by Louise Wise
Fly tucked into the food with relish. He chewed, swallowed and said, ‘It’s important we find out what is targeting them now, rather than be surprised later. I’ll fetch you the gun from the boat. In future keep it on your body all the time, even when you’re inside.’
He creamed off the last of the sauce from his plate with graddy leaves. Jenny had barely started her food.
He stood up, and took his empty dish into the kitchen. ‘I’ll get the gun and bring you more ammunition,’ he called over his shoulder. Then he was pulling on his boots. They were wet and squelched under his feet.
‘You can’t wear them, you’ll get trench foot,’ Jenny said. ‘Put dry ones on.’
Grunting, he did as she asked and then he was gone; banging out of the door.
Jenny rubbed her forehead. At least this latest obsession would stop him talking about their ridiculous suicide. She ate more sedately and then Fly was back with the gun and a pot of bullets. The gun was Bodie-made and their one and only firing weapon. It only fired two bullets at a time, three if Jenny held it at an angle, and was awkward to load. He placed it on the table as she ate her food. He’d also included a collection of knives and a bow with many arrows, which Matt had painstakingly made.
Matt had been ridiculously pleased with himself, she remembered, and he and Bodie had a competition on who had made the more effective weapon. She missed the guys. There was safety in numbers, although she didn’t doubt that Fly couldn’t keep her safe. She was one obsession that she didn’t mind him having.
‘You should practice using these,’ he said as he laid the arrows down next to the bow.
‘I can use a bow and arrow.’
‘You should still practise.’ He gave her a look that told her he wouldn’t rest until she did as he asked.
‘Can I finish my food first?’ she said sarcastically, knowing it would be met with a serious answer.
‘Yes.’ She was never disappointed. He left her eating, and from outside she heard the creaking door of the barn open as he entered it. Then came a lot of banging and sawing as he began making the shutters. She finished her food, tided the kitchen, checked the baking bread, and then pulled on her fur poncho and handmade boots.
She collected the bow and its arrows and took it outside where Fly had already completed the first shutter. Three very bright moons, all half crescent, shone down casting the typical perpetual light over Eden, the other moons were lost behind trees or the horizon. Jenny’s body clock was now set to Eden. They slept when they were tired: night and day being almost equal.
Fly was sawing pieces of wood over an old log, and had stripped off to his waist. Jenny paused to admire him before coming round to his line of vision. He straightened when he saw her and wiped sweat off his brow with the back of his hand.
‘Don’t you ever feel the cold?’ she asked.
‘Cold? It isn’t cold,’ he said.
She grunted and raised the bow. ‘I’m going to practise. Where’s my target?’
Fly looked around at the prairie, then pointed at a lone cow.
‘No way!’
He grinned.
She pretended to be offended, but was always pleased when he made a joke—he’d come a long way from the cold and distant man he once had been. She walked away to his laughter, tossing him a grin over her shoulder and then began practising firing arrows at a tree.
‘You are good,’ Fly said, after she’d been firing at the same tree over and over.
She turned to find him behind her. ‘See that last leaf hanging on the second branch on the left?’
‘I see it.’
Tongue protruding in concentration, Jenny raised the bow and shot an arrow straight at the leaf. It missed.
Fly’s laughter scattered grazing cows.
Jenny lowered the bow and stared at the leaf. ‘I was close.’
A large hand squeezed her shoulder. ‘Come inside now, you look cold. I’ve made the shutters, and I’ll fit them tomorrow in proper light.’ He pressed his body against her until she could feel the hardness of his erection.
‘I guess you want to warm me up?’
‘I do.’ His lips nibbled her ear and then the side of her neck.
A howl, as if a hundred honnards had grouped together for a communal gathering, broke them apart. Jenny, with a hand against her chest stared up at Fly in shock. ‘What the…’
Fly was looking towards the river, one hand still on Jenny’s shoulder. It dropped away as he made as if to head towards it, but Jenny grabbed his hand.
‘No, Fly. Leave it.’
He gave her a fleeting look, enough for her to see the energy dance in his black eyes and her belly lurched.
‘Don’t go. Stay with me.’
‘I’ve never heard them howl like that before,’ he said. ‘I have to go and see what’s going on.’
She didn’t have a chance to reply, because he spun her round and hurried her towards the house, pushing her inside and closing the door on in startled face. She heard him wedge something against it from the other side.
‘Lock it,’ he instructed from behind the door, and Jenny slid the bolt across.
There was no point resisting him.
‘Be careful,’ she said instead, her mouth closed against the door but he didn’t answer. She rushed to look from the window and watched him disappear over the brow of the hill. She listened for a splash as he dived into the river, but all was silent. ‘Oh, stop it, Jen,’ she admonished herself. ‘You’re going to end up as neurotic as he is!’
The smell of burning made her turn to the kitchen.
‘The bread!’ she cried. She cleared away the charred cinders and set to complete her mending to try and fill her mind. She wished she had a radio. Aside from her mum, she missed music the most.
She began to sing an old Elvis Presley classic, but stopped. She couldn’t remember the words. She tried to think of a current singer but couldn’t think of any names. In a moment of panic she tried to picture her mother’s face but couldn’t. She closed her eyes and gathered her thoughts. She tried to visualize her old home and even her car. Nothing. She tried to imagine Earth’s sky with its one sun and one moon, but all she could see was two suns and eight moons. She opened her eyes, pushed her mending to one side and went over to the window.
Fly’s anxieties niggled at her even though she’d told herself it was just him obsessing again. Maybe, subconsciously, he was doing it to keep him mind of her pregnancy?
The grazing cattle in the distance looked unalarmed, and all was quiet and peaceful outside. Fly could be such an old woman at times, she thought, and went back to her mending.
She put it down again and placed a hand on her stomach: movement.
Chapter Nine
As much as he loved Jenny, she frustrated him sometimes. He could tell she thought they were untouchable, separated as they were from the rest of the planet by a fast-flowing river, hard rock and the beach.
There weren’t many of the subordinate native wolves left in the old lair and their burrows looked empty of pregnant females and yapping cubs. Nine of them were sharing a hunt; tearing off flesh with their teeth or claws. They either hadn’t heard the collective howl, or were not concerned.
The four-legged natives were nowhere near as sophisticated as the honnards—they were aware of fire but hadn’t the intelligence, or inclination, to make it. They and the honnards were at the top of the food chain, so to have these proud primitive people unnerved and acting strangely needed investigating, whether Jenny liked it or not.
Fly came out of the jungle and stood on the moonlit plain. His body cast three shadows on the dusty ground. A far-off native howled, an animal screamed and the elecat in the jungle behind him hummed their peculiar song, but there was no more united howling.
The ground vibrated as a distant herd stampeded, followed by several howls; but this was the voice of honnards hunting: the ordinary sounds of Eden.
He hadn’t explored much of the planet—not since
Jenny had arrived, but it seemed to consist of ocean, thick damp jungles with higher, dry and dusty ground. There was a mountain range in the near distance, which he’d promised he’d climb one day and see what was over the other side.
If Jenny survived the pregnancy he would, he told himself. Maybe over the mountains there was better land to farm animals and grow crops. Maybe there were new creatures? More advanced natives? Who knew?
‘Che-lers!’
Fly swung round but could see nothing at first, then noticed a flash of yellow in the dark as a honnard peered out from behind a tree. These eyes were joined by more.
He was being followed!
He peered into the darkness of the wood. ‘Bargi,’ he said, then stepped forward with his hands outstretched in appeasement. Wind shot past his head and he ducked as a spear became embedded in the ground behind him. Turning, and keeping low, he ran towards an embankment of rock, jumped over, and ducked behind. He peered over the top; his throat contracting as venom bubbled to escape but the honnards hadn’t chased him. He could see them milling around on the plain: ten—eleven of them. Another group came out of the forest, increasing the number.
They’d be easy for him to kill; his poison was rapid fire but he didn’t want to kill them—he wanted to understand them. One of them howled and several others copied, making the noise travel further. They were all looking in the direction he had run and a few dropped to all fours telling him there were a mixture of honnards and native wolves.
A honnard smacked its own face. ‘Ji-ji,’ it cried.
Another howl, loud “chuff-chuffs” and then more cries ‘Ji-ji, Ji-ji, Ji-ji.’
Fly stood up. Could it be that they’d not recognised him? That they thought he was another honnard? He, apart from the hair on his head, was completely bare of hair. Every honnard and wolf he’d encountered had facial and body hair so to think there might be natives that were hair-free was a revelation to Fly.
The honnard, who, Fly guessed, had thrown the spear at him, smacked its face again. The others turned away and walked off into the horizon and finally, the shamed native, joined them. Fly clambered over the rocks and followed. They seemed to be heading towards where the old spaceship came down; not that it was easy to tell where it had been. The crater made by its impact was full of greenery. The honnards and native wolves stood on the lip of the depression and howled collectively.
A few paces behind, Fly watched.
One honnard shook his decorated spear at the sky, and one by one, they all copied. The staffs all had red-coloured twine resembling Jenny’s hair. The native wolves didn’t hold spears but rose up on two legs and stood as regally as the others.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Fly muttered. The English words slipped out involuntary.
He watched the natives until they turned from the crater and returned to the wood.
***
It was nearly dawn when he dived into the river and swam across. He pulled himself out the other side and ran up the hill. He saw the outline of Jenny at the window and knew she’d been watching for him. On reaching the house he pulled back the large water butt he’d pushed against the door and tried the handle, forgetting he’d instructed Jenny to lock it from the inside. He tapped gently as he shook off excess water from his body, and kicked off his boots.
‘Who is it?’ she said from the other side of the door. Obviously, her relief at his return had brought the playfulness out in Jenny.
‘Who do you think?’
They was no giggle this time, though. ‘I’ve no idea. Tell me who you are.’
‘Jenny, it’s me. Fly.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Is this one of your jokes?’ He spoke “joke” in English as if it was only a human characteristic and not a Jelvian.
He heard a giggle then and relaxed a little. She said, ‘How do I know you’re Fly? You might be an imposter?’
His hand dropped from the handle. At first, the “playful Jenny” was hard to understand. He hadn’t encountered much laughter or playfulness in his life, not that he didn’t like it, it was frustrating at first but he was quick to learn.
‘I am an imposter. A honnard.’
‘Really? The sexy one, I hope?’
He gave a low laugh, and said, ‘Sexy and wet.’
‘Isn’t that my line?’
Delightful visions danced in his head. He tried the handle again. ‘Open the door, Jenny.’
‘What will you do once you’re inside?’
‘Do? Can’t you let me in so I can show you?’ He imagined her leaning against the door, her arms folded, a smile playing on her mouth as she thought up more ways to tantalise him.
‘Oh, I think I need to know. Just so I can be prepared.’
‘I’m going to strip you naked and make love to you.’
‘I’m already naked,’ she breathed through the door.
She was the master at this game-playing. He pressed his forehead against the rough wood of the door. ‘Jenny, please,’ he said. His entire body was burning despite the coldness of the river. He felt the tiny hairs on his skin quiver in anticipation and when the wind blew a leaf against his arm, he jumped.
‘So tell me again,’ she said. ‘What are you going to do with me?’
‘Take you there and then. Hard.’
‘Hmmm, how hard are you?’
‘Jenny!’
‘Do you want to come in or not?’
He sighed. ‘Very hard.’
‘You’re not very good at door sex are you?’
‘Door sex?’
‘It’s the same as phone sex, except we haven’t a phone.’
‘Phone?’
‘Oh, never mind.’ He heard the scrape of the lock and waited until Jenny opened the door. She stood there with nothing on except a smile. Her clothes were on the floor behind her as if she’d hurriedly taken them off.
‘I don’t know whether to hit you for running off like that or… well, I’m choosing “or”.’ She turned around and began walking down the short passageway towards the living-come-bedroom. ‘Was everything OK?’
Fly took his time, watching the delicious swell of her buttocks as her hips swayed gently from side to side. He closed the door, pulled off his wet poncho and followed her into the lounge.
‘Everything OK with the honnards?’ she asked again. She was kneeling on the bed. Her hair was all tousled as if he’d woken her, and her cheeks were flushed from the fire and despite her playfulness there was anxiety in her eyes. ‘Why were they howling like that?’
Fly didn’t want to talk about the natives. He peeled off the rest of his wet clothes and threw them to one side, then knelt next to her, his hand tangled in her hair as he tipped her mouth to his. He marvelled again at how tiny she felt against him, he felt like a giant next to her and he could no more take her “hard” than he could not take her at all. Although she’d never complained when he was a little rough. In the early days, when they’d first come together as lovers, he’d been inexperienced at “making love”, as she called it. Making love was so different to sex. Sex was just an act. A way to relieve sexual tension.
He rested his hands on her shoulders and she shivered at their coldness. Pulling her towards him, their lips met in a crushing joining of mouths. They made love quickly, there on the floor, and he was rougher than he might have liked, but she didn’t protest, instead she urged for more. And later, after their breathing had calmed, they took their time building each other up and reaching the peak once again until they fell together in a tangle of arms and legs. And finally they slept as the suns brightened the sky.
They slept late the next day and were awakened by the baying of their cattle. They lay in each other’s arms, both feeling the chill, and both reluctant to move from the warmth of their bed.
‘I wish this moment could last forever,’ Jenny said, her cheek in the crook of his arm.
‘But what about breakfast?’
‘You’re so romantic.’
He c
huckled and began stroking her hair.
‘I was worried about you last night,’ she said. She looked up at him with reproach in her eyes. ‘You’re not invincible, Fly. The honnards outnumber us thousands or more to two. Your venom couldn’t kill that amount.’
‘I still don’t know why they relocated but I do know they don’t want to harm us.’
She raised herself up on her elbow. ‘You discovered something?’
‘Things are beginning to make sense now, and I believe it was Bo who tried to shake you from the tree. He didn’t want to hurt you. Just worship you.’
Jenny lay back down. ‘Funny way of showing it.’
‘We know that Eden has many species of native wolf with differing intellect, and our honnards have joined up with one of the more evolved group. Why, I’m still not sure. But we’re safe from them. You are anyway,’ he added remembering the spear, whizzing through the air, and missing him by inches. ‘Their settlement is much more advanced than the previous. They use fire more effectively and have caves instead of burrows. They have a guard that keeps watch over the camp, and they make more advanced tools like the spear.’
She sat up, pulling the covers up with her. ‘Rewind,’ she said, making a motion with her hand. She moved to her knees, wrapping the cover around her body. ‘A guard? What are they guarding?’
‘I think they use him to keep watch for spaceships. They’ve made the connection between the spaceships and you.’
A cow bellowed.
‘We all came from spaceships. They never worshipped Bodie and…’ She stared at him. ‘They did though, didn’t they? They never hurt them or you.’
‘And you stand out more.’ He reached up and threaded his fingers through her hair. ‘They see you as some kind of divine being.’
She gave him a suspicious look. ‘What did they think of my gift of hair? I bet they do weird voodoo spells on it.’
‘The leader has tied it around his staff. You’re their queen, Jenny, and they worship the remains of my spaceship. The loud howling we heard was a joint effort, and they were gathered around the crater howling and raising their decorated staffs to the sky like devoted disciples. You should have been there. It was moving.’
