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“I don’t suppose the names of animals or plants are a requirement for teaching languages to a hanjin or senator,” she remarked.
“No,” he chuckled.
“What do they eat?”
After several attempts at describing burrow dwelling creatures, she concluded he meant rats or shrews, something similar. As they continued, something else shot across their path. It had floppy ears like a rabbit, a tail, and black fur flecked with gold, and was as big as her foot.
“Now they are rare,” Jamen said with surprising excitement. He hurried forward to see where it had gone. “I’ve only seen them in pictures at school. We call them… sparkfur… a rough translation. Far as I’m aware, there aren’t many left as they eat only certain vegetation.”
“So you’ve not seen them in zoos?” She crouched and examined the prints left—scratchy marks in the ground. “It’s so much like a rabbit, but has a body like a raccoon.”
“Zoos?” His forehead furrowed into horizontal lines. “What are they?”
She explained how they once were used to entertain people by showing them rare and exotic animals. Now, back on Earth, they were important centers for breeding the most endangered ones and saving them from extinction. “We breed the rarest and hope that they might one day be free to live in the wild.”
“But why? What is there to gain from giving space and food to a dying species of animal?”
She rose, her nostrils flaring, her sentiments inflamed by his thoughtlessness. “I can’t believe you just said that. You, the great Vendu, who take planets from others, use their land and food to help your own race survive? Why not save all the creatures of your planet? Are they not part of your world, too?”
Jamen took a step back, his eyebrows now knotting into a dark line. “You really think saving an animal is worth it? We don’t even eat them—too scrawny. They are lucky to have the buffer zone.”
She opened her mouth and glared. “Lucky? Have you, the mighty Vendu, not done anything to help them? What if that was the last one on the planet? What if you just saw something nobody else will ever see again, is that worth fighting for?” As she spoke, the sparkfur reemerged and ran ahead of them.
She trotted after it, leaving Jamen behind in her haste to keep up with the animal.
“The barrier!” Jamen called after her. “Don’t… there’s something wrong. A possible weak spot or breach.”
She couldn’t see it. What breach? There was nothing in front of her—no wall or fencing.
As the sparkfur jumped, she saw a flicker of red lines come and go. The creature hesitated, then continued forward.
“Too late,” Jamen said, hurrying to catch up with her. “It’s crossed through a breach. See, the beams are broken.” He pointed to flickering red lines that bounced in and out of existence. “Step back. The air isn’t good here.” He sniffed and wrinkled his nose in disgust at the smell.
She tasted it in the back of her throat—the acridity was worse, the bitterness stuck to her tongue. The sparkfur halted, its tail drooping and nose twitching frantically. It hopped around and instead of returning to the safety of the buffer, it continued to move further away from the invisible barrier.
“It will die in there,” she exclaimed. “It’s lost. It can’t smell its own scent. Poor thing.” She wrung her hands together.
“This is not good.” Jamen turned. “We should move away from here. I shall report the breach.” He fished out his communication device out of his pocket. “I’ll make a note of the coordinates and register the location. It will be a while before it’s fixed.” He held up his device. “There should be a satellite overhead,” he muttered to himself, walking back in the direction of the landing site.
Paige hesitated and stayed put. The sparkfur was still there, just meters away from her and frozen to the spot. The poor thing seemed to sense the danger it was in. With Jamen’s back to her, she decided it would only take a matter of seconds to nip over there, grab it, and run back. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead—now or never. She couldn’t stand the thought of the little thing suffering when she could save it.
She ran, aiming for the spot where the laser beams had failed. As she reached the line, she closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath. Her skin tingled as she crossed the broken energy field. If it had been fully operational, it would have repelled her attempt. Holding her breath, she dived toward the sparkfur, hoping it was too scared to move.
“Paige!” Jamen shouted. “Don’t be reckless. Get back here!”
She ignored his cry of alarm and focused on the stunned animal by her feet. Her eyes watered as she bent to pick it up. She wasn’t sure if she was crying in sympathy at its plight or because the air was heavy with something unpleasant. The sparkfur wriggled for a second, then gave up. With the sparkfur in the grip of one hand, she spun and hurried back toward where Jamen stood, his jaw hung, his face a picture of both horror and anger.
The warning beams were a pattern of solid red lines, stacked up as far as she could see. She skidded to a halt. Somehow, the breach had repaired itself. Creeping forward, she felt electric pulses zap along the length of the barrier and as she tentatively held out her hand, her fingertips struck something impassable. Invisible like glass, the surface was hot and fuzzy, and unyielding.
She was stuck on the wrong side!
Her bleary eyes streamed and her lungs were ready to burst. She had to breathe or else she might faint with the dizziness. But what was she about to inhale?
The sparkfur went limp in her arms.
The color had drained from Jamen’s face. What could he do? There was no way to shut down the barrier, no magic button to press. It wasn’t a wall she could climb or fence she could stick her nose through to find fresh air. She’d done something terribly foolish and he was going to have to watch helplessly as she poisoned herself.
The seconds felt like painful minutes, but that was all they were. Brief moments in time when she wondered what her future might have been. It was then, facing Jamen, unable to touch or speak to him without losing the last precious pockets of air in her lungs, that she realized that she couldn’t imagine her life without him.
