It was never that easy.
‘You …’ he whispered, his voice choked.
‘Me,’ she replied. She saw her canines reflected in his eyes. She saw her own smile. ‘Damn.’
He didn’t seem to hear her, barely even seemed to see her. His sole sense was touch, and he explored her with it. She felt the ridges of his fingers, the calluses of his palm on a skin of sweat as his hand traced her face. His fingers creased under her nose, traced the ridges of her lips. She could feel her breath break upon his fingertips, feel its heat.
He’s just mindlessly probing, she told herself. Groping like a monkey. He is a monkey, remember? He probably thinks he’s still asleep … or dead. You can still run, or you can push him away. When she felt herself leaning into his touch again, she all but screamed at herself. For Riffid’s sake, at least bite him or something!
‘You’re real,’ he whispered.
His hand slid farther up, plunging into her hair. She felt the sweat of her scalp under it mingle with his skin, felt his hand gentle upon her.
It’s not gentle, she reminded herself. Remember how many people he’s killed. Remember how easily he killed them. He’s not gentle. Stop thinking he is.
A sensation cold and hot at once, like a chill breeze on sweat-kissed skin, lanced through her body, causing it to shudder. She drew in a sharp breath as his fingers found the notches in her right ear, tracing them carefully.
Oh, you can’t be serious, she all but shrieked. Those are your ears! Shict ears, stupid! He can’t touch those! They’re … they’re sacred! They’re precious … they’re … he …
‘You’re alive,’ he whispered. His smile was easy, bereft of the malice and confusion she had seen in him before. ‘You’re alive … you’re …’ She felt his hand stop suddenly, something brushing against his hand. ‘Your feathers.’ He blinked, as if remembering. ‘You never leave your feathers behind.’
‘Not usually, no,’ she replied. It felt easy to tell him now, the words spilling from her lips. ‘But this time I—’
She felt his fingers wrap around her locks, pull hard. She felt the sudden stab of pain as the shriek escaped her lips.
It was easy to punch him after that as she brought her fist against his jaw and sent his head snapping to the side.
‘You stupid little kou’ru,’ she snarled, baring fangs. ‘What the hell was that for?’
And when he brought his face back, rubbing his jaw with the hand that was still slick with her sweat, it was easy to return the broad, stupid grin he gave to her.
‘I had to know,’ he said, his laughter harsh and parched.
‘You couldn’t have just asked?’
‘If you were a hallucination, you’d have said “yes”.’ He looked thoughtful, his grin growing broader. ‘Then again, if you were a hallucination you’d probably be …’ His eyes drifted lower, widening. ‘Um … nude.’ He rubbed the back of his neck, clearing his throat. ‘So, ah … not that I don’t have more impressive things to say, but I feel I must ask.’ He levelled a finger at her chest. ‘Why are you wearing that?’
She followed his finger to the scanty garment of brown fur wrapped about her br**sts. From there, she followed his eyes down to her nak*d midriff and to the loincloth hanging off her sand-covered, pale thighs.
‘For the same reason,’ she said, prodding his bare, wiry chest, ‘you’re wearing that.’
Up until that point, she never thought that humans were capable of leaping nearly so high or turning such a shade of red. He slapped at his body, nak*d but for a similar garment tied about his hips, as if wondering if his clothes had perhaps seeped under his skin.
The panic fled after a moment of desperate slapping, leaving him staring thoughtfully at his new garb and the bandage wrapped tightly about his thigh.
‘So …’ He looked from his loincloth, then up to her. ‘Did I miss something fun?’
‘Well, the fun only started after you passed out from blood loss,’ she replied.
‘As usual,’ he grunted, looking about. ‘So, where are my pants? Where’s …’ His eyes widened, scanning the sandy floor intently. ‘Where’s my sword? I had it! I had it right—’
‘It’s elsewhere,’ she replied, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘Calm down. Your pants, what remained of them, were filthy and covered in piss.’
Lenk blinked, turned a leery eye on her.
‘Whose piss?’
‘Your piss.’ She cringed a little at his visible relief. ‘You may have been unconscious, but your other … parts were still working despite you. The smell became unbearable after the third time.’
‘I suppose that explains this.’ He fingered his loincloth. ‘But why did you dress yourself that way, too? And not that I don’t appreciate your enthusiasm for cleanliness, but couldn’t you have just cleaned my pants?’
‘You think I did this?’ She slapped her torso. ‘Listen, you demented little shaven mole, if I wanted to see so much scrawny flesh I could have just plucked a chicken.’ She sighed and leaned back on her hands. ‘I passed out on my way here and woke up like this. They’re not too big on modesty here.’
Lenk raised an eyebrow.
‘They?’
‘They.’ She gestured over his head with her chin. ‘Specifically, him.’
And it was at that point, as he turned his head to his other side, that she realised how high humans could jump. She grinned, studying him even as he studied the creature squatting beside him, reliving the moments she had experienced when she had awakened under their tremendous yellow gazes.
Bulbous eyes, larger than overripe grapefruits and apparently desperate to escape the green, short-snouted skull they were ensconced in, were undoubtedly the first thing he noticed. From there, he would see the creature’s squat and scaly body, the apparent horrific crossbreed of a gecko and an ale keg, with four stubby appendages ending in three pudgy digits.
He would then find the most unsettling fact that it wore clothes. The creature absently scratched its furry loincloth and adjusted the round black hat, too small for its large head. One eye remained locked on Lenk while its other independently swivelled up over a pair of smoked-glass spectacles to look at Kataria.
‘’S’the matter with him?’ the creature asked in a voice bass enough to make Lenk jump again.
‘Fever,’ Kataria replied. ‘He’s just a little strange right now.’
‘I’m a little strange?’ Lenk replied, voice hoarse with surprise.
‘Oh, hey, ’s’not polite, cousin,’ the creature said, shaking its massive head. ‘King Togu always want politeness in Teji, y’know.’
‘King … what?’ Lenk asked, grimacing at the creature. He held up a hand. ‘Wait, wait …’ He turned back to Kataria. ‘First of all, what the hell is it?’
‘He is not an it,’ the shict shot back with a glare. ‘He is an Owauku and his name is Bagagame.’
‘That’s an Owauku?’ Lenk looked back at the creature. ‘And his name … is …’
‘Bagagameogouppukudunatagana-oh-sho-shindo,’ the creature said, a long and yellow grin splitting his face apart as he tipped his hat. ‘M’the herald o’ King Togu, welcomin’ you to Teji.’
‘So … Bagagame.’
‘Sure, cousin.’ His head sank considerably, smile disappearing behind dark green lips. ‘Go ahead and call me that. Not like I got a name that means anything special as my father might have given me to boil down my entire lineage into a single word. No. Bagagame ’s’fine.’
‘Oh, ah …’ Lenk rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Listen, I never really expected a lizard to have ancestry that I could insult, so …’
‘Yeah,’ Bagagame grunted. ‘M’just so damn pleased you’re up and awake and not babbling anymore in your sleep.’
‘I was babbling?’ Lenk’s curiosity swiftly became shock, and he turned to Kataria. ‘You let him watch me sleep?’
‘Well, he wasn’t really interested until you pissed yourself,’ she replied, shrugging.
‘Why did you let him do that?’
‘I couldn’t very well say no; it’s his house. He volunteered before any of the others could.’
He swept his eyes about the reed hut, the thatched roof, and mats of woven fronds on the floor. ‘There are more? They have houses? What do lizards need houses for?’
‘Oh, fantastic,’ she sighed. She rolled her eyes in the direction of Bagagame. ‘He’s doing it again.’
‘W’sat?’ the Owauku asked, tilting his head.
‘He does this sometimes, starts repeating everything in the form of a question.’ She tapped her temple. ‘He wasn’t too right to begin with and the fever hasn’t helped. You’d better go get ah-he man-eh-wa.’
‘I kuu you, cousin,’ Bagagame said, bobbing his head and rising up. ‘M’had a fellow once, acted like way, kuuin’ things that weren’t there. W’beat him over the head a bit.’ He turned a bulging, thoughtful stare to Lenk. ‘Y’sure that wouldn’t just be easier?’
Lenk blinked.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure.’
‘Do things the hard way, huh? Yeah, I’ll grab ah-he man-eh-wa.’ He hopped to the leather flap serving as a door. ‘Togu’s gonna be wantin’ to talk with you after.’
Kataria watched the flap open and saw the various green shapes moving about in the bright sunlight beyond, the errant burble of their alien languages drifting into the hut. They were silenced as Bagagame slid out and she turned back to Lenk, eager to see another layer of horrified shock on his face.
What she saw instead was him lying supine on the sand, his arm draped over his eyes. She studied his wiry body, the slight twitch of his muscles as he drew in deep breaths and exhaled them as stale, weary air. His body had become tense, trembling with every sigh he made.
For as much as he seemed to enjoy being grim and silent, Lenk was not the most difficult human to read, she thought. Even if he never spoke his feelings, his body told her enough. He seemed to compress as he lay upon the sand, some great weight pressing him down upon the earth.
She opened her mouth to speak when her thoughts leapt unbidden to the fore of her mind.
Don’t, she told herself. Don’t ask him what’s wrong. You know what he’ll say. He’s thinking about what you said on the boat before the Akaneeds attacked. He’ll ask you why you said them, why you said you had to kill him to feel like a shict again. Then he’ll ask you why you’re still here, having said all that, why you didn’t kill him. Don’t ask him. Don’t tell him. He’s just now recovering; he can’t handle the answer.
Yeah. She sighed inwardly, rubbing her eyes. He’s the one that can’t handle it.
‘How long?’
‘What?’ She looked up with a start. ‘How long what?’
‘Have I been out?’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘About two days.’
‘Two days,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve been out for two days and on the island for two days. Four days total, three days past the time we were supposed to meet Sebast so he could take us back.’ He cracked a smile. ‘I’m assuming we lost the tome, too?’
‘It hasn’t been found, no,’ Kataria said, shaking her head. ‘The lizardmen have been fishing things out of the ocean for a while now, but no book.’
‘Well,’ he sighed, folding his arms behind his head. ‘I suppose it doesn’t really matter if we don’t get picked up, then, does it?’
‘Not necessarily,’ she offered. ‘The Owauku haven’t said anything about a ship arriving in the past few days. Sebast might just be late.’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘I suppose that isn’t much comfort, though.’
It would certainly be less comfort, she reasoned, to tell him that Sebast might not be coming because his search party was currently being digested and excreted by roaches. She held her tongue at that, knowing that the loss of the tome would likely be too much for him to bear.
It didn’t appear to be, for his smile didn’t diminish. Even when his lips quivered, it only grew a little larger. His eyes didn’t grow any colder, their blue suddenly seeming less like frigid sheets of ice and more like the sea, endless and peaceful.
And even as she stared back at him, he didn’t turn them away from her.
That, she knew, was unusual. He had stared at her many times before through many different eyes. She had felt his curiosity, his anger, his yearning all hammered upon her back through his stare. And always, he had turned away like a sheep before a wolf when she turned to meet his stare.
Now, it was she who felt the urge to turn away. It was she who felt her smile as sheepish upon her face. To see him so … pleasant, without his sword and without blood spattering his face, was so unusual she couldn’t help but feel as though it were somehow wrong, as though he were nak*d without violence and anger.
As if you needed any more reason to run.
‘We’re trapped here, you know,’ she said, ‘for the foreseeable future, at least. We have no weapons, no tome, no clothes. We’re stuck amidst a bunch of walking reptiles and you just barely survived an arrow through your leg.’ She sneered, leaning back onto her hands. ‘So, just in case you’d forgotten, there really isn’t anything to smile about.’
‘I suppose not,’ he replied, ‘but things are a lot better than they were two days ago.’
‘Things will get worse.’
‘They always do,’ he agreed, nodding. ‘But for now …’