by Nhys Glover
Chapter Eight
I trudged back to the hovel when both men went back to their tasks. It seemed a fair assumption that if Darkin had left the house then so had Rama. I needed to sit down, nay, lie down, before the last of my energy ran out.
Once onto the portico I glanced inside, just to make sure the annoying man wasn't hiding in there. What I saw surprised me. Not only was the tub gone, but my clothes were washed and hanging from every surface. Someone had done this for me. I felt touched in an uncomfortable way when I realised which brother must have done it. Calun and Jaron had been butchering meat. Darkin had been talking to me. That left only Rama.
He would make me pay for it later, I knew. Tell me he was not my servant and make me pay. But a little part of me was still touched. Although I was glad I had had the forethought to remove my jewels from the tunic hem before my bath. I had hidden them under the bench used for food preparation.
I drank warm water from the bucket in the house and then returned to my pallet on the portico. If it was possible, the dwelling had become even more sweltering as the day progressed. The problem was, the heat had nowhere to go. There were no air ducts to carry away the hot air that rose to the roof. And no windows. The one open door was all there was to let air in and out. Not nearly enough.
As I contemplated the problem, I eased myself down onto the pallet. Before I had come up with a suitable solution sleep claimed me yet again.
When I awoke once more the sky was dark and the most wonderful smell assailed my nostrils. Cooked meat. I struggled to my feet and followed the smell and the light, both of which came from a make-shift firepit in the middle of the yard.
Jaron stood turning the spit, his handsome features illuminated by the firelight. It was hot work, and his brown hair, damply dark, had more curls than when dry. Those curls clung to his face and neck. Tanned skin gleamed with sweat, while muscles bulged each time he rotated the large daubler over the flames.
"Ah, you are awake again. Come, sit. The meat's just about done. I'm more skilled in cooking like this than I am in a kitchen," Jaron welcomed, a sly smile on his well-formed lips telling me he had been aware of my appreciative appraisal.
I sat down on a long wooden bench that had been put in place especially for the 'celebration'.
"How do you feel?" he asked, turning back to the spit.
"Better. Still tired, but better. And hungry. I seem to have spent my whole life hungry, though I know it has only been a matter of days."
"I guess you never went hungry in the harem."
I shrugged. "There was always more food than we could eat. But in the last days, before I left, I could not keep food down, even though I was hungry."
"Being told you're about to die will do that to a person," he said with cynical humour.
"Did... Did you think you might die when you were arrested?"
"Which time?" The humour made an uncomfortable subject bearable.
I laughed. "You were arrested more than once?"
"Once when I was caught stealing. I was only five at the time and not skilled at it then. I got better. Then again when... when Ma died. And the last time when we got back from rescuing Rama. I thought I was going to die every time."
"But you did not die. And neither did I."
"And so we'll celebrate, filling our bellies until we can eat no more," Jaron declared with enthusiasm.
"She can't eat like that. Her stomach's still not used to food," a deep voice I immediately recognised as Rama's said from behind me.
"How do you know what I can and cannot eat?" I snapped, turning to glare at his shadowed form. He looked twice as tall, and three times as daunting, standing there on the edge of the firelight, the flame's reflection flickering across the planes and hollows of his scarred features. Even his hair was more sinister. Red dancing in the golden tresses like blood.
Without answering, he turned and stalked off. I immediately felt remiss. I was the one who snapped and snarled like a wounded animal this time, not him.
"He knows," Jaron said softly. "It took us half a moon' to rescue him from the Clifflings. In that time they gave him only enough water to keep him alive. He was a walking skeleton by the time we got him out. If he could've walked, that is. It's amazing how quickly a body will devour its own flesh when deprived of other nourishment."
My heart ached in my chest. Why hadn't I considered that possibility before snapping at him. He had stopped me drinking too much when I first arrived because he probably knew from personal experience what that could do to a person.
"I should go..." I said, making to rise and follow the man I liked least of my new companions. Yet my conscience required it.
"No, leave him. He doesn't want to be reminded of that time, so saying anything'll just stir it up. His belly'll bring him back soon enough."
By the time Jaron started calving great chunks of meat off the carcass the others had joined us. Even Rama. They brought wooden plates and a large bowl of greens liberally doused in olive oil, I discovered when I tasted it. There was a much smaller bowl of ground salt. No utensils came with the plates and I realised why as the men proceeded to pick up the chunks of meat with their fingers and tear sections away with their teeth to chew on.
They scooped up the greens with a chunk of hard bread, into which the olive oil quickly soaked.
Though I had never eaten anything but fruit, honey cakes and sweet meats with my hands, I decided to copy my hosts. I worked my way through my greens first, leaving the bread for last. Once my plate was partially cleared, I picked up my one chunk of meat and began gnawing on the outer edges, taking care not to eat as fast as I wanted to.
Every so often I caught Rama watching me, probably making sure I was not eating too much or too fast.
"You make eating with your hands look elegant," Jaron said with a laugh, as I daintily licked my greasy fingers after I finished the meat. "Mother would do that sometimes."
"I would have attacked my food like a wild beastling had I not been warned. I will not lose the content of my stomach again. Food is too precious here."
"Aye," grunted Rama, although I think he seemed pleased that I had followed his instructions so well.
"Tell me how you became Airluds," I asked, after we had all finished eating and were staring into the flames in companionable silence.
"It was thanks to Calun. One day when he was barely out of clouts, he wandered off. Ma was beside herself with worry and Rama and I were sent to search for him. Jaron was still a babe barely crawling, at the time," Darkin started the tale as a true storyteller might. We women of the harem spent many hours together sharing stories in just this way, and the best storytellers were asked for the same tales over and over again. We all knew them so well, yet loved to get lost in them anew, nevertheless. Most were make-believe, but some were true. Or had started out as true before time and the storytellers' art had embellished them beyond recognition.
"We searched half the day away, growing more and more concerned the longer we went without finding a sign of him. Then, as the sun began to set, we found him a league from town in a field where a small pod of airlings was grazing. A large group of airlings is called a flock, a family unit is called a pod. Depending on how much grass is available they'll either move from place to place as a pod or flock." He looked over at me to see if I was following. I nodded for him to go on.
"I still remember the terror I felt seeing him there, sitting amongst those huge beastlings. Any one of them could've trodden him under foot, or clawed him with their vicious talons. That's how they fight, you know, with their feet. They'll dive and claw at an enemy until the threat leaves them alone.
"We didn't know what to do. How to get to him without being torn to pieces ourselves. But after we crept up as close as we could, and saw Calun stroking the pointed nose of one airling, we became braver.
"Eventually we found ourselves sitting beside our brother, being begged for attention by the youngest members of the pod. The childlings of th
e mated pair. We didn't know that at the time, of course. But that was how it was." He stopped for a moment and smiled, as if remembering.
"Calun hadn't been able to utter sound from birth. But he learned to communicate that day. He'd been drawn to the airlings by the pictures in his head. That's how they talk to each other. How they talked to him. And he learned to do it with them and with us. Talk to us in pictures and gestures."
I looked over at Calun in amazement. I had never heard of such a thing before. I had understood him when he communicated with me but I had not understood what was happening. It was just that I seemed to sense what he was trying to say. Had there been pictures? I was not sure. There were certainly feelings.
Calun smiled at me beatifically.
"We can't talk to them. But we spent so much time with the airlings we started to understand their ways. And Calun would interpret for us when necessary. The idea to ride them had never entered our heads until Jaron started to join us. He started toddling after us the moment he found his feet, and most of the time we'd look back and see him there and have to take him back to Ma. But when she had a man in the house, we had to be out of it, and so Jaron would end up sitting in the dirt outside. Short of tying him to a tree, we either had to stay home with him and listen to the sounds coming from the hut or take him with us to the airlings."
I fought down the horror I felt at hearing this part of the tale. My heart bled for the boys they had been back then.
"The pod came and went with the seasons, and often they returned with their full flock. But it was only the childlings of our pod the day Jaron clambered onto the back of a seated airling. Blackie we'd named him, because his coat was black as night, as was the skin of his wings."
"We'd simply been petting the others, leaning against them where they sat, just enjoying the airlings' company. They're very peaceful beastlings when left to themselves. Anyway, before we knew what'd happened, Jaron'd clambered onto Blackie's back. The shock had Blackie jumping to his feet and taking off. How Jaron clung on, I have no idea. But once the big airling became comfortable with the added weight and realised it meant him no harm, he landed again and, just like that, sat down again with the others."
He laughed as he went on. "We had nearly pissed ourselves thinking we'd lost our little brother. What would Ma say when we brought back his flattened body? If we could even find his body. But Jaron wasn't worried. He squealed with excitement the whole time, clinging onto the horns that extend from the shoulders. They make perfect hand-holds.
"We didn't ride the airlings that day, or even in the days that followed. It was too frightening. But when Jaron again tried to clamber onto Blackie's back, some time later, Calun stopped me from pulling him off. He sent me a picture of us all riding like Jaron. The airlings liked the idea. So that was what we did. That first time I was so scared I could barely hold on, my hands shook so hard. But I was the big brother and so I had to be the brave one. And so we found a way to escape the pain of our lives by following the bliss of flying."
I had so many questions, but decided to stick to one. "Could you only ride those young of your pod or others?"
"Once the others saw what we did, they agreed to take us on their backs. They're very intelligent creatures. They learn from each other quickly. And though not all of the airlings in the flock that regularly grazed near our town would let us ride them, most would. We were too young to be claimed, so they just indulged us, I suppose you could say. But our favourites were always the young of our pod. It was like we were part of their family unit by then."
"What happened when you were sent to join the soldiers in Godslund? Did you take your own airlings?"
"We didn't own the airlings. And we weren't given the chance to bring them along, even if we'd thought we could. Instead, we were presented with supposedly tamed airlings the general had bought from somewhere."
His voice was angry now. "Whoever captured them had been cruel in breaking them. That was the word they used, 'breaking'. Calun cried when he tried to communicate with the broken beastlings. Their pictures were... jagged and made little sense. They were cowed with fear one minute then striking out in the next."
"Like me," Rama grunted out.
No one spoke for a long time, but eventually Darkin went on. "They expected us to ride those poor broken beastlings, and we refused. We said... I said... that we needed to heal them first. That they wouldn't serve us while ever they were wounded on the inside as well as the outside. The men who broke them drove metal stakes into the bones of their wings. They called them pins. And they attached chains from the pin to the leg to keep the airling from flying away. Of the six airlings the Godslunders had bought from traders, three had bad bone poisoning from the pins."
"They locked us up and threatened us with death, but as the airlings were useless to them as they were, costing them good men every time they tried to ride them, they eventually came around to our way of thinking. It took us almost a suncycle to heal them enough to ride them. But we succeeded. By the time we were drummed out of the army we'd trained up other riders who knew how to handle airlings properly.
"But they had no new beastlings to add to their stable. So we were offered a deal when we were arrested for what we did. Die or go back to the Badlunds and tame more airlings for the army. Though we didn't like the idea of capturing wild airlings and selling them to Godslund, we knew we had no other choice. And at least if they bought our airlings, that were tamed not broken, it was better than the alternative."
"And so that's what you do here? Catch and tame airlings for the army?" I asked, sending my arm out to take in the whole property.
"Aye."
"But why are you struggling to make ends meet? Each airling you tame and train must be worth a fortune."
"We agreed to provide four airlings a suncycle in exchange for our freedom and enough money to provide for us in a limited way. That's four airlings too many, as far as we're concerned. People've come to us looking to buy more, but we won't do it. We won't steal these wild creatures' freedom to line our pockets with gold. It's already like we're selling off members of our family.
"And it takes time to prepare an airling for its role. Not all of them are suited for the life. We have to choose the ones that're adaptable and open to change. That're willing to let us train them and slowly curtail their freedom. It's painful work."
I nodded, understanding a little better. I had only experienced the joy of flight once. What must it be like to have had that freedom all my life and then have it restricted. Only flying when and where my rider decided. Horrible. Truly horrible.
Like living your life inside a harem, never seeing beyond its walls... Only knowing that lakes and seas and mountains exist because someone else tells you of them.
"How do you keep the airlings you capture from flying away?" I asked the question that had been bothering me from the moment I arrived.
"We don't pin them, that's for sure," Rama snapped out angrily, but his fury wasn't directed at me so I let it flow over me.
"We loop a rope around one wing just below the shoulder and attach it to a leg. It doesn't hurt them, but they can't stretch the wing out well enough to fly. Catch them young enough and do it long enough, and the airling forgets that it can fly without a rider. When that happens, roping them is no longer necessary. They associate the joy of flight with the pressure of a rider on their back. They look forward to being ridden. But only by a rider who's in tune with them. That the airling has claim as his. Luckily, the men we trained up before we left the army continue to use our training methods with the new recruits."
Calun produced a pipe and began to play a mournful tune that had tears pricking my eyelids. I reached for the cup of water, from which I had been slowly sipping since the beginning of the meal, to hide my emotional response. My feelings were too raw and intimate to share with these strangers.
Once the song was over, he chose a more upbeat number and Rama joined in with the most gorgeous baritone voice I'
d ever heard. Well, it was the only baritone I had ever heard, but it was better than even the most skilled of singers in the harem. The sound sent goosebumps skittering across my skin, in much the way his mouth on my nape had done. This time, though, there was no snide comment to spoil the feeling.
Jaron rose from his place and offered me his hand, leading me to the empty space on the other side of the fire from the bench. I knew how to dance, it was a skill all harem girls acquired early, because we were told our husbands would be entertained by it. But what Jaron asked of me was unlike anything I had ever done before. He placed both hands on my waist and encouraged me to put both of mine on his shoulders. Then he began to gamble around with me in tow. It took no more than a few moments for me to learn the steps he used and, once done, I almost flew as we danced.
When the song ended, Darkin took Jaron's place, and he danced with me to a much slower number. I leaned in to him without thought, resting my head on his chest. I could hear his heartbeat beneath my ear and I felt oddly soothed. I was leagues away from the only home I had ever known, the only people I had ever known − my loved ones who were willing to put me to death, I had almost died under a burning hot covering, and almost sold into whoredom. Yet somehow I had ended up here, with the legends my brother had spoken of, the men I had admired before knowing them: the Airluds.
I wanted to pay them back for what they had done for me. Could I do it? Could I dance for these men? It was wrong. It was unseemly. None of these strangers were my husband or father. I should not even consider it.
But I did.
The music ended and I gestured for Darkin to sit. "Play me something with heart and soul," I said, more a question than a demand. Rama looked at Calun and he nodded, starting up a melody that was slow and rhythmic. After a moment Rama joined him, singing of love found and lost.
My body took in the music in the way it took in air, food and water. Without being aware of it, I began to undulate. When my whole body was moving in place I started to step out, long sliding steps in time with the music. My arms rose and fell, circling me, reaching for the sky. A breeze stirred the glowing embers of the fire. I swayed with it, claiming it as my own, the way an airling claims the wind. My body soared and plummeted, swooping for the ground, then reaching for the heavens, over and over again. I was the music, I was the song.