that they’re just old sailor’s tales and legends. There’s some truth there and if you dig deep enough into records, you’ll find the reports.”
“You went looking?”
“A couple of times,” he admitted. “Found enough to know that I’m right to be nervous any time I get too close. Still. Even if we never cross it, it’s still beautiful to look at. It’s a nursery for stars. Someday, all that gas could be planets like this one.”
“Seems like it would take a long time for that to happen.” She leaned back against her good wrist, letting her head cant to one side, regarding him in profile. “Thousands of years? Millions?”
He shrugged slightly. “Beyond our lifetimes, that’s for sure. But it’s nice to know that some things will outlast everything humans have ever built.”
“So they call it the Seal because no one has ever crossed it?”
“Not from this side, at least.”
Her brows went up. “What do you mean?”
He smiled and shook his head. “There’re some legends that suggest that maybe at least some of the humans here started out somewhere beyond the Seal—fairy tales, almost. A few of the books on the shelf in there have some of the stories.”
“I take it you’ve read them?”
“A few times.”
“You did strike me as the type to actual read the books you’ve got in there.”
He chuckled softly, standing slowly. “Glad to meet your expectation.”
“Are you going in?” She asked, watching him for a few seconds.
“If I don’t, I’ll end up wandering,” he admitted. “I don’t think either of us need that tonight.”
“Wandering where?”
His lips curved in a smirk. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“If don’t ask questions, you don’t seem to talk,” she said, standing. “And I can only learn so much from watching you make dinner and sweep the floors.”
His smirk transformed into a rueful grin. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Thanks for noticing.”
He turned and headed inside, leaving her to trail after him. She pulled the door shut and set the latch, watching as he crossed to the kitchen to hang up the towel draped over his shoulder. “I have a friend that’ll be dropping off some more clothes for you, probably tomorrow. Shoes, too.”
“That should make things a little easier,” she said. “I won’t feel like I have to stay so close to the house if I’ve got some shoes.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “You probably shouldn’t range that far alone anyway. Not until you’ve got your bearings.” He turned to look at her again, brow furrowing slightly. “Though if you want to go to town after you’ve got more clothes and shoes, I can take you. Westnedge isn’t much, but it’s more than a wizard’s cottage in the woods.”
“Is that what this is?”
“That’s what the locals think it is, anyway, and I guess it’s not far from the truth. I do the things wizards do when they ask me to. And when I have to.”
“Do you have to very often?”
He shook his head, sinking into an easy chair that sat in front of the cold fireplace. “It’s mostly a quiet life. Only a little bit of chaos here and there to deal with—and wrinkles.”
“Wrinkles like the place you found me.” She sank down into a chair near his, one much less well-worn than the one he’d chosen. “That’s never happened before here, has it?”
“No,” he said. “That’s why it worries me.”
“It worries the man who chose a quiet life on a planet where what he can do is easily hidden?”
“If you’re talking about being a pilot, yeah, I guess it is pretty easily hidden. But yeah, it really does worry me. The Veritans don’t usually show up out here in the Zone—there’s no reason to, except I guess now they’ve found one.”
“The same reason you’re out here—because no one’s going to look for a retired pilot out here.”
He nodded. “You’d be surprised how many retired sailors end up out here. It’s more than a few. After seeing some of the shit we see, sometimes quiet lives somewhere no one will look for us is appealing.”
“I’m guessing a lot of you didn’t leave much behind, did you?”
If she hadn’t been watching, she would’ve missed his wince. It had been slight, and he’d covered it quickly, but she’d seen it just the same.
“Yeah,” he said. “Mostly just us in the universe. Not a lot of people to miss us, if any at all.”
It was a lie, but she let it go.
For now, at least, she’d let it go.
