by Viv Phoenix
Kind, I thought, a hope that shone light through me. He was kind. He didn't harm the animals although a form that large must require a lot of food. His belly rumbled, as though to confirm my thought. It scared me that he stood so close I heard his body. Please, please, please, just go away. If the stranger went away, I wouldn't wish for anything else for a long time, and I'd be much more careful in my scouting.
He walked closer to me, away from the pool, and shook his garment. I tried not to breathe. He upended the fabric and shook it again the way Lida shook our rugs. My lungs burned with need. I gasped a breath. The dust choked me. I sneezed.
He started and dropped the strange, fine fabric.
His silver eyes scanned the rocks. His nostrils dilated. He came right at me. I ran, water running down my leg in my terror.
I sprinted between the rocks as though the demons of ancient stories that scared children had become real. It seemed they had. I didn't know if his footfalls shook the earth or if it was my heart. I'd heard of silent animals running so hard their hearts burst from it. Or perhaps from the fear of being chased, of being eaten alive by a predator. I'd never considered how the other inhabitants of our world felt.
I dodged through the trees, tearing away at angles to confuse his eyes, using every trick I knew to throw him off my path. Brush tore at my fur-less skin. Breath rasped in my throat, the foul dust hurting my lungs. Pain lanced through my side. I ran at top speed, arm up to shield my eyes from wicked sticks and the setting sun.
My muscles screamed. I raced through the trees unaware of where I went, angling off the path hoping the stranger wouldn't be able to find me. I longed to be back where I belonged, but I'd lost my chance. If he continued to follow, I needed to lead him away from home.
If he caught me, I'd scream, shriek the way I did when I sneaked away to the city after my parents died and entered a church. The tortured man's lean face and loving eyes looked like Dad. His starved, bleeding body was my dads. Shriek and shriek and shriek to rouse Miren from her eyrie, Wizen from his den, everyone from everywhere to save the shifters from the threat I should have alerted them to so much sooner, instead of with my flesh-rending death.
His pounding footfalls receded and my senses returned. I scrambled into a narrow cleft between rocks I'd played in as a child, a space far too tight for a giant to enter to follow me. The rock warrens had many outlets, making it impossible for him to trap me. I stopped, remembered to breathe as Wizen taught. I outran him, maybe out-thought him, too. I had to be Rar-the-bold as Wizen called me, not a hare, bounding without thought until a larger creature caught me for my flesh.
I waited, listening with all my being. No sound of pursuit. Darkness cloaked the rocks, not even moonlight peeking through. I waited longer yet, scrubbing my wetness and smell off my legs with sand, careful to make no sound. I savored the clean, gritty texture of sand made from centuries of worn rocks, not the bodies, technology and stupidity of humans and my ancestors.
I crept to the aperture, blinked at the moon, the stars sparkling the same as mom's best dress that Lida wore for her wedding. The stranger wasn't still waiting to take me, was he? No, I'd have heard him. I centered all my concentration as I'd learned to do and listened. No one moved out there.
I ran my finger through the sand, drew a picture of him leaving. I gave him three big legs and made his pointed ears stand out from his head in bat wings.
With childlike glee I pictured him picking his nose. The image banished most of my fear.
It still took me time to move. My legs did not want to take me out of my safe place. I didn't want the shame of returning and having anyone scent that I'd wet myself. What if Lida was out as tiger and sniffed my shame? What kind of scout makes water the first time she encounters something to report?
Better that I find out more before I return. I'd redeem myself, if only to myself. On the way back, I'd stop and use the stranger's vessel to bathe myself. I tingled at the thought of touching what he touched, using it on myself, feeling the cool water rinsing me where I watched him bathe himself.
I felt heartened at the thought of making a success of my patrol, rising above my fear so I'd have a story to be told long after I joined the dust. This, this was a story for the ages, worthy to be kept on the scrolls we made from bark pulp. We saved our writings for generations as the stories of our people, the shifters who survived the destruction the all-humans wrought with their war, saved theirs along with human documents for us. A chill went through me. I was making history.
I slipped out of the cover of the rocks and made my trackless way in the direction I sensed the stranger went.
What if there's more than one of them? Lights shined ahead, rising over the dune in fire glow. But no voices. If there were many of his kind, there'd be sounds. Emboldened, I crouched and crept closer, trusting to my training in soundless, dust-free patrolling.
I lowered myself to my belly and crawled up the dune, raised my head. No. Oh, no. Tents. Many of them.
Gripping fistfuls of dust, my inner vision shimmied. A horrible image of strangers carrying Lida away rose in me. If they took her, Garhan would need someone to console him. He'd need a new mate. I closed my eyes against the most unworthy thought of my life, rolling my eyes back in my head to banish it from having ever been. No matter how much I envied her, I didn't wish Lida gone. I didn't mean to think it. Some not-bold part of me sent her to the monsters rather than me. My mind kept punishing me for wanting a man forbidden to me. I swallowed, forced my attention back to the the camp.
I needed to focus, prepare to report. Twelve tents. More creatures, people, whatever they were, moving between them, but the shadows and the tents obstructing my view made it impossible to count them. Their unfamiliarity and similar garments made it difficult to tell them apart. They seemed to be all one kind, similar in shape and coloring, not different kinds like us. Some slimmer ones appeared to be females, but at that distance, not knowing their kind, I wasn't sure. If the smaller ones were females, the males outnumbered them, but there might be more inside the tents. I saw no children, just silent adults.
Stupid mistake. Just as I moved through the desert without stirring dust, these strangers had the sense to camp without sound. I shouldn't have believed the absence of voice gave me leave to approach. I stilled my recriminations, brought my attention back to the moving figures.
An enormous strange thing shimmered behind them, wavering in the glow of lanterns like a mirage in the midday sun. It reminded me of a blimp, an ancient airship-- its form there and not there. It shifted the portal Lida went through to the dangerous world where she found Garhan. The wavering shape reminded me of a huge ocean creature we found dead on the shore when my head came breast-high on Lida, not long after my parents died. The smell stayed with me. Whale, she said. She cried. I cried too, holding her hand, sad for its death, crying tears I swallowed when she said our parents were gone forever. My lips tasted salty and the ocean blew my hair across my eyes. The waves rose and dropped, spreading along the beach, leaving trails of dirty foam and dead fish. Mom and Dad weren't coming back.
I didn't always like my sister, but I remained grateful she hadn't lied. It was harder when someone lied and you found out the truth later. In the awful smell, looking at the big blow hole in the creature's head, the rough, bone-colored growths on its skin, I held my silent funeral for mom and dad. Lida let me cry as long as I needed. Sobs wracked me and she gripped me in a fierce hug, one of the few times she did so. I heard her heart beat, felt her soft breasts against my cheeks, smelled her sweat and the fragrance of orange blossoms she crushed there. I wiped my face and we walked home.
That wasn't a whale beyond the strange camp with the shining, seamless tents. It loomed far larger and kept reflecting the colors around it, the way my tunic blended with the land around me, only magic. Not that I believed in magic, official adult that I was.
An unfamiliar odor rose from the stranger's camp, not dead-whale bad, but unknown. My belly rumbled as
the stranger's had, affirming my suspicion that I smelled food. Curiosity burned at me. What did they eat? What were they doing here? I'd find out, make a good report. Already I imagined the cool water caressing my heated skin, making me clean again, easing away all the fear and mistakes, allowing me to go home with honor.
I elbowed my way higher, squinting again, wishing more than ever for the technology of the ancients to see the strangers better.
Not meaning to, trying not to admit to myself I was doing it, I looked for him. The powerful one I spied on as he bathed. I'd stay long enough to see him again, then go back and report as duty decreed. I ducked my head, grateful that my hair and skin blended with the dunes.
A hand covered my mouth and big arms lifted me, trapped me against a hard body. I pushed with my arms and legs, shaking, shifting to tiger.
"Don't. If you try to fight me, I'll kill all your kind. Our weapons can destroy everything on this planet except what we choose to keep to eat. You might taste good, even as a tiger, skinned."
I stopped. His words chilled me. I believed him. I nodded, my lips pressing against his calloused palm.
"I don't need weapons to kill you all. We have weapons, far beyond the killing power of anything you know. If I told you about them, showed you in your mind what they can do to you, your people, and your planet, you'd have nightmares until you die-- which might be soon. If we choose to kill you all, if you make me make that choice and be damned for it by everyone you know with their agonized dying breaths, I'll focus my will on their brains and obliterate them. The brain fries in the skull like a fish in a pan. The pain, well, you can imagine. It's the greatest agony we inflict."
I didn't move. My breathing stopped. I fought for a new breath. He moved his hand to allow my nostrils more air, but kept my mouth covered. His body held great bulk, but not as much as the massive male I spied on earlier. Despite my panic, relief filled me. It was a different one, not the one I watched. As horrible as this was, I'd feel worse if the one I believed was good turned as cruel as this one.
"We didn't choose this, but we're here. We're not going away and we're going to colonize your world. With your cooperation or without it. I've seen your scrolls. I know your ancestors committed genocide to increase their lands. That stain, as your kind see it, formed the undeveloped lives you have now, living here as beasts without machines, without vehicles to travel land, sea or space-- without fulfillment. It might be a mercy killing, to destroy you." His voice had a musing quality, as though killing everyone who lived in my world could be rationalized as being for our own good.
I never encountered his kind before. None of the shifters kill just to kill, only for food or to defend themselves, their mate, their children.
I should have run to told the others instead of following the stranger alone. No one would know what happened to me. No one would come to help. And no one knew of the threat to their lives, their world. I swallowed, thinking of myself in the past, already dead.
His bulge prodded me from below and a more immediate threat took my attention.
The alien thrust me from him and pushed me down in the dirt. He flipped me like a turtle with his spatula foot.
"You fight, they all die." He caged my throat with one long-fingered hand and straddled me. His lips looked swollen on his flat face. His narrow skull and the bulging muscles pulsing with purple veins looked cruel. No, I didn't want to know if an alien cock dilated like his nose. No. He mounted my body and pulled his fabric aside, exposing his erection. He shifted his weight and yanked up my tunic, ready to mate. The sun turned his silvery skin apricot and outlined his big muscles with gold.
All my will aimed at staying still. I resisted the urge to grab my knife. My body beneath him slipped into timeless space, the moment stretching long as a spider's strand, slow, so slow, with my heart drumming. A sharp smell like deep cave odor wafted from the alien into my face. He handled himself, his damp breath blowing strands of my hair. He meant to force me, to blackmail me out of my virginity with my peoples' lives when he meant to kill us all anyway. I knew it as sure as I knew my parents died because of me. Bumping liar. My fear shifted to rage. I glared at him. Pictured him picking his nose so deep his long finger poked his brain and fried it. Carrion bumper.
I closed my thighs and made my body heavy. Even small cats who aren't shifters make their bodies heavier when they don't want to be moved. He huffed out his breath, his nostrils dilating, his eyes glittering.
"I can kill everyone. I promise you." His lips thinned.
"I'm not fighting. But I do not want to mate with you. Don't the warriors of your kind have honor? I didn't transform to tiger. I didn't injure you. You have no cause to harm anyone here. I don't want you, that's all." I averted my face from a different, too-ripe fruit smell from his mouth.
He spat in disgust and got off me. He raised his arm.
I rose to a crouch, gripped my knife under cover of my tunic, ready to spring. If I was dead anyway, better to rip his throat out first.
"Eret, take her to Lirian. Tell her to give this beast a dose. If she moves, send guards to get her sister tiger and fry her brain in front of this beast." He grabbed my hair. "We've been studying your kind since we crashed here. We know how to disable you. But we haven't tested the serum yet. It might kill you." He smiled and stalked away on his long, thick-muscled legs.
They'd murder Lida in front of me. I wobbled on my legs and let go of my knife, hiked up my tunic to cover it. Modesty mattered for nothing here, the alien had already taken that. In extremity, I might turn the knife on myself. If I died, Lida might get the chance to survive. Garhan would defend her to his death. Maybe they'd hear the aliens coming and get away. Not even Garhan in bear shape couldn't overcome these warriors. How could we fight brain-frying aliens?
The guard gestured for me to proceed him down a path. He pointed to a tent amid the others. I entered it. A lamp's glow illuminated my first female of their kind. She contrasted with the shadowy tent, her body pale as the desert all over and flat as a boy, not as silvery as the males. Her simple robe draped her body to her knees. I felt too exposed, but couldn't adjust my tunic without revealing my knife.
Lirian. I tested the name in my mind. For all her strangeness, her face and body stunned me like my favorite ancient sculpture of a beloved queen.
She nodded at me, as though unlike the man who seemed to be in power, she didn't see me as a 'beast.' Above her creamy chest and arching throat, her face bore the smooth planes of a mesa and ripe lips. She took an object from a pouch on her belt. All her things appeared hard with sharp edges and shiny surfaces like water, unlike the things of my world. She poured the contents into a cup and glanced at the guard. He took hold of me by my throat and hair. I wanted to fight him, but remembered the danger to Lida. I heard the rustling fabric and spatula feet of aliens all around me outside the tent. There was no escape.
The woman I guessed was their doctor put the cup to my lips. I pretended to drink and held the liquid in my mouth. I'd spit it out.
She massaged my throat and made me swallow. Was it true what they said, they'd disable me, keep me from becoming tiger-- or kill me trying? My abductor didn't care about causing death to others. He wanted me to die in agony because I rejected him. He anticipated the sufferings of others with pleasure. Strange, cold, horrible people. And they had me prisoner.
Lirian seeming to have no need of words with the guard. Was it the sensing I suspected the first male I spied upon possessed? Despite my fears, I felt intrigued. I wanted to learn more about the invaders. As a new adult of my people and a scout, I had a duty to learn everything I could all shifters survive. I'd made a selfish, horrible mistake by not reporting the first stranger. I had to get away and warn the others.
The guard pulled me to my feet, bruising my arm.
"You don't have to do that. Tell me what you want. I can move by myself." My anger flared, strengthening me. I couldn't shift to tiger in body, yet I could shift to tiger in spirit. I resolved
to show no fear.
They understood my words. They studied us, the first male said. I shivered. The woman's eyes assessed me. Her smooth face showed no expression, yet her eyes seemed to show respect. The guard took his hand off me.
"Go with Eret. Don't resist. Do as you're told and no one will hurt you."
No one wanted to know my name or give me theirs. It was the first sign that they saw me as a possession.
"My name is Rar."
Eret kept marching, showing no sign he heard.
He led me to a strange thing, not a dwelling, a cage, such as our animal healers might keep a wounded animal in for everyone's protection until it was well enough to release.
He motioned me to get inside it. I stared at him. He couldn't mean it. He bared his teeth. I didn't want to, but I didn't want him to touch me again. I'd already learned these people could be mean. Most of all, I didn't want them to abduct Lida and heat her brain so it cooked in her skull.
I didn't feel well. Would their poison kill me? I entered the cage and crumpled to the ground.
He closed the door and fastened it with a shiny, hard clasp. I touched the bars. Not wood. Some hard stuff like the female's things. Cold to my touch, unyielding. I grasped the clasp and pulled on it. Impossible as trying to bend stone. The bars met a hard floor without a seam. The pen's height didn't allow me to stand. I'd have to sit, crouch or lie down on the hard floor for as long as they kept me in it. I ran my fingers over every part of it and found no weakness. The aliens had me trapped; I couldn't get out. Panic rose to my throat. I fought it. I had to control myself. Stay alert, watch for my chance to escape.
The guard walked away, knowing there was nothing I could do to get away. Stars flickered in the distance above the hulking tents, reminders of a world I betrayed and no longer got to patrol or roam. I ached to race away and dig my claws into a tree, sharpen them and come back to repay the alien leader for his hospitality.
I wrapped my arms around my knees. The cage contained a bowl of water, a plate with something unfamiliar meant as food, and a bucket. My face flamed at the sight of it. They must mean for me to release wastes there. In front of everyone, and with no way to bury it. What kind of people were they that treated a person this way? Beast, he called me. Who was the beast here?