by Lauren Esker
Some part of her expected the door to be locked, but it wasn't. She walked outside into brilliant sunshine and her first good, ground-level view of the village they called Lake City.
It was small but neat. The houses were snugly built from wood, painted bright colors and others dressed up with little plots of flowers and vegetables.
The sound of voices drew her to a group of children, mainly teenagers, plus one adult, sitting in the middle of the courtyard on logs. Something shimmered in the air in front of them, like heat mirages. When Claudia approached, she saw that they appeared to be doing homework.
"Yes, that's right, those are all the major bones of the humanoid body. And the smallest one is ...?"
"In the ear!" declared a slim girl with green skin.
"That's right, Trini," the teacher declared.
She was a middle-aged woman who looked, to Claudia, perfectly normal and human. She wore gold cuffs of the Galatean style, but otherwise Claudia wouldn't have looked at her twice if she'd walked past her in a mall or office back home. The other woman was even wearing normal Earth-looking clothes, a pair of what could easily pass for jeans and a loose dark-green blouse. She was black, not just brown-skinned like Kite, but actually African-American ... or, well, not American ...
... or was she? By now Claudia had gotten used to what it sounded and felt like when the symbiont translated for her. It was seamless, but there was also a faint sense that what she was hearing was not the words she understood, what she had taken for a weird accent back on Earth.
But when this woman spoke, there wasn't that faint overlay. Claudia was pretty sure this woman was speaking English.
"Excuse me," Claudia said, somewhat shyly, and felt even more shy when everyone looked up. "I hope you don't mind me asking, but ... are you from Earth?"
The woman broke into a grin. "Claudia! It's nice to meet you properly at last. I'm Meri. Meri Rowland. Yes, I'm from Earth. Kids, why don't you fill out your worksheets and I'll check them later. And then go find Tamir for your self-defense lessons."
There was a shy chorus of "Yes, Miss Rowland" and a few murmured complaints. Some of the kids stared openly at Claudia, who tried not to stare back, but it was difficult. One of them was a little centaur, with knobby horse legs folded under her. Another had wings like Kite's, but rather than being gray-barred in a hawklike style, they were bright green and red like a parrot's.
"Come on," Meri urged, beckoning Claudia. "You've been asleep every since you got in. I bet you could really use something to eat."
On cue, Claudia's stomach growled. As they walked away, she glanced back and saw the kids giggling and whispering.
"Are you an alien schoolteacher?"
Meri laughed. "Not on purpose. I'm actually a nurse from Ohio. But they don't have schools here, so we all try to fill in and give the kids lessons in whatever we're good at. I do health, first aid, and biology two days a week."
"Ohio? That's kind of a change."
"Tell me about it," Meri said. "I was abducted by aliens. Literally. What about you?"
"Um, pretty much the same thing," Claudia admitted. "I'm Claudia Webb, of Seattle. Have you, uh ... met Skara?"
"Oh, everyone around here knows Skara. And I know you've met my husband Lyr."
Claudia realized her mouth had fallen open. She shut it. Meri grinned.
"Sorry," Claudia said. "I mean ... I'm sure Lyr has a personal life. Everyone does. But, yeah. Wow. What's it like being married to a dragon?"
"What's it like dating a shapeshifter?"
"Weird," Claudia said promptly. "Wonderful. Amazing. Weird."
"And now you know what it's like having a dragon for a husband."
She held back a heavy curtain covering the doorway of a hut set slightly apart from the rest. A wave of damp heat struck Claudia like a physical blow.
"We cook most of our meals communally," Meri explained, ducking through the curtain. "We thought it would be easier than trying to install cooking facilities in every house. Safer too, since everything is made of wood. We're going to have to come up with something for heat when winter hits, but for right now we just take turns with cooking duty."
Rather than the cozy furnishings and wall hangings of the other huts, this one had a floor of clean-scrubbed stones, wooden counters along the walls, and a large fireplace pumping off heat. A woman with green skin and her hair wound up under a turban-like wrap was stirring a large pot hanging over the fire.
"Preet, hi!" Meri greeted her with a hug. "This is Claudia. We're just going to grab some lunch."
"Help yourself." Preet's voice was soft and shy. She smiled at Claudia, picked up a bucket from under one of the counters, and ducked out through the curtain.
Meri took down a stack of bowls from a shelf and began ladling a thick, chunky stew out of the pot, while Claudia looked around. Large windows, open to the outside with no sign of glass or shutters, let in light and let out some of the heat.
"Here." Meri handed her a bowl, fragrant and delicious-smelling. "You can use some water from that bucket on the left if you'd like to wash your hands before eating. We've been trying to keep everything as hygienic as possible until we can get better infrastructure installed."
There was a row of buckets underneath the counter where Preet had gotten hers, most of them full of water, and it made Claudia realize that she'd seen no sign of running water here, or electric lights. It was like stepping backward in time. Meri poured some water into a large bowl and they washed their hands—Claudia couldn't help thinking of it as a sort of ritual—and then they took their lunch, spoons, and a couple pieces of bread from a fresh-baked loaf on the counter.
"There's no modern conveniences here at all, are there?" Claudia asked as they left the cooking hut, brushing past Preet on her way back in; they both nodded to her.
"Not really. I do my best, but I'll really look forward to getting refrigeration and flush toilets and everything else I used to take for granted back home."
Meri gestured out back, where Claudia found a number of benches and tables. They were very close to the tall wire fence surrounding the village, making her aware that it gave off a soft but audible hum.
"Careful," Meri said, seeing her looking at it. "It's electric." She picked out a table underneath a canvas awning that sheltered them from the sun and wind.
"Wow." Claudia looked up at the fence. It must be twelve feet tall, with barbed wire along the top. "What in the heck are you trying to keep out, a T-rex?"
She laughed, but then noticed that Meri wasn't laughing, or even smiling. "Yes," Meri said. "Didn't Skara mention the wildlife?"
"He might have said something about dangerous wild animals." She thought back to their excursion into the woods. He hadn't seemed too concerned about it, but, well, Skara.
"They're actual, real dinosaurs. At least they look like it. And most of the weapons we have don't work on them."
Claudia suddenly wished Meri had picked a table farther from the fence. Like ... twenty miles away. Or two hundred light years. "Can they get in?"
"They don't really seem to try, at least not anymore." Meri appeared oblivious to the fact that this was not as reassuring as she clearly thought. "Hunters go out from the village all the time. In fact ..." She poked her spoon into her bowl. "You're probably eating one of them right now."
Claudia stopped with the spoon halfway to her mouth. Suddenly the stew didn't smell quite so good.
"Sorry!" Meri said at the look on her face. "You can't really tell, I swear. They taste like—"
"Chicken?"
"I was going to say beef, but now that you mention it ... look, trust me, it's not bad. You don't have any dietary restrictions, do you? Like, allergies, religious requirements or anything?"
Claudia shook her head, and forced herself to take a bite. Once she dug in, she couldn't stop, and cleaned her bowl, alien dinosaur or not.
"At least your first taste of dinosaur was cooked beyond recognition," Meri said with a faintly
nostalgic smile. "As opposed to hunting it yourself and having to eat it charred over a campfire."
"Did you ... do that?"
"Oh, honey," Meri said, and she launched into a story that sounded like it was straight out of a movie, involving space pirates, a crash landing, and fighting off dinosaurs. She was just telling Claudia about being treed by a pack of hunting velociraptors ("Well, I call them velocirexes, because they're so much bigger") when Skara appeared around the corner of the cooking hut, carrying a bowl of stew.
He was accompanied by Lyr's tall, horned figure, along with someone Claudia hadn't seen before. The newcomer looked like Kriff's species, a big tiger-guy with gray mixed into his striped black and orange fur.
Meri leaped to her feet and Lyr took her in his arms. Their obvious love for each other shone in their every motion, their every shared look. Claudia was almost jealous, until Skara sat on the bench beside her and slid his arm around her waist.
"You look better," she said, turning her head to kiss him.
"Feel a lot better, too." He nodded to the tiger-guy. "This is Tamir, by the way. Don't know if you've met him yet. Tamir, Claudia."
"No, we haven't," Claudia said. She gave Tamir a polite nod.
He nodded back and set a bowl of dark blue-purple fruits in the middle of the table. They looked vaguely like shiny blue grapes. "Look what I found in the woods today."
Meri grimaced. "Hooray. More awfulberries."
"That is not what they're called," Tamir retorted, and popped one into his mouth.
"What are they?" Claudia asked, reaching for one.
"Don't!" Meri and Skara chorused together. Claudia froze with her hand in the bowl.
"The only person who can stand them is Tamir," Skara said. He rested his chin on her shoulder. "We're not sure if it's a Galatean thing or a Tamir thing. Possibly years of eating military rations has killed his sense of taste."
"You grew up eating the same rations I did," Tamir retorted, and scooped a handful of berries out of the bowl. "Fine, more for me, then."
Claudia was too curious not to try. Tentatively she plucked a berry out of the bowl. She touched her tongue to it. There was a hint of citrus and a certain mouth-puckering tartness. Deciding to bite the bullet (or the berry), she popped it into her mouth.
And then promptly spit it into her empty bowl. "Eww! Oh, my God!"
"Warned you," Skara murmured.
She tried to elbow him, and grabbed his soup spoon. She needed a bite or two of something else to get that out of her mouth. "It tastes like toilet bowl cleaner would taste, if they flavored it with artificial grape! Eurgh."
"Right?" Meri said. "We were literally starving—well, okay, not quite, but the only alternative were these horrible, bland ration packs, and I still couldn't bring myself to eat those things."
Skara retrieved his spoon and dug into the stew. "Earth people are picky," he remarked. "Some of the things we had to eat ..."
Claudia nudged him. She worked her mouth, trying to eliminate the bitter taste. "I don't see you eating any of those berries."
"Well, I'm not starving now," he remarked, between bites.
In fact, he seemed to be slowing down; he'd gone through half a bowl of stew and was clearly losing his taste for it. Seeing Claudia eyeing his bowl, he shoved it toward her. "Here."
"You need it more than I do," she protested, pushing it back. Her stomach, meanwhile, was letting her know that the stew and bread she'd eaten earlier had hit bottom and bounced in the echoing emptiness.
"I don't think I could. Go on, have the rest of it."
"Adorable, aren't they?" Lyr remarked to Meri.
"That was your outside voice, you know," Skara said, tossing an awfulberry at his head.
Claudia decided to trust that he meant it, and quickly cleaned his bowl while the light banter went on around her. It was interesting to watch Skara interact with his ... well ... his family, she thought. It was clear that he thought of them that way.
She had seen Skara under enough different circumstances by now to have, she felt, a pretty good read on him. She'd seen him lying and earnest, playful and sincere; she'd seen what he acted like when he put up a front over insecurity and fear.
And she was reasonably confident that this was Skara feeling relaxed, safe, and confident. These were people he trusted enough to let down all his guards, to give up all his lies.
She wondered if they knew how much that meant. Lyr, at least, probably did.
"Hey," Skara said, nudging her as she scraped up the last spoonful. "Want to get out of here? See a little more of the village?"
"Actually ..." Watching Skara with his family had made her think about her own. " I don't suppose there's any way to make long-distance calls to Earth from here?"
"Only if someone on your planet has a subspace receiver," Tamir said.
"Er ... no. Probably not."
"In that case, no."
"I can take you there, then," Skara said.
He started to stand up, and swayed, catching himself on the edge of the table with a quick, subtle movement that sent a ripple of reaction through everyone else at the table.
"No," Meri and Lyr said together, and Meri added, "Nurse's orders. Doing those jumps is hard on the body, isn't it? Lyr told me that."
"He passed out when we did it before," Claudia said.
"Traitor," Skara muttered.
"Yeah, no. He's staying here 'til he's well."
"Rei and Sarah might be able to get a message out," Meri suggested. "We could contact them."
The suggestion brushed past Claudia; she wasn't sure who Rei and Sarah were, and she barely heard Tamir's reply. She blew out a breath and tried not to worry too much about Naomi. Her sister would be all right. She was probably worried by now, but Claudia was okay, and she'd be back as soon as possible, to ...
To do what? She touched a hand to her abdomen. The symbiont wasn't physically in her stomach, she knew, but it was a gesture toward the energy being that was part of her now.
She wasn't just Claudia Webb anymore. She was something new. Someone new.
She needed to tell Naomi that she was okay, but other than that ... was there really a reason to go back to Earth at all?
"Is something wrong?" Skara asked quietly, looking up at her. Around them, the light, friendly banter at the table had resumed, the comfortable chatter of people who knew each other very well.
"No. I'm fine. Better than fine." What would he do, she wondered, if she told him she wanted to stay? She looked into his face and knew that she wanted to, beyond all else.
They really did need to talk about it.
"I think I'd like to take that walk and see the village, though," she added, and a smile of pure delight spread across his face.
He got up carefully from the table, and took her hand.
Twenty-Six
Skara walked down to the lake with Claudia, her fingers twined in his. The sun was warm on his head and shoulders, helping soothe the lingering aches away. Nothing could be done about the exhaustion or the lingering twitchiness under his skin, but the food had helped a little and time would heal the rest.
He still couldn't quite get used to how alive planets were. Even with no large wildlife around, there were a thousand tiny sounds: insects buzzing, grass rustling in the wind, the piping cries of tiny lizards.
Claudia was full of questions, pointing to everything. She gasped in delight when a small, colorful lizard raced out from under their feet, then gasped again and laughed out loud as it spread its wings and took off, swooping low over the lake.
Skara laughed with her. "Don't you have animals on your planet? I distinctly remember a lot of small biting ones."
"Of course. But not like this. Oh, look!" She pointed to a tiny orange creature crouched on a rock by the lake, bristling with spines. It sensed them coming and sprang into the water with surprisingly long legs. "Was that a frog? I've never seen a frog like that before!"
"I don't know what most of th
em are called. If they even have a name. Most of the wildlife on this planet doesn't, you know."
"I keep forgetting that. Oh!" She looked up as a different winged lizard, this one with about a two-foot wingspan and long, narrow wings, swooped overhead.
There was something so infectious, so lovely, about her delight in even the tiniest things here; it made him take a fresh look at things he'd become jaded about. Watching Claudia was more fun than watching the wildlife.
He could spend a lifetime watching her. The subtle play of emotions on her face, the way her long lashes shadowed her smooth skin, the thousand tiny quirks of expression in her mouth.
He had never meant to put her in danger, but even when she had a choice, she'd gone willingly with him. She wanted to be here with him.
I ... I could spend the rest of my life with this woman.
I want to spend the rest of my life with this woman.
I think I love her.
"Skara?" Claudia had noticed he'd stopped responding. "What's wrong?"
"Wrong? Nothing. Not really." He took a deep breath of the warm, fresh air. There was an almost instinctive urge to ... to hide, to cover, to deflect with a joke. He didn't want to look at what he was feeling right now. He didn't want to admit that he felt it, to himself or anyone else.
But he'd spent a lifetime doing that.
Instead he took her in his arms and kissed her.
"Wow," she murmured as they separated. He still had his arms loosely around her waist, her hands resting on his shoulders. "That was nice. What's that for?"
"For being here," he said. "For being you."
The question hovered unspoken on his tongue. Will you come with me?
Will you stay with me?
She might say no.
"Skara?" she said, searching his face with her wide, expressive eyes. He saw nervousness there. Worry.
Hope.
"I was wondering," he began. "I wanted to know ... if you've thought at all about what you might want to ... do. After all of this."
"I have," she said slowly. "I might not still have a job, you know. The last thing I did was get the office trashed, and then I ran off without a word."