Anna could see a glow like a campfire on the southern edge of the island as she flew across the lake. Mara was waiting for her. A small, soft light floated just above her hand like a beacon and lit the ground beneath her feet.
The two sat down on a patch of grass surrounded by thick bushes and tree roots that dipped into the water like long fingers. It was quiet here on this tiny island. The only sound came from the slight waves lapping up against the shore. The moon, almost full, reflected off the water’s surface in shifting bands of light. Mara sat silently and looked out across the lake as Anna described her visions. When Anna finished, Mara leaned back and shook her head.
“It’s possible to reconstruct a picture of someone else’s visual experiences,” Mara said.
“It’s more than that, Mara. I could actually feel what it was like on that planet. The temperature of the water. The smell of salt. I was there. Really there,” Anna said.
“So you really think the wormhole is here?”
“I’m certain.”
Mara put on her goggles and motioned for Anna to do the same. Both activated their full masks, their faces lit by a faint light that traced the interior seal. The red stripes on Anna’s sleeves glowed neon red. Mara stood from the grass patch and offered her hand. Anna pulled herself up and the two looked down into the darkness of the water.
“All this time and it was right here. I never thought to look in water,” Mara said as she shook her head. “I don’t understand any of this, Anna. How the creature talks to you. How the wormhole stays open on its own.”
“I have an idea.” Anna grinned. “Let’s go find out.”
Anna dove headfirst into the lake. The light from her mask lit up the water in front of her, making the flecks of algae luminescent. Pondweed drifted back and forth with the slight current. Anna looked up just in time to see Mara dive in, her silhouette against the light of the bright moon shimmering on the surface. The two held hands as they floated side by side underwater.
“You’re the expert here. What should we be looking for?” Mara asked over the iCom.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. Bending light, maybe, like you’re looking through a fishbowl,” Anna said.
Anna let go of Mara’s hand and began to swim slowly along the edge of the island, shining the light from her mask on the sloping shelf. Mara followed just behind. A fish darted out from one of the crevices and startled them both. Anna looked more closely and realized it wasn’t just a crevice but a shallow cave leading under the island.
“I don’t see anything—” Mara started.
“Wait,” Anna cut her off.
Anna swam in closer. The cave wall was made of granite, not soil, and it receded under the island by about five feet. It was a shallow recess, no more than four feet high and five feet across, but tucked far enough under to prevent anyone seeing it from the surface. The light from her mask illuminated all four walls in a white glow. Anna’s eyes opened wide. Her pulse quickened. This was it. There in the center of the shallow cave spun a dark orb, three feet in diameter. The color was different from the wormhole she had seen weeks before—almost black, with flecks of shimmering light. The edges bent the light around it, and Anna could feel a deep hum in her body as she drew closer.
“It’s beautiful,” Anna said softly. Her fingers touched the outside rim of the orb; the bending light distorted the shape of her hand.
“What is it?” Mara asked as she floated just outside the cave.
“The way through.” Anna turned around and smiled.
She squeezed herself against the side of the cave to give Mara a clearer view. Mara placed her hand on the top edge of the cave to keep from bumping her head and peered in. She wasn’t sure what to expect. She knew what the physics should be. She had modeled what a structure like this should look like. What she wasn’t ready for was how she felt. A deeper emotion than excitement or even fear.
“Be careful, Anna. We don’t know what this is,” Mara said.
“Sure we do. Remember? I’ve done this before.” Anna placed her hand on Mara’s shoulder.
“How does it maintain its shape without collapsing in on itself?”
“I don’t know. It just does,” Anna replied.
“This makes no sense. I don’t see any impact on the surrounding area. No apparent energy source,” Mara said as she squeezed farther into the cramped cave, her hand unconsciously drawn toward the spinning orb. “What do we do now?”
Anna wasn’t used to seeing Mara this way: hesitant, unsure, the one seeking answers. But she knew what her friend wanted.
“We explore,” Anna said.
Mara paused. “Yes, we do. Against all good judgement.”
“That hasn’t stopped us before.”
Mara looked at the orb and the sides of the cave.
“We can’t fit through at the same time,” Mara said.
“Then I’ll go first. I’ve had practice,” Anna said. “Just hold my hand. If anything happens, you can pull me back.”
Mara nodded yes.
“I can’t tell you how much I’ve wanted to do this. Imagine. Another world. There’s so much to learn,” Mara said as she turned to face Anna. “I’m glad I’m not doing this alone.”
“Me too,” Anna said. “Ready?”
“Check your oxygen levels and your vitals. Be ready to pull back at the first sign of trouble,” Mara said.
“Don’t worry. I’ve learned my lesson. Ready?”
“Yes. I’m ready.”
“See you on the other side,” Anna said, then began counting down out loud. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”
Anna reached her right hand into the orb and held onto Mara with her left. There was no resistance at first, just like before. Then, suddenly, Anna felt a sharp pain, as if her arm were being yanked out of its socket. Something had grabbed ahold of her on the other side. She looked back toward Mara for help, but there was nothing there except darkness and spinning flecks of light. She felt Mara’s hand tighten around hers but couldn’t see anything, not even the end of her own arm. The darkness wasn’t an absence of light—it had substance and weight.
She couldn’t see Mara, but she felt her pull hard with both hands now—so hard her own fingers started to turn numb. But the force on the other side of the wormhole was even greater. Slowly, Mara’s fingers began to slip. Anna screamed out, but there was no sound except her own racing heartbeat in her head. One last desperate pull from Mara on the other side and then Anna felt herself spinning. Her tether to her home world was gone.
Anna couldn’t see any farther than inches in front of her face, but she could sense that she was tumbling forward. Alone. Then the darkness gave way to a night sky filled with an endless sea of stars. Anna had enough time to glimpse a giant dust-red planet that filled the far horizon and a gaseous purple nebula just beyond before she felt herself plummeting in thick air.
Something is wrong. Her chest hurt and her arms and legs felt like lead. She could feel the blood rush through her head, pumping harder than it ever had before. Too fast. I’m falling too fast. She was spinning helplessly just feet away from a sheer cliff of jagged rock. If she hit at this speed, she’d be dead on impact.
She focused on her antigravity boots and struggled to turn herself upright. At home she’d be flying forward, riding gravity faster than she had ever flown before. But here, she was only able to slow her descent. She strained to fly upward, her hands grasping at air. All her focus was set on breaking free of the force pulling her to the ground.
Anna looked at the corner of her goggles and scanned her environmental readings. Warning lights flashed red across her display. Air composition: Methane, Argon, Carbon Monoxide, Ammonia. All at unbreathable levels. Her blood pressure was twice its normal rate. One reading she had never paid attention to before stuck out: g = 37.17m/s2. The acceleration of gravity was more than four times what it was on Earth. Her antigravity boots were struggling against this world’s gravitational force, just as her body struggled to breathe.
Sweat poured down her forehead and into her eyes. Her muscles ached, but she was able to slow her descent to less than a couple of miles an hour. A slow-motion fall. She reached out and grabbed ahold of an outcropping of rock. Even at this slow speed, her body slammed hard against the cliff wall, knocking the wind from her lungs. Still, she held on. With her antigravity boots on full ascent, she was able to hold on without breaking her arm. Anna leaned her head against the rock and closed her eyes. Think.
She couldn’t fly upward. She had oxygen for another twelve hours, but she didn’t know how long her heart or lungs could last in this gravity. Her limbs, even her head, felt like heavy weights. She thought of Mara and began to sob quietly despite herself. Had she been pulled into the wormhole too—or cast out into another world? One thing she did know was that Mara would be frantically searching for her. As much as she wanted to just let go, she couldn’t quit now. Anna took in a long breath—as much as she could take in at once—and then released it slowly. She took another slow breath, and then another, until her head cleared enough for her to open her eyes.
Anna hung from the rock cliff with one hand and looked out across the horizon. This world may be slowly killing her, but she found it beautiful. Straight ahead was a dark ocean reflecting the light of the dust-red planet floating in the sky. Sharp rock formations jutted out of the ocean like giant black stalagmites. Far down below she could see a shoreline covered in thick vegetation, teeming and pulsing with green and blue lights that cast a glow well out into the water. The trail of vegetation and light followed the coastline until it disappeared in a straight line—too straight to be a result of natural causes. The cliff she was hanging onto was part of a massive structure, a sheer rock face that extended for miles in either direction. She had limited perspective since the landscape was so unlike her own, but she estimated the cliff to be at least two miles in height; she was halfway down its side.
In the far distance, miles down the coastline, she saw a different set of lights than the ones below. These lights were green and blue but also orange and white, and they were arranged in perpendicular lines that looked like city streets and buildings. The Shadow’s home. An alien city.
Anna looked at the cliff wall just beneath her and noticed a set of lights that snaked their way down to the surface below. It was a thin trail that zigzagged its way up and down the face of the cliff, and it was no more than fifty feet away. Anna grabbed onto the rock overhang with both hands. She would swing her body toward the trail and use her boots to slow her speed just enough to land or miss it altogether and plummet to the ground below. She tried using the increased gravity to help with the force of the swing, but it felt like someone was hanging onto her legs. She swayed once, twice, then flung herself toward the trail below just as her fingers began to slip.
She strained against the force pulling her down with just enough thrust that she felt like she was floating in slow-motion. Twenty feet. She was going to make it. Ten feet. She prepared her legs for the impact.
Slam!
She felt her body hit the flat surface of the trail and then she rolled hard against the cliff wall. Her shoulder ached and she could barely catch her breath, but at least she could lie back to rest. The trail was no more than four feet across, flat and polished as if worn down through centuries of use. Anna rolled to her side and looked over the edge of the cliff. Water, edged with a blue-green glow, lapped up against the shoreline in gentle waves a mile below.
“Oh, that’s a long way down.”
Anna rolled onto her back and looked up into the alien night sky. So many stars, so bright and clear, scattered densely in strange formations. Her brain automatically identified patterns and created forms. A trail of stars looked like a whale. Another trail formed the shape of a starfish. She could be on the other side of the Milky Way or in another universe altogether. But her way home, the wormhole, was just a mile above her. Only a short hike in crushing gravity away. Gathering all of her strength, Anna rolled over onto all fours and then up to a bent knee. She could feel the bands of muscles in her legs and core strain to lift her body upright. Legs shaking, she took one step up the steep trail and almost collapsed, grabbing onto the cliff wall to hold herself steady.
“Just a mile hike. Easy . . . peasy,” Anna said out loud just to hear her own voice. The first human voice in this strange world.
Twenty feet up and Anna could feel her hands and feet start to swell. Fifty feet up and she felt a warm trickle just above her lip. A runny nose? Then she experienced the sharp taste of iron. Blood.
“Not good,” Anna said as she reached up to wipe her nose and slammed her hand against her face mask.
The pulsing blue-green lights on the trail ahead began to grow dim.
“Huh?”
Why are they getting dim? I didn’t do that.
“I don’t feel so—” Anna said just before collapsing.
She was aware enough to know she was falling—even aware enough to know that the force would hit three to four times greater than it would at home—but she was unable to stop her fall. Thankfully, she passed out before impact.
In her sleep, Anna could feel the blood rushing in her head. She heard the humming she had heard earlier that day when the Shadow had tried communicating with her. Had it been that day? Or was that another life? She was floating now, just above the trail. Maybe she was having an out-of-body experience. She had heard this happened to some people when they died. But there was a pressure against her arms and legs that grounded her to this place, and she wasn’t floating as much as she was being carried. The humming sound and the rocking motion soothed her. Then she fell asleep in her sleep.
Minutes later, maybe hours or days, Anna didn’t know—she was stuck between consciousness and sleep—she felt a light through her closed eyelids, like she was looking up into the sky while lying out at the beach. But the glow was blue-green, and a soft humming noise replaced the sound of crashing waves.
Anna’s eyes flickered open. She was on her back under a grove of short, squatty trees no more than fifteen feet tall. The trunks were thick like a baobab tree. In fact, it looked like a baobab with its thin fractal branches. Small flat leaves fluttered in a soft alien breeze. But the humming came from the lights, not the wind. The tree was filled with a shimmering blue-green glow, bright enough to light the clearing around her like the day. But the lights didn’t just circle the trees. They looked like they were part of the trees, like pollen.
A dark figure kneeled over her. Anna blinked to clear her eyes. Scales, like feathers, fanned out around the creature’s head. Each scale was adorned with lights. The shadow creature from my vision. Behind it stood four other creatures with similar markings.
They must have carried me down here to the beach. Ugh, the wrong direction.
The tall one was applying a compress of black sand and leaves and orange light to her shoulder. Her head wasn’t pounding as badly as before, and her blood pressure readings on the iCom were still elevated, but lower than the danger levels she had registered on the cliff.
“Hi,” Anna said meekly. Her throat felt dry and raw.
The scales on the creature’s arms flared open, and dandelion lights floated gently out to form a circular pattern that floated in the air above Anna’s head. More lights floated from its arms to cluster together in a dense swarm.
“Is this how you say hi?” Anna asked.
Suddenly, the lights began to spin and realign to form a perfect outline of a human face. It was her face—an exact likeness with her mask, matted hair, and a trail of dried blood from her nose.
“Wow,” Anna said as she tried to push herself up on her elbows, still exhausted. “But seriously—I look better than that. You caught me . . . on a bad day.”
The tall shadow gently placed its hand on Anna’s shoulder and guided her back to the ground to rest. It pointed to Anna’s floating portrait in lights, then pointed down to Anna.
“Yes, that’s me,” Anna said, nodding.
The creature nodded back. It learns fast, Anna thought. Then the lights shifted to form a new pattern—the outline of a shadow creature, smaller in frame. The tall one pointed to the floating portrait made of light and then looked back at Anna.
“Yes, I’ve seen it,” Anna said. She remembered to nod, even though her head throbbed. “It came through the wormhole just like me.”
The tall one looked back to the others. The green and blue lights on their heads started to pulse, each creature taking a turn until all their lights pulsed in sync.. The creatures continued to stare at each other in silence. Motionless like black stone statues. Seconds passed. Anna turned her head and looked out past the grove of trees and saw the water’s edge. She was less than a hundred feet from the ocean. The waves were quiet and barely broke against the shore. At least a half dozen creatures stood in silhouette in the distance, watching and waiting, their outlines in sharp contrast to the light of the giant dust-red planet on the horizon.
The tall one turned back to Anna and stepped forward. The lights in the circle above her head began to spin into a new form, this time a large-scale model of the cliffs and the trails that led to the wormhole above. Anna pointed to the wormhole in the model, and then to herself, and then to the actual cliffs above her.
“I need to get up there,” Anna said.
The tall one stared back, unmoving. The shape above Anna’s head began to dissolve, and the lights scattered like glowing dust in the slight breeze. Suddenly, the tall one turned and ran toward the shoreline, out of her field of view. The other four creatures followed just behind, running in a single file, leaving Anna alone in the small clearing.
Anna tried rolling over but her shoulder ached, and she could feel her heart struggle to pump blood. She slumped back against the ground and stared up at the stars that poked through the clearing above her head.
Minutes passed and Anna could feel consciousness start to slip away. She struggled not to fall asleep, fearing she may never wake up if she did. She tried focusing on the things around her, taking in what she could. The feel of the coarse black sand under her hands. The soft humming sounds. The massive cliff wall in the distance. She noticed the thick trunks of the alien baobab trees seemed to contract and expand as if they were breathing. It was a micromovement, unnoticeable unless you focused for a long enough period of time.
Then Anna felt something slowly crawl across her leg. She tried kicking at it, but her legs felt glued to the ground. For a moment, Anna thought she had scared it away, whatever it was. Then she felt multiple legs, limbs, fingers—she didn’t know—drag across her exposed ankles. Her skin crawled. She strained to lift her head to look at her leg. Her eyes widened.
There at the base of her legs floated a jellyfish-like creature, translucent and pulsing with green and blue points of lights. Its body undulated in a wave motion from the center out. Dozens of dangling tentacles dragged across Anna’s legs as the creature slowly moved up her body, leaving a trail of lights wherever they touched.
She tried kicking again, but the jellyfish creature easily floated away, only to return and continue its slow trek across her body. Tears began to well up in Anna’s eyes as she closed them tight. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.
Slowly, the fear that knotted her stomach began to melt away. The muscles in her legs relaxed. Wherever the tentacles touched her, Anna felt a warm sensation. Pleasant and healing. The translucent jellyfish was now floating just over her shoulder, and Anna was able to get a clear view of its insides. Green and blue lights were connected by thin opaque threads. Pulsing neurons. The tentacles were made of the same opaque substance—almost white, like milk. The throbbing in her shoulder faded to a dull ache.
The lights stopped pulsing, and the jellyfish-like creature started to float away, revealing the tall shadow creature just behind it. It had returned. Just behind it stood almost a dozen other shadow creatures.
“You’re back.” Anna smiled, relieved.
The tall one came over and slowly raised its hand to Anna’s face. The tips of its four long fingers spread equally apart in a diamond shape. It reached its hand down toward Anna, making her flinch. The creature paused and made a soft humming noise. A comforting sound. An assurance.
Then Anna realized that the creature wasn’t trying to touch her face. It was framing a spot in the sky miles above, just on the edge of the cliff. It was where she came through. The wormhole.
“Yes. There. Can you take me there?” Anna asked as she pointed.
The tall one tilted its head to the side.
“Help me get home and I’ll bring back your friend. I promise.”
The creature stood unmoving for a good thirty seconds, lights floating around it in a swarm. Then it stepped gently forward, arms out to its side. The tall one made another comforting sound, lifting Anna as if she weighed nothing and cradling her in both arms. Its head moved first in a 180-degree turn toward the cliff, then its body followed.
The tall one started to run, taking ten-foot strides with apparently no effort and holding Anna so steadily that she didn’t feel any sense of movement other than the breeze across her skin. Behind them, the other shadow creatures ran in single file, their strides in perfect unison. As they neared the cliff wall, Anna looked up at the massive sheer rock. Black and jagged. The only way Anna could make out the edge of the rock miles above was the dome of stars that marked the boundary between cliff and sky.
They reached the trail at the base of the cliff in less than a minute. The tall one easily leaped across an outcropping of rock and a shallow tide pool and began running up the steep climb of the cliff trail without losing its pace.
Anna looked out across the ocean. Her head was heavy, but she wanted to take it all in. This world, so different. So many mysteries. Small swirling patterns, like eddies in a stream, covered the pale red giant that filled the horizon. Like Jupiter, storms must ravage its surface. The mass on this planet (or moon, or whatever she was on) must be great enough to stay in its orbit. Maybe two giant planets in a perfect state of orbital equilibrium.
The rock face passed by in a blur. Anna looked up and studied the face of the tall one. In the low light, Anna could only make out its outline, a silhouette against the night sky above. She felt herself fading again. Her breathing labored. The creature looked down for a moment and then quickened its pace.
Minutes passed. The thin trail began to widen as they neared the end. No more lights as guideposts. Just darkness. Then the creature stopped. Anna looked up to see why and then realized they had arrived at the top. To her left, floating thirty feet in the air, was a spinning orb in a dome of stars. Light bent around the orb like a lens. The wormhole. To her right, a flat plain opened up as far as she could see in this dim light. A purple nebula spanned the sky just above her like spilled incandescent ink.
Slowly, as Anna’s eyes adjusted to the increased darkness, she began to make out shapes across the plain. A field of alien baobab trees spread out as far as the eye could see. But unlike the trees down by the shore, these looked dead. Lifeless. In the slight breeze, ashes floated from the trees like snow.
Suddenly she saw movement in the trees—a dark form, tall and angular. The pale opposite of the shadow creatures. Its body stepped forward in a herky-jerky motion. Then stillness. A bone-white face emerged at the edge of the trees and floated in the darkness. Stars spun in its eyes.
Anna struggled to make sense of it. The ghost-white apparition from her half-remembered dream. She looked to the shadow creatures that had carried her this far, but they didn’t seem to notice the apparition, or if they did, they didn’t care. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the ghostly face disappeared into the shadows, leaving Anna to wonder if she had imagined it after all.
The tall shadow looked down at Anna and made another soft humming noise, snapping her attention back to this moment. Then, one at a time, it looked into the faces of the dozen shadow creatures standing motionless in a circle. There was a pause as the creatures signaled to each other with light. Here at the top of the cliff, on the flat plain that stretched forever, was absolute silence. A place void of life, so unlike the shore down below.
With a sharp, high-pitched command and a nod from the tall one, the shadow creatures began to run in perfect unison to the spot just beneath the wormhole. Two of the shadow creatures linked arms. Then, like a wave, the other shadows scrambled and climbed onto one another, creating a ladder for the next one to follow, until they reached the edge of the wormhole thirty feet above their heads. A living structure. Unmoving.
The tall shadow cradled Anna in one arm and pointed to the wormhole with the other. Anna nodded yes. Home. The shadow began to effortlessly climb on the backs of the others until it reached the top. Just feet away from the wormhole, Anna could now see the white flecks spinning around its edges. The shadow held Anna out with both arms.
Anna reached for the wormhole, her fingers distorting into elongated shapes as they entered the dark orb. The tall shadow held Anna even closer to it, and suddenly she felt herself pulled into the wormhole with the same great force she had felt before. In a dark flash, the world that orbited the pale red planet and the trees made of lights were gone. Anna floated alone in a vast darkness.