Mid-March – 3,390 BC
Earth: Outside Crash Site
Jamin
Jamin watched, and saw, everything…
He gasped for breath, burying his face into his knees to suppress the scream which threatened to erupt from his heart in a wail of grief. Deceiver!
He'd known. He'd known in his gut the day she'd run into the winged demon's arms that he'd been replaced, but he'd deluded himself into thinking she would grow tired of caretaking a monster in the wilderness and return. He'd been busting his hump, cutting timbers for her dream house and preparing his warriors for the day he just knew demons would swoop down from the sky and attack their village.
First people. Gita had told him the priestesses at Jebel Mar Elyas had legends about winged demons that had come across the waters and killed off all of the people who had been on this world before. Nephilim. Slant-browed, barrel-chested giants. And now they were back to kill them…
He watched Ninsianna lead the winged demon into the sky canoe. He wanted to kill him! He lurched forward, spear clutched in his fist, and fell back. The tribunal. His father had threatened him with the tribunal if he thwarted his authority one more time. Several of the village elders bore grudges against him. The penalty for disobeying a direct order from the chief was public humiliation, banishment, or stoning. He would bear humiliation gladly if it would win back her heart, but the thought of being sent away from her?
He looked at the goatskin parchment clutched in his fist. Equal. His father had told him Ninsianna could never love a man who didn't treat her as his equal, so Jamin had thought up hundreds of ways to prove he did view her as his equal. It was only a little room sketched onto the side of their dream house, but the ‘hospital’ room was meant to be his temple to her. The goddess he'd failed to worship ... and lost.
He unrolled the goatskin, tears streaking the charcoal he'd used to mark it. He'd even sketched plans for a garden to grow medicinal herbs. For six weeks he'd plotted ways to win back her heart. He was, after all, the son of a chief. How could she not want him? Her rejection had made him the laughing-stock of the entire village!
Real men didn't cry! Fading into the woods from the spot he'd taken to watching the goings on at the ship, he waited until he was out of ear shot before he began to rage. If this is what they did outside the ship, he could only imagine what went on in private. Hatred of the winged demon hardened in his veins.
'Jamin … let her go…'
The wind taunted him, whispering his loss through the cedars. A green grasshopper flew onto his hand, tilting its head to look at him and whirring its gossamer under-wings. The muscle in his cheek spasmed, stress causing the errant facial tic to develop a mind all its own. Let her go? He gave the wind his answer.
"Never!"
He squashed the grasshopper and threw the blueprints into the scrub. Skulking back to the village, he plotted how he would get even.
Chapter 35
Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One Page 39
