by L M Feldt
“That’s creepy, it’s following us.” Whispers Naoaki.
“Yep,” I agree. “But it found us water.”
Sixteen
Reentering the forest is a shock to my senses. The tall trees, with their thick canopy, keep the ground below significantly cooler than the open desert and now that it is night, it’s almost chilly. There is a slight breeze, fluttering the leaves high above us, a gentle whispering of welcome. I am happy to be out of the strange desert with it’s fine sand, blistering heat and horrible creatures. Stepping over the rind of fused glass, the demarcation of the desert, has given me great joy. Even Micha, who’s so introverted he makes me look outgoing, smiles in relief.
It is full dark now and what moonlight we might have had in the open desert is now hidden by the greenery above. Again, I lead, with the others close on my heels. I look for signs of water; thicker underbrush or the presence of the bitterfly. With bright iridescent wings in green or blue, the bitterfly is as long as my hand and hard to miss. Back at the pools we’d learned that they can usually be found near water and are a great way to locate streams or ponds.
I scan the woods, Khane tense at my left shoulder, and wonder if we still have the husk man tailing us. I don’t see him. Maybe he’s confined to the desert? I don’t know what to make of him or it. I wish he hadn’t been so hidden in shadow so I could have seen him better. Is he/it some strange plant that mimics a human form? Not like the creatures we’d fought off. There was a chilling human quality to them, the way they communicated and the child sized lumpy bodies. Those are something I never want to meet again. My mind wanders until I am brought up short by the sudden appearance of the husk man standing right before me. His black form, wreathed in the nights shadow, is visible only to me. I am startled but remain quiet, waiting to see what he will do. He sees me watching and slowly turns, heading just a little south of the random direction I’d chosen. I follow my hunch and alter my direction to match his.
After a while I sense the group behind me growing restless, even I have started to doubt our direction, but eventually we spill out onto a small stream and a pebble strewn beach. Moonlight filters down, bright against the water, clearly marking the presence of the husk man, standing still in the middle of the wide stream. He gleams wetly in the strange pale light, no longer a creature of the desert. A gasp from behind me and I realize he’s been spotted by the others.
“What is that doing here?” Naoaki hisses.
“He led us here.” I suspect she is just startled and reacting out of that fear.
“I thought you led us here.” She insists.
I sigh. Our relationship has been strained since Fish’s death. I know she still blames me but she has pulled herself together enough to act as part of the team and even accepted my sudden leadership. Still, her simmering anger can be grating at times.
“No, I was following him. And look, water.” I point, sweeping my arm with just a touch of drama. I am rewarded with a shrug and a grimace, the closest to a smile I’d seen from her in a while.
“Whatever.” She moves to help Aito settle down next to a large fallen log, Micha and Jax following like lost puppies.
“What is it?” Khane has come to stand by me. Together we contemplate the husk man standing a little way down the beach, his top half glistening as he stands knee deep facing the water, the forests shadows covering the rest of him.
“I’m not sure but he found us water, twice.” I turn and start gathering firewood. Aito had wanted fire before, now that it is possible I will give it to him. Maybe, it will help him feel better. His wan, gray skin and constant headache is starting to alarm me.
“You keep saying ‘he’.” Khane bends to gather small sticks for the center of the fire, his gaze questioning.
“I know. Just feels right.” I haven’t gotten a clear view of the husk man, only enough to know he isn’t a cactus. As for gender, well, some women are build like lithe tanks, just not many.
We get a good sized fire going and Naoaki has managed to gather a nice pile of fish from the stream. She’s gutted them and buried the entrails where they won’t attract animals. We spear them on sticks still green and sappy and arranged them in the flames to roast. It will be our first real meal in some time and my mouth waters from the smell.
Hunger turns us into animals and we tear into our share of fish like it’s our last meal. I think it is because of this that we don’t noticed him right away. I am licking my finger, still dripping with juice, when I see him, sitting quietly on the log nearby. I let out a very un-warrior like squawk and everyone’s heads shoot up. We freeze, not sure what to make of this new development. Not only is the husk man sitting among us… but he is naked and unquestionably a male humanoid.
Naoaki, across the fire from me and directly across from the husk man, turns a bright red and starts to giggle uncontrollably. Her mirth spreads to the rest of us and, smiling, I turn to get a better look at our party crasher. With shiny black skin, he sits quietly, silent as a stone and unruffled by Naoaki’s outburst. His sculpted muscles looked to be carved from the night sky itself and contrast with his mild, though handsome features. His profile is sharp and strong, it is his expression, or lack of one that gives him a blandness. He is bald too and I think it suits him.
“Hello?” I ask.
No response.
“Are you hungry?” I offer that last remaining bit of fish. It is a pitiful portion considering the size of him but it is all that’s left. Still nothing. No nod or eye blink. He doesn’t take the fish from my outstretched hand so I give it to Khane who scarfs it down. He is a puzzle… and something tells me, unfinished somehow. Like a knife waiting to be sharpened, this shiny ebony man needs a whetstone….and maybe some pants.
After some searching, Khane finds a pair of shortened pants that will fit the newcomer. It takes Khane miming putting them on, much to our amusement, before the husk man finally copies his actions. At least he is clothed. Now he needs a name ‘husk man’ doesn’t suit him now that I’ve seen him up close. He is clearly not a cactus.
“What should we call him?” I ask the group at large. It’s obvious he isn’t going to give us his name.
“How about Stud?” Now that Naoaki has calmed herself she seems quite taken with the new guy.
I roll my eyes.
“Erebus.” Whispers Aito. “It means ‘darkness’ in one of the ancient languages.” It is painful for him to even speak and my worry for him grows.
“He’s strange.” Khane grunts. His comment seems more like male posturing or misplaced jealousy to me. I know Khane is an empath, so he can sense if a person means harm. Clearly this man does not.
“Erebus is good. Bit of a mouthful though.” Naoaki observes diplomatically.
Just then a breeze flares up, blowing a spray of ash over the subject of our naming game. It settles like a gray blanket across his bare head and shoulders and he makes no move to brush it off.
“Ash.” Says Micha.
And so named the others turn to more relevant questions surrounding our new friend. What had he been doing out in the desert by himself? Are there others like him? Is he a twist like us or just altered, a dirty word in most circles, meaning a twist that looks mutated but has no special abilities.
“If he’s altered I won’t mind.” Pipes up Micha.
He sits closer to Naoaki’s other side and it is the longest string of words I have heard come out of him in a while. Micha is small, smaller than Aito but built stockier, more like a mouse than a bird. I suspect he is just happy to have someone around that is stranger than he is.
“He’s not altered!” Naoaki defends Ash. “He’s just really shy, or hurt maybe. The altered are deformed. Does he look deformed to you?”
The conversation continues in much the same way, flowing around and over me but not engaging me. They all seem to have forgotten him, as silent as he is, and they talk as though he isn’t even there. I haven’t forgotten him. I’ve noticed the slow, conservative mov
ement, the stick in his hand. He is drawing in the sand, down between his feet where no one but me can see. He is drawing two curved lines that meet at one end and intersected into a fan shape….I move without thinking, scraping the drawing away before anyone else can see. The image has shocked me to the core and I need to think on this.
My sudden actions have brought me up close to him, directly before his bent head and I reached out tentatively toward his ash covered skull. He drops the stick and I freeze. A sense of wonder and hope has grasped me by the throat, but suddenly I know he isn’t ready yet. He’d wanted me to know his secret but now he seems, in his sudden stillness, to want to take it back.
Carefully I retreat back to my spot on the log, though a little closer to Khane than before.
Seventeen
The water is a balm to my sand scoured back and with the sand gone, my wings finally settle into place. The swimming helps ease the tension I’d been carrying and after a while I just float. Everyone has gotten in, even Micha, Jax guarding his pile of clothes and chirping at him in distress. The remnant doesn’t like to be parted from his master and it refuses to enter the water. Khane has offered to help Aito who still suffers from an agonizing headache. I wish I knew what to do for him and I wonder how it had happened, it had come on so suddenly. Once we get to the city he can set up his lab and brew up a potion for himself but I really hope he gets better sooner than that.
Naoaki hunted our breakfast in her own special way again this morning. That she can catch a fish in the water by it’s gills is astounding to me. We baked our breakfast in the fire and ate with the immovable Ash still sitting as he had been last night. He has eaten none of the fish offered. Now Naoaki is hunting again. I watch her, or rather the splashing, foaming water that marks her position. Finally, she rises up out of the water in a spray of shimmering liquid, her short red hair slicked back. She looks like something out of a story, a water spirit maybe. She strides up the beach in the sunlight, naked and clearly over her bout of embarrassment. She lays the freshly caught fish on a wide leaf and places it on the ground by Ash’s feet like an offering or maybe an apology. She doesn’t wait for a response but sprints back into the water and dives in, cleaving the water without a ripple. I’ve often thought her name should have been Fish.
Fed, watered and clean we pack up camp and head west once more. I take the lead with Khane following, Aito’s pack on his back and a struggling Aito by his side. Naoaki and Micha bring up the rear with Jax scuttling by Micha’s side. Once and a while I look back and catch glimpses of our new friend but for the most part he keeps his distance. I wondered if my suspicions are right, if Ash really is Fish, alive but very, very different. Is he even a true twist? Aside from Fish’s water finding ability I knew of no other talents he might have had, he’d been to far advanced in his sickness or transformation by the time I’d met him. I certainly couldn’t ask Naoaki.
The forest has given way to softly rolling hills of wavy purple and green grasses that fade into the horizon, pretty from a distance. Up close, the waist high thin blades are sharp and can cut deep without a person even realizing they’ve been hurt. I learned that the hard way trying to forge a path for the others to follow and now my arms are red from the elbows down. I am lucky, my leather pants, while hot, have saved my legs. I call a stop as soon as I realize what’s happening but now we are in the thick of it. Using our booted feet to mash down the grass, we make a large enough space for us to form a circle and come up with a plan.
“I don’t like this, anything could be hiding in this stuff and we would never see it until too late.” I start. I am in a bad mood. No matter where we turn there always seems to be something trying to kill us. My arms sting from the lashes the grass has given me and it makes me angry. How can I fight grass?
“We will loose days if we backtrack and go around.” Aito whispers.
It’s hot and my frustration mounts with the temperature. We can’t go back, Aito is barely holding it together now. Adding two more days isn’t an option. Going forward doesn’t feel like an option either. I grind my booted toe into the grass, breaking the stems at the base where they are thickest. It gives a satisfying crunch and bleeds a grayish green ooze. Well, a little payback works for me. I stomp on another and another, leaving a trail of gunk. Jax comes to investigate, strangely curious for a dead thing. He sniffs, his half decayed snout pushing into the noxious smelling ooze. It smells like Jax looks, rotted and foul. The patchwork lizard of skin and bones drops to the ground and rolls in a very un-lizard like manner. He likes the stink.
Done rolling, Jax stands and ambles into the tall unbroken grasses, tail swishing madly. We watch, mouths agape as the thin reeds sway as though pushed by a wind and actually bend away from the roaming lizard.
We make ok time through the fields. We have to stop fairly often to reapply sap to Jax, or rather encourage him to reapply, once it dries it no longer works and the lizard’s dry, beef jerky body gets stuck in the thick reeds. It is a major production getting him out too because no one wants to touch him, especially not with that stinky stuff all over him. We leave a swath of grasses stomped flat, a purple path that our tall dark shadow will be able to follow easily while still keeping his distance and his secrets.
“Thank you for helping Aito.” I say to Khane as we follow Jax. Khane seems out of sorts since the fight with the strange desert creatures. I am concerned he’s gotten hit and is hiding an injury. If something even as little as a scratch goes septic he will die out here.
He shrugs, refusing to look at me. Now I am alarmed.
“Are you hurt?” I hope he will be honest rather than stubborn.
“No, nothing like that.” He frowns as he stares ahead. “Those things, the worms with the spider legs… I think they were human once. When they got close I could sense them a little, like I can people.”
I shudder, no wonder he’d shut down. Those creatures are a perfect example of the horrors of the DNA wars. The offspring mutated and mutated again until they no longer resemble anything close to their origins. That they had once been human….
“Also,…no. Never mind.” He amends quickly.
“What is it?”
He glances back and seeing a pocket of space separating us and everyone else he nods at me to walk closer.
“Look, I know you and Aito are close but….It’s just… he spooks me.” Khane looks embarrassed.
“What?!” I hiss. “He’s half your size.”
“I know!” Khane whispers back, “but he’s a blank to me.” Khane looks like he regrets saying anything.
“I don’t know what that means, blank.”
“I mean, I don’t get anything from him. It’s like he’s not even there. He must have mental shields of steel and I’ve never come across that before.”
We are interrupted before I can grill him further.
“We’re going to have to stop soon, Aito can’t go much further.” Naoaki pops up in front of us, giving me a start. I look back and see Micha struggling to support Aito. Khane's short break is over.
“Just to those trees, out of this grass.” I point to a green fuzzy line, hopefully only a couple of hours away. “Give me the pack Khane. You carry Aito.” I loop the straps loosely over my shoulders and grunt at the weight on my wings. It grates but there is no other way. Aito can’t keep going, incapacitated by his migraine and Khane can’t carry both the pack and Aito. It scares me, both Khane and I weighted down like this. We are sitting ducks, neither of us able to reach our weapons quickly.
Naoaki walks next to me for a time, knives out unless she is helping re-coat Jax. It is a companionable enough silence. I know she is worried about Aito too. We have no medicine to give him, all that had been lost along with our shelter in our mad rush away from the tentacled horror. Rest might help but where? Not out in the open. Every rest stop only delays us reaching our goal, the city of lights.
“Where do you think Ash came from?” Naoaki breaks her silence.
“Wha
t?” It is not the direction of questions I had been expecting. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he was in an accident?” It would explain him wandering the desert alone. I hadn’t noticed any wounds, however, and we’d had ample opportunity to look.
“Maybe.” She frowns at the skyline, probably willing the trees closer like I am. “A hard blow to the head could make a person forget who they are I suppose.”
“Sure.”
She is quiet for a while, either mulling the mystery of Ash or sensing that I am not in a chatty mood. The truth is, the pack on my back chaffs and it’s heavy, now containing most of what we have left. Also, I can’t shake the feeling of being watched. Maybe it’s just paranoia but at this point it isn’t unreasonable to think everything is out to get us. I long for a safe place to tune out the world, forget about the danger constantly around us, forget about strange mystery men that show up unexpectedly, forget about Aito being a blank and what Khane might have meant by that.