First Steps

This would be the last time Reynold saw his baby before the war began.

He crouched in the yard and opened his arms. “Here, darling,” he said while Renata stood on wobbly legs a short distance away. She was the most beautiful thing Reynold had ever seen. No nebula had ever taken his breath away so easily.

Renata waved one arm around, trying to keep her balance. Reynold’s eyes lingered on her other arm, mostly unformed and cut off above the elbow. He intensely wanted to know if it had been the haze or genes that had caused such a defect.

Buttery, dawn light iced his caramel hair and thin shoulders. He had waited through fourteen hours of darkness for this moment. The smell of cooked meat wafted through the settlement. Other settlers in standard-issue jumpsuits tended to gardens of Grixia’s equivalent of turnips. An older woman who’d owned a tailor’s shop on Earth carried a quilt across the settlement to give away.

About two years ago, the settlers crash landed on Grixia after their cargo ship’s sensors malfunctioned and told them to dock on the wrong planet. Trying to escape the planet’s atmosphere had been like a game of paddleball; the more they strained the engines, the harder the planet’s gravity yanked them toward the surface. Luckily, they found Grixia was temperate around the equator and replete with deciduous forests, small animals for hunting, and freshwater streams.

They didn’t feel as charmed when they learned other humanoids lived on the planet, mainly in the northern part of the continent. Fear and skepticism prevented the settlers from attempting to establish communication, and so, though acutely aware of each other, the groups did not mingle. The settlers hoped the Grixians wouldn’t mind their holiday on Grixia; surely, friends and family on Earth would find out about the disaster and come to pick them up within the next five years.  

“You can do it!” Reynold cheered. His heart swelled as he watched Renata wobble on her chubby legs. He could have cried from the emotion. “That’s it! Come on, go, go, go!”

His enthusiasm fizzled when he noticed a familiar pinkish-orange haze rolling into their settlement from the north. It was almost iridescent in the sunshine, like a curtain of dish soap.

“Back here, back here,” Renata’s mother said, scooping her up.

The year before, after the last day of snow on Grixia, the settlers first encountered the haze.

When it came, many of them, children included, experienced lethargy, difficulty breathing, and most commonly burning in the eyes. For some, symptoms were unpleasant; for others, they were debilitating, forcing children to miss lecture hour and adults to leave chores undone. Rounds of medical checkups indicated everyone was in perfect health otherwise. Though no one had died, rumors spread that the haze was some kind of poisonous gas the Grixians intended to use to exterminate the settlers.

When the weather warmed, Renata became the first human born on the planet. There was little celebrating, however. Her birth defect confirmed for many that the haze was a chemical weapon. Mass hysteria ensued, as settlers scrambled to make masks and shelter indoors when the haze appeared.

“Wait, one more try!” Reynold exclaimed.

“We better go inside,” Renata’s mother murmured, watching the haze float toward their home. The baby squirmed, and her face puckered.

“Let her try!” Reynold pleaded. “She almost took a step!”

“It’s not safe, Reynold!”

“She won’t learn if you don’t let her try,” he argued.

Renata’s aunt came outside with a bandana hanging from her neck. She squinted at Reynold. “Better get started on your little mission out there,” she sneered. “You’ll see. They’re not our friends.”

At first, Reynold had belonged to a minority who expressed skepticism about the haze being a weapon. Maybe it was something about the environment; after all, they were still very new to Grixia. But when he first held Renata and saw her missing limb, he had to question his viewpoint.

With one last look at Renata, Reynold held a handkerchief to his face and stepped through the haze to meet an old crewmate, Everet. Unwilling to sit around while the other settlers suffered, Everet had arranged a “scouting mission” for that day to see if he and Reynold could gather leftover weapons at the crash site. They also wanted to see if they could find where the haze might be originating from.

“Ready?” Everet asked, hiding an oafish smile under his own cloth. The sun cut through his green irises.

“Yep,” came Reynold’s muffled voice.

Jameson, ex-captain of the ship and unofficial leader of their settlement, intercepted Reynold and Everet. He greeted them. “Where are you both going?”

Everet furrowed his blonde brows. “To the crash site.”

“Why?” Jameson asked, a handkerchief plastered to his lips and nose. When neither man answered, Jameson stepped forward and murmured, “This isn’t a war. We’ll never survive another year—”

“It’s not war?” Everet asked, wide-eyed and ready to rupture. “How can you tell that to these sick people? That it’s all imaginary?”

A few settlers peeked out of their doorways.

“You know, Jameson, I haven’t seen your wife lately,” Everet continued. Soon, the haze swept over the three men, surrounding them in a peach-colored fog.

Though not one to let himself be strong-armed, Jameson stepped aside. “I’m just telling you… We don’t even know them yet or their planet for that matter. We’re still visitors here.”

Everet grumbled, “Yeah, you say that while you parade around with your face covered.”

Reynold and Everet walked around Jameson who stared at their backs in dismay. “My wife is fine,” he called.

After a twenty-minute walk northward, the pair came upon the crater that served as a basinet for the wrecked ship, warped and shredded.

With the handkerchief over his mouth, Everet slid down into the crater and began searching for the arsenal in the rubble. Reynold helped, peeling back busted panels with a shrripp, and cutting through cables. The haze hung like a nuisance around them and the ship parts.

Reynold came across a case full of flash grenades. “Over here.”

Everet picked through what weapons remained. “Jameson says ‘it’s not war,” he scoffed. “Can you believe that? You oughta be more outraged than anybody.”

“Jameson doesn’t want anyone to panic,” Reynold said, taking out a grenade, giving it a little toss up in the air, and placing it back in the case.

Everet grabbed a shotgun and aimed it into the wall of the crater. “How many people can we arm?”

Reynold stood over the pile of recovered weapons with his hands on his hips. “I—"

“Shh!” The pair ducked behind a busted crate when they heard footsteps around the rim of the crater.

“Grab one of those,” Everet whispered, pointing to the grenades. He held the shotgun tight against his chest.

The two stepped out from behind the ship. Reynold saw a man, human-like but with gray skin, a wide chest, and legs twice as long as his torso, skirting the crater curiously. In the morning sun, he looked almost golden. The haze passed across his body, clothed in a white tunic.

“Is that one of them?” Everet whispered to Reynold, quaking with fear.

“Who are you?” Reynold asked. In a display of trust, Reynold laid down the grenade and lifted both hands in the air. “Let us,” he gestured between himself and Everet, “know you.”

The Grixian placed both hands on his chest. “Keleb,” he said in a clear voice from the rim of the crater.

Noticing how the haze passed over Keleb’s face without him even twitching his nose, Everet cried, “Look, he doesn’t even react to it!”

Everet scaled the crater and confronted Keleb, whose face, though not human, showed very humanlike fear. He leveled the shotgun at him.

Reynold came clambering over the edge behind Everet, holding the grenade.

Keleb raised his hands in the air and began to backpedal. He made a whining noise like a cornered calf.

“What is this?” Emmet yelled, gesturing around at the pink in the air. “Answer me!”

Without any other effort to communicate, Keleb turned and sprinted downhill toward a thicket. His gait was sideways, like that of a small child.

Everet aimed the shotgun. “He’s getting too far. Throw it!” He bellowed. “Don’t let that freak get away with what he did.”

Reynold squeezed the grenade in his hand while he watched Keleb run nearer to the thicket, waving his arms to maintain his balance.

“Hurry, go!” Everet shouted.

Reynold pulled the pin and threw the grenade ahead of Keleb. He and Everet dropped to the ground and wrapped their arms around their heads. A white light appeared like a flash of lightning, and a piercing sound sliced through the air, making Reynold’s ears burn and head feel full. Branches rained down and thick, ugly smoke rose into the sky.

After a moment, Reynold and Everet stood and jogged downhill to the edge of the thicket, listening for groans of pain. The acrid smell of sulfur filled their nostrils, so thick it turned to sludge in the back of their throats. Reynold and Everet brought their handkerchiefs back to their faces.

What they stumbled upon left them speechless. A beautiful grove of wildflowers, all colors of the spectrum, carpeted the ground, crowded enough for their stems to intertwine.

The pinkish-orange haze concentrated above the flowers in dense clouds, sparking like synaptic impulses in the brain.

Reynold and Everet dropped into the grove, their boots turning the flowers into mush. Everet knelt down. With the handkerchief still against his face, he laid the gun aside and touched a petal. A layer of powder brushed off easily and disappeared into the air. He rubbed it between his fingers.

“Do you think…” Everet’s face looked strained.

Reynold cupped his palm and some pink specks landed delicately inside.

Nearby mewling broke them out of their trances. Keleb lay in a fetal position with his hands tremoring over his ears. His eyes rolled around in their sockets. He cried something in an unknown language.

“What do you think he’s saying?” Everet asked, his face screwed up in disgust.

Reynold’s stomach felt hollow. “I think he’s blind… And deaf maybe, too.”

“W—” Everet turned away and sneezed.

Reynold looked at him. They both reached an epiphany.

Panicked, Everet shouted, “This was a trap! Don’t you see!?” He fumbled with the shotgun.

Reynold grabbed Everet’s shirt. “Hey, calm down! Wait!”

“My eyes!” Everet said, squeezing them closed. “We need to get out of here!”

Reynold looked down at the Grixian, writhing on the ground like a newborn lamb and uttering strange noises.

With one eye shut, Everet called Keleb a derogatory word and pulled the trigger on the shotgun. The blast rang louder in Reynold’s ears and conscience than the grenade had.

Holding his temple, Everet trotted back toward the crash site behind Reynold. He dropped on the ground at the edge of the crater, scratching his face.

Reynold dropped next to him, sniffling, his eyes puffy.

“That… He lured us there,” Everet rambled. Looking at Reynold, he frowned and said, “Hey, why don’t we walk back and see the doctor? You don’t look so hot either.”

Reynold wiped streams of tears from his cheeks.

“I didn’t think it usually got you this bad, but, woo, that was a lot.” Everet put a hand on Reynold’s shoulder. He tsked. “And Jameson says there’s no war.”