“We have you surrounded, but we mean you no harm. We wish to understand your purpose here.”
Karl shuffles over to me and whispers frantically in my ear. “What are you doing?”
I shake my head and try to concentrate, but he nudges me again, nearly knocking me over.
“I can understand them, and apparently they can understand me. Now be quiet and let me concentrate,” I say.
And then I scream as a fair-skinned man tackles Karl from behind. He pins Karl quickly, his knife menacingly set against the skin of Karl’s neck. I jump away, into one of the other men. He pushes me back into the middle of the circle and my knee buckles. I fall hard on the ground, scraping my hands as I catch my fall. I land next Karl and the man with the knife.
Even though Karl is twice the size of his attacker, his weak body is helpless against him. He lies face first in the dirt with his arms pinned behind him, not putting up any kind of fight.
“Let me go!” he moans.
“Arujan!” The big man takes a step forward.
“Don’t you stop me,” the little man, Arujan, says with a snarl. “We know Sapphiri cannot be trusted. They are killed on sight—your own laws demand it.”
“You do not instruct me on our law,” the large man says.
“Please don’t hurt him,” I say to the large man.
“You would leave the traitor man alive?”
“He’s not a traitor. He’s my, uh,” I nearly say friend, but he really isn’t my friend. Hardly that, we’ve barely spoken to each other. Even to save his life, I’m not ready for that kind of commitment. “He’s come to help me here.” That is mostly right.
“If he has come with you, then we will do him no harm,” the large man says. “We will only kill him when you say.”
I shudder. I can’t imagine telling them to kill someone. Not even after he’s been a jerk to me all day.
“You give him a chance to deceive us with his lies,” Arujan yells in a squeaky voice. “He will betray you and you will all rue the day that you didn’t leave his body to rot here atop the mountain. We must kill him now, and the girl, too. I will do it.”
I stare at the men, and even though they’re talking about killing Karl, I can’t help but smile. I understand them! I was right—I do belong here.
“No,” the large man says. “Lower your knife, or it will be your body that is left to rot here today.”
The other men grumble their agreement.
The small man may be able to fight Karl, but he’s no match for the other men. The knife comes away from Karl’s neck, and the man steps on him to walk back to his place in the circle. Karl doesn’t move. He curls into a ball and puts his hands over his head.
Pathetic.
“Lower your weapons men,” the large man commands.
I walk toward the man, trying to hide my limp, but failing badly. “Hello,” I say, and I can tell that I’m starting to get a bit better at communicating through thoughts and emotion instead of words. “I’m Lydia.” I stretch my hand out.
The large man stares at my hand warily for a moment. Then he bows his head. “I’m Ziru,” he says. “Where have you come from, Lydia?”
“Me and this man.” I’m still not sure what my relationship is to him. “We’ve come through a magic portal that brought us here. We were surrounded by blue light and taken from our world to yours.”
My words set off a ripple of conversation among the men. “It’s the blue princess,” I hear one of them say. A couple of the men drop to their knees.
“Is this true?” Ziru asks. “Are you the blue princess?”
I stare back at him. “I don’t know who I am. I was found alone when I was a baby.”
Ziru nods.
The fair-skinned man snarls behind me; he’s the only one still brandishing a knife. “See! They’re imposters. She’s not the blue princess. We must kill them now.”
“Do not speak again, Arujan,” Ziru says. “And put that knife away.”
Arujan doesn’t move, but Ziru ignores him.
“Now child.” Ziru’s voice is kind. “Do you have the mark of the blue flower over your right breast?”
“Yes.” He knows about my tattoo. Does everyone here have them? Does that mean that I belong with these people? Does that make me their enemy?
“Impossible!” Arujan yells. Two men step over to him and pull out their knives. He glares at them, but he finally stops talking once the knives are in his face.
“Will you show us?” Ziru asks kindly.
I pull hard on my T-shirt to get the collar down, and it stretches far enough to uncover most of the tattoo. The men gasp. Ziru drops to his knees. Within seconds, seven men are on their knees with their heads bowed, though Arujan doesn’t follow suit.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I say.
Ziru lifts his head slowly and meets my eyes. “Your friend has the eyes of a traitor, yet you’re the long-awaited for princess.”
He doesn’t offer any further explanation.
At least I don’t think that they will kill us.
“Will you come with us to our village?” Ziru asks. “We will find suitable clothes for you, and we can talk more about the strange events that brought you here.
I look at Karl. He wants to go home, and I was about to take him. But now we’ve found people, and they have a village, and they might know something about me. I find myself liking Karl less and less every minute. If only I could let him go back home and continue on without him.
But, I can’t, and that means I have to take him with me. If I’m going to go, and I really want to go.
“We have to go with them now. They have decided not to kill you, but they’re taking us to their village.”
Karl uncurls and stands slowly. He’s completely covered in dirt.
“I don’t want to go with them,” he says.
“I’m not surprised.” What if he doesn’t come? These men want to kill him—I’m not sure he’s even safe here.
“You can really understand them?”
I nod. He looks at the men; every one of them watch him suspiciously.
“You can’t convince them to let us go back?”
I’m not going to try. I shake my head.
He has no choice. The guilt for lying to him hurts more than each step with my bad knee, but I really want to see this village. I’ll take him back home soon, once I’ve learned something.
24 Ravine
Karl
We round yet another turn in the trail, and I squint down yet another ravine. Finally. A small collection of houses huddle together against the slopes ahead. It isn’t much, but I bet this is where we are going.
It better be.
It looks like the middle of nowhere. But, at this point I’ll take anything to stop this interminable hike.
Not that getting there means anything.
I’m in trouble. Captured. Nearly killed.
At first being here was a breath of fresh air; I stopped looking over my shoulder every five minutes. The strange plants and weird looking insects intrigued me.
The intrigue only lasted ten minutes.
If there’s one thing I learned in my many years of post-secondary education, it’s that biology kills what doesn’t belong.
I don’t belong here. We don’t belong here. I’ve never been so scared in my life.
We should have never come—I should have realized there are worse enemies than Tara and Bob. The microbes and bacteria on my world are things I can fight, things my body understands. There is nothing but strangeness here. Nothing but a new biology that is going to kill me.
I should have forced the svelte soccer girl to go back the minute I realized the danger. Why did I follow her down the trail? Life shouldn’t venture out of the environment it evolved to survive in.
But I did. I turned my fate over to an athlete. All body, no brain. I probably trusted her because she’s pretty. You’d think that after Tara I wouldn’t be so stupid. Maybe th
is time I’ll learn my lesson. From now on I should only talk to ugly girls.
The sun disappears behind the mountains as we enter the village, which is a generous word for the small collection of scattered houses, people bustling about, and children yelling in the streets. The trail we followed all day splits up, winding through the trees and the rocks to connect the houses.
How quaint.
People notice us as soon as we get close. Their eyes grow wide when they see me. They gather, they point, they talk. I can’t understand anything, but I’m guessing the language they speak doesn’t always sound so anxious and angry.
They’re pointing at me.
A hand slips into mine. The athlete’s hand. I pull back, but she has a strong grip.
“Don’t fight me,” she says through gritted teeth.
“What do you think you’re doing? We can’t be transported back to Earth from here. We’ve already tried, remember?”
She laughs as if I said something funny. “Oh Karl,” she says with exaggerated sweetness. “I’m not trying to get back to Earth right now.”
What a jerk. I tug again, but she holds firm.
“You need to understand something,” she says. “And you need to stop pulling your hand away.”
“Okay.” It’s embarrassing how much stronger this girl is than me. Athletes.
“These people hate you.”
“Oh, is that why they all look like they want to kill me?”
“Because of your eyes. They usually kill anyone with eyes like yours on first contact. However, they spared your life because you’re here with me.”
“They like you?”
“Yeah, they think I’m a princess.” She smiles and waves at the people. No one waves back, but they smile at her. Since I started holding her hand, their expressions have softened. A little. Maybe.
I thought she said we had to go with them.
“What happens once they realize you’re not a princess?”
She shrugs. And smiles. She’s been lying to me.
“Let’s bolt right now.”
“With my bad leg?” She winces as she takes her next step. How much of that is an act?
“We have to trust these people.” All body and no brain.
“Trust them, huh? Didn’t you just say they wanted to kill me?”
This girl has spent her life chasing a ball. That’s what dogs do. And then, in soccer, you spend considerable amounts of time hitting the ball with your head. She probably has sustained permanent brain damage.
“Ziru promised you would be safe.”
“What’s a Ziru?”
“He’s a who. The leader. Behind me.”
We stop walking suddenly; the crowd watching us has grown large now. How many people live here? More than I thought, given the number of dwellings. They stand together, jabbering away. I stand stupidly next to the girl, my hand stuck in hers. The man she calls Ziru steps in front of us to address the crowd.
Hundreds of people. Maybe thousands. And they all hate me.
Ziru starts talking and he keeps talking. It gets boring really quick.
Eventually, the athlete lets my hand drop and steps forward. She pulls down her shirt collar to show off a strange tattoo over her right breast. The people gasp and fall to the ground on their knees.
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any stranger!
I don’t kneel. I stand there and watch the moths swirl around the lanterns. They fly in erratic patterns, eventually diving into the flames so the fire can consume them. And that is how their lives end. I end my life by taking a pretty girl through a portal. For all the schooling and training I’ve had, it turns out my intelligence is on the same level as a moth.
✽✽✽
The athlete takes me to a small house in the center of town. We sit on a porch and eat some nasty tasting root vegetables. They’re probably poisonous. Oh well, I’m starving, and we might as well die and get that over with.
“They asked if we were married,” the athlete says. I’m so used to not understanding anything that it takes me a few chews to realize that she’s speaking English. I offer a grunt in response. I’m not ever telling anyone I’m married to this empty-headed pretty girl.
She laughs. “Don’t worry, I told them no. So, they’re going to separate us.”
I drop my food. They can’t do that. How are we going to get back if we’re separated?
“Don’t freak out. I think we’ll be okay for a while, but we’ll find a way to get back to the portal eventually.”
“Don’t freak out!? That’s easy for you to say. You, who are loved by a bunch of strangers because of your gorgeous body and your funny mark. You aren’t risking your life, and so you don’t mind throwing mine away.” The words that have been rattling around in my head all day feel good on delivery.
Lydia looks away quickly. “I talked to Ziru, Karl. He says his son Ler will take care of you. I think you’ll be okay.”
“Oh, and I’m guessing that Ler is another really nice guy, who hates me for my eyes, but he can see past all that because of how pretty you are.”
She stiffens—I’m starting to get through. “I don’t think it’s like that,” she says.
“You have no right to sentence me to death.”
“How can you say that? When you called me, you said you wanted to come here. Here we are. We’ll go home eventually.”
“I needed to go somewhere to think. I’m thinking now, and this place is death. Maybe you should try thinking for a minute.” I know I’m being rude, but I’m scared and want out of here. All the pent-up emotion from the day seems to have removed all my sensibility filters.
Lydia stands up and walks to the other end of the porch.
Too many whacks of a soccer ball to her head say I’m not going anywhere. Ziru joins her and says something. She trudges back over to me, her eyes downcast.
“Ler will keep you safe,” she says, her eyes on her feet. “He’s a respected worker in the village, and he’s Ziru’s son. As long as you stay with him, no one will hurt you. I trust Ziru. I think you should, too, and we’ll both stay alive.”
By the time I come up with a retort, she’s gone. A large man walks over. He does look like Ziru. Genetics.
The man called Ler claps me on the shoulder and speaks loudly. He has a huge, stupid smile. I call him some nasty names and follow him onto a trail leading away from the village center. As angry as I was at Lydia, I panic now at not having her here with me. The connection to my world is gone now. I look back, but don’t see her anywhere. Footsteps move away, and I hurry to keep up with Ler.
The moon lights a well-worn path that we follow through the village down to a small house that sits just feet away from a cliff.
Hopefully there won’t be an earthquake tonight.
It’s dark inside the house, except for a few coals in a fireplace in the corner. Ler steps in behind me and stirs up the coals. Smoke fills the house, but it’s replaced by light and warmth after a few minutes. It’s nice to be warm—I was getting cold outside, which is a feat given my layers upon layers of fat.
With the light from the fire, I see that I was wrong to call this a house. It’s a shack. I stand on a dirt floor; the walls are made of clay, and there is a single window near the fire pit. The room is mostly empty. There are no beds, no chairs, and no decorations except two large white animal skins that hang in the corner.
Ler finishes stirring the fire and says something to me.
I tell him he’s the offspring of Tara sent to torture me for trying to run away.
He laughs and walks over to the animal skins. He hands one to me. It’s soft, and huge. I could fit my entire body inside this thing. Is this how we sleep?
Ler takes the other skin off the wall. He throws it out with the inside of the skin against the floor and the soft part facing up. He motions for me to do the same.
It takes three or four throws, but I get it eventually.
I look back at Ler. He’
s completely naked.
No way.
Ler gestures for me to follow suit but I don’t move. Undeterred, he steps forward to help.
Nope, that’s going too far. I shake my head, and then I strip quickly, keeping an eye on Ler, who looks away.
I grunt when I’m finished. My bare white body practically glows next to Ler’s tanned body. I watch as he lays down at the edge of the skin, grabs it, and rolls over twice. Just like that, he’s completely enveloped by the skin and I’m left standing naked next to a huge white slug.
Cold wind blows through the window, and I shiver. Who can see into the shack? Impossibly, I wonder what the athlete would think if she was looking. I look at the rolls of fat on my body and sigh. Something serious is wrong with me.
Shivering against the cool night air, I lie awkwardly on the skin and manage to roll over like Ler did.
The skin is soft. And warm. Wrapped up, I’m actually comfortable. Not only does the fur keep me at a perfect temperature, it takes away the shock of the hard, rocky floor. Although I was feeling irritable when I laid down, I’m overcome by sleep within seconds.
✽✽✽
I wake up with a bolt of energy early the next morning—as soon as sunlight makes its way into the room. I close my eyes and try to go back to sleep, but I’ve never felt so awake in the early morning in my life.
“Where are my clothes?” The place where I left them is empty. I don’t see them anywhere. Ler comes into the house, already clothed. He smiles and gestures toward a small washroom outside. I shake my head and point to where I left my clothes.
Ler points at the fire.
“You burned my clothes!?”
He laughs and gestures to the washroom again. I follow him outside, freezing and still naked. He shows me a large basin of water, where to stand, and how to wash myself. Then, he leaves me shivering in the small room, which has too many ventilation windows for me to have any privacy.
The rocks on the floor are sharp and the air is cold. I pick up the bowl, fill it with water from the bucket, and pour it over my head.
And scream. The water is colder than the air.
Ler is back within seconds. He laughs when he sees me, shivering buck-naked on the rocks with freezing water dripping down my body, which is now turning pink. I shake myself dry and glare at Ler.
The Forgotten World Page 17