by Foxx Ballard
“Wait, me check.” Rusty said and loped silently into the edge of the forest. Despite being gangly, his movements were as smooth as a dolphin gliding through the water. He glanced back once to make sure the girls were waiting. They moved into the edge of the forest as well, but were staying put. So he proceeded forward until he was one tree away from the campfire. He could smell the smoke. It was the same wood growing around them that was burning, not fully dried. There was meat cooking in the fire, reptile flesh of some sort. They had not skinned it before cooking. There were spices he didn’t recognize, but they were aromatic, and smelled delicious. Rusty’s mouth started to water in anticipation. There was one person tending the meat and their scent was musky and a little sweaty. Moldy and dirty. They hadn’t showered for a few days. The scent of the sea. There was fish oil and beeswax mixed with dandruff and hair. Testosterone. Likely male then, though he had been fooled before by human hormones.
Rusty risked peeking around the tree and saw that it was a large male human sitting by the fire. He had thick dreads hanging from his head and he was tending to a three foot long lizard that was cooking on a spit over his campfire.
Rusty risked it and stepped out from behind his tree, sauntering nonchalantly over towards the stranger’s campfire.
Without looking at Rusty, the man slid out a machete that had been hidden behind his body and poked idly at the lizard on the spit. He then glanced over at the Goblin with one eye.
“Rusty.”
When the man’s brow furrowed and he glanced at his machete, Rusty added, “Me name… Rusty.”
The man didn’t answer, just nodding slightly and continuing to turn the lizard over the spit. He was wearing rough woven clothing made from thin strands of plant fibers, frayed at the edges, unfinished and handmade. Shorts and a shirt made in this fashion were his only attire. The man’s skin was dark bronze and smooth, but had been branded in several places, and then the brands had been burned over to make them unrecognizable. Many old scars from lashes could be seen as well. His muscles were impressive, and he likely stood near seven feet tall. His face consisted of glaring eyes, thick eyebrows and a not-so-neatly cropped beard and mustache. Next to him was a round wicker basket with a lid.
Rusty stopped a distance from the man, keeping out of arm and machete distance. He also noticed the spear leaning against a tree on the far side of the man with a bamboo-like shaft and multiple splayed points at the end, more than likely meant for fishing, but still a spear.
The man indicated a log across from him, on the other side of the fire for Rusty to sit on. Rusty complied.
“Name?” Rusty asked, pointing at the man.
Glaring briefly, he opened his mouth and revealed that most of his tongue was missing. “Guh.” He pointed at Rusty. “Wuh-wee.” Back at himself. “Guh.”
“Guh,” Rusty repeated the man’s name and got a brief smile and a nod.
He seemed friendly and Rusty didn’t want to surprise him if the women arrived unexpectedly, so he decided to inform Guh of their situation.
“Guh, me have two women…” he struggled for the word and then just said “Friends.” He pointed back into the forest behind him.
Guh looked over Rusty into the forest and then held his hand up, indicating the lizard, and nodded.
Rusty smiled. “Be back. Thanks.”
Jumping up from the log to head back to the girls, for a moment he was disoriented, not exactly sure where they had gone, but he let his nose guide him and soon he found them hiding behind a fallen log, crouched together and quietly talking. Their whispering stopped as soon as they heard him approaching.
“Come, human named Guh, friendly. Has food.”
When they followed, he also added, “No tongue, has scars. Me think was slave or punished, maybe banished, but seem nice.”
Reaching the campsite, they were stepping out of the trees about to introduce themselves when Guh leapt up from his seat and grabbed his spear, shocking them all, but it only took a moment to notice that he wasn’t looking at them. Rusty smelled their slight sour smell just before he saw them.
In the forest, closer to Guh than them, was a pack of four hairless black-skinned quadrupeds. Their shoulders alone were taller than Rusty, and their bodies were thick and muscular. They bared circular fanged snouts, elastic lips opening and closing around rings of teeth, all beneath four black eyes, two facing forward and two on the sides of the head. Along their back ridge was a series of chitin plates that extended down a long segmented tail that whipped back and forth. With each step, as their feet lifted from the sandy loam between the trees, could be seen four thick wide claws, slightly curved.
The pack, noticing the addition of the extra prey, changed its tactics and spread further apart to try to flank the humanoids, one animal facing each of them from a different angle.
Guh hefted his machete and threw his spear at the feet of Rusty and the girls.
Rusty grabbed the spear as Karnij extended her claws out and charged at the predator facing her, flailing her claws at the ground to propel herself even faster. This caught it off-guard, and after a moment it registered that Karnij wasn’t going to stop, so it turned tail and loped quickly into the forest, with her following as a spinning white ball of fur and claws.
A second creature started hissing and spinning in circles, biting at the air and whipping its tail at an invisible assailant. Rusty knew that Zondra was in the mind of this one.
That left two, which were not as easily dissuaded.
They leapt at the same time, one at Guh and the one facing him, turned and leapt at Zondra instead. Rusty jumped in front of her, stomping on the butt of the spear to stick it in the ground, his hands angling the multi-pointed head at the chest of the beast as it landed on top of it. The spear pierced its body, and there was a horrible squeal, but its weight landed fully on Rusty as the spear passed through it, pounding him to the ground and knocking the air out of him. If the ground hadn’t been soft, he would have likely suffered from broken ribs, but as it was now, he was just in danger of suffocating. He couldn’t see a thing and the sour smell of the creature as its scratchy skin pressed against his face was overwhelming. It moved above him for a moment and then it just went limp, its full weight settling on his chest. He tried to roll and push the creature off of him but he couldn’t budge it. He was fully pinned, and he hadn’t taken a breath before it had landed on him. Rusty tried to call out, but just a little more air escaped his lungs and his mind started to panic as he feared his ribs would break. His mind spun faster and faster as he clung desperately to consciousness. He was sure he was going to die here. It had been so long…
As the creature lifted off of him, Rusty gasped in lungfuls of air. There was Guh, rolling it off as easily as folding a blanket with his thick, muscular arms. Guh checked him over briefly for any injuries and then smiled and grabbed Rusty’s hand, pulling him up.
Looking around, Rusty noticed that his was the only creature that had been dispatched. There was some sour blood he could see where Guh had injured his, but it had run off, and Zondra’s must not have liked its mind being messed with, it was nowhere to be found. Karnij was returning with no blood on her claws, so she had chased hers off successfully.
“Thanks you,” Rusty said to Guh. “Me no breathe.”
Guh just patted him on the shoulder with a big smile and pointed at the spear sticking out of the chest of the beast and then gave a thumbs-up to Rusty. He then pretended to take a bite of the creature and then made a wry face and spat several times, shaking his head and pointing at it. Rusty understood. The creature was not edible.
Then Zondra knelt down in front of him and took his hands, contemplating him for a moment, and then pulled him in for a hug. Hesitantly at first, and then firmly, Rusty hugged her back, surprised.
She pulled back, but kept her hands on his shoulders. “I’m still mad at you,” she said as she smiled. “But I forgive you, I know you never meant for all this to happen.” A blue-skinned,
tentacle-haired alien had never looked so beautiful to him before that moment, and again he felt guilty for even thinking about it.
Karnij was taking deep breaths to calm down. He could smell the adrenaline on her when she raged. She must have great energy reserves, because most creatures would simply die from being that wound up.
Guh waved them all over to his cooked lizard, which suffered from some burnt spots on one side. Rusty preferred his meat raw, though after tasting it the others seemed quite pleased. It was still hot, so he nibbled on it, scales and all, as it cooled. The spices were excellent choices and added a great deal of flavor to the otherwise bland, oily meat. Maybe cooked wasn’t so bad after all.
It turned out that Guh’s wicker basket was his general container for holding everything. Clothes, small tools, shells, little pouches of spices. A clay pot of beeswax. Rusty could smell them all individually without even looking into the basket.
When they had all finished their meal, Guh chopped a large haunch off of the lizard, and kicked sand into the fire until it was out. He then waved at them and gathered his things. With the machete on his belt and spear in hand, he grabbed his basket under one arm and the haunch of meat with the other, marching off through the trees to his outrigger-canoe sitting on the shore.
They followed Guh to say goodbye to him on the beach and helped push his trimaran into the water. Up close, it was larger than it had appeared at first. It was made from a single hollowed-out log, twenty feet in length, with cross braces across the top that extended about ten feet out the sides to hold the pontoons in place. The pontoons appeared to be bundles of bamboo with plugged ends to prevent holding water.
After it was floating, he motioned them all to get in, and after Rusty glanced at the girls and received shrugs of indifference, they followed his lead and boarded as well.
It was a little cramped with four of them, and they had to duck when Guh pulled on a rope, erecting a sail that had been laying in the canoe beside them. It fell a couple of times back into the boat, but after a few tries it caught the wind enough to stay up and Guh locked it in an upright position with a pole that he had laying in the boat. As they skimmed and bounced along the top of the choppy water, salty, cool spray would hit them from each wave.
Rusty looked back at Guh in the rear of the boat, and he had the biggest smile. Like he was doing what he enjoyed most. Maybe there was a life here that could be lived, one that was almost normal. Maybe there was still hope.
After an hour of bouncing over the waves and swells of the ocean, with the shoreline behind them well out of sight, they approached an island that ran the length of their vision to the left and right. Rusty wondered how large it really was.
It took some time before they got close enough to make out specifics. The trees on this island were primarily palm trees, or something similar in appearance. There were a few other sails in the water, besides their own. Boats similar to the one they were in were all dragged ashore and left above the high tide mark. There was smoke from at least five campfires inland behind a line of trees. As they got closer, Rusty could recognize people on shore by their smells, including the ones he hadn’t seen yet. There were over fifty people in this community that he could detect, including several babies and children.
Rusty was awed and honored that Guh had brought them to such a place. Most inhabitants were human, but there were a few Vesuvians and a handful of the winged brutes. One winged man was on shore repairing fishing nets, a dollop of white hair on the top of his head above his bony faceplate. His age had turned a lot of his muscle into a potbelly and sagging skin and Rusty could smell that he was old, as older people had a distinctive odor, but he could also detect that the man’s liver was failing, his blood wasn’t cleaning out waste as well as it should have been. Some of his bone spikes had broken off, too. Rusty doubted the man’s wings would be strong enough to hold him aloft anymore. The old man did not acknowledge them until Guh ran over and gave him an affectionate hug. Guh then waved Rusty and the girls to approach.
“Who have you brought to me, my boy,” the old man asked in a raspy voice, not looking directly at any of them. Rusty confirmed he was blind when he saw the cloudy eyes through the bone slits in the man’s faceplate.
Guh with palms up looked at them and made urging motions toward the old man indicating the rest of them should introduce themselves.
“Uh, Rusty…”
The man put down the thick bone needle he was using to thread the nets and reached out with both hands. “Let me see you Rusty.”
Rusty hadn’t seen a blind person for many years. On Earth, their eyes were normally repaired or replaced, if not genetically corrected before conception. He stepped in to let the man feel gently over his face and shoulders with fingertips, finding it interesting how the other senses developed to fill in the gaps.
Rusty stepped away when the man put his hands down.
“Good strong head on those shoulders, Rusty. What race are you? I have not met your kind before.”
“Me race called Gadlin. Humans call Goblin, close enough.”
“Well, both Gadlin and Goblin will mean ‘good strong head’ to me from now on. There are others you brought, my son?”
“Yes sir, I am Zondra.” Zondra stepped forward and knelt in front of the sitting man so he could reach her face.
“Ah, Vesuvian! Yes!” he said as soon as he felt her hair tentacles. “I love the people of your race. You show me visions in my eyes even though I can no longer see. You are an amazing people. Can you show me your friends?”
Zondra looked the man straight in the eyes for a moment and his face lit up.
“Oh! I love the detail. Your thoughts are beautiful! Have you told him how you feel?”
Zondra backed away, suddenly self-conscious, her cheeks taking a darker shade of blue as she blushed.
The old man put his hands on his knees. “I apologize, that was not for me to tell. And your vision shows me there is a Ripper here as well…”
While the old man was getting to know Karnij, Rusty looked at Zondra. She glanced at him briefly and smiled, but looked away, embarrassed.
Was there a chance she felt something for him besides friendship? Goblin men weren’t often found attractive by members of other races. He knew he found her attractive despite being that much taller than him, and having blue-skin, and tentacles for hair, and flat bone ridges for teeth instead of sharp spikes… there were a number of reasons why he shouldn’t… but she was considerate, and thoughtful, and kind… and she smelled good. And had curves. Men’s instincts seemed overly simple sometimes. Maybe for Zondra it was the same…?
“What race you?” Karnij asked, touching one of the old man’s wings.
“Oh, my name is Barok, and I am a Galantar. My kind originated from here, but we learned the language of humans centuries ago. They record past experiences by putting symbols called ‘the alphabet’ on things. We had never done that and found it both useful and fascinating, even though most of my kind enslaved them after they dropped from the sky. Their language was much more expressive than ours, so we adopted it. We don’t allow slavery on this island, though.” Barok stopped to scratch his head. “I was a hermit, fishing, years ago, and ran across Guh trying to swim out to sea. He was exhausted. It had been days since he’d escaped the slavers. I was old, even then, but I could still see, so I raised him and he, in turn, has helped me now that age is taking its toll on me. The old of my kind are sacrificed to the ancient gods when they can no longer fly. I left at the first sign of this. I don’t believe in the gods. I made a home far from everything, and it seems to have become a haven for outcasts. We watch for escaped slaves on the mainland now and take them in. Not a lot of opposition here.”
Guh then took Barok’s left hand and poked and slapped his palm, drawing symbols on it with his finger.
“You don’t say! Rusty killed a ridgeback? Fine work!” Barok said to the air, not knowing where Rusty was standing. Rusty said nothing, more embarras
sed that he had nearly suffocated under the thing’s body.
“Why don’t you show your new friends around the village, Guh?”
So Guh took them through the initial line of trees to where there were thatch and mud huts built. They were constructed with three or more rooms each, and the central room had a firepit with an open hole in the ceiling to let out the smoke. Several of these huts were scattered around the area, a good spot because a stream ran behind them, which meant mountains further inland, or so Rusty figured. Vesuvian and human children played together. Rusty noted a trimaran being built in front of one of the huts and he could smell heated metal from a hut that had racks of tools outside, so they even had a blacksmith. The odor of fish and shellfish was abundant, and there were gardens around the huts with a variety of vegetables that Rusty didn’t recognize. Not that vegetables were important anyway…
Guh walked them the length of the village. People waved at them as they passed and greeted them with many smiles. They were wearing woven clothing and led simple lives. It was a paradise. Rusty had lived this type of life himself before he’d been uprooted to Earth. Memories brought pangs of loss, and he turned inward, not paying as much attention. Soon, he was standing within an empty thatched hut on the outskirts of the village.
“For us?! Oh, thank you Guh!” Zondra gave the muscular man a hug, and he hugged her back with a huge smile on his face. He then let her go and grabbed Rusty and Karnij, each under one arm, and hugged them as well. Rusty just stiffened until he was put down. He wasn’t used to being hugged by strangers. And then a beautiful human woman, blind in one eye with a long scar passing through it, stepped into the hut.
“Guh! You rascal, this must be why you’re neglecting me!” Guh just laughed. The woman leaned forward towards the rest of them. “You know his name spelled backwards is hug, right?”
Guh wrapped the woman in both arms and carried her out, squealing and laughing.
It was hard not to smile when people were so happy around you. Rusty found himself admiring the big man.
