by V. K. Ludwig
“Jessica,” he shouted after me. “Tell me you’re coming to the plains with me.”
“I won’t.” And there was no zovazay to urge me otherwise. “Once my assignment is officially over, I’ll return to Earth.”
Twenty-Two
Jessica
Musty air lingered between the chamber’s columns, and each breeze pushing from the plains and through Noja’s northern gate let a new layer of moisture settle on my forehead and cheeks. It mingled with the smell of leather and yuleshi droppings as the tribe gathered to leave.
Neshta pressed her forehead against mine, but the gesture held more pain than comfort now as she whispered, “You will come and visit us in a moon, yes?”
A promise I’d made Kam, though the word visit hadn’t been part of it. Two days ago, I’d walked out on Katedo, only to turn heel ten seconds later and step back into his quarters. Just how did the proclaimed urizaya go about breaking up with the warlord? Worse yet, how did you explain that to his son?
Katedo once told me that, for the first time in history, Jal’zar and Empire stood united behind a lie. We went ahead and added another one to it, telling the tribe and Kam that the urizaya had to stay at the lab for another month. Enough time to bring distance between us, and allow Katedo to discuss this with Kam on his own terms.
But Neshta knew the truth.
“Remember, vasani tea makes everything better.” She rubbed her palms up and down along my arms and smiled at me. “And if it does not, add mokhot to it.”
I struggled against the urge to grin, because once my cheeks bunched against my eyes, tears were sure to follow. “Thank you for everything.”
With a final dip of her head, she turned away. As old as she was, she swatted Katedo away as he offered his help, and mounted her yuleshi as if arthritis wasn’t a thing out in the plains.
Kam rode Dinale up to me. “You can ride with me to the gate.”
I glanced at the far end of the chamber, where a gray veil of rain blocked most of the plains from my view, aside from the dark outlines of the mountain ridges in the back. “You gotta go slow, okay?”
His grin showed off a wiggly fang at the corner. “Yeki.”
Familiar hands gripped my waist as Katedo lifted me onto Dinale, his touch gentle and yet it strung my ribs tight, disabling my next inhale. I would miss his touch terribly. Something he’d gifted me in abundance, and that made all this hurt even worse: how loving and attentive he’d been.
“Hold on to me,” Kam said as he clicked Dinale into motion, joining the rows of yuleshis trudging toward the gate.
I wrapped my arms around his tiny chest from behind, no matter how little he could do to prevent a fall if it came to it. Something Katedo was aware of, because he walked right beside us, staring at the ground while he led his new yuleshi, Pekira. The female tossed her head toward Rogon, whose reins were tied to her saddle, but the male only groaned, unimpressed by her youthful nonsense.
“Yuleshis hate rain,” Kam said. “They’ll want to sprint. Until they realize they can’t run from it, and then they hang their heads and press their ears against their skulls.” There was an arrhythmic pause in his breathing, almost as if he could sense that something was off. Perhaps he did. “You’ll come, right? You’ll come to our tree once you’re done at the lab?”
“Of course.” But I wouldn’t stay. “I’ve never seen a mother tree large enough to hold a tribe, you know. Think you can show me how those nabus work? Maybe take me to a yoni?”
“Amimi knows how to braid them. She’ll teach you, and I’ll help you tame a yuleshi. We can go hunting together. Adi says nobody plucks a tendetu faster than me. You have to rub their feathers with ash, and it’ll go sooo easy. Nobody taught me. I figured it out myself.”
A bubble formed and expanded right beneath my throat. The thought of leaving Kam behind once I returned to Earth hurt, but not as much as this sense of betrayal that still roiled between my organs. By the Three Suns, I’d tried to overcome it, tried to see things from a different angle, but my vision reached no further than this pain beneath my ribs.
“I bet you’re a great teacher,” I said and stroked a hand through his hair the way I’d observed Neshta do it.
And there, at the left back side, was the scar she’d mentioned. I didn’t sense it so much on his scalp since Kam had full, straight hair like his dad, but the increased thickness of the bone underneath.
“Maybe I can try to braid your hair.” He gave a reluctant glance over his shoulder, frowned up at my hair, then shook his head. “Or maybe you can braid mine. But only before I sleep. Sometimes, the nabu twinges my hair and it hurts a little.”
My heart took on the beat of the paws around us, pounding so hard it drove little cramps across the muscle. And what if I simply stayed on Dinale and came to the plains with Katedo? He’d lied to me, yes, but only because he didn’t want me to get hurt.
I could forgive him that.
But roam the plains with the heat suppressant injector dangling from a belt? Watching all those bonded couples around me share this deep connection, while I wondered if what Katedo told me was the truth? I just… no, I couldn’t do it.
There are no secrets in zovazay, no lies, he’d once said, you fully bare your soul to your mate. He’d also told me that he couldn’t give me what I wanted. I should have listened. Katedo was so terrified of zovazay, he couldn’t give me his soul.
But he’d given me everything else…
“It’s time to say bye, or Jessica will get soaked,” Katedo said, and gave a tug on Dinale’s rein. “A moon is not very long. We’ll be so busy setting up our home, it’ll pass in the flick of a tailclaw.”
Kam’s shoulders rounded, but he eventually nodded. “I’ll make you a yalat, Jessica. For your yuleshi.”
My voice wavered when I slipped off Dinale and said, “Sounds great.”
Katedo gave a tap against the mount’s rump. “Go check on amimi. Lead the tribe for me. I’ll be right there.”
His gaze remained on Kam for long moments. In a way, I wished it had stayed there because, when he finally looked at me, the red rimming his eyes near choked me. He hadn’t slept much, and had probably tossed in his pod as much as I had these last two nights.
“You, um…” His pupils flicked from nut to nut on the metal rafters above, nodding as if they assured him of the structural integrity. “Remember to isolate yourself from Warlord Toagi’s tribe as best as you can. At least until everyone has been checked for the virus, though those deemed potential hosts have already been separated. Still, Noja won’t receive the first batch of the new vaccine for another couples of suns. So, um, I guess what I’m trying to say is, um…” His eyes finally locked with mine, looking more than ever like the ocean underneath the moon with how they turned watery. “I just want to say… be safe.”
No, what he wanted to say was that he loved me. Something he’d told me a hundred times with words, with his touch, his attention… but it was also reflected in his fear and concern for those he loved. Of the many things he’d made me doubt, his feelings for me were never one of them.
Then what was I so afraid of?
When Pekira tossed her head at Rogon once more, he gave a tug on her reins and hissed before his attention returned to me. “Do you have everything you need?”
No, because I needed him. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
“Good,” he said, lips shifting with how he ran his tongue along the sharpest points of his fangs. “Thank you for having breakfast with us one more time this morning. Kam had a lot of fun.”
“Mmh.”
“Before you come and visit us, I’ll speak to him, though I’m not certain if he hasn’t figured it out already. When I told him that you were so busy you stayed at the lab overnight, well, he didn’t look convinced.”
I struggled up a half-smile. “What do you expect from a boy who managed to escape his overbearing adi several times?”
That drew one of his mesmerizing smirks to his mout
h, which weakened my knees all over again. Katedo was beautiful with all of his scars — inside and out. So why had I walked out on him the way I feared he would on me? Why send him away?
“He’ll certainly let you know if I fall back into old patterns,” he said and stepped up to me, letting his eyes linger on my mouth before they found mine again. “The last of my warriors will leave the next sun. If you need anything, anything at all, or… if you want to get a message to me while our satellites aren’t set up yet, you tell them, yes?”
I wrapped my arms around myself before I wrapped them around him, my breathing nothing but choppy and flat. “I’ll probably be busy with this entire rotation thing. The way you guys organized this is quite impressive.”
His hand reached for my cheek, then stalled, until he closed the distance between us with one step and cupped my face. “I never meant to hurt you.”
My gaze sunk quickly enough it distributed that tear in my left eye enough it neither pooled together nor dared to fall. “I know.”
Katedo hadn’t acted out of malice or carelessness, but fear. He was as scared of succumbing to a soulbond as I was of living without it, each for reasons borne of loss.
His gaze wandered to the cot Lacassa, a shimid, dragged behind her yuleshi. Sevja slept on it, though she’d regained consciousness earlier today, if only for a minute, from what Neshta had reported.
“I need to leave.” He gave Pekira a quick pat against the shoulder before he swung himself onto her back, then reached down and stroked through my curls one last time. “You are a wonderful woman, Jessica. I wish I could have been better to you.”
Nobody had ever been this good to me, and yet I only managed a shrug and watched as he trotted off with his tribe. Our eyes connected at least a dozen more times as I stared behind him, and he glanced back at me until he disappeared behind the veil of mist. And with him, the tail-end of the tribe.
He didn’t want to leave me behind.
I didn’t want him to leave without me.
The massive gate slowly lowered from the top, and each rusty screech it gave sent a shudder across my skin. Memories of Katedo’s words blended into it, reaching deep into a core that filled with jitters and restless energy. What was I doing here?
All this time, I’d wanted zovazay so someone wouldn’t just walk out on me again, leaving me alone, drifting. Instead, I had walked out on Katedo, even though he’d given me everything I’d always wanted. And he’d done so not because zovazay urged him to, but because he loved me. Truly loved me.
And I loved him, so why couldn’t I offer him the same? He’d told me I wanted zovazay because it was more convenient than having to trust. That wasn’t it, though. The true reason was fear — for both of us.
I feared not having him without zovazay.
He feared losing me with it.
And what did it make me if I succumbed to my fear even though I’d tried for weeks to help him overcome his? A hypocrite. One who would lose not just Katedo, but an entire family if I didn’t overcome my fear.
Because one of us had to.
And if the warlord couldn’t do it, then the urizaya had to, if only to call him out on his bullshit.
“Stop that gate!” The squeak of my soles resonated the abandoned chamber as I sprinted toward it. “Don’t lower that gate. Stop it!”
It stalled right there, and two warriors ran toward me. “Urizaya. What’s the matter?”
I sprinted past them without saying a word, my chest heaving as I ran up the waterlogged incline. One foot slipped out underneath me. I kept pushing. Curled my soles around the furrows chiseled into the rock.
I shielded my eyes from the rain, already shivering as fat drops soaked my dress. “Katedo!”
Another step.
I slipped.
My leg ripped out underneath me, throwing me off balance. The world turned topsy-turvy for a second. My head hit the rock with a clonk. A shockwave swept through my skull, drowning my thoughts in ripples of white that swallowed me whole.
Twenty-Three
Katedo
Muscles tired from argos of spanning nabus from branch to branch on our new mother tree, I leaned my head back against the stony edge of the yoni, and let the hot water engulf me. For three suns, we’d travelled, stopping often so the elders, young, and injured could rest.
Steam rose from the pink-shimmering surface, wafted around the salt stalactites above, then ran down along their smoothed surface and dripped back into the water. No good for drinking, but with strong healing properties that soothed away the pain on my horn, my fingers, my leg…
Everywhere but my chest.
Beneath bruised ribs, a black void expanded more with each sun away from Jessica, each recalled memory of her, each sleepless night where I didn’t have her in my arms. Shimids said there was no greater emotional pain than the severing of zovazay.
This came pretty damn close.
In fact, it consumed me so fully, ate me from the inside as if to give that void more room to expand, I couldn’t help but wonder why I’d denied Jessica zovazay. Either way, there was pain. Something I’d been addicted to for solar cycles. Now? It felt like a strange entity, a sickness or virus, but not even the mineral-rich water could make it go away.
Bracing my palms against the stone behind me, I lifted myself out of the yoni and rose. Once I stroked most of the water from my hair, I put my loincloth back in place, and stepped outside.
The yoni was situated a fair walk away from our tree, the path marked by hundreds of luminescent flowers that shone underneath the bright red moon. Purple flames crackled across the gathering area of the main camp — one of five — the smoke thick with fragrances of herbs Reiko must have tossed into the fires. To ward off the spirits of our dead enemies, she’d said, which a group I’d sent ahead had burned before our arrival.
Mother sat cross-legged on a grass mat beside Sevja’s fur-lined cot, feeding her vasani tea one sip at a time. By the sharpness of its scent, enriched with strong mokhot.
I sat down beside Sevja, and Feoni immediately climbed onto my lap, pounding my chest, rubbing the itchy nubs of her emerging horns against my arm. “How are you?”
Sevja blinked up at me from half-lidded eyes as if she needed time to process my question. After two suns, she’d regained consciousness. She’d spoken little and cried much. Now she spoke even less, the crying had stopped, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
“Well enough, my urizayo,” she mumbled, gaze softening around the corners as she watched Feoni rub her tired eyes. “Aside from the pain in my chest.”
One might expect someone as familiar with loss as I knew what to say, but I didn’t. Somehow, my lips parted anyway, the words which followed not mine, though they felt on my tongue as if they should be.
“Pain serves as a reminder that, love once existed in its place. That’s precious, but only if you don’t let it turn you bitter. The freeraiders took much from you, but your memories of Faruk are yours to keep until you reunite within Mekara.”
Mother scoffed and tilted the clay mug against Sevja’s lips once more. “Such wise words from such a foolish mind.”
Because they weren’t my words but Jessica’s. I said nothing to Mother’s remark, though, because it was the first time she’d spoken to me in suns. Still, she couldn’t be more disappointed in me than I was in myself.
Sevja’s gaze went cross-eyed for a second before she blinked herself out of it, and squeezed my hand. “They took much from you, too. First one urizaya, then another.”
The fine hairs lifted at the nape of my neck. “But Jessica is fine, Sevja, remember? We told you when you asked for her last sun.”
But Sevja’s eyes had already fallen shut again, and Feoni gave little grunts, kicking her legs as she scooted back into her mother’s arms.
I arched a brow at Mother. “Perhaps less mokhot in the tea?”
“Vasani tea makes everything better.” She downed the rest in one swallow.
“Not if it disorients her to a point she’s talking nonsense.”
“Is she?”
I waved at a now passed-out Sevja, her arms wrapped tightly around her daughter. “She thinks Jessica is dead.”
Mother rose, already turning her back on me again as she glanced over her shoulder. “Once again, you have not listened. Sevja never said anything about death.”
With a sigh, I grabbed another piece of dried dung, tossed it into the fire, then picked up Feoni. I walked the gathering area with her until I found her adidi, Sevja’s father, who’d fashioned the arrows for our tribe for as long as I could remember.
“Sevja fell back to sleep and it’s not safe for Feoni near the fire,” I said, leaned over, and handed him the girl. “Once everyone has a nabu and we set up the satellite connection, I’ll find a female to help Sevja until she’s better.”
Setosh took Feoni into his arms, chuckling at how she hissed. “Ah, just like my Sevja was at that age. My urizayo is too kind, but my daughter was born a fighter. Even during the occupation, she would not let anything keep her down for long. She will overcome this, too.”
“I know she will.” I pointed at his gnarly fingers. “Still, with that gout of yours, caring for Feoni until then will be difficult.”
“Thousands of arrows, these fingers have fashioned.” Their knuckles so stiff, his arm shook when he bent and stretched them. “And I will fashion thousands more. What an oddity that the very thing that gave me these pains in the first place is what keeps it away, if only I keep moving them.”
My eyes focused on the callouses, the old cuts, the roughened skin on his fingertips. They’d seen a lifetime of hard work, just like I’d seen half a lifetime of hardship. That very thought made me consider his words more closely. Making arrows gave him pain, and took it away.
