by D. Martin
Grizzled, tattooed elders emerged from a large wooden building taller than the others and bore brightly colored, painted symbols around the door. They greeted Matt with open welcome, like a long-lost friend. They exchanged hearty hand clasps and many approving nods, and I guessed he must have come there often to trade. He spoke in a rambling, incomprehensible language with the village elders and then pulled me forward. He must have told them I was his new wife, for the Narharis stared in openmouthed wonder at me. Then Matt told me to go stand with the women on the fire’s other side. Hmmph! But it was either that or the Narharis-approved custom of a man’s mate kneeling at his back during trade talks.
I chose to stand with the other women.
The men settled into a circle on colorful, woven rugs arranged on the hard-packed and surprisingly dry ground around the large, smoky but crackling wood fire at the village’s center. Wooden dwellings surrounded us, and small children played near the open doors, though some stood solemnly watching us.
The women whispered amongst themselves, wearing guarded expressions as their small, tawny eyes covertly studied me from where they stood behind and beside me. They bore elaborate green designs tattooed on their arms and legs, left exposed by their bright-dyed garments. Their auburn brown, waist-long hair was woven into elaborate braids. Small, colorful blossoms peeked out from behind their ears.
I could well imagine the unfavorable comparison I must be garnering from them.
Matt was tall and comely looking in a strong, masculine way, while I wasn’t anywhere near fragile beauty or exotic siren material in my mud-speckled coveralls. The few passable features I possessed weren’t on best display. I hadn’t slept well recently due to my worry about Matt’s health. He hadn’t eaten a full meal or more than two bites at a single time during six standard days.
I shifted the small white plastalloy case I carried under an arm when a corner dug into my side.
A tentative touch tugged my hair. I turned quickly to find two women crowded close behind me. They smiled disarmingly, and one reached out with a gentle grasp to capture a dark curl that lay over my shoulder. She whispered to her friend while I forced myself to stand still against their curiosity. Her thin fingers gently coaxed the dark spiral to unravel until it lengthened almost a full arm’s length. She released the lock, and it promptly rewound itself into a fat ringlet and rejoined the others cascading around my shoulders.
The woman laughed with evident delight. Several others crowded near, stretching out eager hands to unravel more curls. Stepping back and turning away didn’t deter them. They followed me. It took much restraint not to smack those hands away.
I’m Matt’s trade partner. I mustn’t offend his customers!
I sent him a beseeching look. He glanced around in time to catch my distressed glance with an amused smile and bent close to say something to an elder sitting beside him. The elder turned and spoke to a woman kneeling meekly behind him.
She leaped to her feet and rushed toward me, murmuring quick, incomprehensible words to my fascinated audience. They chattered back at her, but their animated smiles fell as if disappointed. But one by one, the women gently patted my curls and murmured something that sounded soothing or respectful before they backed away and gave me space again. The woman who had saved me scurried back over to kneel near the elder talking with Matt. She said something to both of them before backing away on her knees with a big grin.
My unruly curls were left mercifully alone while Matt spent more long minutes conferring with the elders. They exchanged many quick hand gestures amongst themselves. It appeared the men were tallying up something by counting on their fingers. They seemed to conclude a mutually favorable trade deal, for the men in the circle rose, talking with animated excitement among themselves.
Matt moved to his feet with them. He glanced across the fire at me and held out a hand. I trotted from the women’s group to stand behind him. Before we’d left the ship, he’d explained how a woman should behave in the Rikin villages, with much laughter in his eyes. He’d asked me to follow suit so his customers wouldn’t take offense at a wife who lacked proper respect for her man.
He also needed the small case I’d carried. It contained one hundred vials of analgesics that the Alliance Exobiology Trade Commission had approved for these people’s physiology. Matt had explained they were highly valued here when the healers’ traditional treatments failed, and because interstellar traders didn’t come there often, the Narharis hoarded the medicine or used it for trade with other clan tribes. He’d added that as a married man now, he would have lost face if he carried his trade wares before these fiercely traditional-minded people.
In my modern opinion about their belittling views regarding a woman’s place, I silently dubbed them backward people. Almost as bad as my family and community.
Matt took the case with care, and I glanced up in time to catch his amused, tender smile before he released the lid and turned to present its contents to the elders. Everyone crowded near as the elder gingerly lifted a clear vial to view and then shake the white pills. A great contented sigh went up from the Narharis.
Bitter thoughts assailed me. It was ironic Matt was trading painkillers to these people when there was none for whatever it was that caused him such deep pain.
One elder ceremoniously took a battered leather pouch from a woman standing behind him. He squatted and emptied the contents on a rug at his feet. Large semitranslucent blue stone nuggets lay strewn upon the woven cloth. Matt dropped to one knee and picked up one palm-sized chunk. The cloud-dampened daylight from Rikin’s sun managed to fire the stone with glittering brilliance along the rough corners while he examined it. The villagers all went motionless and silent as they focused on him. They seemed to hold their collective breaths, as birds chirped in the wilderness surrounding us and the fire logs crackled.
Matt’s dark gaze scanned over the other stones on the rug before he nodded and returned the one he held to the pile. The elder scooped the stones into the pouch before handing it to Matt with a small bow, and the first genuine, spontaneous grin I’d seen upon the old man’s somber face. Matt smiled and bowed low to the elders. I copied his bow also, as he’d earlier instructed. The villagers’ voices filled the air as they chattered to one another again.
Matt spoke with the elders several more long minutes before they seemed to bid one another farewell. Then we left the village, with me consigned to carrying the leather pouch’s hefty weight in my role as his dutiful wife.
We walked across the meadow, which didn’t seem quite as waterlogged now, and headed back to where the Stardancer perched, gracefully in a horizontal position on her landing struts. My home for now….
When we had approached the ship, Matt stopped and drew me into his arms. The green-gold flecks twinkled in his eyes and gave him a boyish, mischievous look. That was my only warning before he grasped a curl hanging above my eyes and gently pulled it far past his shoulder. Then he released it and watched with fascinated interest as it promptly retracted into a thick ringlet before my left eye.
Laugh crinkles appeared near his eyes, and white teeth gleamed as his smile widened. “I envied your admirers, Kai. I’d always wanted to do that, but was sure you’d slap me for it. The Narharis women were right. They said your hair was full of magic—and so were you. The village leader said you would bring me much luck with so much magic inside you.” Matt laughed at my cynical, unamused expression as he smoothed the recalcitrant curl from blocking my vision.
“Well, my magical trader-wife, you’re entitled to half the profits in uncut Rikin diamonds from this day’s work. They gave me more nuggets than usual in the past for the same trade. It appears the Narharis are willing to pay more for wares from a married man than an unwed one. Especially to a man with a magical woman at his beck and call. My personal worth has increased, you see—but understand, doll, you’re still nothing in their eyes. You’re only personal property, despite your uniqueness and all the luck you’re suppose
d to bring me.”
The intentionally provoking, wicked glint in his dark eyes made me laugh. I thrust the weighty leather pouch at him. “Here. That bag’s heavier than the case you made me carry to honor your oh-so-lofty status as a married man, Matt Lorins.”
He took the pouch, but raised his dark eyebrows high in exaggerated mock offense at my effrontery. That made me laugh again. His playful moments were rare.
“Do you regard me as personal property, Matt?” I banished amusement and tried to mold my expression into stern seriousness, but it was a struggle.
“Very much so, Kai,” he murmured, and his lips sought mine, and I yielded with eagerness until he pulled away. “You’re the most precious possession that I’ve ever hoped to own and probably don’t deserve.” His voice was rough-edged. “Stay here. I’m going to put our fairly won trade prize inside the ship’s airlock, and then I have a promise to keep to you. The Narharis won’t mind if we linger longer on their lands.”
Matt approached the Stardancer and touched her lower section to uncover the ident plate. He spoke his name and pressed a hand on it. The hatch opened and the ramp stairs extended for him. Matt ran lightly up and dropped the pouch inside the small airlock compartment that guarded the cabin’s interior door. He descended the ramp and watched the airlock door reseal and the ramp retract into the ship’s underbelly before reinstating his locking code.
He returned to my side with a somber expression. “There are two more things I want you to remember, if the inevitable should occur before we sell the Rikin diamonds, Kai. They’re going into the cargo bay’s vault when we return. Use the ship code to unlock it. There’s a jeweler on Tivat whom I trust. His name is Seth Medlock. I’ve sold raw stones to him for several years and he’s a good friend. You’ll find his shop’s name, location, and contact data in the comp files I made for you. Tell no one you have those stones. They have high market value: raiders and cut-throats will track you. Take them only to him. Show Seth my ring and tell him you were my wife. He’ll give you a better than fair price in trade. Promise?”
My heart pounded with spiked alarm at the unsettling things he’d combined in those instructions. Disbelief and grief at the thought of him leaving me caused hot prickling in my eyes. I clasped one hand over the other where I wore his band and held them both over my heart.
Matt’s stare focused with unblinking intensity upon me while he waited for me to pull myself together.
I sniffed back threatening tears and forced myself to nod once. “The vault… and Seth Medlock on Tivat…,” I repeated in an unsteady, tight voice.
“Good. Come, dear heart. Let’s go over there and sit in the light of this blue star while I tell you about the man who existed before Matt Lorins.”
Ice slipped into my body at his words. I allowed him to lead me around a large puddle, almost a small pond. We slogged across the meadow beyond the ship to a scattered grouping of knee-high white boulders. He sat on a broad, flat-topped rock and pulled me down beside him. He encircled my waist, holding me close. We sat silent listening to mournful cries from meadow birds and chastising chatter from small creatures hidden nearby in the grasses. Then Matt quietly spoke with slow reluctance.
“I have decided to tell you all of it, dear heart. You have the right to hear it. The beginning is unimportant, because life never had much meaning for me in those days, until my sire informed me that I’d achieved the legal adult age and I could attain my majority shares in our family’s investments. Like you, Kai, my home fostered no warm feelings within me for its members. Mine was discordant family. Everyone was suspicious of one another. No one lost the opportunity to undermine another family member.
“I left as soon as my father transferred credits into my accounts. I bought a ship—one smaller and flashier than the Stardancer. She was brand new—fresh off the assembly port gantries. I christened her the Fire Dawn.” He smiled at my perplexed look. “Don’t ask why I gave it that name, doll. I was young, and my vivid imagination had been touched by a painting my sire had hanging on a wall in his study.”
He glanced away, seeming to stare into the distant corridors of his memories. “I aimed the nose of the Fire Dawn toward almost every system and planet logged in the preloaded navilog flight path records that the ship manufacturers had programmed into the ship’s comps. The years passed, and I’d only gone back to visit my family twice in that time. Each of those two times, my low opinion for my family remained the same, but on my second visit, I found there was someone for whom I did care. It was my distant cousin, A’lia. She was a girl when I left upon my wanderings, but upon my return, A’lia had become a sweet, beautiful woman and… and I fell in love.”
My gaze stayed fixed upon Matt’s strained expression as he stared out across the meadow. A range of conflicting emotions battled and clashed within my soul—most of them hostile and defensive. I took a deep, calming breath and forced my jaw to unclench.
Matt continued in a meditative tone. “She returned my regard and we married. I settled for a while upon my home world and devoted my time and life to her and to learning my father’s trade business and land management. It was what he’d always demanded of me, but I’d fought him, until then. A’lia soon carried my child, and I thought life could hold no more happiness for me than that.”
Matt was silent for several minutes. I dared not move nor speak. A struggle raged within me against resentment and jealousy for my mate’s first wife.
“One day, I awakened determined to show A’lia a bright and beautiful place I had once discovered on my intersystem travels. Eager to please me, as she always was, my lovely, happy wife accompanied me. She was in the seventh month of her pregnancy with our child, but I was rash and impulsive. I wanted to show her the special world then and there. So the Fire Dawn lifted and sped toward that world, but an error had occurred in the coordinate mapping for the system and planet.
“By the time I’d discovered the error, it was too late to abort the flight path and landing. I don’t know to this day if it was my fault or something inherent in the ship’s navilog comp, but instead of the beautiful world I’d selected, the Fire Dawn had instead vortex-leaped to an unexplored, nameless world in an uncharted, far-edge system with a contracting red dwarf star as its dying sun. The Fire Dawn developed a malfunction during the landing sequence. She fell hard.”
Matt frowned down at the ground. “A’lia was critically injured. She went into premature labor, and we were systems away from civilization. The Fire Dawn had automatically sent repeated pulses from its distress beacon, but I knew no help would arrive for several weeks. I’d also beamed an emergency transmission requesting help from anyone in the area. No one responded. We were alone out there.
“I had only the ship’s medical supplies and medi-comp to rely upon. I’d sustained a broken leg and several broken ribs from the crash, but I spared no time to tend to myself or use any of the supplies for my injuries. I saved everything to help A’lia.” His lips twisted with bitterness.
I refrained from reaching out to hold his hand.
“She lost the child. It was stillborn. A’lia’s internal injuries were extensive. She… I couldn’t stabilize her and stop her from bleeding…. She lost consciousness in the end and died in my arms.”
Matt’s unsteady, deep sigh tore at my heart, but I remained motionless, listening despite my own inner torment.
“I sat beside her a long time, in shock, slowly dying myself. The broken ends from my ribs had dislodged in my efforts to help A’lia and our child. Broken bones had lacerated and pierced my lungs. I’d lost a fair amount of blood from internal hemorrhaging from my injuries. I didn’t greatly care. I wanted to be with my A’lia.”
Matt raised his head slowly to the sky and inhaled deeply before he turned toward me. He looked long and intently at me. “Forgive me, Kailiri, for baring my heart’s pain before you. Don’t ever think of it as a slight or rejection. You are as special and precious to me as A’lia was. I was drawn to you becaus
e you reminded me of her—in spirit. Physically, you and she could not be more different.” He smiled gently and continued. “She was the bright-haired, fair, laughing lady who graced the morning of my life. You are the shy, dark-haired, beautiful preserver of my approaching night… my magical moon mistress, who comforts my heart with silver fires of desire.” He raised a hand to smooth a dark curl from my eye where a sudden wind gust had blown it.
My stare fell from his searing gaze. “You haven’t been drinking Crynishan Dawns behind my back, have you, Matt?” I moved away and rose from the stone—and his touch. “You’re speaking in poetry again,” I said softly, remembering the night on the Sauran restaurant balcony.
I walked away several steps. It hurt too much to sit close to him, knowing he’d loved another. I hated myself for feeling that much hostility. Why couldn’t I be sweet—like his blasted, beloved A’lia? Disgust rose within me at my petty emotions.
“Please hear the rest of my story,” Matt said close behind. He startled me, for I hadn’t heard him come near, but I didn’t turn. He touched my shoulders in a warm, caressing grasp and rested his hands there. “I was close to death upon that uncharted world. I had even begun the long, cold spiral downward into death’s oblivion when I felt the awareness of something speaking to me in my mind. Not someone, but something, Kai.”
Matt turned me to face him. He transferred his grasp to my arms and locked me in place. “It called itself Timirshil-ka. It was curious at first, and then later it felt regret for me that my life force was ebbing. It understood spirit bonding between two entities, so it understood my anguish at losing my mate. It asked me if I wished to continue in my present life essence, or if I was intent on disassembling it. It would help me preserve my life essence if I wished to continue to manifest in this dimension.”
