After many years of waiting, the tribe of Cosandeer had to take to the stars. Finally, it was time to leave.
Despite everything, when the clock ran out the Cosandeers were still unprepared for the moment they knew had been coming for most of their lives. Panicked, they bundled together possessions, repaid old debts, and visited the graves of their ancestors one last time.Payzar was a carpenter. Every day he’d take the forest path into the village, amble his way to his workshop and wait.
Only when Jambo arrived would Payzar start work, under Jambo’s supervision. At lunch time, Payzar would share his sandwiches, tell stories about his childhood and speculate about the nature of their journey ahead.
Jambo on the other hand, would chew quietly and stare out of the window thinking about how he used to hunt with his brothers. Allowing his mind to touch upon their absence for only as long as he could bear it. Sometimes he would lay his head down and listen to Payzar’s voice, like the reassuring waves of a tide bringing the boats home for their supper.
When the day came, Payzar’s family arrived to collect him early. Their jumble wagon was overflowing with knick-knacks and personal treasures. Payzar was nowhere to be found. At first, they simply waited, but as the morning dragged on they ventured out, trying to find their boy. Payzar’s father and his brother Kopec hunted high and low while his mother stayed with the wagon, in case he came home.
They found him on the forest path, frantic with worry, calling out Jambo’s name. His friend was due to leave in the same ship, Payzar had made sure of that. He was meant to be coming with them.
“It’s no use Zar,” his father said, “we have to go. The ship won’t wait. It can’t. And anyway, who’s to say he hasn’t gone on ahead of us? He may already be on board.”
Payzar was sceptical, he couldn’t imagine Jambo just taking himself off alone. It wasn’t until his father said that if Payzar didn’t go, then none of them would go, that Payzar knew he had to relent. His parents were right, he couldn’t force them to leave him behind. “And anyway,” his father continued, “if you refuse, I shall tie you in a sack and carry you to the ship myself.”
Payzar nodded, eyeing the smaller man. Payzar hated that sack.
All the way there his family gaped in awe at the rocket, and Payzar sat on the back of the jumble wagon eyes searching behind them for signs of Jambo.
The ship shone like silver. All starlight and energy. A fierce sanctuary primed to take them to new worlds, their new beginnings. It smelt of sizzling electricity and, as they approached its base, they could feel the air seething around them as the propulsion system readied itself for the launch.
Payzar was fighting every fibre of his being that willed him to leap off and run back into the village, shouting Jambo’s name. He held it in tight, knowing that there was nothing he could do.
When their ship took off, the family crammed into the bunks on the fourteenth deck, Payzar vomited. Tears streamed down his face, his chest heaving. A boy on the bed above him reached down timid fingers and touched Payzar’s shoulder. “I get space sick too sometimes,” he said.
In the days to come Payzar searched every deck for Jambo. He even snuck into the Gold Quarters for a while until he was caught, beaten and arrested. His family came as a group to beg the Authority for his release, but when asked why he had been trespassing they were so intimidated by black boots and iron buttons that they just whispered that Payzar was a good boy and he would never do it again.
When Payzar was finally released both eyes had been blackened shut and he had trouble using his left hand, but the first thing he said as his mother hugged him and his father ran a soothing hand across his back, was that there had been one final ship after theirs, for the very last of the tribe.
His father smiled, “That’s right. The Alexos, it left four hours after us.”
Payzar smiled and held his mother, eyes closed from the effort – and the bruising.
On the fourth day of their journey the ship left the solar system and so the viewing ports were opened. Payzar was already waiting silently by the mechanism, his blue and black hand strumming across the metal impatiently.
Kopec had waited with him and when the port opened he gasped, confronted by a million stars, brighter than ever they were before. A host of light, a heaven teeming with life. Payzar pressed his face against the pseudoglass and strained to see. He peered back to where they had come from, trying to see past the wake of their engines that cast waves of black heat behind them.
He stared back to the dying star that had once been their home, searching for signs of the Alexos.
Kopec stood gently by his side and, after a time, pointed. “Do you see that point of light there? Slightly larger, slightly redder? That, I believe, is the Alexos.”
“Kopec, do you think Jambo is aboard?”
But his brother stood still, simply gazing out at the celestial wonders before him, awed by the fact that they were, in fact, their home and always had been.
Payzar nodded to himself, “I think he is.” His voice was just a whisper. For a moment he stood, pressed up against the cold pseudoglass, and then he sat himself down on the floor, his nerves calming for the first time in days as he pulled a single sandwich from his pocket.