Pan’s Legacy

  One of the Terran Volunteers, Pandora Smythe has gotten a surprising welcome to space. Taken from her home world, she is tossed into a survival situation on an alien planet and forced to fight for life as best she can. When her captors believe she is ready, she is taken to another world and becomes a pit fighter.

  Granted the chance to meet her captors, surprised is a mild word for her reaction as Huek K'ptain and T'nker Biel confront her to let her know that the tales her grandfather told of an eternal fairy and evil captain were not his imagination. Pandora has something that they want…and she has no idea what it is.

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  Pan’s Legacy

  Copyright © 2010 Viola Grace

  ISBN: 978-1-55487-491-0

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books

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  Pan’s Legacy

  A Novella of the Terran Times

  By

  Viola Grace

  Chapter One

  Pandora Smythe stood outside the recruitment centre and fidgeted. Out of long-standing habit, she grabbed her necklace and rubbed it for advice. The gemstone warmed slightly and she considered it a good sign.

  “Go on, Pan. They can only say no. It isn’t like they will insult your shoes or anything.” Heloise Vandermeyer was a fantastic cheerleader. She even meant it.

  Straightening her shoulders, Pandora went through the doors and smiled at the attendant. “Hello.”

  The man was alien, but he had the steady features that she would look for in public-relations personnel. “Hello. You are here to fill out an application?”

  “I am.” Pandora took the clipboard he extended.

  “Will you provide a blood sample for analysis?”

  She thought about it. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Sure. Where would you like me to go?”

  “Oh, right here will be fine.” Efficiently, he picked up a device, inserted a clean needle from a sealed package and pricked her finger. “Press your finger onto the pad, please.”

  Pan took a look at the pad and pressed the drop of blood onto the plate in the centre. A light turned green and she drew her hand back. She took the wipe that the attendant offered and smiled as the small wound sealed itself. “Thanks.”

  “Now, if you fill out the form, we will be able to enter you into Volunteer selection.” He smiled, tucked her blood test away and waited for the next Terran to stumble through the doors.

  Pandora kept a smile on her face as she filled in the form. She was unremarkable and she knew it. When the question came up about her ancestry, she gritted her teeth. It physically hurt her to write in Peter Pan, but her gemstone was blazing so hot that she had no choice.

  It would probably discount her right of the bat, but she had tried. It was always in her to try even if she failed. Usually, failure was the result, but she couldn’t stop herself. The urge to try new things rode her and the necklace heated if she tried to back out.

  The necklace was her only true link to her grandfather. The infamous Peter Pan. He had skipped her siblings, her mother and aunts had also not been entitled to wear the stone on his death. Only Pandora, the child that he forced his name on was good enough to wear the Star of Lesser Fey.

  The irony was that once she had put it on, it wouldn’t come off and she had really tried. Even bolt cutters would not slice it off her neck. Her only consolation was that people outside the family didn’t really see it. They could look, but not focus on it.

  Smiling at the attendant again, she handed the questionnaire back to him and nodded a goodbye.

  “Wait. A representative will want to speak to you before you go.” He was a little worried until she returned to a seat in the waiting room.

  It was not a busy day and the representative that she was to see came out of the back to escort her into an interview room.

  “Well, we have not had a chance to look over your questionnaire, but there was one point we needed clarification on.” He was small, silver and had large black eyes.

  “What is that?”

  “Are you truly the granddaughter of the man known as Peter Pan?”

  “I am.”

  “Well your blood sample indicates that you are, but I just wanted to make sure.” The small creature stood and shook her hand. “Thank you for coming in. You will be hearing from us shortly.”

  Bemused and not a little confused, she left the offices and returned to her home. Her answering machine was flashing and it was Heloise. “So, wasn’t it a good waste of time? I just loved looking at the attendants. I wonder what their planet is like?”

  A second message caught her by surprise. “Pandora Smythe, my name is Representative Nalo and I wish to be the first to congratulate you on your acceptance into the Volunteer program. You will be launching in ten days. You can bring five kilograms of personal items so pack carefully. An information pack with your travel documents will arrive in the morning. Welcome to the project.”

  Pandora stood looking at the answering machine in consternation. It was that easy? Wait. What am I saying? I don’t want to go into space! It had been Heloise’s idea for her to sign up. The rumours had been circling that the more normal you were, the better your chances. Pan shrugged and gave in to the urge to call her mother.

  “Hiya, Mom. Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure, sweetie. What do you need?”

  “Um. I did something today and I don’t know how to feel about it.”

  “What was it?”

  “I signed up for the Volunteer project. I was accepted.”

  “What?” Her mother’s shriek burned through the phone lines. “Why would you do that?”

  Because my necklace told me to was probably not the best answer.

  “I was nagged into signing up and now I have one of the spots. It doesn’t feel wrong if that is what you think.”

  “What I think…what were you thinking? Wait a minute. I am getting your father on the other line.”

  What followed was a conversation that would ring through her mind for the following nine days. Her family nagged her into a meeting and they decided on an intervention. They needn’t have worried. She was going to show up at the designated spot and decline. Normally, she would have given them plenty of warning, but no one returned her calls and the centre that she signed up at was closed, the full complement of Volunteers had been filled.

  She didn’t spend her last days laughing and partying with friends, she spent it going in to work and keeping her head down. She was a clerk in the finance department of a large, faceless corporation, no one needed to know that the day she had booked off was not simply to wave goodbye to a friend or a member of her community.

  Representative Nalo was short, but he was easy to spot. His ever-so-alien guards stood next to him, bracketing him in
muscle.

  Pandora’s documents got her through security and she rushed up to speak with the Representative.

  “Representative Nalo. I am sorry to have to say this, but I can’t leave Earth. I have friends, family. I signed up on a lark—I never expected to be accepted.”

  “Come with me, Pandora. We will have this conversation out of the public eye.” He held his diminutive hand out and she followed where he led. The off-world muscle followed them closely.

  When he stopped in a short corridor, he turned to look up at her. “Now, what seems to be the difficulty?”

  “I have tried to get in touch with you for the last week, but you never returned my calls and the recruitment centre closed. I never intended to leave my friends and family. I was nagged into it by my friend Heloise.”

  “That is unfortunate. It would have been easier if you had been willing to board the shuttle.”

  That drew a frown to her face. She couldn’t understand what he had said, but the large hand that wrapped around her waist and pulled her back against a massive body held her still as a sharp pain hit her in the neck. She felt her body lifted and then everything went dark.

  * * * *

  Representative Nalo shook and shifted forms. A few changes and she was back in her comfortable natural state. T’nk Biel smiled as her guard followed with the true descendant of Pan. Huek K’ptain would be pleased that the capture had been so easy. The Alliance would take the heat for the kidnapping and the girl would be on a far-off world, learning the art of fighting for her life. If she could survive three months in the wilds, she would be fit for the pits and if she rose in the rankings, the Huek would have his revenge.

  If she died. So much the better.

  Chapter Two

  Pan’s stomach growled angrily and she hushed it. She had been on this strange world for two days and had yet to find any food that she could eat. Twenty feet up a tree, she was able to watch the village of small lavender beings with too many limbs protruding from their torsos.

  They greeted each with a series of hand signals that she watched intently. She practiced from her high perch and when she felt she had the right combination, she began her treacherous descent.

  Pandora was only a few feet from the ground when she heard the growl. Turning slowly, the figure coming out of the tangled brush was horribly familiar. A predator, the likes of which did not exist on Earth, was targeting her as its next meal.

  Heat pulsed from her pendant and she almost cursed. The pendant pulsed when it wanted her to act. Acting was definitely required at this particular moment. When the predator attacked, she pushed up with her thighs and hovered in the air as it passed beneath her. “I can fly?”

  Astounded, she dropped back to the branch she had been crouching on, just in time for the beast’s second strike. Shrieking in surprise, she jumped upward again and this time was clear of the entangling vegetation. “I can fuckin’ fly!”

  Her ecstatic joy swiftly spluttered when she began to drop rapidly and crashed without ceremony in the middle of the small village she had been watching.

  To her dismay, not only were the villagers facing her with projectile weapons, but the beast had followed her and was now menacing everyone between it and its target. “How lucky can I get?”

  Using instincts she had never even seen an inkling of in her life, she stood, grabbed one of the spears from a near villager and jumped again. This time she came down on the beast, spear first. She aimed for its spine and unfortunately was successful. Well, fortunate for her, not so for the creature dying under her.

  Breathing deeply, she stood and faced the villagers who were still glaring at her, albeit not with as much hostility as before. Her fingers formed the signals that she had been practicing and the group seemed to be a little confused. Her second attempt was slightly better and a certain amount of giggling occurred. Pandora hoped it was giggling. It was a sort of huffing hiss, but they were all doing it.

  One of the littles came to her and gestured for her to follow it, having nothing else to do, she did. Behind her, a group swarmed the predator and began taking it apart the instant she was off it.

  While Pandora looked around with avid curiosity, her guide gestured for her to sit and offered her a bowl of wriggling contents. It mimed eating. Shrugging and hungry beyond bearing, Pandora reached out and took one.

  It didn’t taste half-bad, kind of nutty, once she got over the wriggling. At her guide’s gesture for her to have more, she took another, then another. All too soon, she was feeling a little better and the bowl was empty. Her guide offered her another bowl, this one with water in it. She washed down the insects with small sips, cradling the bowl gently to keep her shaking hands from spilling the cool contents.

  The stone at the base of her neck began to pulse, it wasn’t hot, wasn’t cold, it was sending out a signal and Pandora’s mind started to flex in response. A whispering took hold of her thoughts. Words that she had never heard were connecting with ones that were familiar. The stone was teaching her a language that she didn’t know existed. She shuddered and groped for the words that she needed, amazed at how they sounded when they came out of her mouth, “Thank you. I don’t know why you are helping me, but thank you.”

  Her guide looked startled—she thought. Perhaps it was angry or confused. “You are welcome. You rendered service to our village by providing meat for a month for all. How did you learn our language?”

  Pandora stopped and searched out the words she needed, the pulse continued her education slowly, but carefully. “It is being given by an heirloom of my family. I do not know how.”

  “Ah. We will be happy to help you learn to survive. You seem to be very weak. Where did you come from?”

  The spot on the ground where she sat gave her an excellent view of the sky and its multiple orbiting bodies. “Very far away.”

  Shaisn was an excellent guide and a better teacher. He was also the leader of the village hunters and this was why he had offered her food after her kill. Her kill, so she would eat first. He showed her how to stalk prey, where to find the juicy worms and together, they worked to make her stronger.

  She practiced her flight during hunts, the death-from-above tactic working very well to catch everything but fish. The distortion offered by the flowing water threw her aim off.

  Her ability to fly, or at least engage in controlled jumps, was startling at first, but the more she came to accept it, she realised she had heard of this talent before. Grandpa Peter had told her stories of flying through the skies of a strange land, fighting to save lost boys and girls. The stories that he told her were different, if more colourful, than the commercial variety. In his stories, the fairy was named T’nk and the commander was named Huek. The fairy captured the children and was forcing them to work, but something about Peter enabled him to fly in that place and he saved as many boys and girls as he could.

  He handed the stone over to her on his deathbed, telling her, “Pandora, this will take care of itself, but if anyone comes looking for it, give it to Huek. The shapeshifter will lie, but he will be able to see it for what it is. If he won’t take it, destroy it. Promise me.”

  With shaking hands, she had taken the stone and promised. On her grandfather, it had looked like a watch, on her, it took a position at the base of her throat. No one had ever noticed it. Not in the ten years she had worn it.

  When Shaisn explained the hand signals that his village used to avoid the attention of predators, she understood her mistake and why the whole village had laughed at her. Her lack of dexterity had caused her to invite them to have sex with her while eating a water lily. Fortunately, they had not taken her up on her invitation.

  She used those hand signals to ask about the preparations that the village was engaging in. What are they getting ready for, hunt master?

  To induct new hunters to the tribe. You have been with us for a few large moons. You will be one of those to become full hunters.

  Pandora blushed, her sligh
tly tanned skin turned a hot pink. That is quite an honour. What do I have to do?

  Well, if you were one of the village, it would be time for you to take a woman. You can skip that part.

  Pan snorted. Thanks for that.

  Although there are a few hunters who have asked me if they could try to copulate with you.

  Seriously? I am four times your size!

  I think the novelty appeals to them. Also, you are an excellent provider—perhaps they want the easy life.

  Jackass.

  He gave her a toothy grin that she wanted to smack off his lavender skin. Her initial problem with the hand signals had been that they had four arms while she had only the two. The cure was to form one word completely before working on the next.

  Pandora shook her head and went to the hut that she had painstakingly created over the last few months. Nothing in the village fit her, so taking over the guest hut had been out of the question. With friends from the hunt, she had laid down in an empty area that the headman had been willing to part with and they had drawn around her body with pebbles. From there, she added six inches on her head and feet marks, then created a circle from there. Poles made from a bamboo-type substance made up her walls and thatching covered the roof. To keep with the aesthetics of the village, she kept it low and crawled inside when she needed sleep or shelter from the weather. It was large enough inside to have friends visit and they brought her a collection of pots that were off size for their use.

  She was living a fairly comfortable life. She just wished she knew why she was on this weird world. She liked the village, liked the people and really enjoyed the feeling of belonging that they had given her. She didn’t resemble them at all, but she was as close to one of them as she could be.

  The new hunters were lead out of the jungle and into the centre of the village. Pandora was just reaching forward to take her raw share of the hunt when a dart hit her in the neck. The villagers scattered and Pandora jumped.