Aisling Murphy's Arc

Chapter 3 of 12

That night in the infirmary, Aisling fell into another dream. This one was not her own. She stood on red sand beside a shallow lake. The water was pale at the edges and blue in the middle. Behind her rose a stepped pyramid of red stone, baked by a hot sun. Nearby, a great metal dome held a tiny city under its gleaming shell. The dream felt a thousand years old. In the dream, Aisling was not herself. She was a small Martian girl. Beside her stood a tall, thin figure with red skin and huge black eyes. The figure wore a shiny black suit. "I am Zyx," the figure said. Zyx did not look at her. Zyx stared up at the dome. "The amplifier is thinning. It will not hold much longer." Aisling followed Zyx's gaze. High above the dome, a point of fire grew in the sky. An asteroid. It fell straight toward the red planet. "What is the amplifier?" she asked. Her voice came out small and strange. "It keeps the dome strong," Zyx said. "It bends the rock away from us. But the power fades." Zyx knelt in the red sand and placed one thin hand flat against the ground. "Feel it. The whole city is afraid." Aisling pressed her own small hand down. The sand trembled. The dome above them hummed, low and sick. Zyx stood and turned to her at last. The black eyes held no fear, only weight. "You see this so you will remember. Someone must. When the amplifier fails, we cannot stop the rock. We can only choose what to save." Zyx pointed to the dome, then to the pyramid, then to the sky. "The city. The old stone. Or the children." Aisling's chest hurt. "You have to pick?" "We already did." Zyx walked toward the lake. The fire in the sky grew wider. "We sent the children up, past the dome, past the air. We looked at the sky together one last time. Then we sealed them away and let the rest burn." Zyx stopped at the water's edge. "That is why you dream of looking up. The sky is where we put our hope." The asteroid struck. White light swallowed the sand, the lake, the pyramid, the dome. Aisling did not wake screaming. She woke slow, in the gray ward, with the words still in her. She sat up. Her head did not hurt. For the first time she understood her own pull toward the sky. It was not only her own cliff and dog and flowers. It was older than that. Someone long ago had taught a child to look up and hold on. Aisling pushed back the blanket. Her legs held her weight. She walked to the window and found the glass, then the latch. She wanted the sky now, and she meant to find a way out to see it.