Tell Tale
by Sara Hartje
Adventure was a word full of richness and promise, exotic as the flavors of off-world dishes Weston sometimes cooked for their guests. Ria’s longing for it was constant, always there in the background, steadier and more reliable than the pulse of her half-synthetic heart.
It was ironic, she thought, that her physical and metaphorical hearts were so at odds. As much as she wished to experience the worlds the inn’s guests came from, or the cities on her own planet, she was tethered. The ancient biogen hub in the basement, synced to monitor and correct her heart, was the star constraining her orbit to the edge of town.
Someday, Ria would change that. Someday, the money she placed in the inn’s vault, each a small piece of a dream, would add up. Another year, if everything went smoothly, and she’d have enough to contract an implantation specialist to give her a fully internal heart system. Then she would seek every dream in every location she wished.
But for now, she continued to run the inn her father had run before her. And in place of adventure, she filled her soul with stories.
It was the perk of the job; a continual flow of people meant a continual flow of stories. Growing up, Ria had pestered countless wealthy guests for tales against her father’s exasperated attempts to divert her attention. It hadn’t been until he died when Ria was nineteen that she reined herself in. As the inn’s new and very young proprietress, her position required more sophistication and reserve.
It didn’t mean she stopped asking—she just added more polish. After so many years around the wealthy, she’d learned to emulate their manners when it suited her. When guest found unexpected refinement in such a rural town, they were usually charmed and softened enough to relinquish their tales.
Each guest had a new story, a new experience, a new adventure to share. Which was why she knew their recent arrival’s story had to be worth prying from the woman.
“She doesn’t give you the creeps?” Nina wondered, her brow furrowed as everybody helped Weston prep dinner.
Ria laughed, tossing a peeled potato into the pot. “I mean, she isn’t very interested in small talk, but she’s always polite. I wish all our guests managed that.”
The woman, Doran, had arrived the week before, softly asking if it was possible to exchange work for five weeks of lodging. They could spare the room while they were in the early spring off-season, and they needed the extra hands more than Ria wanted to admit.
But the staff had expressed reluctance about Doran. It could’ve made sense—nobody unvetted had ever stayed so long—but a few admitted that their hesitance was harder to explain.
“I’m glad for your certainty about her, Miss Ria,” Weston said as they shucked corn. “You interact with guests more than I do, so I’ll follow your judgment.”
Nina made a noncommittal sound. “She’s at least useful, I suppose.”
That was true. Over the past week, Doran had demonstrated a remarkably varied set of skills for somebody with the appearance of a privileged background. She hauled dirty linens from rooms and brought clean ones back to Eliza. She patched the storage room’s roof before helping Nina reorganize the items displaced by the leak. She even fixed the sixth burner on the stove. Weston had been so ecstatic that they asked to create something off-menu to celebrate.
As Ria finished the potatoes and left to check on Doran, she thought about the discrepancy between the staff reaction and her own. There’d been no unease for her; Doran felt familiar from the moment she stepped into the inn, regardless of how impossible it was for Ria to dredge up any memory of her.
When Ria stepped into the storage building, Doran was half inside the delivery truck’s engine. The truck had been out of commission since earlier that year with mechanical issues that cost more than the vehicle was worth to fix, leaving the inn’s staff to rely on their personal cars to haul deliveries and luggage. They were all holding their breaths hoping Doran would find some miracle way to fix it.
Doran stood, wiping a forearm across her brow to push away loose honey-gold hair. Ria tried desperately to drag her eyes away from the long line of Doran’s throat. “I think I can do it.”
That managed to catch Ria’s attention. “Seriously?”
“If you’d let me purchase a few things, yes. It should be fairly inexpensive,” Doran assured, considering the truck again. “As long as you’re okay with the fixes not being strictly by the manual.”
“Of course. It’s better than nothing.”
As Doran closed the hood, Ria’s focus was already shifting. After so many years around the wealthy, she noticed the money in the tailoring of Doran’s clothing, the smoothness of her hands, the tones of her speech. She couldn’t make sense of those details when combined with the breadth of Doran’s skills and her lack of funds to pay for a room.
When Ria said nothing further, Doran turned to look at her. Her dark eyes were guarded. “What is it?”
The question that hummed in Ria’s thoughts since Doran first entered the inn finally spilled past her lips. “Do I know you?”
Doran stilled. It was the sort of motionlessness that shed attention, that made her seem to waver into the landscape. A not-entirely-human stillness, Ria thought, though that was common enough in the decades since hyperlight travel took off. She tucked the observation away.
“Why would you think that?” Doran asked in return. Not a yes, but not a no.
“You seem really familiar,” Ria admitted, again taking stock of Doran’s features. “I thought it might explain why I’m comfortable around you, but the others aren’t. I can’t remember seeing you before, though.”
Doran turned back to the truck, knocking a foot against the tire. “I’ve come and gone a few times,” she said eventually. “I never stayed, but perhaps you saw me.”
“Perhaps,” Ria allowed. Her curiosity strained, urging her to prod at Doran’s vague answer in hopes that she could coax something interesting to fall out. “I should’ve warned you upfront, but there’s something else you have to do while staying here.”
A cautious beat passed. “Which is?”
“I can’t travel.” Ria glossed over the pain the admission inspired. “So, I ask people to share stories.”
“And you believe I have stories to share?” Doran wondered. Something new settled into the keenness of her eyes. Curiosity, Ria realized, like an echo of her own.
Ria nodded. “I think you have a library worth of stories.”
Slowly, Doran smiled. It wasn’t as full as the polite smiles she’d given before, but this was unmistakably authentic. “An interesting conclusion,” Doran mused, her own fascination now obvious. “I’ve always sought stories as well. If you can join me while I purchase replacement parts, I’ll tell you about Ancleet before the supernova.”
“We don’t have other guests coming with reservations,” Ria said, grabbing the keys to her own car with a grin. Eagerness brimmed inside her, ready to spill into the cracks Doran had finally revealed. “Eliza can manage the desk for a bit.”
An easy rhythm settled into place. Doran worked through the wish list of tasks the staff always talked about doing but never found time for. It eased enough of everyone’s burden that Ria suddenly found herself with free time, a luxury that had been absent since before her father’s death.
Although Doran seemed puzzled that Ria sought her out, she accepted her company in their gaps between chores. The prim professionalism between them thawed like frost-crisp grass in the morning sun, their working agreement softening into an easy companionship.
Once Doran started telling stories of her travels through the galaxy, it was like a dam crumbled until they flowed out of her, at least one every day. Some were small, a candy for Ria to tuck beneath her tongue as she went about her work: the bioluminescent fish market from pre-war Ti; the fire dance of the lost We’un people; the blinding glimmer of Vehle’s diamond moon when it shattered. Others were longer, patterned carefully over multiple days, weaving threads of wonder through Ria’s thoughts until Doran tied the strings into a whole.
“What about your home?” Ria asked, loading supplies into the fixed truck. She noticed the distance to Doran’s stories; they were things she observed, but not things she was part of. “Do you have any stories from there?”
“I have no home,” Doran said, voice bland in a way that was too careful to be genuine. “I’ve never remained anywhere long enough to have one.”
“Seeing so many places must be exciting,” Ria probed.
“Yes.”
“But difficult,” she continued. She considered the flatness in Doran’s eyes, the rigid line of her lips. “You aren’t happy, are you?”
Doran looked at her sharply. “Why do you say that?”
“Am I wrong?” Things were comfortable between them, but perhaps she had overstepped.
Doran took a deep breath, fingers fluttering over the lid of the box. “No,” she finally admitted, the word almost a sigh. “I’m not sure I even know what that feels like.”
Ria recognized the expression that pulled Doran’s features; it must paint her own every time she acknowledged how trapped she was. Maybe that was what Ria saw in Doran—a kindred spirit, somebody who also longed deeply for something out of reach.
She didn’t think when she set her hand over Doran’s.
Something in that simple contact froze Ria, a tripping electric hum buzzing under her skin. All the brightness it filled her with just made the shadows it also threw were darker. Not only giddiness raced with the tingle up her arm as caution lit her like a match; the chime of her aerotab was a redundant alert to her unsteady pulse.
“I’m sorry,” Ria said, jerking back her hand. “I shouldn’t have presumed—”
“It’s fine,” Doran murmured before she picked up more boxes and set them in the truck. “I doubt you’ll do it again.”
Ria would have dropped it, but Doran’s tone was so precisely constructed, so suddenly guarded. Unease that had never existed between them yawned through the fissure of that moment. “Why?”
“You felt it, didn’t you?”
There was no need to ask what Doran meant. “Is it something from your non-human heritage?”
Doran stopped again, and that stillness was back. “What do you know of that?”
“Just that there’s something,” Ria said softly, hoping to soothe. “I noticed a while ago, but I didn’t want to pry. I figured you’d tell me if you felt like it.”
“And you’ve still sought me out?”
Ria shrugged. “What difference does it make? I serve all sorts of people out here.”
When Doran spoke, the breeze nearly torn away her small voice. “You can only say that because you don’t know.”
“Maybe.” Flexing her fingers to dislodge the warning that had climbed up her nerves, she stepped closer and reached again. It helped that she was prepared for the warring reactions as her fingertips settled over Doran’s hand. “But I don’t know, and I won’t demand that you explain.”
The careful construction of Doran’s expression shattered. “You might regret that.”
“Oh, another regret to add to the list,” Ria said dryly, rolling her eyes. “However, will I manage?”
A pained laugh bubbled passed Doran’s lips. As Ria shifted to pull her hand away, point made, Doran caught her fingers and threaded theirs together. “Then I guess I might as well follow your reckless lead.”
When the light caught in Doran’s eyes, sparking like garnets as she smiled, Ria floundered. Whatever lingered of the warning fled; all that remained was warmth that marched up her throat and across her cheeks.
As they walked back to grab another load of supplies, hands still linked between them, Ria figured that warmth was likely a sort of warning, too.
Five weeks. Ria knew from the beginning that Doran would only stay that long. She knew it when she marveled at the work the woman accomplished, and when she fell into the plushness of Doran’s stories like they were a down comforter, and when she thought there was no danger in allowing the spark between them to warm her.
She had been wrong.
The spark caught like wildfire in the neglected tinder of her heart. For all the worldliness and knowledge Doran exuded, she seemed as unversed in this as Ria—if not more so. Where Ria felt flustered by the new thing growing between them, the fact that Doran was now cautious and unsure inspired her with unexpected courage.
So she led in this new dance—an arm slipped around a waist, a head rested against a shoulder, a hand carded through hair. Doran’s expression would catch somewhere between distant assessment and immediate wonder every time Ria reached for her or when Ria allowed her to reach back.
Still, there were lines her boldness could not buoy her across, at least not without Doran moving to meet her. It was fine that she hadn’t. Time was so precious and even the flare of this joy was bright. That fifth week, in whatever way it unfurled, would have to be enough. It was all they would get.
But the days slid away too quickly. Ria thought this would be like her beloved stories, one in which she, finally, got to be a character as well. She would enjoy the whirlwind of everything she felt and then tuck it away like a note, something she could pull from her memories to look back at after Doran was gone.
That had been arrogant. She knew that, now, as they sat together on the bench behind the inn, hours after Doran finished her final story. They’d both acknowledged the need to go back inside—Ria still had responsibilities to complete, and Doran needed to prepare to leave in the morning—but neither moved. Ria’s arm, threaded around Doran’s, had long since fallen asleep.
She wouldn’t leave, not when Doran held her hand so gently between both of hers. There was no longer any hesitance in the gestures Doran initiated. Ria wondered where they’d be if they had another week, another month, another year. Maybe nowhere, she knew, realistically. But…
“You could stay.” The words were fragile, almost as unsubstantial as the air Ria used to speak them, but the sentiment was heavy enough to break the lingering peace.
Doran didn’t look at her. “I wish I could,” she said, but the denial was there, spilled into the spaces between her words.
Ria nodded and pressed her emotions deep, deep down. They went into the same place where she put all the other dreams she half-knew would never bloom. “I’ll prepare some supplies for you to take.”
“I have my own—” Doran started, but Ria lifted a hand.
“Let me do this much,” she insisted. She forced a smile to her lips as she untangled her arm and stood. Staying out that late was only prolonging the inevitable; it wouldn’t make it hurt any less if she faced reality later rather than now. “Then you can take something of me along on your next adventure.”
She turned to go inside. With any luck, she’d hold the tattering pieces of her heart together until she got to her suite. As she reached for the door, though, Doran pulled her back.
“You need to leave here,” Doran breathed as her warmth encircled her, pressing her face into the crook of Ria’s shoulder.
“I can’t.” The pounding of her heart reminding her of why with every labored beat.
“You’ve always wanted an adventure.” The crush of Doran’s arms bordered on painful, but it was grounding. “Why won’t you take that for yourself?”
Ria closed her eyes. She could imagine it, had imagined it, every beautiful, wild thing in the galaxy spread before her. “I want to. But I can’t.”
Before Doran could protest, Ria pulled away. She tugged the neckline of her shirt, and even in the darkness, the puckered surgical scars littering her chest were clear. “I’ve been saving for a new heart, one that’ll let me go to another world.” Ria gave a weary laugh. “Or even to another town. But right now I’m stuck with this, and that means being stuck here. No matter how much I wish to go.”
“That’s why you can’t travel,” Doran said slowly as understanding slid into place.
“Yes.” Ria searched her face. “That’s why I have to stay near the inn. At least for now.”
Doran stepped away. She ran a hand through her hair as she paced, panic slipping through her usually reserved features. “You’re actually trapped here.”
“Nothing new,” Ria said, but her levity fell flat. Regardless of how she tried to stay calm, Doran’s energy stained the air.
“This is different,” Doran insisted. “Something’s going to happen, Ria.”
Ria frowned. “What’re you talking about?”
“There’ll be an accident at the inn tomorrow,” Doran said, sharp and hopeless. “And you need to be gone to avoid being killed when it does—but now I realize you’ll die regardless, if your life is tethered here.”
Ria stared at Doran, this woman who had always been so softspoken and gentle. “What?”
“You asked me, once, why I was so disconnected from my stories.” Doran shook her head with a bitter laugh. “I was relieved when you only made that connection and didn’t notice how everything I spoke about was dead or destroyed.”
Ria froze. She thought about what Doran had told her, the tales she wove, all of it covering vibrant places and people—and all of them gone.
“You asked if you knew me. You said I was familiar, and I am, in a way. To the others as well, only they knew to be uneasy.” Doran took cautious, measured steps closer. “I wondered why you weren’t. It must be because of this,” she said, fingers ghosting the scarred space beneath Ria’s clavicles. “Because a piece of me has been with you from the moment your life began.”
Ria’s blood was sluggish regardless of her tripping heartbeat. “What’re you saying?” she whispered, but that wasn’t the right question. Watching Doran, it rose to her lips—a question she said she wouldn’t demand. “What are you?”
That inhuman stillness settled over Doran, but Ria realized now that she had been wrong. This wasn’t just the indication of mixed blood. This otherness, all-encompassing enough to trigger instinct, was different.
Doran dropped her words into the silence like stones into still water. “I’m a herald, or a harbinger.” Her tone was as distant and empty as the space between stars. “The living face of an inescapable force.”
The recognition skittering at the edges finally slid into place, a key turning a lock.
“Death,” Ria breathed.
Of course, that was the answer, regardless of the absurdity, the impossibility. She felt it now that she saw the truth of it. Death had always been at her side, tracing her steps through the path of her life. Sometimes farther away, like in the lull after she received her new heart. Sometimes, like when the fuse to the biogen hub blew, so close that the space was no more than a breath. Doran was right; after having such a constant companion, why would she not feel familiar?
All of Ria’s declarations now seemed like the foolish ignorance of a child. The warnings had skimmed her, there in her staff’s unease and the caution that filled Ria’s mind the first time she touched Doran’s hand. She overlooked it in her determination to prove that she could, even though Doran had suspected from the beginning that it couldn’t last.
“You can only say that because you don’t know.”
“You’re death.”
“Yes, and no,” Doran said eventually. For a moment she was far away. “This form is meant to collect a different sort of harvest.”
“And what’s that?”
Her smile twisted with irony. “Stories.”
“Stories,” Ria echoed.
“You feel trapped, wishing for something new and unknown,” Doran replied. “How trapping do you think endlessness feels? Don’t you think similar problems might have similar solutions?”
Somehow, even as her mind buzzed at the impossibility of this, Ria still didn’t feel the terror she knew she should. “That’s why you wanted to stay at the inn. Even locals come there to socialize and chat.” When Doran nodded, Ria gestured to her. “But why are you like this?”
“Lived stories are best,” she replied, glancing at herself. “This form helps provide a point of reference.”
“And was I a point of reference, too?”
Doran’s features softened so that the pain shone through again. “No. This was for me. Just this facet of me.” When she looked away, her weariness held the weight of centuries, millennia. “Although I should have been more careful when I knew the ending.”
“You told me to leave, though. So, the ending can’t be set,” Ria reasoned. “Otherwise, I should die here with everybody else regardless, right?”
Doran turned away with a noise of frustration. “You are one life. What difference does it make if a grain of sand is misplaced?”
Ria’s thoughts spun so fiercely she could hardly get them to settle long enough to stitch together. If Doran could choose to spare her, Ria had to hope it was possible for her to spare the others, her staff who were like family, too. “And you’re only here for stories? That’s all you need?”
“Ria, what does this matter?”
“What if I could be more than a grain of sand? What if I could be a gem?” Ria wondered, pushing past the arrogance of her presumptions. “Could I take the place of everybody who should die here?”
When Doran shook her head, brow drawn, Ria pushed forward. “I’ve listened to countless stories from everywhere across the galaxy. How many do you think I hold now? Hundreds? Thousands? And I’ve always wanted an adventure.” Even though her pulse stumbled, she managed a wry smile. “What bigger one is there?”
Doran lifted her free hand to touch Ria’s chin, gently tipping her head back into the wane light of the moons. “You’re afraid,” she said, thumb pressing against a tear as it slipped down Ria’s cheek.
She hadn’t realized she was crying. “For the people. Not of you,” she replied. Even in the uproar of everything else, that was still true. Ria thought of her staff, so willing to follow her regardless of their own worries, and the stream of people who filled the inn.
Swallowing, she stepped closer until she could lean her forehead against Doran’s. “I know it’s too much to ask. But if what you’ve said means you care for me at all, rather than saving me, please let me save them.”
Every sound silenced, and the shadows closed around them like an embrace. Doran’s eyes were as deep and dark as a void and just as unreachable, all her warmth hidden beyond a distance Ria could never hope to cross.
When Doran’s eyes finally slid shut, she let out a long, slow breath. The hand still against Ria’s face sank back into her hair. “Very well.”
Relief swelled in her chest before Doran shifted, pressing her lips over Ria’s like the sealing of a pact. Suddenly she understood why Doran had neared but never crossed this line; under that gentle pressure, Ria tripped and shattered, everything within her flung across the spread of the cosmos. The flare of her spirit was at once too big to be contained in her frail, mortal form and too wavering and fragile to fill this immensity. She would blaze and then flicker, sputter, extinguish.
A kiss of death. Ria was lost, her senses overwhelmed, torn in every direction, every plane, every reality.
And then there was Doran’s other hand against her cheek, an anchor to moor her spirit. There was the warmth of her mouth, gentle and seeking. A kiss to call Ria back.
The songs of night birds pushed against the silence like the lapping of a tide. Somehow Ria was still standing, dew-chilled air caressing her bare legs as she tried and failed to drag her eyes open. Her heart thundered and thrashed behind the cage of her ribs, her pulse singing in her ears, and yet her aerotab was quiet. No warnings. No errors.
Everything was the same, and nothing was.
“You bartered stories,” Doran breathed into the fragile space between them. “And I will collect. But I don’t want the tales of others. I want yours.”
For a moment, Doran’s fingers settled over Ria’s heart. “I can only offer rest—not adventure. So, seek that now, and live now, and I will come for your stories in due time.”
Her presence withdrew. Ria pressed her hand over her chest, trapping the fleeting heat of Doran’s touch beneath her palm. In the stillness, the pulse of her heart, strange and new and strong, rushed with the reliability of a timepiece. Ria smiled, throat constricting against a laugh that was almost a sob, as she finally opened her eyes upon the first weak blush of dawn.
In every heartbeat she felt the echo of Doran’s words, each heavy with portent—and promise.
About the Author
Sara Hartje is an asexual writer who gets to play with words in her personal and professional life, where she works as a school-based occupational therapist. She's deeply moved by the vastness of space, the way humanity seeks to see itself reflected in all things, and the perfection of baked goods.
© Tell Tale by Sara Hartje. 2022. All rights reserved.
