by E A Comiskey
Hala touched my arm. "Do you want anything else?"
"I want to be out of this place."
A moment later we were back on the street, Hala carrying his purchase in a large pack on his back. The drizzle had turned to true rain, but instead of driving the population to take cover, they seemed to revel in it, faces to the sky as the rain pressed their scant clothing tight against their skin. The woman who'd made the offer to us before we went in the store had found a customer, but apparently neither of them had been concerned about going back to her room. A group of men with brass horns stood under a canvas awning.
I would have expected the rain to clean the intoxicating scent from the air but, if anything, it magnified it, adding overtones of urgency to the ever-present nagging of desire.
Hala and I pressed our backs to the wall in an attempt to stay dry under the meager overhang of the roof, two stories above.
I found my eyes drawn back to the woman and her lover. In my mind, Hala knelt between my legs in the candlelit room we'd shared the night before. A trickle of sweat ran down my spine.
I looked up at him. He held my gaze for a long moment before grabbing my hands and pulling me into the deluge. My clothes were plastered against my skin, my hair hung wet against my back. Rain ran over my face and dripped from my nose and chin. He pulled me to the center of the street, lifted me, my stomach against his chest. His arms wrapped around my thighs, just under my buttocks. He turned his face to the sky and cried out in wild abandon, spinning me around and around until I dissolved into laughter in his arms. He laughed with me, setting me on my feet, but refusing to release me from his hold. "There's beautiful music, Jax. Can you feel it?"
I could. In the pulse of his heart, beating against my own chest and the spinning movements of his feet on the rain-slick pavement, I felt it.
"I am alive with you," he said. "I'd forgotten what it was to revel in life, Jax." He bent down, his lips to mine, running his tongue over my teeth, pressing me against him so tightly I was bent back. I clung to his powerful arms, slid my hands up to his shoulders wrapped his long braid around one fist and pulled. He pulled back, just long enough to raise his eyebrows at what I'd done, and then his mouth was on my neck, and the heat in my body was concentrated under his touch. I tried to wrap my arms around his back, but I couldn't.
The guns were in the way.
~*~
We stayed in Orleans for only one more day, just long enough to replenish our supplies.
Leaving the city behind us, we all breathed a long sigh of relief. A thick haze lifted from my mind, and my steps grew lighter and quicker the further away we traveled.
"What is that smell?" I asked.
"Salt water," Risa said.
Less than an hour later, we stood at the edge of the salt water sea, a body of water so vast it appeared to simply spill off the edge of the earth in the distance. Large, sleek fish as long as a man leapt from the water, one after another, in graceful arcs. In the far distance a smudge of black rose up against the horizon.
"It's a ship," Hala said. "There aren't many, but a few travel these waters."
We walked due west, staying a course that was somewhat parallel to the coast. When the sun hung low enough to burn our eyes, we found a wooded hilltop and pitched our tents there. We ate the food that Stella had pressed upon us and talked of the strange sea. Throughout the day the waves had grown.
"I have a feeling there is a storm moving across that water," Hala said. "We should move further inland tomorrow. Dragon spoke of the storms. They're not to be taken lightly."
I took a bite of the heavy bread in my hand and let my eyes and thoughts move to Risa.
With little warning, she rose and stretched. "I'm exhausted. I'm going to bed. Sleep well."
Hala and I were alone.
"You can't keep doing that to her," he said.
He was right. Literally, I wouldn't be able to keep doing it forever. She would grow immune to my Gift. I should save it for some important moment, but I couldn't help myself. I hadn't even thought to do it. In my greed for Hala, my will had slipped. He had overpowered my common sense. "You don't want to be with me?" I asked.
"You know that I do."
I did know, but he led me to my tent and proved it to me, anyway.
Seventeen
The air felt weirdly heavy.
"It's so quiet," Risa commented. "Like there isn't a bird in the sky for a hundred miles."
Hala glanced toward the sea, though it was much too far behind us now to see. "We should keep an eye out for sturdy shelter."
~*~
The little village was deserted. A circle of log cabins had been erected around a central courtyard of sorts. It appeared to be a garden, though in this season little was growing there other than a few small leafy greens. The houses had boards nailed across the windows. They sat low to the ground with stone-and-mortar chimneys. A larger building that I took for a barn was built on a stone foundation that ran the length of several houses. Hala turned in a slow circle, looking over the village. "There are footprints on the doorsteps," he said. "These people haven't been gone long."
"Where are they?" I asked. Usually when we came into a village they came out to greet us or warn us away.
A cold wind picked up my hair and threw it across my face.
"They're hiding from the storm," he said, striding toward the windowless barn.
A raindrop smacked my arm with surprising force. Three more followed in quick succession.
Hala banged on the door, and it was opened a crack by a short, powerfully-built man with a bushy beard that reached down to his chest. His whiskers covered his mouth, so I couldn't see what he was saying. Hala was at my side, but it wasn't hard to get the gist. In seconds, the man was shaking his head and trying to push the door closed. Hala held his hand against it, keeping it open, clearly arguing for him to let us inside.
I exhaled slowly, focusing on the man's dark brown eyes. He relaxed, letting Hala push the door all the way open and stepped aside to let us in.
Hala glanced at me, but said nothing.
About thirty people were scattered around the room. They seemed to be human, but they looked strange to me. Their heads were too long, their mouths too small, their eyes too round. Every one of them glared at us. Only the little group of children playing a game with colored blocks on the floor paid us no attention.
"Who are you?" a woman with long, thin, reddish hair asked.
Hala answered for us all.
"Why have you come here? We don't let strangers into our community. How do we know you don't carry the fever?" another woman, older than the first, asked, standing up and backing away from us.
Again, Hala answered.
Something smacked into the building, hard enough to make it shake.
"Tree's down," I saw a man say. Everyone glanced at the ceiling.
Hala moved his hands quickly. "Use your Gift. You don't want to be out in this storm. It sounds like war on the rooftop."
I felt the radiant love move out of him in powerful waves I'd never before experienced. I matched his effort with my own, moving through the people one at a time, telling them to accept our presence and welcome us.
The group stilled, shifted almost as one. The woman who'd first spoken smiled, revealing gums containing only a few broken teeth. "Come in and sit. Hungry from your travels?"
We allowed ourselves to be led to the table and, as I sat, her hand pressed against my back for a moment. She froze, a blank expression sliding over her face before the smile returned, larger and more disturbing than before. "Are you able to eat, dear? Has the sickness come yet?"
I frowned, not knowing what she meant.
"No. No, it wouldn't come yet. The baby hasn't taken root yet, but when it does, she may give you a tough time. She'll be a fighter all her life, but great things will come from her." The woman brushed my cheek with grimy, too-long fingers. I struggled not to recoil. "You've made a wonderful mistake that will res
ult in something extraordinary for us all," she said before turning her back on us and shuffling away to sit at one of the tables.
Hala stood nearby, wide-eyed and silent.
This was a good-sized village compared to some we'd seen. Judging by the smoky fire they cooked over and the wooden spoons they ate with, they were in no danger from the technology-hating Fae.
Once we were seated with bowls of stew in front of us, they all ignored us and went back to what they were doing. Several men gathered in one corner. By their tapping feet and rhythmic movements I surmised they were making music, though I wasn't sure how that could be as all they had seemed to be random household items: an old jug, a plastic comb, a strip of tin, and other such junk.
Half a dozen children played on the floor with a bouncing ball and colorful sticks. They moved their left arms freely, but their right arms were twisted at an awkward angle and didn't seem to bend in the right places. Only two of them appeared to be unhampered by the deformity, but one of those two stared off toward a corner of the room, a thin line of drool hanging from his mouth.
Two young men, one of whom had an eye that was so small it was nearly unnoticeable, sat at the end of the table, talking and staring at us.
Unease pulsed through my veins. Hala casually walked around the table, nodding politely at the people he passed and came to sit behind us, creating a barrier between us and the people of this place.
"Something is wrong here," Risa signed.
I nodded. I'd seen this happen in the north. In very remote places there were small groups of people who had little contact with the outside world, and so they bred with one another over and over again. Less than a year before the blood drinkers came for me, we went to raid one such village, only to find they were all already dead. So far as we could tell, a single woman went through the houses in the night, slitting the throats of the others and writing on their walls in blood. When she was done, she went to the center of the town and lit herself on fire.
A man passed, a long knife hanging from his belt.
"We're here to ride out the storm," Hala said. "It will be fine."
I shivered and scooted closer to them. Risa was right. Something was wrong in this place. Something more than a few malformed arms. The way we were watched created a feeling within me that I'd experienced, but never quite understood before.
We were prey.
The stew sat untouched upon the table, and the woman who had served it returned. "Something wrong?"
"No. We appreciate the food," Risa said. "We're just not used to storms like this. We're a little nervous."
The wind shook the building on its stone foundation. Risa's words were not unbelievable.
The woman reached forward with a six-fingered hand, the smallest digit hanging, limp and useless, to clear the dishes away. She laughed, shaking her head. "We've seen a hundred storms like this. This building will hold, you mark my words. Within a day the birds will be singing in the tree branches again."
"Never seen a storm like this?" One of the men from the end of the table loomed over the woman's shoulder. "You must be from pretty far away."
"That's true, sir," Hala said before shifting to the back of us.
"Are you demons from Hell?" the other man asked, joining his friend.
The woman turned and shoved at the man, pointing a finger in his face. I couldn't see what she said, but I saw his mouth clamp shut, his lips pressed in a thin line.
She stormed off, and the second man slapped his shoulder with a laugh. "…about her," I saw him say. He pulled up a chair and dropped into it. "I'm Billy," he said. His right arm lay crookedly in his lap. Was no one here unaffected by these strange deformities? "This here's Luke."
Hala's hands rested on our shoulders. I didn't know what he said, but the men looked at each other and burst into laughter.
"Don't seem right for one man to have two women, now do it?" Luke said.
"Don't seem right t'all," Billy answered.
"Don't know why any man'd want to tie himself to two women. Seems like more trouble 'an it's worth," Luke said.
Billy's eyes roamed down the length of my body. "Mayhap you ought to leave one here."
"Or both," Luke said. "Be a free man and let us take care of these girls."
Hala said something more, and their smiles dissolved into masks of hatred. "You don't know nothing 'bout us and what we're capable of," Luke snarled, standing so abruptly his chair fell. "How's about we send you back outside to see how well you fare?"
We were the center of attention once more.
I poured myself into Billy's eyes. He frowned at me, hesitated, and then pulled on the other man's arm. "Come on, Luke. No trouble during the storms. You know the rules."
Luke let himself be dragged away, but when they'd settled back in to their original spot he glared at us.
I spoke silently. "I used my will on him, but he resisted. I have very little power in this place. Something about them… they're not normal."
"Come on." Hala pulled our chairs to a corner. Here, we could all more-or-less have our backs near the wall and still see one another. We sat still and quiet, trying to disappear into the shadows, but it wasn't working.
"They're all talking about us," I said.
Hala nodded.
"New blood," I said. "Those are the words I see on their lips."
He watched the room with one hand resting on his stomach, looking for all the world like he was perfectly relaxed. No, not on his stomach, I realized with a start. On a gun, tucked in his waistband.
My body grew stiff in the hard-wooden chair, and still we did not move or talk. Gazes flashed in our direction. The people shifted and moved so they sat in two groups, the men and the women. It looked like a council meeting. We remained silent and observant.
A girl stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the room, near where the women sat. I hadn't even seen her. She stayed near the wall, walking as though praying no one would notice the movement. Her long red hair hung in two braids, almost to her waist. Her steps were even. Her arms hung straight at her sides. She's very pretty, I thought, as she came closer.
She was not unseen. We were watched, and so was she, but she kept her back to the room and knelt in front of us.
"When this storm is over, where you goin'?" she asked.
"West," Hala answered.
"My name's Alma." She peeked over her shoulder and then looked up at him with clear blue eyes. "Take me with you."
Hala's chin lifted a fraction of an inch. "That's probably not a good idea," he said.
She peeked again. The frank curiosity of the others didn't seem to deter her. "It is a good idea. I'm a hard worker. See how clean this place is? That's my job. I've got two good arms, and I can cook and clean better than the other girls. You've got two women. A third would be nice, no?"
He was visibly taken aback at that, coming from this child.
Risa leaned forward, elbows on her knees, so she was closer to the girl's level. "Why do you ask this of us?"
She looked at each of us in turn before answering. "Every year we have fewer babies. The ones with the problems--the arms and such--they can't always… their wombs don't hold the child."
"But you are whole," she said.
"I'm twelve years old now. My woman's time will come soon. I don't want to be a breeder. Better to be the tied to one man with two others to divert his attention, than an object owned by the village."
The world tilted beneath my chair.
"Alma. I'm just not sure…" Hala was speaking, but I couldn't follow his words.
"An object, owned by the village."
It was much too far into the dark time to consider going anywhere. The snow covered the rooftops, and even the dogs could freeze in weather like this. The fire in the dining hall was enough to keep the beer from freezing. We ate in heavy coats, never taking our boots from our feet.
"Oiy! Get off me, brute. I'm tryin' to eat." Dika shoved her drunken assailant a
way. He stumbled against the table behind him, roaring with laughter.
"Come on, woman! A man has needs on a cold night."
"Get your rocks off on someone else, Ujarak. Your seed smells like rot."
My father slapped the table, laughing as hard as the others. "Good news, Uja!" he said, grabbing me by the back of my coat and lifting me to my feet. "This one finally made herself useful. She's a woman now. I opened her up for you already."
Ujarak's black eyes fell on me, and I couldn't stop the tears that sprang to my eyes. The night my father had first come to me I knew he'd share me like this eventually, but still, I had hoped…
The man's filthy hands pulled at my pants. My father held me, pinned to the table while the village went on with their business.
The other men were excited at the prospect of something new…
I swallowed hard and interrupted whatever Hala was saying. "We will take you with us," I said.
All three of them stared at me.
"We will find a way. And you will not be Hala's woman. You will be your own person, free to live as you choose. Free, as all people should be free."
"Jax…" Hala began, but something in my eyes must have spoken to him of how serious I was. He didn't know the details of all that had happened to me, but he knew enough. Finally, he nodded. "Alright," he relented. "But be ready to run, girl. These people won't be happy to see you go."
Tears poured down the girl's cheeks. She grasped my hand and clung to it. "Thank you. You don't know… thank you."
The man with the small eye walked toward us, looming over Alma, leaning in as if to purposely cast his shadow over her slight frame. "What are you bothering these people for, girl?"
She shook her head, but didn't look up at him.
"Nothing. I'm not. I just… I"
"She was just checking to see if we needed anything," Risa said. "We appreciate your hospitality. All of you."
Go sit down. Leave us alone. I pushed at him with everything in me.
