The little star did try to fight me in the end. When we reached the sandy bank of the river and water sloshed over its feet, it yelped and careened backwards against me. I held it in place, then with a soft grunt, tossed it up over my shoulder. I didn’t have the focus to fight with the creature. I needed to get into the water, breathe, and remember.

I also needed to maintain constant physical contact with the little star. So this would have to do.

“I just need to get in the water. Stop struggling,” I murmured, wading forward as the little star bucked and wriggled. Its knees crashed against my chest, its hips bucking wildly at my shoulder. I clamped one arm across the backs of the creature’s thighs, then fastened my other hand across its backside, holding it in place as I waded hip-deep into the water.

I stopped when the water reached my waist, staring down the length of the wide river, watching the way the sun disappeared and turned the surface to something silken and hushed. I felt myself frowning, the muscles in my face wracked with tension in response to the answers that I was sure were right there. Right there and just out of reach. This water meant something. The corresponding river raged inside my head, throwing images and words upwards, like the bones of lost ships hurled up to the storming surface.

For a fraction of a second, the river in front of me and inside of me converged.

The sun warms the Bohnebregg river as I wade in up to my waist. I turn back to see someone – a male – in the water with me. Behind him stands the palace on the banks.

“But you aren’t even looking,” the man says. His hair is bone-white, his eyes burning like pale blue fire. His wings, black where mine are green, rustle behind him, lit up by both the drenching sun and the bright blue points of his starmap.

“You aren’t looking for yours either,” I toss back at him easily. It’s a conversation we’ve had countless times before. He’s always been far more reserved and risk-averse than I have.

“I am younger than you,” he counters. “I have more time.”

I grin and thwack the water with my tail, sending a small tsunami crashing towards him. He does not even flinch as the glittering water explodes on his stone-coloured skin.

“Hard to believe you’re the younger one. You sound like some wizened old crone,” I scoff. He’s always been this way. A serious, stoic worrier. I slosh water at him again, more gently this time, trying to get him to ease up, to see that there is more time. There will always be more time.

But his gaze only narrows, his wings twitching with tension.

“You know what will happen,” he says gravely. “You know what will happen if you do not find-”

He vanished.

So did the sun. And the palace.

I whirled, searching for him, but he was gone.

I knew him. I knew him.

What his name was, or who he was to me, I could not say. But I felt I knew him nearly as well as myself. That he was someone important. The place where my left eye used to be ached as I tried to keep the image of him fastened in my mind. My chest heaved, my breath catching in my throat. I clung to the only thing I could, the only anchor I had in this river – the Bohnebregg river. My little star.

I clutched at its legs, feeling like if I let go, I would completely cease to exist.

CHAPTER SIX

Suvi

I’d long given up on fighting the alien monster’s hold on me. It was too big, too strong, and wasting my energy was pointless. Instead, as it dragged me into the river and held me on its shoulder, staring intently into the distance, I stilled. I carefully placed my palms flat against the muscled expanse between the creature’s wings, lifting my head and staring through the curtain of my hair to get my bearings.

This landscape was nothing like where we’d just been. There was no sign of the caves or the valley we’d come from. No sign of the ship, either. The sandy soil was a golden beige instead of blue. And all the water. We’d relied completely on our ship’s water supplies because there’d barely been any on the surface of the cave planet, let alone massive rivers like this. We knew from surveys and scans that the entire cave planet had been like that – mostly dry, with the only life forms being fungi and forms of bacteria. I gasped when, straight ahead, some sort of water fowl took off from a nearby bank, wings unfolding in a glittering array.

This isn’t the same planet.

I gulped when that instinctive realization hit me. My rational mind tried to fight against it. I hadn’t made it to the ship, so how the hell could I have ended up on another world entirely? I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to relive the moment when the winged alien had cracked the sky like the shell of an egg and pulled me through it. It hadn’t felt like much of anything at all. It had been like stepping through a door.

But somehow, on the other side, we’d ended up in another sky.

And now, we were standing in a freezing fucking river.

Luckily the thing holding me was so tall that neither my feet at his front nor my head at his back were in the water. But even so, my boots and the cuffs of my pants were soaked from when the alien had first marched me into the water. And it was cold. I shivered, curling my hands into fists against the scales of the alien’s back as I continued to crane my neck this way and that. Why it had carried me into this water only to hold me and stand there and stare at nothing, I had no fucking idea. For the moment, it didn’t seem keen on hurting me, at least. I’ll have to get away from it the first chance that I have.

But then what? My heart sank. I didn’t recognize anything around me. For the briefest flicker of a moment, I thought we might have been on Earth. But that water bird was massive, with four spindly legs, unlike anything I’d ever seen or heard of on Earth. And the reeds and rushes were strange, too. They had fluffy tufts, reminiscent of something from Earth. But in those tufts at the top were hard, gleaming threads of what almost looked like metal. Like copper had been spun alongside something as soft as cotton.

We were not on Earth.

Maybe I was dreaming.

Maybe I was dead.

No.

My resolve hardened. There was no point in giving up and pretending this all wasn’t real. I had to function under the assumption that my senses were feeding me accurate information. I had to assume that this was actually happening, no matter how little sense it all made.

And I had to survive it.

Almost as if reacting to my inner thoughts, the alien suddenly tensed and whirled. Its breath came quick and ragged, and its head swung back and forth as if looking for something. Its hold tightened on me, and I held my breath, terrified it would crush me with the strength of its hands or drop me in the freezing river.

It did neither. It remained still and breathing harshly for a long moment before trudging back onto the riverbank. My hair swung with its movements. Blood pounded in my head as I shivered again, more violently this time.

I didn’t think the air was that cold, but the water had been, and the iciness clinging to my boots and legs was sapping the heat out of the rest of my body. When the alien had suddenly started and whirled, more water had splashed up the backs of my legs. Only my tank top and bra had come away from the river unscathed, but they were damp with cooled sweat from my earlier run.

Heat radiated off of the alien’s body, but I tried to ignore it. I rejected the instinct to burrow against its back and started twisting in its grip once more. Surprisingly, its huge fingers settled around my waist and it set me on my feet. Between what felt like an entire body’s worth of blood dumping out of my head, and the frantic, freezing, locking up of my muscles, I didn’t stay on my feet for long. My knees buckled.