Aeyli-ah was ecstatic. “Mark, we can eat three pieces of fruit, twice a day! We can eat now and the rest will feed us for three days! The sack will be heavy though.”
I smiled and said, “Not for me. I carried you on my back all afternoon. I can handle the sack easily. We can take more if you like.”
She said, “No, it will only be good for about three or four days. We’ll be at a settlement before then. And, you might be satisfied with just one at each meal,” and she winked at me.
We walked holding hands, back toward the ruins and she said, “Let’s stay at the ruins again tonight. You can teach me more about the swords that we made. Tomorrow we can leave for the settlement.”
After we had exited the woods and had walked for maybe 20 minutes, we heard a strange roaring cry break the silence and Aeyli-ah snapped her head up in alarm.
The girl grasped my arm and said, “Oh no, look!”
I looked where she pointed, and coming toward us, directly between us and the ruins, was one of the great white apes of Barsoom. It was running straight at us from perhaps two hundred yards away.
The great white ape of Barsoom, like many creatures of the planet has six limbs: two arms, two legs, and two in between that can be used as either arms or legs according to need. It moved fast, having spotted its prey…us.
Aeyli-ah gripped my arm, “We have to run. But it is no use! It may have been hunting us all the way from the shrine. The trees aren’t any safer! You could escape alone, but I know that you won’t. I have become your death. If we run, perhaps we could get lucky, but My Prince I’m afraid that our time together is done.”
Without a word, I tore myself from the beautiful girl who was now my mate. I dropped the sack of fruit and ran…straight at the oncoming hulk bent on taking her from me. I didn’t think of anything; I just ran. I ran faster than it did and I closed the distance very quickly. I could hear Aeyli-ah screaming for me to stop, but I couldn’t, not if I wanted to save her.
As the beast and I closed on each other, I let out the most vicious roar that I could muster; both verbally and telepathically. It wasn’t a scream of frustration or rage of blind fury. Anything but. It was a calculated roar of warning to the creature that it was about to die. It was calculated to give my opponent a reason to pause and reconsider his plan. And it did.
The creature slowed momentarily and seemed to pause to take stock of the warning that it had received, like a blow to the face. It shook itself and then came on, but a little slower. The next instant we were upon each other.
The great beast’s arms stretched toward me and I could see that his reach was greater than the effective range of the sword in my hands. As he swung his arms to take hold of me, I ducked low to the ground and stepped to my right and the beast’s fur brushed my hip as he passed me. He tried so stop, but he couldn’t turn in time. As he passed me, I stood up, spun on my feet, and brought my sword crashing down on the back of his head with all the strength that my two arms could summon.
I felt the shock of the impact to his skull transmitted to the handle of my sword, and I felt the crushing of his skull as it gave way and caved in. I pulled back for another blow and the great ape crumpled forward on its face to the ground. I leapt over the body to my right and stood at its shoulder and brought my weapon down again, this time across the base of his neck, shattering the vertebrae connecting the shoulder and head, separating the thing’s spinal cord.
I took a breath. It was dead. Very, very dead. I scanned the area for more threats and not seeing any, I turned back to find Aeyli-ah. Had she kept running away as I had hoped? Was she running for safety?
No, she was running toward me. She was still maybe 20 yards from where I stood, and when she reached me, she threw herself into my arms! Even though she was light in the reduced gravity, she knocked me off my feet and landed on top of me.
The girl straddled my chest and then bent down and kissed me hard. “Mark, Mark, Mark,” she babbled as she covered my face with kisses. Not only that, but I could feel her grinding her sex against my ribs and when she rose up, I saw that her nipples stood out firmly. It was clear that she was highly aroused and that if the opportunity had been there, she would have had me take her then and there.
As it was, my own mood didn’t exactly match hers. Yes, I was thrilled to have saved my beloved, but I had never killed anything before in my entire life. I wasn’t a hunter. The fact that I had just defeated one of the biggest predators on the planet of Barsoom was a matter of instinct cultivated by training in a martial arts gym, not on the battle field.
I grabbed my princess as she continued to writhe and kiss my neck and face and I pulled her into a tight hug to contain her. I think that she didn’t even know what she was doing. I breathed heavily and my heart pounded. I lay next to the dead body of a great white ape and my lover lay on top of me. I continued to hold her until I felt her begin to relax in my arms. She trembled with emotions that she wasn’t in control of, but eventually she began to calm down.
Afterward, I sat us both up and then finally stood. We stood together and looked down at the body of the thing that would have killed us.
Aeyli-ah said, “Mark, My King, I have never seen anything like that before! You killed it with one blow. When it reached for you, I thought it was over. I knew that you could never escape its crushing grasp…and in the next instant I saw it fall headlong, dead at your feet . And then your sword came down again and would have separated its head if the blade had been sharp. Mark, you killed a great ape! By yourself! With a stick! Yes, I saw you do it, and I know how it was done, but I have never heard of anything like this, ever! Maybe the Warlord could have done it, but by all accounts of his swordsmanship, he probably would have run his sword through its breast and would have fought for an hour waiting for the thing to finally die. Oh, Mark, there is more you that you have to know before we reach the settlement, but first we need to handle this. Give me your knife.”
I handed Aeyli-ah my knife and stepped back as she went to work skinning the animal. We weren’t after the meat, so she didn’t gut the thing, but the pelt seemed to be a great prize. I heard her say, mostly to herself, “We will need many sleeping furs…many. This will be mine.”
I forced myself to watch as she expertly cut here and there and peeled the fur from the thing as if it were fruit. I thought about how she again said something about needing to tell me something important. This was maybe the third time that she had mentioned it, but she always said that it would be discussed later and changed the subject. There was always a hesitation to bring it up and a sense of a long held secret. It felt as if she’d kept a secret promise for a long time, but for some reason felt that she had to eventually tell me. And, she seemed to indicate that it was important that she tell me before we reached the settlement she was taking us to.
The work of skinning my kill and collecting its pelt went on for at least an hour. She was very deft with the knife, but she worked very carefully, removing the enormous fur in a single piece. When she had it off, I helped hold it as she used the very sharp knife to scrape the inside of the hide so smooth that it would dry very quickly without a single hint of flesh left on it. In the end, the thing was about seven feet tall and nearly eighteen feet wide, with another four feet of legs and arms at each side. Aeyli-ah folded and rolled the thing into a large bundle and then handed it to me.
I held the hide as she faced me and said, “My prince, you asked about a token. The custom is for two: one for day and one for night…if the girl has a very brave mate. My Lord, you have given me the jewel for daytime. The custom is for a hunter to give the fur of his first kill after their betrothal to his mate for her bed. It’s a sign of his protection.”
She looked at the ground and shifted on her pretty feet shyly.
I laughed and shook out the giant fur to its full size and said, “Who’s the stupid one now, my Barsoomian queen?” and I wrapped the fur around us both and pushed her to the ground. I rolled us up in the great
sheet and caressed and kissed her. I joked, “Oh, look, here’s your bed now! Whatever shall we do? I have given you your token, what do you have for me?”
Aeyli-ah laughed in my arms, but then pushed me away and pulled us both from the tangle of the large fur.
She said, “I give you myself, oh stupid prince! And, as to what we do, though I could long to have you break in my new sleeping furs, I long even more to get away from this rotting corpse!”
I sprang from the ground and helped her fold the fur as we laughed.
I started to walk back toward the ruins, but she stopped me and said, “Wait. Come back. There’s still time. Let’s go this way and I’ll show you a secret place.”
She led me back into the woods away from the ruins.
Aeyli-ah held my hand and pulled me quickly along through the woods. We went several miles and the forest grew thicker as we went. I had no idea where we might be going, and I could tell that this wasn’t ‘the secret’ that she was so reluctant to share with me.
We kept going. Aeyli-ah was obviously excited to show me something that she thought was very special. And, it was. When we reached our destination, we stood at a pool of water, surrounded by trees and well hidden, about 20 feet across. A small clump of rocks was at one end and a stream bubbled into the pool.
Aeyli-ah whispered as if she didn’t want anyone to overhear, “Lover, we can bathe here!”
That sounded great to me. I was used to bathing daily, but it had been several days.
She said, “Mark, have you ever seen so much water? Enough to stand in? It goes up to my neck!” she said excitedly.
We quickly laid aside our belts and fruit and the fur and stepped into the water together. It was a little cooler than the air, and it felt wonderful. We washed, and then washed each other. After a bit we sat near the rocks in the shallows and she lay against me and we talked.
I said, “Aeyli-ah, my world is so poor and sad in so many ways compared to this one, but three-quarters of it is covered with water. Great oceans thousands of miles across and large lakes and rivers a mile wide, or even more. Forests and jungles a thousand miles across, and deserts just as big. But this is better than all of it.”
She snuggled under my arm and smiled.
I said, “Princess, could we live here? Could we build a shelter, a little house, and make this place safe, and just live here together? Bathing every day and eating fruit?”
She laughed, “And if a monster comes, we’ll just kill it and make a rug and use the skull as our soup bowl. What a nice plan. But no, well, not at first. By sundown, the number of beasts here would easily overwhelm even a small company of men with rifles.”
I asked, “What about the trees? What if I built our house high in a tall tree? I would make a cone hang down and no creature could climb it.”
She laughed again, “And I would eat fruit and you would dine continually on the nectar of my boobs and we would make love constantly and I would die a thousand times every night. But, no, well, not at first. It would take a hundred men to build me a castle the in sky. Later, if that’s what you want, I will live here with you, if that’s what you decide.”
I said, “OK, don’t forget where this place is though.”
She laughed more than ever, “Mark, that must be another difference between the worlds. How can a person not know how to return to a place once they’ve been there? A compass is only for places we have never been to. Everyone knows his way home. And speaking of home, we have enjoyed your castle in the sky woods as long as we can. We need to hurry back to our…bedroom. Come on.”
I watched as the epitome of feminine beauty rose from the pool and let water run down her bare rear end and I followed. We buckled on our belts and gathered our fruit and fur and headed back toward the ruins that we had come from that morning.
Aeyli-ah said, “We should hurry. You don’t need to carry me, but we should run. First, drink a bag of water. And we still haven’t eaten! Eat one of the fruit, and then we have to go.”
We drank our water and ate a piece of fruit and then started our run. The girl was swift and we soon exited the wood and a minute later passed the corpse of the ape that I had slain. We ran at the speed that she set. We had walked here this morning, but now that we had food in us we covered the miles quickly and soon reached the buildings.
Inside, we filled our water bags, even though we would have easily had enough for the evening.
Chapter 12 A Second Night at the Ruins
Aeyli-ah led us back up the stairs to the top floor of the building and unlocked the door. We set aside our bundles and as soon as they were down, she rushed into my arms and kissed me.
She said, “Mark, what a day we’ve had. The way you leapt into the highest branches and picked fruit. Enough for three days! And to kill the ape! It was an adventure for a lifetime, but you accomplished it in the blink of an eye! Then we bathed. We bathed in a pool, it was glorious! You gave me pleasure a dozen times and presented me with the sleeping fur of a king! Fifty years at the shrine and now the mate of the man I gave myself to never knowing if he would ever come! Mark, Mark, Mark! Here, come!”
She dragged me from the room and didn’t bother to close the door behind us. She ran to the opposite end of the building and up another flight of stairs and onto the roof.
It was about 90 minutes until sundown and we went to the edge of the roof and looked at the landscape.
She said, “In that direction is the settlement that you were headed for. It’s been dead for many years because of the wars. In that direction is the shrine. Over there is the settlement that I come from and where we need to go, probably tomorrow. It’s a few days away, but maybe I’ll let you carry me part of the way. It’s awfully nice, clinging to your back and feeling your legs carry us along as I wrap my legs around your waist.”
She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. “In that direction is the woods where you built me a castle in the sky with your imagination. That way is Helium, the city of the Warlord and the Royal Household, although it was overrun by green hordes before I was born. It’s a very long way away, but maybe we’ll have an adventure there someday. That way is the Northern pole and that way is the southern pole. I’ve never been to those places, but it’s roughly in those directions. I have only been here, the shrine, the woods, and my settlement so those are the only ones that I can say for sure. I think that we’ll go to many places now that my service at the shrine is ended. Oh, Mark! What will our lives be? What kind of things will we see?”
I had my arm around her shoulders and said, “I have no idea. Aeyli-ah, until today, I had never killed anything.”
She gasped, “What? But you taught me only a part of what you know of swords. And the weapons themselves! How can you say you never killed anything? Oh, you mean that your battles were won by disabling your opponents without killing them. That’s noble in some cases.”
I said, “No, I mean that I had never fought a real battle before. When you said that I would lose you to the ape, the ape had to die. There was no other way. It died because it had chosen to die.”
She asked, “What do you mean, ‘it had chosen to die’? It didn’t want to die.”
I answered, “It must have wanted to die. We heard it scream. It said that it was going to kill you. The only reason for any creature to say something like that is because it has chosen to die at my hand. No sane creature would want to die, and no sane creature would ever threaten you while I breathe. If they choose to die by my hand, I won’t stop them.”
She sighed, “Oh, I see. So you didn’t decide to kill it, you let it decide to die. That’s a very wise saying. It would prevent many wars. If we must, we will allow others to throw away their lives. If they don’t value their life, we’ll help them on their way. That’s a wise saying.”
I said, “It’s a bit different with a man than with a beast. The ape chose to die because he didn’t understand the sword that I carry. If a man knows how my sword works, it will save his life.�
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She looked puzzled, “It will save your enemies life? But if he chooses to die, then what?”
I said, “If he chooses to die, then he dies. But if he respects my sword, even though he might have thought about killing us, he has a chance to save his life by changing his mind. He can choose to live instead. He can choose to die or he can choose to live. I decide if I live or die; he decides if he lives or dies. If he threatens you or I, then he chooses his own death.”
She sighed again, “Mark you would make a good general. Like a Barsoom cave bear, if a man tries to harm her cub, he has chosen death. It’s very wise.”
I continued, “So, if a man threatens me, he chooses to die in the same way he does if he threatens you while I breathe. We are bound. I won’t let him take your lover from you. Do you understand? Do you understand what happened with the ape?”
She thought, “The ape threatened me, so he chose to die. But I expected to die. I would have given my life for you. I hoped that if the creature caught me that it would allow you to escape and live. When you ran toward the beast, I thought that you were trying to do the same for me; that if he stopped to kill you then maybe I would escape. But, I wouldn’t want to live. I would rather have died at your side. Oh, but we’re bound to each other…life to life. If you choose to die, it’s my death as well.”
I said, “And?”
She frowned and said, “And, if I choose to die I kill you. This is a wise saying too. I can’t choose to die as long as you live, just as you will never give yourself willingly to save me. You will let the ape choose to die, but you will always choose to live because we’re bound. I will always choose to live because we’re bound. I will gladly let the ape choose to die if he insists on it, because I will never leave you!”
The Start of Time Page 9
