by Loki Renard
“You all sleep on this?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Together?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” I can’t begin to imagine how that works. Do they all snuggle up like a pile of puppies? I can’t see that. They don’t seem like the snuggling sort of men.
“It is easier to build one sleeping place than four,” he explains. “And it is harder for an animal to take one of us if we are together.”
That makes sense. My little bed in my little room in the city is better appointed and more comfortable, and I don’t have to worry about any long-toothed monsters roaring out of the shadows. I wish I was there.
“Will you take me back to the city, please?” I ask as nicely as possible. My lower lip trembles and my eyes fill with tears. Home. I need to be home. I wish I had listened to my mother. I could be safe and comfortable right now. I could be eating fried leftovers and watching something on the Citylink network. It’s about seven p.m. The news would be done by now, and the old comedies would be playing. The one about the friends who live in one of the old cities that doesn’t exist anymore. A documentary about a paleontologist who has an on again, off again relationship with a waitress. It is an excellent show that has withstood the test of time. I wonder if Ross and Rachel will ever be together. I wonder if I will ever see home again.
Hans crouches down in front of me, his deep brown eyes holding mine. He puts his hand over both my hands. “You belong to us now. It is the law of the wild. If you save a life, you own that life. You see Stryker and Maverick?”
“Yes…”
“Maverick found Stryker near death in a ravine. He had fallen in. Maverick saved him, and Stryker became one of us, just as you will be. Now he wears the marks of our clan, and he hunts with us to bring meat to the tribe.”
“There’s a tribe?”
“Many days’ walk from here. You will meet them when we return in a moon cycle’s time.”
I don’t want to meet the tribe. I want to go home to the city. That’s where my tribe lives.
While I sit there slumped with the misery of being in a strange and frightening place, he has reached under the bed platform where there are several sacks. They have very little, these men. My mother’s apartment is full of things. Every surface is covered in items with deep sentimental value. She refuses to throw anything away. Everything has memories, she says. Except my father’s things. She threw most all of them away after he disappeared.
While I muse, he has picked up a furry bag full of liquid. I can hear it sloshing around. He opens another bag and pulls out an earthenware pottery cup. He pours some of the liquid into it, then hands me the mug.
I take a sniff. It doesn’t smell bad at all. It smells sort of rich and very fermented, like sauerkraut if it weren’t made of cabbage.
“Stryker says that there isn’t any drink in the city, so be careful.”
“There’s plenty of drink in the city. We have water and fruit juices…”
“Strong drink,” Hans says, his voice rumbling with humor. “It dulls the senses and calms nerves. You are worried. This will help.”
I take a little sip. It has a tangy taste, rich and full. It is the most delicious thing I have ever tasted. I drink more deeply, greedily. He is right that I am thirsty. He reaches for the cup, but I pull back and drain it to the bottom.
Hans snorts and takes the cup from me. “You like it.”
“Yes. I’m still thirsty. May I have some more, please?”
“Later,” he says.
I can feel warmth trickling down my throat and into my stomach. That warmth spreads through my belly and into my limbs. It finds my mind and makes it lighter and clearer. A smile rises to my lips as I look at this handsome man standing before me. This is one of the savages my mother warned me about. He has not cut my throat, or ravaged me—whatever that may mean. She never bothered to explain further than that.
“This is just one room,” I say. “You sleep here, and you must cook out by the fire, but where is the bathroom?”
“We bathe in rivers.”
“But, uhm, where do you toilet?”
He points to a rusty old spade sitting by the door of the hut. “You take that, you dig a hole, you go.”
“Dig a hole?”
“At least a foot deep. Don’t go alone though. You do not know these woods well enough. You should take one of us with you when you need to go.”
I can’t help but cringe at the idea of taking one of these men and digging a hole to toilet in. It seems embarrassing and undignified, but what other option is there out here?
So much of what these men have is hewn from the natural world, but now he has shown me the spade, I begin to notice that they have a few implements of the old world. There used to be great roads that passed through these lands, houses and towns and many cities. As civilization receded, nature reclaimed the human domain. Now when we watch the footage of the world as it once was, I can barely believe it.
“What are you doing?” Ice steps into the hut. When his steel gaze meets mine, I lower my eyes instinctively. There is something about the man that frightens me. He is not safe. An air of cool menace rolls off him with every glance and word.
“Just giving her something to drink,” Hans says.
“Plying her with alcohol,” Ice laughs. “You don’t have to do that. She is ours already. We can take her as we please.”
I don’t like how he speaks about me. There’s something so possessive and arrogant about him and when he looks at me I don’t feel as though I am a person at all.
“I’m not yours,” I say. “I’m mine. You can’t own people.”
Ice’s eyes narrow at my challenge. He sets his jaw and I feel a thrill rush through me. He doesn’t like being defied, but I like to defy more than anything else in the world. I have never been obedient or easy. My mother has often despaired of it.
“You have no choice,” he says. “You can’t find your way back to the city now, and we won’t take you.”
“I could find my way back if I wanted.”
He makes my temper flare. The drink Hans gave me has loosened my inhibitions and now I am not so scared to tell this man with the silver eyes what I think of him and his ownership.
“I’m a free woman. From the city. I’m not a savage. You can’t just take me. I’ll go back when I want to!”
“Oh, will you? Let’s see how prepared you are for your great journey through the wilds.”
He reaches over my head and yanks the pack off my back. I shout for him to give it back, but he holds it high and opens it without my consent. How fucking dare he! He pulls each of the items out and throws them down on the bed. It doesn’t take long. He laughs at each and every item.
“Two sugar cakes and enough water to last perhaps a day. Do you know what would have happened if we had not crossed your path?”
“No,” I say, stubborn and angry.
“You would have perished painfully within the week if the bear had not taken you. You would have gotten hungry and tried to eat something poisonous and likely died vomiting the lining of your stomach up for birds to feast upon. The forest is a living thing. She does not take mercy on the unprepared.”
I recoil from him. He speaks with such vicious words. They frighten me. He frightens me.
“What is this?”
He pulls out Roger. Roger is a small stuffed rabbit. My father gave him to me before I left. He is only about five inches tall and his once white fur is yellowed from a lifetime of experience. One of his beady eyes is gone, but I sewed a thread eye in place so he could still see. I take him everywhere.
“Give that back to me, now!” There is anguish in my voice as I make the demand. So much so that Hans turns to Ice.
“Give her the toy.”
Ice smirks and returns Roger to me. “You are childish,” he declares with scorn. “You packed as if you were a cartoon character running away from home. This is the real world. And you are a woman, not a lit
tle girl.”
“I know I’m a woman,” I hiss. He has thoroughly aroused my temper now. I have never in my life hit anyone, but I would love to slap his mercilessly hard cheek right now. He has made me furious by insulting me to my face, making me feel simultaneously small and ashamed for being small.
“Leave her be, Ice,” Hans says. “She faced a bear alone today. If she wants her bunny, she can have it.”
Ice sneers. I cannot contain myself. My foot draws back and is in motion before I can stop it. I kick his ankle hard, though my rubber-soled shoe hardly packs much force. I know I can’t hurt a man like this, a warrior who faces bears. But I can show my displeasure in a physical way, and I can let him know I will not be bullied.
He rounds on me with a growl. A real growl, like an animal would make. Hans grabs me and hauls me behind his broad body.
“Leave her, Ice. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“She doesn’t know she just kicked me? Get out of my way. I will teach her what she needs to know.”
I try to step out to face him, but Hans’ strong arm keeps me back.
“You will teach me nothing! You will take me back to the city.”
“Oh, I will take you, girl. I will take you long and hard until you scream.”
I stare at him. What does he mean? His words make no sense to me, but they are delivered with a rough male growl that makes every hair on the back of my neck stand up, and causes a peculiar quiver to wriggle through my belly.
“Keep it quiet in there!” a voice booms from outside the hut.
Everybody falls silent and still in an instant. Maverick’s voice has a resonant quality of command that does not allow for disobedience. I fall back behind Hans. Ice looks away from me in disdain and Hans relaxes a little. The fight is over, for now, but both Ice and I cast little disdainful and angry glances at one another in the silence that follows.
I slip past Hans and look outside the hut to see what is happening. As the dusk begins to settle into darkness, Stryker is stitching Maverick’s wounds.
Maverick sits cross-legged, staring into the fire without reaction as time and time again the needle pushes through his flesh and the thread draws the edges of the wounds closed. Stryker’s fingers move with practiced alacrity, and his supplies come from a green case with a red cross upon it. There is nothing primitive about what Stryker is doing. These are the same techniques city doctors use to suture wounds.
“How does he know how to do that?” I whisper the question, afraid to distract them again.
“Stryker is a doctor,” Ice says.
I startle as he comes up behind me, his tall body looming over mine. I look to Hans for reassurance. He is on the other side, pouring himself a drink from the skin. He does not seem worried that Ice is now upon me.
“A doctor from the city out here?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“That is not my story to tell.”
I look up into his eyes and wonder what story is his to tell. Our conflict is not resolved, but he seems to have put it aside at Maverick’s loud request.
Again, my thoughts turn to home. If only one of them would escort me, I am sure my mother would give them a fine reward. Maybe that will tempt them to let me go.
“If you take me back, I will make sure you are paid.”
“With what?”
“We have money. My mother’s family is very rich.” I’m lying, but he can’t know that.
“Money,” Ice snorts. “And what would we do with money, bunny? Could we eat it?”
“You could use it to trade,” I say, my lip curling up in a mirror of his sneer. “You don’t have to live like animals.”
“We choose to live this way,” he growls.
“Well, that’s stupid.” I know it’s a rude thing to say, but he has taunted me as much as I have taunted him.
This time he does not reply with words. He responds with force. I don’t see his hand in motion, but I feel the impact of his large, hard palm against my ass, his fingers extended so he catches all of my left cheek and some of my right in a hard slap that lifts me onto my toes and sends me skittering away with a cry of pain.
Stryker turns his head toward me with a vicious look of annoyance.
“Quiet!” he insists.
“He hit me!”
“You will be hit a great deal more if you are not silent,” Maverick growls, not moving as Stryker’s needle is pushed through the ragged edges of his skin.
Ice looks at me triumphantly. My rear is stinging with the force of the slap and I am utterly horrified. He struck me! How could he? What kind of man does such a thing to a woman? And why are none of the others coming to my defense?
My mother was right. These savages are dangerous and cruel and I think they do have plans to harm me after all. I have to get away, take my chances with the bears…
“She’s going to bolt,” Hans says, seeing my darting eyes. “Grab her.”
He’s right. I am about to dash into the darkness, away from these cruel men who say they own me. I appreciate their help in rescuing me, but I do not belong to them.
Ice reaches out and catches me before my feet can move, grabbing me not by the arm, but by the back of the neck. His long fingers clamp either side of my spine, and he draws me inexorably backwards.
Feeling trapped, I start to panic. I lash out, my arms and legs flailing as I throw all caution to the wind and cry out at the top of my voice, begging to be let go. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with them. I want to be home. I scream all that and more as hot tears start to fall.
“Shut her up!” I hear Stryker growl in the background.
They can’t shut me up. If they want to take me as their captive, they’re going to have to listen to me scream, because I can’t take this. I don’t know how to be around one civilized man, let alone four savage brutes. I don’t understand this world of theirs. I am more frightened now than I was when the bear attacked.
I am whirled around. Something warm and hard presses against the length of my body. It is him. Ice. His arms are around me. Tight. It’s not a hug or a tender embrace, though it feels reminiscent of both. It’s a… I don’t even know how to describe it. He is holding me so securely that I can’t panic or fight or cry. I am squished and held and forcefully settled.
Ice keeps me there in that grasp, my face pressed against his hard chest. I can just barely breathe, but the calmer I get, the easier it becomes.
“Settle down,” he croons, his gravelly tones running through my body.
He is the one who angered me. He is the one who hit me. I don’t understand how he is also the one who is comforting me and making this better, but he is. I feel my muscles relaxing as he draws me back into the hut and lies down, pulling me down onto the skins with him.
I am lying with a man.
I stay utterly still, barely daring to breathe. He turns me around so that he is behind me, his arms around me. I stare at the wall of the hut, listening to the silence that suddenly descends in the wake of my chaos. Every muscle in my body is tense and stiff as he holds me without speaking, one arm under my head, the other over my waist, locking me against his hard body.
“She freezes just like a rabbit,” he rumbles against the back of my head, talking about me with Hans. I can see Hans hovering at the very corner of my peripheral vision. I wish it was him who had me. I would be safe with him. I am not safe with Ice.
“You’re frightening her,” Hans says, his easy tones making it possible for me to draw breath.
“She’s not frightened enough,” Ice says. “She kicked me.”
“Frightened animals lash out,” Hans says, as if he is reminding Ice of something.
“True,” Ice admits. His arms relax a fraction. “At least she has settled.”
I’m not settled. I’m scared. And something else. Something I don’t fully understand. I can feel tingles running through my body, concentrating low in my belly. Ice affects me in an i
ncredible, unprecedented way, and that scares me as much as his cold comments on the forest and the things that live in it. I am reacting to him in a way I’ve never reacted to any man before. There’s a warmth very low in my belly, a tingle between my thighs. I want… something. I want him. I just don’t know precisely what I want him to do.
Before I can work out what it is I need, Maverick rises from the fire. He has been sutured to suit Stryker’s satisfaction, neat stitches running in the tracks the bear made on his skin. He has been mended like a sexy quilt.
“Bring me the girl.”
Ice sits up, picks me up with him, and places me on my feet. I find myself standing beneath Maverick’s dominant gaze. He must be in terrible pain, but he is still not showing it.
He looks down at me with those eyes that are so much richer in hue than any I have seen before. His gaze is blue like the most beautiful lake. “Understand, Riley. You are ours now. There is no going back to the world you once knew. It is gone and there is no time for mourning.”
That makes no sense to me. The world is still there. I have only been gone a few hours. I am a citizen of the city. Of course I can go back to it. But he won’t let me.
I start to whimper. His merciless decision frightens me to my core. I don’t belong with these men. I am not one of them. I am a city girl with city needs. I am soft and I need to return.
“Hush,” he says, his voice low and resonant. “You must begin to learn our ways immediately. First of all, you must not gasp or scream. When you make those pathetic sounds you draw predators. There are many big cats that hunt monkeys. We are nothing but large apes to them and screeching draws their attention. We must move through the forest as silently as possible, speak in low tones. Do you understand?”
I nod and swallow, unable to find my voice. He is impressive. They all are, but after what I have seen him do and endure, he has my admiration and respect. I don’t think I can be like him though. I don’t have the strength. I am not brave enough. I need my comforts, my soft bedding, walls that protect me from the outside world and give me space to imagine all the things outside the realm of my small rooms. The forest fills my senses, anchors me in this very immediate, brutal reality. There is no room for dreams or fantasies here.
