by Cara Bristol
Buzzzzzz. Buzzzzzz.
A skimmer! Snow muffled sound, but cold air and wind amplified it, making it difficult to judge direction or distance. I cocked my head, listening. If I could catch the rider, maybe he would deliver a message to my tribe.
The buzzing grew louder, and then a skimmer appeared out of the trees and headed for the Meeting Place. I slung the traps over my shoulder and ran into the clearing. “Here! Here!” I waved.
The rider spotted me and veered in my direction. A second skimmer fishtailed behind him. He piloted one, pulled one.
He gave a shout. “Enoki?”
“Yes!” I yelled, recognizing the voice of my camp’s healer. Just the person I wanted to see!
Ardu pulled up and cut the power to the skimmer. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I replied.
“We’d assumed you’d ride out the storm in one of the shelters; however, we figured we should check.” He motioned at the second vehicle. “I brought you a snow skimmer. Another blizzard, worse than the last, is on the way.”
“I’m really glad to see you, and that you brought another skimmer because I’m not alone. A Terran man needs your assistance.”
“A Terran man?”
“The ship bringing the females departed without him. He twisted his ankle. I don’t think it’s broken, but you should examine him.” I glanced at the prefab Terran infirmary located in a field outside of the Meeting Place. Earth had trained our healers how to use the medical equipment. “Is there time before the next storm to take him to the infirmary?”
“To get there, yes. To examine him, fix the problem, get him to camp…probably not. But I brought the portable bio scanner with me and some medical supplies. We may not need to go there at all if it’s only a sprain. Where is he?”
“I left him in an emergency hut.” I unhitched the spare skimmer. “Follow me.” I hopped on and fired it up.
We pulled up outside the hut, and Madison poked his head out. His eyes alighted on me with relief. A warm sensation curled in the pit of my stomach. My horns twitched.
“Enoki! You’re back—” His gaze shot to Ardu.
“The tribe got worried about me and sent Ardu, the healer, and a spare skimmer.” I motioned him inside. “He’ll check your ankle.”
“Let me get my stuff.” Ardu dismounted and lifted the seat over a storage compartment.
Madison moved back inside, and I entered the cabin.
“I was getting concerned about you,” he said.
“Sorry to worry you. I intended to set some traps for dinner, but now it won’t be necessary. With another skimmer, we can get to camp,” I said.
“Oh good,” he replied, and I was relieved to gloss over my awkward, sudden departure. I needed to talk to Ardu about my mental state, but Madison took first priority.
Ardu entered, and I introduced the two of them. I folded my arms and stood off to the side. The healer had Madison sit and remove his boot. “What happened?” He focused on Madison’s face as he unwound the kel hide strip.
“Stepped in a hole. Twisted my ankle. It’s not as swollen today as yesterday—is something wrong?” Madison attempted to tuck his short hair behind his ears.
Ardu narrowed his eyes. “With your ankle? That’s what I’m going to find out.”
“You’re staring at me.”
“Don’t Earth healers look at their patients?” He lowered his head and probed the bones. “Can you move it at all?”
Madison rotated his foot. Not full range of motion, but much better than yesterday.
“We iced it last night and this morning, and it’s been wrapped all night,” I said.
The healer set Madison’s foot on the floor and reached for his kel pouch. He undid the fastening and pulled out a rectangular device. “I’m going to do a bioscan of your foot and ankle. It will reveal if there’s a fracture,” he said. “I’ll run a few health checks, too.”
“Okay,” Madison agreed.
“We need to raise the foot.” He glanced around the hut then grabbed his own pack. “Here. This will do. Stretch out your leg and rest your heel on this.”
Madison placed his foot on the pack. Ardu tapped on the screen, and then a blue beam shot out of the device. He trained the light along Madison’s knee down to his toes, taking extra time over the ankle area. “That ought to do it,” he said, and shut it off.
“What does it say?” Madison asked.
He peered at the screen. “It’s still processing. It will take a moment.”
“So, everyone got back okay?” I asked.
“Everybody but you,” Ardu said. “We didn’t have much time to greet the new females because the storm swept in, but a welcome banquet is planned for after the blizzard passes.”
“So they do end?” Madison twisted his mouth.
Ardu and I glanced at each other. “For a short while,” I said, and we laughed.
The medical device beeped, and Ardu squinted at the screen. He went still and lifted his head to scrutinize his patient.
Madison’s shoulders slumped. “My ankle is broken, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s just a sprain. It should get better on its own. I have some salve to speed the healing.” Ardu continued to study Madison, but directed his next comment to me. “I left the salve in another kit. It should be in the skimmer storage compartment. Would you get it for me, Enoki?”
Chapter Nine
Madison
Enoki left for the salve, and Ardu rocked on his heels. “Well,” he said, never taking his eyes off my face. “Do you want to tell him, or shall I?”
“Tell him what?” I frowned.
“That you’re female.”
My jaw dropped. “W-what are you talking about?” I forced a laugh. “I’m as male as you are.”
He jerked his head at his device. “Not according to the bioscan.”
My gaze shifted away from the steadiness of his stare and darted to the door. Enoki would be back any second. What should I do? Continue to lie? Insist the device was wrong or broken? “Why does he need to know? What difference does it make?”
“It makes a huge difference if Dakon has an available, unclaimed female. The lottery and selection process keep competition under control. The presence of an unclaimed female could cause dissension. If a fight broke out over you, Enoki might be forced to banish tribe members.”
“All the more reason not to tell anyone I’m female.” I folded my arms.
“If someone looks closely at you, it’s obvious you’re not male. I’m surprised Enoki hasn’t figured it out. He’s one of the most perceptive men I’ve ever met.”
“You didn’t know. You needed the bioscanner.”
“I suspected. I confirmed my hunch with the scanner.”
“You tricked me—that was no health scan.”
“It was a health scan. I know you’re free of infectious diseases. But, it also revealed your sex.”
“Well, you’re trained to be hyper observant.” A contrary pang of hurt shot through me that Enoki hadn’t seen below the surface, the way Ardu had. “If Enoki didn’t figure it out, nobody else will, either.”
“I can’t allow the leader of my tribe to be blindsided.”
I glowered. “Medical information is protected, private information.” My gender didn’t qualify as medical information, but he’d gotten it from a medical device—without my informed consent.
“On Terra, perhaps. On Dakon, where every day means another fight for existence, the tribe has a right to know the factors impinging upon our survival.”
“My being a woman pretending to be man isn’t going to affect Dakon’s survival rate,” I argued. I was starting to dislike this guy. Apparently the conventional notion that all Dakonians were nice was promotional hype perpetuated by the exchange program. “I don’t belong to any tribe. I’m a stranded Earth citizen who’s leaving as soon as I can catch the first ship off this plan
et.”
“You tell him—or I will.” His eyes narrowed.
“All right. I will. Just…let me do it my way.” In my own time. Like, maybe never. I had the horrible feeling Enoki would be really hurt. However, if Andrea could contact the ship, and it could zip back and pick me up, I might not have to confess.
“Be sure you do. Enoki needs to know,” Ardu said as the door opened.
“What do I need to know?” Enoki asked.
“That I have to stay off my foot and give it time to heal? Right?” I glowered at Ardu for attempting to force my hand.
He hesitated. My heart pounded with anxiety. Would he tell? Finally, he said, “I’ll check on your ankle in a couple days.”
Message received. I had two days to come clean, or Ardu would spill the macha.
“I couldn’t find your kit,” Enoki said. “I checked the storage of both skimmers.”
Ardu flashed a sheepish, mea culpa grin. “Sorry. I’ve got it right here,” he said with the perfect blend of embarrassment and apology. He was as good an actor as I was. Maybe better. He pulled a smaller pouch from his larger leather bag.
“If we’re going to reach camp before the storm, we must hurry,” Enoki said. “I smell it coming in.”
“You can smell snow?” I asked. Water was scentless and tasteless, unless it was melted snow, and then it tasted like dirt.
“Scented—sensed—changes in the atmosphere portend of a storm,” Enoki explained.
“Let me rewrap…her—Madison’s ankle, and we can be on our way,” Ardu said. A slip or a warning? Fortunately, Enoki didn’t seem to notice and shoved my clothing into a drawstring bag as the healer wound a new bandage around my ankle. He emptied the chamber pot outside somewhere.
I donned my borrowed kel, furry mittens, and Dakonian boots and limped outside. It hadn’t gotten any warmer. Frosty air stung the exposed skin of my cheeks. I pulled the hood of my kel closer around my face.
After the bags and supplies were stowed in the seat compartments, Enoki stood on the running board and motioned for me to get on behind him. We sat, and I became immediately conscious of how uncomfortably close our bodies were. If we’d been a couple, I would have snuggled up against his broad frame, cradled his hips between my thighs, and wrapped my arms around his waist. Instead, I scooted as far back on the seat as I could without falling off.
The machine fired up with a vibration I felt through the thick kel. Or maybe my own body hummed with the awareness of Enoki.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready.”
“Hang on.”
There was nothing to hang on to, except him, so I rested my hands on my knees.
He steered the skimmer into a U-turn. With Ardu following, we putted away from the cabins. Once we cleared the Meeting Place, he headed for the woods. “Here we go,” he said and opened the throttle.
The skimmer shot across the snow like a rocket had been lit underneath. I felt myself falling backward and instinctively grabbed Enoki around the waist. Freezing wind tore the hood from my head and stabbed at my face. I ducked behind the windbreak of Enoki’s large form and clung to him, afraid I’d be thrown from the vehicle.
Trees, their branches and leaves coated in white, blurred as we tore through the woods. He anticipated the twists and turns like he knew them, but his familiarity with the route did little to relieve my fears. In a head-on collision with a tree, you didn’t have to be going very fast to get killed, and Mr. Responsible Leader had transformed into a speed demon. At the first opportunity, I would suggest he have Andrea order crash helmets.
“Good galaxy! Who taught you how to drive?” I shouted over the engine hum.
“Nobody taught us. We learned ourselves. You get on and go.”
Well, that explained it.
“We need to outrun the blizzard,” he said.
After swerving around trees and large boulders, we emerged from the woods to shoot across an open field of white, pristine and untouched except for a single set of tracks—Ardu’s. I risked life and limb to peer behind me. The healer had kept up. He drove like a speed demon, too.
At the tree line, a herd of huge antlered animals pawed through snow, digging for grass, I presumed. They eyed our skimmers then resumed grazing.
“Those are kel.” Enoki pointed.
“I see,” I said, relieved when he had both hands on the handlebars again.
Level ground swelled into a sizable rolling hill.
“Hang on,” he said.
“I am,” I said. I’d never let go of him.
He goosed the skimmer up, up, up—and over—the hill, and then we were flying. There was nothing beneath the skimmer but air. I screamed. A high-pitched girly girl shriek.
The skimmer hit the ground with a thud, and we shot across the snow. Enoki roared with laughter and zoomed over a second hill, just to make me scream again, I suspected.
Behind me, Ardu laughed, too. A mischievous ten-year-old boy lived inside every man, even alien ones.
We passed through another large copse of trees, and then he slowed to a putt as we entered a hamlet just as snow flurries began to tumble from the sky. Small stone huts similar to the emergency one we’d stayed in were interspersed with modular Terran prefabs. The insulated composite panels snapped together like toy blocks. Enoki brought the skimmer to a stop outside one of the larger prefabs. Ardu pulled up alongside him.
“I found him!” Ardu announced as men and a few women, looking like bears in their kel coats, crowded around.
“Obah!” they shouted.
“We have a guest,” Enoki announced, and I realized I was still holding onto him. I let go and scooted back so he could dismount.
One of the bears flung off her hood. “Madison! Is that you?” Garnet gaped.
I pushed back my own hood. “’Fraid so.”
I got off the skimmer, and we hugged. “What happened? Why are you here?” she said.
“The ship left without me!”
“Good galaxy! Do they know?”
“By now? Maybe. Maybe not.” I shrugged. Several of the women from the SS Masquerade were shaking their heads and rolling their eyes. They weren’t glad to see me.
Flurries had become big fluffy flakes as the snow fell harder and faster, and the wind seemed to whip up, too. Perhaps the Mad Hatter’s Wild Ride had been necessary. For sure, if we’d traveled any slower, we wouldn’t have arrived before the snow.
“We should all take shelter now,” Enoki said. “But, let me introduce Madison Altman. Some of you might recognize him. As he said, the Terran ship left without him. When the blizzard passes, we’ll try to contact his ship so he can return to his planet. In the meantime, he’ll be our guest. Please make him feel welcome.”
“He will need a hut,” Ardu said to Enoki.
“Madison can stay with me, with us,” Garnet said.
Kellian compressed his lips but didn’t object. Enoki had said Dakonian men would do anything to please their mates. Kellian clearly disliked having another man bunking with them but avoided disagreeing with Garnet. However, my presence would not be appreciated. I wished Garnet all the happiness in the galaxy and hoped her new relationship would succeed. For me to insinuate myself between her and Kellian would not be helpful.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea…” I said.
“He can stay with us.” A bear of a man with a feminine voice spoke up. The hood came off to reveal a Dakonian woman.
I don’t know why Ardu worried. Nobody would be able to see through my disguise. In a kel, everybody looked alike. Man, woman, bear—there was little difference.
Like the men, the Dakonian woman had horns, and they were twitching as she gazed at me with piercing intensity. The man beside her appeared no happier than Kellian.
“That’s very nice of you, Icha, but I have the most space. It would be best if Madison stayed with me,” Enoki said, and motioned at the large prefab, which must h
ave been his “hut.”
“I’m sure we could get Madison his own hut,” Ardu said.
“We can’t construct one during a blizzard. He’ll stay with me. When the snow passes, we can make other arrangements. Please, everyone return to the warmth and shelter of your huts.” Enoki waved them off.
The sky had begun throwing snow in buckets. They needed no further inducement to scurry away. Garnet and I hugged again, and Kellian hustled her off to their prefab before she issued any more invitations.
Ardu hung back.
“You, too.” Enoki thumped his shoulder. “Thank you again for bringing the skimmer. I’d much rather ride out the storm in my own hut than at the Meeting Place.”
Ardu shot me a warning look before mounting his skimmer and zipping away.
“How long do you think the blizzard will last this time?” I asked Enoki.
“A day. Maybe two,” he said.
That’s how long I had until Ardu would tell the Enoki the truth.
I followed him into the prefab.
Chapter Ten
Enoki
Madison scrutinized my hut, taking in the heater and lamps, a new flash cooker, the table and chairs I’d built, the kel bed. I’d have to divide and split up the hides to create a bed for him. “It’s very…functional. Your hut seems larger than the others,” he said.
“About double the size,” I admitted.
“Ah.” He gave a slight smile. “Rank has its privileges?”
“What do you mean?”
“You being tribe leader and all, you get the biggest cabin?” He dragged his fingers over my table. “This is pretty. Did you build it?” he asked, craning his neck to peer into the adjacent chamber I’d added onto the hut. “What’s in there?” His avid curiosity was…curious. I’d never known anyone to display such interest in a simple hut before.
“Right now, nothing. I have some tools and weapons stored. I only need the one room. Yes, I built the table—and the chairs and the shelves. As for why I have so much space, I had hopes of needing it.” I shrugged. “I built and outfitted my hut, believing I would have a mate and then kits.”
