Euphemia of Khaiterra

Excerpt from Chapter One

Euphemia simply could not believe that her mother had put her on this train to nowhere!  For what felt like hours now, her breathing had been shallow, her heart racing faster than the whining steel wheels carrying her north.  North through delectable little Midlands towns and edgy Northern cityscapes, and further north still, into Scotland, on out, into open country.  

As the greenery and crystalline late morning light flowed in under her scowl, the faint warmth on her skin through the perspex window felt like balm for her wounded soul and - finally - Euphemia began to calm down.  Maybe this was what she needed.  A change of scene, a chance to reconnect with a father who she barely knew.  

All in a rush, Phemy remembered the fantastical bedtime stories that her Papa used to tell her, stories of his home.  Of camping and waterfalls and swimming in the vast ocean which would pound you dreadfully, if you didn't time your return to shore just so.  Could it be that this magical boyhood home he had told her of was Khaitland?!  The safe place she had longed to escape to, had escaped to - in her mind - whenever she'd most needed it.  

When the other kids teased her for having no dad; or as she'd gotten older and never had an allowance; or even, last month, when inside her own body was not a place she had wanted to be.  She shuddered and shifted her attention.

On another track, her mind was working away at the question of whether this train could possibly carry her all the way into Khaitland?  Didn’t you have to be Khait, to live on the other side of The Border?  She knew that you had to have a special passport to stay there more than one week; could her dad be a Kahit?  

She also knew that there were no mechanised vehicles allowed north of the roaring torrent which separated Khaitland from the mainland.  To get there you had to cross one of the ancient stone viaducts on foot or horseback, didn’t you?  It was one of the things that made people in London snicker a little when they spoke of Khaitland, muttering phrases such as "backwards blighters" and "those Northern hypocrites".  Though for her part, Phemy couldn't understand what was hypocritical about trying to resist burning up fossil fuels, an evil that the human world was having great trouble extricating itself from…  A little frown creased her elation, as the train plunged into deeply wooded territory.  

It was just exactly like something out of one of Papa's stories, thought Phemy, heart kindling in her chest again.

Was she being fanciful?  If her father was Khait that would make her half-Khait… That seemed unlikely: how could she not know something like that?!  Surely she was simply human, through and through?  Surely her mother hadn't lied to her, all these years?

Quite suddenly, the world seemed to drop away beneath their headlong rush.  The train felt like it had shot straight out over an abyss of surging white light.  Phemy actually yelped, briefly.  Out loud.  Mortifying.

But there was aboslutely no chance any of her fellow passengers had heard her.  All conversation in the carriage around her had ceased.  For below them, it's cacophony drowning out all other sound; churning and tossing and thrusting and crashing - a massive river, like a perpetual waterfall - surged horizontally through an unfathomable gorge, the water only inches from the narrow, side-less viaduct supporting the single set of tracks that their train was running on.  This must be it then, The Border.  

So the train did go all the way into Khaitland...and her father probably was a Khait!

……… 

A mere ten minutes later, as she stepped off the train, Euphemia's first, overwhelming impression of Khaitland, was of SOUND.  She cast her eyes upwards, to confirm that so much bird-sound could exist, even seven hours after the dawn chorus.  

On cue, her stomach gurgled.  Mama never kept her waiting for lunch this long… Apparently she never thought it was important to mention certain pertinent things about her daughter’s heritage, either.  Euphemia’s thin, inky-black brows descended, framing her clear aquamarine eyes in a pretty frown.

As if in answer to the call of her own midnight follicles moving so mightily, an onyx coloured khait male rounded the corner of the station building.  He called a cheeky greeting to the guard and strode towards Phemy, silky-brushed chest hair swept to the left by the steady breeze on the platform.  The way they framed one side of his body, the windswept tips of his hairs looked like the little flecks a cartoonist might draw to show that their character was in rapid motion.  And certainly, he - Silas Zhoe, née Benar - was.  Kilt flapping boldly, Euphemia’s father strode up and encircled her, in a bone-crushing embrace.

Phemy went rigid. Silas seemed to notice.  He pulled back and said, “Well now, would you look at this young un-khait!”  He was beaming under his face fur, and it felt so familiar, she wanted to cry.  Even if the last time she’d seen him - and in all the pictures she had of him - he had clean-shaven, human-looking cheeks.  When he lived in London with them, he must have had a shaven forehead and neck too, she realised, with a shock.  This fully-furred being in front of her was NOT human-passing.  The father she’d known, had been.  At least in a crew neck sweater.

She looked down at her feet.  Overwhelm threatened.

As if he could sense it, the next thing she felt was a steady - warm - arm, like her favourite plush scarf had come to life and wrapped around her shoulder.  “C’mon, let’s get this immigration stuff over with,” he rumbled deep,  “Then we can get you some cream ice.” Phemy glanced up in time to see his conspiratorial wink.  The malapropism and that gesture.  Together they twanged a chord of memory in the top of her skull.  How had she forgotten?  Forgotten him?

With that sturdy arm around her shoulder, Phemy felt herself steered through the crowd of blithe bodies - all topless, mostly furred - on the station platform.  The white lace Peter Pan collar on her jet black cardigan was suddenly an object of oddity, she realised.  As was her smooth, hairless, alabaster skin.  She was glad of the cardigan’s weight, however.  The autumn weather in Khaitland may have been crispy clear; but it was bitingly cold.  Her mother had been right to insist.  Another painful twang.  This time on the betrayal string, in her heart.

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J.  Darkwater, they/them/theirs, international human rights lawyer of colour escaping into the writing of young adults fantasy fiction and personal essays around what it means to be mixed heritage, in the 2020s