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To Find You

Story by Kandrel

Intro: This treatise on the dangers of starship repair was written by Kandrel. He’s a fox without thumbs and an impressive collection of golf balls he’s stolen. The story was originally published in Heat 16 by Sofawolf press. If you’d like to read more of Kandrel’s stories, you can find his entire bibliography available at www.foxyonline.com.

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Raise the cups and give a toast! It was New Years Eve, and I didn’t want to be there. A shy girl more used to books than drinks, and here was a crowd looming in from every side. There was my friend, Becky, who declared she’d watch over me, then deposited me at the drinks table and never looked back.

But then there you were, with fur of gold and a comforting expression.

I knew you, if only at a distance. Everyone who's anyone knows you're David, and you know everyone who's someone. Your eyes caught mine, and I saw a moment of confusion. Frustration and anxiety rise. I should go home before this gets awkward.

Before I can grab my jacket, you're there. I can smell you still, hints of wood smoke and astringent cologne doing its very best to cover the fact that you’re a ferret. It failed, but I didn’t mind. You handed me a glass and said you knew how it felt, being dragged out and left to face people on your own. You asked my name, and I told you it's Leslie. A smile and a nod. The question had been building since our eyes met. I braced. You asked if maybe I had another name, and I said none that I still answer to. Leslie is a good name, you said, and it suits me. I looked away, but you take my hand. You said that it's a mistake that you hadn't taken the time to get to know me before, and it wasn't one you intended on repeating. By that time, we were having to shout over the music, so when you offer someplace a bit quieter, I was all too eager to follow.

You had glowing bracelets around your wrists and the fur over your temples was dyed green. You said you were a traveler and a stargazer, a poet and a sensitive soul. You even claimed to be an alien, though you were laughing at the time. I asked if it was tough, coming down from the stars to walk among us poor earthlings. You smiled and admitted it was probably harder to be who I was. I almost laughed at you, with the way you were dancing around not having to say it out loud. I pointed my head at you and told you that you could touch my antlers if you wanted to. It turned out you did. You even made a joke about no girl like me having such a fine rack, at least not this time of year. You were such a gentleman. You made sure I was comfortable, and said I should sip instead of gulp because I’d hate myself in the morning. You’d been everywhere, you said. Africa, where you met the spirits of your ancestors and learned their true names! The Far East, where at the tops of mountains the ancients of wisdom sat and communed with the universe! I sipped at your stories and gulped at the champagne.

Then it was ten, nine, eight! Big Ben was ticking down to midnight, and your hand was on my shoulder. Seven, six, five, I kissed you, and I’m not even sure why. Four, three, two, and you were gripping my antlers as you rolled me onto my back and slid inside. Leslie, you whispered into my ear as you showed me something new. One, zero, happy new year! You were so warm and alive as you shivered in my arms. You stole a towel from the host’s kitchen and helped me clean up your mess.

It was definitely a new experience. I'd done it before, of course, but only as who I used to be. Leslie was a virgin. Or at least, she had been until that new years countdown. Even if my head was swimming a bit from all the gulping instead of sipping I’d done, I’d enjoyed it. You said I should probably put my pants back on before we went back out into the party, because you didn’t want Sharlene to know what we’d done in her guest bedroom. But hey, it was new years eve, and there were lots of other parties. I said I didn’t want any more parties. One had been enough. Especially since that party had you in it. I was worn out. I was spent. Thank you, David. I wanted to go home and be with my books, but thank you for treating me like who I was now.

You couldn't resist a beautiful lady, you said. Okay, no more parties, you promised, but I was with David now. David the alien, you reminded me. The alien ferret. And if I take your hand, you’ll show me amazing things I’ve never imagined before. Things I’ve never even read about. Look at your mask, you said you’re a thief. Look at these fingers, you said you must be a rock star. Follow you and you’ll show me the stars, because you’re a roguish rock star alien. Take your hand and don’t let go, and you’ll take me to outer space. You winked. I should see your space ship! And if I left with you, you’d show me the universe.

You took my hand and we ran out into the rain. I said I should go back for my umbrella, but you said I looked good with the drops on my antlers and my ears slicked down. No one had ever said that about me! You pulled me on, down into the underground where we could go anywhere in the city. Where’s your space ship, I asked? You winked again, and we rode the tube to Kings Cross, where the celebration was so thick that we could barely move.

The party had been bad, but this was worse. Shoulder to shoulder, moving like a single creature that surrounded me on all sides. Take my hand and don’t let go, you said. I tried. I really tried, but the crowd stole my grip, and it carried you away in a peristaltic wave. I saw the golden glow of your pelt beneath the neon lights fade, your hand still held outstretched to me.

I don’t know where I went, then. First, I think I went a little out of my mind. The crowd was a beast, and it swallowed me whole. Bodies shoving and pushing, shoulders in my back and elbows in my stomach. A poor wolf met the business end of my antlers when it got too much, but he was gone before I could apologise. The buzzing in my head had me gulping for air, but as time passed, the crowd ebbed, then left entirely. When it was through with me, I found myself at the shore of the Thames, gazing off over the water and wondering where you’d gone. Call it fascination. Call it obsession. I wanted to see you again. I desired it so physically I felt sick. Or maybe that was the champagne.

It was four in the morning. The streets were empty. I traced my steps back to the tube, just hoping you’d gone back. You hadn’t. It was my own fault, really. I had let go of your hand—the one thing you said I shouldn’t do. I cried, and a wise guru standing near a burning barrel showed me the way. A golden ferret, of course he’d seen you. An alien? Oh, sure. He knew all about that. Go ask the Madame, he said. She knows all about the aliens, and where to find them. I thanked him and threw some change into the guru’s bowl, and destination firmly in mind, I followed you.

The sign at the old lighthouse read “Fates Sought And Destiny Revealed! Ten Pound Reading.” Madame bloodhound crouched at her crystal ball, badly hidden electric cord drooping. She held shaking hands over the orb and claimed that upon its surface my fate would be divined by those with the talent. “Wouldn’t you like to know when you’ll meet the perfect girl? I can help you find her” the old dog claimed.

“Oh no,” I said, “I already know who. And he’s a he.”

“Well, it takes all types” said Madame with haste. I had gotten used to watching people perform this particular mental gymnastics when they met me face-to-face. It brought me no joy.

“Then where is he? I meant to hold his hand, and now I regret ever letting go. Is he looking for me? I only just lost him and already I miss him so.”

“Don’t you worry” said Madame, “I can see he is with the spirits now, and content.”

“Oh.” I was confused, but not for very long. The spirits! Of course! You knew the spirits. You visited the ancestors, you said as you roamed wherever wayward feet led.

Still tipsy from the gulping, that morning, I packed everything I thought I would need. I was wrong, of course, but how else should an adventure begin, if not naively? I slept on the plane. I saw you on the horizon, hand still outstretched for my grasp. Fingers reaching as mine slipped free in the ravening crowd, dragging apart our clasp. I woke with a jerk as light pierced the dream. Outside, sand and sun and scrub was the theme.

Airport became city. Crowd thronged, and I cowered. Cars brayed. Weasels hawked cheap tat from metal wagons. The air was full of noise and musk and sand. Then the towering steel monstrosities of the metropolis became bowed and squat, like the pride of youth descending in age. Warehouses gave way to cheap homes beyond number, which then gave way to asphalt, which then gave way to sand. Confident in my ignorance, I walked into the sunlight.

Beneath a tall baobab tree, I found a lion made entirely of sand. I asked him if he was a spirit, and he told me of the world after the walking earth. I took that for a yes, and asked him if he’d seen you. He had not heard your name, but he offered to teach me how to survive the long walks of the savanna in exchange for the chocolate I had bought at the airport. I had not the heart to tell him that restaurants sold salads. I didn’t need to stalk and kill my prey through the long grass, but still I watched and learned as he showed me how to move without sound. That night, he devoured the chocolate, wrapper and all, and I had my first taste of meat. Lion and I laid beneath the tree, and he told me the stories of the stars that only the spirits know. Beneath the roots of the tree, he had kept his favorite piece of jade, and in that jade he’d kept his favorite memory of the hunt. He wanted me to have it, since I’d been such an apt student.

I thanked lion, pocketed the jade, and took my leave. If the spirits of the earth could not help me, perhaps the wise men at the tops of their mountains would know where to find you. I traveled to Nepal, where the mountains were so high they made the sky look short. Foot in front of foot, I braved the stone. Once, I fell, but my guide held me by a rope until I could catch my grip again. That far into the sky, my head felt light, just like it had when I’d been sipping—no, gulping—the champagne.

At the top of the mountain I met a wise lemur who levitated in meditation. “He who you seek is not here.” He said, before I had opened my mouth. “But tell me what he said, and perhaps I can help you find him.”

“He said he had a mask. He must have been a bandit.”

“Don’t be foolish.” The guru said. “It was only fur.”

“He had long, delicate fingers. He must have been a rock star.”

“Did he sing for you? Idle boasts, most likely.”

“He had an amazing jacket and sunglasses. He must have been an alien.”

“Of course.” The guru nodded his head. “That makes better sense. If you will trade me the stone you keep in your pocket, I will call my friends from the stars, and they will carry you up to find him.”

Grateful for his help, I gave him the jade that Lion had given me. Down from the sky came a slim space ship, barely larger than a truck. It hovered above the guru of the mountain, and stairs appeared from its belly.

An alien descended, with long ears that drooped over his curled horns, which framed a face from which four eyes glared at me with distrust. “There’s no room on my ship for freeloading. I’ll take you, if you can work.”

“Of course.” I said.

“Can you navigate by star chart?”

I admitted that’s something I’d never done.

“Too bad. How many intergalactic languages do you speak?”

With head downcast, I admitted that this was the only language I understood.

He lifted my head with fingers that were covered in scales. “I can get you a few planets out, and you can find another ride there, if you want?”

We stopped in at a little spot in the rings of Saturn, where I asked if anyone had seen a golden ferret pass through. They asked me what a ferret was. I said thank you anyway. I took up with a freighter whothat was headed out of system, and said he could get me as far as Eta Eridani.. Eta Eridani was his last stop before he left the cluster, the freighter said, but I could hitch with him that far, at least.

I should have known better than to trust an interstellar freighter, but I was naive and experience is a currency that can only be bought with sweat and blood. When we arrived, the freighter locked a collar around my neck, and I was sold to a local tribe, whose feathers were iridescent and beaks were cruel. For a month and a week, I worked their hydrogen farms with other slaves. My back bore the tracts of their cruelty, and only the kind hands of the other slaves salved my wounds. By day we worked under a barium sun, and by night I listened to them sing songs of their homes in thean asteroid belt where air is as precious as love.

Long days I spent beneath the whips, but a sisterhood is born from blood violently spilled. A distraction would spare the whip of one frilled-neck vulture on the old. An intentional mistake would draw the wrath of the overseer when he beat a hatchling. My fellow slaves were canaries with feathers of yellow and voices of gold, but underneath, we all bled red. Well, except they didn’t. They bled green, but the bleeding was the important part, and we did it as a team. Those who could survive a few blows took them for those who were at the end of their endurance.

Over weeks, the softness of my books melted away to reveal muscle underneath. The pick was feather-light in my hands—or perhaps that was because of the microgravity. All the while, my fellow slaves sang of home and asteroid. Their tones rang soft and shrill between the cracks of picks on pyroxene crystals.

Only after I had acclimated to the hot days and sombre nights did pirates raid our farms. They took the hydrogen to fuel their junker ships and stole those slaves they thought most interesting and most valuable. The captain herself, an Altairian with purple scales and a head like an iguana, picked me because she’d never seen an Earthen deer.

Aboard their fleet of modified haulers and junk trawlers I was shown the ropes, starting with the fact that there were no ropes. I learned to read a holographic star chart, and to recognize a Canis fleet dreadnought warp signature. The work was hard, but I was treated well, at least compared to my time with the sadistic vulture slaver-masters. I was put to work cleaning the barrel of the laser cannons, and when we flew into the shadow of the moons to hide from notice, the captain pulled me by my antlers into her bed.

My first time with an alien began with uncomfortable embarrassment. “Oh, what a pretty thing you are.” my captain said as she stripped the tatters of my old earth clothing from my legs.

“It’s nothing.” I said, covering myself. “It’s not who I am anymore.”

“Then why did you keep it?” Concern was on her face, before her features softened. “Oh, I see. Poor Earthling. Stuck on a backwater planet with nothing but sticks and rocks and knives and scalpels. Just a minute with the ship’s auto-doc could give you the body you want.”

I looked away. “I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

She took my hands and asked, “Would you feel better just going back to your bunk?”

“Shouldn’t you be telling me what to do? You’re a pirate and a captain.”

“Yes, but I’m not a monster.” She said.

Anxiety flared, but was smothered by curiosity. “I think I’d like to stay. If you’re okay with that.”

The captain laid back on her bed, nude and challenging. Across her body her purple scales were large and supple, but they grew smaller across her belly, until they blended together so smoothly that they were nigh invisble between her legs. She spread herself with fingers, and with a hand on my snout she taught me where and how to please an Altarian. In her passion, her legs tangled in my antlers. She didn’t allow me up until my tongue was sore and my muzzle was soaked with her pleasure.

Pirate scuttlebutt is efficient. By the following morning I heard the whispering that the captain had picked a new plaything. The ribbing was good-natured. I’d endured far worse back on Earth. If anything, it made my time among the pirates easier. They were a loyal crew, and being the captain’s toy opened doors—both metaphorically and literally. Through the rings of Luyten eight we terrorized unwise freighters with valuable cargo and no escort. In the far side of the planet’s gravity well we waited to pounce like a hunting spider. And on the long days when military cruisers swept the system for us, we hid silent and dark behind the planet’s moon, On those days, with the crew bored and hours dragging by at glacial speed, the captain would drag me back to her bed.

So elated was she with my service that after a year I was given my freedom. When my pirate captain heard of my quest to find you, she gave me her own vibro-cutlass and, with tears in her reptilian eyes, put me to port at Beta Orionis, where the whole sector comes to trade.

It’d been more than a year, and here I was so many lightyears from Earth. I was free, and now I had skills I could sell. I could have made a life for myself. But my mind circled back to a party that felt so far and so long away. Why? I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it’s stupid, but I remembered the first person who accepted me for who I was. All that time ago, I wonder if I would have taken that first step if I hadn’t been drunk and vulnerable and a little insane. But for all that I wouldn’t have believed all this back then, hasn’t everything you said turned out to be true? You were a ferret alien. Hah. Good joke. But here I was on Beta Orionis, with six-legged hyenas trading with three-eyed sheep. Maybe an alien ferret wasn’t so unbelievable now.

Have you seen my David, I asked? His body is long, and his fur is made out of gold. I was about to give up when I heard of a race of space-faring nomads who fit your description. Perhaps that was where you came from! If anyone knew, perhaps they would.

With all I had learned from the pirates, I hijacked a pleasure skiff from the port and flew it out to Arcturus, the red star where the gold-furred nomads played in between the comets. I found them cavorting in the rings of a great gas giant, with long ships that were sleek and maneuverable. When they heard my story, they greeted me with open arms, and bade me play with them for a while.

The stories had been true. They were long of body, and their fur was gold, but they weren’t ferrets like you. Instead, they were otters, with phosphorescent blue trails dyed into their fur. So close, yet I knew I had hit a dead end. Still, I could hardly blame them, it wasn’t their fault. So I stayed with them for a time, learning the way they siphoned alcohol from vast interstellar clouds to make wine. Perhaps ironically, I finally learned to sip rather than gulp. By day, we swam through the stars, and by night we curled in plush chambers together. There they invited me to explore their secrets, and they were energetic lovers. Two, five, ten, I lost count under the diffuse glow of the nebula. Buried in squirming ottery bodies, one would kiss me with a mouth tasting of their exotic space wine, while another would grab my hips with their webbed paws and fill me with their alien pleasures. It was a fantastical dream—and one that my mind would return to on nights as I floated lonesome through the cosmos.

But all dreams must end, and while I learned much from the Arcturian nomads, I still had not heard hide nor hair of you. When I announced that I would be taking my leave, they threw me a feast to to remember our time together. They celebrated my body until the sun Arcturus rose over curved horizon of their home planet. As I lay there naked and spent, the otters dyed my fur in glowing blue swirls with their secret rituals to show that I was a sister of their tribe.

On the way back to Beta Orionis, my ship was violently pulled from warp. Around me, great hulks of military dreadnoughts darkened the spaces between stars. The planet Vega Eight spun as my ship cartwheeled. Lasers flashed and missiles stalked the dark void of space. The flotilla had no time for a civilian vessel that had accidentally been pulled into their war with the Beta Lyrians. Engines ruined and spiraling out of control towards a nearby planet, I fled to the life pod and crashed into the back-water planet of Lyr-Nine.

Given no time to recover from the crash, I was caught by a clan of natives. They were canny foxes, clad in leather and loincloths. They had seen the flashes in the sky far above, the lasers and the explosions of the space war taking place above their atmosphere. I was a god, fallen from heaven, they said, with glowing spirals of blue and my noble ‘battle-spikes’, which is what they called my antlers. With me to lead them, they would surely defeat their rival tribe!

I argued that, while I was well-versed in the forms of godly combat—a blatant lie—they would need to show me how they intended me to fight for them. Honored to take his place as my personal trainer in the way of combat and my concubine, a dashing rogue of a fox named C’Tul’a’Was was given to my care while I deigned to spend my time among these humble mortals. He showed me how to handle a spear—the thrust and the parry. The stab and the riposte. Then he showed me how to handle a different spear and though the parry and riposte were less important techniques, I found that one thrust was very much like another.

Was I becoming jaded? I had expected more, but his lessons left me unfulfilled. While he took his rest, the student became the teacher. It turns out he had much to learn about the proper use of his weapon, and when I had finished showing him the skills I had learned as a space stow-away, he cried my name in supplication.

I led them to their victory atop the tribal mount, where foxes came to show their dominance. We fought through the day and into the night, and as torch-light waned and the fireworks of the Vegan-Lyrian war flashed far overhead, my foxes and I stood triumphant over the bodies of rival champions. Bonfires were lit, and the wounds of the defeated were treated. Two tribes became one, and where once their fierce warriors had fought to prune the collective family trees, now they nourished new seeds together that the strengths of two tribes might bear a greater next generation.

In the rush of victory, I must admit my judgment was impaired—just as it had been so long ago when I’d been gulping rather than sipping. I told them that a mortal’s seed was unlikely to bear fruit within a god, but that didn’t stop them from trying. And try they did. They worshiped me atop the battle-mount with words and fingers and mouths and their exotic members, and by the end of the evening their goddess could really have used a shower.

On the morrow, to the victors went the spoils. From the defeated tribe we were awarded their own ‘god’, a white-furred mink who had been a military engineer. We shared knowing glances, and I immediately felt a kinship with the scared little weasel. She had crashed here too, just as I had, and hadn’t been as wise in the ways of the stars as I had been. Fortunately for me, she was wise in the ways of atmospheric engine repair. I conspired with her to ‘re-ascend to our godhood’, or in other words re-jig my crashed life pod with enough thrust to escape the planet and rejoin the fleet. Before we left, the clan held a feast in our honor, and C’Tul’a’Was gave me his personal spear, with its feathers and carved handle.

By the time we made it back into orbit, the battle was over. Burned out hulks of defeated cruisers and battleships littered the space lanes. We met back up with the mink’s command, and in thanks for returning their engineer, they told me of a sisterhood of mystics who knew all, saw all, and for the price of a secret they had never heard, would answer one question.

The sisters were hooded and mysterious, with black cat-like tails trailing from beneath their robes. In confidence, I divulged to them the otter’s secret—the recipe for their special space wine—in return for a single question. Where were you?

They told me that they couldn’t answer my question directly, but they could train me to learn how to discover it on my own. They took my hands and gave me my own robe to hide my glowing blue swirls. The hood wouldn’t fit over my antlers, but they said it wasn’t important.

I sipped at their spirituality and gulped at their lessons. The names of the stars, and the nature of the galaxy. I learned the correct way to eat oysters from the asteroids over Cygnus. They taught me the three forbidden magics that only females could learn: how to change a man’s mind, how to live with a broken heart, and how to teleport through solid stone.

And then they stood me at the portal. Behind me were stars. Ahead of me was the great devourer. Cygnus X-1. A dark blot in the fabric of space and time. I took a step, and fell into the black hole. Time held still, but the training of the sisterhood had prepared me well. I saw all. I understood all. I had become one with the universe.

That’s how I came to stand here, today, at your door. A little flat in Brixton, London, with a broken street lamp and a bicycle parked out front in driveway that isn’t even large enough for a car. You look at me with shock on your face. I realize you don’t recognize me. Well, the stars can change a girl, not to mention the way slavery and battle and otters had changed my body. I remind you of a party downtown where you met this shy girl named Leslie.

“Oh yes,” you say. It takes a few more seconds for you to realize that Leslie is me, and I am her. “Oh! Yes. Wow. You’ve changed!”

“You haven’t.” I say. You still have your ferrety mask, even though it doesn’t make you a thief.

“So.” You stumble. “How have things been?”

“I’m sorry I let go of your hand.” I say. You fold your clever fingers in front of yourself awkwardly. Clearly, you’re no rock star.

“That’s okay.” You give me a ghost of the smile I’d seen all those moons and stars ago.

“Do you remember what you told me that night?” I ask. You blush, then look at my glowing fur, the pirate’s cutlass in its scabbard at my hip, and the tribal spear that’s strapped across my back. “Didn’t you say you were an alien?”

“Well, yes.” You lick your lips. “But of course, I’m not.”

“I know.”

“I don’t even have a space ship.” You joke.

“I do.” I tell the truth.

Your eyes are wide.

“Take my hand, David.” I ask, and you shy away.

“I’ll show you amazing things you’ve never even imagined before. The scars don’t hurt very much, and when you’re back home, you’ll look up and know it was all worth it. Come with me!” I offer.

You avert your eyes. And you close the door.

I guess I don’t blame you. It’s a scary place out there, and not everyone gets to come home. It stings, but the sisterhood taught me well. I’ve learned the second forbidden magic. My quest is over. I’m glad I found you again, and now that I have, it’s time to leave.

I think I’ll go to Betelgeuse. I’ve heard there’s a bar there that serves a mean martini.