Planet X - Michael Jan Friedman [1]
Now the sun was rising over the uneven line of the horizon, its warmth moving down Erid’s body like a lover’s caress. It immersed his hands and his feet, then took the chill from the stone surface beneath him. He breathed deeply again and at last opened his eyes.
The world was … beautiful. Even this place, with its dark, graceless flats and slopes and rock piles, with its stubborn refusal to support lif—it was as beautiful as anything he had seen.
His teachers were right, Erid thought. There had been a new way of seeing things locked inside him, a way that belonged to him alone. And all he had needed to do to find it was to follow their path.
Wishing to share his feelings with his friends, knowing how glad they would be to see him, Erid uncrossed his legs and tried to dismount from the rock pile. However, his limbs wouldn’t cooperate. They were stiff and awkward from his long night’s vigil.
He had to go slow, to allow his feet time to find the niches between the stones. As the light moved down the ancient pile, so did he—little by little, rock by rock, his legs tingling painfully as the circulation began to return to them.
Then one of his feet slipped and missed its niche, and the rest of Erid followed it with amazing quickness. The next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground, the side of his head feeling raw and bludgeoned.
He touched his fingertips to his temple. They came away with a purplish smudge on them. Blood, he thought vaguely. I’m bleeding?
But even that couldn’t dim Erid’s jubilation. Rolling over onto his belly, he raised himself on his hands and knees. Then, laughing at his helplessness, he hauled himself to his feet.
Turning, he saw the place where Otros Paar descended into the Vuuren Pass. With his back to the rising sun, he set out in that direction.
At first, it got easier and easier, as the blood rushed back into his legs. He made his way past one stack of rocks and then another. But after a while, Erid’s legs began to feel heavy again.
Sensing that something was wrong, he looked down at them. Was it his imagination, or were the veins in his legs swelling?
As he pondered the question, feeling a tiny trickle of fear running down his spine, he realized it wasn’t just his legs that felt heavy. His arms felt that way too.
Weighted down. And thick. Swollen, somehow. And their veins were popping out as if they wanted to burst through his smooth bronze skin.
Erid shook his head helplessly. It didn’t make sense. There were no poisonous animals lurking this high up, no toxic plants he might have brushed against. And if he had eaten something bad for him the day before, he would have known it long before this.
It didn’t make sense at all. And yet, his veins and arteries were swelling before his eyes, standing out under his flesh like metal cables.
But, strangely, Erid felt no pain. Even the numbness had gone away. The only discomfort he felt was the sensation of weightiness.
He swallowed, his throat dry with fear. He could feel the vessels in his neck and his temples were swelling, too, now—and that wasn’t all. His flesh was beginning to darken around them, turning a hideous shade of purple—except in his fingers, which remained their natural bronze somehow.
What’s going on? Erid wondered, his heart pounding savagely against his ribs. What’s happening to me?
At that moment, he chanced to look into one of the puddles left by the night’s rainshowers. In it, he saw his reflection, almost as clearly as he might have seen it in a mirror.
He was hideous, his blood vessels enlarged and darkening all over his face, his long, narrow brush of blue-black hair starting to thin and fall out. As he staggered away from the sight of himself, repulsed beyond words, he heard someone screaming.
It took Erid some time to realize it was him.
He fell to his knees, too weak and scared to support himself any longer. Only his fingers remained normal, resisting whatever had befallen him. Staring at them, he tried to