The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

Not yet. Maybe tomorrow.

She would stand and they would link arms and go inside together.

This happened many times, the quiet pattern of their lives wearing pleasurable grooves into their time together, until the day came when she kissed him goodbye, went for a swim, made a stew, and waited for a return that did not come.

That night was wind and rain and thunder and lightning, and she sat with the front door open and the lamp lit, staring into the darkness. The river roared, and the trees whipped, and the house grew too cold for the fire to warm, but she did not shiver, and she did not move. Morning met her still in the chair across from the door. When the rain became irregular drips on the roof and greying light softened the lamp’s glow, she woke with a start from a light doze.

She cast her gaze over the undisturbed room, and stood with stiff legs, her hands going to the small of her back as she stretched out the kinks.

Alright then, she thought. There was the slightest tremor in her fingers as she put out the lamp. Then she walked out the door and through the forest until she reached the main road into Town.

Her boots sank into the mud with every step, the air fresh and clean and cold, scoring her tight chest with every breath. Early morning light glimmered on the puddles she passed.

He’s fine. She repeated this mantra in rhythm with her heart. He’s safe. He’s fine. He’s safe.

She told herself it was the storm. He’d taken shelter somewhere overnight and now the rain had passed, she’d meet him on the road, empty sack under his arm, and he’d shake his head when he saw her and smile and call her a worrywart.

He’s fine. It was just the storm.

But her stomach buzzed with a familiar energy and her skin prickled, and all she could think was it had finally happened, and she hadn’t been there.

A long hour later, the red peak of the church belfry came into view between the trees. There was a scorch mark on it, and the bell had crashed through the stone arch and the roof. The wind shifted as she passed the sign that welcomed travellers and she smelled acrid smoke and mud, and beneath that, something thick and coppery and nauseating.

Her pulse quickened. She closed her eyes, letting the scent she knew so well flow over and through her. Then her heart settled into a calm, steady beat and she opened her eyes and strode into Town, her gaze scanning the wide plaza and every building and side street that led off it.

She ignored the crushed and splintered homes and the smoking piles of debris that used to be walls, windows, roofs. She stepped over the bodies and the weeping people huddled near them and crouched in doorways. She walked past those few searching the collapsed dwellings for survivors and headed straight for the market. Only when she reached the blasted hole in the ground that used to be the heart of Town did she stop, her nostrils burning, her hands clenched at her sides. An old man was ministering to someone on the front stoop of a building across from the marketplace. She looked down at him and recognized the Town’s only doctor, a man she knew well. He’d helped care for her when she first arrived, years ago.

‘My husband?’ she signed.

Weariness and sorrow made his watery blue eyes dull. His bloodied fingers sketched brief movements. ‘Gone. With the others.’

She looked back at the market and her hands trembled as she pointed. ‘There?’

The doctor rose to his feet, giving up on the man he’d been trying to save. She turned her head and watched his throat work as he struggled for speech, read his lips.

‘Taken,’ he said. Then he signed, ‘Slavers.’

Relief made her expel a breath while rage sent tension singing through her entire body. It was slavers.

Not them. He’s alive. For now.

But there was a clock on her options and it had been ticking down for some time.

‘How long?’

‘They waited out the storm. Two… three hours? We’ve sent for help, but…’

‘Which way?’

The doctor shook his head and held out a trembling hand. ‘No. Wait for help.’

The nearest Base was three days travel. That’s why they’d come this far out. No one would get there in time to stop them. ‘Which way?’

The hand descended on her forearm, gripped her sleeve. She read his lips as he spoke. ‘You can’t go by yourself. If you go, you die, or they take you too. Do you understand?’

She glanced back up at him and whatever he saw in her face made him release her arm. His mouth opened then closed and a frown carved a deep groove between his brows. She searched the tumult of her mind for something appropriate to say.

‘Alright. I understand.’ She paused. ‘Which way?’

There was a larger settlement to the east. One she hadn’t seen since she’d first come to this place. The slavers had gone in that direction, and she knew they would strip that town of every healthy person they could find. The weather was glorious today, and it was the last settlement in the Eastern Lands. They would leave once they were done. She had hours at most.

As she strode out of town, she tapped a command against the underside of her wrist. Wake, Sister.

Under the brown of her skin, a white pinpoint of light flickered into being between the forked veins of her right wrist.

In her mind’s eye, she saw the dark dankness of the root cellar her husband had enlarged after her arrival. Saw past the rows of barrels and shelves of vegetables and preserves to where shadows wreathed the back. They would shiver away at her word, the cloaking revealing the silver dart of her solo-ship, the cockpit nose flowering open.

Drone.

A translucent mass would float free of the cockpit, unfurling rippling ribbon-like appendages, the centre of it a pulsing yellow