Imarja's Children
By Sarah C. Brandel

Illustration by Leah Falco

lake had walked halfway back along the crash scar and his sack was still empty. Clouds already towered on the horizon, and the wind had picked up. With his makeshift shovel broken, Blake had to scrabble in the coarse dirt with his hands. When his abraded fingers encountered a pipe, he dug out enough to gain purchase, then heaved. Underneath the ruptured metal, buried by a thin layer of dust, Blake saw the telltale green of rations packets.

Four. Not enough for everyone. If they shared—but Blake's stomach protested the thought. He shoved the rations into his sack and continued searching. Maybe one of the other boys had better luck.

A cry arose from further down the crash scar. Imarja had been sighted.

Blake abandoned his search and ran. The line of wreckage from the lander accident sketched a crude arrow, pointing the way to the safety of their mountain cave. That protection grew thinner every day, like the boys it sheltered.

The first real gust of wind scattered the boys into the cave. Blake counted them once (five awkward boys in too-large clothing that ballooned around them like sails when the wind caught the fabric), twice (five skinny boys wearing atmosphere-processing masks that hid their hunger-pinched faces), and closed the entry hatch behind them.

Secured inside, each boy dropped to his habitual perch, a niche of rock in the cave wall or a comfortable groove in the floor. Blake moved among them, collecting what food they'd managed to find. Each boy held some back; Blake spotted bulges in the boys' clothes where baby fat should no longer fill them out. One of the boys had even chanced lifting his mask while they were still outside, and shoved the first ration bar he'd found in his mouth.

Blake wanted to scold them for stealing, for taking stupid chances. He was the oldest, the biggest, and the only one who knew the combination to the storage safe where he kept the extra rations. But nothing would change, despite the scolding, even if he threatened them. Hunger made them devious with others and honest with themselves.

Blake passed out a round of rations, then stocked the remainder in the safe, noting the day's scavenge in the log book. Just ten, today. If their findings grew slimmer, the boys would have to depend on the stock in the safe until they found another source of food. He tried not to notice how quickly the amount had dwindled. If their luck soured completely, they'd have enough for a week, maybe more. But not much more.

The temperature had dropped outside, and now cold crept into the cave. Blake secured the safe and snugged his father's jacket around himself. When he hugged his arms across his chest, the well-worn research chief's insignia on the shoulder came off in his hand.

"When will you be back?" he'd asked as his father finished packing the last of the sleds. The party, composed of the able-bodied adults, had taken most of the food and supplies with them.

"We'll send someone back when we've established a new camp," his father had reassured him, pointing to the mountain range on the horizon. "It will be safer there for all of us. Take care of the boys until we return."

Blake felt so hazy from hunger that he could almost hear his father's words. Every time he remembered their parting talk, he had a renewed sense of hope, as if his father had left only a few days ago and was due back any minute.

The party had been gone over four months without word.

Blake was homesick for them. He might have yearned for a place if he'd lived anywhere long enough, but his father's research team was the only constant in his life. Their location had changed regularly as the team moved between assignments, but the faces stayed the same. They were his family, his world. Blake's hunger for those familiar faces competed with his hunger for food.

At least there was plenty to drink. He could drown his physical hunger. The condensers set up after the crash still yielded a steady stream of water. Imarja had yet to destroy that.

Imarja. Blake closed the log book and set it on the safe. At the main control panel, he shut down the wind generators and switched over to stored power. Now only a single lamp lit the cave, glinting off the boys' hair and eyes. They'd settled down on their perches as if ready for sleep, but they all waited.

Outside, the storm slammed into the mountain like a wave. Imarja and her trailing maids were the main attractions of the planet's weather system. She was more than wind: a goddess, like her namesake. Blake's father and his research team had come here to investigate the formation and growth of deadly storms by studying a giant. The processes would be easier to observe on this scale. All they'd learned was that something else lurked at the storm's core. Something that had brought down their ship, something that was hungry for them.

One boy whimpered, another prayed, and another called for his father.

When Blake's father gave him charge of the boys, he left him with little but a few lines of caution to recite each time the storm engulfed their haven. The words had become a daily ritual, like evening prayers or a bedtime story. Blake crouched next to the lantern and began.

"Imarja scours the world, looking for a son.

Don't let her catch you, or you'll be the next one.

If you see looming clouds, and wind is all you hear,

And static pricks your skin, then Imarja is near.

Imarja scours the world, looking for a son.

If you hear her, flee; if you see her, run!"

The boys would sleep now, wrapped in their too-large clothes and pillowed on the rocks, until Imarja passed by. Each day Imarja tore a swath across the surface of the planet, and each night her maid storms swept up the worst damage, covering the evidence with a fine layer of dust. The processing masks kept most of the particles out of the boys' lungs, but like the cold, it entered the cave without an invitation.

Imarja hadn't passed close to their haven since she'd brought the survey ship down, but she was due any day. When she tore up the remains of the crash site, there wouldn't even be anything left worth scavenging. Her maids would tuck everything out of sight, leaving the boys to starve.

As the boys settled into sleep, Blake climbed the broken ladder at the back of the cave, all the way up to the lookout. He went there sometimes to be alone. None of the boys would follow him. Not because of the tricky ascent, or because of the height, but because of the ghosts.

One of the women in the crew was buried off to his right, separated by a few feet of rock, but closer in memory. She'd been pregnant. When the party had headed out, she'd been left behind with a man injured during the crash. They'd parented the boys until she came due. The man had tried to help her through delivery—Blake could almost hear her screams now in the shrieking of the wind—but he couldn't save her or the child. No one had expected the party to be gone this long.

Imarja tore the earth so deeply that they couldn't bury the woman and her son in the ground and assume they'd remain there. So Blake and the man had carried their wrapped bodies to small caves, drilled high up the mountain, and sealed them there. Two more pieces of Blake's world, gone.

Afterward, the man tried to father them as well as he could, but the longer they went without contact from the party, the more Imarja's winds wore away his hope. Without medical attention, his earlier injuries had left him permanently lame. Three weeks after they'd buried the woman and her son, the man had walked outside without his processing mask. Blake had found him before Imarja did. Alone, he dragged the man up the mountain to bury him, cursing him every step of the way. His body was heavy, but the responsibility he'd left with Blake was heavier. Now he truly was in charge.

The lookout was built close to the height where the bodies were buried. The man was a bit higher up the side of the mountain, somewhere above his head and to the left. Instead of being afraid of the dead, like the other boys, he felt comforted by having them close by. Though they had died, they hadn't really left; they still occupied a shadowy corner of his memory. When his father vanished, it had left a hole in Blake's world.

When the winds died down, Blake opened the metal iris that shielded the window. The glass was frosted with scratches, but if he squinted, Blake could make out the mountain range that had been the party's goal, and the crash scar, trailing off to the horizon. The plane of icy dirt and sand had been scoured clean of footprints. There were no figures on the horizon. They were still alone.

"Blake!" He must have slept, because there was light filtering into the lookout when he opened his eyes. The cry from below wasn't a sob or a shout of dream fear. Blake closed the iris, then half-fell down the ladder. The boys clustered around the control panel, gesturing and jabbering. Several of the previously blank, sleeping screens had awoken.

Wind had stripped most of the antennas and satellite hookups off the mountain. If the computers were tracking a ship, it had to be close by.

Blake's hands hesitated on the controls. It had been so long, he'd forgotten how to work the machines that weren't associated with survival. He pushed several buttons and spoke into the receiver. "Ground to lander. Please respond. Over."

No response, but the screens tracked a ship approaching. It must have homed in on the emergency beacon; the one everyone thought was damaged. Blake checked the time: just after sunrise. They had several hours before Imarja's next pass.

He handed out extra rations to the boys, knowing they would all need the energy to stay on their feet. Together they gathered every piece of reflective metal and bright cloth they'd scavenged, donned their processing masks, and headed outside. Shouting and waving their arms, they ran in frantic circles until the small lander came down.

Blake tried not to notice that it landed on the crash scar.

Then the men emerged from the lander, a survey boat from the orbiter Breakwater. The sight of human faces through the men's processing masks should have driven his worries away like a strong wind.

Still, Blake scrutinized each face. None of them looked familiar. If Blake's father had found help, he would have come with them or sent a message. Instead, the boys were surrounded by strangers. Even the familiar dead had been more reassuring than the lander crew. The men were the message Blake had been waiting to receive: his father was dead; the rest of the party, still missing. His world began to crumble.

The men brought the boys aboard their craft and gave each a brusque physical. Sunk inside himself, Blake didn't react to the scans or the sting of the bioreader. The crew members tossed words back and forth over Blake's head—"Malnutrition, exposure, low blood oxygen"—but they wouldn't answer any of his questions.

Instead, they interrogated him.

"What happened to your ship?" asked one crewman, who had brought some of the wreckage aboard. "Where are the adults?"

When Blake made no response, the pilot of the survey ship came to stand over him. "How long have you been stranded here?" the pilot asked. Blake handed him the meticulous log he'd kept, but the man glanced at it and tossed it aside. They weren't interested in suffering; they wanted concrete answers. They were scientists, like the crew of Blake's lander.

He answered the questions as well as he could, but he was increasingly distracted. The lander's windows showed patchwork glimpses of the darkening horizon. None of the men seemed concerned when the wind rose. Nobody noticed as the computers began to murmur a warning. None of the crew on Blake's lander had noticed, either.

When the clouds began to tower in the west, the electricity in the air made the boys cling together like puppies. Blake went to the window and pressed his face against it. This window wasn't fogged like the lookout. It was too clear.

If you hear her, flee; if you see her, run!

"It isn't safe here," Blake said, grabbing the pilot's arm. "She's coming."

The pilot looked at him like he wanted to shake Blake's grubby hand off his uniform. "Who is coming?"

"Imarja."

The men laughed, but they hadn't felt Imarja's hunger. They didn't know her cold. The boys huddled behind Blake, staring out the windows with wide eyes.

"Now, I know you've been alone here for a while," said the pilot, patronizing, "but it's just a storm. A weather phenomenon. It's not coming to get any—"

"We have to get something from the mountain," Blake interrupted, abruptly cutting him off. There was a warning siren wailing in his head like a rising wind. It was almost too late. "Please."

The crew lowered the gangway and watched bemusedly as Blake and the rest of the boys trooped off the ship. The boys followed without being asked; they'd also seen the signs. Outside, the winds were already rough. They had to fight their way to the cave entrance, bowed and slow as old men.

Blake scanned the horizon through the currents of dust. Usually, Imarja passed to the north or the south of them. Then he sighted the cone, a black funnel that sucked up debris like a tornado, over seventy miles across. This time, she was headed straight for them. They redoubled their efforts against the wind, though the sand it carried stung them like wasps.

When Blake reached the cave, he turned back to count the boys just in time to see the wind start to lift the lander off the ground. Several of the crewmen jumped from the hatch and struggled after them, toward the mountain.

"Why don't they take off?" one of the boys asked as they clustered about the hatch, five boys who'd narrowly escaped.

Blake knew it was already too late for the lander crew. The ship reared up again, then slid and tumbled across the plane. The men who'd already fled the ship fought the wind as if swimming upstream against a strong current.

Imarja towered above them.

If you see her, run!

More castaways. More mouths to feed, when the boys' rations were already dwindling. More people telling them what to do, when they already knew what they had to do to survive.

One of the men shouted into the wind, but Blake didn't hear him. Instead, he heard his father's last charge: "Take care of the boys."

They were all that remained of his world. Blake pulled the hatch shut.

Illustration by Leah Falco

*          *          *

The next morning, there was a new crash site to scavenge. The lander had been smashed open on the plane like a piñata. One of the boys found an entire box of rations amidst the twisted metal and burning insulation. And there was the promise of more. Safe in the cave that evening, they feasted and thanked Imarja.

Other ships would follow the second ship's emergency beacon down onto the planet. And Imarja would provide for them all.