I watched her walk off, conflicting emotions growing in me like weeds in a garden like a monster’s tentacles wiggling from the ground and wrapping around me. I’d caught enough of Aoife’s looks to know it wasn’t a good idea for me to spend so much time with Seanna. The last thing I needed to do was form some kind of attachment. I was afraid I’d already had, to be truthful. What was the harm in a little crush, anyways? People developed them all the time, like catching a cold. They felt it coming on and then—bam, it was there! Slowly, it goes away, though. I was sure that would be how things went down with whatever I was feeling for Seanna. We’d see this Daresh dude, then she would take us back to the gate. That would be that. A list of reasons for me to not nurture this crush started building in my head.
1. We came from different worlds. Talk about long-distance relationships.
2. Although she looked human at the moment, she definitely was not. I made it a point to not think about what she looked like in her true form, but there was no denying it.
3. Speaking of that, I had no clue how old she really was. Sure, she looked like a teen, but from talking to her about her people, I got the feeling she was older. How long did Ashlings live?
4. The biggie. She was engaged. Crush killer.
“Heads up, boy.”
I turned to see a stick flying at my face. Instinctively I raised a hand to protect myself and accidentally pushed out with my telekinesis. The stick flipped into the grass beyond our little clearing.
Minotaur watched the stick fly away. Funny thing. Turned out, the stick was one of the two combat sticks he kept strapped to his back in an X. “You were supposed to avoid it,” he commented.
I thought that was what I did. “Sorry, I’ll go get it.”
“Good idea,” he growled.
I stomped off into the grass where the stick had disappeared, grumbling the whole time. Why in the world was he swinging a stick at me? I should have thought he was attacking, but I figured if he wanted to kill me, it would have been the massive ax he swung at my head. There wouldn’t have been the warning either.
It took me a few minutes to find the stick in the thick grass. Calling it a stick was a lot like calling a Pegasus a horse, but I didn’t have any idea what to call it. The weapon was about two feet long, smooth except for grooved handholds, and had surprising heft to it. I made my way back toward Minotaur. Pegasus a horse? Really? Where did that come from? I was spending way too much time with Aoife.
I held the stick out to Minotaur, but he shook his massive head. “Keep it.”
“Why?”
I guess I shouldn’t have asked. His answer came in the form of a snake-like strike with the second stick. It smacked across my right bicep. The muscles in my arm spasmed and I dropped the stick I held, crying out in pain and grabbing my arm.
“What was that for?” I demanded.
“After your encounter with the balataur this morning, I figure you are in need of learning to protect yourself.” He held his stick in front of him.
“This should be entertaining,” Aoife commented.
I cast a glare at her before turning back to Minotaur. “I really don’t think that’s necess—OW!” I bit back a curse as he swatted his weapon at my left arm. Twin pain shot up that one. I glared at Aoife as she tried unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh. “Why don’t you come do this?”
“I would suggest you pick up your weapon, boy,” Minotaur said.
I ground my teeth and bent over to grab the dropped stick. I stood up straight in time to see Minotaur taking another swipe at me. I cried out in surprise, stumbling backward. I landed on my backside, flattening a chunk of grass. It wasn’t a graceful maneuver, but at least I had avoided another stinging blow from his stick.
I didn’t have time to congratulate myself before he was bearing down on me again. His stick struck out again and I managed to raise mine in time to block the blow. A clack of wood on wood rang out over the field as vibrations shot painfully up my arm.
“Hey, take it easy,” I gasped.
“Do you think the balataurs will go easy on you, boy?”
Why did everyone on the whole stinking planet have to call me that? I had had just about enough of that nickname. I raised my hand between us, palm facing toward him and pushed. Calling on my power came easier that time. I didn’t push hard, just enough to get him off balance, but it was enough to nearly lift him off his feet…er, hooves. He stumbled back a few steps, enough for me to scramble to my hooves…er, feet.
By the time I was up, Minotaur was on me again, swinging his stick in a long arch. I brought mine up to block it, nearly losing my hold on it from the impact, but I somehow managed to deflect the blow. I let myself smile. That was probably a mistake.
“Why do you smile?” he asked.
“I think I did pretty good just now,” I said.
“Do you?” he asked, a nasty sneer spreading along his snout.
Yeah, a mistake for sure. His stick snaked out, catching me on the left elbow. Before I could even get out an ouch, he reversed his swing and clipped my right side.
“I exaggerated my swings so you would see it coming, but since you’re so good already, maybe I shouldn’t hold back, yes?” he growled, landing blow after blow as he spoke.
“Hey…” Aoife began, concern in her voice.
“Don’t worry yourself, girl,” he said. “I’m holding back on him. The worse he will have are a few bruises. Better than dead.”
Thwap. Right on my hip. I ground my teeth as I felt my eyes watering from the stinging pain that was quickly spreading over my entire body. Aoife stood and Minotaur glanced her way, giving me an opening. I lifted my left hand and pushed on his right, which held his weapon, swinging it away, clearing the way for a strike. I swung my stick as hard as I could.
“Don’t call me boy again, you cow!”
I have to admit I got a great deal of pleasure from the thump my stick caused on his chest. He had landed dozens on me, after all. My delight was short lived. He turned back to me and then looked down at his chest, the muscles twitching underneath his fur. He snatched my stick from my hand with lightning quick speed and dropped it, grasping my neck, lifting me off feet and shoving his own stick in my face. He stared at me with his black eyes. They were dark pools of rage.
“Minotaur?” Aoife breathed.
He snorted, blowing hot breath in my face. “Nice work using your powers, but you must learn that there are things on this world that you cannot overpower with sheer force of will. Fight smarter, not harder.”
He let go of my neck and I somehow managed to not fall to the ground. I lifted a hand to my throat.
He bent to retrieve the second stick but hesitated before he did. “And if you call me a cow again, I will rip off your arm and beat you with it.”
The childhood taunt, quit hitting yourself, quit hitting yourself, ran through my head.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, gingerly probing a particularly tender spot on my right side with a finger. I lifted my shirt to reveal several angry, red welts forming on my skin.
“Ouch,” Aoife breathed. “Gaige.”
Minotaur rolled his eyes in my direction. “I might have been a little overly enthusiastic in my strikes,” he commented.
“You think?” Aoife asked, bending to take a closer look. I tried not to flinch as she ran a soft finger down the bump growing on my side.
“He should thank me,” he grunted.
“What?” I blurted out.
“As I have observed in humans, wounds are highly attractive to those of the opposite sex,” he said, slipping the two sticks into the straps on his back.
Aoife jerked her hand back and stood up straight. She turned away, but not quick enough that I didn’t catch a hint of blush creeping up her cheeks.
I chuckled and let my shirt fall back in place. “I’ve gotten worse playing football.” That’s right, I was a manly man. Even though I felt like crying like a four-year-old who just fell down and skinned his knee. I fle
xed my right hand, trying to work the stinging sensations out of my arm as I found a spot to plop down on the ground. I looked up at Minotaur, who was adjusting the ax that hung at his left hip and the large knife at his right. “One thing I’ve been wondering, Minotaur. Where did the balataur come from? I mean, they’re like you, but all the ones I have encountered are taller and bigger. Are they like distant cousins or something?”
His large fingers worked on the hilt of his ax. I got the feeling that I had said something wrong. Again.
“We are not related. If you suggest such a thing again, I’ll twist your head around so you can watch me kick your hind quarters into a bloody mess.”
Yup, I’d said something wrong.
“Where did they come from if you’re not related?” Aoife asked since I didn’t have any intention of pursuing the subject further.
“The balataur are native to Alisundi,” he answered.
“So where does your kind come from?” I asked. “I mean, if you are not related to the balataur, how did your Minotaur Father have children? Are you really him?”
Aoife made a noise in the back of her throat. “Really, Gaige? We’ve been through this.”
“Well, just making sure.”
“He has a point,” Minotaur said. He hesitated a moment before continuing. The muscles in his face twitched as he spoke. “Truth is, we are distantly related to the balataur. Very distantly related,” he added with a look at me. “It is not something we minotaur care to admit. Before Minotaur Father came here, there were two species of balataur. The large beasts that you have encountered, and a smaller version who were either outcast because of their size or enslaved. They are the ones who took Minotaur Father in. Not all of my people can trace their ancestry back to him, but I can, which is why I am allowed to be known as Minotaur to those outside my family.”
Just then, Seanna pushed her way into the little clearing we had made in the grass carrying a double handful of vegetation. She deposited her load between Aoife and me. “Animals out on these plains are scarce this time of year, so the best I could do is this.”
The food looked like a pile of the grass we’d been walking through the past few days. I picked one out. It looked like a thick stalk of wheat. I took a bite of the nearly tasteless, dry plant and contemplated the dried meat in my pocket. I couldn’t bring myself to pull it out, though.
“What’s wrong?” Seanna asked.
“What?” I said around a mouthful of twig.
“You winced,” she said.
“Oh,” I replied. “Minotaur was showing me how to defend myself.”
Her eyes narrowed as she reached over to lift my right sleeve. She turned her glare toward Minotaur. “Was that really necessary?”
“He did admirably,” he grunted. “He even managed to land a strike on me.”
“And how many of these did you cause?” she asked.
A massive, hairy shoulder rose, then fell.
Without asking, Seanna lifted my shirt, looking for all the bruises. I winced as she did; even the slightest movement caused them to sting.
“There’s no way you’ll sleep with all these. Really, you let him do this to you?”
I shrugged, which caused pain. “I didn’t have much choice.”
I flinched again as she lay the palm of her hand on the nastiest bruise on my side. Purple light flared from her other hand and the pain quickly faded into a tingle. When she removed her hand, the bump was gone, leaving just red skin behind, which was quickly returning to its normal hue.
“That didn’t hurt,” I commented. “Not like last time.”
“Healing bumps and bruises is a lot easier than cuts and slashes,” she said as she moved to a different spot.
“Those little bumps seem a waste of magic,” Minotaur commented.
“The magic is mine to do with as I wish,” Seanna said. Her voice was cold and clipped.
From what she had told me about magic, I was inclined to agree with the big beast. The football comment had equal parts truth and bravado. There had been games when I could barely work up the range of motion to get my pads off, but that was a general, all-encompassing soreness. Minotaur’s blows were stinging pain that bit deep under the skin. I glanced at Aoife who was watching Seanna work. She turned away, when she noticed me looking.
***
I stood, watching the massive storm roll by miles off toward the horizon. When I say massive, that’s just the product of not having a better word to describe the maelstrom that pounded the plains. The dark clouds rolled and twitched like pure blackness put on a stove to boil. A roar of thunder rolled across the land toward us as Seanna stepped beside me.
“We are lucky it passes us by,” she said.
I wholeheartedly agreed. I loved to watch the storms that blew down from the Rocky Mountains back home, but the spectacle I stared at looked like hell itself had opened up and belched out its evil to devastate Alisundi. Okay, maybe I was being a little melodramatic, but not by much. It was a truly frightening sight to behold.
“That rain is coming down hard enough to drown a person,” I said.
“It is not the rain that should worry you about these storms.” She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself as if just viewing the storm had leaked a bit of death into her.
“It does look pretty wicked.”
“It’s not what you can see that you should be afraid of,” she said with a shake of her head.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
More thunder rolled. It reminded me of a cheap movie that used thunder at the right moment for dramatic effect.
“It’s said there are things that come out in those storms.” She released a long breath. “Storm Walkers.”
“What are they?” I squinted as if I peered at the blackness long enough, I’d be able to see shapes in it.
“Nobody is sure.”
“Nobody’s seen them?”
“None who are capable of giving an accurate description,” she said. “Not everyone caught in those storms comes across the Storm Walkers, but those who do…” Her voice trailed off.
“What about them?” I prompted.
“They change.”
I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. “Change how?”
She shrugged. “Internally. They are not the same people as before their encounter. They come out as something lesser. Primitive. Primeval.”
I thought of a time Brian and I got caught out in a storm a few years back. We were out wandering the golf course, ignoring all signs of the coming storm. When it hit, we ran to a small shed on the eleventh hole. We huddled under a small eaves while rain poured down. It didn’t provide much protection and we ended up soaked down to the marrow in our bones by the time it let up a good thirty minutes later. It was cold and miserable, but it was just a rain shower with a few thunderclaps thrown in for good measure. Nothing like what I stared at in the distance. Everything on this world seemed like it could kill you or do irreparable damage.
I glanced at Seanna, her delicate brow knitted in concern. Just a few more days and I’d leave this world. Could I leave her behind for good? That was what I wanted to do. I didn’t want anything else to do with this world, Gatekeeper or not. I wondered if I could just give away being a Gatekeeper. Step down. I didn’t want to be one. I never asked to be one. Seanna had offered me the chance to do something meaningful. I was doing it. I would get the help Mom needed and close the gate behind me. Lock it. Throw away the key if I could. Help Mom. Save Earth. Done and done.
Seanna shuffled a little closer. “It is beautiful,” she said, “in a way.”
“In a terrifying way,” I said. “I’ll be glad when it passes and we can get to Daresh. Then you can take Aoife and me home.”
She looked up at me. Her lips parted like she was going to say something, but she didn’t. She reached out a hand to curve her thin fingers around my forearm.
“I’ll get you home no matter the cost,” she finally said.
&n
bsp; 28
Into Delicia
Delicia rose slowly from the plain like an ant colony’s mound from the earth. On the flat terrain, it appeared as a bump miles away. Seanna and Minotaur spotted it first. It took another hour or so of walking before Aoife saw it and I pretended to see it for another half hour after that. Once I did spot it, watching it rise out of the ground was mesmerizing. Approaching the city on foot gave a true feeling of just how big it was. Like a living thing, it kept stretching itself out from the ground both horizontally and vertically.
Minotaur became more agitated the closer we came to the city. His large hand never strayed from the ax handle that hung at his hip. His lip pulled back from his snout, revealing large, square, yellowed teeth. The muscles under his fur-covered skin twitched like those of an antsy horse. When I was nine, my parents took me to a ranch in Colorado Springs to go horseback riding. As we prepared the saddles to go, I noticed my assigned horse twitching and asked our guide about it. She told me that happened when the horses were nervous, excited, or anxious. Our horses were excited to be on their way. I wondered which emotion Minotaur felt. I wasn’t about to ask him a question comparing him to a horse.
He saw me watch his fingers flex on the wooden handle and correctly guessed my thoughts. “Much has changed since Minotaur Father,” he said. “The following human generations increasingly forgot Minotaur Father saved their forefathers’ lives. In fact, they became bitter, cut off from a world they never knew, a world they felt they had lost before they were even born.”
“And they blame the minotaurs for cutting them off?” Aoife came up behind us.
Minotaur nodded his massive head once.
“Humans have large egos,” Seanna said. “No offense,” she added as an afterthought, but sounded like she couldn’t have cared if we did take offense or not. “They have continued to multiple, but still remain a minority on Alisundi. They have only been able to establish a few major cities. My people teach of their greed and sense of superiority and how they wish to control more of this world, but it’s something they can never accomplish. They squabble among themselves too much. Much like the humans on Earth, they have great technological minds. They’ve developed some things independently from their cousins on Earth. If they could put their own petty differences aside…” She fell silent with a shake of her head, her golden hair swaying back and forth.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy Page 26
