The Lost Seal: A Seal Romance

by Bell, Victoria

  Right. Meaning that it’s not just us humans who still haven’t bothered to expand beyond our planet to the stars, then. Though I feel we should have, by now. I wonder if we’re still stuck on earth because of all the fuck uppery we like to do to ourselves. It stops us already colonizing places like Mars and setting up some kind of solar system defense parameter against hostile alien life.

  Then again, I pretty much didn’t know aliens existed until I got sucked into a spaceship by them.

  I imagine understanding that threat might encourage us to put aside our differences, stop fucking up the climate and whipping up our sixth mass extinction event.

  We humans can be stubborn, though.

  It also seems to mean that the Yaru are basically space pirates, stealing women without the planet’s consent or knowledge.

  “My advice is to deal and make the best of it for the best life you can get in our home,” Reon says, “or you will have a bad time. No other choices.”

  We erupt into arguments after that. To Reon’s credit, he doesn’t get irritated and asks us to shut up but does call for quiet when too many people are talking at once. He tries to answer all of us patiently, even if it’s basically him repeating the words: “Can’t do, sorry. Deal with it.”

  It’s not until after the lesson that he asks for Tia and me to stay behind. “I would like to teach you both more. Show you around. You’re intelligent females. You’ll be valuable.”

  Not that we have a choice, but we agree. Anything’s better than going straight back to our cells. I go to hold Tia’s hand, even as I say, “Valuable?”

  “Yes. You humongs are the first of your kind we’ve ever taken. You’re new and quick learners, and very pleasing to the eye. You are like us but without scales. And you have small tentacles, but with such color!” He especially looks at me as he says this and my red tresses. “Your noses are also flatter.”

  I can’t help myself. I start laughing at the way he pronounces human, and Tia joins in.

  “Oh, that was glorious,” I say.

  “Glorious?” he repeats, unfamiliar with the word.

  “Very very very good,” I supply, and he smiles.

  “Glorious. Is this meant in real or in jest?”

  “Both,” I say. “Your way of saying our species… is wrong, but funny.”

  “Then I will keep saying it as humong,” he answers, giving us both a wide smile. We erupt into giggles again. Ah, it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to laugh like this. Certainly glorious.

  It doesn’t take away the loneliness we feel, the fear we harbor for the fate that awaits us on their home planet. Will we be slaves? Will we be treated like pets or equals? We don’t know, but I find myself wishing for one desperate moment, that if I had to have one of these fucking aliens as a partner, I’d much rather have Reon as one. I don’t really know him, and for all, I might understand, he’s a monster on the inside, but he’s given me a good impression. The others are cold and mock us in the corridors. Now I understand their language better; I also understand the insults. I always pretend I don’t understand, which is what they expect. I suppose it takes other species a lot longer than the human pace to learn the language. And I suppose they underestimate us.

  Reon, at least, seems genuinely fascinated by us, even if it’s more like a scientist getting excited because a rat displays vast intelligence or something. I have a feeling that with him, at least I won’t have to worry about maltreatment.

  It’s hard to comprehend that level of horror he described their past for another alien species. I put human faces on them instead, imagining women burned at stake, having their organs cut out, infants abandoned in the cold like the Spartans of old, or the Chinese when they had their one child policy, creating a massive deficit in the male to female ratio.

  To the point where they too needed to steal women from other countries.

  When I make that comparison, it becomes easier to understand the alien’s motivations. It doesn’t mean I like it. How could I? I’d much rather be at home, studying, aspiring to go to college, aspiring to get a good job and a good boyfriend.

  But it’s true what Reon says, even if my stomach churns in dissatisfaction. We have to deal with it, or we don’t. Some of the women don’t deal, and I hear their broken sobs in the background when I try to sleep at lights out. They come into classes puffy eyed and listless.

  I, however, do everything to keep myself strong, though I still have my moments of rage and helplessness. My moments where I just don’t want to do anything at all. I find ways to cope, however. Whether it’s through my memories, or looking forward to the little things or pulling stupid faces in the mirror, I must.

  Tia is the same. Behind her dark skin and steely expression lies a vivid mind and a will of iron. She’s so much tougher than me, and it inspires me to be the same. We support one another by not breaking down, like the foundation of a house.

  Reon shows us around the entire ship, explaining the rooms, like the canteen, the recreation room, the flight deck. In the recreation room, as we pass, we hear, “Why are you leading two animals around? They’re dumb; they need more training. Why are they not on leads? What if they attack you?”

  “This is why you lot aren’t allowed females,” Reon shoots back. “Your attitude needs clearing before you’re qualified.” He then says in an apologetic whisper, “Males are not allowed females unless they pass a test and prove they are worthy to have them. Because females are so rare, we have high requirements to allow someone to have one.”

  “Really?” I say, and exchange a glance to Tia. Now, this is an interesting rule. One we both could get down with since it suggests that maybe we won’t be beaten and raped by our captors.

  “Did I mention,” Reon says then, “that these aliens are rapid learners? They already grasp most of what we say now. I suggest you apologize.” Reon nudges Tia and me.

  Tia grins as she says to the scowling aliens. “Yes. Apologize to us, please. You are very rude.”

  Their gobsmacked expressions have me, Tia and Reon laughing raucously as we leave the canteen.

  I think it’ll be a long time before we can feel the same ease we experience back on earth, or to learn to like who we’re with. It might be a long time before we discover a way to escape because I’m not going just to accept my lot if I think there’s the slimmest chance that I can be rescued, or rescue myself.

  It's a start in the right direction, anyway.

  Chapter Two

  We’re warned that the landing’s rough. The closer we get to our final destination, the more dread I feel. There’s no guarantee I’ll stay with Tia, or see Reon again, once we’re shuttled onto the planet and sent our merry ways.

  There are things I’ve learned about the Yaru, in-between my lessons and dreams of home. Since their idiot ruler in the past, the entire Yaru society had changed to compensate for the fact that their female population had been decimated. It took a while to elevate the women’s position again, even with a new ruler advocating it, since people still practiced the cruel customs for a few generations afterward. Some famous scientist or whatever discovered that Yaru DNA was highly compatible with an alien species from another planet, as well as turning out to be the dominant gene. This meant that their test babies came out as Yaru. The scientist, backed by other experts, proposed the radical solution of simply taking these women for themselves.

  The idea caught traction until eventually, the Yaru developed an entire system dedicated to the kidnapping of women.

  On our last lesson before we arrive on Yarussa, Reon tries to teach us some complex idioms, but I act disinterested. I’m thinking about the future that awaits. When the lesson finishes, he calls me aside.

  “A word with you, Esther.”

  Reluctantly, I slouch to his side, and Tia gives me a concerned look before she walks out of the door.

  “You weren’t focused at all this time.” He folds his arms in a familiar defensive gesture, the brow above his ey
elid raised up in concern. Yaru doesn't have eyebrows as we do, but they move by muscle, there all the same. I look up into his gray eyes, dark as storm clouds, and think again about the strange human quality of his face. Alien, yet familiar at the same time.

  “I’m not looking forward to arriving. It’s like – we finally have a kind of okay routine. I dislike my cell, but I like these lessons, and I like you.”

  “Ah.” Reon appears sad at this statement. “I understand.”

  “You’re more fun than the other aliens.” I direct a small grin his way, though I’m not really feeling it. He imitates the grin back.

  “Oh, we do have our sense of humor. The people on this ship, though, they have a different expectation of the women they collect. To them, you are all incoherent barbarians barely able to utter a word between you. No matter if you speak a language or not. And hiring language tutors takes a chunk out of their wages. It must be done, of course. And, well, they spend many months of their lives trawling space for women to take back to their planet, but they aren’t allowed to sample any for themselves. Unless they want to be executed. It’s not exactly exciting for them, either.”

  “Huh.” I consider the words. “I suppose I get that. Why did you choose to be a teacher, then? You’re stuck for months at a time, too.”

  “Well,” he says, pursing his lips thoughtfully and rubbing his hands together, “I like to get away from my family at times. My mother’s a purebred Yaru; she likes to go on and on about how special she is. My dad and I are quite fed up with it. As are my three brothers.”

  “Three brothers?” Listening to him calms me down, gives him more substance in my mind. A person with a family, and siblings. Being on here to get away from his overbearing family. These are things I recognize, and help anchor me to reality. They let me know that although I’m going to an alien planet, it’s not so far removed in that I can no longer relate to anything. Aliens have lives, too.

  Obviously.

  “Yes. They really want a girl, probably so my mother can go on about how special that girl is. So far, no luck.” He gives a little shrug. Even though we’re not talking so much about our inevitable departure, it’s still helping. I appreciate it, but again feel a pang of regret for the idea that I might be parting from the one alien who doesn’t seem like an asshole.

  Time to probe. “Do you want to wait for an uh, ‘purebred’ woman, then? I imagine your mother might put pressure on that.”

  “Well, she hints at it but is realistic enough to understand that female Yaru are special for a reason. So as long as I find a respectable race that doesn’t look like it’s come out of a chuktok’s behind, I’ll live.”

  Now I’ve just discovered he’s single and quite possibly looking for someone. He raises the muscle above his eye again, now appearing amused. I realize I’ve puffed out my chest and preened my red hair.

  “I'm not very subtle, am I?” I say, with an embarrassed laugh.

  “No,” he replies, his voice soft. Kind. “And I understand. I’ve shown you kindness. You will want stability if you think you can find it.”

  I can’t really deny it. “Yes,” I admit. “If I’m going to be sold off, I’d rather at least be sold off to someone I like. And you haven’t really given me a reason to hate you. Yet.”

  Reon locks his jaw for a moment, fingers tapping on his desk. He takes longer than I’d like to reply. “I wasn’t considering taking on a female if I’m honest with you. But, I think humongs will be popular when we take you to auction.” He closes his eyes, then opens them with a glint of determination. “I’ll see what I can do. I can’t promise you anything, but I’ll try and be at your auction. Okay?”

  I smile in relief. Less so about the idea of being sold off, more at the idea, Reon’s going to look into getting me. It’s not solid, it’s not a definite, but I’m glad he’s offering to try.

  “If I do win you,” Reon says, “I’ll do my best to keep your quality of life good. I’d like you to at least see the better side of Yarussa. And, who knows? Maybe you can learn to be a language tutor like me and travel.”

  Holy fuck. Now Reon must win me. My heartbeat increases about tenfold. It’s the first real glimmer of hope I’ve had in a long time. It pierces through the murk of a future I don’t want and gives it a marginally more bearable form. If Reon wins me, I might have the opportunity to travel with him.

  And find a way home.

  The hope flares brilliantly inside me. Of course, it can all go wrong from the offset. I know that. I shouldn’t get my hopes high, because if something’s too good to be true, then it usually is.

  Seeing my face fall slightly, though not knowing the reason behind it, Reon starts to entertain me with stories of when they accidentally scoop up the wrong alien genders. Not all aliens are clear cut in their biology, apparently, and it’s not until the aliens get their blood taken, that the Yaru realize they might have made a mistake in where they pointed their abduction light. Their solution for these cases is to pump the aliens full of hallucinogenic drugs and dump them back on their planets, so they think everything that happened to them was because of a chemically fuelled delusion. I find the image funny and smile, though again the mood’s muted when I see Reon’s home planet appear in the distance, through the reinforced glass windows of our classroom. I’m a little sick and tired of seeing nothing but space and stars.

  We’re all then ordered to go back to our cells to endure the oncoming landing. I brace myself as best as able, running through the options of what I might expect once I’m there.

  First off, I’d be insane to assume it’ll be a nice life, surrounded by gentle aliens who want nothing but the best for me. If that was the case, I never would have been taken in the first place. These aliens want females. Any females. For the explicit purpose of helping bump up their population again, thanks to past stupidity. Unless I lie and say we can only be pregnant like once every five years and they believe it, I’m going to be a sex slave. Unless they have some fancy protocol in how they treat females. Considering our own planet still treats women atrociously in many parts of the world, from female circumcision to general oppression, I’m sort of hoping the aliens will be marginally more civilized.

  They obviously have more sophisticated technology, which should be an indicator of cultural advancement. Maybe if I knew how to sing or something, I could entertain them. Unfortunately, my vocal talent is the equivalent of a frog being trodden on, I never really progressed past stick figures in drawing. I know all the prices of the shoes in our local city to the bones, though, and when most shops strike their bargain deals. I also know how best to use my flirting technique to get guys to buy me drinks or gifts. Hell, I never even learned any kind of self-defense. I did okay in science – actually, science was probably my best subject, but I didn’t focus on it as much as I should have because there was that whole stigma that only super nerdy people did science. I underplayed what I did know. I did have the occasional biology book at home, though, back when I got curious about why some people had brown eyes or blue, and why humans looked so damn different despite supposedly being the same species.

  I actually hid those hobbies from my friends, and never talked about them.

  Knowing how brown and blue eyes works doesn’t give me an exact advantage here. I’m practically useless. The perfect product of a middle-class white family upbringing, now shoved in the middle of the wilderness. God knows how the other women are planning to cope. In our language classes, I’ve seen a mix of the shallow, material girls who because they have absolutely nothing inside their heads, need to compensate for it by looking pretty and having expensive items. Then there are a few nerdy types who are clearly smart but emotionally fucked up in their own ways. We have a range of women from all over the world, presumably for alien sampling and diversity.

  It’s easy to be amazed at how different human women are, honestly. We’re probably a gold mine of genetic diversity for these aliens – not that it matters, I suppose, if thei
r genes turn out to be stronger. But if the aliens are anything like the humans back home, of course, they want strong, smart, healthy females.

  I wonder how many of the other women, alien or not, will crumble under what happens to them, or whether they’ll meekly accept their lot.

  I again picture my family back home. I know they would have reported me missing, I would have appeared in the local newspapers. People would likely report and say I was last seen in my little coffee shop, maybe they even saw me on the path back home. I wonder if CCTV will catch the alien ship, or whether for them it will just seem as if I’ve vanished off the face of the earth – which is unfortunately accurate in this context.

  My older brother won’t care, I think. He liked pretending his younger sisters didn’t exist at times. Gertrude will probably be in my room trying all my makeup, seeing my disappearance as an opportunity for her to take my things. My mother will probably be wailing her heart out and sobbing about her agony and perpetual suffering with other white mothers. She’ll also probably milk her sorrow in the local tabloids for some extra cash and to look like the perfect parent who just wants her baby girl back. My dad will just pretend nothing has happened and pointedly avoid my room or anything that would remind him of me.

  That’s pretty much my family in a nutshell. It comforts me, rather than makes me sad, imagining life going on as usual. It may not be nice or particularly flashy, but it’s just how things happen.

  It’s possible that the brief friendships I’ve managed to strike up won’t be happening either. Not if we’re all sold to different areas.

  The soft vibration I feel in the walls from the hum of the engines shivering hard. I don’t have a view of the outside in my cell, so I have to draw on my memories of films in the past where they show spaceships going through the atmospheric entry, maybe with a ball of fire around them. The shuddering gets to the point where my teeth chatter and my bones jar, and I wonder for a brief, manic moment if we’re going to die if there’s some faulty engineering in the ship that will lead to our demise. Possible, I suppose.