by Ivy Cross
Pretty sure.
And at least she does communicate with me. Atrae, on the other hand, hasn’t spared me a glance or a single word since we climbed out of that underground tunnel system. He seems to be actively trying not to look at me.
I’m not going to take offense, though. These guys may prefer their women tall and furry for all I know. And I’ve got bigger issues to deal with anyhow… like figuring out how to stop my lungs from exploding while I keep up.
“Hey, you guys wouldn’t have some water tucked away betwixt your leathers somewhere, would you? I feel like my tongue is about to crack and fall out of my mouth.”
“There is a stream not too far from here,” Mayna says without breaking stride. “Earn your drink by keeping pace.”
“Oh, I’m just dawdling so I don’t show you up in front of the boss man up there,” I say. “You can thank me for that later.”
She actually laughs. “You could certainly best me in a contest of boasts, little one.”
The terrain evens out and while I still have to powerwalk to keep up, I don’t feel like I’m going to throw up from the effort. This is probably the first time since Lisic shot us down to this planet that I haven’t felt like I am under immediate threat of bodily harm or death.
It gives me a chance to look around. I mean, really take the place in. And the beauty around me is a little overwhelming. Everything is pristine. From the rapidly darkening orange-colored sky to the sea of thick, undulating green moss that covers the ground, it’s like a paradise of nature—something perfect that has never been touched by the oil-belching machines of man.
I let it all wash over me as we approach the softly babbling sound of the promised stream. Considering the fact that a few hours ago I was trapped inside a dark, smelly spaceship on my way to who knows what kind of a hellish future, this isn’t such a bad result.
The ever-present optimist screaming inside me might even say this is a step up from my life back on Earth. Sure, everything and everyone I ever knew was back there—and there’s a fat chance I’ll get my favorite General Tso’s chicken takeout anywhere on this planet—but I wasn’t exactly living life to the fullest potential or anything close to that. And all my lofty hopes and dreams seemed to fade into the gray of good enough somewhere in my early twenties.
Atrae stops by the banks of the little stream and folds his arms. Without even glancing back, he trudges slowly away, leaving us to drink alone.
“Is he alright,” I ask Mayna, dropping to my knees next to the crystal-clear waters. I cup my hands and pull the icy liquid to my mouth, letting the excess run down my cheeks unchecked. It tastes faintly of some kind of earthy mineral, but my god is it quenching.
“He… he is fine.”
“So, you have no fucking idea.” I wipe the cold water from my chin.
Mayna’s eyes flash at me for a moment but then she cools just as quickly.
“You have the right of it,” she says after a pause. “I suppose it is my failure that vexes him… but it seems more. Or it is worse than I thought.”
“If you ask me, it’s you that should be skulking off and pouting,” I say. “I saw him standing there just watching as that thing—”
“Valat.”
“That fucking thing beat the shit out of you. He should have stepped in sooner.”
Mayna turns to look downstream where Atrae stands staring off into the distance.
She shakes her head somberly. “No. He should never have stepped in at all. It was my fight to win, and my fight to lose.”
I follow her gaze downstream to where Atrae stands in stony silence. “If you say so… Where I come from people don’t just stand there when you’re getting beat to death. At least, the good ones don’t.”
“Then your people are weak.” Mayna turns and strides back from the stream without another word.
Well, fuck you very much, too…
I take another swig from the cool stream waters and then stand to languish in the middle space created by the awkward distance between Atrae and Mayna.
Before we left the Valat tunnels, while Mayna and Atrae stacked the dead and left some kind of artistic calling card carved into the dirt floor, I begged them to help me find Talia. I even hit with their own logic—they would get to kill more Valat and have another prize human to take back to their village.
Win-win, right? I figure Tal would rather be with these guys than the gruesome twosome I last saw her with. I know I see it as a good tradeoff. I mean, at least the Calji don’t seem interested in eating me… or worse.
But then Mayna hit me with a logic bomb of her own: if Talia was taken by the Valat, why wasn’t she in the warren where they found me?
That’s a pretty big mystery, especially when you pair it with the fact that the two Valat I last saw her with weren’t among the ones Atrae and Mayna killed…
And not that they really gave me much of a choice, but I figured going back to the Calji village wouldn’t be such a bad place to start. Maybe one of their people found Tal or some of the other humans and, if not, I hope I can convince them to help me go find them.
It’s half a plan, at least.
Atrae shoots Mayna a look and she in turn gestures for me to follow. I guess break time is over.
I fall in behind Mayna, and we continue on the path set by Atrae. He has picked up his pace and leads at a fair distance… almost like he doesn’t want to be near us.
Or me.
“Did I do something to tick him off?” I ask Mayna as we pick our way through some knee-high vines. “You said he was upset about what happened with you two or whatever, but it sure seems like he’s going out of his way to ignore me. I know I look a bit different from you guys, but I don’t think I’m that hideous.”
Mayna glides effortlessly through the vines, slipping her slender muscular legs over them without even bothering to look down. She waits for me to painstakingly lurch my way to the other side before answering.
“You are odd-looking,” she says. “Tiny and soft… with so many useless curves.”
Well, I guess I set her up for that.
“But I do not think Atrae is so appalled by your deformities as to not be able to look upon you.”
“Uh, okay, great… thanks.” I can’t tell if she’s busting my balls or being serious.
“It simply would not be appropriate,” she continues.
“What is that supposed to mean? Why wouldn’t it be appropriate?”
“Atrae is our leader’s first guard, and you are a prize for Jaha. Just as it is disrespectful for one warrior to look upon the mate of another, so too is it disrespectful to look upon his… plaything.”
Chapter 4 – Atrae
“Can she not walk?” I spit my words at Mayna, then instantly regret my tone. She has done nothing wrong to warrant my ire.
“Uh, she can walk perfectly fine when she can see where she is fucking going,” says the lilting voice of the tiny female before Mayna has a chance to respond. At the edge of my vision, I can see her staring at me fiercely, challenging me to look at her. Her eyes seem too large for her small face, but this is probably only a trick of the failing light.
I do not look to see.
“The female’s vision seems to be far inferior to our own,” Mayna replies, ignoring my tone. “I would suggest we camp until dawn.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I have tried leading her by hand, Atrae. But she is even too clumsy for that.”
“Hey…”
“Could you not carry her on your back like a—”
“Absolutely not,” both women reply in the same indignant tone.
“But… I guess you could carry me, being that you’re a big burly man and all. Probably wouldn’t even know I was there.”
I do not like what I hear in the female’s voice. She taunts me knowingly, but I have done her no wrong. It is almost like she resents me for bringing her to Jaha, but that does not make any sense. He is our leader, and this is the proper w
ay of things. Would she have me stare at her brazenly and without a scrap of decorum?
It matters not. I have more pressing issues than the slighted feelings of this tiny creature.
“We will make camp,” I concede. “But only until there is light enough for the small one to continue without aid. Mayna, gather materials for a cookfire while I find something for us to eat. And put the small one to some kind of use…”
“The small one has a name,” the tiny female says. “But I guess she’s not entirely opposed to being called small one. It sure beats when my mother used to call me the well-fed sister…” This last she mutters under her voice, but I hear it clearly just the same.
“Also, I have a great many uses. One of which is that I was a cook in my past life… so, if the big one can scrounge us up something to eat, I’ll treat you to something more than the fire-blackened carcass you’re probably used to.”
Mayna barks out a harsh laugh. “If I did not know better, I would swear this one had tasted your cooking before, Atrae.”
I turn from them and busy myself adjusting the blade on my hip.
“Don’t think for a minute I didn’t see that grin on your face before you turned around,” the tiny one’s voice teases at my back. “Maybe you’re not as much of a stick in the mud as you like to pretend.”
“Have the fire ready when I return,” I say to Mayna, ignoring the other female’s comments. “I will not be long.”
With that, I leave the females and stride deeper into the forest in search of something for the night’s dinner. Almost before I am out of hearing range, I feel a tightness in my chest loosen and my breath comes more freely.
I have counted Mayna as a friend for many cycles and have enjoyed her company at the fireside on many occasions. We have hunted together enough times to be comfortable with one another. To sit in the silence with one another and simply enjoy the peace.
But tonight, I cannot look upon her. It is not the same thing as with the tiny female we found—her, I choose not to see in order to maintain propriety. And perhaps because I still see a little of what I imagined I saw back in the Valat warren… But every time I look at Mayna now, it is not her face that I see. I see only my recent disgraces.
And even her eyes seem to shine with my failure.
It takes far longer than I expect—far longer than it should have—for me to take a beast for our meal, and by the time I walk back into camp, the cookfire rages. Mayna stands just outside the brightness of the fire, her shrewd eyes latching onto me as I emerge from the blackness of the nighttime forest.
The little female lies closer to the fire sleeping like a babe with her knees pulled almost to her chest. She is such a tiny thing, no larger than a child really. But she is so entirely unexpected. In the possession of the Valat, she was completely helpless and, even now, she has no control of this situation—though, we mean her no harm.
From the way she speaks, though, it is almost like she does believe herself to be in control. This one is certainly not meek, and she hides her fear well. It does not control her.
When I near the fire, I hear a loud tsk sound come from the female on the ground. “Now what would your leader think if he knew you had been looking at me that long?” Her eyes snap open to hold the light of the cookfire, blazing with the flickering oranges and yellows.
I grunt in response and drop the pair of melkas I took for supper beside the fire. “I thought you might be dead… figured the exertion of preparing a fire might be too much for your fragile body.”
“And he speaks to me!” The female casts a glance toward Mayna but gets no reaction in reply. “I guess you just needed to work off some of your frustrations on hunting those… What the hell are those things anyway? They look like large, scaly rabbits.”
“Melkas,” I reply. I know she is baiting me into conversation. She is good at it but not as subtle as I believe she thinks. But her words also hold some truth. The hunt, meager as it may have been, was enough to cast some of the heaviness from my heart. At least for now.
“Mel-kas,” the female repeats slowly. “Well, if it’s got meat, I can cook it. Mayna helped me find some herbs. I tried them, and they should make for a passable rub… depending on what a melka tastes like.”
I set about cleaning and butchering the pair of small beasts, then hand over the preparation and roasting duties to the human female.
She takes her time readying the meat for the spit, going so far as to press in her mixture of herbs after tenderizing the large morsels with a heavy stick. I have never seen someone use the red ailla spice in a savory dish, but the process is interesting to observe none the less.
The female is mostly correct. Had the cooking been down to me, we would have had something far closer to the burnt carcass of which she spoke.
Within minutes, the air fills with the mouthwatering combination of roasted meat and pungent herbs. The aroma would be intoxicating on its own, but the fact that my only meal for the day was a handful of seeds I thoughtlessly tossed in my mouth shortly after dawn makes the aroma nearly overwhelming.
My hunger is doubly confirmed by the loud roar from my stomach.
“Whoa, you better be vigilant, warrior. I think I just heard a huge-ass melka grumbling somewhere nearby.” The small female presses a tiny finger against one of the hunks of meat on the roasting spit, then nods her head, apparently pleased with the result.
“That was not a melka,” Mayna says to the female. “It was Atrae’s stomach rumbling with desire for this feast.”
“I—I know… It was a joke.” She looks at me, sighs when I do not meet her gaze, then motions to the meat. “You can take that from the fire now, O Brooding One.”
“It has hardly cooked at all,” I say.
“Do you recall our conversation about burnt carcass?”
She may have a point.
I pluck a few large leaves from a nearby bucca tree and then use them to portion out the roasted melka meat.
I watch as the tiny female nips delicately at the tender morsel. She nods her head again, satisfied with her work. It is not until her grinning eyes latch onto mine, that I realize I am staring at her.
“Go on and give it a try.”
I tear a chunk from the meat and plop the still-steaming hunk into my mouth. The juices threaten to spill from my lips as I chew down on the flavorful bite.
There are cooks in the tribe, certainly, and I have shared meals with some of them over the cycles. But, for most of my adult life, I have prepared my own meals—simple fare, consisting mainly of blackened meats, seeds, and a few fruits and vegetables.
The mechanics of what this female has done in preparing our meal are little different from what I do—roast meat over a fire. Yet, there is a world of difference in the flavors and textures in this dish she has prepared.
It is like I have never truly tasted melka before.
I look over to see Mayna cramming the last hunk of her portion into her mouth and almost choking in the process.
The tiny female’s head swivels between Mayna and myself, a broad smile growing with each passing moment.
“Good?” she asks, as I tear through the last of my meat in a frenzy.
I look up from my glistening hands and meet her eyes intentionally for the first time.
“Good,” I agree.
Chapter 5 – Bailey
“What if we just look around a little before we go back to your village,” I ask, picking my way through the tall, wispy fern-like plants. “We might find some of my people… Surely, Lala won’t mind waiting a little while. I mean, he doesn’t even know we’re coming.”
“Jaha,” Mayna corrects. “And, as we have told you before, the matter will be up to him. He is our leader, and we are bound by honor to bring you to him first. You may beseech him to aid you in your quest, if you wish, but the decision is his and his alone.”
I knew she was going to say that. She’s said almost exactly the same thing each of the half-dozen other times
I asked the question. But my dad, God rest his soul, always said I am as stubborn as a mule, and anyone who makes the mistake of arguing with me would eventually give in… or die from exhaustion.
My traveling companions weren’t kidding when they said we would get going at first light. We have already been walking for at least an hour, and the sun’s light is still only making the forest a little less murky.
The sparse overgrowth underfoot gives way to a more well-worn path that opens up into a wide expanse of cleared forest. Even in the dark, I doubt I would have very much trouble navigating on this leg of the journey.
“This is the main road,” I say. It’s not a question, the path is far broader and better maintained than anything we’ve walked on so far, but keeping a dialog going with the two warriors has been entirely up to me, so I have been spouting out pretty much any and all observations along the way.
“One part of it, yes,” Atrae answers from a little way in front of me. “The other exits south from the village, but it has fallen into disuse in recent times.”
“Why? What’s south of your village?”
Atrae grunts. “An upstart tribe called the Qarna.”
“Upstarts when we were still little,” Mayna puts in.
“Still,” Atrae continues in a dismissive tone. “They are made up of the castoffs from half a handful of other legitimate tribes. Outcasts and those who failed their Provings… or failed in other ways.” His voice trails off.
“So… the south road isn’t used anymore because you don’t like the people who live in that direction?” I ask. I direct my question to Mayna but, surprisingly, Atrae answers instead.
“It is more than simply not liking them. The Qarna have whittled away at our once glorious village over the cycles. They do not fight with honor. Instead, they ambush small groups of our warriors and pick off travelers with cowardly tactics. Sometimes they set huts ablaze in the night, only to scurry off into the darkness before anyone can see them.”
