Zenn Scarlett (32 page)

“Scarlett?” Liam had to shout to be heard over the thundering engines. “You sure this was really a good idea?”

She wasn’t remotely sure, but didn’t say so.

Katie was too frightened to sign now, and simply buried her head in Zenn’s lap, blended and vanished from sight. The engine’s noise at last overwhelmed their ability to shout, and she and Liam could only give each other encouraging looks… and wait.

Zenn struggled to keep the seda-unit aimed at the hog. But it really didn’t matter – nothing could move under this kind of acceleration. The pressure continued to build, until Zenn was forced down flat in the straw, with the invisible Katie pinned in position on her stomach. It occurred to her maybe she’d made yet another bad judgment. Maybe it was not, in fact, possible for something as fragile as a human, or a rikkaset, to survive a ferry launch in an unprotected cargo-crate.

But, of course, it was too late to reconsider. They must be miles above Mars by now. Miles beyond the familiar world of the cloister walls and her animals, beyond Otha and Hild and Hamish. And despite what she felt, or didn’t feel, about him, at least Liam was with her, at least she had the company of another person. She wouldn’t let it mean anything beyond that. After all, Liam had his own reasons for leaving Mars.

As the ferry hurtled skyward, Zenn told herself she also had still another unspoken, but crucial reason to follow her abductor. She had no clue what the skirni meant by the term “nexus.” But it had to be connected with her sudden capacity for linking her mind to the minds of others. It meant she hadn’t imagined it all, dreamed it up, that she wasn’t losing her grip on reality. There was a logical, real-world explanation for what was going on inside her. And the skirni knew what it was. If nothing else, she would make him tell. If she survived.

A knot of doubt materialized and tightened within her.
Would
she survive? Would any of them? Maybe she should’ve gotten herself and Katie out the crate when she had the chance. Maybe she should’ve listened to Liam.

Too late now. She tried to lift her hands, to comfort the rikkaset, to stroke her and make the sign that it would be alright. No, that would be a lie. But she could sign she was sorry. Her hands weighed too much to raise them more than an inch or two. She gave up.

Her helplessness spawned a fresh wave of fear, and the fear grew quickly, like a dark blossom opening. She saw her younger self, terrified beneath a flapping canvas tarp, breathing in dust and fumes in the back of Otha’s speeding truck, saw herself boarding the ferry that would bear her aloft to witness the inconceivable wonder of a living Indra, to witness her mother’s final moments within the creature’s impossible body.

As the rapidly mounting g-forces of the ferry’s violent ascent threatened to tip her into unconsciousness, an unbidden memory rose up through Zenn’s fear and doubt: the honeyed scent of apricot blossoms, laced with just a whiff of antiseptic. She heard her mother’s voice, the words spoken years ago, ages ago, in another lifetime:

…sometimes Zenn, doing the right thing… is the scariest thing of all
.

Something brushed her fingertips: Liam’s hand, fighting gravity to edge its way slowly onto hers. With her entire world reduced to shuddering chaos and noise, it came as a sudden, almost refreshing shock: the touch of another, at this moment, in this place, was something, maybe the one thing, she needed to feel more than anything else. Liam’s fingers closed around hers. She allowed her fingers to tighten in reply.

Then, the rushing, black oblivion pressing in on her faltering awareness pushed its way beyond her final measure of will power. She had no choice. She let it in. And in her last instant of knowing, one last thought:

Never… leave… the cloister
.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to:

…my mother Betty and sister Sue, the former an English teacher who simply expected all her children to love books, so we did; the latter a sibling who helped me appreciate the power and magic in language and art.

…every teacher or professor I’ve ever had. Teachers. They rock.

…Dr Jenni Doll, DVM, who let me look over her shoulder and ask many, many questions as she ministered to our farm-full of animals or worked on her own menagerie of domestic and exotic beasts. The same goes for her husband Torben, whose extensive herpetological knowledge I also mined. Any mistakes or questionable extrapolations in this book are, however, mine alone.

…Adam Schear of DeFiore & Co, the genre-savvy agent who rescued the book’s manuscript from oblivion while cleaning out his Kindle files, and then dove into the story to help me polish the novel until it was ready to be exposed to the light of day.

…Amanda Rutter, my editor at Strange Chemistry Books, who thought the book might be worth publishing and, following its acquisition, immersed herself in Zenn’s world, then applied her formidable expertise to ensure that world was prepared for visitors.

…my wise and patient wife, shield-maiden and best friend Kathleen, whose encouragement, willingness to listen and deep affection for all creatures great and small made her both an inspiration and the ideal companion as I wrote Zenn Scarlett.

….and all the dozens of animals who have ever shared, brightened, saddened and/or complicated my life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christian Schoon grew up in Minnesota, and worked his way through college in a succession of rock bands before earning his degree from the U of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Journalism.

Following a stint as an in-house copywriter/scriptwriter at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, he supplied freelance copy for the entertainment industry and scriptwriting for live-action and animated TV.

Currently, he writes from his 150-year-old farmstead in Iowa which he shares with a fluctuating number of horses (generally less than a dozen, but not always), 30 or so cats, a dog, three ferrets and a surprisingly tolerant wife.

The
Zenn Scarlett
books are his first novels, however he admits to being an unrepentant fan of science fiction and fantasy ever since discovering the tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs in the fifth grade. He can be found at his blog:
www.christianschoon.com
and on
Twitter
:
https://twitter.com/cjschoon
 

STRANGE CHEMISTRY

An Angry Robot imprint

and a member of the Osprey Group

Lace Market House

54-56 High Pavement

Nottingham NG1 1HW

UK

4301 21st Street Suite 220B

Long Island City

New York

NY 11101, USA

strangechemistrybooks.com
 

Strange Chemistry #10

A Strange Chemistry paperback original 2013

1

Copyright © Christian Schoon 2013

Christian Schoon asserts the moral right to be

identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

UK ISBN: 978 1 90884 454 5

US ISBN: 978 1 90884 445 2

eBook ISBN: 978 1 90884 456 9

Cover art by Steven Meyer-Rassow (
www.smrphotoart.com)
 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by

way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or

otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in

any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is

published and without a similar condition including this

condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and

incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or

localities is entirely coincidental.

Contents

1. Zenn Scarlet
   
2. Dedication
   
3. Before
   
4. One
   
5. Two
   
6. Three
   
7. Four
   
8. Five
   
9. Six
   
10. Seven
    
11. Eight
    
12. Nine
    
13. Ten
    
14. Eleven
    
15. Twelve
    
16. Thirteen
    
17. Fourteen
    
18. Fifteen
    
19. Sixteen
    
20. Seventeen
    
21. Eighteen
    
22. Nineteen
    
23. Twenty
    
24. Twenty-One
    
25. Twenty-Two
    
26. Twenty-Three
    
27. Twenty-Four
    
28. Twenty-Five
    
29. Twenty-Six
    
30. Twenty-Seven
    
31. Twenty-Eight
    
32. Twenty-Nine
    
33. Thirty
    
34. Thirty-One
    
35. Thirty-Two
    
36. Thirty-Three
    
37. Thirty-Four
    
38. Acknowledgments
    
39. About the Author
    
40. Copyright