He stands with his father in the river. Their pants are rolled up, his father to the calf, he to the knees. The fishing rod is cumbersome. His father insists he use an adult rod because he must learn the full process. Nothing but hazel wood in his mud-caked palms. His father casts several meters with a flick. Not wanting to be outdone, he swings his own rod like a javelin thrower and sends the line sideways across his father’s.

  “You’re comin’ too far back, Tommy,” his father says. He reels in, untangles their lines, and shows him yet again how to cast.

  “It won’t go far enough!” he protests.

  His dad laughs. “The fish aren’t gonna hop on your hook cuz they’re impressed with how far you cast. Fishing is a subtle art.”

  “I don’t like art,” he says, kicking the water.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s boring and stupid.”

  His dad has nothing to say to that and casts again. It lands precisely where he wants it to in the little dark patch to the southeast of their backyard. The fish like that spot. Even if the Ueichi Electric Power Company fires him, his dad could fish up breakfast, lunch, and dinner from that little dark patch in the River Cleif.

  ‘Those fish are my pension plan,’ is one of his dad’s jokes.

  “Tommy?”

  “Mmmyeah?” Thomas replies. He’s back on Shuu’s boat. The morning sun is lightly toasting his pink skin. Momojin. Peach person. We look like peaches when we burn, he thinks.

  “Put something on your head. You’re gonna burn.”

  It’s her. She’s talking. He knows her but isn’t sure why.

  “You need to get this down,” she says, pushing a mug into his hands.

  He looks up and sees the forest whizzing by in a horrifying blur. His stomach churns. Cold sweat pricks along his nauseous body as the ribbed deck vibrates and turns the world into a fuzzy mess he can’t stabilize. More than anything, he wants to stand on firm ground right now.

  “Drink it and go back to bed,” Miriam says. No, Milly. This was Milly, not his dead sister. “Force it down if you have to.”

  He accepts the mug and forces his resisting throat to accept the sickly liquid He gags.

  “What is it?”

  The boat and the blurry forest dissolve into darkness. Replacing Milly’s voice is the voice of his commanding officer.

  “Eleven men in total. One machine gun. One rocket cart. Neighboring posts are half a ki north and south along the ridge.”

  A huddle of burgundy coats surrounds him, shivering as one in the thin mountain air. They would appear like blood clots in the snowfield if they emerged from behind the small hill. Slung over their shoulders are plastic-wrapped Chrys-Rifles.

  A few meters away crouch men in a wavy mirage of white, gray, and black, camouflaged against their alpine surroundings. Underneath goggles and masks, lines of gold trace their skin like warpaint. Gold and garnet together. Even on the other end of the world, his universe is painted in these colors, the same colors as the Ueden uniform his father wore.

  “Our objective is psychological,” his CO says. Gold leaf fills the creases of his lips. “We are a diversionary force to draw manpower away from the valley entrance. We have one job: Present a threat. You have some discretion about how best to achieve this, but do not get in the way of the ISF. Understood?”

  A round of “hai!” come from the assembled ?frian grenadiers. The operation begins as special forces men crawl over the hill, turning invisible and impregnating the mountain air with danger. A minute passes. He can spot them drifts of snow which seem to hang lifeless, but the lizard worshippers in the watchtower don’t know what to look for. Their eyes see a battlefield where a machine gun and a pair of binoculars can hold a platoon of men at bay.

  The grenadiers play their part, peeking over the hill with their Chrys-Rifles. Thomas presses the button to switch on the magnet and his gun purrs with electric energy. He lines up the reticle of its scope with the machinegunner’s forehead and presses the trigger. True to the chrysanthemum rifle’s nickname, a little red chrysanthemum blooms on the gunner’s forehead. The mountainside echoes with sonic booms. More chrysanthemums bloom.

  The ISF men arrive ahead of the grenadiers and round up the villagers, organizing them into groups at the gate of the village’s small shrine. Grenadiers wander the streets. They have been given no new orders. Enemy reinforcements from down the mountain path have already been stopped, their truck smoking from where a Chrys-Rifle has perforated its engine block.

  “Should we set fire to the place?” one grenadier asks.

  “No,” Thomas replies, “Take valuables, leave beds and sheets, use the fuel and food. Their intelligence will think we quartered here. What do you think, Captain Kaga?”

  “Good thinking Corporal,” his CO replies. “I’ll ask the ISF guys to do their business farther outside of town.”

  His commanding officer leaves. He leans against a wall, taking the weight of the heavy, magnetic rifle off his shoulders. His muscles are sore. He has volunteered to carry extra ammunition and fuel cells for the squadron because promotions mean a higher salary and a higher salary means money to send home. Word has already reached him that crop failure and trade embargoes have made food expensive back home.

  He sees motion in the window in a nearby hut and goes to investigate. Inside is a family of six. Two young girls are held by their older aiater. Between the girls and him are a mother, father, and eldest son. In the father’s trembling hands are a set of sheep shears. In the son’s a broken glass bottle. The mother is defenseless. Her fearful eyes flick between him and his rifle.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The mother, though scared, is the closest to calm. She looks very different from his own mother but reminds him of her just the same. He opens his mouth,

  “We have to help them.”

  Unable to bear the anxiousness of the flashback, Thomas’ mind thrusts him back into the present. He can see the boat has stopped at the cement pier of what he thinks might be a former logging camp.

  “You heard him!” Sayuri yells. Her shrill voice makes him wince. “He said we should help.”

  Milly glares at Thomas from where she stands at the edge of the boat, speaking with a crowd of people. He isn’t sure why she is mad.

  “Please! We don’t know if anyone else will come down the river!”

  He wants to hear the rest of the conversation, but the dark closes in around him once again, as though his mind is realizing the present is hardly an escape from the horrors of the past.

  Thomas’ squadmate looks between him and the terrified family and says, “If they catch us helping, we’ll be shot. Close the door and say we didn’t check. We don’t need to help them.”

  “Then say you didn’t see me do it,” Thomas replies.

  He turns to face the doorway, beckoning to the family. They don’t understand. Or perhaps they think it’s a trick. He slowly lays his rifle down and shows his empty hands to them. The mother must see something in his eyes because she calls her children to her. The father speaks. His tone is harsh and frightened and angry, but she says something to soothe him. The eldest son stares, fist curled around the neck of a broken bottle.

  The mother shepherds her family out the doorway. The eldest son files out last. This close, Thomas sees a face blank with not fear but fury. Instead of following behind his family, he speaks something in their language. His mother shrieks at him as the son lunges for the throat of one of the grenadiers.

  He is fast. Glass enters the soldier’s throat. At that moment, the memory becomes sharper and more vivid. He has seen it too many times.

  Thomas grabs the boy. They look at each other, Thomas at the boy, the boy at him, and both realize their mistakes. Blood spurts from his comrade’s throat as his arteries pump life out of him. It stains the man’s jacket a darker red.

  Thomas shoves the boy to the ground and picks up his rifle and brings the butt down onto the boy’s face. Again. And again. His mother screams and tries to run to her child’s side, but his squad mates fire little red chrysanthemums into her legs and neck. The rest of the family runs, shambling down the mountainside in a blind stumble.

  ISF soldiers in their arctic camouflage wander over to see four spots of quilted fabric escaping down the mountainside. Beside them, two grenadiers are trying to stanch the bleeding from their wounded comrade.

  “Utsu,” one of the ISF soldiers bellows from a mouth lined with gold filament.

  Thomas and the other grenadiers feel a d?mon take hold of them and bring their rifles to bear. The dying man too, gurgling and sputtering and blubbering for his mother, nonetheless grabs his rifle and aims it downhill. They all fire. Four spots fall into the snow.

  The ISF soldier sighs. “Kono buta domo wa meirei nashi ja, dou shiyou mo nee na.”

  “Eto… moushi age nikui nodesu ga, sono keikaku ni tsuite wa imamotte ubugoe o ageru ni itatte orimasen...”

  “I sussed that, lass,” Shuu said.

  “What is she saying now?” Milly asks. She sounds tired.

  The sky above Thomas is on the hair’s breadth between late afternoon and early evening and the Daisagi-Maru is docked. His skin is clammy with cold sweat. He can’t recall what he dreams about other than that they are nightmares.

  “Would you like to translate for her?” Shuu asks.

  “I said we don’t have a plan yet.,” Sayuri replies.

  “You gave these people false hope! That is far, far worse, than just passing them by. Do you understand that?” Mildred says, her voice filled with an anger he hasn’t heard from her in years.

  “We have all night to—”

  “Do you understand!?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  Thomas groans. Milly’s eyes shift to him and her expression softens.

  “Sorry, Thomas. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “It’s okay…” he says.

  He accepts a plate of hot, oily, canned fish and a roasted carrot on the side, and as he eats, he feels himself settle back into the present as the haziness of his dreams dissipates.

  Eating beside him, Milly said, “I’m getting pretty sick of canned fish.’

  He didn’t say anything at first, too busy looking out at the logging camp. The village had congregated in a log cabin near the shore. It reminded him of the Burnehithe Yeoman’s meetings his father used to drag him to. Eventually, his mind caught up with her words.

  “You’re upset,” Thomas said. “And not about the fish. Is it something Sayuri said ?”

  Milly brushed her hair back. “Yeah. Nothing she intended though. I’m not angry with her. Well, for that anyway. She was telling me about a song my mother used to sing, about how it’s a Kaihonjin love song.”

  “Did you know it was Kaihonjin?”

  She laughed. “It’s in Kaihongo, Tommy, of course I knew. But—”

  Milly’s voice crackled , the words fighting to remain in her chest.

  “—I thought my dad raped my mum. And that was awful, but it made sense to me.”

  “So, the song…”

  “He sang it to her. He sang it to her, probably— fuck— who knows how many times!? Enough that she knew it by heart and passed it on to me, and now— gods, Tommy, she loved him!”

  The plate of potato and fish dropped to the deck. Thomas held Milly while she cried. Truthfully, he couldn’t fathom her reason. Finding out that your mother loved your father and wasn’t raped seemed like a good thing.

  When she was done crying, Milly explained what Sayuri had signed them up for. This was a much more intellectually exhausting task than holding Milly and soon unconsciousness beckoned once again. Putting his plate away, he lay down near her at the stern.

  In the twilight phase between waking and sleeping, he sensed Milly setting his tarp up overhead in case it rained. At some point, the version of her in the present was replaced by her dream version. This Milly had thick, moss green and wood brown eye make-up and wore a sparkling green, sequin dress. Fake freckles and blush covered real freckles underneath and her black-brown hair fell like a waterfall crashing into a plunge pool against her narrow shoulders.

  Her legs were crossed and she was laughing at her co-worker’s joke when she heard the door open for a dirty, hollow-looking man in a burgundy jacket.

  “Have a look on the wall and tell us who you like,” she said to him, gracefully waving her hand like a magic wand over the laminated sheet of women. He didn’t look at her or at the sheet. He was instead looking at his shoes, just as he had every step from Burnehithe after learning he didn’t have a home to return to.

  “I need a job,” he said.

  This set the girls to giggling.

  “Sorry, love, only women work here,” she replied.

  Her tone shifted from flirtation to business. He looked at her for the first time and he saw how skinny she was. Her upper arm would’ve fit entirely in his hand. All the girls looked skinny. He had thought Suigen was saved from the famine, but he could see now they were hardly better off than Burnehithe. His own body was strong, well fed, and in good health, but it meant nothing when he couldn’t share that prosperity with anyone.

  “I was in the military. I can guard the door. I could keep you all safe,” he said, saying whatever he thought would help him find a job.

  Her eyes narrowed at him, green paint crinkling in the creases of her sunken eyes. “No offense, but you look like the kind of person we need protection from.”

  Her coworkers hushed her, telling her not to be rude. Some of them would have realized he could also be a future customer.

  One of the women, her name long since lost, told him to come back the next day. They would debate and take a vote on whether to hire him.

  That night he slept in a Lofhearth in an old grain mill along with eight or nine other veterans, and after a depressing day under the Shroud, he returned to The Silk Pillow to find they had voted 14-2 in favor of hiring him on as a bodyguard for the brothel. He could tell by Milly’s sour expression that she was one of the two who voted against.