“N-no,” Peter answers. “I sent my son with her to warn you and to warn our other tribes of what was happening.”
Oliver’s face twists into a mask of rage. “You expect us to believe an Urthman rode off with a human and didn’t slit her throat as soon as the opportunity presented itself?” He tightens his grip on Peter’s throat.
“Riley!” June cries. “She could be alive!”
June’s words do not calm Oliver in the least. He brims with unbridled anger.
“Please,” Peter’s voice trembles. “I don’t expect you to believe me, but all that I’ve said is the truth. Every word.”
Oliver hold his gaze for a long, tense moment before finally releasing him. “Fine. Then lead us to Cassowary. After we get there you can take me to where you sent the girl on horseback.”
Peter nods in agreement, and realizing I’d been holding my breath, I exhale, lightheaded and relieved at the same time. “This is what I want to. I want to find my son as much as you want to find this girl. I hope he’s alive and has warned my people.”
This time, no one contends what he’s said. For reasons that don’t quite make sense yet, it seems as though Peter has breached a wall we once thought impenetrable. A common threat unites us at present. And while I can’t believe the day has come that I’m trusting an Urthman to lead me and my loved ones to safety, right now, I know it is my only chance at survival.
Chapter 10
The musty smell of decaying leaves and damp earth is all I smell as I follow behind Peter. The sky glows a rich, electric blue, lending the surrounding woods an ethereal quality. Trees, their bark blackened by the dim light of dusk, reach and bend with skeletal arms, clawing at us at every turn, and a chill cools the air, leaching all the warmth from my body. Low fog has gathered, lingering and slinking like a spectral presence as it blurs and mutes all that it envelops. The moment is surreal, one in which I never thought I’d exist ever again: wandering the forest at nightfall, and following an Urthman, no less.
Following an Urthman when a weapon is not pointed at my back is not something I ever envisioned myself willingly doing, not in my wildest imaginings, yet here I am, my sister and my safety at the mercy of a being long considered my enemy.
Centuries of slaughter span the short distance between us, millions of human beings’ blood on the hands of his ancestors. I could kill him easily, slide my sword from its sheath silently and stab it through his skull. The act would occur instantaneously and with no objection from the people with me. It’s what I would do under any other circumstances, lost in the woods after sunset or not. It’s what any of us would do and would’ve done had I not stopped them. For reasons I can explain as readily as I can explain the structure of the universe, my blade remains snugly in the scabbard at my back, and Peter lives, for now at least.
I wonder whether he feels it, feels the thick tension in the air, the adrenaline-laced agitation of prey caught in the crosshairs of a predator, the intrinsic uncertainty of whether death or escape awaits. I hold his fate in the palm of my hand, or more accurately in the sheath at my back.
I lock my jaw and squeeze my eyes shut for a second and take a deep breath. Every nerve in my body taut, stretched to its limit. My bones feel sharp beneath my skin, brittle and poking at my insides until they rub me raw. Even the blood that streams through my veins chafes, feels toxic. Everything about my circumstances feels wrong. The sooner we get to Cassowary and out of the forest, the better I’ll feel.
“How long before we reach Cassowary?” I grind out each word. It’s a chore to keep the frustration from my tone.
“It’s another four hours or so through the forest and then another hour or two once we’re out,” Peter replies.
“What? Are you kidding me?” I’m unable to mask my annoyance, my fear. “It’ll be the middle of the night by then! We’re going to be attacked by Lurkers!”
My gaze bounces from June to Sully. Worry lines carve a path around June’s mouth, and Sully’s eyes are narrowed, boring into Peter’s back.
“Attacked by what?” Peter slows and twists, looking over his shoulder at me.
A part of me wants to shoo him away, to order him to turn back around and keep his wide, childlike gaze in front of him, but I don’t. Instead, I answer, “The creatures that come out at night, the ones that live in underground tunnels by day.”
“Oh, you mean Wolfmen.” The space where eyebrows should be on Peter lifts considerably as he tips his chin in understanding. “Yes, yes, they were nasty creatures, weren’t they?” He shakes his head and shudders.
“Were?” I ask.
“Well, yes, were is the right word when something is past tense.” Peter shrugs.
“Past tense?” I question again.
“Yes, we rid the forest of them many years ago.”
My gaze volleys from Peter to June and Sully to be sure they heard what I just heard, that my ears aren’t deceiving me. They look as I do: stunned and a bit confused.
“How?” I ask. “How’d you rid the forest of them?”
“We killed them off. They kept attacking our people at night. It was us or them.” His tone is matter-of-fact as is the small shrug of his shoulder. I don’t understand either. Lurkers aren’t easy creatures to evade, let alone exterminate from an entire forest. How he and his people managed to accomplish such a feat is mindboggling. “Our quality of life improved dramatically once they were gone. We could roam the woods freely at night without worry.”
“Shut you filthy mouth, monster!” Brom, quiet up until now, erupts unexpectedly. Peter startles. “I’m tired of hearing your voice!” Thrusting both arms out, Brom pushes Peter from behind. Peter lurches forward, stumbles and loses his footing. He lands face-first in a muddy section of the trail just ahead.
“Brom!” I admonish, but he’s too busy laughing, pointing at Peter who’s now covered in slimy, brown filth from head to toe.
“Now that’s a good look for you, monster!” Brom can barely speak, his words muffled by a fit of chuckles.
“Cut it out!” I scold a second time and raise my voice over the laughter. “I told you to leave him alone!”
“Yeah, stop being such a jerk,” June chimes in.
Brom’s head whips around toward the sound of her voice. His act sends a jolt of adrenaline coursing through me. If he utters a single harsh word or uses a tone I disapprove of, he will be met not with a threat but a promise of violence. Shockingly, however, his stern expression melts away. He smiles. It is a wide, almost frightening grin that makes my stomach churn. Peter studies the interaction, his scrutiny intense but unreadable. I want to comment, to ask what his interest is, but we continue walking and as we do, Sully speeds his pace so that he’s next to me.
Seeing Peter with mud staining his clothes and dripping from his skin, I find myself mumbling, “Sorry about Brom.”
Sully is so surprised by my words his head whips in my direction and he arcs an eyebrow at me while curling his upper lip as if to ask, “Really?”
One side of my mouth tilts as I bob one shoulder. Truth of the matter is, I feel bad about what Brom did. As preposterous as it is, I feel guilty for his behavior toward Peter.
Peter exhales softly. “It’s okay, Avery. It’s not your fault. He is who he is.” Several beats pass and I notice that his gaze remains pinned to June and Brom. “I’d keep an eye on that.” He clips his head in their direction.
I look from them to him, wondering what the heck he’s talking about. “On what?” I ask, genuinely perplexed.
“That.” This time he points between them, wagging his finger. Brom, about twenty years June’s senior, walks beside her teasing her. I’ve never seen him behave as he is with anyone. Not ever. “That is your sister, isn’t it?”
“Yes, why?” I focus on the narrow sliver of dusky light passing between their bodies as Brom edges closer and tugs a coiled lock of her hair, straightening it temporarily, then releases it.
Peter makes a deep hmm sound in hi
s throat. “If I were you and that were my sister, I wouldn’t like the way he looks at her, the way he touches her constantly.”
“She’s just a child.” The notion of what Peter implies repulses me. Brom, thick by every possible meaning of the word, is boorish and lumbering while June, slender lovely June, is grace personified. And she’s at least two decades younger than him! My breathing ratchets up a notch and beads of perspiration stipple my brow.
“That’s why I wouldn’t like the way he interacts with her,” Peter says calmly, stoking the growing fire inside my gut.
“He’s twenty years older than her!” I protest a third time more for my benefit than anyone else’s. But as my gaze returns to them, I see Brom flick June’s earlobe playfully, the way a boy her age would flirt. She tells him to stop, clearly unaware of his objective, and a slow smile rounds his stubbled cheeks. Ire blazes a fiery path through my veins, the sensation reflexive, as instinctive as breathing, yet for the briefest of moments, I wonder whether Peter is toying with me. Whether he has an agenda and is trying to manipulate me. After all, I never noticed Brom behaving inappropriately before. It couldn’t have been happening right in front of me without me noticing, could it have? Though I try to protest the notion, try to convince myself that I’m too observant to let anything related to June slip past me, every part of me protests. Still, I bristle at Peter. “You could be saying that, trying to suggest that Brom is after June, just to get me mad because you want to get even with him.” I huff a curl off my forehead. “Your people have hated us for centuries without reason.” I can’t resist the bitter tendril that winds about in my gut. I know it’s unwarranted and perhaps even unfair, but I hear the words fall from my lips as if of their own volition.
Taken aback for a moment, I swear a look of insult flashes in Peter’s features. “Just watch for yourself,” he says meekly.
“I will,” I reply with a defiant edge that almost sounds childish.
A few seconds pass before Peter turns to me and says, “What did you mean when you said my people have hated humans for centuries without reason?”
“Um, I meant exactly what I said,” I reply and maintain the argumentative tone I used moments earlier.
Peter snorts and shakes his head.
“What? What the heck is your problem?” I raise my voice. “What’re you all bent out of shape about?”
“C’mon, enough already.” Bitterness touches Peter’s tone for the first time since meeting him, a fact that sends a torrent of fire surging through my core.
“Enough already? Are you kidding me?” I fairly shout. “Urthmen have hunted and killed humans to the brink of extinction for centuries for no reason whatsoever and you’re telling me enough already? You must be crazy!”
“Yeah, really,” Sully chimes in. “You have to know what you’re people have done.”
“My people! My people?” Peter stops and whirls on me so that he faces both me and Sully. His face is a masks of shock.
“Why’re you stopping?” I look around nervously, still not buying that every Lurker in the forest has been exterminated.
“I’m stopping because I can’t believe what I’m hearing from you.” Peter’s voice pitches up an octave.
“What’re you talking about?” I ask and don’t bother to hide my exasperation.
“You think Urthmen hate humans for no reason?” His dark eyes are wider than any Urthman’s I’ve ever seen, the incredulity he’s feeling etched plainly in his expression.
“No, that’s not all we’re saying.” Sully’s voice is steel wrapped in velvet, smooth as silk yet deadly. He stresses the word “we” to punctuate his point. “Most Urthmen we’ve encountered are savages that kill for no reason. They kill humans for no reason.”
Peter plants his fists on his hips and begins shaking his head vehemently. “No, you’ve got it all wrong.” His tone is ripe with self-righteous indignation.
Folding my arms across my chest, I step toward him and cock my head to one side, eyes narrowed and a cruel smirk playing across my lips. “Why don’t you enlighten us, Peter? What is it we have all wrong?”
“Huh.” He shakes his head again and rubs his bald skull when he finally stops. “Enlighten you,” he mutters more to himself than to us. “Okay, well, for starters, we hate humans for a very good reason.”
His words land like a ham-fisted punch to my gut. Shocked by his admission that he and his people do, in fact, hate us I swallow hard and rebound without missing a beat. “And what is that reason, Peter?”
His hands fly out in front of his body, fingers splayed before they tighten into trembling fists. “Because of what you did to us.” His voice grows louder but not in anger. Another, profounder emotion that eludes me drives it. “We hate you for what your people did to us!”
Momentarily shocked by his outburst, I jerk my head back, too stunned by his words to react verbally. Sully and I exchange looks of disbelief and concern before our gazes move to the rest of our group, now looking our way in alarm, fingers twitching at their weapons. His raised voice garners their attention, his words, undoubtedly so disturbing they sense an impending clash. Heart fluttering an erratic tempo, I raise my hand to gesture that all is okay, that the situation is under control and that they can continue walking. Skeptical nods come my way before reluctantly, everyone resumes walking. Peter closes his eyes and rubs his temples before continuing along the path.
After several tense minutes during which his words roll around my brain like a ball of barbed wire, I pace him and ask quietly, “What did you mean when you said your people hate humans because of what we did to you?”
Peter’s shoulders slump and a heaviness surrounds him. He sighs loudly. “Human beings created the weapons that destroyed the world.” He pauses, allowing what he’s said to take root in my mind. “They used them on us, destroyed the minds and bodies of my ancestors, reducing them to monsters like the ones that’re hunting us now.” His thin lips tighten. “It took generations before we evolved into what we are now, until we became thinking beings again.”
Knitting my brow, I contemplate what he’s said, only as I do, an anomaly in his theory presents itself. “Peter, your ancestors were human too, so why would you and the rest of the Urthmen hate us? It doesn’t make sense. We all came from the same species, all started out the same. According to your thinking, you should hate yourselves too,” I add with a snide tone that’s completely unnecessary.
Wincing, Sully slides me a sidelong glance. I shrug, at a loss for an excuse for my snarky words.
Peter, rebutting my last comment, turns his head so that he faces me. “My people were left to suffer, most left to eventually die a slow, torturous death. Your ancestors were the rich, the powerful, who hid below the ground while we were left to contend with the fallout of your weapons. No, we are not from the same people.” He expels air from his nasal openings, the sound similar to a huff. “You lived like kings while most of us choked on our own vomit or burned to death by poisonous chemicals.” He licks his lips and levels me with eyes laden with grief. “Then when all of your supplies were gone after years and years burrowed underground, you began returning to the surface, only it wasn’t your world anymore. It was ours.” Charged with energy that’s burdened by centuries of anguish, the air thickens, stifling and stagnant. “You did this to us.” He stabs a thick finger in my direction. “You hid like cowards while we suffered. And you wonder why it is that my people hate you with such passion, such ferocity? Your ancestors were the evil ones, not us. We are a result of your doing. Our suffering, our blood is on your hands. All that we went through is because of you.” A harsh, mirthless laugh escapes his mouth. “And you think we’re going to let you do it again? You think we’re going to let you destroy the planet again?”
My mouth is suddenly dry, the walls of my throat feeling as if they’re lined with sand. Words escape me, and I doubt they’d come out as anything more than a rasp at this point. Never in my life did I ever even entertain any of w
hat he’s said. Never. The pain that carves his features is undeniable, as is his argument. As hard as it is to hear, it bears validity. It by no means justifies the centuries of atrocities committed against humankind. It only explains what drives the hatred, or more aptly, the fear.
Feeling Sully’s eyes on me, I swivel my head and find a pair of russet-hued irises watching me. I’m certain that like me, he’s never considered that Urthmen have a “side,” that there’s a motivational factor that transcends bloodlust. And now, one has been presented to us. I struggle to wrap my mind around it, and judging from the look on his face, so does he.
To consider Peter’s point is a hefty undertaking. Millions of humans have been slaughtered at the hands of Urthmen. Men, women, children, all butchered indiscriminately to settle a centuries-old vendetta. Regardless of the reason, I cannot reconcile their deaths no matter how hard I try. What motivated them unleashing their hatred then does not pardon humanity being hunted to the brink of extinction. Though they weigh upon us like chains, the wrongs of our ancestors shouldn’t be the force that drives us. Their history shouldn’t be the voice in our head, the fire in our veins. I realize that now more than ever. The past, though worthy of acknowledging and heeding, needs to be laid to rest if peace is desired in the future.
While I’m hesitant to argue with Peter when he’s clearly rattled, I’m compelled to refute what he’s said. In the gentlest tone I can muster, I say, “You have to understand that something our ancestors did more than two hundred years ago has nothing to do with us. We didn’t do it.” I gesture among me, June and Sully, among our entire group. “Neither did the hundreds of humans I’ve seen killed throughout my years, defenseless human beings like my mother, my friends.” Anger seizes the cells of my body like a current of electricity, spilling through my veins in crackling fury. Try as I may to remind myself that Peter is upset, that there are three sides to every story—the two sides at odds, and somewhere in the middle, the truth—recounting my mother’s death forces all else from my thoughts.
Planet Urth: The Fate of Urth (Book 5) Page 9
