“This is the xamxin river.”
River? What in the stars? “It’s water?”
“Hexa.”
“But its on fire!”
He smiles a little, though it looks like he’s trying hard not to. He edges towards the water and I follow him to the edge of the bank, clenching tighter to him at the sound of a low whir coming from behind us.
His arm pulls snug against his body, bringing me with him. “It is only Ixria and the other xub’Ixria docking the glider. And this is only water. It is our primary light source, since the canopy above lets in so little sunlight, and Voraxia is so far from the sun besides. Not like your little moon.”
“But the water shines. Is it some type of algae?”
“Nox. It is the water itself. Though direct sunlight is blocked by the canopy, ultraviolet rays are not. The water is iridescent beneath ultraviolet radiation. You will see that the shine goes away at night. It is why we have not attempted to crop any of the werro trees. They provide insulation. The rivers provide daylight.”
“It’s incredible. Can you drink it?”
The corners of his mouth are twitching again as he takes a step so close to the bank’s edge, one false step could send him tumbling. Panic grips me.
“Careful,” I whisper, tugging a little on his arm as if I could somehow block him, or heave his giantess free of the lapping eddies, were he to slip in.
His ridges flash a multitude of colors for a beat before the color retreats. He shakes his head and gives me a pull that pitches my whole body forward.
Next to him now, toes close enough to breach the water’s edge, I watch him dip his hand into the fire and withdraw liquid gold. I have to blink many times in order for my eyes to adjust to it and when they do I am utterly spellbound.
“Drink,” he tells me.
“Drink?”
“Hexa, Miari. It will not harm you.”
And I believe him. Because deep down in my heart I know that he’d never hurt me. The thought is as stupid as it is reckless, but when he tells me to drink once more, I do.
Warm and strangely sweet, it’s delicious, rich in ways I found the little packet of food he already fed me. I laugh a little and drink some more, lips brushing the rough side of his hand as I slurp.
He jerks, fingers pulling back and parting. Water rains down between us as he makes a brutish sound. I open my eyes and inhale the smell of his skin, that rich wood and spice, his natural musk. And the even headier smell of his cum, still lingering a little on the insides of my thighs. I haven’t bathed yet, and feel myself heat at the pressure of his gaze on my thighs and the juncture between them, as if willing himself to see straight through the lightweight tunic I wear. I lean forward.
His jaw clenches and he takes a few steps away from me, staggering in a way I’ve never seen before. “Come, Rakukanna,” he barks.
Flushing — both out of irritation and out of what I was just denied — I’m still curious enough to follow.
Weaving again through the forest, all is quiet at first and I have the impulse to ask how crowded Voraxia is, how populous. The human colony is always full of sounds. Kids running and playing, the elders coughing and clapping and singing, women shouting over one another as disputes are settled in the market, hunters’ swords clacking as they train, preparing to leave the safety of the dome to scavenge.
Here, there is very little in the way of noise. The sounds of branches creaking, but very far away. Leaves crinkling high overhead. Sand shifting under our footsteps. The river carrying its light around the capital. Distant voices, whispers, getting louder. And then I see them. Hidden at first, but once I relax my gaze, I catch sight of people in my peripheries.
Beings with blue faces watch us from open doorways and windows in the werro trees — some as high as ten, twenty heads up — and I’m floored by the world that these Voraxians have created out of them. Hollowed out, vertical worlds that still ascribe wholly to the planet’s natural beauty. Like everything they could keep as it was, they did.
Xoran doesn’t stop for any of the beings we pass, but he does step closer to me and places his hand on the small of my back. I flush when his claws brush my skin through my thin shift. I keep thinking about our pact and what it might be like if we could just have the pleasure part without having to barter for it…What would that even look like? I can’t picture it. A relationship where we stand on equal ground. How could it exist, when we never will? Before it consumes me, I quickly shake off the thought.
The hill we’ve crested begins its descent and I focus on the werro in front of us. It’s the largest I’ve seen yet, and its doors are wide open. Light shines outward and silhouettes two figures who bow deeply when we draw near.
“Raku,” the woman says, her long, straight hair grazing the sandy floor when she dips.
“Lemoria,” Xoran answers, and I notice that he bows a little bit this time when he hadn’t the last. Does he know her too? Even better than Ixria? I bristle, irritated with myself more than I am with him.
This female has dark grey, pearly skin and wooden beads decorating her hair. Her chest is bare, but she wears a thin, tan skirt that flows to the ground and covers her feet. Nearly the same height as Xoran, she is a combination of long, yet muscular limbs and soft, feminine power. Like some kind of universal being.
Her attention pivots to me then and she bows once more. “I had heard tales of the beauty of the Rakukanna. For once, they were not wrong. You must be very proud, my Raku, that Xaneru created your Xiveri in such a way, and that Xana brought her into your path.”
Xoran gives her another slight nod before pushing me out in front of him towards the female, who clasps both of her hands together against her chest. “I am Lemoria. You honor me with your presence here.”
“I um…am happy to be here.” I can put a fusil tank together with a flex rod, but I can’t put two coherent sentences together…
“We do more than seek the grace of your presence, but we also seek your counsel,” Raku says at my back. “We will enter now.”
The woman, Lemoria, steps aside with a flourish, and the man behind her bows. He looks first into Raku’s eyes, then into mine as we pass him and just before he turns to shut the doors, I see him stare at Lemoria with an expression that makes my pulse thunder.
His ridges flare subtly, but in a multitude of colors. Xoran’s looked at me like that before and I suddenly get the feeling that I know exactly what it means, and it doesn’t make sense with anything that he’s done…with the pact…with the person — the alien — I thought he was.
And that terrifies me.
“We would like a word alone.” We. He keeps saying we. The panicky sensation I feel just gets stronger.
“Of course. Ki’Lemoria, would you take over in the Frakar’s room?”
“Of course,” Ki’Lemoria, the one with eyes wreathed in color and devotion, says behind us.
The female moves forward down a flight of three stairs and as we follow, the room opens up. This isn’t a house like I’d thought it was — this is a hospital.
Huge paneled windows on the walls let in the same fire light from the river, almost as if — actually, exactly as if — they make their windows with water inside of them. Incredible.
Abandoning the natural aspect of the city behind us, this structure, wreathed in an orange-yellow glow, has the same hard paneling of the ship we left behind. The walls are paneled too, and so is the ceiling, though I can hear the muted sounds of bodies thumping across the floors above.
Cooridors branch off left and right. We take the first and head down a short hall. At its end, a door opens onto a smaller room equipped with a sturdy plastic table and implements of all kinds — scalpels and tools with hook ends and scopes and probes and fluffy pink balls in murky glass jars and long white tables and giant, metal machines hanging from the ceilings and a scope in one corner and a machine that looks like it fits a Voraxian sized body inside of it and — is that a gamma laser?
So focused on the glass tube mounted to the ceiling filled with the same pink liquid Xoran called reien farrn, I jump half a head into the air when the door behind us swishes firmly shut, leaving us alone with her in this room of wonders. Or horrors.
“How can I be of service, my Raku and my Rakukanna?”
Xoran slips his hand under the curtain of my hair in a gesture that makes me heat. It’s so possessive. Possessive, but also reassuring.
“The Rakukanna is a hybrid Dra’Kesh-human. As of this span, there are only two hybrids alive today and she is the only female.” He pauses, as if waiting correction or contradiction.
“Yes. Hexa,” I stutter, “That’s correct.”
Continuing, Raku tells her some of what I told him earlier. Here I was thinking that he’d taken the information and immediately discarded it. How wrong I was.
“The Rakukanna has informed me that human females are extremely fertile. However, because they were forced to participate in the hunting ritual of Cxrian, and provided no medical care, provisions or equipment, human females who were among the first to be bred by Dra’Kesh males did not survive the birthing process and neither did two-thirds of their kits.”
“Xana guide us,” the woman says in a hushed, horrified breath. Her ridges flare pink and then fade again. “Fertile females have lost their lives?”
“Hexa.”
“And younglings?”
“Hexa. To ensure the fertile females are able to continue living to produce human children, hybrid younglings conceived during this forced Hunt have since been discarded by females. Without any record keeping, it is impossible to know just how many hybrids have been lost. That Voraxia has lost. Female losses from faulty medical equipment, or from attempting to birth hybrids has numbered in the dozens. My Rakukanna’s own female sire was among the first to perish.”
She gasps as if she’s witnessing the murders now before her eyes, many times over and my stomach is weighted with stones. All over, I start to sweat.
“A thousand graces, my Rakukanna. May Xaneru relieve your pain.”
I feel myself burning up. After rotations of being made to believe that my mother’s death was my fault, hearing Xoran’s telling of what happened and this female’s — Lemoria’s — response, I am moved. Deeply.
Lemoria’s ridges have turned a deep grey now, and I can interpret the color only as grief. A genuine grief. I hold my hand over my heart and nod my head, in a colony gesture.
“Thank you,” I tell her. And I mean it when I do. Rotations of guilt suddenly seem to slide off of me like droplets of water into a larger pool, absorbed. They are powerless now.
She stiffens suddenly, glancing to Xoran. “This loss is a crime for the whole of Voraxia. There must have been those among us who knew of this.” Her ridges flash bright red.
“There were, and they will be punished. You can rest calmly this night and all others, knowing this.” She can? They will?
“In the meantime, my Rakukanna and I have fulfilled the call of the Xanaxana. It is exceedingly unlikely that our coupling will bear offspring given that we did not use a breeding belt, however, I will not take any chances.”
The woman’s ridges flare yellow. She bows. “Apologies, but no breeding belt?”
“There was neither the place, nor the time to construct one. And as you well know the Xanaxana will not wait.”
“Nox,” she says, voice a little more breathless than it was before. “I understand. And I understand your request. You can be sure that nothing will happen to our Rakukanna while there is still breath in my lungs. On my life and my honor, her pregnancy will neither bring harm to herself nor to your future kits. Does the Rakukanna have time now for some initial tests?”
“That is why we are here.”
“You wish to stay, my Raku?”
“Hexa.” He shifts his weight almost imperceptibly from one side to the other, but I still feel it. “I am not going anywhere.”
A little smile comes to the woman’s face and I wonder if Xoran didn’t see it too, but she quickly smears it away and whirls around to face the table in the center of the room. The only thing made out of wood, it’s red and glossy with darker red veins and rings rippling dramatically though it.
Lemoria pulls a plush fur out from beneath a cabinet below the table and drapes it over the red surface, making the whole thing look more like a luxury than a medical cot. Not that I would even know what a medical cot looks like. I’ve never been into the medical facility. Never had enough rations to trade for even the most basic checkup.
“I have extensive knowledge of Dra’Kesh breeding cycles and anatomy, however my knowledge of the humans is limited, to say the least,” Lemoria turns and flicks her fingers at what looks like blank russet wall, only for a whole host of holo screens to suddenly pop up. The part of my mind excited by gadgets salivates.
“I will need to visit with the Rakukanna extensively to fill in any gaps, and travel with a team to the human planet to run tests on human subjects if I am to stand the best possible chance of ensuring the complete safety and comfort of the Rakukanna throughout the duration of the birthing cycle. And then of course, of ensuring the same for human females on the human planet. We will need to set up a permanent outpost there to provide rotation-round medical care for any future hybrid births, should there be any.”
The lilt of her voice begs a question which Xoran hesitates to respond to. His muscled arms cross. “The Rakukanna and I have already begun discussing the future of our inter-species’ cooperation. However, I had not at the time known of the horrors perpetrated against their more fragile population. More will need to be discussed to ensure that future matings between Voraxians and humans are healthy in all ways.”
“Of course,” Lemoria says.
“I believe the Rakukanna would be best positioned to lead these efforts as one of her first duties to her people, and ours. These humans live in Voraxia and their offering to Voraxia in the form of kits, of any species, can only be seen as a blessing from Xana. As I stand as Raku before you now, know this,” he says to her, though I know the words are meant for me — and I cannot believe he’s saying them, “humans and hybrids fledged Voraxian and cared for accordingly.”
Lemoria nods curtly as if this were an obvious decision and not something wild and outlandish and never before dreamt of with the possibility — no, with the guarantee — to change everything for the colony. For humanity. My jaw drops while Lemoria flicks on a few more holo screens. Finally, she moves to the other side of the raised, fur-covered bed and pats it lightly.
“If it please you, Rakukanna, I would take a few scans and samples now,” she says.
But I don’t move. I can barely breathe. I turn to look up at Xoran standing next to me. “You…you’re going to help the humans? Treat them like…like they’re Voraxian?”
“Hexa,” he says with a frown. “Younglings are precious and rare and to know that they have been…discarded, and fertile females killed in the birthing process is not to be borne. Not while I remain Raku. And certainly not when the risk of doing nothing remains mine.” He reaches out and gently traces his clawed fingers over the tunic covering my stomach.
“I will not have harm come to you,” he growls with low menace. A brief flicker of red lights in his ridges, then all is silent.
I lick my lips and wring my hands together so hard it hurts. I can’t believe it. To know that no other women in the colony will go through what my mom did. To know that no women will be forced to go through the Hunt ever again. To know that our people will be taken care of just like they’re not slaves…not animals…not humans. Like they’re aliens. Voraxians. Like we’re…equal.
It’s too much. But what’s the price? Because whatever it is, I surely can’t pay it. If he knows something I don’t, he should tell me now. Because no matter the price, I’d try.
“This…this can’t be free. And I don’t have anything left to trade you,” I say in a hush.
Xoran hisses
. There is a slight shuffle and when I look up, Lemoria’s back is turned to us. In front of me, Xoran’s ridges grow a darker and deeper red and when he meets my gaze, they flash pink and orange, like a sunrise. Like broken skin under a punishing fist.
“You dishonor me,” he says and his voice is sharp and cutting. It renders me hollow, straight down to my core and worse, I don’t have any idea what I’ve done, or what he means or how to fix it.
All I know is that the strange strand I felt in my chest pulling me to him suddenly feels like it’s been cut…and I don’t want it to be.
11
Raku
“The ceremony will take place in three lunars. You will remain here until then.”
“Is this…your home?” She says with a shy glance around the entrance. She keeps her hands tucked under her arms as if she’s afraid to touch anything.
“It is.” I long to know what she thinks of it, if there is anything that can be procured or tailored to her liking, but I do not have the words to ask. Not after her slight — not a slight, an assumption. One that I’m a savage.
The thought ravages me. That she would think me capable of abandoning so many fertile females and their babes within my own constellation. What else would she think? The Dra’Kesh and Voraxians the humans have been introduced to thus far have done nothing but harm and dishonor them.
A shudder passes across my ridges and I turn away from the sight of her, because the longer I watch her, the more I desire to apologize to her on behalf of Bo’Raku and the Dra’Kesh and Voraxians who have claimed her fellow human females. And Bo’Raku is only my xub’Raku, and I am Raku besides. Apologizing is not done.
I clear my throat. “I will show you around, and then I will leave you.”
I pad down the stairs, enjoying the familiar rub of woven carpet beneath my bare feet. They are draped haphazardly over the packed earthen floor, very unlike the medical bay, which is one of the few structures here that is built to industrial specifications.
Taken to Voraxia Page 13
