by K. A. Holt
“Ramona, we only ask that you clean yourself up a bit.” She is trying to speak softly, as if to a wounded animal.
“I will not remove my clothes where others might see.”
I do not care a toot for modesty. Not anymore. But I will not strip so that they see my peltan and knife.
Aunt Billie sighs and returns to the schoolhouse without saying anything.
Old Man Dan returns with a metal seat. He motions at the stool and smirks. “You may stay stinking for now. But we will not stall the rehabilitation process. If you please, Ramona.”
I practice my counting. Not to calm my breathing but to calm my rage. I breathe deeply through my nose, filling my lungs, then exhaling slowly, counting, promising myself that if I beat Old Man Dan with his gum stool I will not succeed in anything except for momentary pleasure.
I sit on the stool.
There is the shing of a blade coming unsheathed and before I can react, a thump at my feet. I swallow, noting that I feel no pain. I look down and see my braid. My matted, roped black and dusty hair lies at my feet. Old Man Dan goes to work now, hacking at the rest of my hair until it is shorn as closely to my head as a newborn kakee. I feel naked without my horsetail.
“Much better,” he mutters, sheathing his knife. “Now it will grow back long and shiny. As the gods intended.” He dusts hair off my shoulders and squats in front of me. He wobbles and then steadies himself by grabbing my knees and squeezing. Hard. “You fought fiercely to just give up and come home now?” He sucks his mustache and rolls back on his heels. “Quite a change of heart you’ve had, huh?”
I shrug. “When you are a captive, you are treated better if you act as one with the tribe.” I unbutton the top three buttons of my blouse and pull it, along with the strap of my peltan, over my right shoulder, showing off the scar from the Kwihuutsuu talons. “Do you not think I suffered? That I learned to do what a girl must do to survive?”
“I do not doubt you learned much,” Old Man Dan says, pushing himself up to standing. He cracks his back. “I just want to make sure you didn’t forget anything important.”
I stand, facing him. “I am sure you will find that I am still the Ramona Darling I’ve always been.”
“Yes, well, we’ll see about that.”
I begin to walk to the schoolhouse door, but Old Man Dan stops me. “One more thing, Ramona.” He reaches up and yanks the cooling crystal off my neck. It falls into his palm and he closes his hand around it. “No need to waste valuable resources.” He puts the necklace in his pocket and walks into the schoolhouse.
Ben-ton moves out of his way, but stays in the doorway, where he must have been the whole time, watching everything. He blinks slowly, resting his closed eyes for a moment, then turns and goes back inside.
If Old Man Dan had struck a blow to my stomach I would have more breath in my lungs than I do now. I gasp once, twice, three times as my body adjusts. The dust and dirt and heat flow into my lungs, tightening them like dried plini skin.
I measure my breathing; try to calm down.
Without that necklace I am weakling Rae, but I must be Mayrikafsa, cunning warrior of the Kihuut. I cannot be weakling Rae. Not now.
Not ever again.
Breathe, Mayrikafsa. Breathe.
29
I AM SITTING IN THE scrub in front of the cabin, watching night beetles scurry around the rocks, when Temple sits down next to me. She has a blanket over her shoulders even though it is stiflingly hot.
The Red Crescent frowns above us, making the night glow.
“Can’t sleep, either?” I ask.
Her frown is more evident than the Red Crescent itself. She is still angry with me. She doesn’t speak.
We sit in silence for several moments. Temple puts her shorn head into her hands, then looks up at me, her blue eyes wide, desperate. “I cannot stay here, Tootie. I cannot do it.” Her voice is a raspy whisper. She yanks at the sleeves of her nightdress until they rip at the seams. “E’e naa fataka nee.” I do not belong here.
She rubs her hand over my nearly bald scalp. “But you seem to want to be here now. You came on your own? Why aren’t you building a raiding party? Why aren’t you trying to save everyone right now? This is a poor showing for a future chieftess, Mayrikafsa.”
I shake my head and a bitter, quiet laugh seeps out. “I am no future chieftess. But I promise you I don’t want to be here now.” I stare at the Red Crescent.
“You seemed calm enough about it this afternoon.” She is not looking at me while she talks, her eyes trained on the Red Crescent, too. “The trials are over, Rae. They are going to kill everyone. I’m sure you saw the building crew. It will only take a few days to build the gallows.”
I reach for her hand and she lets me take it. “If I tell you there’s a plan, would you believe me?” I whisper, turning to her. “That I am to get everyone back to the village?”
Temple squints at me. “By yourself? But how?”
I tap my head. “It’s all up here.”
Temple sighs. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Do you have a way to stop time while you work out this plan of yours?” She pushes my shoulder, gives me a sad half smile, and she is the Temple I know. “Does Fist even know you’re here?”
“Of course he does!” I lie, trying not to feel irritated at this interrogation. “He sent me, rockhead. He’s watching over the human prisoners and recovering from his illness and injuries. I promised him I will . . . take care of everything.” That is almost the truth.
“And then what?”
I shrug. “Then we will all be home. I haven’t thought that far, Temple.”
Temple nods.
“I think I can get everyone away from the township,” I say. “But I am not sure how to get them back to the village. I am not sure how to do any of it quickly.” I pause, feeling a storm of emotion threatening to engulf me. I cough it away. “Kwihuu is dead, Temple. All of the Kwihuutsuu were killed.”
“Oh no,” Temple says, and her head whips around. She stares at me, eyes going bright. “Oh, Rae, that’s terrible.”
“You just called me Rae.”
She ignores me and stares back at the Red Crescent. “All the Kwihuutsuu.” She shakes her head and says to herself, “So awful.”
I swipe treacherous tears from my face. The Cheese would not mind the emotion from their Crying Warrior, but it feels strange to be back at the homestead and to allow such strong feelings to show.
I breathe deeply, the scratching of the dust in my throat distracting me from my sadness. “There are plenty of wild Kwihuutsuu out there, but I am not sure I can get to a nest and break in even one of them. You know, in all of the extra time I will have away from rehabilitation.”
Temple gives me a rueful smile. She throws her blanket out on the scrub and lies on it. “You’ll think of something.”
“Will I?” I stretch out in the scrub next to her.
“You always do.” She closes her eyes. “You’re so smart, Tootie. The smartest person I know.”
“She wasn’t that smart before.”
We both jump up, ready to fight.
It is Boone. Taller now, skinny as a shine tree. I relax a little but see Temple does not. Boone laughs and holds up his hands.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, breathless. And how much has he heard?
He taps the gogs hanging around his neck. “Still smashed, but working well enough. I saw you two out here and I thought I would come say hello. It has been a long time, Rae.” He smiles, but his eyes dip, looking sad.
“How did you get away?” I ask. “After the . . .”
Boone sits on the blanket. Temple finally seems to relax a little, though she stays standing as I sit next to Boone.
He shrugs. “There was a storm. The dactyl that was holding me balked after one of the electrical bolts. He dropped m
e, but luckily we were not that high off the ground. I twisted my ankle, but it wasn’t that bad. As soon as I hit the ground I ran as fast as I could, even though my ankle was burning and I was bleeding everywhere.” He drops his head in his hands for a moment and looks up. “I was closer to the township than to the cooling flats. I ran here first. Maybe if I had found your papa sooner he wouldn’t be . . .”
I put a hand on his arm. “You could not have changed anything to do with Papa,” I say. “You probably saved him, even, by being able to tell everyone where he was.”
Boone shakes his head, his eyes closed, his face creased, full of anguish. “I dream of the raid every night, Rae. Every gum night.” He turns to look at me. “I am so glad you’re home. Safe.” There’s a long stretch of silence as we all stare at the Red Crescent. There is so much to say, I can say nothing at all.
After several moments, Boone lightly touches the scar on the back of my neck. “Did they . . . did they do awful things to you?” He whispers the last part.
“They are not as bad as you would think,” Temple says. There is a hard edge to her voice.
Boone’s eyebrows go up.
“It’s true,” I say, shooting Temple a look. “Maybe we could show you sometime.” I mean this as a joke, but as soon as it comes out of my mouth I regret it.
Boone pushes away from me. “What? You’re not . . . you don’t plan to go back, do you?”
Now it is Temple’s turn to shoot me a look. “No, no,” I say, forcing a quiet laugh. I shake my head. “It was just a joke, Boone. I am glad to be home.”
It is drying my mouth and breaking my heart to lie to him, but he looks so broken, sitting here in the red light of nighttime. And as terrible as it is to admit to myself, I no longer know if I can trust Boone with my secrets. He does not know Mayrikafsa like he knows Rae. He does not know Mayrikafsa at all.
We are all quiet for a while, listening to the wind and the night beetles.
“Do you still enjoy making those small statues? The ones with the clapping hands? You were always so good at intricacies, Rae.”
I shake my head. “No time. Too much training,” I say, then regret the words.
Boone’s mouth becomes a thin line and he goes silent. After several moments he clears his throat and from the way he tenses next to me, I can feel what his next question will be before he even asks it. “Did you learn anything of Rory?” he asks. Temple shakes her head because even she does not know the story Natka told me. Boone lowers his head and is quiet again, but I interrupt the silence.
“Actually, I did hear of Rory,” I say, feeling a bittersweet melancholy. I tell him everything I know, leaving out the part where Rory was stripped of her Kihuut name for failing the flying test.
“Kamino,” he says finally, with a small smile.
I nod. “Perfect, don’t you think?”
He nods.
“And also perfect that you can see her shine tree from the fields. She is watching you, Boone. Every day.”
He nods again, slower this time, then drops his head onto my shoulder and weeps. I wrap my arms around him and we rock slowly back and forth. It’s contact we’ve never had—this kind of togetherness is not allowed among humans who aren’t family, and often not even shared among family. But I’ve become so accustomed to it among the Cheese. It feels natural to hold him like this. Boone collapses further into me, and I blink back my own tears as I hold him and he cries and cries until he is asleep.
Temple and I give him time to rest, to be away from his grief, and then wake him so that he can get home before the suns come up. If anything is worse than having been stolen by the Kihuut and heathenized, it is getting discovered spending time with a boy after dark.
After a few hours of fitful sleep inside the homestead, I awake to the sounds of hammering. Mara brings the noises with her as she throws fistfuls of dust up against the Star Farmers window of the bedroom.
Temple sits at the foot of my bed, watching me.
“Storm’s a-brewin’,” she says in a whispery imitation of Papa.
I rub the dreams from my eyes. “Storm?”
Temple holds a finger to her mouth and points to the doorway. Voices carry over the threshold.
“It’s ridiculous to continue construction,” Papa says. “There is obviously a storm coming. You only waste energy and resources. Everything will be torn down with the first real gusts.”
“We must show strength. We must show the seriousness of the impending sentencing. We speed up the construction, is what we do.”
It is Old Man Dan. Of course.
“I do not suppose any of the Cheese doubt the seriousness of the sentencing,” Papa counters. “And the crews are working at capacity already. We do not need to waste man power building scaffolding that will likely be blown haphazardly around the entire township—”
There is the sound of a fist hitting the metal table. “This is important, Zeke. Not just to show the Cheese we mean business, but to show the townspeople as well. They do not abide the current delays, I can tell you that. Lest you seek a rash of vigilantism, I would show the people you mean to follow through. And if those Cheese are killed by accidental electrocution during a storm rather than justice served . . . gods help you, man.”
“Why would there be doubt of follow-through?” Papa speaks low, through his teeth. “Who would seed their minds with this doubt?”
“You’re up!” Aunt Billie bustles into the room, startling me and Temple. She claps her hands in a hurry-up manner. “We have much to do today. Get dressed.” She thrusts dresses at us and marches back out of the room. Papa’s and Old Man Dan’s voices quiet to whispers.
“How long does it take to break in a Kwihuutsuu?” Temple whispers to me.
I shrug. “Depends on the Kwihuutsuu.”
“How long you think before the storm comes?”
I shrug again. “Could be now, could be days. You know that.”
Temple and I are surely thinking the same thing. They intend to hang as many Cheese as they can fit on that scaffold they’re building. And if Old Man Dan gets his way . . . we are nearly out of time.
There is a loud gust that buffers the homestead, and the wind carries a crash and shouting.
“Waste of resources!” Papa shouts, and as Temple and I poke our heads through the doorway we see Old Man Dan rushing out the front door, with Papa in his chair, close behind.
I give Temple a hopeful look. Mara is on our side. If that was the scaffolding collapsing, the sentencing will be further delayed.
“I am the dumbest person alive,” I say to myself as I hold a giant slab of dried plini meat over my head. It smells foul in the roasting suns. The horseshoe-shaped rock formation towers over me, looking the same as it did when we stopped here for lunch on our way to the cooling flats what feels like a hundred summers ago. The wind gusts are growing stronger every day, but still no signs of electrical bolts. I can only pray the Kwihuutsuu will break in quickly and we can wage an escape. Whether the Kihuut are hanged on the gallows or accidentally electrocuted in their pen, time is not on our side.
Two wild Kwihuutsuu circle above me. One is bright red, the other is yellow. I have never seen a yellow Kwihuutsuu, though I have seen yellow clothes made from the skins. The yellow one is enormous. Big enough to hold several full-grown men.
I give the meat a shake. The yellow one circles lower and lower. I tear off a piece of the meat and throw it at her. Mara catches it and it hits the beast’s beak, falling to the scrub. She flies a little higher, but then comes closer again. I toss the meat back at her and this time she catches it. When she does, I blow the whistle. She circles higher into the sky now, shrieking.
I hope the whistle didn’t scare her.
The other Kwihuutsuu, having seen the success of her companion, comes closer, and I throw a small piece of meat at her. She chomps it out of t
he air and I blow the whistle.
This has been my routine for two days. I beg Aunt Billie for “personal time to study herbs and roots, and also to spend alone time with the gods,” and then I sneak off with Heetle and plini meat, and try to train these two Kwihuutsuu to come when they hear the whistle. If only I could get one of them to land so I could try to ride her. I know that won’t be easy, but if they’re to help us escape, they will have to learn more than just snapping meat from the sky.
This time with the Kwihuutsuu is keeping me from losing my mind, but it has gone on too long today and I must rush back to the schoolhouse. Heetle is more than happy to comply, galloping through the scrub, kicking up clouds of dust, and I have to pull my blouse over my nose and mouth to try to prevent a breathing attack.
We fly through the center of the township. The scaffolding is nearly complete, but a strong gust of wind has pushed the whole thing precariously to one side. It leans as if wanting to kneel in the scrub. Men wander around it, measuring, discussing.
I whisper my thanks to Mara and nudge Heetle faster. We are soon at the front of the schoolhouse. I tie her up and walk in wheezing. Temple looks up from her tablet, worry passing over her face. Aunt Billie hands me a bottle of the breathing drops, but I shake my head. I do not want them. I want to be able to take care of this on my own.
“How did you survive without the drops?” Aunt Billie asks. She has softened since we first arrived and kneels, placing a hand on my knee.
“My necklace,” I gasp. “The one Old Man Dan took away from me. It had a bibiloka on it—a cooling crystal. Something about the crystal helps me breathe.”
“Well, how about that?” Aunt Billie says to herself. She puts the vial of drops in front of me on the table and goes to a corner of the schoolhouse, where the cooling grate is. She reaches in and takes out a crystal. She holds her hand up to my face, the crystal gleaming in her palm.
“Better?”
I take as deep a breath as I can muster but something is not quite right. I shake my head. The crystal is only barely working to soothe my wheezing and now I’m coughing. “Maybe it needs to be hanging in this part of my neck,” I gasp, pointing to the soft spot where an area of skin has gone white, having been protected from the suns while the crystal hung there.
