by Nora Blaze
The alien seems to detect that something is wrong because he frowns then barks in his guttural, deep voice. The vibration sends a tremble to my core. He holds out his hand, then taps it to his chest. “GrrrTCK.” His growl turns into a clicking noise, then he repeats it by stretching it out. “Grurr. Touck.”
It’s the noise he made before, I realize. It must be his name. I swallow, then tap my own chest right above my heart. “Loretta,” I say. “Loretta.”
He kneels to meet my gaze, then points at me. “Lore Ecka,” he growls, splitting the syllables like they’re two words.
Close enough. I smile softly and point back. “Gurtock,” I say.
I’m communicating with an alien. Realizing that gives me a thrill that I didn’t expect, but I have to push the feeling aside, knowing that I need to stay focused to keep myself safe.
“I wish you could tell me why we’re here,” I say. “Or where we are.” He continues staring at me with that determined look, which I hope means something other than I can’t wait to sprinkle herbs and spices over your delicious body. But even though he can’t understand a word I say, just talking feels like a little bit of a relief. “Those other aliens were fucked up.”
Gurtock taps his fist against his chest harness. He growls and grunts, then points out to the light.
“Fine,” I sigh. “It’s not like I really have any other options.”
When I walk out, the smell hits me first, a metallic scent undercut with something like a musty garage. I stumble onto a ramp and my legs are wobbly and weak beneath me and my body feels heavier than usual. An unfamiliar landscape stretches out, thick with gnarled gray trees, muddy black and red dirt, and a slight fog.
I step onto the wet ground and turn. The spaceship is large, the size of a two-story house, and shaped like a football. It’s built of some kind of white metal I don’t recognize and adorned with sleek black fins and what I assume to be weaponry of various kinds. Six legs stick out and hold it slightly above the earth while beneath the spaceship, quite a few of the gray trees are squashed into splinters.
The alien growls something at me, his blue eyes shining in the red light, then gestures ahead.
I startle when I see three more aliens waiting. Off to the side is the one who looks like my guy, with the blue skin and blue horns. The other two aliens are different. One has a face that reminds me of a tiger. He’s a bit smaller than the others and dark hair grows across his bright blue skin. The other is the biggest of them all, a furry red beast who looks like he could stop a freight train in its tracks. All of them are wearing the same heavy black boots. Most wear gray pants that remind me of an army uniform, but the furry red guy sports a skintight silver suit.
I swallow. I really, really hope these are the good guys.
They all talk to each other for a while, grunting and growling and shooting me glances. I hear a high-pitched squeal from somewhere in the trees behind me. Turning my eyes up, I see not only a sun, red and big in the sky, but also an even larger gray planet. I pull the fabric tighter across my body, then my purple guy comes forward.
He grunts something and gestures through a clearing in the trees, right where the rocky protrusions rise up out of the muddy ground.
“Okay,” I respond, nodding to steady myself and gather my courage. “Here we go.”
Gurtock and the furry red alien take off with me and when we emerge from the trees a very wide stone road greets us. Ahead, jagged and rocky hills rise up out of the earth, forming walls of black stone on either side of the road, all covered with black and white vines. I follow intentionally behind while the two massive aliens talk to each other. I’m too scared to join their side but Gurtock keeps looking over his shoulder to check on me.
I want this to be the aliens’ home, a safe place with some kind of space organization that can help me out. Even though the landscape is terrifying, I want there to be someone who can answer my questions, find my sister, and bring us back to Earth.
To our home.
A gray craft passes through the sky in the distance and a fat yellow bug flies in my face before zipping away. What kind of a place is this, anyway? Does that big planet in the sky mean that we landed on a moon, or is there just a planet really close to this one?
And how far away is Earth? I search the sky again as though I could find my home or my sister out there. My thoughts return to everything I left behind. Sure, my life wasn’t anything special at the moment, but it was still my life. I liked bitching about work to my sister. I liked stopping in at my dad’s and just watching TV together. I even liked the family meals with Uncle Bill and his annoying kids.
And most of all, I loved laughing about all of it with Marie. My life on Earth wasn’t glamorous, but it was real and it was mine.
Unlike this hell world with its metallic stink.
From somewhere beneath my lungs a sob escapes, surprising me. Out of nowhere, I remember the laboratory where the aliens had tied me down, where they had taken Marie. Terror crashes back down as I remember the women captured in those tubes, and the nightmare in my brain becomes so vivid I swear I can feel the alien’s seaweed hand gripping my skull as I walk down the dusty road.
I shake the horrible feeling away.
Why had they shown me those women? What the hell had any of that meant?
All of a sudden, something flashes down the cliff beside me. The large red sun is high above us and the hills and the scraggly gray trees cast short shadows everywhere. I suck in a breath when something launches from the rocks, flying straight toward my face.
Silver streaks through the air and a large knife decapitates a flying snake against the rock beside me. I gasp as its head tumbles to the ground, but the body stays stuck in the rock with the knife. It must be five or six feet long and bright red, the color of it so uniform I don’t immediately notice its red eyes, red teeth, and long red tongue.
Gurtock growls something at the dead snake, then retrieves his knife from the rock. He uses a rag from his pocket to wipe the black blood casually off the blade, then shoves it back in the hip holster. He looks at the dead snake one more time, then back at me.
“Thank you,” I say. I stand there awkwardly, not sure how to show my appreciation. He’s just saved my life, after all.
And for the second time, too.
We take off walking again and when I try to linger back, Gurtock stays and walks beside me, his friend leading the way. One of his hands rests on the hilt of a knife and I let myself believe it’s in preparation for another snake and not a way to keep me in line.
Walking together in silence, I slowly begin to relax. I realize my heart is pounding and I take in a long, deep breath. The alien’s scent fills my nose and he’s musky, like a human man, but he smells also like burning sage. The strangeness of it all must be getting to me because I almost laugh for a minute, like I’ve gone delirious, before I recover and drag my tired body forward.
I don’t have the slightest clue where we’re headed, but I do the only thing I can and keep going anyway.
After an hour of watching the alien landscape, Gurtock stops. More and more flying ships have been zipping through the sky and I’m equally hopeful and terrified that we might be arriving at our destination.
He holds my eye and if he were a human, I would think there was something apologetic in his expression. He growls a few things softly, then lowers himself to his knee, rummages in his bag, and pulls out a short golden chain that ends in two gold cuffs.
I stare at it, process, then shake my head quickly. “No, no chain. Absolutely not.”
Gurtock tightens his brow. He growls quietly like he’s trying to explain something to me, but there is no way I will let him chain me up. I frown and shake my head, hoping it might mean something in his world, then pull my hands close to my chest, burying them under the loose brown garment. “I don’t do chains, got it?”
He grunts with frustration and for a minute we stare at each other in silence. Finally, he lets out a slow
breath. He holds one of his hands out, palm up, then places the gold cuff over a few of his fingers and makes a fist.
“You want me to hold it?” I ask, confused.
Gurtock offers the gold cuff to me. Hesitantly, I take it and squeeze the cool metal in my hand. Gurtock reaches out and I startle, almost jumping back, but he simply pulls my tattered clothing over my wrist, covering me again.
“You want it to look like I’m chained up,” I say, catching on.
On the one hand, this seems like the best indicator yet that Gurtock is actually on my side, or at least not interested in immediately harming me. But as he hands me the other cuff and rises back to his full, imposing height, I can’t help but wonder why he’s bringing me somewhere that I need to disguise myself as some sort of prisoner or captive.
Which I kind of am.
We continue walking and I hold the cuffs loosely. The furry red alien talks to Gurtock and I trail behind. Slowly, something begins to appear in the distance and my heart races as we near. It’s an alien city, or something like it, and the wind carries a cacophonous noise to us.
Massive gates built of corroded blue metal emerge from the rocky cliffs and behind them something like a rustic city opens up. As we walk I can see the shapes of large tents and shack-like buildings. A few squat spaceships hover over the place, which seems to stretch on far beyond what I see, and countless creatures hurry about inside. Most are too distant to see, but even from our spot down the road, a few behemoths stand out, one that looks like a large red velociraptor and another that resembles a giant armored toad.
In the distance, King Kong rises up to full height, towering above the tents and shacks, then drops back down out of sight.
“What in the hell…” I look down at the gold chains, then up to my alien.
This can’t be good. No way in alien hell.
Gurtock says a few things in his language and waves his hand around, then squats down and gently pulls my hood over my head before he takes off walking again.
“I don’t know about this,” I exclaim. I realize that I’m clutching the cuffs tightly as I stumble behind. If that snake hadn’t flown at me on the walk, I’d probably turn around try to sprint back to the comfortable spaceship now.
As we approach the strange city a chill shivers across my skin. What was a distant noise turns into a screeching, howling, growling racket. A few tall yellow aliens with gangly arms stand outside the gate, smoking and glaring at us while something rattles in a cage at their feet. As we pass the gates we enter a sprawling crowd. Aliens of every sort wander about, some escorting monstrous creatures, big and small.
I gulp. A few blobby gray aliens float by on hovering discs, trailing behind them a metal cage on its own disk with something that looked like a pterodactyl trapped inside, hunched up with its talons and wings poking out the sides. In the opposite direction, a tall, skinny bigfoot strides past, licking what looks like a cow skull.
Gurtock pauses. He rummages in his bag then offers me a canteen made out of pure crystal. Hesitantly, I accept it, and when he makes a motion to drink I realize how thirsty I am.
I take a sip and water floods my mouth, crisp and refreshingly cool with a hint of citric flavor. When Gurtock gestures again I drink more while his furry alien friend walks away, leaving us alone in the noisy crowd.
I take stock of my situation. Even though my heart desperately wants to trust him, to believe I have a good guy looking over me, my brain has to take over.
He’d brought me to some sort of terrifying monster city. Sure, he’s given me some water and he didn’t demand I chain myself up, but totally trusting him is just too much of a risk. No matter what, I need to stay alert.
I hand him the water back and we continue walking in silence. Paths run in every direction, lined with shacks and tents. We pass a bunch of little gray creatures who run around roasting something as big as a car over an open fire pit. A few furry things like the aliens we arrived with argue with each other underneath another tent, a spiky blue rodent on the table between them. Across from them, a massive tank holds bubbling pink water with slimy white tentacles writhing inside and slapping at the walls.
The smell of wet garbage assaults my nose. Maybe I can find a friendly alien who can communicate with me here. I have no idea how much you can judge an alien by looks, or by behavior, really. The care my guy has seemed to show might just be preparation before he sacrifices me to this giant octopus. But I also know that as soon as we’re back on that spaceship again, I’ll be stuck.
I curse under my breath. Am I really considering whether I should make a break for it on an alien monster world? It’s not like there’s anyone else here who seems like a promising companion.
Gurtock pulls me up to a small booth. My stomach churns as I prepare to be horrified but there’s only a bunch of dirty shelves lined with mechanical objects behind the tent’s alien, a short thing with a fish-like head, gigantic eyes, and a long white beard.
He and Gurtock talk for a moment, then Gurtock gestures to me. The alien stares and I worry that I’m about to be sold to him. Gurtock nods to my hands, peeking out from the fabric, then up to the alien.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. He wants me to reveal myself and I know there can’t be any good reason for that. Gurtock tightens his jaw then slowly, almost apologetically, reaches forward and tugs back the fabric, exposing my arm.
“Hey there,” I object, and start to step back, but the alien in the tent flashes his giant sideways eyes at me and I can tell he’s seen what he needs to.
I’m clenching the cuffs painfully tight, the metal cutting into my fingers. The fishy alien makes a long slurping noise as he wanders into the shop, then emerges with a grape-sized device that looks like a ball of tangled wire and red metal. Gurtock taps a device on his wrist, like a watch that’s built into his arm, and it projects a digital screen. He waves his hand at it a few times, and when he swipes it away, the alien turns to me.
My heartrate accelerates. What’s happening? Gurtock frowns and says something that sounds like an apology, then pulls my hood back and rests his hand on the back of my head. He doesn’t push me forward but I can tell that he wants me to lie my head on the counter.
I look up to him, fear flooding my mind. Gurtock takes in a deep breath, then releases it slowly, like he’s trying to get me to relax. Having his hand there reminds me of being on the first alien ship and I flinch.
Oh shit. No. They’re going to put some sort of tracking device in me, or maybe something that will control my brain. Maybe this fish alien is going to turn me into a mindless worker drone in his weird tent. I feel sick to my stomach, but I hold it together.
This is my last chance to make a move.
Adrenaline floods my muscles. I act like I’m going along with Gurtock and lean my head forward, but the second I’m bent, I drop to the ground instead, landing in a tumble as I whip the chain across Gurtock’s legs. He bellows loudly, but I don’t bother to stop and look at him, I just sprint.
As fast as I can, I charge down the winding streets, my legs burning from exertion. I throw the chain aside, dodge two golden aliens on dirty golden horses, and slip across the muddy ground.
I don’t know where I’m going or what I’ll do when I get there, but I run anyway, desperate to escape whatever nightmare Gurtock had in store for me.
Chapter Five
UrTak
“Damn it all!” I curse as Lor Ekka slips away. I turn on my heel to sprint after her and a hairy wallclimber drops in front of me with a wet plop. It fully blocks my path as its round body rocks from side to side and its spindly legs wiggle in every direction.
I dash around it and scowl at its owner, a Gildenz woman struggling with the creature’s leash, then charge into the crowd.
Lor Ekka has disappeared.
Of course she has. This is exactly what Mokrov warned me about when he insisted I fasten the cuffs for her own safety. She’d ran off when I saved her, so of course she’d done i
t again.
But she had seemed so alert and so careful when we entered the Beast Market, I had let my guard down. The way she walked through the crowd, it was obvious she was scared, but she did not flinch.
She impresses me.
Whatever the reason, she had walked by my side since we crossed the gates, an experience I treasured. I allowed myself to imagine what it must have felt like generations ago, when KrysOlakn men often walked with strong women by their side.
This is what I get for taking my eye off the mission at hand and distracting myself with fantasies from a time long passed. Like a confused child, I mistook the flash of a laser for the star light that announces my destined.
My job as a warrior is to keep those I rescue safe, and clearly, I am failing in that duty.
I shove some large snouted creature out of the way and find a split in the path. One road is wide open and leads toward the mess hall. It’s definitely more inviting than the other, a row of stalls selling winged creatures that were suited for battle.
I frown, then charge down the alley of creatures. Somehow, I just know she’d take the extra risk if she thought it offered a better chance of losing me.
And loathe as I am to admit it, she is definitely trying to lose me.
Gritting my teeth, I plow my way through the crowd, my heavy boots pounding the swampy, muddy ground. A Triovian who looks a bit like Grov holds the chains of a few dozen flying rodents, which he aggressively tries to sell me, and when I push him aside I finally spot her.
Lor Ekka’s hood is thrown back, revealing her smooth flesh to the whole damn Beast Market. Even in the squawking chaos, she attracts plenty of attention. Aliens gawk and stare while she looks around with frantic eyes. The servant wrap I had given her to cover herself is slipping off, threatening to reveal even more of her curvy body.
I charge forward without word, hoping to surprise her and wrap her in my arms before something awful happens. Three Pohilkans emerge down the path behind her, hollering and pointing. Their scaly green skin catches the red light of the local star as they point to Lor Ekka with furry hands.
