Haydn of Mars

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Tobacco was good.

With a pipe, a smoke ring might linger for a full minute, but I preferred cigarettes.
 
They were not easy to come by, though, and this, unfortunately, was my last one.
 
Which was why I stood savoring it on a cliff overlooking beautiful Noachis Terra, with my home and the capital city of Wells at my back, studying a pink sunset just tinging to blue at the far horizon, and wondering what any other sky might look like.

The scientists claim the sky on Earth was once blue, bluer even than our own fringe of twilight, but I can't believe that.

There are so many things that are hard to believe – and, these days, even science provides little more than idle thoughts.

Kaylan, on all fours, moved up behind me and rested a paw lightly on the back of my leg before pulling himself up to full height.
 
He stood silently for a moment gazing at the horizon before speaking.
 
I turned to study his profile: his short mane swept back behind his ears, framing his almond eyes, slitted black, always deep pools of thought; his classically-shaped face covered in bare white down, soft white whiskers barely visible astride his perfect, regal nose, brown nostrilled, the downturn of his mouth that transformed itself, brightening his entire visage when he laughed – which was not often, these days.

“It's hard to believe this might all be gone in a week,” he said.
 
I could not exactly place his emotions: sadness, a tinge of anger, bitterness.

“They say that war will come, and I suppose it will.”

“It always has,” he said, and turned his head briefly away.
 
When he turned back he looked at me and not the horizon, and now there was defiance in his eyes.

“We have failed, you and I.”

I drew heavily on my cigarette, savoring the smoke in my lungs, and then threw it to the sandstone at my feet, crushing it with my foot.

“Our marriage was supposed to prevent this.
 
Our two clans together, J'arn and K'fry, cannot make the Frane stop now.
 
They are too strong.
 
I can make them do nothing.”

“But–”

“They are barbarians, Kaylan, and this is the way barbarians settle matters.
 
Has it ever been different?” Now I turned with my own form of bitterness in my eyes.
 
“Ever?”

He stared into the distance.
 
“No.”

Twilight had deepened, making the horizon an even darker shade of blue.
 
The pinkness overhead was deepening to rust, letting the feeble light of the night's first stars bathe through.

“I read a picture book once,” I answered, letting my tone lighten, “in which two kits travel to Earth. My mother read it to me.”

He let his own voice soften, “Could you ever leave Mars, even if it was possible?”

“Could you?”

“No.
 
You dream too much, Haydn.
 
You always have.
 
It's the world we have to live in, not dreams.”

“You're right, of course.
 
I'm just a spoiled girl, pampered from birth.
 
But couldn't you dream for their sake?”
 
I gestured a paw at my belly, already swollen with litter.
 
For a brief moment pride and happiness, the handmaidens of hope, invaded my troubled thoughts.

“Especially not for their sake!
 
Do you think we could raise them somewhere other than their own home?
 
Here we might have barbarians, but we know the land.
 
Somewhere else would be...” He let the thought pause in what looked like a shiver.
 
“
Unknowable
.”

I sighed.
 
“You don't have to be so literal, Kaylan.
 
It's one of the things that make us so different.
 
A moment to dream is a good thing.
 
Especially considering what has happened here in the real world.”

Now his huge eyes were filled with alarm.
 
“What do you mean?”

“There is word a price has been put on my head by the F'rar.”

“This can't be so!”

I wished for just one more cigarette; wanted to feel the burn of sweet tobacco in my throat and lungs.
 
Instead, I had nothing to grasp but my own words.

I nodded.
 
“This is the word that Jamie brings me.
 
My father was king.
 
They see me as a threat.”

“Then Jamie is a fool!
 
The F'rar would not dare!”

“Yes, they would,” I answered.
 
I let a slight, knowing smile onto my face so that Kaylan could see it.
 
“Come, it is getting dark.
 
We should go in.”

“Tell me what you know!”

“I only know what I learned today.
 
Jamie came with word that the council of the F'rar clan had convened an order of condemnation.
 
I was listed, along with Parterine and Colin.
 
There were others, too, even lesser in stature.”

“How could they do this?”

But he already knew how they could do this, and I waited for his to answer his own question: “Frane.”

“Yes, Frane.”

“She is evil.”

I was silent.

“I will not let you go to the Hall of Assembly tomorrow,” he said.

“I must go.
 
You know that.
 
I must try to hold back this tide.
 
Even if it is useless.”

“We will leave tonight, with what we have on our backs.”

“If it were only us, I would say yes.
 
But there are others to think of.”

“Some of them are of other
clans
.”

I turned to look harshly at him.
 
“I never would have expected to hear something like that from you, Kaylan.
 
You and I are of different clans.
 
And many of them are friends.”

He was looking at the sky; his shame was evident.
 
“I'm sorry.
 
It was a cruel and thoughtless thing to say.” He continued to look away from me.
 
“But I fear for you.”

This, I knew, was something beyond the present argument.
 
It spoke to something deeper -- our arranged union, his love for me, my lack of it for him...

“Tomorrow will be all right.
 
The order of condemnation does not go into effect for three days.
 
Even the F'rar would not dare to move more quickly than that.
 
Their purpose is to uproot us and make us flee, not to murder us.”

I didn't add:
At least not yet.

“Why must you go tomorrow?
 
If we fled tonight, it would give us that many more hours ahead of the assassins.”

“A final chance, Kaylan.
 
To try to make them all see reason, before war.”

“It will be fruitless.”

After a moment, I said, “Yes, it will.
 
I feel like a fool for trying.
 
I am too young, and I have so little experience.
 
But it is what my father would have done.”

The deep blue of the horizon had crawled up overhead like a cowl, banishing the pink sky of day.
 
The stars were out in full now, muted through the atmosphere's dust but beautiful nevertheless.
 
There was The Pot and its companion The Ladle, and, farther south, hanging overhead like a totem, the starry figure of The Mother Cat herself, mane visible at least in the mind.

And there, in the East, like a baleful, knowing green-blue eye, was Earth, perched on the darkest horizon.
 
I thought briefly of my mother, long dead, and that picture book...

Kaylan followed my gaze, and after a moment I felt his paw slip into mine, his slender silky fingers wrap around my own, a hint of flat claw pressing into my palm.
 
Then he dropped to all fours, pressed his body against me before moving off toward the house -- a dim wide silhouette fifty feet behind us framed by the lights of distant Wells.

“I love you,” he said.

But the words were faint, a whisper.

Almost, I knew, a resignation.

Hadrian's whiskers twitched when he spoke; it was a tic that had once been distinctively endearing but now was irritating beyond reason.
 
The word
traitor
rose to my mind but I quickly banished it as unfit:
weakling
was the correct term.