Page 2 of A Light in the Dark
TWO
If you want to know the secret to eternal youth, it’s to become a moth shifter.
The paramedic stayed for several hours, keeping an eye on both of us for any signs of internal injuries. At first glance, I never would have believed Amanda could possibly have over thirty years of experience pulling people out of Stonecreek’s flood waters. When I’d blurted a request for her secret, she’d chuckled and informed me it was one of the perks of being an avian shapeshifter.
With a rather wicked grin, she added, “The moths have it even better than we do. If you want to know the secret to eternal youth, it’s to become a moth shifter.”
My unexpected guest, Gabriella, who had escaped from Earth during the evacuation, giggled at the paramedic’s comment. “During our orientation, we were warned to be wary of the shapeshifters. They can be determined. Nobody explained what that meant, though. The administrators in Moonriver suggested I come here, as I’d lived in the mountains back on Earth. I’d gotten lucky. I’d been on holiday when the volcanoes blew. A Hunter helped me get through the portals.”
When I listened for it, I could make out an accent, although I found it to be faint to my ears. Then again, I supposed our planet’s tendency to send people to Earth, at least before its brutal and swift end, had helped with that. We all spoke the same language; we just spoke it in different locations.
Those who traveled the stars tended to do their best to be understood, and that meant taking care with their accents.
I glanced at the moth, who’d passed out on my table after demolishing the fruit buffet I’d offered. Despite the long months after Earth’s destruction and the exodus of its people, I struggled to come to terms with the situation. I’d been aware of people from Earth moving to Stonecreek, but we’d all evolved the same general way, making it almost impossible to distinguish someone from Earth versus one of the preservation planets. While I wasn’t anything other than a boring, run of the mill human, I shrugged and replied, “Once a shapeshifter decides he or she wants to date someone, they will persist until it’s established they have no hope with the person they find to be interesting. I’ve never dated a shapeshifter, but Stonecreek has quite a few around. Not as many as Moonriver does. Moonriver has the highest open population of shapeshifters on our world because of the Hunters.”
“And the shapeshifters will date anyone? And this isn’t a problem?” Gabriella’s expression, which implied she fought a smile at the thought of having someone pay her close attention, comforted me in some ways.
After the trauma of her planet’s destruction, she was ready to look towards the future. Hopefully, she learned to treat the floods seriously and would heed the warnings next year. Those who survived did—usually.
“They’re as human as you and me,” I assured her. While I wasn’t an expert on shapeshifters, I could think of a few ways I might put her at ease. “Most shapeshifters in Stonecreek are shy—and the ones who aren’t tend to work in rescue services. I mean, I might not have spotted you in the water without the luna moth.”
Amanda regarded the moth with a grin. “He’s a bit worn out. The moths don’t tend to have a lot of endurance, and he wouldn’t have had time to land and rest while following you. To complicate matters, the moths are pretty shy. Stonecreek has a healthy population of moths, but they’ll only show up when they must—or someone gets into a tight spot.”
Interesting. I hadn’t thought to ask Amanda if she knew my winged guest. “Do you know this specific moth?”
“Oh, no. I can just smell that he’s a man; it’s one of the advantages of being a shapeshifter. We have a heightened sense of smell, even avian types like me. I can also smell someone’s general age, although the moths are trickier. The younglings have a fresh scent about them, though. He doesn’t, but he also doesn’t have any of the markers of old age, either. But for a moth, grown but not middle aged can be anywhere between twenty-five and eighty or older. Then again, if a handsome moth came my way looking like he’s in the prime of his life, I’m not going to care if he’s actually eighty. By the time he looks eighty, I’ll have been dead three times over!”
Throughout my life, I’d heard stories about people seeking out the Fountain of Youth, some myth most claimed originated on Earth. Eternal life hadn’t appealed to me then, and I questioned why anyone might want to live longer. Then again, my frugal nature played some part of that.
I’d grown up poor. I’d gotten lucky moving to Stonecreek and finding a job, and I had scraped every penny to keep my home, having blown through my education grant buying the place. I sometimes picked up work in the evenings, often helping people recover from the floods or preparing for them. While I got by, I mostly lived paycheck to paycheck, hoping nothing went catastrophically wrong while squirreling away money for a rainy day.
Why would anyone want to extend that for hundreds of years? Did having so much extra time somehow lead to wealth and happiness?
Rather than speak my mind, I decided to address the next problem of my day: where everyone would sleep. Gabriella would be easy; I had a guest bedroom, and I kept it clean. The moth and the owl would be my primary issues, as my spare rooms were dedicated to my hobbies or lacked clean bedding. “I only have one guest bedroom, but if you plan on staying and need to rest, Amanda, you’re more than welcome to make use of my couch.” I considered the moth. “I’d make an offer to him as well, but it seems like he has decided the plate is an acceptable place to sleep.”
Amanda laughed. “Don’t you worry about me, Valerie. Once I observe you for a little longer, I’ll wing my way out and go back to work. I’ll be out of your hair within the hour. You both seem to be fine. Just monitor when you go to the bathroom. If there is any sign of blood in your urine or stool, call emergency services immediately. We’ll bring in a helicopter if we can, and if we can’t, we’ll do what we can. It may be a while before the waters recede. Internal injuries are probable among flood victims, but I think you got off lucky, Gabriella. You got caught in the second phase of the flood. Most of the debris had already washed out of the city. Sure, you got hammered by the water and some of the walls, but you didn’t hit much debris on the way down.”
I glanced up the hill in the direction of the massive caldera lake edging the town. Year after year, nature pulled the same trick, sending massive storms to the mountain region, which in turn elevated the lake’s waters. Despite magic and science, the dams and levees could only do so much.
Rather than have them break, the engineers opened the floodgates, and Stonecreek braced for the worst. Whomever had built the city had been wise about it, but I questioned why they hadn’t done the building somewhere safer.
“Would you like some breakfast?” I asked, hoping that doing something would ease my growing tensions.
Outside, a light rumble of thunder promised the floods were just beginning—and I had only planned for enough extra food for one person for two weeks. Feeding Gabriella while waiting for the recession would test my patience and my pantry.
Oh, well. As always, I would find a way.
“Breakfast would be good,” Amanda replied, and she stared at Gabriella to send a message she should not skip the offered meal.
“Yes, please,” Gabriella said, and she wrung her hands together. “Can I at least pay for the groceries? As a thank you? I don’t have much.”
Few from Earth did, and I’d heard rumor the evacuees became despondent if they could not do what they could to contribute. “Of course. We can worry about that after the floods recede. Until then, we’ll make do with what I have.”
Amanda left after an hour and a half; she wanted to see if Gabriella suffered from any discomfort after eating. As the woman seemed fine, the paramedic gathered her kit, transformed into an owl, and left my home on silent wings. I breathed a relieved sigh, showed my guest to the spare bedroom, and once she was settled in to sleep, I went to deal with the luna moth. I provided a fresh dish of water and left him to his nap. If he wanted to depart, he’d have to wait until I opened the door for him, as there was no way I was inviting in any more wildlife.
A human and a moth would test my patience enough.
Aware I would need to provide for my guest, I set an alarm for five hours, changed into my pajamas, and conked out the instant I crawled into bed. As planned, the shrill tone startled me awake, and I killed it before it could go off a second time. Thunder clapped, and I grimaced at the rumble of flood waters beating on the shored foundations of my home. Rolling out of bed, I headed to the bay window, discovering white waters two feet below my door. Across the street, darkness greeted me, with no lights in any of the windows, indicating they’d lost power.
I could only assume my side of the street would be next.
No electricity would complicate matters for me and my guests, although I had a propane barbecue in my backyard, assuming it hadn’t flooded out. The worry things might go from bad to worse got the better of me, and I pattered to my kitchen to check my sliver of property. Not only was the drainage system still working, my rain barrel was ready to be stoppered, purified, and put into storage until needed. I headed to my closet, grabbed the lid, and closed it. Moving it would have to wait, as I’d have to call in some favors due to its excessive weight.
When I came back inside, soaked through, the luna moth explored my table. I grabbed an apple and an orange along with a clean plate, prepared his breakfast, and offered it to him before changing into dry clothes and going to work figuring out what I’d feed myself and my guest in case we were trapped for longer than a few days. I settled on chili, which would last us a few days unless the power went out. In theory, I could keep the food a safe temperature in a pot on the barbecue, assuming I didn’t run out of propane.
By the time I’d gotten everything prepared and the chili simmering on the stove, Gabriella emerged from my guest bedroom, yawning and rubbing at her eyes.
“Did I wake you?” I asked, grimacing at the thought of having disturbed her with my banging around in the kitchen.
“No. The thunder did. Nobody warned me how bad the storms got here. When I first came to Stonecreek, I had a guide who showed me where to stay and shop.” She gestured in the direction of up the hill.
Interesting. Few of Stonecreek’s residents lived anywhere near the dam, where the waters were the most dangerous during the yearly flood. While the buildings bore similar protections to mine, anyone caught out on the streets died, their bodies broken and battered by the time they reached the base of the mountain. “Where did you fall into the water?”
“I didn’t fall. I was on the street, headed to a hostel down the hill, as I’d reached the limit on my stay at the refugee shelter. I managed to get up onto some steps for the first while, but then the waters got too high. I got swept off my perch.” She frowned, described where the shelter was at, and added, “I’d thought it strange everyone was careful to go indoors before sundown, but nobody up there had told me why. I had no idea the flooding happened this time of year. To be fair, they keep the refugees up near the lake, teaching us about the planet and helping us improve our language skills. I never thought to ask about the floods.”
My mouth dropped open, and even the moth stopped eating his breakfast, his antennae twitching while he fluttered his wings. “They didn’t tell you when the floods happened?”
The floods were scheduled. We knew the exact minute the floodgates opened. There was one reason—and one reason alone—why someone would neglect to inform the refugees on when the floods began.
There was no faster way to kill someone than to forgo warning them of the dangers of Stonecreek. But why ? Why invite refugees only to neglect to teach them how to survive in our city?
A possibility roused.
Moonriver had paid city-states a hefty sum per person to accept refugees. Gabriella’s life had a price tag, and if I remembered correctly, she’d brought in over a hundred thousand dollars in immediate revenue to help her settle. Stonecreek had taken in several hundred refugees in the first wave and several hundred more in the second.
Charitable donations from around the universe had paid for the relocation funds. The wealthy would enjoy tax incentives for having contributed, and the refugees would be able to start a new life.
It wasn’t possible that the powers that be running Stonecreek would deliberately murder refugees for the money, was it?
“No, they hadn’t,” Gabriella confirmed in a soft voice.
“How strange. Did they tell you about the flood response, how we clean up, and what we do after the flood waters recede?”
The woman shook her head. “They just told me there were yearly floods.”
That bothered me, as it indicated that the guide understood they led the refugees to their inevitable deaths. Worse, it meant we’d have more bodies than normal in the lakes that formed below the city. The census wouldn’t include the refugees, and the residents wouldn’t be checking the missing persons list for those we only knew existed from news reports.
With a high probability of there being no survivors, nobody would have caught on to how someone in Stonecreek had figured out how to profit off the lives of refugees—hundreds, if not over a thousand of them. Fury stabbed through me, and I needed to control my breathing to keep from sounding like a bull about to trash a china shop for the sheer joy of destruction. “I can teach you more about Stonecreek,” I promised. “I’m no guide, but I’m happy to help you get settled—or to get you to somewhere safer. ”
Anyone could reach out to Moonriver regarding refugees, and I bet the instant I communicated that there were refugee bodies likely in the water, they could begin the process of rescuing Gabriella and getting her to somewhere genuinely safe. I checked my cell phone, the cheapest money could buy and unreliable most days, to discover I’d lost signal sometime during the storm. I regarded my landline, which hung on the wall nearby, and I picked it up to check for a dial tone.
While the electricity was out across the street and my cell wasn’t working, the phone was still good. I’d heard the commercial so many times inviting people to contact Moonriver if a refugee was spotted having trouble that I dialed without having to think about it.
On the third ring, a woman answered, “Moonriver Refugee Response Network, how may I direct your call?”
“Hi. My name is Valerie Chester. I’m a resident of Stonecreek. It’s our flood season, and I need to report that I assisted a refugee out of the waters. I have reason to believe that the refugees brought into Stonecreek did not receive sufficient warning about our floods or the flood schedule.”
The woman sucked in a breath. “Do you have the refugee’s full name and registration number?”
“Let me ask.” I lowered the phone, turned to Gabriella, and relayed the request for more information.
“Gabriella Espinoza, and my registration number is MR-SC-1262.”
I translated that to mean she’d initially arrived in Moonriver, she’d been assigned to Stonecreek, and the city-state had taken more than twelve hundred victims.
The potential death toll staggered me, especially if Gabriella spoke the truth and all our refugees had been building lives for themselves in the most vulnerable part of the city without any idea the floods could be so dangerous.
I told the operator my guest’s name and registration number.
“How did you come about this information?” the operator asked.
“Gabriella got lucky. She fell into the waters at the later stage of the flood, so while the waters are high, most of the debris has already been washed out to the forming lakes below the city. I heard her scream, and I saw the light from a moth shapeshifter. I have a rescue rig in my house. I got lucky. My aim with the preserver was good, and my system held while I pulled her in. Internal injuries are a possibility, though.”
“Miss Espinoza has active shapeshifter genetics, so she would begin healing immediately. She stayed in Moonriver long enough for her genes to activate, so she should recover. While she is not as robust as a shapeshifter, nor does she have any known animal genetics, she stands an excellent chance of survival.” The operator made a thoughtful sound. “She has not been disclosed on her genetics; she was welcomed to Stonecreek before the DNA tests were completed. Her genetics make her eligible to gain residency in Moonriver.”
“Give me a sec,” I requested, once again lowering my phone so I could speak to Gabriella. “I’m guessing your medical records are not exactly private because of your status as a refugee?”
“Yes, that’s correct. We agreed to have our basic information public to simplify moving between the city-states. Why?”
“You have sufficient shapeshifter genetics to be eligible for residency in Moonriver.”
The relief on Gabriella’s face told me everything I needed to know. “Truly?”
I lifted the phone back to my ear. “Can someone in Moonriver retrieve her?”
“We absolutely can. What is the current flood situation?”
“It’s bad. The stairs are out, but I have a courtyard. Perhaps a helicopter could lower a rig into it?”
“I will need your precise location and a method for the pilot to locate you. We will send a helicopter.” The operator made a soft sound rather like a growl. “We will need to investigate the situation with the floods and refugees. This could be problematic.”
I understood; Moonriver was on good terms with Stonecreek, and any accusation of killing off refugees using the floods would destroy that. However, the same commercials I’d been listening to for months came to our rescue. “The floods are the worst time for emergency services, and by the end of them, it’s a mess for first responders. I already had an owl shifter here. And I remembered the commercial, and it does say help with any major problem. The risk of internal injuries counts, right?”
The woman chuckled. “Absolutely. And this sort of thing is why this hotline exists. But I am concerned, because if it happened to one person, it could happen to many. It is possible it was a poorly trained guide, but we must investigate. And as you’re using a landline, they’ll be able to identify that you made the call. ”
“I’m just sparing local emergency services from having to try to figure out how to get a woman to a hospital in our worst weather,” I replied, making sure to keep my tone light.
“That you are. All right, give me all the information you can about your location, the space in your yard, and anything that might help us help you. Also, how are your supplies?”
“If you could bring a spare tank or two of propane, I wouldn’t say no to that. Power went out across the street, and it’s only a matter of time before it goes out here, too.”
“We’ll bring some emergency supplies for you, so don’t worry about that. How many are in your household?”
“Right now, it’s just me and a luna moth shifter, and he’s a stranger. I suspect he does not shift with his clothes, so if you could bring some fresh fruit for him, that would be wonderful.”
“We’ll make sure your shifter guest is properly supplied,” the woman promised.
I thanked her before giving her every scrap of information I could on my home, right down to the property’s lot number, the precise number of intersections up from the entrance, and the rather unique building on the end of my row belonging to Joel. Once the woman was confident the helicopter could reach us, she promised someone would call once they got close and that they would smooth over any feathers with Stonecreek.
The city-state would appreciate making a problem disappear—at least for the moment.