Lucy

Oldhill was in the middle of nowhere, next to a tiny forest, on a riverbank. Oddly enough, there wasn’t a hill anywhere nearby. It was a charming place, but too out of the way for any kind of tourism. Once a year the nearest village held their annual smoked salmon festival, and people sometimes came to Oldhill by mistake, which was pretty much all the excitement the inhabitants got. They didn’t mind; they were simple folks. They didn’t really talk about the spaceship in the woods the same way they didn’t talk about how the local pub, the Crown, watered the beer. It was just part of life, nothing to yap about. The spaceship didn’t hurt anyone and the beer was still good enough, so why complain?

The door of the spaceship slid into its wall accompanied by a sort of hydraulic noise. There was some hissing, too, and Lucy’s untidy, long hair moved a little. She knew that it was because the air pressure was changing inside the spaceship now that the door was opened. The air inside was old and tired but nothing worse than that.

Lucy had read everything about spaceships and interstellar travelling she could find in the village’s little library, all three books. One of them was a novel stating dolphins came from outer space and were much more intelligent than humans, which Lucy had no problem believing whatsoever. She didn’t know a whole lot of people, but after meeting the ones she did, she decided that was more than enough.

She was only fourteen, but already the smartest person in the village. She knew it and the others knew it, too, so naturally, they thought something was wrong with her. Lucy couldn’t care less. She had read everything she could get her hands on, regardless of the topic, and was never satisfied. Every new crumble of knowledge led her to five new questions. Nobody had ever seen Lucy without a book in her reach. After she finished the village’s library, she was begging to her parents to bring her to the one in the nearest town, but they always said that maybe next week, when they won’t be that busy. Well, her mother said that. Her father just growled impatiently and told her to go play with her dolls.

Travelling through space was only Lucy’s latest obsession. Ever since she heard about the ancient spaceship half buried, just outside the village, she wanted to see it. She was dreaming of flying it, though she realized that whatever energy source the ship might have had, it must have been dead for centuries.

That is, until the door opened for her. At least some things still worked, apparently.

Warm, yellow spotlights flickered to life as she set foot on the ship. A low humming began somewhere deep inside, the girl felt it through the sole of her sneakers. Could that be some kind of engine? Perhaps.

As far as she could tell, judging by the part that wasn’t under the forest’s leaf-covered ground, the spaceship wasn’t big and definitely didn’t look like a saucer. If anything, it appeared to be shaped like a rosebud, with the door on the round end. Lucy assumed the cockpit was the buried part, probably badly deformed due to the crush landing all those years ago.

The floor was slightly crooked, the walls pleasantly warm. Lucy came to a halt in front of another door at the end of the short corridor. She had prepared herself for what she might see in there: a dead body or more like the weird skeleton of one, a pilot that died a terrible death. She wasn’t scared; she had never feared dead things. Everything and everyone that ever hurt her was all alive. And yet, as she lifted her trembling hand to push the button that opened the door, she felt the smoked cheese and tomato sandwich, her breakfast, unpleasantly turning in her belly.

The door slid aside. The room behind it was indeed a cockpit: just a seat and a dark dashboard full of signs that reminded Lucy of an ancient language she had read about. There was no skeleton, nor any noticeable damage. Weird. Whoever or whatever arrived in this little spacecraft must have survived the landing and left the vehicle behind. Maybe they actually were dolphins, giggled Lucy nervously, although the shape of the seat clearly suggested something more or less huma-like.

She sat down and the dashboard with the strangely familiar signs came to life, emitting golden light. She jumped to her feet but the lights stayed. Slowly, Lucy lowered herself back into the chair. It had a few buttons on the armrest. She stared at the dashboard. She knew she had seen these markings before.

They were runes, she realized, the kind Vikings used to carve into things. How was that possible? Were Vikings aliens? Maybe. They did manage to build regular ships good enough to reach another continent way before anyone else did, so maybe they had some otherworldly knowledge. Though they were just as bloodthirsty as any regular human, so who knows?

On the screen in front of her, a text appeared. “Engine ready. Proceed?” and indeed, the humming became louder, the vibrating more pronounced. The text was good old English, not Viking writing. Maybe the ship knew that she didn’t speak Viking? Wouldn’t be too odd.

‘Y…Yes?’ Lucy said hesitantly. A rune started to blink in front of her. She touched it and another text appeared on the screen above: “Core energy level: 67%. Destination set to: home. The minimum amount of required core energy level: 42%. Do you wish to proceed?”

Home... That must have been wherever the ship came from. Another world. A world full of people who can make spaceships like this, full of people who read more than the Bible and those paperbacks with naked people on the cover. Full of people who wouldn’t scorn and make faces when she asks questions, who wouldn’t try to tell her that a pretty girl like her should not be worrying about all those science stuff. A world full of new books. New things to learn. A world where people might have something else to ask from her apart from which boy she fancies and how many children she wants. Maybe even a world where men don’t say things like “you are already a lady!” with a weird gaze.

Or maybe a world full of violent space Vikings, but either way, it would still be more interesting than Oldhill. And at least she chose to be there.

Lucy touched the same rune button again. The hydraulic door slid close behind her as the ship, as if it wasn’t buried for half a millennia, leapt into the air and left the atmosphere of Earth with the brave little girl on board, flying towards new words and new things to see.