Caveman Alien’s Enemy

by Skye, Calista

  A heavy, cold weight settles in the pit of my stomach and I squeeze the ball of leaves in my hand. But the treasure inside gives me no consolation. “Then she is alone in the jungle.”

  The woman Delyah clears her voice. “Where is the cave where you kept her?”

  I frown. “I didn’t keep her there.”

  “You prevented her from leaving.”

  I think back. That does sound like something I might do. “No.”

  “Why did she not leave and come back here?”

  “There was too much snow. Then there was too much water. And then we enjoyed ourselves. We made things.”

  “Did she ask you to let her go?”

  “No. She could have left at any time. I helped her make the ladder.”

  “A ladder?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why was there a ladder?”

  “So she could climb out of the hole. I must demand to be released from these wires. I intend to look for Mia in the jungle.”

  Delyah looks at me, it seems to me with a mildness that I recognize from Mia. “What hole?”

  “The fire melted the snow in a circle and the walls were very high. Like a hole. It’s remarkable how much of these simple things I have to explain to you.”

  “We are slower than dragons. Bear with us. When you saw Mia last – was she alive?”

  “Yes!”

  “Was she injured?”

  “No.”

  “Was she bound?”

  “No.”

  “Did she ask you to leave?”

  “No.”

  “Did she ask for your help?”

  ’Will you help me find my village?’ “Yes.”

  “Was she in danger?”

  ’You promised!’ I decide to be honest. This woman has a way of seeming so unthreatening it makes me want to tell the truth. She’ll understand. “Only from me.”

  “She was in danger from you?”

  “I was in a strange state of mind. The gold... I may have said unpleasant things.”

  “Did you harm her?”

  “No.”

  “Did she harm you?

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  I look around the circle of slayers and a handful of women. No dragon will want to state how he might be harmed by lessers. It is a secret any dragon would take to his death. But Mia is alone in the jungle. A jungle where both Galindilan and Berilona and several others seem to roam around freely. “She shot me in the head. Then she tied my hands and ankles. She put poison on the wounds.”

  “Poison?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did this poison look like?”

  “It was blue and transparent. We are wasting time. Mia is alone out there. There are many dragons in the woods now. They might harm her. They are different from me.”

  “She poisoned you and tied you. So of course, you wanted to harm her.”

  I consider it. “Perhaps a little.”

  “You wanted to torture and kill her.”

  “I thought about it once or twice. Then no more.”

  “Did you torture her?”

  “Why must I answer every question fifty times? No!”

  “How did she tie you?”

  I nod towards my feet. “Like that. Now let us all go into the woods and find her.”

  “But you got loose.”

  “She did it. She weakened the wires until they snapped. Metal fatigue.”

  The woman frowns. “Metal fatigue?”

  “That’s what she called it.”

  “She released you voluntarily?”

  “Yes. And now please release me voluntarily. If none of you will help me look for her, then at least let me do it alone.”

  More women come over to the seated one and squat down. They confer for a while in whispered tones, throwing glances at me.

  Delyah looks up again. “If we ask you to show us the cave, will you?”

  “Yes! Let’s all go! Now! Bring your slayers. All of them.”

  “Why do you want to see Mia again?”

  I look away. “I don’t know.”

  “Is it so you can torture and kill her?”

  “No.”

  “What will you do to her when you see her again?”

  “I will…” I close my eyes and imagine Mia walking into the village right now, in her ugly dress that she somehow makes look wonderful, with that shy smile on her face. “I will say ‘thank you’.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she gave me something and I took it from her.”

  “What did she give you?”

  “It was… something important. I am surprised about this idiocy. We all know that Mia is alone out in the woods. And yet here we are, wasting time with endless and fruitless talk!”

  “We must make sure that your intentions are good, Kyandros. In which direction is the cave? We’ll send men to check.”

  I groan. “I am not good with directions. I much prefer to fly over landscapes to being part of it. But I think it is… well, I can’t point. That tree which is broken halfway up.”

  Some of them turn to look.

  “From you to that tree is the direction?” the woman Delyah asks, pointing.

  I was right, she does understand. “It is. Possibly. I said I’m not good with directions. Less than half a day for me to walk. For you, maybe a little less than a day. For these slayers, about a half day.”

  “If we send men in that direction, will they find the cave?”

  I want to lift my hands in exasperation at her silly question. “I can’t possibly know that!”

  “Is there a chance?”

  I think about it. “I suppose.”

  “Any landmarks? Strange hills or trees?”

  “All hills and trees look the same to me! Great gold, why did I come here? I would have better luck looking for her alone! Observe the sun! The day is getting old.”

  “No landmarks?”

  I frown, thinking. “There is a waterfall. A large one. But it is not close to the cave.”

  “So not really useful as a landmark, then.”

  “Mia was there. Recently, so she said. At the waterfall. I have noticed that she leaves tracks on the ground when she walks. Small indentations in the ground or snow where her foot has been and then is no more. In the shape of her foot. She will leave many such indentations in a row where she has walked—”

  Delyah holds up her hand. “We know what tracks are, Kyandros. You mean we might follow her tracks from the waterfall to the cave?”

  “Again, you ask me questions that it is entirely impossible for me to answer. It’s like you do it on purpose to display my ignorance.”

  “No offense is meant. I just must make sure that we are talking about the same thing.”

  I take a deep breath. My patience is running out.

  The man and the woman talk briefly, and then the man gives orders and a lot of the slayers take off into the jungle at a brisk pace, going in the direction I indicated.

  I would never have thought that the sight of a whole gang of dragon slayers running off, ready to do battle, would have a positive effect on me. But it does reassure me somewhat that there are now strong men looking for Mia in the jungle.

  The mild Delyah looks at me again. “Kyandros, have you ever heard of Bune?”

  “Mia talked about it.”

  “Do you think she might go there?”

  “No.” I am glad to have spotted a trick question. They want her to be guilty of something.

  “Why not?”

  “She said it was a forbidden place.”

  She frowns. “Forbidden?”

  “Forbidden by the shaman of your village. A sacred place. I don’t remember the details. Now let me go and I will join the search for Mia.”

  They confer again. Finally, the woman Delyah looks at me.

  “Kyandros. There is a good chance we will release you at some point in the future. For now, we must make sure that what you say is true. We have
known dragons to be deceptive. We assure you that we will be looking for Mia with all our resources and as many men as we can spare. Bad things have happened recently, and we think dragons are behind them. For now, we must keep you here. You, yourself, admitted that you are not good with directions. We can probably search better than you can. We know the jungle. We even think we know of the cave you talked about. When we find it and we can confirm your story, we might let you go.”

  I glance up at the slayers around me. “I don’t believe you. These men would rather die than let me go.”

  “They will do as they are ordered. Kyandros, can we get you anything? Food, drink?”

  “I am a dragon.”

  “So, yes or no?”

  I snort. “No food or drink is required. I hereby demand to be released. If Mia is among dragons, there’s no telling what they might do to her.”

  She gives me a strange look and taps her lips with one finger. “Then I will only ask you one more thing: will you please open your fist and show us what you’re clenching in it so tightly?”

  31

  - Mia -

  The fight-or-flight reflex is taking me over, and it makes my hands shake so I can’t aim the crossbow properly. I can only shoot one of them. There’s a good chance I should have chosen flight, not fight.

  Not that it would have helped. I have seen Kyandros run, and these guys can’t be that much slower. They would have caught up with me in a second or two, and then… well. I’ll soon know what they have in mind.

  The three of them are coming towards me side by side, chatting calmly as if only out for a stroll on a pleasant day. They haven’t paid me any attention since they all smiled.

  But I’m not fooled by this. They have nothing good in mind for me. I’m aiming the crossbow at the ground right in front of them, ready to lift it. I’d prefer not to accidentally shoot someone again.

  As they come closer, they don’t even look at me, and for a second I stand aside, thinking that they might actually just want to pass right by me.

  But at that moment, they stop. One of them casually reaches out and snatches the crossbow from my hands, making my finger pull the trigger and sending my last bolt skywards with a loud twang.

  “Oh, look! What is this?” one of them says with a voice so oily it almost drips. “A female? Surely not.”

  “Surely not,” another agrees. He has orange skin and milky eyes. “We have seen no women on this planet. Just large men with rusty swords.”

  “It is a very strange creature,” says the third, a stiff and haughty kind of dragon. He’s older than the others and must be the same guy I saw walking into the ship. I guess he saw me, after all. “Perhaps we must make sure that it is in fact female. Aliens can be so unusual.”

  “This is true,” says the orange dragon. “And it would be fine sport for us to check these things. But I know someone who especially likes to meet young females.”

  “Ah,” says the old one. “The Duchess is no friend of females younger than her. But yes, whenever she meets one, she does tend to enjoy it.”

  The orange one frowns. “Do the younger females also enjoy that kind of encounter?”

  “No,” the oily one says with a satisfied smile. “Let us take this one inside and present her to Berilona for her amusement.”

  They reach out for me, and that wakes me up from my passivity. “Take your hands off me! I’m not going anywhere!”

  They get hold of my arms and hold me so tightly it pinches the skin.

  I kick and scream and hiss and try to yank my arms out of their grip, but they’re so much stronger than me that I don’t stand a chance. My kicks don’t connect at all, and the dragons are lifting me off the ground and carrying me with them towards Bune.

  I have felt powerless before. In the flying saucer when we were abducted in the first place, and being Troga’s captive with her terrible trench all around us. But this, being held immobile and carried towards something that doesn’t sound at all pleasant, is worse than all of those experiences.

  “Heeeelp!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Brank’oooox!”

  I can’t have any hope of any of the cavemen from our tribe hearing me, of course. But I have to do something.

  “Heeeelp! Draaagoooons!”

  Before I know it, we’re at the spaceship. The dragons carry me up the incline to the door and then inside.

  The door closes and the air goes still and dead.

  I yank and kick and squirm as hard as I can, but the dragons are unaffected as they carry me further inside the alien ship.

  I have been inside Bune once before, when Delyah gave some of us a little tour of the tiny part of it that had been explored before then. And I remember this – a garden landscape with idyllic little paths and bushes and flowers. This is the upper level, where the original owners of the ship would enjoy themselves by pretending that they were still on their home planet, a planet that the dragons had already ruined.

  The dragon men still hold onto me as they march me across the very nice lawn. The old one walks in front with a regal gait, having thrown his toga around him. He carries my crossbow like it’s a dead fish, holding it out from himself.

  Still, I yank at their arms and throw kicks when I think I have a chance, but I never hit anyone and all I accomplish is to tire myself out even more than before.

  There’s someone else in front of us. A woman, sitting on the ground with her back to me. She appears to be wearing some kind of dress, very clingy and shiny. Her hair is a reddish hazel, like a flow of liquid copper down her back, her skin is the most perfectly golden tone I have seen, and she manages to look elegant sitting on the ground with her legs curled up underneath her. She doesn’t appear to have the spikes down her back that Kyandros does.

  I can’t see her face, but it looks like she’s doing something, like reading a book.

  The toga guy walks up to her. “Duchess Berilona, I have found a female in the woods. It was spying on the ship.”

  “We,” the orange dragon beside me says loudly. “We found it.”

  The woman doesn’t look up. “Bring it here.”

  Her voice is silky and sensual and downright beautiful.

  The two dragons walk me over to her.

  She looks up, and if I weren’t so staunchly straight, I would have considered changing teams, at least for a while. She is spectacularly beautiful. She reminds me of an old poster that I saw hanging in some guy’s dorm room, with the first and original supermodel Cindy Crawford in a swimsuit. Except this dragon woman is even more perfect, even more stunning. And of course, no model on Earth ever had green eyes with star-shaped pupils.

  “A female?” she says and looks down again. “Are you sure? Females usually have some beauty to them.”

  “We are pretty sure, Duchess. Observe the protrusions on its chest and the wideness of its hips. The voice is also unmanly. It was carrying this, which looks like a musical instrument but is more likely a weapon.” Toga guy places the spent crossbow on the ground.

  “Make it speak.”

  “Speak,” the toga dragon says to me.

  I say nothing.

  The orange man squeezes my arm with his claw.

  “Ow!”

  The woman shrugs. “I suppose it might be female. How young is it?”

  “How young are you?” toga guy repeats.

  “Twenty-two,” I say before they pinch me again.

  The woman looks up, now with some interest. “Twenty-two years?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is indeed very young,” she says and changes her position. “I enjoy dealing with younger females.”

  “I know,” toga guy says. “That’s why I brought it to you.”

  “We,” the oily dragon holding me corrects. “We brought it.”

  “So that,” toga guy continues, “you have some entertainment after you agree to mate with me. I must tell you now that Kyandros is not able to bring you any gold. It is true as was reported by these two �
�� he is dead and gone. Or as good as dead. Let us forget him and his empty promises and get away from this planet as soon as we can. Unless perhaps Hunderet or Revetax have brought you gold?” He raises his eyebrows in a way that even I perceive as mocking.

  His words send a hard pang of worry to the pit of my stomach. Kyandros dead or dying?

  “Not yet,” orange guy admits. “But soon. If even an elderly wretch like Galindilan can find silver, then certainly I can find gold. I would strongly dissuade you from mating with this old rug, Duchess. When the story gets out that you gave yourself to him, along with your famous virginity, for a mere silvery rock, you’ll be the laughing stock of the universe. Every dragon will know. So I brought you this female, that you may play with her and get in the mood for mating with me.”

  The oily guy laughs. “Ignore these two clowns, Duchess. It is I who have brought you the female. Indeed, it is for your entertainment. Perhaps you’d enjoy seeing what this thing looks like on the inside, while I’m off getting your gold? Well, here it is.”

  The woman finally gets up. “Hmm. I do need some entertainment. This one has served its purpose.”

  Now I see what she’s been doing. There’s an animal on the ground, one of those mousy monkey things with a whole bunch of arms. They’re what the cavemen call grey ghosts, and the same kind of creature that Heidi befriended and called Alice.

  This is not Alice, but a smaller one. It has been dissected and lies on the grass in a sad heap of blood, organs and, fur.

  To my horror, the little thing suddenly twitches. It’s still alive. Yeah, it’s being vivisected – taken apart while still alive.

  I swallow. “You may want to put that thing out of its misery.”

  The woman chuckles softly. “Oh, it is dead already. Just another minute and it will stop moving. I made it last a good while, though. Think I can make you last longer?” She holds up two fingers, as if to show me the blood on the claws. Then she puts both fingers into her mouth and sucks on them, closing her eyes. “Mmmm. Blood from still alive prey always tastes the sweetest.”

  “Duchess,” toga guy says. “Now that I have given you something to entertain you, I wonder if you are ready to do as indicated and mate with me. In return, I will give you a large rock of silver.”