Seablood

by Cameron Bolling

  “I see,” said Oleja.

  “But you are safe here,” said Maloia quickly. “Most don’t end up in street brawls unless they partake in them willingly. Bad luck landed you in the midst of one, that’s all.”

  Oleja drove a nail through the body of her prosthetic. It sunk into the wood easily; hollow space made up the innermost part, a design that kept the weight of the thing in mind.

  “I’ve had closer calls with angry mobs,” she said without looking up. “I’m fine.”

  “Too close in my book.”

  “I’m fine,” said Oleja, driving another nail into the wood. Small cracks creased the wood around the nail’s head. Tor’s ears perked up, though he did not open his eyes nor move from where he lay curled up on his bed in the corner. “I got out unscathed. I can fight. I can walk. I was just surprised, that’s all.”

  Maloia paused, eyeing Oleja. Oleja didn’t turn to meet her gaze. She tried to force away the heat rising into her face.

  “Right, I know that.”

  Oleja kept working, finishing up her reinforcements to the body of her prosthetic and to her crutch and then moving on to repair the ankle joint. Maloia sat in silence and watched.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said after a while.

  “All right.”

  “I know it’s a subject you’ve avoided over the past few weeks, but… what happened, exactly, before you got here? With your leg, I mean.”

  Oleja chewed at her lip. It was true that over the weeks she had avoided the specifics. She told Maloia that she’d had an accident in the desert—a fall into a crevice, which was not exactly incorrect—but Maloia was right to guess that Oleja left out more of the tale than she gave.

  As that same partial truth pried open her lips, her thoughts snapped back to that crevice in the hills—to how much she had lost there. It was more than just her leg.

  The words that bubbled up were not the ones she anticipated.

  “I suppose it goes back to some ruins out in the desert somewhere—or maybe even further back, perhaps. I met a party of raiders and traveled with them for a bit. I never intended to stay with them long, but I suppose they planned for my stay to be even shorter. I…” she paused. “I was hunted by an ec—. By an earthborn. And the leader of the raider party sold me out to him for her own benefit. I fought him and fled the ruins on my own, but the desert is—”

  “Harsh,” interrupted Maloia. “I’ve seen it firsthand only once. That was plenty for me.”

  Oleja shrugged. “I will see it at least once more. After that, I have no desire to return again. But yes, the trek was difficult, and I did not carry enough supplies since I left in haste. The first injury I sustained came in the form of a snake bite—a mutant rattler that sprung on me from beneath the sands.”

  “We did find traces of the venom in your system after your arrival,” said Maloia, nodding. “But even a snake’s fangs cannot snap a bone in two. And you did not get so lucky to have yours in so few pieces.”

  “No, the snake only sapped my strength—that and the heat. But before I joined the raiders…” Oleja took a steadying breath. She had not spoken of Pahlo since his death. “I traveled with one other. And after my flight from the ruins, he tailed me, though he did not catch up with me for a few days. He and I traveled together again for a short while until we reached a crevice. While attempting to cross…”

  “You fell.”

  “Not exactly.” The memory pulled against Oleja—clamping down on her throat and gripping her stomach, trying to drag her down to the floor. “The ledge collapsed, and I nearly fell. My… my friend saved me, barely, but it cost him his life. I paid a smaller price.”

  Tears blurred her vision, and the lump in her throat manifested itself as a sob, struggling to force its way out, but she blinked away the tears and pushed the sob back down. Why had she said all of that? What good would it do to have Maloia know of her failures?

  Because Pahlo would have wanted her to say it. All of it. Just like he wanted her to seek out help to save their people. And because if she didn’t tell his story, who would?

  “Oh, Oleja, I’m so sorry,” said Maloia, placing a hand on Oleja’s back. Oleja stiffened under her touch. She didn’t want sympathy.

  But something else tugged at her mind, something that kept her from shoving off Maloia’s hand and sending her away so she could continue her tinkering alone in peace. She felt some comfort in knowing that Maloia knew what happened—she felt understood, in a way, and it eased the burden she’d borne for the past several weeks. After a moment, she released the tension in her muscles and let her body slump against Maloia’s.

  “You are very lucky to be here. Alive,” said Maloia after a moment.

  “Luck may have played a part,” said Oleja. “But fate drew me here too. There are things I have to see to, and the city can help, especially as I perfect my prosthetic and practice on the new device.”

  “Fate, huh?”

  Oleja nodded. “I am sure of it.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  Oleja cast a sideways glance at the woman. She didn’t look at Oleja with doubt or mockery on her face, but curiosity.

  “In my village I am what is known as ‘skyborn.’ Some people think there’s something special about skyborn children. Recently, I learned the truth of their origin, and though it isn’t as glamorous as many hoped, I still feel that I am meant to do something great. Just because being skyborn isn’t always the badge of a hero, doesn’t mean I can’t turn it into one for myself. I get to decide who I am, and I decided long ago, before I left my village, that I was a hero. I think being skyborn—hero by blood or otherwise—and fate have played some role in getting me here.”

  Maloia’s face danced through a dozen expressions of contemplation as she seemed to consider the words. For a brief moment, Oleja regretted telling Maloia about her skyborn heritage at all, and about how she regarded the title now, after weeks to dwell on it with the revelations Pahlo brought to light. But then Maloia spoke.

  “I think it’s an important distinction you make—that being ‘skyborn,’ as you say, is something that makes you great based on how you define it through your own actions, rather than something inherent. It’s not the circumstances surrounding someone’s birth that define them, it’s what they do.”

  Oleja listened as Maloia spoke but kept her attention on her work. The woman’s words made some sense, despite being hard to focus on. But whatever personal philosophy Maloia tried to impart, Oleja thought it best to simply nod. She knew what path fate had laid out before her.

  “But anyway, I think you can become the hero of your village. Your village in the west.”

  Oleja paused and furrowed her brow. She turned to Maloia. “My village is to the east.”

  Maloia only looked back with an amused grin.

  “What? What is so funny?”

  “I am only teasing. I know your village is in the east—or I assumed.”

  “Then why did you say west?”

  “Because you said west. When you first arrived. You woke up from your fit of unconsciousness and I asked if you were from the south. You said you were from the west. But then later on when we discussed your story in more depth you spoke of traveling through the desert, which lies east of here.”

  “I was disoriented when I awoke. I meant east.”

  “I know. And that’s why I tease.”

  “It’s not a good joke.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  With a quick push of her thumb, Oleja snapped the repaired ankle joint of her prosthetic back into place. She tested it in her hands—functional, though not particularly pretty. It should hold until she could go through the work of crafting a new one, more durable this time and with any other improvements she thought up before then.

  After flexing her knee a few more times, she put on two fresh socks over the stump of her leg and then pulled on the prosthetic. She laced it to her thigh with the leather straps and then stood,
carefully, testing to make sure it held her weight. The wood groaned quietly but did not break. Given that breaking was the—albeit low—bar for success, she considered her work done for the moment and then took up her crutches, one of which now bore a shining strip of metal that held it together.

  “Heading out for a walk again so soon?” asked Maloia from where she sat on the end of the bed. “You really should stay off your leg. It’s not healed, and you will only damage it more if you push it.”

  Oleja nodded but waved her off. “I need the practice on my prosthetic.” After a quick smile and wave farewell, she and Tor left the room.

  She did need the practice, that much was true, but she had other things on her mind as well—things she didn’t bother to tell Maloia in order to keep her from worrying. The position of the sun in the sky confirmed what Oleja already knew.

  She had a meeting to get to.

  Chapter Three

  Tor bounded ahead of her along the narrow gravel path, often disappearing around the next bend but always racing back a moment later, tongue lolling, his body a streak of brown and grey. Bulkier than a normal coyote, he’d been bred for one purpose—run, as fast as possible, while towing behind him as much additional weight as he could manage. And of all the things he did best, running certainly earned a high rank on the list.

  Oleja’s repairs to her prosthetic held nicely—no replacement for a proper fix using new pieces, but sufficient enough to keep her mobile. She took walks daily, often more than once. Long treks waited ahead of her, including the return journey back to her people—a journey that promised not a rest at the end, but rather a battle, greater than any other she had ever been in. The faster she could get herself back to moving at her regular pace, the better.

  And her walks alone, without Maloia, were the best times to work on that improvement. Alone with only Tor by her side, she didn’t have to keep pace with anyone else; she could speed up or slow down as she wished rather than as a necessity to avoid being left behind, or because Maloia warned her to slow to avoid hurting herself. No one was there to fuss over her.

  Cautiously, she lifted her crutches from the ground as she kept walking. One wobbly step after another passed below her. It was not until she had taken a dozen or more that she began to lose her balance, but she used the crutches to catch herself and continued on. She never pulled stunts like that when Maloia walked with her, but alone she felt free to experiment with her new limb as she wished. Soon, she’d be as nimble on it as she had been with her leg—if not more so, once she figured out ways to improve it even beyond her natural capabilities. And that she was determined to do. Because she had a battle to win, and she wouldn’t win it by tripping into the enemy and knocking them down.

  There was no other option.

  As Oleja reached another bend in the path, she turned away from it, facing instead to the steep grassy slope that made up the left side of the walkway, contrasted by the steep descent on the right. After adjusting her prosthetic and the crutch bracers on her forearms, then giving a quick beckoning call to Tor, she started up the slope.

  Inclines made walking even harder than it already proved to be. She progressed slowly, but she progressed nonetheless, and knowing that she did not have far to go spurred her on. Tor leapt gracefully up the steep hill, pausing at intervals to watch over his shoulder as Oleja caught up. He never moved more than a few paces away from her, seemingly ready to help should the need arise, though Oleja did not know what the coyote planned to do in the event that she lost her footing and ended up tumbling down the mountain, down into the valley and city far below. She hoped she’d never have to find out.

  Soon enough, the ground underfoot leveled off, and she stood on a small expanse of grass between the hill and a tall silver cliff face before her. Wind blew through her hair in bursts, tugging at the black braid she kept neater these days than she had in the past, but which still seemed determined to unwind itself at any opportunity. Stray strands of hair clung to her face, stuck there by the gusts.

  Around her, a few pines broke up the landscape. Two trunks off to her right held her attention as she made her way towards them—a landmark familiar to her after many days encountering them on similar such walks. One of the trees leaned heavily on the second, perhaps blown over by the wind or struck by something immense and strong, like a boulder tumbling from the peaks above. The branches of the two trees intertwined as if the straight one caught the other as it fell. Between the two, down low to the ground where the cliff met with the grass, descended a dark hollow.

  Tor went ahead of her and disappeared inside, but Oleja followed not far behind. She stepped into the darkness.

  Stone walls surrounded her, making quick returns on any sound she made. The feeling came with all too much familiarity—a sense of anxiety, a sense of hunger, a sense of fear—but also a sense of safety, strange as it was.

  In all her time living at the bottom of the canyon, she had never once considered herself “safe.” Quite the opposite, in fact—danger seemed to be ever-present, manifesting in the form of the unseen eclipsers and their unspoken threats of murder or starvation. Safety seemed about as elusive as a full belly.

  But then she stepped outside. The very environment around her seemed set on turning her into a pile of stark-white bones jutting up like monuments from the sand. Every spike in the temperature, every dangerous stretch of terrain, and every mutated thing came at her like another jab from an opponent’s blade, and she realized just how safe the canyon was, if only in that the dangers were consistent. Out in the wilds, she never knew what waited for her over the next hill. And she was alone.

  That wasn’t exactly true, of course. She had traveled with the raiders for a while, and Pahlo too, both before and after. But for the time between leaving the raiders and when Pahlo caught up with her, and then again after—well, after she set out on her own again—that’s when things went downhill. Fast. When people back in her village got bitten by a rattlesnake, the rest of the village was always there to help them, and usually that help meant the difference between life and death. Oleja got lucky—the snake that bit her carried no deadly venom, but if it had, she would exist now only in the stomachs of half a dozen vultures. Traveling through the desert with the raiders or even just with Pahlo was the same way—having someone else around kept her alive, kept her healthy. People looked out for her, and in exchange she looked out for them.

  She had a community, and it kept her alive. And when she spurned it, she struggled. It was the lesson Pahlo had tried to teach her, and the lesson she tried to keep close to her heart even now. And that was exactly what brought her to the cave.

  A fire burned up ahead, casting warm light across the damp grey walls of the hollow. The cave did not go particularly deep, just far enough to shroud the far end in darkness. A boy sat there, firelight illuminating his features.

  He was a boy only slightly older than her—twenty, as she’d learned. He matched her in height, though he was larger otherwise—fat, as Maloia said. He wore a dark pair of shorts and a white tank top smeared with grease and dirt which left his muscled arms exposed. Short black hair stuck out at odd angles atop his head. A few hairs clung to his chin as well, though not enough to call a beard by any standard. Sweat glistened on his skin—pale, though not as colorless as many others thanks to a golden undertone, and with features that reminded her of Onet. He turned at the sound of Tor and Oleja’s approach.

  “Oleja—hi!” he said, flashing her a toothy grin. Oleja ducked into the wider, room-like section of the cave and sat down across the fire from the boy. She leaned her crutches against the wall behind her.

  “Morning, Wil,” she said. Tor came over and lay down at her side. She scratched behind his ears.

  “The others are on their way, I just headed up early to get a fire started.” He gestured to the small pile of sticks that comprised the low-burning fire between them—big enough to cast the space in light, but not so large that it filled the cave with smoke.
The little smoke it did create made its way easily out the entrance to be whisked away by the wind.

  Oleja nodded. “Find anything interesting today?”

  Wil reached behind him and grabbed a small burlap pouch in one fist. He tossed it over to Oleja. It clattered on the hard ground, the contents announcing themselves without Oleja even having to look.

  “See for yourself.”

  Oleja found the pouch filled with small components perfect for tinkering, as expected. Most interesting among them was an odd ball-jointed piece with minimal rust. She tied up the pouch and tucked it next to her—a comfort, having pieces to tinker with on hand again, as she couldn’t carry her bag around with her just yet despite how much it pained her to part with it. But she knew to expect such gifts from Wil.

  Her first time meeting Wil Geizou had been orchestrated by Maloia. After Oleja’s arrival in Ahwan, she asked Maloia constantly for tinkering components. She had the things in her bag, of course, but she needed more—especially for her prosthetic, which demanded larger pieces of wood. Maloia, unsure of exactly how to handle this situation from her new charge, spoke to Wil, who worked as a junker down in the city. Wil brought Oleja what she needed, and since her requests for pieces came daily, he became a regular visitor to her room, always toting with him a selection of components.

  Wil, she learned, was a craftsman himself, though he tended to work on larger projects. When she needed a piece, Wil knew exactly what to get. They formed a friendship over the weeks, and in him Oleja learned to place her trust. He never failed to get her exactly the pieces she needed, no matter how obscure or tricky to describe, which perhaps made it easier, but she worked hard regardless. Her instincts pressured her to close herself off—to get out of bed and get the things for herself. But such a task loomed large, a daunting one for sure. Pahlo’s words in her mind fought against these urges. You do it with help, he had said. And she kept those words in her head, both for his sake and for her own. And then one day it spurred her to begin something new.