Now, here Andra was, on a planet she didn’t even want to be on, alone, with no clue as to what happened or what to do next.
She dug her heel into the sand. “They’re gone, instead,” she finished.
The man beside her looked confused but nodded sympathetically. “Sorries, Goddess.”
She winced. “Please don’t call me that. It’s Andromeda. Or Andra. Everybody calls me Andra.”
“Andra,” he repeated, misshaping the vowels, stumbling over the string of consonants. “It exists an honor. I’m Lew-Eadin. Wead as a shortcut.”
Andra wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I’m just going to call you Lew.”
He laughed, though she didn’t understand the joke. “Lew. Certz, then, Goddess.” He shook his head. “Sorries. Andra.”
Below, one of the children shouted above the rest, a long string of words Andra couldn’t understand. She was starting to recognize patterns though, mining familiar syllables from the mush of elongated vowels and clipped consonants. She itched to write down what they were saying, to map it out.
The soldier laughed at something one of the children said.
Andra nodded to them. “How come you don’t speak like they do?”
“I do,” he said, raking his hand through his brown curls. “But when I convo with a goddess, I speak High Goddess. I learned it from the First, as did Zhade. As did most of Eerensed, which you will hear if you come with us.”
The children dove for the fox/dog, their smudged faces lit with intensity.
“Come with you?” Andra murmured, but it wasn’t really a question, just an absurd idea—tagging along with strangers to a place she knew nothing about. But on the heels of that absurd idea came the realization that she was low on options.
Lew-Eadin was quiet for a moment. “Firm, come with us. You can save us.”
She snorted. “I’m not a goddess.”
“So you say,” Lew-Eadin said, smiling, though he gave her a sideways look. “But, full respect, I can’t say I believe you.”
Andra shrugged, tearing up a tuft of brown, crisp grass. “Suit yourself.”
Lew-Eadin blinked, obviously confused by the phrase, but didn’t comment. There was movement behind them, and Andra turned to see that Zhade had climbed the hill. His hood was pulled over his head, and the bandages on his hands had been replaced with fingerless gloves. He sat, wriggling between them and kicking up a cloud of sand in the process. Andra’s eyes smarted.
“Wead, are you talking gnats with our Goddess here?” Zhade asked, then let out a cheer as one of the children launched themself at the fox/dog and missed, the animal slithering its way through the child’s arms. He turned back to Lew. “She’s had a day and a half. Leave her resting.”
Andra fought back an eye roll. She was starting to make sense of Zhade’s speech patterns, and if anyone was “talking gnats,” it was him. She had the feeling he wasn’t being honest or, at least, wasn’t telling the whole truth.
“You woke me up,” she said. It was an accusation this time. He had no right. And maybe she was still a bit mad he’d seen her naked. The paunch of her stomach, the heft of her thighs. The birthmark she hated—a starburst of dense freckles, like a pointillist painting, just under the left side of her collarbone.
“Firm,” Zhade said slowly, then bit his lip. “We’ve convoed this already. Do you have no memory? We woke you. I’m Zhade, this is Lew-Eadin. You’re the Third Goddess, the one who will save us all, stop the pockets, restore the forests and seas, which personalish, I don’t believe ever existed. Just fishes and wishes. More importantish, you’ll get me back to Eerensed.”
She narrowed her eyes. It shouldn’t have been possible—some random person waking her up. People went to school for years to become cryo’technicians. “You understand manual technology.”
He leaned forward. “I don’t comp what that means, but it sounds full good, marah?”
“How did you know how to wake me up?”
“I’m a sorcer, Goddess.” He grinned. “Best there is.”
“Where did you learn how to open my ’tank?”
He shrugged, his expression blank. “From another sorcer. In Eerensed. Where I once lived. Where I’m taking you now that I’ve found you, Goddess.”
She scratched at the sand crawling down her neck. “My name’s Andra, and I’ve told you, I’m not a goddess.” She paused, cocking her head to examine him. He seemed arrogant and ridiculous, but his brown eyes were clear, sane. “Surely you can’t believe I am.”
Zhade picked up a flat rock and twirled it between his fingers, leaning back on his other hand. “I reck you were agrave for as long as anyone has memory. I reck you could probablish perform magic beyond the best sorcer.” He leaned forward conspiratorially, his blond hair flopping over his eyes. “Which is me, beedub.” He sat back. “I reck you speak High Goddess full flawless. And I just witnessed you come back to life. If you’re not a goddess, what are you?”
Just Andra. Twenty-second-century teenager and all-around underachiever.
“I’m from . . . the past,” Andra said, wincing. Even to her ears, it sounded fantastical.
Zhade let out a bark of a laugh. “Me too. I traveled here from the moment before this one.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I reck full well.”
He watched her for a moment. Andra stared back, tugging at the tight material of the borrowed shirt where it had ridden up over her stomach.
“I’m not a goddess,” she muttered.
Zhade waved his hand, dismissive. “Fortunatish for me, it doesn’t import what you for true are. It’s full good that people believe you exist a goddess. The Guv will let me in if I have you with me.”
“So I’m a bargaining chip?”
“Neg. For certz not.” He paused. “What’s a bargaining chip?”
“You’re using me to get what you want.”
“Oh, then firm. You’re definitish a bargaining chip.”
Andra stood, beating the sand off her pants. “I’m not going with you to this Ear-and-sand,” she said, though she wasn’t so sure. What other options did she have? Stay here? In this town where she didn’t speak the language, didn’t know how to survive?
“Eerensed,” Zhade corrected. “And I resurrected you. You owe me.”
“She literalish just woke, sir,” Lew-Eadin’s voice was bored, perfunctory, as though he were used to arguing with Zhade. His accent grew thicker, more natural. “She needs time and a half to adjust.”