The three winds with the thinner braid was sheer vanity, she
admitted to herself, but so what? Now, however, as she rested her head in her hands, her fingers caught in the finer braids and pulled causing her to cry out in pain.
Like an echo to the sound of her own voice, she could hear
sudden movement deeper in the bush, just off to her left. When she turned she saw it, the unmistakable outline of a man. He stood perfectly still, without her heatvision she was certain she'd not have been able to see him at all, however, with it he stood out like a parrot in a snowstorm.
Her breath caught in her chest. She'd wanted this to happen for so long, perhaps even before she'd first glimpsed a look at what she thought was a human across the lake, and yet, now that it had, now that she was only feet from one, she could barely breathe. Would he hurt her? Should she yell? Call the guards? They were out there –
they didn't patrol much at night, but they stayed on guard in the village, they could get here quickly if she screamed. Should she?
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Her heart pounded so hard she could feel it in her chest, her skull and even in her wrists. After an intense effort of will she managed to draw a few deep breaths and that time helped her make her decision. With a tremor in her voice she spoke.
"I can see you," she said as kindly as she could manage in the harsh and abrupt Reptar language. She waited a couple moments during which the figure grew brighter, hotter, but didn't move. "I can see you." She said again, this time in her native language.
This time the human shifted, coming out from behind the tree
that did nothing to hide him anyway, and took a step closer to her.
"You're a swamp elf," a distinctly male voice said in Swamp Elvish.
His accent was all wrong, but the words and the intonation were right and the sound of someone other than herself speaking her language brought tears to her eyes.
"I am." She hoped the man couldn't tell she was crying, that he'd ascribe the shake in her voice to fear, which was certainly a contributing factor.
The man stepped nearer again, slowly. His posture wasn't
threatening at all, in fact, he seemed as afraid of her as she was of him – or wary at least. "Do you live with the Reptar?"
"Yes. What are you doing here? Are you a scout?"
"No," he laughed and sat down on a boulder, leaned forward and peered through the darkness toward her.
Z'thandra realized then that he could see her, or her outline at least and to soothe the flutters in her stomach, she stopped using her heatvision. At first she could see nothing, but slowly, as her eyes adjusted, the light of the moon became sufficient to see, if not details, at least the outline of the stranger. She spoke while her eyes shifted, not wanting to let him know he had a slight advantage over her for the present and very much wanting to hear him continue to speak to her in the tongue of her race. "What are you then? Why are you here?"
"I'm studying the swamp, the swamp elves, the reptar."
"There are no more swamp elves," Z'thandra said sadly.
"There's you."
She shrugged one shoulder. "There's me. What are you
studying, out here in the dark?"
"Night time is the only time I can get close to the village," he answered smoothly. "What are you doing, out here in the dark?"
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Z'thandra smiled, feeling the last remnants of her fear dissipate in light of his gentle teasing. After all, if he were really a threat to her or the village he wouldn't be sitting here answering her questions would he? "I came to get water."
"And instead you found a human."
She laughed, "And instead I found a human."
"What are you going to do with me?"
"Nothing, I suppose."
"Nothing? You'll just leave me on my way?"
"If they catch you, they'll stone you." Z'thandra blurted out.
"To death. They will stone you to death."
"I hope they don't catch me then," he said, moving closer so that Z'thandra could see the moonlight reflect off his hair, as smooth and dark as a crow's wing. His voice was like wet silk, decedent and slippery. He remained mostly concealed by shadows but even so Z'thandra could tell he was a handsome specimen of his race; his cheekbones were high, his jaw strong. His nose was perhaps a little too big, but overall, he was quite attractive, even, she admitted, to a swamp elf.
"I need to get water," she stammered, bounding to her feet.
"Can I see you again?"
Z'thandra felt blood rush to her face, could humans read
minds? Surely not. She'd never spoken to one before, but in all the tales she'd heard no one had ever mentioned –
"I'd like to ask you some questions if I could." He explained, abruptly ending Z'thandra's mental questioning.
Of course, he was doing research on swamp elves, reptar and
the swamp, she remembered. How better than to speak to the swamp elf who lives in the swamp with the reptar. Three toads with one stone. She opened her mouth to say no, she couldn’t it was
dangerous for her as well as him, but then he added one more word, whispered softly in her own language.
"Please?" he said.
She nodded.
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Chapter Nine
It was easy to arrange to meet him. With Grung injured and
Orga being Orga, Ulda had her hands full enough without trying to fetch water everyday, so when Z'thandra offered to do it at night, saying she enjoyed the solitude, her foster mother didn't question it, she was merely grateful.
Dorian, that was what he said his name was, never used the
paths lest he leave boot prints where the Reptar might see them but he'd wait off to the side in the brush while Z'thandra raced down the lake path to fill her water buckets, then he'd call to her and she'd join him in the scrub.
At first they sat on rocks, watching one another and talking, then, as the days grew colder and the first light snowfalls came, they started to huddle in the shelter of trees or bushes, like children in a secret fort. They had an instant connection. Z'thandra thirsted to hear her language spoken and to talk to someone more like she than the Reptar, and Dorian wanted knowledge. He pried her for information about the village set up, the way of life, how the patrols worked, the scavengers, the shaman – he wanted to know everything. How they'd been affected by the curse and by its end, how they cooked bread over open fires and how she'd come to live with them and survive the outbreak of swamp fever that killed the rest of her race.
She never answered his last question, not completely. If history had taught her one thing it was that some secrets should never be shared. Ever.
"It wasn't always called the curse you know," Dorian said one evening as he shivered under a blanket with Z'thandra. His breath hung in the air around him and a light dusting of snow that had fallen off the tree above them to speckle his hair.
"No?" Z'thandra said. "That's the only thing I've ever heard it called, Abbadon's Curse."
"When she first uttered it, they called it the blessing –
Abbadon has blessed the land so that none who die in battle will remain dead, but their spirit will be free and they will rise up once more to fight again. That's what the first declarations said."
"Really? Funny how some things work out, isn't it?"
"You don't really care," Dorian laughed and bumped his shoulder against her. "You just like listening to me talk, it doesn't matter what I say."
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"That's true," Z'thandra giggled. "It's all in how you say it.
Before you came along, I hadn't heard anyone speak my language since I was a child."
It was the first time she'd mentioned her past and, as though he sensed the moment was special, Dorian held his ton
gue and simply watched her.
"I love Ulda and Grung, but I miss my family terribly. You can't imagine..." she sighed, then feigned a cheerfulness she didn't feel and lifted her eyes from her hands to Dorian's face.
"You'd be surprised how much I can imagine." He smiled sympathetically, "I was an orphan. I don't mean to take away from your pain, but at least you knew your parents, I never met mine."
"Never?"
"No. They died, I'm told, when a magic spell went awry – a faulty scroll they say." He shrugged, "The good news is that they left me a large enough inheritance that I was able to apprentice as a scholar. I've even managed buy some land just inside the swamp so I can be near to it and pursue my studies."
"What are you trying to find out, exactly?" Z'thandra asked.
"Everything I can, everything. I crave knowledge like...like Reptars crave blood."
"They aren't like that you know. They were, during the curse, but they aren't...now."
"They haven't the numbers to be now, have they?"
"You've studied them for how long?" Z'thandra could feel herself growing angry, and she wasn't sure why. After all, Dorian wasn't saying anything she hadn't thought at one time or another.
"Haven't you seen past all the warring they did during the curse?
Can't you see how...how sad they are? How pitiable?"
As the words left her mouth she fell silent, shocked by them.
She'd never thought that before, never put into words these feelings, but there they were, hanging with her breath on the winter air between her and Dorian.
"Pitiable? They treat you like offal, Z'thandra, how can you pity them?"
Now that she'd voiced it, everything made sense, they were,
above all else, pitiable. "Don't you see? They once were great, more technologically advanced than humans or swamp elves or anyone, then along came the curse. They fell victim to greed and tried to use their technology to get more – more land, more power, just...more."
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"That doesn't disprove my point." Dorian said dryly when she paused.
"But they got caught up in it Dorian. They fought everyone, warred with everyone. They started poisoning one another to gain power within the tribe and eventually they splintered, at war even with each other."
"Poisoned people stayed dead?"
"Yes, it's not combat if you're poisoned."
"Are you sure?"
"That's not the point is it?" Z'thandra grew impatient with his interruptions. "They devolved. Now the curse is over and look at them. Digging corpses out of the swamp to wear the armor because they don't know how to make their own anymore. Their houses
crumble around them because they can't remember how to make a spackle that will stay hard in the swamp's wet air. Their numbers are so small they can't even maintain the things they do remember. The only thing they have left is the stone."
"The stone?" Dorian lifted an eyebrow. "You've never mentioned the stone before."
No, Z'thandra realized, she hadn't mentioned the stone before.
She wasn't sure why. Over the weeks she and Dorian had been
spending together, she'd gotten the impression there was something he really wanted to ask her about but was trying not to, and she also suspected that something was the stone. Still, she'd never mentioned it. Now, it had slipped from her tongue and there was no taking it back.
"I've not, no." She paused and then said, "you've never mentioned it before either."
"No." The sound of a frog crying to his mate and the wind rustling through the bushes was the only noise for a very long minute, then, Dorian spoke again. "At first I was too scared to, then I didn't want to give you the wrong impression."
"What impression?"
"That I was more interested in the stone than I was in you." He felt for her hand beneath the blanket, tangled his fingers between hers and gave her hand a little squeeze.
Z'thandra felt a whole swarm of fireflies jump in her stomach and swell all the way up to her throat. For a moment the feeling was so intense she couldn't breathe, then, even after the initial thrill had passed she still felt little tremors of joy deep within her. He was
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holding her hand! Z'thandra was a normal teenager, as far as
teenagers go. She'd thought about having a partner, a mate, but growing up in a Reptar village made that unlikely and unattractive.
When she imagined herself with someone, it was invariably a swamp elf or a human – never a Reptar. She'd never thought it would be possible, but here she was, holding hands with a human. It made her head feel foggy and her fingers tremble.
She wondered if Dorian could feel her shaking, and if the
tremor she thought she felt in his touch was from him, or just herself.
She wondered all these things in less time than it took to draw breath, and when she did, and looked up into his eyes, she was startled. He was gazing at her with an intensity she'd never seen before, never felt, and she gasped, choking on the air she'd been pulling into her lungs. She recovered almost instantly, and dropped her eyes back down to the mud at their feet.
She could smell him, the manly smell of sweat and breath and
earth that clung to him like cologne, and it had a faintly intoxicating effect on her. She looked over at him once more, this time focusing her eyes on his lips. His warm, soft-looking lips. She was so close now, all she had to do was just lean over and she could –
Z'thandra stood up abruptly, brushing the snow from her
clothes and picking up the water buckets. A thin layer of ice had formed over their surface. "I need to get back."
"I've upset you," Dorian said, standing with her.
"No," she said.
"I'm sorry."
He sounded sincere.
"You haven't upset me, but I need to go."
"Meet me tomorrow?" he asked, reaching out a cold finger to brush against the back of her hand.
She didn't answer but carefully picked her way through the
scrub toward the path, trying to disturb as little of the vegetation or snow as possible, to leave as slight a trail as she could. Once she reached the path and felt the well-packed and frozen mud beneath her feet she stopped to look back over her shoulder.
She could see Dorian, his outline anyway, deep in the bushes.
She imagined that if she could see the look on his face it would be sincere and pleading. But she couldn't. The moon wasn't that bright.
"Meet me tomorrow?" he asked again in a loud whisper, his voice barely making it to her ears.
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"Yes," she called, then before she could change her mind, picked up the heavy buckets and headed off back down the path to the village. Her eyes, well-trained after many such excursions, picked out the bits of fabric marking the pits, saving her from the discomfort of heatvision.
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Chapter Ten
All the next day Z'thandra looked at the Reptar in a completely different light than usual. Her realization that she found them pitiable colored everything she saw and did. None of their snubbing hurt her anymore and she felt an immense sadness each time she looked at or thought about Ulda or Grung.
They've made themselves extinct, she thought at one point,
they just don't know it yet. That made her feel almost as bad as she had when she'd been sentenced to five stones. In fact, she had to stop and take several deep breaths to blink back the tears that sprung to her eyes. She must have looked terrible because even Greasl came over to ask her if she was okay. He was quite happy to accept her assurances she was, even though they were obviously lies.
Later that afternoon, Z'thandra was still wrapped in
contemplation of the Reptar as a race. They can still breed, she thought, they aren't lost, not y
et. There is still hope. As long as they had the stone... She stopped, frozen in place again. Of course, that was it. The stone was the key.
All the time she was in or around the village Z'thandra could feel the stone's shadow over her, protective, guiding. She had never really been able to put her finger on what it was about the stone that drew her, transfixed her before, but now she knew – it kept her safe, it kept them all safe. A smile curled around her lips as hope wrapped itself around her heart. Of course. It wasn't merely coincidence that had brought the stone into the Reptar's possession as the curse ended, it was the stone itself. It knew they needed protection; it knew and had chosen to be with them rather than the humans when the curse ended.
~*~
"Have you got a fever?" Ulda asked, concern etching deep furrows in her face. "Z'thandra, it's magical, yes, but alive? That's absurd."
"But it's true Ulda, it explains so much."
"It explains nothing except that you've been working too hard lately." Ulda moved around her kitchen, giving the stew over the fire a quick turn and looking over her shoulder at Z'thandra. "First of all, how would the stone know when the curse was going to end?"
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"Careful Ulda," Z'thandra teased, still far too excited about her theory about the stone to be put off by the Reptar's logic. "You're coming awfully close to blasphemy."
Ulda smiled and, putting her hands at the small of her back,
straightened up. "Perhaps so, but what you're talking about is insanity."
"Will you at least admit that you feel safer with the stone here than you would with it gone?"
"That I'll grant you," she agreed, pointing the stew-covered wooden spoon at Z'thandra, "but intelligence? No, I don't think so."
"Anything's possible Ulda, anything." Z'thandra put the palms of her hands against the table and stood up slowly. "I'm going to go for a walk and fetch some water. Don't hold dinner for me I may –"
"—It's okay we have water." Ulda said, too late.
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