“The females which dwindle?” she asked.
Gary nodded. “That is part of it. The 'Band' as you call them were a police of sorts.”
“A which?” Rowenna asked.
“A group of protectors.”
“Against whom?”
“The people which reside between the clan and the sphere-dwellers,” Gary answered.
“Who are the fragment? Why are they allowed to flourish?” Her eyes shifted between the two. Could they not, with all their advancements, purge this vile faction forever?
Finally, the one that could not speak clearly said, “They're the prisoners of our time.”
Rowenna thought she had misheard.
Gary repeated it for her in a tongue that did not falter, “They are the people that will never be civilized, whom transgress criminally against all they interact with.”
Rowenna's head spun with the ramifications. They were not people from here, from her time. They were criminals from the future. Human dregs to be set upon this land for the Band to deal with.
Rowenna's expression darkened.
Joe said to Gary, “They might have an 1890s understanding but this girl isn't having any trouble connecting the dots here.”
Gary shook his head. “Believe me, if there was another way to fix this debacle, I'd be on it. But this is the only way. We need to fix this catastrophe of genetics before the spheres diverge further.”
Rowenna said, “So the Travelers divest themselves of the horrors of their time by depositing their inhumane for us to govern? And now, you come to me to breed with a sphere-dweller to help you? I think not.” Rowenna crossed her arms underneath her bosom.
They were clearly mad.
Gary pulled out his Ace of Spades. “Rowenna. If you do not assist in this matter, all the kin you may have will be doomed to a future of madness and physical depravity.”
She rolled her lip into her teeth, biting on it as she deliberated over his words.
Gary interrupted her musing, “We have already seen such in one of the spheres. There has been too many that mate too closely. It causes the mind to soften in the offspring, the physical traits which are weak become magnified. This pathway will widen, taking all that come upon it, the spiral of which will take humanity to its knees.”
“You sound like a poet,” Joe said.
“Shut up, it's how they communicate.”
Rowenna thought of the beautiful children she would have once mated. She thought of the world they may face in the future. True, she would not be here to see the outcome but to know of it now...
“Who is this sphere-dweller?” Rowenna asked. Hating that she would be a whore for the Travelers. She determined she would extract her pound of flesh before this vile transaction commenced.
“He is a king of the sphere. He is to marry a neighboring Princess from another sphere.”
“Marry?”
“Mate. They call it a Wedded Joining.”
“It is 'marrying' in your time?” she asked.
He nodded.
A young man came out of the woods after his words were swallowed in the glade, the thin air stealing them.
He was awkward and thin, his hair dark, his large eyes on her face. He blushed and she realized he was but a year or two older than she.
“Is this he?” she asked, approaching him. Rowenna circled around him, noting his uncomfortable-looking garments. They were completely wrong for the climate.
Raymond looked upon the girl and thought he had never lain eyes on anything lovelier. Her eyes were the violets of the books that described such things and her hair a woven tapestry of gold, the colors rioting in the bright sunlight. He had never been Outside before and was overwhelmed by all of it. He could not help but notice the delicate gills upon her neck. Her slender, beautiful neck.
She stopped dead, her eyes spying something behind his back. “What have you that you are hiding?”
Raymond smiled. He brought out that which he had thought to bring at this auspicious meeting.
Rowenna gazed upon it and thought it lovely. The blooms of the strange flower, wrapped each other in a tight bud which spiraled in a wonderful way in its center, forming a bud. It was a bright tangerine with a hot pink center. He handed it to her and she took it.
“Smell its core,” Raymond instructed her.
She did, bending her head over the fragrant bloom, its smell reminding her of the citrus fruit which grew in their houses of glass. She looked up and met his eyes.
They were kind and bright. Eyes a female could love.
Raymond turned to Gary with a frown. “I must marry Princess Ada?”
He nodded.
“I have told you how I feel about this. This female will bear my child, yet I will not know what becomes of her. I cannot protect her.”
“I do not need your protection, sphere-dweller,” Rowenna said.
He looked at her for a few moments and she grew ashamed by rejecting his kind offering. “Mayhap, but I would give it to you nonetheless. It is what is true, Rowenna. I would mate with you but if it were allowed. Unhappily, it is not.”
They looked at Gary and he shifted uncomfortably.
“All that I may afford you is the guarantee that your daughter will come to your clan when she reaches maturity. She will be the genetic key to the succession of both the clan and sphere-dwellers. There is not another way. It is her blood, solely hers, that will allow the survival of the human race,” Gary promised.
Raymond nodded slowly. “Know this, Travelers. That if I had any way save the weight of the coercion you have laid upon us this day, I would take this woman in a Wedded Joining.”
Gary nodded. “We are aware of your integrity, Prince Raymond. It was one of many reasons you were chosen. You, above almost anyone else have seen what is becoming of the spheres?”
“Aye, I do.”
Joe shrugged. “Let's get on with it.” Gary frowned at him. “Give them a second to get acquainted, will you? They're just kids, for God's sake!”
“Mayhap we are children in your time, but we are not in our own,” Raymond said and looked a question at Rowenna.
She nodded. “He speaks true.”
Raymond came before her, cradling her face, noticing that she was the barest bit shorter than he, with a slender form, fiercely muscled. “I am sorry to make your acquaintance in this manner, Rowenna.”
“I am glad it is you, Raymond,” she whispered, only for his ears to hear...
*
The surf crashed and no one uttered a word. The tears trembled unabated at Clara's jaw and Charles dabbed a napkin along her jawline, soaking up her sadness. There was so much she could barely breathe.
Rowenna looked at her with empathy. “It is a fine day that I meet the babe that I gave for Raymond to raise. Tell me he turned into the man that I saw promised within the boy.”
Clara nodded, choking back a sob and Evelyn and Sarah were there, each holding a shoulder. Finally, when Clara could gain a degree of control over her emotions she said, “He was that and so much more.”
“What of the woman who raised you? Ada...?”
The pounding of the waves filled the well of silence and Clara responded, “She was killed in a battle with the fragment.”
“I am so sorry!” Rowenna cried, touching her hand to her gills.
“Do not be. She was not fit for the royal calling,” Clara said.
Rowenna frowned. “She was not fit for her leadership or not fit as a mother?”
Charles spoke for her, “She was not fit to breathe.”
Rowenna looked at him and a look of understanding came upon her. “She was not a good match for Raymond?”
“Nay, a match but not one of his choosing.”
Something occurred to Clara and she asked quickly before losing it like a wisp of smoke, “What was the pound of flesh you gained from the Travelers?”
Rowenna's lips curled in triumph and Clara knew that she had won a small battle of importance.
>
“They can no longer dump their human garbage about.”
“The fragment?” Clara asked.
She nodded. “It has been a generation since new fragment has been added to the old. It was the only concession I could think of that may aid my people now. In our time.”
Clara thought of Daniel and wondered if he had died that day during the skirmish with the Band. She would ask sometime later. She had understood him to be one that had what her father had in abundance: integrity.
CHAPTER 17
Rowenna walked with Clara along the shore, the Band keeping a discreet distance. Their arms were entwined together, walking in companionable silence. Clara had so many questions she did not know where to begin.
She began with the most pressing, “How often were you and Father together?”
Rowenna looked at Clara sharply, a lovely pink coloring her cheeks and she sucked in a huge breath, letting it out in a shaky exhale. “Many times, but briefly. We always came together in the glade.”
“But how? Our home sphere is forty days travel by horseback from your clan.”
“Yes. But, he came the way that they did.”
“Who?”
“The Travelers.”
Clara stopped and faced her. “What mode of travel allows a body to go through time?”
Rowenna shook her head. “It was not the barrier of time that they breached in this instance, but distance. They explained it as a 'folding'.” Rowenna used her hands to mime folding a napkin or similar. “It is akin to opening it thus,” and she mimicked opening a small blanket entirely. “See the distance is here,” she touched on one corner, then ran her finger to the opposite end. “Then,” she folded the imaginary cloth in two, then half of that again. “Suddenly, this distance is much smaller.” She shrugged. “I cannot begin to ascribe a degree of logic to how it occurs, just that is is real.”
“That is how you came to be together?”
She nodded. “He had but three short months to aid with your conception then he had to fulfill his mating obligation to Princess Ada.” She looked at her hands momentarily, seeming to resolve something internally. “The folding sickened Raymond, Clara. He knew that he would sacrifice longevity for this cause.” Clara saw a sheen on her lavender eyes and afforded her privacy, looking away.
“He died because he used their way,” Clara stated.
Rowenna nodded, pinching the bridge of her nose as she did so.
“He would need a time after he came through the ripple, to come to his senses. Sometimes, he would need to be ill.” She looked at Clara. “I loved him, you know. Even though he was a sphere-dweller. The man that he was...”
Clara smiled through a wash of tears thinking of the two unlikely lovers, brought together for the future of humankind and finding love. “I know what man he was.” And Clara told her of the glass that Father had commissioned on the date of Clara's birth in her honor.
Rowenna began to sob and they held each other, their tears blending, the sadness of what was missed an abiding weight which pressed upon both their hearts.
*
They made their way back just as the sun's great weight melted above the vast ocean, turning it into a sea of blood.
“Tell me of Maddoc,” Clara said.
“He is from my mate, Rolland,” Rowenna said.
“Where is he?” Clara asked, thinking she had not yet met him.
Her face took on a sad expression and Clara halted. “He died in battle with the fragment.”
Clara was enraged instantly. “Now I know that without the misery of the Travelers, that we would not need to worry. They are scourge.”
“ 'Tis true. It has been many years. He mated me when I was but ten and six years.”
“Do you wed so early?”
Rowenna began to move forward again and nodded. “We do. Ten and sixteen years is an age of acceptance in the clan. In fact, that girl that was so...”
Clara knew she meant Evelyn and smiled.
“If she does not have a drop of savage blood, I will toss my dirk into the sea.” She smiled.
“Mayhap,” Clara laughed, thinking of the girl's temperament.
“How many years is she?”
“Nary unto ten and four, I believe.”
Rowenna grew thoughtful. “Your brother is my only child,” she looked quickly at Clara, “aside from you, of course.”
Clara understood the newness of her presence and did not take offense.
“He is accustomed to the adoration of the females of our clan. He is one of very few males his age and we have a glut of females at that age, but not many of other ages.” She shrugged.
So he was a sole rooster in a coop of hens, Clara thought, enjoying her thoughts.
Rowenna smiled at Clara. “Tell me what you think upon, my daughter.”
“I think it is very good that he has made Evelyn's acquaintance.”
Rowenna chuckled. “And I.”
Mother and daughter looked at each other and laughed as they entered the dwelling that served as dining hall and recreation hall. The scene which greeted them was several of the young Band surrounding Evelyn. Maddoc had a look of feigned nonchalance that Clara immediately saw through and Rowenna gave Clara a wink and nod, sliding away from her to greet members of the clan.
Charles found her and said, “I am very glad that you have returned. Where were you?”
Clara retold all that Rowenna had conveyed, skimming lightly over their romantic entanglement as she thought it was somehow wrong for him to know of their intimacy in any detail.
“This is why your father died when he did? He was sickened by their magic transport?” It wasn't a perfect summary but it was accurate enough. Clara nodded.
“Did he know he sacrificed growing old for this problem that was of the Guardian's making?”
Clara nodded again.
“They were never our saviors but playing the part of a god?”
“It appears that is so,” Clara said sadly.
It seemed that her father's life had been full of sacrifice. The woman he truly loved lived forty days away and from a culture looked down upon by the people he ruled. His heart had been held by her. His royal obligation and leadership was so much more to Clara in light of what she knew now. Marriage to Ada must have been hell on sphere for him. And Clara growing to look so much like the Band of his secret love.
She shuddered thinking of all he had endured.
Rowenna came to Clara and said, “We will have a huge feast in honor of your return to our clan. We will announce our kinship and your place within the clan. It will be a joyous occasion.”
Clara smiled, she felt so honored to be a part of their family.
Rowenna turned to her suddenly and her eyes flicked momentarily to Charles'. Clara intuited she was concerned to speak with him nearby. “It is fine, he is my adviser and dear friend,” she said, patting his arm and he gave her a glowing smile in return.
Charles would bide his time. Now that the savages could no longer court Clara, he was her most logical choice. His eyes sought Matthew and Bracus of the Band and found their eyes already upon him. He smiled. They could go sod off. They glowered back at him and the one brute, Matthew, laid his hand upon the handle of his dagger where a large polished stone was embedded. Charles stifled a recoil. They were a repugnant lot. What had Clara been thinking? Charles tried not to dwell on the fact that she was actually related to the Band. That she was, in fact, Band herself. He came back to the conversation reluctantly.
“Did you not say that the fragment knew who you were?”
Clara nodded. “Yes, of course. It was because of Prince Frederic that they knew who I was.”
“Do they know that you are now Queen of that sphere?”
Clara thought about her brief time with the fragment. Slowly, she shook her head. “I do not believe so. Their leader, a man named Tucker, referred to me as Princess. They do not know. Although, it should have been most obvious to Frederic. He did murd
er Ada,” Clara said, swallowing a huge lump in her throat. She did not know why she mourned the atrocious woman. The memory of her bloodied neck spilling against Clara and the blackened pearls scattered about in the middle of the field would be one that would haunt her forever.
Rowenna's eyes narrowed. “What say you?”
“I was remembering the battle that led to her demise. It was...”
“Bloody?” Rowenna supplied.
“Yes.”
“They are always thus,” she shrugged. “It is the way of it. She obviously did not understand with whom she dealt.”
No, she had not, Clara thought. Knowing in her heart that Ada had not been sober since her father's untimely death. She did not see the snake in the grass until it struck.
*
Evelyn watched Rowenna and Clara speak at a distance, that dolt Charles lingering about. Her eyes found Matthew and Bracus, their eyes trained on Clara. This was beyond boring! Could she not just choose one of the Band? And be about it? She looked around all the young Band that was here and thought them handsome. But, it was that rogue Band that she was smitten over.
Maddoc.
He had eyes only for the females of his Band though. She wanted to slap him again. Did he not notice she was fair of face? She was not a weak female of the clan either. Her grand-sire had been Band. Their blood beat in her veins. Although she had not throat slits like Clara. Oh to have them! Evelyn thought it would be quite wonderful. She had missed one of the Band's words that he spoke to her, his eyes filled with desire.
Ugh. “I do apologize, what say you?”
“I asked if you would walk with me.”
Hmm. Evelyn did not really wish to walk with him but mayhap it would cause Maddoc jealousy? Presently, he was allowing two dark haired beauties of his clan to drape themselves all over him. Mayhap they were a year older than she. But they still had the figure of a boy. She had finally lost hers and was glad of it.
The SAVAGE Series, Books 1-3: The Pearl Savage, The Savage Blood and The Savage Principle Page 41
