by Mara Duryea
“You sure it was me?”
“It was you,” said N’Nar.
Rilkin scratched behind his ear. “So…so on the ship, when you say I’m your brother, you not just adopting me because I around Vijeren and Sibare.”
N’Nar shook his head. “I knew your soul. Zhin said you don’t talk about what happened to you. Sibare and Vijeren say I was brought from Aralia. Why weren’t you with me? Why did you end up in a Child City?”
Rilkin gazed at N’Nar, struggling to find anything familiar about him. His only clue was what had happened in the Dining Club on Kinarrin’s compound.
“When I come into Kinarrin’s stupid Dining Club,” said Rilkin, “I find you, Sibare and Vijeren familiar. I wondering all this time why. Maybe you one Cedrite and we not remember you yet. I not know why we don’t. Siblings easier to recognize than anybody else.”
Rilkin’s brows knit. “Only Zhin not find you familiar. I was confused. I tell Zhin one night, while we waiting for Vijeren and Sibare to recover in the vozhrith. He ask me if N’Nar come from my past I not remember, but then why N’Nar not say anything to me? N’Nar remember souls, so N’Nar should have known I his brother.”
Rilkin gazed at N’Nar, as if he could answer for his past self. The Sirilith turned to Sibare and Vijeren, who had known him better and could hopefully explain.
“N’Nar didn’t always speak up,” said Sibare. “Especially if it had to do with Karijin. N’Nar probably didn’t want Karijin to know Rilkin was related to him. Karijin already had him by the throat with me and Vijeren. Only he wouldn’t have murdered us like he would have murdered Rilkin.”
“He was sadistic enough to do it in front of N’Nar,” said Vijeren. “And N’Nar knew it.”
Satisfied with the explanation, the Sirilith turned back to Rilkin. The Antiminar had fallen into a deep reverie.
“What happened to you, Rilkin?” said N’Nar.
“I not remember,” whispered Rilkin. “I only remember the Child City.” He squeezed his tail to his stomach. Only then did everyone realize that both N’Nar and Rilkin hugged their tails when they were uncomfortable or nervous.
“Then tell us about the Child City,” said N’Nar. “I need to know what happened to you, at least from there.”
“I’d rather Zhin tell it.”
“But you’ll have to fill in some gaps,” said Zhin. “There were times I wasn’t there.”
Rilkin nodded hesitantly. “All right, but you start.” He stood up. “Can we eat first?”
Zhin nodded.
“And can we go back into the library?” said Vijeren. “It’s creepy in here.”
Zhin glanced at the drab walls and realized the only way out that he knew of was through the library. The vozhrith was also deeper underground. If they got trapped here…he shivered.
“I think we’d better stay beneath the stairs in the library,” said Zhin. “That way it can protect us if something falls from the ceiling.”
“Maybe the haladon is dead,” said Rilkin in a monotone voice, although he hardly believed it. Even debilitating worms needed time to penetrate a haladon’s massive brain completely.
***
After breakfast, the companions headed to the second floor in search of cul-de-sacs to hear Zhin and Rilkin’s tale. They found some on the second floor, protected by the stairs and third floor walkway.
Rilkin remained close behind Zhin, resisting the urge to catch hold of his belt like a child. The Antiminar had forced himself to eat, knowing he could cope better if at least one thing, like his stomach, was happy. He’d never spoken of his days in the Child City. He figured Zhin could, because he was an Iskerkin. Rilkin wasn’t too far from the truth.
“This is good,” said Zhin to Sibare, whom he cradled in his arms. “Nothing fell here. The shelves are bolted down, too.” That was the important part.
“They kind of small,” said Rilkin. “I think Ikalkor sleep up here, so maybe we better smell them first.”
Sibare stared into space. “They look like they’re spinning, but staying still at the same time.”
“The shelves?” said N’Nar in consternation.
“Yeah.”
Zhin’s arms tightened around Sibare. Panic threatened to surge through him and he sucked in air. Be calm, be calm. “Pick your rooms.”
The Metirins set out to smell the four cul-de-sacs with zeal.
“Rilkin,” said Zhin, “are you still okay with this?”
The Antiminar took a shuddering breath. “I am. I have to. Maybe is not right I hold this in.”
“We’ll bear it with you, Rilkin,” said Zhin. “If it gets too hard, I’ll take over.”
“If you could do it, I can, too.”
Zhin’s insides twisted. Hopefully his example wasn’t a harmful one. What if it was better for Rilkin not to relive it? He should have gone to a child psychiatrist, but he’d had a Kabrilor family, and they couldn’t expose him or themselves.
“Agh, agh, agh! He sleeps in here!” Vijeren bolted out of a cul-de-sac and pushed his face between the bars of the short protective wall. “Don’t let Sibare smell it, or he’ll drop dead.”
Sibare smiled as Miranel patted Vijeren’s back.
Zhin picked the room furthest from Ikalkor’s haunt and laid Sibare carefully on a couch. He then stretched out on the floor. There was room enough for Rilkin, who sat on the end of the couch. Like all the furniture, the couch was huge even for a Kabrilor. Vijeren, N’Nar, and Miranel occupied the room next to it. Nobody would take the one beside Ikalkor. The smell had seeped in there.
“Everybody ready?” said Zhin, taking the nearly completed blood pendant from his pocket. He would finish it during the story.
Everyone answered in the affirmative.
“I’ll tell dad’s side, too, since he told me,” said Zhin. He closed his eyes, letting the past play before his mind’s eye. He opened his wrist and began adding more Iskerkin blood to the small dagger. “It was my fifteenth birthday…”
Rilkin
1
The Hunting Trip
Since Rezh only knew the season I’d been born in, he’d decided to place my birthday on the first day of the Fall Feasts. That was just before the freezing rains turned to snow. It also meant birthday feast.
Velevy was expecting her third baby, so we located a giant four-room bunker to winter in. The last time we were in a one-room bunker, Velevy had given birth. My brother, twin sisters, and all the cousins got traumatized.
Their reaction was not unlike Gilanra’s when she first witnessed a birth. Total panic. Syladins hatch from eggs. My mom had no idea what a labor pain was, or what a land birth looked like. She didn’t pass blood every month, either. After that, there’d been a lot of cleaning involved and some serious psychiatric help on Terros’s part.
Gramma and Grampa had three sons; Terros and Velevy had two daughters. Potesac and Selly had no more. I think it was the drugs Selly had taken before she joined the band. It’s the reason Ikalkor came out so scrawny.
The bunker was under a white timisree tree. They always smelled fresh and kept the draft from coming down the tunnel. Not many things liked attacking under timisree trees. It was too much trouble trying to get in. Their white branches twisted like wooden tornadoes, making the trees look like cones. Best of all, the kiderrins would live in the tree branches, instead of in the bunker with us.
This late in the fall, the leaves had already dropped, leaving the trees naked and cold in their huddled clumps. It was rare to see a timisree standing alone. They liked friends. Cold sprinkles tapped on the blanket of dead leaves as Rezh, Terros, and Rindar prepared for one more hunting trip for the birthday feast. They donned thick, gray coats to their knees. Their green and black pants poked out underneath. The kiderrins were already holding their weapons and hunting gear.
“I want to go, too,” I said. I was similarly dressed and ready to go.
“Not this time,” said Rezh with a smile. “I have to get your present. I
had to hide it from you out in the woods. You’re like one of the babies. You’ll go looking for it and then you’ll admire it in secret, and then pretend you’re surprised when I give it to you.”
I blinked several times, struggling for a comeback. I usually had one, but when my dad turned psychic, it was a moot point. Laughing, Rezh kissed my temple and jumped on his kiderrin. He, Terros, and Rindar rode away.
“Bye, Daddy!” my little brother shouted, running out of the tunnel. “Bye, Grampa, bye, Uncle Terros!”
“Bye, Kofirin,” Rezh yelled back as he, Terros, and Rindar gave him a wave.
My brother looked up at me. He wore a heavy coat Selly had made for him out of brown beygar fur. He was seven years old, and a stout little Berivor with blue-green eyes. Kofirin looked like Sibare, because he had the same wild brown hair and make of face. My sisters possessed the same kind of appearance. They’d pulled their looks from both Gilanra and Rezh. Maybe that’s what I was supposed to look like, instead of the male human version of my monster mother.
“What?” I said.
He held up the wooden figurine of a Miricor with carefully crafted joints. “Uncle Terros finally finished it!”
Taking the toy, I examined it. The figure was the best Terros had ever made. The face had been meticulously carved. The clothes looked real. A round discoloration stained the chest, which Terros had used to his advantage. I wanted one. I didn’t dare admit it, though. Fifteen-year-old young men didn’t play with toys.
“Kofirin, get my wooden soldiers and let’s play!”
Shouting in glee, Kofirin ran off and returned less than a minute later.
As he and I settled on a low branch with the box, I asked, “What did you name him?”
“Hm…” Kofirin tugged on his ear in thought. “I don’t know yet.”
“We can’t play unless he has a name.” I started setting up the miniature warriors.
Kofirin suddenly threw a fist in the air. “I know what it is! His name’s Rilkin!”
I closed the box and set it aside. “Why Rilkin?”
Kofirin pointed at the discoloration on the shirt. “You see that?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a sunbeam.”
I needed to hear this one through. “How do you figure that?”
“The wood got sunburned.”
My brows went up. “How does wood get sunburned?”
“It’s the same as when you get a sunburn. A sunbeam gets trapped in your skin. So a sunbeam got trapped in the wood.”
I smirked. “Okay. Why did you use the Vaylanian word?”
“Because Miricors are from Vaylania.”
Keftsla, Kofirin was intelligent. He’d really thought this through. When I was his age, I was eating bloody leypels.
“Let’s play,” I said.
We dug tunnels into the dirt to make an underground fort. We also constructed shelters for the soldiers out of leaves and sticks.
“Hurry,” I said, “it’s almost night and the retsinists are about to come out.”
“But we haven’t made the protective wall yet,” Kofirin cried.
Taking the one retsinist in my arsenal, I cut it through the camp. The soldiers screamed and scattered throughout the tunnels. The retsinist pounced on several poor souls and ripped them apart.
“We have to regroup!” Kofirin shouted, or rather, Rilkin shouted. The remaining soldiers ran for their lives to the high ground in the branches. They only had two spears and a few hammers. The shrieks of a dying man echoed through the tunnels.
“We have to lure the retsinist into one of the rooms underground,” I said.
“Whose room?” said Kofirin.
“Azhrin’s room.”
“But he’s drunk in there!”
“It’s okay. The retsinist will think he’s dead.”
As the soldiers began taking their positions to herd the retsinist into Azhrin’s room, the tug jerked with sudden force. My dad’s anxiety shot into my heart, and I sucked in air. Great Cubons, I should have gone with them! What if he’d been trampled? He could be disemboweled and dismembered.
“Kofirin,” I said, “go inside. I have to go to Dad.”
My brother’s shoulders and ears drooped. “But we were just getting to the good part.”
“I’ll come back and play, so leave all the soldiers out.” I grabbed one of the kiderrins lounging nearby and sped towards my dad.
***
The mossy boulder was breathing, but it had no head. It rumbled like something was digesting inside. A smell similar to dead leaves sliming over in scummy water oozed out of the rock.
“That’s the biggest deldrit I’ve ever seen,” said Rezh. “I think it could swallow a grown Metirin.”
“Hopefully it didn’t,” said Terros. “Or the meat’s not gonna taste too good.”
Deldrit meat was tender and soft, but only the part under the heavy rock shell. The legs tasted like dirt from an awik’s nest. The head was nothing but a balloon of fat packed with bulging veins. Vaylee used to cook with it until Gilanra spotted tiny worms in it and started screaming.
Rindar stuck awik meat onto a double hook at the end of a long thick stick. We didn’t eat awiks. People think cannibalistic wanderers enjoy them because they’re capable of eating people. They never stop to think that if wanderers liked awiks, they wouldn’t have switched to people. Anyway, deldrits love awiks, and that’s the only thing an awik is good for.
“Ready?” said Rindar.
“Ready,” said Rezh, as he and Terros carefully approached the breathing boulder. They each carried a few pieces of meat and began tossing them around the large rock. It was about six feet high, with a twelve-foot diameter. They kept a good six feet back, because deldrit necks could stretch as long as their shells were high. The suction from the mouth was powerful enough to drag a Kabrilor down. They couldn’t eat full-grown Kabrilors, but they settled for limbs. We once ran across a dead Kabrilor without his arm and legs. He was lying beside a breathing rock.
As Terros tossed meat, the round, bald skull lunged out, mouth open in a perfect circle bigger than his head. The eyes resembled rough warts. A thick yellowish crust had formed around them. The deldrit sucked in and the meat vanished. Terros’s leg left the ground and he jerked it back in alarm. At the same time, the deldrit’s tan cranium popped back into the shell.
“Dad,” Terros said, “don’t get dragged.” He and Rezh snatched their axes from the kiderrin frames. The beasts themselves had moved into a stand of trees. They remembered that Kabrilor.
Rindar approached with the stick. “Stand on either side of me.” He hovered the stick over the spot and then dropped it on the ground with a dull thud. Whoosh! The deldrit’s crusty head snapped out and clamped on the hooked meat. A shudder rippled through its body as the hook pierced its mouth. It jerked its head back, dragging Rindar with it.
“Great Cubons!” he cried as his sons caught him around the middle. Muscles strained as they pulled back. The deldrit’s neck stretched an inch at a time until it reached full length. It looked like an eight-foot pipe packed with the same yellowish crust around its eyes.
“Rezh, chop its head off!” Terros bellowed. “I can’t let go!”
“You ready?” said Rezh.
“Ready,” the Miricors shouted as they braced their feet.
As Rezh released Rindar, the deldrit nearly yanked the two Miricors back to its mossy rock shell.
“We should’ve brought Zhin,” said Rindar in a strained voice.
Rezh raised his axe over the thick neck. “He would’ve seen his present!” He chopped into the neck, and the deldrit’s mouth opened in a silent scream. One of the eyes swiveled to Rezh, knowing he was the killer. The great rock of its shell heaved off the ground. Long thick legs burst from the packed dirt.
Rezh chopped into the neck again. Blood spurted across his front. The deldrit whipped its head back and forth. Rindar and Terros cried out as they tumbled across the dead leaves like a pair of rag
s. The neck caught Rezh in the stomach and he sat down.
“Get it!” the Miricors shouted.
“It’s gonna run!” Terros yelled.
Rezh scrambled to his knees and hacked the deldrit’s head clean off. The headless body sped through the huddled cone trees for several yards, and then fell dead. The deldrit’s round mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water before the wart-like eyes glazed over.
“Gutless awiks,” said Terros, struggling to his feet. He gave Rindar his hand and pulled him up.
“You all right?” said Rindar.
“Yeah. Rezh…Great Cubons.”
Rindar looked to his adopted son and tensed. Ten Kabrilors in long dark coats had emerged from the forest on kiderrin back. They weren’t wanderers. They held long black spears tipped with dark feathers. Their kiderrins had beautiful carved frames. The blankets were black with red geometric designs. The blue points of a thirty-point star poked from under the frame. Sivarins. Rindar glanced at their own kiderrins. Too far away.
Rezh backed up and joined Terros and Rindar. The Sivarins circled them. For a few horrific seconds, the three wanderers believed they were dead. Kizhiridors of any branch despised wanderers and killed them whenever they could. To let a wanderer live was to kill an innocent.
“Bind them for questioning,” said the leader. He was a Miricor with black hair and gray eyes. “Break their legs if they…” He trailed off, and he peered at my grampa for several seconds. “Semrin Rindar?”
A tremor seemed to run through the Sivarins as Rindar stared at the Miricor in shock. Where did he know this Sivarin? He racked his brain from his respectable Sivarin days. No, not as a Sivarin. It was after the Miricors and Veerins had discovered he and Vaylee had wed. The Veerins had thrown her into a Kosalin, and the Miricors had tossed him into prison. This Sivarin had been his guard. He had just begun training.
“Arencor,” said Rindar.
Arencor smiled. “We been looking for you for the last three years.”
“What?” Immediately, Rindar thought they meant to imprison him again.