“When Granny was a girl, she had journeyed to the Great Rend on this very ship. I’d asked her, What was the ship like back then? The same, she’d said. How old was the ship then? As old as me now. What does the ship’s name mean—Tūrangawaewae? Silence. Then Grandmother said, very carefully, No one really knows what it means. I replied, But isn’t it just an old word from our ancestors’ language?”

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fiction, may 25

No matter what Grandmother said, I knew I was ready for the initiation ritual. So what if I wasn’t old enough? One more lunar cycle—come on. That’s nothing! I’d had to constantly remind her there wouldn’t be another lightspeed ship to the Great Rend for, like, three whole cycles. If we waited until then, she wouldn’t be available to chaperone me, and if she didn’t go with me, I’d have to go alone, and what kind of elder would do that to their own grandchild? So, finally she said yes, with a huff, and booked us passage on the next available ship.

No one ever talked about the ritual, but everyone knew it happened at the Great Rend, a black hole twenty light-years from home, in a corner of space we had never settled for some reason. We also knew, because it had been drummed into us as children, that the ritual was “a time-honoured test of our readiness to join the adult classes and the foundation of our culture…” Snore.

Anyway. I was on the ship. I was going to the Great Rend. I was going to become an adult. And nothing Grandmother could say would scare me off from going through with the ritual. “Prepare yourself, child,” she intoned, yet again, as I stared out the porthole. “Initiation will change your perspective on life—”

“Yes, Granny.”

“Mind your tone,” she retorted, twitching her white headtail. It swept proudly from the crown of her head to the small of her back, reflecting sparks of starlight. “I say this only to prevent you having to learn a very hard lesson,” she said. What a queen my Granny was. One day, I’d be a lady like her…

If she’d just let me do the bloody ritual without fussing.

The concierge gathered our emptied glasses and told us we were nearing the Great Rend. My heartbeats sped up when he said, “As we approach, the mysteries of our universe will unravel themselves.” Then he looked straight at me and said, “Prepare yourself,” and I got all annoyed again. I rose, smiled peaceably at the concierge, and stalked off.

When Granny was a girl, she had journeyed to the Great Rend on this very ship. I’d asked her, What was the ship like back then? The same, she’d said. How old was the ship then? As old as me now. What does the ship’s name mean—Tūrangawaewae? Silence. Then Grandmother said, very carefully, No one really knows what it means. I replied, But isn’t it just an old word from our ancestors’ language? (That was the theory my friends and I had.) But Grandmother shook her head emphatically. No, she said. We have never spoken that language. Her tone of voice ended the discussion.

As I searched for the stairwell back to our quarters, I passed a vis screen showing last night’s concord ceremony. The two Premiers clasped hands, headtail tips inkstained from signing the accord. “At all costs there must be peace…” one of them said.

Pop. Pop pop pop. I glanced at the vis screen. The sound wasn’t coming from that. I could see the Premiers’ mouths move, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I couldn’t hear—anything. I’d gone deaf, to everything except this popping.

Then the brightly-lit hall sank into darkness. Something pushed past me, spinning me round. The thud-thud of sprinting feet went past me, down the hall, and faded away.

Then the lights turned back on.

“I am deeply honoured to have earned the Premier’s trust and cooperation…” I heard from the vis screen behind me. The now-lit hallway was empty, except for me. But it hadn’t been. Something—someone—had shoved me.

This had to be part of the ritual. Part of the test. So the lights turned off, and the vis screen’s audio went funny. And someone ran past me. So what? All explainable. A lighting malfunction; a crew member running past to sort it out. What, has your skin turned back to blue, like a baby? Stop shaking. Grow up. I gulped down a breath and headed back down the hallway, marching past two crew members who both smiled at me as I passed—smiled, or smirked. I toughened my expression. I wasn’t afraid.

I made it to a corridor leading towards the observation deck before the lights went out again. A slushy dread chilled my nape, but I made myself walk forward, into the dark. “Hello?” I whispered.

I was answered by voices shouting in a language I didn’t know. Fumbling for the switches, I flicked on the auto-translator in my pocket. The voices coalesced into—“Get away from here! Hey!” I felt, heard two people sprint past me. The lights turned back on—except it wasn’t ship or starlight, it was sunlight, yellow sunlight, and I was outside, caressed by a warm breeze, and I could see the two runners, one in blotched green, one in dark grey. The one in green carried a long appliance with metal tubes. The one in grey was both chaser and shouter, driving the one in green away from the building I stood in front of. Somewhere, a child screamed.

The lights went out. The lights went on. I was back on the ship.

Who were those men? What were those men? As they ran, I had seen them from behind. These running, chasing phantom men didn’t have headtails. The backs of their heads were covered in silky hair, and were rounded with no protrusions, horns, nothing. What were they?

Where had I gone?

I edged down the window-studded corridor. My hands still shook. But now I was curious as well as afraid, and the curiosity was slowly crowding out the fear. I chanced a look outside. The stars had resolved from streaks to spots; we had dropped out of high-speed warp. Some of the stars had a strange magenta sheen. As I walked towards the bow, I remembered that scared child’s cry. My heartbeats pounded.

The corridor snaked towards the observation deck, the only place on the ship with a window wide enough to allow a view of what lay ahead. When I saw it I went instantly cold, my headtail shrinking back against my neck. The Great Rend. Its magenta edges billowed like wind-torn flags, bruise-like around a black hole that gaped like an open wound. For the first time, I realised this journey might be dangerous. The Great Rend was a tear in the universe; an endless well; a mouth. I thought, I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.

Then a flare of light leapt out of the Rend, searing my gaze white. I cried out, blinking wildly, clearing stars from my eyes.

I was not on the ship. I was bathed in yellow sunlight. I was surrounded by screams.

Two men ran past me again, one in blotched green, one in grey. The white-skinned one in green lifted his appliance as he ran, aimed. Pop pop pop. Windows shattered into blades of glass. That long appliance—was it—what was the word—a weapon? Siren wails deafened. The man in green ran out of sight. I turned.

I stood in front of a white building with a domed roof, fronted by a courtyard littered with people dying. A man lay on his back, his brown face growing paler. Near him, an old man was curled in a heap by the doorway. His circular black cap had slipped off his head. Inside, more heaps crumpled in the hallway, in doorways. A young man lay in front of a cupboard door, dark eyes huge with pain. “My brother,” he gasped. “My brother.”

I pulled the cupboard door open. Inside crouched a very young child, with glossy black hair, black eyes, smooth brown skin, and a face streaked with tears. As soon as he saw me, he fell into my arms. “Mau pulang!” he sobbed. “Mau pulang!” His shirt was sprayed with red.

Later, after Grandmother found me collapsed on the observation deck, after the Tūrangawaewae began to head home, after I saw that the peace treaty had been signed and Grandmother had assured me, repeatedly, that such peace could never be broken, after I returned to school, my friends excitedly asked me: So how was the ritual? Did you pass?

I understood then why the adults of our world don’t talk about the ritual. It is unspeakable; it lives beyond words. I asked Granny and she couldn’t explain it either. She just sat there silent, tears seeping down, her headtail so very white, while I begged her to explain: Why did that white one want to hurt the others? Those people lying down, did they survive? What did the little boy mean when he said, I want to go home? Wasn’t that place his home already? Wasn’t he already supposed to be home?

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