Tide of Shadows and Other Stories by Aidan Moher Page B

want to leave my mother; I didn't want to go into a sky pod.
    "What did I say?" she snapped. "Go with your aunt."
    One of the boys behind my aunt screamed. He pointed behind my mother, his scream becoming a high-pitched wail. The other children joined him. My aunt's eyes widened and she stumbled backwards into the children.
    The first of the shadowborn rose from the shadows in the darkest corners of the nursery's forested grounds. Like living nightmares, they appeared from nothing, a thickening of the shadow until it was almost permeable. They had no eyes, but I could feel their hungry stare. Six of them.
    Seven.
    Eight.
    They surged forward. My mother leapt towards them, spear readied. My aunt called my name from the shadows of the nursery. My mother's spear stabbed out at the shadowborn, its blade sinking into the forward-most demon. It screeched and flailed backwards, just like any beast of flesh and blood.
    I ran after her, forgetting my promise.
    My mother's flat palm slammed into my chest, hard enough to send me tumbling backwards, gasping for breath as I hit hard-packed ground.
    From the cockpit of the sky pod, we children watched our world become washed over in shadows. My aunt cried out. We all looked, like children in a classroom gathered around for a lesson. At the edge of the forest where our village hid, where the towering sprawl of Hieyth emerged from the natural landscape, there was fire and chaos. In the centre of the settlement was the main communication tower, our lifeline to the other settlements on Uwe'hhieyth. Shadowborn swarmed it from top to bottom, crushing the enormous structure under the weight of their darkness.
    It's difficult to imagine, even for those of us who survived the attack and have seen shadowborn with our own eyes, but the shadows swelled, the way light does as it fills an empty space, and enveloped the buildings with their malice and non-light. When they subsumed, nothing was left of the tower but the acid-burned steel husks that had been shipped from Earth alongside my people.

    My mother saved my life the day they came. Saved the lives of me and seven other kids. She earned no posthumous honours, no statue was erected to capture the spirit of the bravery she showed that day, the bravery she showed every day. It was impossible to officially honour all of the heroes who died that day, those selfless men and women who showed fire and strength when all sense and goodness was choked under the Tide of Shadows.
    She was my hero before the Tide of Shadows; she was a hero afterwards.

    12 days 03:17:42 until drop

    "Be a man, for fuck's sake, Sligh."
    Be a man? What does that even mean when the biggest hero in my life—the only person I've ever truly admired and respected—was a woman?
    I never knew my father. He died young, but my mother always spoke about him with a twinkle in her eye. She liked the way I laughed like him, full from my belly, so I felt like I'd grown up with a part of him anyways. I knew his spirit watched over me and Mother, knew he did everything he could to save her that day, but I couldn't admire a man who I'd never really met.
    A rivulet of water trickled down my back where my hair hung still wet from the shower. I wiped at my eyes, brushing away the water. Then I pressed hard with my fingers, hoping the distraction would make all my troubles go away.
    But she was still there when I looked up again, hand on her hip and fury in her eyes. I pulled my hair up off my back, wringing water onto the ground as I twisted it into a low bun.
    The ship was thrumming with all the frenetic energy of a struck tuning fork. Combat drills had intensified to the point where those of us soldiers still committed to the mission collapsed into our quarters in the evenings as little more than a quivering mess of gelatinous human being. There were many whose vengeance and hatred for the shadowborn had withered during our drifting existence aboard The Spirit of a Sudden Wind since departing