The Faarian Chronicles: Exile

by Karen Harris Tully

  “Sure, what?” he asked warily.

  I gestured to the one room I recognized as we passed. The bathroom. “Can you tell me how to make the water work?”

  He burst out laughing again. “No one gave you a link, did they? That’s typical. Ethem needs to delegate more, just not to me. Anyway, we’ll get you a code after dinner and a real tour too. You probably have lots of questions.”

  “Yeah.” I gave a sigh of relief.

  The long tables in the great hall were set for dinner now and they were full of people, most of them dusty in light colored fatigues and tall combat boots. Hundreds of people lined the benches of scarred wooden tables that stretched the length of the huge hall.

  The wall on either side of the monstrous, arched door I’d seen from outside was lined with built-in fish tanks filled with more of the silver fish with red and yellow bellies. I really hoped this wasn’t like one of those seafood restaurants that showed you your meal alive before they served it up on a plate.

  Thal snuck off as soon as we entered so his sisters wouldn’t see him. “I’ll find you after dinner,” he whispered and went to go sit at an empty seat far away from them.

  Ethem spotted me and walked over, looking relieved. “There you are! I was beginning to get worried, you were taking so long. Did you get all your things unpacked?” He flashed me his dyed smile and started to take my arm to lead me to a nearby table.

  I spotted the girls, Lyta and Otrere, waving at me from across the room and laughing uproariously at their joke. I suddenly had an urge to go over and smash their big, fat heads together.

  I glared at them as I replied. “No. I got lost trying to find my way back. Thankfully, Thal found me.”

  “Oh?” His eyebrows shot up in surprise and he looked in the direction of my glare. “Oh.” He cleared his throat in embarrassment. “Well, you just need to learn your way around a little better,” he said encouragingly, then looked up at my face and gasped, taking an involuntary step back. Oops. Should have brought the sunglasses.

  “I didn’t notice before,” he said slowly, “you have the most unusual eye color. Is that normal for Earth?” he asked.

  “No,” I said stiffly. “I always thought it must be normal here.”

  “No, I only know one other person with eyes like that,” he said. He was staring now, shifting and weaving to look at my eyes from different angles. I turned away, not wanting to draw any more attention. Keeping my lids as low as possible, I scanned for Sensei and thankfully found her at a table close by, with an empty seat left next to her.

  I slid onto the bench and kept my eyes on the dark, scarred wood. Sensei took one look at me, looked at the still laughing twins, and guessed what was happening.

  “Everything okay?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah, I just had trouble finding my way back.”

  “Ah.” She nodded her understanding.

  “Better?” I asked, looking up and showing her my eyes.

  She shrugged. “Remember not to hide who you really are, Sunny, no matter what other people may think,” she said. Yeah, I’d heard that one before.

  Ethem sat down on my other side and started introductions. “Everyone, this is Veridian,” he said to the people at the table. It was then I noticed with mild alarm that we were sitting at what had to be the head table. Great.

  Chapter 10: General Mom and the Ahatu

  “Sunny,” I corrected quickly, pasting a smile on my face and directing it at the curious faces around me.

  “Right, right. Sunny. This is your Great-Aunt Nico Katje, your grandmother’s sister,” he motioned to a jowly old woman diagonally across the table from me. I smiled politely at her and she nodded back, clearly sizing me up.

  “You’re too skinny,” were the first words out of her wrinkled mouth. “We’re going to have to put some meat on your bones. Can’t have you passing out if you miss a meal while out on patrol, now can we?”

  I felt the smile drop from my face and I glared down at the worn wooden table in front of me. Why did everyone always think I needed to hear their opinions on my weight? Being a gymnast somehow made people think they had a right to judge my body composition.

  A few years ago it had been a constant argument between Dad and my gymnastics coaches, especially the hated one who called me ‘Fatty Fat Cakes’ during my ever-increasing weigh-ins. Dad and Sensei threw out their diets, saying I was going to go through puberty whether they liked it or not. Judith watched what I ate and checked to make sure I didn’t throw it up like some of the girls I knew. I wasn’t sure whether to thank her for that or not as my height and weight zoomed past my fellow gymnasts. At 5’9” and 120 lbs, sure I was thin but in the world of women’s gymnastics, I was a giant.

  Andi was the only one I could count on not to criticize one way or the other. She said they were nuts. I was perfect the way I was, tall and thin like an athletic model. I loved her for that.

  Ethem, oblivious to my reaction, continued his introductions, one after another, after another. There were so many people continually stopping by to chat and welcome Sensei and me that they all went by in a haze. I didn’t think I could have recalled a single name if my life depended on it.

  I had only gotten a few moments to look around when my mother strode through the door. At least I had to assume it was her, the one at the head of a flying V of military-looking people. They all walked with an identical, loose-limbed gait, not looking left or right. Warriors. That’s what they called them here. She was scanning the room, apparently looking for the new face in the crowd.

  She didn’t look much like the few pictures I had from fifteen years ago. Then she’d been young and striking, with the strong look of a professional athlete. Now, she seemed older than I expected, hard and lined. Did she look like me? I couldn’t tell.

  The hair that Dad had said was like mine was actually a strong, true green, salted with silvery sage now. She was tanned as dark as the Mexican ranch hands back home and her eyes were surrounded by crow’s feet from squinting into the suns. Weathered. She wasn’t even forty yet.

  But what made me stare with my mouth hanging open was the giant spotted monster walking calmly by her side. A Cat. With a capital C. Not a fuzzy little lap-cat like Meowman. Big. Bigger than any I’d ever seen - even at the zoo or on TV. She -somehow I knew it was a she- turned her mile-wide head at my gasp and made a raspy sound as she came closer. I could swear it was a chuckle.

  My God she was huge! My eyes locked on the paws, which were at least as big as my head. I closed my mouth and gulped.

  My eyes flickered to the rest of the group. There was a giant cat walking with each of the warriors. Did they have some sort of Siegfried and Roy complex here? Didn’t they know what happened to Roy?

  I recognized the two women who’d picked me up, Myrihn with a mountain lion that seemed to echo her look of disdain, and Teague with a large cheetah, its bottle brush tail held high. The others were an assortment: a black jaguar that resembled a bear, a couple of leopards, and an enormous male and female lion pair.

  My mother stopped across the table from me with her team coming to attention behind her, still in perfect formation. I stood and took a wary step away from the bench in case I had to run from those monsters. The warriors behind her were mostly younger than her, and taller, but all with the same hard, muscular look about them.

  After a count of three, the squad members clicked their boot heels together and gave a dignified nod as one toward their leader, pivoted - with their cats - and silently walked away to other tables around the room. Sheesh, were they brainwashed or something? I focused on my mother and found her watching me shrewdly, not missing one flicker of my reaction. At the same time I kept the giant tiger in sight in case she made any sudden moves.

  Suddenly it was all real. This was my mother, the woman who’d given birth to me and then left before I had a chance to remember her. What was I going to say? What could I say? And everyone was watching. What did they expect, some teary-eye
d reunion?

  “You must be Veridian.” I nodded and waited, but she didn’t continue. She was looking at me as if she too was trying to find something familiar in my face.

  Really? That was all she was going to say?

  “Sunny,” I croaked and cleared my dry throat. “People call me Sunny.” Which you would know if you’d ever been there, the little voice in my head added.

  Leaning away from the tiger as much as possible, I reached over the table to shake her hand because I had to do something. There was no way I was going to hug her.

  She surprised me by grasping my forearm instead of my hand. Oh, right. They didn’t do it the same way here. We awkwardly shook like in some movie set in medieval times. She gestured for me to sit, as if graciously giving permission.

  “Veridian, this is Micha. Micha, Veridian,” my mother announced as if it were completely normal to be introducing her daughter to a thousand-pound killing machine. What was I supposed to do now, shake her paw?

  “Uh, hi,” I managed to choke out, fighting the instinct to bolt. She nodded at me regally and purred.

  “Is she… Is she a liger?” I asked, curiosity running my tongue. They were rare on Earth, born to a lion father and tigress mother. I’d only ever seen them on the Internet and, okay, on that dumb movie with that skinny, curly-haired guy.

  She growled at me, obviously unhappy. I froze as the people around me gasped or tsked.

  “It’s alright Micha. Veridian, I would think you’d know how rude it is to call someone a half-breed. And she can understand you perfectly well. With time, you’ll be able to understand her too. If you have a question for her, ask her, not me.” She looked pointedly at my still-empty seat.

  “Well, don’t stand there petrified,” she said. “You must have learned about the Ahatu,” (literally, sisters) “from the holo-professor I sent you.”

  I cautiously sat back down, straddling the bench this time so I could see them across the table and also make a quick getaway if necessary. I shook my head at my mother’s question, bewildered. I was sure I would have remembered a lesson about giant cats with wide, intelligent eyes that seemed to peer straight into my brain.

  “Sunny!” Sensei reproached. “We talked several times about the Ahatu warriors being incredible trackers and hunters.”

  “Yes, but I thought we were talking about people!” I replied. “Er, humans,” I corrected myself while eyeing the tiger – Micha – warily.

  “The Professor assured me he’d taught you about the Ahatu,” Sensei said.

  “He taught me about big cats on Earth, not here! And that stupid holo-professor was boring! Always talking about planting depths and minimum necessary water allowances and the fall of the Greek Empire. He never taught me anything cool like this.” I waved at Micha and another growl of displeasure rumbled from her chest.

  “Sorry! I mean, cool like you… Micha.” Was I really talking to a giant tiger? To my astonishment, she gave a little “humph” and a nod of forgiveness before settling on the floor with her head in my mother’s lap so that I – almost – couldn’t see her.

  My mother sighed and petted Micha’s head. “I’m not terribly surprised. The National Council is very strict on what information can be divulged off planet. It sounds like customs disabled the, shall we say, ‘alternate’ parameter allowances I installed in his programming before sending him to you.

  “No Sensei, it’s not your fault,” she continued when Sensei started apologizing. “I didn’t want you breaking the law for us; that’s why I sent the hologram. Besides, I know you were monitored. Well,” she said, turning back to me, “the government ought to be happy that you were kept properly in the dark.” She shook her head. “At least he taught you the language. His reports assure me you can read and write in Faarian, correct?”

  I grimaced and nodded. While I could do it, I wasn’t much of a reader. I had to concentrate on the words so much that whatever I read didn’t seem to stick in my brain.

  “Good. It’s all right if you need practice at it. I’ll send you several books about Macawi, and Afaar in particular, that I expect you to read in your spare time to get you caught up.”

  Great, just great. She hadn’t even said welcome and I already had homework. This was going real well.

  The tiger – Micha – stood and stretched. Geez, she reached almost up to my elbow at her withers. Shoulder. Whatever. She reminded me of a horse. A man-eating horse.

  She sauntered around the table to stand in front of me as I stared at her, pressing back into the table edge. What was she doing now? Without warning, she knocked me off my bench to the ground and pinned me with her paws on my shoulders. I couldn’t even wiggle, she was so heavy.

  Holy crap! I started to panic. This was it. I was gonna be eaten alive by a giant cat, in front of everyone, in the middle of dinner, on an alien planet, and Dad would never even know what happened to me….

  “Micha!” my mother said dryly. “Knock it off.” Unfortunately, the big cat ignored her command. Micha looked into my scared face, grinned, and licked me from chin to hairline with one wide, sloppy swipe of sandpaper.

  “Ugh!” I exclaimed as she laughed that husky, rasping laugh and ambled away, presumably to go terrorize someone else. I think I was going to need to go change my shorts.

  Three loud words, accompanied by Micha’s raspy laugh, popped into my head for no apparent reason, making my ears ring as I lay on the cold, stone floor: Welcome, girl-child.

  Chapter 11: Family History

  I picked myself up off the floor to find practically the whole room laughing at me. All except my mother who was shaking her head and frowning at me in disappointment.

  “Did you have a good meeting?” I asked her with bite in my voice as I wiped giant cat saliva off my burning face and took my seat again.

  “No. It was a waste of time, like usual,” she said, looking sharply at me. She took a breath and arranged her features into a more pleasant mask. “But attendance by the farming representatives is critical. One didn’t show up and we almost lost another seat because of it. Pendergrast,” she mumbled unhappily to Great-Aunt Nico seated beside her, “seems happy to sit back and let Glass City dictate the terms of our water rights." She shook her head and turned to me.

  “So, did someone show you around?”

  I nodded, determined to bite my tongue and not think about my ‘tour’ before I said, or did, anything else that gave away what I was feeling.

  “Well, good then. I’m glad you’re finally here,” she said stiffly. It didn’t seem like she was all that glad as we sat down to dinner and had nothing more to talk about.

  “Oh, you two! You are so much alike!” Ethem gushed, wiping at the corners of his eyes with a handkerchief. “Lean towards each other. I’ll get a picture you can send to your father, Veridian. Sunny, I mean Sunny!” He corrected himself quickly and snapped some photos with the same model phone that everyone seemed to be carrying.

  Dinner was served and people focused on their food, quickly losing interest in me. I watched Sensei take her food and followed her lead, relieved to find that the dishes, while unfamiliar, at least resembled recognizable food. My system worked out well except for the scoop of pink-orange mashed potatoes that turned out to be fermented squash. I coughed it out into my cloth napkin as fast as possible and chugged my coconut-pear juice while Sensei chuckled quietly at me.

  Throughout the meal, I looked around the crowded room and the first thing I noticed was that it was mostly women, like two to one. Amazons. The name came from classical Greek, a-mazos: “without breast”. It looked like all those ancient myths had been wrong about that, thank God. The idea that they cut or burned off one breast so they could throw a spear or shoot a bow and arrow had always seemed ridiculous. Even thousands of years ago, women would have bound their breasts with cloth or something, not cut them off.

  The next thing I noticed was how diverse the gathering was. I guess I hadn’t realized how overwhelmingly white my lif
e was back home. Here, there were people of every color sitting shoulder to shoulder on the long benches, comfortably talking and laughing together. It was cool, except I felt… like I stuck out, the only Earthling.

  Women were generally tall, a lot of them taller than me, and stockier than I was used to, like the twins. Teague was still on the mucho grande end of the size spectrum, but overall, the women were roughly the same size as the men and I was now average. Small even. I’d always hated being so much taller than most girls, but now that I was surrounded by women who looked like they could play for the WNBA, I didn’t feel like I fit in here either.

  They were all in shape; I mean like everyone. Okay, Great Aunt Nico across from me was kind of flabby and barrel-chested (and one of the few old people here, though she was probably only seventy), but other than her… they looked like athletes. They were all vegans like me, as far as I could tell, and women and men alike were dusty and dirty from farming all day, which would keep anyone in shape. At least the facial tattoos and dyed teeth definitely seemed to be a male only thing.

  Sensei seemed to be old friends with almost everyone. People kept coming over to toast her return with glasses of ambrosia, and fill her in on things she had missed in the years she’d been on Earth. They listened, enraptured, to Sensei’s tales of Earth weather and her increasingly embarrassing stories of life on Earth and, specifically, of me.

  Dinner conversation moved on to talking about the apparent drop in haratchi numbers in the past few years. My ears perked up. Sensei had told me so much about these bird-pests, I couldn’t wait to see them in person. Unfortunately, all I ended up finding out was that even here, adults could suck the fun out of any topic.

  And then - they decided to draw me into the conversation. “So, Veridian,” one woman began, “what was it like growing up on Earth?”

  “Um,” I hedged. Did she really expect me to sum up my entire childhood for a bunch of strangers? “Um, snowy? No really, there’s lots of snow in Colorado,” I finally replied and pretended interest in my food.