Someday

“Home is where the heart is.”

~ Gaius Plinius Secundus

It was time to turn around and head back. After three long days of the radar’s inactive beeping, Spencer was tired of waiting. If he’d had it his way, he’d have left two days ago. But he was under strict orders to stay. Clarkson supposedly had some ‘gut instinct’ that there was someone stranded there. And while Spencer knew full well that Clarkson’s ‘gut instinct’ was bogus, he also knew that the same nasally voice that nagged out orders at him through his earpiece could issue the command to terminate him in an instant.

And that’s why Spencer was so relieved when the message came through to him. “You may abort the mission, Spencer, there’s obviously no one there.” He steered the sleek craft out of the dwarf planet’s orbit and prepared to create a portal back to headquarters. Finally, after a week, his aching legs would have a chance to stand on solid ground. 

But just as he was about to open the portal, the radar picked up a signal. So there is someone here, he sighed. The solid ground would have to wait. He swung his ship back around and followed the signal back to the dwarf planet. It seemed to be coming from a crater on the planet’s surface. 

Maneuvering onto the planet’s surface was not an easy feat, but it was routine for someone who spent their time rescuing people stranded in galaxies far from home. Someone like Spencer. He gently eased the ship under a low-laying ledge of rock. Putting on a bulky spacesuit, Spencer stepped out of the craft into the bitter-cold, windy atmosphere. Sand flew everywhere, making it difficult to make out anything more than a meter away. How could someone survive in these temperatures without protection? Spencer wondered, half-hoping his rescuee wasn’t frozen to death by the time they were found.

“Hello? Hello? Anybody here?” Spencer bellowed but between his suit and the wind, nothing could be heard. 

He wandered for hours, but the landscape didn’t seem to change at all. The ledge where his ship was parked was getting smaller and smaller until it was only a dot in the distance, and then nothing at all. Without any sense of direction anymore, Spencer was completely and absolutely lost. 

There was no sign of the person who sent that signal, or what they sent it with. There was only one thing Spencer could do, and that was to turn around a hundred and eighty degrees and head back the way he came. That was his best chance. 

But then he saw it. In the distance, there stood a small, makeshift satellite dish. Who’d built it? Were they still alive somehow? Half of Spencer wanted to just ignore it and return to his ship. There was nothing he wanted more than to get out of that place. Yet, he still hastily headed towards the structure. As he approached the satellite dish, he saw a figure sitting on the ground next to it.

“Hello! Excuse me! Sir! Madam!” he called towards it, but it didn’t respond. It just stayed in its hunched-up position, curled up into a ball. “I’m here to rescue you!” 

It was a middle-aged woman, wearing a heavy woolen coat and boots. Her skin was blue from the cold, and where her chest should have been heaving up and down it was still. Her sea-green eyes were open and glossed over, looking to the sky as her hands clasped in prayer. It was a haunting sight to behold.

Spencer walked around her, being careful not to disturb her or the belongings that were scattered around her. He continued looking around, walking beyond the corpse, not daring to glance back at it. He didn’t even know where he was going. He just needed to get away from there. But as he walked, a strange thing happened. The air seemed to get warmer and warmer until it was almost room temperature. 

“Hello! Please let there be someone here!” Spencer shouted one final time. He was almost too tired to go on. But his cry was met with silence.

“Hello?” came a meek voice from behind him. Spencer almost screamed in shock. A young child in a ragged coat was suddenly standing behind him. He looked like the woman who froze to death.

“Hey there,” Spencer said, half laughing, half crying. “Is there anyone else here with you?”

“My mother,” he whispered as if he was telling a secret. 

“Where’s your mother?” Spencer asked, but he already knew the answer to that.

“She went outside into the cold place. She told me to stay here, no matter what.” There was longing in the boy’s voice.

“How long ago was that, dear?”

“A few days ago.”

Spencer fought to blink back tears. How could he tell an innocent child that he doesn’t have a mother anymore? “Wait here just a minute, ok? I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t leave this warm area.”

“Don’t go, please! My mother said exactly that, and she never came back!” The boy clasped Spencer’s hand tightly.

“I need to go get a present for you, okay?”

“A present? What is it?”

“It’s a surprise, you’ll find out later. But for now, you have to stay here,” Spencer lied. It was a small white lie, but he hated lying to small, impressionable children. The boy thought about it for a second, then he nodded and let go of Spencer’s hand. 

Spencer stepped back out into the cold, harsh outside world. He quickly located his ship and flew it back to the haven of warmth.

“Is this my present?” the boy exclaimed in joy, running up to the spacecraft.

“Yes, now get in, we have to go.”

“What about my mother?”

“Your mother… is in a better place.”

“Will I ever see her again?”

“Someday.”

*****

“Hi Noah, I’m Emile Clarkson, and I’ll be your new mother!”

She called herself his mother, but that was just a ruse. His mother had calloused hands from cooking and working and they stroked his forehead with the gentility of a feather. Emile’s hands were baby-smooth, hands that hadn’t done a day of work in their lives, and they were ice-cold. 

“Just call me mom!”

He called his mother “mom” because she was his mother. He could never call Emile “mom”.

“Welcome to your new home, Noah!”

They called it home, but that word had no meaning anymore. Home had always been where his mother would cook him three meals a day, where she tucked him into bed every night and read him bedtime stories. Not this expensive, large mansion with a hundred and six different rooms and a chandelier in the dining room. 

Home was a whole world away. But maybe, just maybe he’d get there. Someday.