by Rena Marks
I nod and hack at the vines of herbs. I can lay these out near a fire in our makeshift cave and dry them, just in case the plants that Atareek is digging up don’t survive. I take the soft leather wrap from my backpack, secure the vines in it, and roll the whole thing into my pack.
“It is getting darker,” Atareek says, and his hand tightens on the machete. Just then a shoot, like a root, comes up from the ground and grabs me around the ankle. I gasp, but before I can even scream, Atareek swings out and lops it off from the ground in one smooth move. The dead piece falls from my leg automatically. “Let’s move, Vee,” he says, looking at the clearing we came from.
I swing my pack up. Before I can turn, the massive black trunk behind me opens up and I’m grabbed and yanked inside. The trunk is shut into darkness, leaving Atareek banging on the outside bark. I squirm out of the hands that hold me, and expose my necklace from between my breasts, softly lighting the interior to where I see the crack in the tree. There are several large men inside. Screaming, I run to the spot where the tree had opened, throwing my weight against it. It opens up and light shines in.
From outside, Atareek inserts the handle of his machete so the bark cannot be pulled closed again, and fights his way inside.
Arms grab me again, pulling me away, and someone says something in a gobblety-gook language. They try to push the machete out, but it’s too late. The tree is opening wider as he twists it into the opening.
Then someone behind me barks something, and the opening is pushed open suddenly. A net is tossed around Atareek and I squint as my eyes adjust to the sudden dim lighting when the door is closed again. Four giant men jump on him before the light fades, and the one who has me covers my mouth as if he’s tired of the screaming.
When Atareek is subdued, they drag us to the opposite end of the tree and a couple of them disappear. I assume they’re jumping, perhaps down a hole. My assumptions are correct when I’m shoved in. I scream all the way down, but at the bottom I bounce, unharmed.
“Valencia!” Atareek shouts, from way above me.
“I’m okay,” I say, before arms grab me again, pulling me upright. “It’s soft at the bottom.”
And lighter. Someone pulls me from the pillow I’ve landed on, and behind me I hear others jump down. We’re somehow inside the tree, and below it. The giant tree trunk has pushed itself through the ground, and the inside is hollowed out. Our captors crawl through it, and I stare at their backsides.
While I can just make out shadows, I realize they’re Blaedonian, but none I’ve ever seen.
These ones have stripes and tails.
Not just any tails, but they’re wide on the end, like a giant flipper. Something tells me this batch isn’t afraid to swim.
Sure enough, the one who holds me pushes my head down, indicating I should get on my belly to crawl through the tree’s root. Inside it’s damp and cooler. Someone comes behind me, and pushes me along. When I emerge on the other side of the long tunnel, another world awaits.
It’s bright, as light as the day outside. But it’s glow rocks that light the cavern, not the sun.
Someone hauls me up to my feet and I’m barely aware of the others behind me crawling out. I’m too transfixed on the people around us.
There are maybe thirty men, women, and children. They look like our own barbarians, but different. Besides the wide, paddle-like tails, their skin color is not deep, rich shades of blue. Instead it’s more like an infant’s, a pale shade of blue with the darker blue stripes as if their color never developed into adulthood. Behind me, Atareek gasps, and one of them reaches out and begins to untangle the netting around him.
“What are they?” Atareek asks.
“I think they’re people,” I say. “Maybe from the caves of the origins? When it flooded, some of you became land-dwellers and some of you continued to live underground.”
Because underground, we were. Just beyond us is a giant pool of water, and the walls gleam with dewy dampness. It makes the glow rocks shine prettier.
“That’s why the rare herbs can grow here,” Atareek says.
One of the men says something to Atareek in their strange language. He shrugs, not understanding. Then the male reaches out slowly, and fingers his rock necklace. He seems to study the holes, fascinated.
From out in the distance, a woman screams.
A few people look behind them, but no one makes a move. Instead, one of the children giggles and steps ahead as if he’d like to touch Atareek. Several people stop him, moving him back, chastising him harshly.
“They’re afraid of us,” I say. “I wonder why they took us?”
Atareek is completely out of the netting now, and moves to my side, placing an arm around me. All around us people stare, ignoring the screaming beyond us.
A few people have maneuvered behind us, and are staring at our backsides and the obvious lack of tails. They’re whispering among themselves, and looking down at the color of their arms, and then looking at our skin coloring. There’s a definite difference in both of our cases.
But the woman screams again, and I can’t stand it. “Why are they ignoring her?” I explode.
“Perhaps like us, she is a prisoner,” Atareek says.
“Let’s find out.” We take a step in the direction of the screams, and the people look curious, but no one stops us. We take another step, then another, and look in that direction. The larger males hover close to us, but they don’t stop us.
Soon we’re right where the screams originate, though there is quiet between screams. If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone was in labor.
I turn the corner and there’s a curtain placed for privacy. I pull it to one side and sigh.
Of course. My lot in life. One of the striped, blue women is in labor and the others around her look worried.
One of the men who allowed us this far steps forward threateningly, and I realize he isn’t going to let us go any further. So I drop to one knee, sliding the pack off my back. Inside, I reach for the new herb we’d just obtained. It’s still fresh, so I’ll have to use half as much. That I remember from reverent mother’s instructions. “Can I have your water bottle?” I speak calmly to Atareek, my movements slow so as not to cause alarm.
He pulls his from around his back just as slowly, and hands me the bladder. On the wall above me are what looks like bone cups. I point at one to the large man who stands next to me. He turns to see where I’m pointing, and I motion again at it. Hesitantly, he pulls it off the wall and gives it to me, careful not to touch my skin when I reach for it.
It amuses me.
“They’re grossed out by us,” I say to Atareek. “As if we’re diseased or something. Our skin color maybe?”
He looks down his narrow Blaedonian nose. “You are a funny color.”
I give him side-eye.
Dropping the herbs into the cup, I pour a bit of water on them. Not much, since his water isn’t hot for tea. Instead, I reach inside my pack and grab the little bone I use for mashing. I muddy the herbs, mixing it into the liquid to pull the juices out. The water in the cup turns a bit yellow, and drop by drop, I add more water while I continue to wring as much property as I can from the herb. When it’s finished, I rewrap the herbs and swing my pack back onto my shoulders. I stand, holding the tiny cup carefully.
“What are you doing?” Atareek growls.
“Just a little calming agent for the one in labor. It’s very mild and will just relax her during the labor. Reverent mother told me it used to be used by Blaedonians when she was a child, but they ran out and it was too hard to obtain. Now I see why.”
“They’re not going to trust you not to poison their people.”
“We’ll have to try.”
I inch my way into the room, and it becomes obvious they’re not going to let me in. So I hand the cup of cold tea to one of the women, and indicate it’s for the laboring woman. She takes the cup, avoiding my fingers like the male did earlier.
I point to
the woman, and hesitantly…with her eyes on one of the large men standing near Atareek, she hands it to the woman sprawled on the bed. There is a murmur of voices speaking back and forth and she drinks it. That lady who removes the cup sniffs it curiously and then sets it aside.
It takes but a few minutes for her screaming to calm. It’s not as harsh; as wired as it was before. I see a gradual realization around the people holding us.
“I think they’ll trust you a bit more now,” Atareek whispers.
“I’ll try again.”
I step closer to the woman, and now it’s allowed. Eventually, the women surrounding her bed move aside.
The one in labor stares at me, babbling something to the large man who has Atareek. He says something back and then I tap her arm to get her attention.
“Breathe like this,” I tell her, and mimic the Lamaze that Miranda knows. She looks curious, and then I point at her to do it.
“Atareek, will you help her?”
He sighs, and drops to his knee to be less intimidating. He begins to breathe with her and I move down to see what’s going on between her legs. I lift the rough fabric and notice no one averts their eyes. Now, that’s one big difference between my culture and theirs. There’s nothing to hide here, no secrets.
Very, very cautiously, I inch my fingers toward her vagina. No one stops me, and the woman is too busy working on the breathing with Atareek. She’s nice and distracted. I insert my fingers, and feel her dilation. All ten of my fingers fit. She’s ready.
I can tell by her breathing that another pain is coming, so I gently say, “Push,” and to emphasize the point, push slightly on her belly. Her eyes widen, but she gets the meaning. She bears down, but the baby is large.
I see the shell-like substance that reverent mother refers to as the ekseta try to emerge. It’s harder than Niki’s was, and I’m not sure it can make its way out. I wish one of the other ladies was here for me to ask.
But I’ll have to do what I think is fitting. So I reach out with a sharp nail, crack the shell and pull a piece off. Liquid gushes down my hands, lubricating things, and setting the wheels in motion. Now the rest of the ekseta crumbles, cracks appearing along its surface, and the baby-in-an-egg shoots from her body.
I pick off the rest of the shell, and the striped infant is completely still, like a little wax doll.
“Not a stillborn,” I mutter. “Oh, hell no.”
Atareek looks concerned. “They may think we had something to do with that.”
“Don’t I know it,” I mutter again, and wipe out the baby’s mouth and nose. Nothing.
I thump his chest, his back. Finally I tilt back his little head, and blow gently. With a few fingers, I push where I normally hear Atareek’s heart beat in his chest, more centrally located than a human’s, and then I breathe again into the tiny baby.
It takes a few minutes and I’m about to give up the CPR when the child shudders. His tail flicks out like a snake, curling around my wrist lightly. He wails, and the woman on the bed looks shocked.
I bring the baby up to me, letting him cry the rest of the gunk from his system, and reach for a small blanket to cover him with. I wrap him tightly, and like most newborns, he quiets when he’s comforted by the intense wrapping. I hand him to the mother, who’s sobbing and kissing him.
Atareek has been watching the faces of the men behind me. He moves over to my side again and whispers. “I think they thought they were delivering a dead baby. No one can believe he’s alive.”
“I think she was in labor too long. I wonder if something was wrong with the placenta and that’s why she couldn’t deliver. They never knew to just crack the damn thing and get the baby out.”
The man who’d had Atareek suddenly drops to one knee, his head bowed down before us.
The rest of the people followed suit, leaving me and Atareek staring at each other, bewildered.
“This must be thanks to you,” Atareek says.
“Are they going to get up anytime soon?” I ask mildly, because they’ve been nose-down for a few minutes.
Finally the male who I’ve come to think of as the leader stands and approaches us. He bangs his arm across his chest, and clasps Atareek’s arm the way our Blaedonian’s do a handshake.
“That’s where you get the handshake from,” I say, excited. “It’s modified from theirs.”
The leader turns to me and we clasp forearms the same way, and then everybody rises, reaching out to touch us, and huddling around the woman who just gave birth. They’re oohing and aahing over the infant, and it makes me smile. We’re all the same no matter the species. It’s a little crowded in the small room, even though we’re at the edge of the doorway. The leader indicates we should follow him and we do, my hand finding its way into Atareek’s. The leader looks down at our linked hands curiously.
He takes us to another room, and there are pictures on the walls. It’s a memory board of sorts, or a classroom perhaps.
“The stories tell of a great flood,” Atareek murmurs. “Only a handful survived.”
“Along with your handful,” I say. “You both probably broke off from the cave of origins, their group going this way and yours going the opposite. Evolution changed your skin tone and either took away your tails, or gave them the flipper tail with which to swim.”
The leader watches curiously. Atareek tries to motion that he also came from the great flood, but I’m not sure how much the leader understands.
Then I spy some carbon on one of the shelves. “Atareek. Draw our people, too. Under his pictures. Like another story.”
I grab the piece of carbon and hand it to him.
He draws the same image of the flood, and shows a handful of Blaedonians swimming opposite the people in the other drawing—toward the shore of land.
The leader’s eyes grow large. It seems to dawn on him that they’re all the same species. Confused, he points to me.
Atareek draws a large spaceship in the sky, a line crashing it down to the land, and several small females emerging. I laugh when he makes two with huge boobs. Me and Tessa.
The leader looks confused, but at least he’s resigned to being confused. He’s still excited about finding out Atareek is a relative. He holds his arm against Atareek, and they marvel at the differences in color.
“I wish we could tell him he’s striped like our infants,” Atareek laughs.
“He may not find it funny to be compared to a baby,” I admonish.
I point to Atareek’s blue skin color, and then draw a huge sun in the sky. I draw tiny rays shining from the sun, and point to Atareek’s skin again.
I see exactly when the leader gets it. His eyes widen and his brow lifts. The sun is what causes a more intense blue pigmentation of their skin.
There’s a small ahem behind me, and I turn to see a smallish striped female. She’s lovely, a sweep of black eyelashes clear down to her cheekbones. She holds out some herbs in her hand, and motions me.
“I think she wants to talk shop,” I say to Atareek. “I’ll see what she has to say.”
“I think he still wants to shoot the buzz,” Atareek replies.
“Shoot the breeze,” I call out, as I follow the woman to another cave.
The second cave is like heaven to me, a simple midwife with curandera training. It’s a pharmacy. There are rows and rows of fine bone jars, with markings carved into the sides. I open each one, elatedly telling the girl what they are. Some are unfamiliar, and I wonder what they’re used for. She doesn’t have the one I have though, the one that calms the nervous system.
I pull it from my backpack and show it to her, and together we spread it onto a thin bone tray. We pull the individual leaves from the stems, and then she shows me an oven. It’s fired up from a small flame at the bottom, and the tray fits several feet higher. There’s plenty of air to circulate, and I realize this is how they slowly dry their own herbs. Makes sense, since they don’t go outside much.
Then she shows me jars of tinctu
res they’ve made from the herbs, and several are marked with the same markings the herb jars have. Names. They’ve created names. I just wish we understood each other.
My new friend grabs a jar of balm and motions for me to follow.
Eventually we make our way back to the mother and baby. The new mother is nursing her infant, and the baby is suckling sleepily.
“Rocca,” the woman with me says. I’m assuming it’s the new mom’s name.
She smiles, and hands us her baby, then murmurs, “Itikan.”
“Itikan,” the other woman coos. I fight from shuddering. Who would name such a tiny thing a mouthful like that?
I smile at them, and point to myself. “Valencia.”
“Valsensa,” my friend tries.
“Close enough.” I grin broadly.
She points to herself. “Eretar.”
“Eretar,” I repeat. It sounds like airy tar. Two odd words that don’t go together.
She points to the jar of salve, and then strips the blanket off the baby. His tiny legs jerk, and she grabs a foot, then begins rubbing the salve in. He begins to fuss, so she rubs it in quickly, before covering him up.
“What’s going on, crocodile?” Atareek’s slang is slaughtered, and I don’t even bother to fix it as he approaches.
“They have a room full of herbs and potions. She’s putting a salve on the baby, but I’m not sure what it’s for.”
“I never realized how frustrating it is not to speak someone’s language,” Atareek says. “Before you landed, we never had this problem.”
Suddenly I feel a chill in the air. Goosebumps pucker my skin. “Did it just grow ten degrees colder?”
Atareek shrugs. Temperature changes aren’t a big deal for Blaedonians, who can control their own body heat. But Eretar wraps the baby quickly, mutters something to Rocca, and motions for us to follow her. All the while outside, the caves have become a flutter of movement. Eretar takes us to the leader, who is standing with his own family. He shoos them away when he sees us. He barks out an order, and a young teen brings us a bowl of stew. I dig in, still standing, as does Atareek. The stew tastes different than what we are used to, of course. They use different herbs and vegetables here. Other than that, I have to assume they won’t kill us. The leader keeps watching us as we eat, as if he’s impatient. Finally when we’ve taken our last bite, he snatches our bowls away and motions for us to follow.