“This world is Mazatla.” Elizabeth frowned. The name ought to mean something. The name of the world she was on ought to be important, but it wasn’t.
“Yes.” The old woman nodded. “But Wraith or not, something bad has happened to you. Rest and heal, and perhaps it will all come back.”
“I shouldn’t be on Mazatla,” Elizabeth said. “It’s not my world.” A ring, a ring turning in a flash of blue fire… And then it was gone.
“Rest and try to remember,” the man said. “We’ll ask at the Gathering if anyone knows you or knows your people. We’ll stop here tonight and then go on to the Gathering at the Place of Two Rivers.”
“The Place of Two Rivers.”
Two rivers wreathed in mist, gray as steel beneath a winter sky, flowing together at a green point… There were bridges over the rivers, struts of iron against the sky woven like baskets of steel. One long span crossed on brick arches, iron rails dark with coal cars… Down the river, smoke rose from high smokestacks…
“Two rivers,” she whispered. “A city where two rivers came together.”
“Your home?” the grandmother asked.
Summer, and a green park full of people, boats on the river while above the sky lit with flowers of fire, green and gold and purple and blue, while she sat on a blanket.
“A festival,” Elizabeth said. “At the end of summer. To celebrate the working man?” The words came back slowly. “There was a boat race on the river between steamboats. We watched from the park where the fort had been. There were people on the bridges watching and cheering. I had a red balloon because it was my favorite color. We ate ice cream when it got dark and waited for the fireworks.” Her parents were there. She was older, old enough to go to school. “The City of Three Rivers.”
“Do you remember why you were there?” the man asked.
Elizabeth nodded slowly. She remembered, or at least the child she had been did. “My father, he had work there. We had come back after Kenya and we were going to stay. There was a building.” The pictures slipped away, and she grabbed at them. “A very tall building with classrooms in it. Very tall. Twenty, thirty, forty stories. A cathedral to learning? I don’t know.” And then it was gone again, the memories slipping just out of reach, words she had almost found. But she knew one thing. “I am from the City of Three Rivers.”
The grandmother looked at the father. “Sateda,” she said.
Elizabeth looked up. “Sateda?” The name was familiar, but…
“It sounds like the things they had on Sateda,” she said. She put her hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Sateda was destroyed by the Wraith years ago. A few people escaped but they wander. They have no homes. Maybe you are Satedan.”
Satedan. The word was familiar. “Maybe so.”
“If so, you’ve been wandering a long time,” the father said. “I don’t know how you got here.”
“I have to get back there,” Elizabeth said. That was one thing she was certain of. “I need to go home.”
“There’s nothing left of Sateda,” the old woman said gently. “The Wraith destroyed everything. They killed everyone they could find. It’s gone.”
“I have to get there,” Elizabeth said. If the City of Three Rivers was there… “I have to find out what happened.” What happened to someone. Who? Who was she worried about?
“We could ask the Travelers,” the grandmother said. “Sometimes they come to the Gathering. They might know other Satedans. Sometimes they’ve had Satedans working on their ships.” She looked at Elizabeth. “You know machines?”
Elizabeth nodded. “Machines. Yes. Radios and computers and guns.”
“Sateda,” the man nodded. “You’re Satedan. Well, let’s see if the Travelers come and if there are Satedans with them.”
“I need to go there.”
The old woman patted her hand. “Sateda is gone. But perhaps we can find your people. Or you will find a place with the Travelers as other Satedans have.”
The word spread around the Gathering about the woman with no memories, and lots of people came to see her. They camped in the flood plain of two sleepy brown rivers, five thousand people or more, with bright tents in all the colors of the rainbow. The Mazatla did not live in cities, but in the summer there were these gatherings at various traditional locations, part fair, part sports meet, part courtship opportunity. Goods and animals were traded and sold, and there were matches of a game that involved throwing balls back and forth between three teams on an enormous staked out triangular field that went on all day until sunset ended the game. Then the victors paraded by torchlight, beginning a dance that went until dawn.
Elizabeth shared the tent of the family that had found her. When people came to see the woman with no memories she greeted them eagerly. Perhaps they would know where she had come from! But no one did. Each curious person at last went away shaking their heads. The woman with no memories had come from nowhere.
“The Travelers may know you,” the grandmother said confidently. “If anyone here does, they will.”
The Travelers arrived on the third day. Elizabeth heard shouts and went outside. A spaceship was descending from the blue sky streaked with a few high clouds, its white contrail bright. She raised her hand to shade her eyes, everyone else shouting and pointing too. It was bigger than…
Bigger than what? The comparison she’d meant to make slipped away. Bigger than a small ship meant to carry six to ten people. And smaller than…
Elizabeth frowned. A man in an olive green jumpsuit, bald headed, severe. He had a ship, a ship that was bigger than this one, and yet his name and the name of the ship ran away, lost somewhere among other things forgotten.
‘It’s the Travelers!” the boy Kyan said. He pulled on her arm. “They’ll help you get home.”
His father looked worried. “Only one ship this year. Something can’t be right.”
“Maybe it’s because of the Wraith,” Kyan said.
“Let’s hope not,” his father replied, and they walked together to the part of the field where the ship had landed.
Close up, the ship looked battered. It wasn’t all the same color, and parts of it looked as though they’d originally belonged to another ship, including a pair of long, organic looking weapons emitters. There was something disturbing about them, something inhuman.
The man coming down the ramp to cheers and greetings was entirely human. He was white haired and burly, wearing a bright red jacket over a jumpsuit. “Hello everybody! We’re glad to be here. Give us a few minutes to unload, folks. Then we’ll be glad to trade with everybody.”
“Lesko!” A man was pushing through the crowd, which parted when they recognized him as Elizabeth did, one of the Mazatla Leading Men, elected to govern this year. “Any news of the Wraith?”
Lesko held up his hands as everyone quieted. “Queen Death is dead.”
“I know,” Elizabeth murmured, and the grandmother turned to look at her.
No one else had heard, and there were shouted questions.
Lesko held up his hands again. “An alliance of other Wraith and the Lanteans and the Genii killed her.”
“The Genii?”
“What did the Lanteans…”
“How could…”
“The Genii have a warship belonging to the Ancestors,” Lesko shouted over the din. “It was flown into battle by the Leader Ladon Radim with the assistance of a Lantean pilot, Lorne. It defeated Queen Death’s ship and then the Genii boarded it. They killed Queen Death.”
Shouts, cheers, people slapping each other on the back…
Elizabeth felt strangely isolated, wrapped in private quiet. Lorne. Ladon Radim. Should she know those names? Why couldn’t she find faces to go with those names?