“I thought you might like this room,” Aeson says softly, looking at me. “This one is yours.”
I turn to him, tearing myself away from the view. “Oh!” I say. “You mean I get my own room? Oh, thank God!”
And then I put my hand up against my mouth, realizing how awkward and possibly rude that sounds. “Oh, I’m sorry! I mean—”
But he starts laughing at me, again chuckling softly. “Gwen . . . oh, Gwen.” He shakes his head, but there is only amusement in his expression, and a kind of innocent delight. “I hope you didn’t think we would be sharing a bed on your very first awkward night here, when you barely know me, barely feel comfortable with me or your surroundings. . . . Besides, by Imperial rules of conduct it is not permitted before we are actually wed.”
“It’s not? Oh, okay.” And then, just like that, my head is on fire, and I’m turning red as a beet.
Seeing me blush, he starts to blush too. And he quickly looks away again with a little smile.
But he regains control swiftly and starts talking, to dissipate the awkwardness. “This bedroom has always been a favorite of my sister’s,” he tells me. “Manala liked to stay here with me in secret when she was small, whenever she wanted to hide from our parents or the nurses and servants. And she still uses it upon occasion, whenever she’s in the Palace, preferring it to her own Quarters. It’s all about that window. She used to think it’s magical.” And he nods at the oddly-shaped window with its darkening view of the star-filled night.
“Your sister is right, it is magical!” I say with enthusiasm. “And Manala—the Imperial Princess—she sounds like someone I would like to meet.”
He smiles, and the look in his eyes tells me I’ve said something very right. “Oh, you’ll meet her soon. And she will be very happy to meet you.”
“Great! But—if this is her favorite room, how can I take it?” I say. “I don’t want to impose! I mean—”
“You’re not imposing. Manala will understand and expect you to have this room on her behalf.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am certain.”
“Okay.” And I smile at him shyly and just stare at him—and he at me—for a long moment during which we both appear to be equally mesmerized with each other. Meanwhile, a slowly blooming smile comes to his lips, his eyes, all of him also, to parallel mine. . . .
Until I suddenly remember. “Oh—my things!” I say. “My two bags from Earth are still in the other apartment.”
Aeson blinks, recovering again from staring at me, and nods. “They will be delivered here first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you,” I say. “But what about for now? I don’t have my sleeping shirt, and my toothbrush. And oh—what about some water? Is there my own bathroom?”
“Of course!” He nods, becoming businesslike, and takes me to the other end of the room through a doorway to show me a very large bathroom with yet another sunken pool and shower area, and then a large storage closet and dressing room.
“This is all yours. There are personal toiletries and everything you might need, including toothbrushes—though I must warn you, we have a different style of brush for the teeth, not like the ones you use on Earth.”
He takes me to a mirrored cabinet, where a row of various pristine brushes stand in jars, next to unidentifiable odd implements, and picks out one that looks more like a bottle brush. “This,” he says, “is for the teeth. And the paste we use, made of natural ground plants, is in this round container here.”
“You are going to have to explain to me all the rest of these things eventually,” I say in embarrassment, staring at the unfamiliar toiletries and the nearby stacks of fine fabrics that must serve as towels.
He raises one brow with amusement. “Eventually, yes. But let’s leave that for tomorrow.”
Next he points out the storage room. “Oh, and feel free to wear anything that’s in that closet. The clothing belongs to my sister who routinely leaves her outfits here and then has new ones delivered, forgetting the ones already in the closet.”
He speaks with amusement and points to multiple rows and rows of hanging outfits that to my untrained eye look like the rack of a high-end boutique, or maybe a clothing museum—fabulous, exotic, and completely not my style, in shimmering fabrics, stunning delicate and bold colors, and very much High Court.
“Wow!” I stare at the clothes with a lost look.
Oh, no . . . it occurs to me. As the Imperial Consort, I might have to wear clothes like this all the time.
“Manala is probably near your size,” Aeson says, glancing at me appraisingly, and his close gaze again sears me with a strange yet now-familiar charge of electricity. “There has to be something in there you can wear for tonight.”
“I’ll try . . .” I whisper.
And then he remembers something else. “Are you hungry?” he says with concern. “Forgive my negligence in not asking sooner.”
I shake my head. “Not really. I think I am still too overwhelmed to eat. . . .”
“You must at least be thirsty.” He shakes his head at me. “Come, you need to have something before bed.”
And we exit the suite comprising my quarters and return back to his own, through the small door. Here in his workroom, Aeson shows me what could be a cold storage cabinet equivalent of an Earth refrigerator. It is well stocked with food containers and drink bottles, as far as I can tell.
“I tend to eat and drink alone, as much as possible,” he tells me. “So, except for the main formal meals at the Palace, the servants know to provide me with foodstuff.”
“I know,” I say, with another tiny smile.
He glances at me in surprise. “You do?”
“I mean, I know you always eat alone at your desk at the CCO back on the ship, so this makes sense.”
“Oh,” he says. “I suppose, yes.”
“Why?” I look at him seriously. “Why did you always eat alone? Why isolate yourself so much? I mean, I kind of get it—there’s your rank, and you want the crew to feel at ease, which is generous. But on the other hand, at least sometimes it’s nice to have someone else there to share a meal—”
He watches me with a complex expression. “And now I have you. . . .”
The words affect me strangely. I look away and nod, and my lips form a smile, but my heart constricts painfully on his behalf. There is so much about him, it occurs to me, so much that seems rooted in dark loneliness. . . .
But he distracts me by taking out a bottle of some dark plum-colored liquid, and pours its contents into two elegant glasses that he retrieves from a shelf next to the food storage. The rich colored drink fizzes as it fills the clear glasses, and the foam heads rise, colored a shade of cream and mauve.
“What is this?” I ask, taking one of the glasses and sniffing a somewhat fruity pleasant aroma that vaguely reminds me of hops and wheat and raspberries.
“My favorite stuff to drink,” he says. “It’s qvaali. Think of it as a cross between weakly brewed Earth beer and fruit juice.”
“Is it alcoholic?”
“Not enough to make you drunk,” he says, looking at me with a sly smile.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” I say in a teasing tone.
He snorts. “You would need to drink a barrel of this before you start feeling any kind of inebriation.” And then he lifts up his own glass and takes a deep thirsty swig. “Ah . . .” he says.
I follow suit. Apparently I am very thirsty, because the drink feels and tastes like sudden heavenly ambrosia, as it soothes me instantly, quenching my thirst and going down smoothly, with a small bite of wonderful bubbles. The flavor is a little like apple cider with a hint of berries and wheat.
“Oh, I like it!” I say. “It’s not too sweet, and much better than soda.”
He watches my reaction with a faint smile. “It’s why I like it. I don’t like things that are too sweet.”
Okay, is that supposed to have a double meaning? Is he implying somethi
ng about me? Am I overthinking, as usual?
As I consider this, he tips his glass slightly toward me in an easy gesture, and nods his head.
“To you, Gwen. . . . Not a very formal toast, but welcome to your new life. Welcome to Atlantida.”
“Thanks,” I say shyly. And then I do the same thing, lift my glass to him. “Back at you, Aeson. . . . Thank you . . . for everything. For saving me . . . for being there for me, always.”
And suddenly, just like that, my voice cracks, and all those ridiculous tears come back again out of nowhere, and I am a sobbing mess.
“Oh no, Gwen!” he says with alarm, setting down his glass on the nearest surface, and taking a step toward me. “Hush . . . hush, im amrevu.” He takes my hand and presses it gently, looking at me seriously.
“I’m sorry . . .” I blather. “This is all so overwhelming, and I just want Mom and Dad here too, and George . . . and oh, what about Gracie and Gordie still up there with the Fleet in orbit, are they coming down here soon . . . at some point? I mean—I need to tell them everything that happened . . . and oh my God, they will be freaking out! Oh my God!”
“Gwen,” he says, and his grip on my hand tightens. “It’s okay. . . . Look at me . . . take a deep breath, and look at me.”
His voice is soft and almost hypnotic, almost a power voice, and it acts to make me stop crying and glance up at him.
“Put your drink down, and come with me, I have one other thing to show you tonight,” he says calmly, and his composure distracts me completely.
“Okay,” I whisper, and leave my drink on the desk. “Wow, you’re good,” I add, as we begin to walk back through the many rooms toward the front ante-chamber. “You managed to distract me from this awful weeping. . . .”
“I’ve had much practice,” he tells me with a light expression, and appears relieved that I’ve calmed down. “With a younger sibling—you must know how it is.”
“Oh lord, yes—Gracie.” I smile, and sniffle to clear my nose.
“By the way, I’ll make sure she is brought here as quickly as possible,” he says. “And your brother too.”
I start to thank him with much enthusiasm. But in that moment we approach the glassed-in wall of the ante-chamber that faces the long outside balcony. Aeson opens a glass door, and we emerge outside in the greenish-teal bright darkness of night.
A cool breeze hits us, and the air is fresh and amazing, rich with oxygen. Immediately it clears my head and sends goose bumps down my bare arms. In my sleeveless Low Court outfit, I shiver slightly.
The balcony overhangs the same garden complex that I recognize from this morning when I first arrived, and we appear to be very high up, at least ten floors, and almost on the top level of the Palace. The gardens below are faintly lit with occasional frosted spheres sitting on top of columns, casting a warm lantern glow over the greenery turned black by the night.
Normally I would be looking at these wonderfully landscaped gardens with curiosity, but instead I am forced to look up at the amazing star-filled dome of sky overhead. . . .
The stars! Oh, they are pressing down from on high in an infinite pin-point mosaic of light—so dense and thick, so unreal, they appear to be pasted on the fabric of the world. And oh . . . they are not merely white dots of brilliance, but are multi-colored! I see faint splotches of pink and red and blue and green and violet, scattered like royal jewels against the general white. Beyond them I see the underlying dense layers of colorful nebulae, like swirling filaments of gaseous light dissolved in the darkness of space, stirred by a cosmic wind and moving in an endless slow spiral dance.
The weight of the sky is immense, both invigorating and somehow terrifying in the awe it invokes.
I stare up, my lips parted, and feel the grandeur of the universe, made particularly vivid in this alien place. And I realize that this inverted bowl of stars is now the only thing that connects me to my own distant home.
Earth is out there somewhere . . . too far to comprehend on a human scale. And yet, now that I look up, the connection is made real. When I was back on Earth, home was the solid tangible thing under my feet, and I looked up at the night sky to feel the wonder of distance from the self. But now, here on Atlantis, I look up to feel the wonder of proximity to my point of origin.
“This weird layered sky, these stars,” I say. “There are no words sufficient. They are stunning!”
I glance away from the heavens momentarily to see Aeson watching me with a look of rare wonder.
“You brought me here to show me all this, right?” And I point with my hand, sweeping it upward and out, encompassing the panorama of sky.
But he smiles. “Yes and no,” he says. “Keep looking. Turn your head a little. Over there.” And he points to the horizon on the right.
And then I see it. . . .
A huge impossible moon is rising! It is at least twice as large as Earth’s Moon, and it is tinted violet that transforms into grey and blinding white around the edges. Its phase is a bloated crescent, a quarter-moon. Even though it’s not full, the light of its albedo seems stronger than Earth’s moonlight, probably because Hel is brighter than Sol, and this moon itself is slightly closer to Atlantis and is a larger disk, with more surface area to reflect more light.
“Wow!” I exclaim, and recall momentarily how relatively small this moon appeared on approach to Atlantis when the Fleet decelerated. What a wildly misleading optical illusion!
Aeson chuckles with pleasure at my reaction. “Keep looking,” he says, and points to the opposite side of the sky, this time high above the horizon line.
I glance where he points and see two more moons, closer to each other than to the first grand moon, but still sufficiently far apart in the heavens to show slightly different phases, and both much smaller than Earth’s Moon—the blue-gray one is two thirds the size of the Moon, and the silver one is probably only a half.
“Oh my God!” I say. “I am on an alien planet!”
The realization strikes me so hard, and with so much impossible sense of wonder that I grab hold of Aeson’s arm, and hold on tight.
“Yes, you are,” he says with amusement. “You are also home.”
“Three moons!” I say, still holding his muscular arm, and feeling the strength of his biceps even through the thickness of his jacket sleeve. “Oh, wow. . . . Okay, let me see if I can remember their names from my classes.”
“All right. Show me what you know.” He nods, watching me with his head craned slightly.
First, I glance up at the great purple moon rising near the horizon on the right side. “The big moon is Amrevet, or Love, in Atlantean.”
“Correct.”
“And the tiny silver one that’s full is Pegasus. . . . While the middle-sized one that’s slightly larger and sort of bluish and gibbous is Mar-Yan, or The Rider.”
“That’s right. You remember well.” Aeson looks at me with an intimate expression. The warm glow from indoors seeps gently onto the balcony, faintly illuminating his face from one side, while the rest is shadowed—but it’s a soft shadow, because the night itself is so burning-bright. His eyes glisten with starlight and the reflections of the three moons. . . .
I must look the same way to him, I think. In this strange bright night, we are visible to each other, and our expressions easy to read.
Or maybe it’s just the way our new level of intimacy has been established.
I take a deep breath, and break the contact of our gazes, while my hand remains on his arm, holding him gently, because I don’t want to let go. I look up again, throwing my head back, straining to take in the entirety of the sky—its trillions of stars, and the rich layers of colors and nebulae and its profundity.
“So . . . many . . . stars!” I intersperse each word with a pause of wonder. “And it’s so weird to see an actual galactic nebula with the naked eye! I mean, that’s a nebula, right? On Earth, you see only a few dots of stars, even on a clear night, and that’s it. It’s worst in the cities,
but even if you get out of brightly lit and polluted urban areas into the wilderness where the visibility is best, it still doesn’t even come close to all this wonder.”
“Earth, and your entire solar system, is located on the outer edge of one of the spiral arms of your home galaxy,” he says. “Which means all you ever see of your own galaxy is a distant faint trail—hence, the Milky Way. You are so far away from the galactic center, that there are fewer visible stars, and fewer objects in the sky in general.”
I nod.
“Atlantis on the other hand, and the entire Hel solar system, are in a very central spot in our galaxy, at the base of the spiral. It’s why this sky is so dense with stars. And yes, you can even see the swirling arms of the spiral galaxy if you stare long enough. There, look!” And he points up toward specific patterns of star cluster light that indeed appear to trace a kind of grand swirl against the darkness. “We call our galaxy the Coral Reef.”
“That’s beautiful . . .” I say, continuing to look up. “The Coral Reef—is that because of the reddish and rose colors of that nebula?” I point and glance again at the splotches of varicolored light against the cosmic vacuum.
“Yes, in part,” Aeson says. “Coral reefs are alive, seething with vibrant energy and so much color. And so is this galaxy.”
As he speaks, I notice, directly overhead near the zenith where the stars are thickest, and somewhat to the right, there seems to be a small, vaguely circular area that’s mostly black and devoid of light—a kind of negative blotch, compared to the rest of the living sky. The stars form almost a circular coronal border around it. “What’s that?” I ask. “It’s like a weird dark spot. Very few stars there. . . .”
Aeson looks in the direction I point out. “That’s the galactic center,” he says softly. “Most galaxies have gravitational anomalies such as black holes in their centers, around which the rest of the star material rotates and clusters together. This one is ours, a massive black hole. . . . Ae-Leiterra.”
At the sound of the name I feel a sudden pang in my chest. “Wait! What?” I say, while my pulse starts racing. “That’s Ae-Leiterra? You mean, the same one that Consul Denu mentioned, when he talked about you being a hero?”