Sunrise Prophecy

Alli Snow

I am seven years old, curled up against the cold in a bed that is not my own. Tonight, I stay in the house of my friend Fielle. Tonight, my baby brother will be born.

No younglings, men, or women without children are allowed in a house where there is a birthing. Fielle explains that the entire process is fraught with magic and mystery, because, in all seriousness, how could a child - even one as small as a newborn - be expelled from… down there? Obviously, says Fielle, who is eight and therefore an expert in such matters, something is going on that they do not want us to know, a secret that will only be revealed to us on the night of our own first birthing.

I am not so convinced. I saw the look on Father's face before he left me in the capable hands of Fielle's oldest sister, and it was full of concern. Why would he be worried, I wonder aloud, if there is magic involved?

Because, sighs Fielle, magic can go wrong. It's a tricky thing. You don't control it, it controls you. If you let it get away from you, it can cause terrible damage.

Darrah enters at that moment and informs us that it is time to sleep. Darrah is skinny and cross and promises that if we speak a word in the darkness, the Wraith will hear and will come and eat us up in our beds. Fielle squeals in fear at this, and then she giggles. The Wraith have not come in ten years. It is hard for children like us, no matter the stories told, to truly understand their horror.

Darrah is sixteen. She understands.

It is cold in Fielle's house, and seems colder after the lights are turned down. My small hand curls around the pendant at my neck as I listen to Darrah's soft, sibilant breathing and Fielle's gentle snores and the sound of the wind in the trees. I cannot sleep. I cannot even close my eyes, because when I do I see the pinched, anxious look on my father's face.

I am still awake when they come to fetch me, and I leap from my bed at the first blow to the front door. There is a scuffle and a curse in the darkness as Fielle's father and brother rush to take up arms, but then a voice calls to reassure them. It is Lada, Fielle's mother. She is a novice healing woman, not as wise as Charin, but strong and able.

Tonight, Lada looks tired and pale. She waves away the concerns of her man and her children and beckons to me. Only me. "Teyla," she says, her voice quavering. Lada and my mother are cousins, and close friends. "You must come with me. Put on your coat. It's cold out. That's a dear girl."

Fielle watches me with wide, frightened eyes, and Darrah whispers a prayer to the Ancestors.

It is then that I know the magic has gone wrong.

()()()

I am ten years old and my brother is named Coll. He is a strange child, serious when most his age are merry, contemplative while others laugh and play, and at three years of age he has never spoken a word. Lada maintains that the difficult birthing that brought Coll into the world damaged his mind, but Father and I know better. Coll might be different, but he still understands.

The others don't believe Lada either; Coll's strangeness is just another mark of his special destiny to them. There is a story among our people that has been told, says Charin, as far back as [?]anyone living can remember, of the man that will save us from the Wraith. He will come from darkness, says the story, and his coming will be marked with pain and death. But he will have a connection to the Ancestors like no other, and he will slay each Wraith until not one remains to wake from their long sleep.

Whether there are other elements of the story that no one will share, elements that explain why they have decided Coll is their savior, apart from the circumstances of his birth, I do not know. Perhaps they are simply so desperate for hope that any source will do, even if it is only a too-serious child who cannot or will not speak.

I find Coll's oddities annoying, for they mark him and therefore our entire small family as different. And yet I love him just the same. I love him as my mother asked me to love him, and watch after him, and help him grow, all before she passed into the dark quietness of the Place After.

I spend this afternoon by the lakeshore with Coll and Meleth, who is Charin's man. The weather today is warm and so he does not suffer so badly from the constant ache of the joints. He watches me as I move in the proscribed patterns and nods his approval, or frowns in rebuke. "Good. Mind… mind your left foot there. Always mind your footing. Sweep with your arm, move it towards your body, and then away, smoothly, like the river flowing. No… not so stiffly, child. That's how I may look now, with these old bones of mine, but you are young."

Meleth was a great warrior in his day. He did not fight the Wraith, of course, because the Wraith do not meet you as an equal on the field of battle. They simply snatch you from the sky, or strike from the shadows. But there were others who sought to take from us what little we still had, and Meleth helped pushed them back. He learned his skills from a wise woman who came from another world, and he had decided to share this knowledge with me.

It was Charin who suggested these lessons to my father. He did not like the idea. It was a conversation I listened to from the boughs of a favorite tree; unknowing, Charin and Father had gone to a nearby prayer stone to discuss my possible instruction.

"It is unusual," he said. "And I am not sure I like it. Teyla is young, and she is my daughter. Why not wait until Coll is older-"

Charin's voice was soft and strong. "This knowledge must be passed while Meleth is still able to share it. To wait even five years… I do not think it is wise. And this is assuming that little Coll has the interest to learn, and the…"

"And the capacity," said Father shortly. "My son is not a fool, Charin. You have looked at him yourself and you can see nothing wrong."

"Only that he does not care to run and play, swim and jump, as do other boys his age. Only that he does not speak. Tagan, dear, you must concede the possibility."

"Now you sound like Lada."

"Lada speaks with nothing but love for you and your children in her heart. As do I. I would see Teyla be a happy child for as long as she can."

She paused. There was a chill in her silence.

"But they are coming back. They always come back. Teyla is intelligent, and she is made of stern stuff. If Coll… if Coll does not, she may be the one to lead us after you go to the Place After, Tagan."

My father did not speak. He never would speak about dying, whether at the hands of the Wraith or from the ceaseless turning of time itself, as though by denying the possibility he could deny the reality as well. Charin must have taken his silence as consent, and the very next day Meleth took my brother and me to the riverbank.

"Watch," he said, assuming the simplest form, "and do as I do."

This was a year ago. Now I have all but mastered the movements, enjoying the feeling of peace and focus and balance they give me. Coll will even sit up and watch me sometimes, and the ever-present frown softens slightly as he looks on.

With a small groan, Meleth pushes away from his sun-warmed rock and walks closer to the water. I pause in my movements to watch as he picks up a length of driftwood, turns it over in his hands, and then breaks it into two nearly even segments. He hands them to me.

"You want me to… break it?" I ask, confused.

He chuckles, shaking his head. "Hold them in your hands, girl. As you do the movements, hold them."

I examine the two lengths of wood with suspicion. "They will get in the way," I insist.

"No, Teyla. They won't. Hold them long enough and they become extensions of your own body, your own mind, and you won't even notice that they're there. But you must practice, girl, practice."

I grasp the two makeshift staves, still looking at Meleth doubtfully. It is beginning to occur to me that the fighting forms and poses he has taught me over these past seasons was merely preparation for this, and for a reason I cannot fully grasp I am a little disappointed.

Meleth simply returns to his warm rock, however, and motions me to continue. At his feet Coll holds up a twig in one pudgy fist, as though to say look, I can do it as well!

I continue my training.

()()

I am thirteen now and we are hiding from the Wraith, Father, Coll and me, hiding in the forest beyond the edge of home, breathing quietly through our mouths, muscles trembling with the readiness to run.

Nobody saw a ship. Nobody heard the dull buzzing that heralds their approach. And yet with frightening certainty I knew that they were near, the monsters, the murderers, the scourge. And so I took my brother by the hand and ran to Father and told him.

He believed me. He knew no child of his would dare to lie about such a thing.

"They are coming," I whisper now.

He puts a warm hand on my shoulder, and his touch is reassuring. "I know, Teyla. You have a gift. Charin has… she's told me a little about it."

"Then why is not everybody hiding?" I can feel myself close to tears now, and I am filled with terror and sadness and, above all else, frustration. Lada's family is somewhere in the forest as well, and Charin and Meleth and several other groups. But not everybody went. Some looked at Father with scorn when he called out his warning. My warning.

"They don't believe you," my father whispers. "Not because they think you're a bad girl, but because they don't want to believe. We've been left alone for so long. I think Jinto and the others would rather act as though there is no longer a threat. They hope that pretending will remake reality."

"They are the Wraith," says Coll. "They will come. They always come."

He speaks, sometimes. Enough to let us know that he can, when he wishes. His words, however, are never comforting, and Father holds him tight.

We wait there in the forest, wait for darkness to fall, wait for the Wraith to come or - as I would much prefer - not come. But the certainty still lingers there in the back of my mind like an unpleasant itch, a snatch of song that cannot be recalled, or a hunger that cannot be sated.

Hunger.

Feed the Hunger.

Take them, take them, use them up, take them all, all you can, watch them run, chase them down. So much fun, good, watching them run, good, good, but not as good as taking them, feeding the Hunger, pushing it down for another time, until the next time you must feed. Hunt, take, use them all up and then move onto the next, the next, the next hunting ground, the small prey. Run, run! Good good good-

Somebody screams.

I think for a second that it is me, for the voice in my mind is so fierce and terrifying, and then I know nothing but the cool damp night air, the smell of the soil, the sting of branches against my skin as I run. My father shouts after me to stop, to come back, and he tries to follow but he is encumbered by Coll, who he cannot leave to fend for himself.

I smell the fires before I see them.

There are more screams, disembodied at first, and then I see an Athosian figure running through the trees, and another, and more. It is harder for their dark light to find you under the canopy, I remember Charin saying.

Charin. I am overcome with concern for my friend; I can see her clearly in my mind's eye, stirring her great pot of soup while I curled by her hearth and drew pictures of the trees, the animals, and the Ancestors, or humming along as I sing the old songs with a child's guilelessness. Sometimes, before Coll was born, Mother would be there as well.

I jerk to a stop, trying to remember where Charin and Meleth went to hide, and then bolt in the most likely direction. I have to make sure that they're safe-

"Teyla!" I almost run into the young man Halling, Jinto's son. He had not come with us. Now his face is smudged with soot and streaked with something else - blood, perhaps? "They are here!" He bodily turns me around. "We have to get away."

I can hear it now: the drone, the sound that was described to me as the voice of an angry insect, the heavy reverberation that makes your teeth ache. They are above us, somewhere. "Was anybody trapped?" I demand, pushing Halling's hand away. "Is anybody still there?"

His expression is grim. "We tried to run in many directions. They will get some of us, but not all."

My stomach twists at his words they will get some of us. Like he's allowing it - like he's just giving up! "They may not!" I yell at him, knowing my voice is lost inside the chaos around us, knowing that what I say is a lie. The Hunger demands. The Hunger owns everything that they do. They will not leave unsatisfied tonight.

"Come on," says Halling, his voice full of sorrow. "Here is your father. We must go."

()()

I am fifteen and we are moving camp. It is a slow and cumbersome process, yet it is one we undertake every few seasons. When I was young the moving went slowly: the unattached men and the fittest women would go first, taking the heaviest bundles, and then the families with children of a useful age, and we would settle in our new spot before helping the old, young, sick and infirm make the journey from the old grounds to the new.

These past years things have changed, and we all move as one, carrying our world on our backs and in our carts, looking over our shoulders at what we are leaving behind, and what may follow after us.

"If the Wraith wish to find us," says Fielle quietly, "this will not stop them."

I scowl at her. "Hush!"

"Teyla is right," says Halling, walking on Fielle's other side. "That kind of talk is not helpful, my dear. Moving between the hunting seasons may fool those who would hunt us. At worst we get a change of scenery. And at best, lives are saved."

Whether or not he is defending me, Halling's tone is gentle and warm, and it is Fielle's hand he takes in his when we come to rough terrain. At first I try to pretend I do not see this, and then I decide that there is no use in such an act. My two friends are in love, and Lada looks on happily from her cart.

Making my excuses, I leave the couple to each other and fall back to walk alongside my father. Coll follows just behind us, stopping along the way to pick up unusual stones or examine a particularly tall tree, and sometimes I catch him humming one of the songs Charin taught him. My brother is rather tall now, with hair the same shade as mine and eyes as wide and clear as our mother's. He is healthy, he is outwardly well, but still he holds himself apart from all of us.

Perhaps because everyone else holds themselves a little apart from them.

"Why Coll?" I ask softly, so my brother cannot hear me. "Why do they think he will be the one to save us?"

My father gives me a wry, sideways look. Perhaps he is wondering why it took me so long to ask, and indeed it is a question that has followed me for many years. I always thought to discover the answer myself, but now Coll is eight and I have learned nothing more. "It comes from a story, Teyla. You need put no stock in it."

"But I know the story. How he will come from a night of… blood, and death."

Father is quiet. Finally: "Yes. That is how the tale begins."

"And he will have a connection with the old ones like no one else. And I've heard some of the people - like Amar, I've heard him say that that's why Coll is so quiet and acts so strange sometimes, it's because he's communing with the Ancestors."

"Is that what you think?"

I bite my lip and think this over. "It would be nice, I suppose," I murmur. "I would like to know there is a reason for… for all of it. And sometimes there is something so strange about the way he looks at me. At the world. But… no, I suppose I don't believe the story."

We walk in silence for a moment, and I listen to the crunch of the rocky soil beneath our feet and the muted voices of those around us.

"Stories aren't meant to tell the future," says my father at length. "Sometimes they help to guide our path, but not always. Did Charin ever tell you that there was a story about me?"

"You!"

He grins. "Yes. A very simple tale, really. There is a woman of brown hair and blue eyes and she is far from home. Lost in the woods, or in a desert - there are variations. It begins to rain. It begins to grow dark. She is all alone and frightened. The rain falls faster. The water rises. Suddenly a river swells its banks. A flood is coming. The beautiful maiden will surely be drowned. Only she isn't. A man, a mysterious stranger, swoops out of the darkness. He looks almost like a part of the darkness himself, with dark skin and dark hair, and at first the woman is afraid. But the man saves her life. He shows her how to swim to safe harbor, a place where her people will find her when they return from trading in the city. He smiles a white smile at her, and then he vanishes, never to be seen again."

I stare at him, enraptured, although puzzled by the end of his tale. "You said the story was about you!"

"And I said they don't predict the future, or tell you what to do. I saved your mother that night, it's true. But in taking me in and making me one of her people, in loving me and giving me you and Coll, she saved me as well."

Although I know he loved her very much, something inside squirms to hear my father talk about anyone in this tone… the same tone that Halling used with Fielle. I cast one last look back at my brother, my poor brother who can do so little and yet will have so much expected of him, and then I drift away. Towards other friends, other members of the extended family who call themselves Athosians. Carliss, mother of Marta; Nevil and Amar, brothers to Juna, who has bound herself to Eammon; little Sade, whose parents were both killed in the Wraith attack during my thirteenth year, and her guardians, Renny and Loris. All of them and more. All of them dear to my father's heart, and mine. I find that I love them, although not in the way that Father loved my mother, enough to leave everything he knew behind so he could be with her. Not in the way that Halling loves Fielle, with a brightness that shines through the roughness of his face.

Such affection, I am sure, comes only once in a generation, and so it will never come when expected.

()()

I'm eighteen, and I am too young to die.

The specter of death hangs over all of us, all the time. Life is fraught with risk: the animal you hunt may charge, the boat you fish in may capsize, the fire you tend may attain a life of its own, and the child you give birth to may be born too early, or too quickly, or with his body turned wrong-way in your womb.

And the Wraith may come, taking you up into their ships with their dark light, or paralyzing you with their weapons and dragging you away to feed.

The Wraith have come, again.

Not to Athos; I can only pray to the Ancestors that they are safe at home. I am on a planet known as Haven, with my father, Coll, and Fielle, with the intention of trading for chemicals to liven the earth we plant in. I have also brought the staves Meleth bequeathed to me, hoping to find a fine woodworker to create a similar pair for my brother. But no sooner do we arrive at the market than my mind seems thrown into chaos; I catch my breath, I feel the hunger.

Fielle notices my body go rigid. So does Father. "Wraith?" he murmurs, looking around the busy market square.

Unable to speak, I simply nod. I'm older than I was the first time, and unfortunately familiar with this sensation, yet somehow it's worse this time. I close my eyes and seek focus. "More," I whisper, aware that a few overhead words could turn this benign crowd into a panicked mob. "More than has come to Athos during my lifetime."

We are already edging towards the large gates that mark the egress to Haven's market. We must get ourselves clear of the throng before we warn others, or we might well be trampled in the melee. Fielle puts an arm across my shoulders and leans towards Father. "Haven is much larger than our village has been in many decades. If they come to feed, they will likely need a larger force."

"Of course they come to feed," says Coll quietly. "It's what they do."

Father goes up to one of the gate sentries; I stand with my brother and Fielle and watch as he goes through the motions of explaining and warning. The sentry casts a nasty look in my direction, and then a far more disgusted look at my father, who is getting more frustrated now, visibly angry, and then two other guards come over. From the expressions on their faces it is evident that the Wraith have been long absent from Haven… or else these men simply do not believe.

They hope that pretending will remake reality.

Sneering and calling us vulgar names, they corral our small party outside the gate threshold, and stand there to bar our re-entry.

And then they come.

Ships, many of them, spear the evening sky like great silver blades. There is a moment of horrified silence in the square before the screaming begins.

I catch things in brief glimpses only, flashes in front of my eyes even as the Hunger roils in my mind.

Bodies colliding.

Hands pushing without restraint or care.

Feet kicking out.

And then in a flash of dark light the monsters are there, faces grotesque and blind, hands ever searching, seeking out fresh life. The crowd surges away from them - there is nowhere to go - there is no room in the enclosed square. There are only the two small gates - where we stand, and on the opposite side of the market - but the great throng is in panic, not thinking, only reacting, only trying mindlessly to get away.

My hands itch for the staves in my pack, slung over my right shoulder. As though he knows this, Father reaches out and touches my shoulder. "They did not come through the chappa'ai," he intones, using the strange word for the Ancestors' portal that he brought with him from his home. "We should get there, and quickly, get home, warn the others to go to ground."

Fielle nods her vigorous agreement, no doubt thinking of Halling and Darrah.

Coll apparently disagrees.

With our father's attention elsewhere, he darts into the crowd. The screaming, thrashing crowd. The crowd that the Wraith use as their banquet-table.

My brother darts between a voluminous skirt and a hanging tapestry, and he vanishes.

I do not remember leaving my father and Fielle there at the gate; suddenly I am pushing the tapestry out of my face, and slipping past the owner of the skirt, who is screaming as though her hair is on fire. Stupid woman, I think, with both scorn and shame. Sneak. Hide. Don't stand there with your mouth open, asking them to eat you.

The Wraith need no invitation.

A man's voice shouts from the direction of the far exit, and like the sea tide the crowd begins to push in that direction. At least some are regaining their senses in the midst of this horror, but not quickly enough. An otherworldly sound tells me that the Wraith are using their fearsome weapons, the sticks of pale blue fire that make the victim drop to the ground as though dead.

They are not truly dead, though. Not yet.

I do not bother shouting out Coll's name; even if he could hear me over the melee, he would not answer. I know this instinctively. For eleven years he has shown scant interest in the people around him, and only slightly more notice of the world he inhabits. He has been docile, if sometimes unsettling. For him now to run into this danger with such intent…

It is a sign from the Ancestors.

It comes together, in a way. My father was drawn to my mother, like in an old fireside tale, and she produced me and Coll. I am the weapon, honed by Meleth's teachings, sharpened by my fear and my anger - yes, anger - against this menace. Coll is my beacon.

Lead me where you will, little brother.

I am certain that I see a scrap of red fabric - red is Coll's favorite color - but then I see something else, something that stops me in a second, my body cold, my mind reeling.

The Hunger voice calls him leader, lord, master. I have never seen one of his kind before, not with my own two eyes, yet I know what he is. He is one of those who are not blind, although his eyes are small and filled with need, his skin pale, his hair long and starkly white across his shoulders as he feeds.

It is in an alcove, a small patio leading off the square with little room to move and even less light. The leader lord master doesn't see me at first, intent on his current victim, laying supine on the floor, and on the others: a young man with dark hair and a pale face, a crying young woman and, in her arms, a squalling baby. The woman looks down at the figure on the floor, the person whose life is being drawn from him, and shudders and holds the infant tighter. The young man grimaces and tries to shield the woman from the sight.

The leader lord master Wraith, while kneeling, is between them and the only exit off the patio. He will take them next if I do not intervene.

The child in the woman's arms is small, so small. I can see one pale pink fist emerge from the swaddling clothes, striking out into the cool evening air.

No Wraith can be allowed to take a baby's life, a precious new life, no matter the alternative. It is sacred, pure, untouched by the harshness and pettiness of life, and it must not be tainted by these monstrosities.

The staves are in my hand, and I strike.

The leader notices me an instant before my first blow lands, and for a second he merely lies on the ground next to his expiring victim and stares up at me. I have surprised him. How long has it been, I wonder, since anyone has done such a thing?

Too long.

He is up; I strike again, but this time he parries the blow with one hideous long-fingered hand. His eyes are laughing. He lunges.

The creature's strength is impressive, and I am rather shocked to find that my reflexes are better. I duck out of his reach - a low, sweeping motion that Meleth took pains to perfect in me - and aim a strike to his knees. This would be a vulnerable spot for many. Not for him.

He hisses - in anger, perhaps, or amusement, but not in pain, and brushes me away as casually as one might shoo an insect. The ground comes up to meet me, hard, but I push myself up again, hardly breathing, letting the staves fly.

This time he does not deflect; the sticks catch him across the face and his head snaps back. The hissing sound comes once more - definitely anger, then - and he swings those deadly hands again.

Block. Thrust. Spin. Duck. It goes on, and on, until I wonder if I am not simply reliving the last few moments of my life over and over. I know I cannot beat him on my own. I know I am merely buying time, and that there is little I can do besides give this small family a moment to say goodbye.

A young woman with two wooden sticks cannot defeat a Wraith.

I wonder if he will feed on me when I am defeated, if he will put his killing hand on me here, on Haven, or wait until he has returned to the comfort of his terrible vessel.

Please, Ancestors, Fathers of Light… if it happens here, do not let Coll see.

No sooner have I formed this thought, well aware that my strength is flagging, failing me, than I realize that the leader lord master is no longer engaged in the fight. He steps away, and there is a flash of annoyance in the dark pits of his eyes… directed at something else, not me.

I am breathing hard, favoring my left leg - I don't recall injuring it in the fight, but it must have happened - and still half-crippled by the fear that comes from battling a nightmare. The creature may not have the time to take my life force for his own, but surely with a stroke of one powerful hand he could take my life.

He does not.

It is not compassion; the Wraith have no understanding of mercy, and that is what makes them what they are. Rather - and I sense this in my bones - the Wraith lord before me simply has other priorities. I am one young woman with two wooden sticks, chattel that will not consent to be taken as so many others are, and I am not worth the bother. Something calls the lord, a signal that I cannot hear, and yet I sense its presence. He is being called away.

With one last, ferocious smile he steps away, back towards the exit, and I stumble to stand between him and the helpless trio should he decide to take them captive.

He does not. In a blink the dark light has come for him, and he is gone.

Many things happen at once. There is a great cry from the market square, a sound of relief and despair, which tells me the other Wraith have followed their master into the sky… and that some Havenites have been taken as well. The woman standing behind me in the alcove - she cannot be much older than Fielle - holds her child to her chest and drops down beside the man on the floor, the man the Wraith was feeding on when I interceded. "Toran, do something," she demands, her voice quavering. The pale-faced young man stares at me in amazement for a long moment, and then kneels down on the victim's other side. Trembling fingers go to his neck and wrist, no doubt seeking the points of life, some sign that there is still a mind within that withered husk, but the young man sags and shakes his head and says, "He is gone, Alma," and the young woman bursts into tears of rage and loss and-

"Coll," I gasp, furious that I have lingered, that I forgot him for even a short time.

I turn to go, to run back into the now-subdued crowd, but the man called Toran jumps up and grabs my arm. "Wait! Who are you? You saved my sister, her child… you actually fought the letumea, the Wraith… don't leave us!"

I shake off his grip. "My name is Teyla!" I shout the words in anger and frustration, and to be heard over the turmoil in the square and Alma's sobs. "I come from another world… I'm sorry, I must go, my family may be in danger, and… Fielle, oh no…"

Pushing back into the confusion, aware that Toran is following me, I fear what I might see. The frightened expressions of those spared, the tears and screams of those whose loved ones were taken… these are sights I am too familiar with. They are the visions that the Wraith leave behind. What I fear is my father's broken body, Coll's sightless eyes, Fielle's beautiful form reduced to a dry and lifeless shell… and these images play on and on behind my eyes until I feel ready to scream-

"Teyla!"

It is not Toran, although he is still there. It is Fielle, thank the Ancestors, and she throws her arms around my neck and adds her fervent thanks as well.

"You ran off, and then your father and I… but we got separated… I couldn't see you at all, and then I saw one of them, and it was coming near me - I just turned and I ran, I ran Teyla, I was so scared. I just kept imagining never seeing Halling again, and Mother and… and are those your staves? Teyla, did you try to fight one of them?"

"She didn't try," interjects Toran, startling Fielle with the nearness of his voice. "She did, she did it, saved me and my sister and her baby daughter, the letumea had killed her husband and would have taken us next, but, but Teyla saved us-"

I ignore him. "Fielle, did you see Coll anywhere? Or Father?"

She appears grim but determined. "No Teyla. I didn't. But the Ancestors only know where Coll ran to, and there are many people here… so many people. We'll look, Teyla. We'll find them."

()()

Half a year has passed and I sit in the shadows with my back against the rock wall, my heels digging furrows in the earth. I have always liked this place: it is cool in the worst heat of the summer and a place of shelter in storms, and so in whatever season we find ourselves camped nearby it is always a welcome sanctuary. When I was very young I would play here with my friends, and we would pretend that we were in the old City of the Ancestors.

Not long after my mother died, Father had given me a necklace, a strange trinket he’d found on another world. A couple of seasons later the necklace had fallen off while Fielle and I had romped through the caverns, and I have never been able to find it since. I had come here today to look once more, but upon arriving I discovered I did not have the energy. I did not have the strength. And so I sit here by myself, looking up at the pictures.

The pictures on the walls show the cycle that is written on our hearts. They do not all sleep, and the ones who remain awake are eager to display their power. They will come again and again, until the next great awakening, and when that happens they will come and never leave.

Unless…

The sound of footfalls heralds someone's cautious approach. I sigh at this invasion of my solitude, yet I knew from the moment I left that it was only a matter of time. "I am here, Fielle."

My friend appears in the archway, silhouetted by the morning light behind her. Her eyes look a little tired and watery, as though she has been crying. "Thank the Ancestors," she mutters, shuffling closer. "When we all woke this morning and couldn't find you…"

"I needed some time to myself."

Fielle slides down the wall, sitting next to me with a little oof. "Are you going back to Haven today?"

I shrug bleakly. "There's no point, is there? If there was anything to find, we would have found it long ago. If they escaped the culling that day, they would have found a way home by now. My father is dead," I say flatly, and then I wince, because telling it to yourself in silence is one thing and hearing your voice speak the words is something altogether different. “So is Coll.”

Fielle is silent for a moment, staring down at her belly. "No bodies were found," she says finally. "We talked to every person in the square and no one remembered a dark-skinned man and a boy in red being among those taken."

"Memory is a strange thing when you fear for your life. Things get mixed up, displaced. It is easy to forget what you don't want to see." Despite this I can still see the body of Alma's husband lying on that fine tiled patio. He was only thirty years of age, yet when the Wraith was finished he looked like an old man long wasted by disease.

"We still don't know why the Wraith left so suddenly," Fielle persists. "If the pattern held they should have been there much longer. They could have swept the marketplace with their dark light and taken us all, set fire to the buildings, destroyed the land, but they didn't. Something drove them back to their ship. Something scared them away. Teyla, what if the stories about Coll are true? What if he ran into the danger to save us?"

Suddenly my hands are shaking with anger and fear and I clench them tightly in my lap. "Fielle, stop. I… I have thought all these things myself. Over and over again - believe me. And even if everything you say is true, the fact remains that they're gone."

They're gone.

We sit in silence for a long time. We watch the light from outside slide through the cave opening and crawl across the floor, and presently Fielle reaches over and puts one cool hand atop mine.

"I'm sorry," she says.

I nod shortly, not trusting myself to speak without breaking into tears. I remember Alma's hysterical display at her dead husband's side and I grimace. I refuse to be that kind of woman.

"You can remain with us for as long as you like," Fielle continues.

"No," I say quickly, grateful that my voice is steady. "I will do everything I can to help once the child is born, of course, but I've stayed too long. I'm going back to my own tent tonight."

"You will be all by yourself."

I manage a tight smile. "I will survive. And I meant what I said about the baby. Darrah told me you had decided on names?"

Fielle smiles down at the child within. "They are not very imaginative, I fear. 'Lada' for a daughter, or 'Jinto' for a son."

"Those are good, strong names," I tell her warmly. "Names of family and history." And, because I know she sometimes doubts herself, I add, "You will be a wonderful mother, Fielle."

She smiles at me now, her face transformed into the epitome of gentle, maternal wistfulness. “You will not be such a poor one yourself.”

I raise my eyebrows, puzzled and yet thankful by the change of topic. “Do you know something I do not? Because I was there the same as you when Charin told us the… basics.”

Fielle chuckles and nudges me in the ribs. “Yes, I’m sure you know the basics, and not only from Charin! But you know what I mean, Teyla. Toran left his people, followed you back here, just like your father did for your mother. He is in love with you… you must see that.”

“I think he believes he is in love with me,” I answer slowly. “I am gratified that he chose to join with us, considering how different Athos and Haven truly are. He is a hard worker, and kind and intelligent…”

“And handsome, don’t you think?”

“But I cannot help but think that he should have stayed with his sister and her child.”

“The family of Alma’s man took her in,” says Fielle dismissively. “They will both prosper on Haven, should the Wraith allow. Stop making excuses. Toran is here because he wants to be here, because he loves you.”

When Fielle has her mind set on something it is impossible to dissuade her – even now I suspect she believes there is some arcane magic used in the birthing process – and so I simply shake my head, conceding the argument for the moment. I clamber to my feet and offer my friend an assisting hand. “You should not be this far from Halling and the others in your condition,” I chide, pulling her up. “Just think… if the child started to come forth here in this cave I, not being a mother myself, would be unable to help! I suppose I would have to turn around and close my eyes until you were done!”

Another nudge in the ribs, although this one is more of a jab. “You would not dare!”

We speak in lighthearted tones during the walk back, but I can still feel the sorrow, cold and heavy, in my heart. I have had a long time to become used to the idea that Father and Coll are gone… and yet forever would not be long enough to extinguish my pain.

Somehow losing Coll is the worst. Folks like Charin, quietly approaching the twilight of their years, are an unmistakable oddity. Parents so rarely live to see their children grow – both Halling and Fielle have lost theirs to the Wraith during raids – that it has become an unpleasant fact of life. And of course living in itself is a danger. The Wraith did not take my mother, but she is gone all the same.

They told a story about my father, about a dark-skinned man who saved my mother from drowning. There are significant omissions from the true tale – the man returned with the maiden he saved, fell in love with her, and she gave him a daughter and a son – but the ending is too accurate. He has vanished, never to return.

Coll’s story, however, was not over. It had barely begun. He was supposed to come on a night of blood and pain and connect with the Ancestors and save us all from the Wraith. He was supposed to be the hero, the savior of our people. Instead he was a strange boy who rarely talked and didn’t fight, who did something senseless and stupid on behalf of people he did not know, who all but gave himself over to the Wraith and abandoned his people and his sister forever.

My anger is irrational. I know that. It does not make it any less real.

Coll.

It hurts to say his name, or even think it.

()()

I am seven years old, running through the corridors of a Wraith vessel. It is dark and cold and my nose is filled with sickening smells: smells of blood, of death and perpetual rot. Everything I see has a faintly bluish tinge, hazy around the edges, but it is all still terribly real.

I am flanked by strange alcoves, shadowed and shrouded in some alien material, and from within these alcoves comes a tuneless, wordless cry of despair. Against my better judgment I stop running. I turn and look towards the voices.

Hands explode through the living web; hooked fingers rake the air in front of my face. I bite back a scream and jump away, but I cannot take my eyes off those pale hands, clutching and clawing… not threateningly but beseechingly, asking me for help.

That is what all the voices are asking, I realize.

Help us. Save us all from the Wraith. Do not let us die like this.

The person in the alcove in front of me is my mother. Father is next to her. I want to help them, to pull them from their strange bonds and take them back home to Athos, but I fear what might happen if I reach out and take their hands. I’m so small and weak – what if I am pulled in instead?

Hating myself for my cowardice, I turn and run away.

But I cannot escape them, for they are all around me, reaching out of the shadows, calling for my help. Meleth and Lada. Halling’s father, Jinto. Alma’s husband.

Fielle, weeping quietly and calling for her child.

Coll, silent and staring.

There are others as well. Charin and Halling and Toran and so many others, all begging me without words, reaching out from the darkness. All I can do is run away, but wherever I go there are more. And more. And more.

“Teyla.”

I turn the corner and stop short. For the first time I can see someone standing in the corridor with me, a man, tall and well built, wearing strange clothing – he looks at me with surprise and concern, as though he has been trying to find me inside this nightmare—

“YOU.”

Behind me. A voice behind me. I whirl and this time I do scream, because after all I am only seven years old and standing there staring at me is a Wraith, one of the masters of their kind, and he is staring at me with venom and…

Is it possible?

In fear?

“What are you?” it demands. “How are you doing this?”

Its face is like death and its eyes like dark pits. I can feel its hunger, raw and insatiable, tearing at me like a wild dog tears at the belly of its prey, all sharp teeth and hot breath. I remember the strange man in the corridor behind me and wonder if he will protect me from the monster, and then something turns around and I realize how silly that is. I am supposed to protect him.

None of this makes sense; I’m caught up in the voice of the Wraith and the voice of the man and then there is another voice, low and insistent, and—

And I wake with a gasp and a short defensive move to my back; in response Toran curses and groans and pulls away, holding his side. “For the love of the Ancestors,” he wheezes. “You were having a nightmare. I was only trying to wake you.”

For an instant I’m inclined to disagree with him; now that I’m awake, safe in my tent, my bed, Toran’s warm body laying close to my own, what I just experienced doesn’t seem like a nightmare at all. It seems instead like some marvelous insight that could change everything, and for the better, if I could only put it to the correct use. There was Mother… Fielle… a man… and a Wraith… and even though I was frightened of him I still had some power, something over him that…

I shake my head despairingly. It’s gone now… fading away. Restless, I throw the blankets aside.

Toran looks up at me drowsily, still holding his ribs. “Is it time already?”

I smile tersely, pulling on a long jacket that belonged to my mother, stepping into a new pair of boots I acquired through our good friends, the Genii. “No, not yet. I’ll come back and wake you.”

“Where are you going?” he asks, his voice slurred and muffled with sleep. Many elements of Athosian life Toran has assimilated flawlessly. Early rising, however, is not one of them.

“On a walk.”

()()

Sunrise is still far off, and most of the tents are dark and silent. I stand in the center of our camp, breathing the cool, fresh air into my lungs, and close my eyes. I seek to open my mind, extend my senses, feel out into the darkness… and no frenzied hunger answers my call.

Good. My dream, at least, was not prophetic.

Halling’s tall frame is folded up in front of his tent; he stares into the heart of a small fire. I draw near him slowly, noisily, giving him time to note my approach and opportunity to turn me away. But instead he looks up and smiles a weary, nervous smile, and motions for me to join him.