Hooves pounding the groundmoss, I galloped across the rolling hills of a planet named after the very deed. I wouldn’t say that I was running from my confusion, but a few hours of exertion would surely clear my head for a much needed conversation. Instead of thinking, I focused on my gait. Hooves touched down, lifted again, one, two, three, four, and a moment of suspension almost like flight, one, two, three, four. I’d fly for real once I was safe from being seen.

I passed the new outer ring of security nodes and pressed onward, slowing to a post trot for endurance sake. A few more kilometers and I was pretty sure it was safe to fly. Taking to the wing, I sprang into the dawn, flying low to put more distance between myself and the eyes of the colony before gaining altitude.

I was further away from my original base of operations than I had ever been before; soon I was descending out of the sunlight on the far side of the hilly region. Beyond, the vegetation changed. Groundmoss was increasingly interrupted with clumps of bulbous growths, some almost as tall as my ankles. Accidentally stepping on one, I found a texture similar to a firm mushroom. Ahead, the first forest I had seen. Closer inspection showed plants utterly unlike Terran trees.

Stems rose slender from the ground – prodded with a hoof they revealed themselves to be stiff with some flexibility. Some were nearly straight, others twisted and wound like corkscrews. Above my head the stems started joining together into larger stems, growing in size as they shrank in numbers. In fact, they looked like upside down trees, hundred and thousands of stems? roots? branches? reaching, joining, forming each single trunk pointing up into the sky. I wandered bemused through the invert forest as Hoof crested the hills where I had left sunrise behind.

As the sun warmed the trunks they sang.

At last I found the mechanism for the polyphonal orchestra of dawn. Each stem was hollow, with inlets just above ground level. Heated by the sunlight, convection inside must pull air up to vent far above through the chimney-like trunks pointed into the sky. By now I had wandered deep beneath the strange growths. The individual stems didn’t appear to grow randomly, rather they were preferentially arranged in loose sheets that almost formed walls, creating an endless maze of naturally groined passages and chambers. The gaps in the walls were far too small to fit through; visibility through the gaps made orientation more confusing than the simple blank passages of a labyrinth would be. There was no sign of leaves, but the ground was thick with trackless layer of what appeared to be leafmould, soft and comfortable under my hooves. Soon I gave up all hope of retracing my steps and turned my gaze upwards to the clear sky above the forest.

POP

Wings spread, I drifted down to land cautiously on the top of one skyward trunk, larger and taller than many of its neighbors. It supported my weight handily, only swaying a little. As I had theorized, it was hollow all the way to the top and a gentle updraft emerged, fluttering with the song of the tree.

Further away the forest grew thicker, with trees towering above my perch. I had no idea how the biology of these plants might work and once again I felt envy for the colonists and the wonders they would discover.

Speaking of whom, their day would be getting under way, and it was well time for me to head back and try to be useful. Sometime today, I knew I would be ready to portal back to Terra, but I didn’t want to risk trying too soon and possibly fizzling out –an additional three days of absence might be noticed. To give a suitable safety margin, I planned to try closer to sunset and I could surely find work to keep me busy until then.

I touched down in the hills between the forest and my goal, and galloped towards the new city. As I ran, I speculated about the command I had been given. Why did the holy one require me to hide my abilities from those I loved? How long would I live this lie?

The goddess said ‘so long as I live’. Well, at least she allowed me some avenue of escape from deception.

—

Back at the germinal seed of a new civilization, I sought out the security guy first, to update his map. ‘Invert Forest’, I wrote, estimating the distance and direction I had traveled. For a description of the land feature I was describing, I simply advised anyone regarding the map to present themselves at the forest before just before sunup. As I finished my annotation he admonished me not to venture outside the perimeter without checking in first. As a reluctant queen, I agreed to consider his suggestion.

—

Isha and I spent the balance of the morning tilling and plowing, using equipment which arrived with the Seven. The agricultural team was eager to get seeds in the ground. They were inspired by my plot of spuds, the young plants a bit past ankle-high. If those grew, there was every reason to expect that the seeds which had flown on the Seven would also thrive.

I gifted the new head of AgOrg (her superior had been a collision fatality) a box of seeds I had carried through my portal. It was a bittersweet handoff. Della was clearly delighted to have more stock to work with. I found myself thinking how Isha and I might have spent the day planting if the ship had not landed here.

—

Before the midday meal, a ceremony was held for those who had died in the collision. Some of the bodies had been lost to space; the rest, cremated. The bell of a rocket engine furnished an urn sufficient to hold their ashes and memorialize the loss. But loss was not going to slow anyone down. The ultimate memorial would be the success of the survivors and they were off to a good start.

The monument stood at the crest of a low rise, a ways off from the town that had sprung up in the last two days and we all gathered below it.

The eulogy was given by the ship’s poet. I had no idea the ship had evenhad a poet – the short, redheaded, mechanic had been half buried in the innards of this or that machine every time I saw her, never speaking a word. She had also been one of the first adults to join in the growing nudist movement. Apparently bare skin was easier cleaned of assorted machine fluids than her shipsuit; laundry facilities were still somewhat lacking.

Bridget, the poet, stood before us, wearing only a belt, a wrench tucked into it, and a smear of some grime across her freckled breasts. As soon as she opened her mouth I realized why she spoke so little. Her voice was poetry and my hand tightened involuntarily around Isha’s. She spoke for the dead, their dreams and the hopes that had sent them questing to the stars. The deceased were alive in her words and I grieved as if I had known each one individually. By the end of her speech, not a single eye was dry.

After the doxology she raised her arms, hands spread wide as she intoned the final words of her message.

“From across a sea of stars we come, to this our home. One day each one of us will mingle our dust with the soil of this world. My brothers and sisters, be at peace.”

On the hill above her, the rocket engine burst to life. A pillar of flame a hundred metres tall scattered the mortal ashes on an alien breeze.

—

By evening I felt sure that my power must be recovered from whatever unknown drain prevented me from using it too soon.

Ready or not, it was time for Isha, Gloam, and I to step back to everyday life and maintain the illusion that we had not made our illicit voyage.

We could look around at the result of three days of effort with sense of satisfaction.

The colonists, plus the three of us, had been hard at work. There were streets of a city measured out and marked with stakes and chalk lines. Families had set up tents and prefab pop-ups on their chosen parcels of land. Freshly tilled garden plots were everywhere, planted with Terran seeds to see what would grow. Dr. Howe had a government pavilion –she called the inflatable dome the rotunda– in the center of a vast area measured out for a future seat of a planetary government. Communal kitchen tents and other functional shelters were set up near the rotunda; for now that was the heart of the community.

And a great circle circumscribed my initial campsite with its ring of trees – Founder’s Park they were already calling it and preserving it for the future. Standing in the park there was almost no indication that the population of this world had grown by more than a hundred fold.

“I’ll see you soon!” I called, and cast my portal spell.

The entire colony, four hundred and forty eight survivors, had gathered to see us off and they were entirely too solemn. We weren’t on our way to our own funerals.

Author's Note

There will be a brief pause while I work on something else. See you in February!