by Zaide Bishop
Tare paused, frowning. “Well, no one is dying. But you’ll regret the delay.”
Might as well get it over with. He motioned for Tare to join them. Romeo was grinding his teeth.
“India—” Tare started, and Sugar cut him off.
“You’re not supposed to be seeing him.”
“Pretend we talked psychically then.” Tare gave him an exasperated look. “Anyway, India did this experiment with chickens, and the eggs didn’t hatch, so that means we’re roosters.”
Sugar and Romeo both stared, Romeo’s hurt spontaneously forgotten.
“What?” Sugar said, hesitantly. “Did you hit your head on the way home? Because I have no idea what you just said.”
Tare sighed. “He’s better at explaining things than I am.”
“Maybe you should have had him write it down,” Romeo said, crossing his arms.
“No, he—” Tare frowned. “You know how dogs have cocks and bitches have milk for the pups?”
Sugar and Romeo nodded.
“Well, India says we’re dogs, and the Varekai are bitches.” He paused, studying them as if to be sure they were following his train of thought. “And India thinks that dogs and hens and the Varekai and Elikai are like plants and you need pollen and stamen to make seeds. He took a hen away from the roosters, and the eggs didn’t hatch. They were infertile. He thinks...”
Sugar’s eyes widened. He didn’t need Tare to finish his sentence, as outrageous as it was. “He thinks that if the Varekai and Elikai have sex, we’ll end up with baby Elikai.”
Tare nodded, pleased.
“That’s crazy,” Romeo said flatly. “India is batshit insane, and you’re batshit insane for listening to him.”
“Well.” Tare gave Romeo a condescending look. “We wouldn’t know, because you hardly ever sleep with your brothers.”
“I’m not a Varekai!” Romeo snapped, hands balled into white-knuckled fists.
“No,” Sugar said slowly. “You’re no Varekai. But you are a hen. A...what do they call it? A she.”
“So make baby Elikai,” Tare demanded. “There isn’t a shortage of brothers for you to pick from!”
Romeo bared his teeth, hands settling on the hilt of his bone blade. “Come on then. Come at me, and we’ll see if I can’t harvest your ‘pollen’ and stuff it right back in—”
“Easy.” Sugar put his hand on Romeo’s shoulder. “Tare, every brother has the right to decide who he lies with. And when. We all have fun in our own ways.”
Tare fixed his gaze on Sugar’s. “But it’s not about ‘fun’ anymore, is it?”
Sugar chewed his lip. Tare was right. This might change everything. Sex had always been about fun. Pleasure. Bonding. It had always just been a way to play, a way to relax after a long, hard day of hunting or building. But if the witchdoctor was right, then it was really about so much more. It was about keeping the tribe alive. Creating new members so they didn’t all die out. They would have to start taking sex seriously.
“We have to tell everyone,” Sugar decided.
Romeo caught his elbow. “Don’t. They’ll all start dogging me.”
“It’s okay, Romeo. You’re not the only ‘she’ on the islands.”
His thoughts drifted instantly to Charlie; his wicked smile, those flashing hazel eyes. He wondered how he would feel about coming here and visiting with Sugar if it meant new members for their tribes.
The thought confused him, a moment of longing quickly followed by a rolling sensation of disgust and guilt. They were supposed to be staying away from the Varekai. There was bloodlust to worry about. The two tribes were enemies and had been kept apart for very good reason.
Romeo was their best hope, but the harder he was pressed, the more their complicated brother would dig his heels in. He was, however, rather susceptible to bribery. A net or a knife, some fancy pelt, one of these things would be enough to win him over. Sugar doubted he would need to forfeit his own gear either. The possibility of new tribe members would spur the others to try the same thing.
“I need... I need time to think about it. To decide how I am going to word this. Can you both keep it a secret until tomorrow night?”
Romeo and Tare exchanged looks. Romeo, Sugar suspected, would prefer no one ever knew. Tare kept secrets like hip bones held water.
Tare nodded slowly. “If you think it’s best, fearless leader.”
“I do. And I don’t want to send everyone into a panic. Let me think of the answers before they drown me in questions.”
* * *
Zebra and Xícara were perched on a mound of smooth boulders watching a pod of dolphins herd baitfish into the shallows to feed. The late-season foliage was starting to turn brown, and soon they would need the rains or the plants would begin to die. The Elikai had been hiking farther and farther each day for water, and Zebra was longing for low, gray clouds. The sky was bright and clear and the air unseasonably cool.
He glanced at Xícara. Big, but thoughtful. Sometimes the others treated him like he was a little slow, but he just liked to think about things before he spoke. Which was exactly why Zebra preferred his company. It was much nicer to spend the day with Xícara than someone like Fox, who had an opinion on everything.
“We should catch a Varekai,” Zebra said.
Xícara frowned. “Why?”
“Not to hurt him,” Zebra assured him. “But they’re doing it to us all the time now. We’re hunting for two tribes. We’re feeding them, and they just slow us down by capturing us. We should turn the tables. Make them pay up for a change.”
“They’re too fast. And with their war paint, it’s too hard to see them in the trees.”
“They’re not too fast out in the open,” Zebra mused. “And they’re pretty visible on the beach and when they’re swimming. We just need to catch one at the right time.”
“It seems like a lot of effort for not much gain,” Xícara said with a sigh.
“Afraid?” Zebra teased.
“Of a Varekai?” He snorted. “Not hardly.”
“Come on then. It’ll be fun.”
Xícara sighed. “Okay, okay. We’ll catch a Varekai, but then we’re letting it go again as soon as we can. They look like they bite.”
Zebra grinned and scrambled to his feet. “This is going to be awesome.”
Hunting Varekai was as easy as tracking boar. Only now, the signs they were seeking were the same ones that Zebra usually used to avoid an area—Varekai footprints in mud and sand, like those of the Elikai, but smaller, their strides shorter; the marks of canoes dragged up the beach, or even the canoes themselves, tethered in the foliage at the edge of the water; the fearful protest of songbirds warning other animals that the predators were near. All of these were signs of Varekai passing. Zebra and Xícara headed east, paddling between those islands they would normally avoid; even so, Zebra was surprised and pleased by how little time it took before they found what they were looking for.
It was a cluster of fighting gulls that betrayed the Varekai, screaming and squabbling over the discarded scraps of fish and mango on the channel bank—someone’s breakfast, hastily eaten on the move. The banana leaf it had been wrapped in was floating lazily between mangrove roots, still greasy and half folded into a box. It was unusual for the Varekai to come this far west.
They were nearby, maybe only a few yards away. Zebra had always known he was the luckiest of his brothers.
The two Elikai had no need to speak, communicating in glances and sharp gestures. They tied up the canoe and pulled themselves silently onto the bank, crouching, listening and waiting a long moment before following the muddy trail of footprints that led toward a wide pocket of smooth rocks and sand at the edge of the jungle.
If a brother was feeling lazy, it was a good place to find baby octopi
and cuttlefish in the rock pools at low tide, a little west of the Vanishing Beaches. Zebra had found a lionfish there once and tipped his arrows with its poison. It had been the only time he’d killed a boar with one arrow.
The brothers moved as silently as they could, keeping low, Xícara just a few feet behind Zebra. The footprints in the mud were unusually small, even for a Varekai, and Zebra wondered if it was India they were about to capture. Getting a close-up look at the witchdoctor would be a novelty after what Tare had told the tribe about him.
When he spotted the sleek, painted shoulders through the trees, it was not India at all. It was, in fact, the second smallest of the Varekai tribe, Bravo, who had been half the age of the others when the world was born. He had grown now, but still had the coltish lankiness of any half-grown thing. Fast and lean, with big, sea-gray eyes and blonde hair he streaked with ink to give it a patchy, striped appearance.
He had been too young to fight in the tribal wars, and there was a cheeky, carefree air about him Zebra assumed you could only have by never seeing a brother kill another with a spear.
Bravo would be a good capture. The Varekai would be distraught that their youngest was taken and would be hasty, too hasty, to get him back. Though it was funny to think that Bravo was eight whole seasons, four years, older now than Zebra had been when they first escaped Eden. It was hard to imagine ever being that young.
Xícara touched Zebra’s arm and made a half-circle motion, pointing across the rocks and sand to the curve of trees opposite them.
Zebra nodded. The plan was simple: Xícara would sneak to the opposite side of the clearing and make noise. Bravo might flee back the way he had come, to the path where Zebra would be waiting, or else he would be distracted, focused on Xícara while Zebra ran up behind him and grabbed him. It was much like hunting boar, only Bravo couldn’t gore either of them.
Xícara wasted no more time, padding off through the trees as quickly and quietly as he was able. Zebra crouched low, focused on Bravo. The little Varekai was happily chasing crabs, paying no attention to anything around him. With such poor attention to his surroundings, it as a small miracle he hadn’t been taken by a crocodile already.
This was almost too easy. Actually, he suddenly realized, it was much too easy.
Zebra whipped around, but he was too slow. Charlie was already behind him, his spear pointed at his head.
“You might want to drop your rope and weapons,” he said, lips curling into a grin.
Zebra sighed. “Oh balls...”
Chapter Four
Xícara had no idea why he was going along with one of Zebra’s crazy schemes. He had a way of making them sound logical and fun, which they never were, and they almost always ended in Xícara picking some kind of parasite—leeches, ticks, march flies—off his testicles. He supposed the world needed people like Zebra, who made it their life mission to find the biggest, ugliest, most dangerous-looking thing they could, then poke it with a stick. But if that were true, then people like Zebra probably needed people like Xícara to hoist them out of harm’s way when whatever they’d just poked tried to eat them.
Now the tribes weren’t at war, it wasn’t really a surprise that Zebra wanted to try to poke Varekai. Capturing one was pretty low on the crazy scale, considering Zebra had once trained a crocodile to come when he banged two pots together. That had actually been fairly interesting, right up until the point it started hanging around camp and rushing up onto the shore whenever anyone tried to wash pots, expecting a feed.
Sugar had killed it, and Zebra had been strictly forbidden to train any more wild animals. That had lasted about a week, until he’d trained a dolphin to throw a rock through a cane wreath in exchange for a fish.
If anything, Xícara needed to be here to make sure that Zebra stuck to his plan.
On the beach, Bravo had scrambled up on to one of the tall, smooth rocks and was peering back toward the path Zebra was hiding on. Xícara cursed mentally, wondering if his brother had given himself away somehow. There was too much space between them for Xícara to sneak up on the Varekai, and Bravo would probably win if it came to an all-out sprint. His only hope was that the Varekai, by some miracle, ran right toward him and he could leap out and catch him at the last minute.
He caught the scent of sweat, mango and squid ink, and froze.
“Best put down your spear,” a Varekai voice said softly from just over his head.
He peered up and saw a leg, a bow and an arrow pointed down straight at him. It was Tango, easily recognizable by the scars on his face and arm, though Xícara was instantly distracted by the view up the Varekai’s short leather skirt.
The inside of his thighs was paler than his darkly tanned skin, and like an Elikai, his groin was thickly thatched with curly, dark hair. There was no cock or balls, just a mound that split down the middle and the tips of pink-brown lips, far darker than his thighs, nestled amid the hair.
It did not look like a shell, though in Tare’s stories there was an opening there, slick, tight and welcoming. He could see no sign of it from the outside, but tried to imagine what it might be like to thrust himself into that tight place.
“Must I fire?” Tango demanded.
“What? No.” Xícara realized he had been staring and slowly lowered his spear, holding up his hands to show he was unarmed. “But do you really think you can bring me in yourself?”
Tango slid artfully down the tree. He was one of the tallest Varekai, but that still left him five inches shorter than Xícara, who towered over most of his brothers as well. He was the broadest too, across the shoulders, whereas Tango was slim, muscled, but not as wide across the chest as Xícara was. He must be at least twice the Varekai’s weight, probably more, and a bow was not a close-range weapon.
“You are the largest Elikai I’ve tried to bring in,” he admitted. “But not the largest prey.”
“Prey you can kill. A dead snake is less dangerous than a live Elikai.”
She smiled a little. “Perhaps. Are you going to kill me, Xícara?”
It shouldn’t have been a surprise that the Varekai knew his name, but hearing him say it out loud sent a shiver down his spine. “Why do you do this?”
“For gear. For food. Because we can. Don’t act superior. You were trying to do the same.”
Realization dawned, and he groaned. “Bravo was bait.”
“Of course. What did you think she was doing out there, licking toads?”
“Looking for octopi and cuttlefish.”
He snorted. “We put down pot traps for those. We catch big ones, for the ink.”
“Oh, for your skin. Why do you do that? Paint yourselves?” He was genuinely curious; delaying the inevitable was just a small bonus.
“You walked right past Charlie on the path in.”
“Then Zebra...”
Tango pointed with his arrow, and Xícara glanced over his shoulder. Zebra was already tied up and being marched out onto the sand by Charlie. Bravo was gleefully dancing around them in wide, sweeping circles. He sighed.
“I saw this happening differently in my head.”
“I’m sure.”
He studied Tango. “I could overpower you. Demand that Charlie releases him.”
“If you come at me, I will let this arrow fly. It might hit your thigh or your belly. Both could be killing wounds. This arrow isn’t dipped in anything, but it’s not real clean either. Our people would go to war again. Surrender to me. Join your sister on the sand. You know I will not hurt you unless you force me to.”
He grinned a little. “Or you could surrender to me. You might like it.”
Tango turned red, the blush turning his scars an ugly purple. Just like that, he went from coolly confident to flustered and uncertain.
“And what would you trade me for?” he asked slowly. “
What is it you think I’m worth?”
Xícara took a cautious step closer, keeping his gaze locked on the Varekai’s. He had very blue eyes, so dark he had always thought they were black, but now he could see they were the rich sapphire of the deep ocean.
“Maybe I wouldn’t,” he purred. A few more feet, and he would be close enough to grab the bow and turn it aside. “Maybe I’d keep you.”
Tango’s blush deepened; his eyes flickered away, as if the intensity of Xícara’s gaze was impossible to look at any longer.
Xícara grabbed the arrow and bow in one hand, thrusting them to the side. In almost the same instant, Tango released them and stepped forward, a wickedly curved knife of slick, black metal in his hand. Xícara felt the cold bite of it against his neck and froze.
The Varekai’s bare belly was against his. Their breathing was out of sync and their skin met in awkward, unpredictable waves. Tango’s breath was on his chin, their eyes both searching, waiting for a flicker in the other that would signal defeat...or attack.
“Smaller is not less dangerous,” Tango murmured.
He smelled of mango and sweat, leather and salt. Xícara didn’t know if it was the tension, or Tare’s stories, but he was half erect under his grass skirt and he was fairly sure that fighting was the last thing he wanted to do right now.
“So I see,” he breathed. “I submit. Let’s not bring this to bloodshed.”
He held up his hands to show he meant it, offering the Varekai back his bow. Tango stepped back, taking the bow and arrow while keeping the knife raised. Xícara could have lunged again, but he could tell by the look in the Varekai’s eyes that this time he would be stabbed. So he did as he promised, walking placidly out through the trees onto the sand.
“I was starting to worry,” Charlie said as they approached.
“No one is injured,” Tango assured him.
Bravo bounced over, rope in hand, and secured Xícara’s wrists together, marching him over to sit by Zebra, but not so close they could have reached one another’s bindings.