Rhani (Dragons of Kratak Book 3)

by Ruth Anne Scott

  Frieda swept a bunch of fabric scraps into a pile on her table. “I’m working.”

  “Working?” Trin repeated. “What kind of work is that?”

  Frieda blushed and dropped her eyes. “I’m learning to sew.”

  Trin’s eyes widened. “Sew? By yourself?”

  “I thought I’d give it a shot,” Frieda explained. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m all thumbs.”

  Trin glanced down at Frieda’s hands and blinked.

  Frieda shifted on her feet. “It’s an expression we have on Earth. It means I’m not very good at it.”

  “That’s exactly why you should get someone to teach you,” Trin pointed out. “You should tell my mother. If she can’t teach you herself, she will find someone who can.”

  “I’m sure she could,” Frieda replied, “and I’m sure I would make better progress if I had someone like that to teach me. But I can’t do that—not yet.”

  Trin stared at her in blank wonder. “Why ever not? How long to you plan to stumble along by yourself before you ask for help?”

  Frieda smiled at her. “I’m not afraid to ask for help. It isn’t that. I’ve just never worked with my hands before. I want to try it on my own before I set out to learn to do it right.”

  Trin shook her head. “I don’t understand you at all.”

  “I’m not trying to be an expert sewer,” Frieda explained. “I just want to start on something. It doesn’t really matter what. I don’t know if I’m really even interested in sewing. I just want to do something with my hands, and I’m not ready to learn from one of your people yet. That would mean....” She stopped herself.

  Trin waited. “That would mean....what? That you’re really Aqinas now?”

  Frieda looked down at the floor. “Something like that.”

  Trin pursed her lips. Then she took a step across the room and took Frieda’s hand. “Never mind. You’ll never be Aqinas until you decide for yourself that you want to be.”

  She guided Frieda out of the house and into the meadow. Frieda surveyed the familiar scene. “I must be crazy not to want to stay here.”

  “I understand why you don’t.” Trin shrugged. “I mean, I understand why you haven’t made up your mind to. I wouldn’t want to leave to go live on land. Making the adjustment from land to the ocean must be very difficult. If I left the ocean for the land, I don’t think I would ever stop dreaming of a way to go back.”

  Frieda cast a sidelong glance at her. “Not even if you found a man you loved there?”

  Trin squeezed her hand. “It’s hard to say, since I’m mated here to a man who matches me perfectly. On land, you don’t have the water to match you with your mate. You might mate with the wrong man. But yes, even if I found a man I loved on land, I would still want to come back. I belong to the water. I’ve never lived anywhere else, and I don’t want to.”

  “It’s nice of you to say that,” Frieda replied. “All the Aqinas have been so kind and caring. No one could ask for nicer people.”

  “Not even that makes a difference, does it?” Trin asked. “Nice people, a strong, loving man, a beautiful environment—none of it can take the place of the land.”

  “You hit the nail on the head there,” Frieda replied. “I was born and raised on land, the way you were born and raised in the water. I’m like a tree that grows in rocky soil. Putting me in the water would drown me.”

  “And yet,” Trin returned, “here you are. You’re not drowned. You’re getting closer to Deek and all the rest of us. You’re even learning to sew. It looks like you might be making the adjustment to life under the water after all.”

  Frieda shook her head. “Then there’s the convocation. I’ll never adjust to that.”

  Trin started back. “What’s wrong with the convocation?”

  “Only someone who lived on land could understand,” Frieda replied. “Ask Sasha. She’ll tell you. People who live on land don’t look in on each other like that, and I don’t think the other factions will appreciate it if they find out you’re doing it.”

  Trin furrowed her brow in deep thought. “I never thought of that.”

  “I’ll bet no Aqinas ever has,” Frieda replied. “You must have seen in this convocation of yours how much the other factions mistrust the Aqinas. Now you know why.”

  “But they couldn’t know about the convocation,” Trin pointed out. “They couldn’t know we looked in on them without their knowledge.”

  Frieda shook her head. “They mistrust you without knowing why. They only have a vague sense that something isn’t right with you. Maybe the fact that you know so much about them gives them a hint that you have ways of gathering information about them that they don’t know about. A lot makes sense to me now that I know about the convocation.”

  Trin walked in silence for a while. “I wonder if Sasha has told Fritz about this. Maybe if he knew, he wouldn’t allow the convocation anymore.”

  “That won’t happen,” Frieda replied. “Deek said it was your most sacred institution.”

  Trin nodded, but didn’t answer. The two women crossed the meadow, but when they got to the edge of the forest, Trin stopped and turned toward Frieda. “I want to say I’m really glad you’re here.”

  “I understand,” Frieda replied. “Your people need all the females you can get. It must be a relief to see Deek finally meet a woman he can connect with.”

  “I’m not glad about that,” Trin replied. “I mean, I am glad about that, but that’s not why I said I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad it was you who came and not someone else. You have a way of speaking right out and saying the plain truth that’s refreshing even for the Aqinas. I’ve never met anyone like you before.”

  Frieda brightened up. “Thanks. That means a lot.”

  Trin started walking, but much slower. She took a long time to walk around the forest. “You’re the only person who could have told us about the convocation causing a problem between the Aqinas and the other factions. You’ve done our people an immense service by pointing that out to us.”

  “Sasha told you the same thing,” Frieda told her. “Why wouldn’t you have understood it from her?”

  “She never told us that,” Trin replied. “She said she wasn’t comfortable with the convocation, but she didn’t say exactly that people on land would find it offensive. Besides, she eventually came around to sharing the convocation with us, so we discounted her reluctance to take part. We thought it was just a process of adjustment to our environment, like everything else.”

  Frieda nodded. “That makes sense.”

  Trin started walking faster. “I’m going to tell Fritz what you told me. This is too important to keep quiet.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Frieda asked. “He might not listen.”

  “If he doesn’t listen,” Trin replied, “we haven’t lost anything. Anyway, he might listen and decide there’s nothing to worry about. Or he might decide there is something to worry about and we should consider changing something.”

  They came in sight of the village. Jen and Deek stood at the door of their house. They broke off their conversation when Trin and Frieda appeared. Frieda dropped her voice to a murmur. “If you need help convincing Fritz, let me know. I’d be happy to tell him what I told you if it makes any difference.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Trin replied. “We might also call on Sasha. She can explain to him why she found the convocation offensive when she first came here. Two of you together would carry more weight than just one.”

  They climbed the hill, and their conversation ended when Deek hailed them. “I thought you’d never get here.”

  “We had something to discuss,” Trin told him.

  “Not sewing, I hope,” Deek countered.

  Trin laughed. “No, not sewing.”

  “Don’t you dare say anything against my sewing,” Frieda shot back.

  “I wouldn’t say anything against it,” Deek replied. “Just tell me you finally
figured out how to thread the needle.”

  “I can thread the needle,” Frieda told him. “And I can knot the end of the thread and sew two pieces of fabric together. It’s not the neatest sewing in the world, but at least it really is sewing.”

  Trin spun around. “And you figured out all that on your own, with no help from anybody?”

  Frieda swelled with pride. “Yep.”

  Trin shook her head. Jen smiled at Frieda. “I’m ready whenever you want someone to show you how to do anything.”

  Frieda beamed back at her. “As long as I’m making progress on my own, I want to keep challenging myself. When I’m ready for a lesson in how to do it right, you’ll be the first to know.”

  The group entered the house. People crowded the room, and several children barrelled between the adults’ legs. They screamed and bellowed and crashed into people before tearing outside and disappearing into the village.

  Frieda stared after them. The adults the children ran into continued their conversations as if nothing had happened. The general hubbub in the room returned to a steady pitch. Two of the women who escorted Frieda to this house the first time emerged from the crowd and pulled Frieda into it. They talked to her in turns about her house, her work, her impressions of the construction on the next hill, and a thousand other topics. Frieda’s head swam. She couldn’t keep track of what all they occupied her with.

  Then another bunch of people joined that conversation and one of the women drifted away. Hours later, Frieda remembered to look around for Deek or anyone else she knew. She met so many new people. She got swept into a million discussions on every subject with all of them, and experienced an instant connection with all of them. She never experienced anything like it in her life.

  Toward the middle of the afternoon, a group of young people filed into the house, and all conversation died to a hushed whisper. The company moved back against one wall of the house. The older family members sat on benches, but most stood where they were. Then the young people sang and danced, and the performance ended, not with wild applause, but with the whole family joining in song. Their voices raised the ceiling with the harmonies and choruses before everyone joined hands and danced together through the house.

  The young people led the line of relatives out through the door into the village byways. The whole company followed, one behind the other. Frieda danced along with them, and her heart danced in exhilaration until she noticed the line moving toward the meadow. A lightning bolt shot through her. She spotted Deek, and his eyes bored into her soul. They could only be on their way to the convocation.

  Frieda broke away from the hands holding her on either side. Deek’s cousin on her left spun around. “You can’t leave now.”

  Frieda gave his hand to Trin, who followed on her right. She waved. “See you all later.”

  Trin gave her a knowing nod and nudged her cousin forward. The line snaked out of the village toward the meadow. Frieda trotted away and waved back over her shoulder. “Good-bye! See you later.”

  When they couldn’t see her anymore, she broke and ran for her own house. She ran into her house and turned her back on the door so she wouldn’t see them out there. Whatever they were doing, she didn’t want to see it.

  Chapter 8

  Frieda bent over her sewing, but she couldn’t make the needle obey her. No matter what she tried, it slipped out of place and stabbed her in the finger, or the thread tangled and went where she didn’t want it. She couldn’t stop thinking about whatever was happening out there in the meadow. After hours of trying, she threw the cloth on her table and paced around the room.

  At least it was dark outside. She didn’t have to worry about seeing the convocation outside her door. But she couldn’t rest. She paced around the room. Had she missed anything vitally important by staying away? Would the Aqinas resent her sleeping with Deek and then shunning their most sacred institution? Was she in or out? Was she under the water or was she on land? She had to make up her mind once and for all and stand by her decision.

  She lay down on her bed, but her mind wouldn’t let her sleep. Deek wasn’t there to rock her to sleep. Would he ever come back? He kept insisting the convocation was optional, so why did she doubt it?

  The first dawn light filtered down through the surface of the water to light the meadow. A brisk wind gusted over the waving grass and flowers. It blew the scent of warm soil and verdant fields to her. The soft wind and subtle smell calmed her as much as she could be calmed on this knife-edge of indecision. She stepped out of her house and set off through the forest.

  She steered well clear of Sasha’s house and struck deep into the heart of the seaweed into a part of the Aqinas territory where she’d never ventured before. The trees blocked out most of the light, but as the day grew overhead, she could see enough to make her way.

  The plant life changed. Different colored flowers clustered by her path. They looked more like anemones, and spiky balls rolled along the ground in the wind. A yellow flower on a thick stalk drew its roots out of the rocky soil and tiptoed across the ground. The longer she spent in the Aqinas world, the more it lost its Earthlike appearance and looked like the bottom of the ocean. Maybe in time even the pretense of the meadow and the air around her would disappear. Maybe in time she would accept her situation enough to see this world as it truly was. She wouldn’t need the fantasy anymore. Would that be so bad? She would have to ask Sasha what she saw in the meadow. Did she see wind blowing through grass and wildflowers, or did she see water waves and coral banks?

  How long and how far she walked, she didn’t know, but walking didn’t answer her questions for her. The decision would never get any easier, yet she couldn’t reject one world in favor of the other, or make one people more important to her than the other. Whichever way she turned, the one she left behind called her back until she didn’t know which direction to turn.

  All at once, she came to herself and looked around. She didn’t recognize the forest. She’d wandered away from familiar territory. She walked back the way she came with a faint hope she would find the meadow and the village and her house again.

  Full day streamed through the waving tree tops. The plant life changed again, and she began to recognize her own territory again. Her spirits soared. She would see Deek and her friends again, and her old familiar meadow and her quaint little house. The whole Aqinas territory beckoned to her with such a loving and nourishing embrace. It was her home as much as anything on Earth. Nothing on Angondra could touch it for its nucleus of perfect comfort and ease.

  She quickened her step. She couldn’t get there fast enough. What would she find waiting for her? Probably no one would have noticed her gone. She might have been gone only a few minutes, but to her, she was coming home after an eternity of wandering in the wilderness. They say home is where they have to take you in, and the Aqinas would take her in. Not only Deek, but his relatives, and Sasha and Fritz, and all the other Aqinas would rejoice at her return. No one else on Angondra would do as much. She couldn’t even be sure she could show her face in any of the other factions.

  That wasn’t true, though. The Lycaon and the Avitras would both welcome her back, but who could compare to the Aqinas? Who had come out to welcome her with song and dance and laughter? Who had made her so settled and at home? No one.

  A light broke through the trees, and she caught a glimpse of the meadow beyond. She could live in that meadow for the rest of her life and never get tired or bored with it. She loved her little house, especially with Deek in it, and Sasha proved she never had to leave it if she didn’t want to. She even loved the frustration of her sewing. She only needed a few lessons from Jen to make it enjoyable. She might even try some other kind of work—pottery, perhaps.

  A shadow crossed her view, and a figure stepped out from behind the trees. His eyes flew to her face, but he didn’t smile. His jaw tensed, and his shoulders stiffened. Frieda walked faster until she almost ran. He strode through the trees with stiff tread, hi
s hands flexed and his muscles tensed. Frieda’s heart fluttered. She didn’t belong anywhere but with him. She never had to see the land or her sisters or breathe the upper air again as long as she could catch him and hold him.

  She broke into a run. She stumbled and ran on. He didn’t run, but he pushed toward her with all his power. She gasped for breath to run faster, to get to him sooner, to erase the distance between them forever. A cry broke from her throat, not quite a sob, not a laugh, but something unknown, a call for him to bury her under the ocean, never to be seen again.

  Then their bodies collided at full force, and their arms flung around each other in desperate need. Deek lifted Frieda off the ground and crushed her in his embrace. She pressed him closer to her with every ounce of her strength, but he was still too far away. She could never get close enough to him to satisfy her. She caught at him with her legs, and he lifted her the rest of the way to sit with her legs around his hips.

  He sank his teeth into her neck and growled. She nipped his ear. She grasped the back of his head and pushed him down into her. As fast as he consumed her, it wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough until the water dissolved them completely and mingled their molecules in its solution.

  He staggered forward under her weight, but neither slackened their grip one iota. He walked one way and then the other. She paid no attention. She burned in feverish desire for him. She no longer cared where or how he took her as long as she was his. She no longer held out any hope for anything but him.

  He slammed her back against a tree trunk and knocked the breath from her lungs, but she only clung tighter to him with all four limbs. He held her against the tree with his body and tore at her clothes with his hands. The tender caution of last night vanished in the wind, leaving raw animal desire in its place. She clawed his shirt away with ravenous fury, but she couldn’t reach anything else. No matter. Deek handled the rest. He didn’t bother with her shirt but went straight for her pants, and then his own.

  He exposed only those parts of their bodies needed to bring them together in wet contact. Then everything else vanished in explosions of light and heat. Frieda raised her voice to the treetops, and Deek howled into her ear until he couldn’t keep his legs rigid against the tree anymore. They sank to the ground in harmonized groans and fell into unconscious bliss.