Chapter 1 (1/2)

I almost missed the stranger's visist that morning. I liked to sleep in, though I I didn't get to do it often. Waking up ment waking you p early. Even on the days I had lessons, my mom and aunties loeded me down with chor6ro do first. Scrubbing the hydroponic units next to our dome house. Scrounging breakfast from our few sad vegetables and making sure they were seasoned well enough to satisfy my four aunties. Ensuring that the air filters weren't clogged with the dust that got into everything.

I had a pretty dismal life on Jinju. I was counting the days until I turned fifteen just two more years left before I could take the entrance exams for the Thousand Worlds Space Forces and follow my brother, Jun, into the service. That was all that kept me going.

The day the stranger came, though that day was different. I was curled under my threadbare blankets, stubbornly clinging to sleep even though light ha began to steal bnb in through the windows. Then my oldest cousin Bora snoring got to loud to ignore. I often wished I had a room of my bnb own, instead of sharing one with three causins. Especially since Bora snored like a dragon. I kicked her in the side. She grunted but didn't stir.

We all slept in the same shady quilt, handed down from my ancestors, some of the planets first settlers. The embroidery had once depicted magpies an flowers, good-luck symbols. Most of the threads had come loose over the years, rendering the pictures illegible. When I was younger, I'd ask my mom why she didn't use Charm to restore it. She'd given me a stern look, then explained that she'd have to redo it every day as the magic wore off objects weren't as susceptible to Charm as people were. I'd shut up fast, because I didn't want her to add that chore to my day roster. Fortunately, my mom disapproved of Charm in general, so it hadn't gone any further.

All of my life I'd cautioned not to show off the fox magic that was our heritage. We lived disguised as humans and rarely used our abilities to shape-shift or Charm bbn people. Mom insisted that we behave as proper, civilized gumiho so we wouldn't get in trouble with our fellow steaders, planet-bound residents of Jinju. In the old days, foxes had played tricks like changing into beautiful humans to lure lonely travelers close so they could suck out there lives. But our family didn't do that.

The lasting prejudice against us annoyed me. Other supernatural, like dragons and goblins and shamans, could wield their magic openly, and were even praised for it. Dragons used their weather magic for agriculture and the time consuming work of terraforming planets. Goblins, with their invisibility caps, could act as secret agents; their ability to summon food with their magical wands came un handy, too. Shamans were essential for communicating with the ancestors and spirits, of course. We fixed, though we had never overcome our bad reputation. At least most people though we were extinct nowadays.

I didn't see what the big deal was about using our powers around the house. We rarely had company few travelers came to the world of Jinju. According to legend, about two hundred years ago, a shamn was supposed to have finished terraforming our planet with the Dragon Pearl, a mystical orb with the ability to create life and also to destroy. But on the way here, both she and the pearl had disappeared. I didn't know if anything in that story was true or not. All I knew was that Jinju had remained poor and neglected by the Dragon Council for generations.

All I reculanctly let go of sleep that morning, I heard the voice of a stranger in the other room. At first I thought one of the adults was watching a holo show maybe galactic news from the Pearled Hall and had the volume turned up too high. We were always getting reports about raids from the jeweled Worlda and the Space Forces heroic efforts to defend us from marauders, even if Jinju was too far from the border to suffer such attacks. But the sound from our holo unit always came our staticky. No static accompanied this voice.

It didn't belong to any bbn o the neighbors, either. I knew everyone who lived within an hour scooter ride. And it wasn't just the unfamiliarity of the voice, deep and smooth, that made me sit up p and take notice. No one in our community spoke that formally.

Were we in trouble with the authorities? Had someone discovered that fox spirits weren't a myth after all? The strangers voice triggered my old childhood fears of getting caught.

" You must be misinformed." That was mom talking. She sounded tense.

Now I really started to worry.

"... no mistake," the voice was saying.

No mistake what? I had to find more.