by R. Lee Smith
“What is wrong with you, woman?! Lie still!”
She fought, but there was no fighting, not before he straddled her thighs and bore down on her from above, and certainly not after. Kicking was futile under the blanket. Bucking dislodged some of the maggots, but only so they could rain their repulsive little bodies down over her stomach and her hip and oh God what if one bounced high enough to land in her mouth?!
Screaming for release, screaming for help…just screaming. It was all she knew, all she was capable of. There were maggots in her!
Then the cupboard door flew open and there was her baby sister’s half-glimpsed face, staring at the lizard atop her in open-mouthed shock. And then she screamed.
Meoraq looked around, startled, because even an alien had to know that wasn’t a human scream of fear, but of rage. Little Nicci dove at him, clawing for his eyes, so that Meoraq was forced to release one of Amber’s twisting arms to shove her back. Amber immediately went for the maggots. He caught her again, swearing vigorously, and pushed her arms together, wrists-to-elbows. Now able to restrain them one-handed, he reared back and whipped his belt off. He used it to bind Amber’s arms together so that she was unable to scratch anything but her own arms, which she did in helpless panic.
The next time Nicci came for him, he was ready. He caught her in one hand and dragged her with him as he flipped athletically from the cupboard onto the floor, and from there across the room to the water bucket, where he dunked her head repeatedly.
Nicci’s screams turned to sputters. Amber’s went on, but they were dying in spite of her, torn to hoarse shreds by their own violence. No one else was making a sound.
Meoraq turned in a full circle, hauling Nicci with him, to face off against the rest of them. “Are you all mad or is it just your women?”
“Hey, do what you want with them,” said Crandall, holding up both hands as Amber howled for help.
Meoraq tossed Nicci in a heap by the hearth where she curled herself up small, sobbing, and returned to the cupboard. He studied Amber while she struggled in her bondage, then reached out and laid his hand over her mouth.
She stared up at him in weepy dismay, unable to believe he could be so calm when there were bugs eating her.
“I have Gann’s own headache,” he informed her after a moment’s meditation. “So I am going to ask just once what is wrong with you and you are going to answer quietly. Now. What is wrong with you?”
He removed his hand.
“I’m rotting,” she whispered, and felt tears drop hotly out of her even though she couldn’t blink. “I’m rotting! There’s maggots in me!”
Behind him, the others recoiled and immediately began to mutter at one another. None of them looked very upset, only a little wary and a lot disgusted.
Meoraq, on the other hand, just kept staring at her. After a while, he closed his eyes and went someplace private with his God. He was gone a long time. His eyes opened. His head cocked, demonstrating resignation and some small amount of humor. He took a deep breath and said, “I know there are maggots in you, insufferable woman. I put them there.”
And as Amber still reeled from that, he bent down and began to put them back.
The panic was gone and the adrenaline with it. She could do nothing but sob out wailing, incoherent pleas as he scraped up all the disturbed maggots and placed them carefully back in the wound. He put the compress back on. He loosely tied the bandage. Then, in that same calm, deliberate, God-alone-knows-how-hard-it-is-not-to-slap-you-woman voice, he said, “The maggots eat only dead flesh. They will clean your wound and at day’s end, I will wash them away.”
Amber cried harder.
“They will eat the beetles as well, but—”
“Beetles?!”
“—but you have had many good days of healing, and—”
“You put beetles in me too?!”
“—and I think the wound will not reopen if you are careful.” He gave the bandage a final light tug and glared at her. “Being careful means you will lie still. Agreed?”
Still weeping, she made herself nod.
He unbound her arms. She had to keep clutching her elbows to stop herself from immediately grabbing at her side. She could feel him looking at her, his stare almost as physical a thing as his irritation.
His thumb brushed at her cheek. That was all for a while.
“Get out,” he said, adding crossly, “Not you,” when she tried to sit up. “The rest of you. Get out.”
“It’s raining.”
Meoraq clamped both hands suddenly to his brow-ridges and bellowed, “I don’t care!”
Dag wisely shut his mouth and backed away.
After a minute and several deep breaths, Meoraq began to speak in the tight, rapid way of the kind of anger he usually reserved for dealing with Amber herself: “God has given me the strength thus far not to knock the head off your skinny neck but don’t try His patience, human, because mine is gone!” he finished at a shout and had to stop for some more deep breathing. “I suffer your presence as a gift to my woman’s gentle heart and for no other reason, so get up and leave my camp one damned hour or be turned out for all time at the point of my blade! Don’t whine at me! Go!”
A shuffle of feet and murmurs marked their obedience, but sniffling told her Nicci, at least, had stayed.
Meoraq let her. He sat down on the edge of the bed, prodded broodingly once at his brow-ridges, and then put his hand on Amber’s thigh and waited.
What was she supposed to tell him? Knowing intellectually that the maggots served a useful and even necessary purpose meant nothing compared to the feel of them crawling and writhing inside her own body. Inside her own meat! It wasn’t just a bunch of maggots, it was a premonition of her own mortality in a universe without a God—a playful sampling of an afterlife in which she was nothing but food for the lowest forms of mindless life—and Meoraq could never begin to comprehend that. Oh no, he rode around in God’s back pocket all the damn time!
“I dreamed of you,” he said suddenly, softly. He continued to gaze out into the main room and not at her, but his hand again brushed back, this time along her shoulder. “I dreamed much. Awake and asleep.”
Amber pressed her palms over her eyes and made herself take deep, slow breaths until she finally quit leaking. The maggots rolled and wriggled and dug themselves around under the compress; knowing what they were, she could no longer feel them as anything so benign as a tickle. She’d probably never feel a real tickle again quite the same way, either. She had god-fucking-damn larvae crawling around inside her and he was talking about his dreams!
“They’re in me, Meoraq,” she said shakily. “They’re eating me like I’m already dead.”
He sighed. “I know. And I suppose it is terrible. Yet you live, Soft-Skin. You live and will be well.”
“For how long? God! Why are you trying so hard to save me?”
She meant her outburst for him, but he apparently took it for a prayer, because after a respectful silence, he grunted and said, “What does He tell you?”
“He? What, you mean God?” Momentarily unpinned, Amber erupted into giggles just as fantastically inappropriate as her hysterics had been. “He tells me I’m going to need saving for the rest of my stupid life, that’s what He tells me!”
And Meoraq nodded, either oblivious to her sarcasm or pretending to be. “Then I will always be there to save you.”
“Oh for—Leave me alone, lizardman! Let me die already! I’ve done nothing but get hurt from the moment we got here. This isn’t fair!” she burst out, once more on the brink of hateful tears. “I don’t get hurt! I’m the strong one!”
“Yes,” he said, with no trace of irony.
The dam was good and broken now. It all came flooding out of her—not tears, but words—in a hot sluice of emotion as bitter as bile: “I hate this! I hate lying here day after goddamn day staring at the top of this goddamn cupboard! I hate riding around in your stupid sled and watching you have to carry m
e! I hate that every single fucking creature on this planet wants to eat me and half of them have tried! And I hate you telling me it’s all God’s will!”
“His will is great, Soft-Skin. There is room for all things in His eye.”
“If God actually wants me to lie here with maggots in my guts, I want no part of him. I hate your God!”
It was the worst thing she could think of to say to him—the most vicious, blasphemous, mean thing to say—and she did it half-hoping he would walk out and give the tears struggling inside her an easy way out. Instead, he snorted, as if she’d told a joke that was perhaps in poor taste but still very funny.
She stared at his back for a long time as anger was replaced by exhaustion. The itch in her side just grew and grew with every passing helpless second.
“And I hate you,” she whispered.
“Lies.”
“What can I say?” Amber asked at last, her voice raw and shaking. “What can I say to make you leave me?”
“Try insulting my father,” he suggested.
“Stop making fun of me! I can’t do this, Meoraq! I can’t spend the rest of my life being your God-given burden!”
“Your trials are mine, Soft-Skin. As you learn from them, so do I.”
“Bullshit.”
“Truth.”
“What are you learning right this second?” she demanded.
“Patience.” He glanced upwards. “I learn that a lot when I’m with you.”
Amber clapped her hands over her face again. “You’re a zealot.”
“And you hate me,” he prompted.
Again, he waited. She did not reply, but her hand went to the bandage at her side, wanting to scratch but tortured by the image of crushing their disgusting little bodies into slurry right inside her.
He did not look at her, but must have been able to track her hand regardless, because he said, “It will heal.”
“But there’ll always be something else. Something worse.”
“Such is life.”
“I don’t want to live like this.” Her hand went to her side again, rubbing sickly at the skin around the bandage since she didn’t dare touch the actual site. Her stomach cramped; she might survive the maggots, but honesty had turned toxic and there was nothing she could do but keep on puking it up. “And don’t feed me that what-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger bullshit! What doesn’t kill me just makes me worse! I don’t want to be ugly like this!” She scratched miserably at the places that didn’t itch, scratched until she felt blood wet beneath her fingernails, until he reached back his hand and stopped her.
“No warrior should be ashamed of the scars he carries. Each one is proof of courage. Even this one.” He touched the pink marks of his teeth he’d left her with on the night they’d first been together. “Perhaps particularly this one.” His eyes shifted to meet hers. “You are mine.”
“Because God gave me to you.” She tried to say it in her old tough-Amber voice, but it came out in a lost crybaby-girlie way instead, all the sarcasm lost in a quaver. “Thanks a lot, huh?”
He grunted, gazed at her for a long moment of silent thought, and just when she thought he was about to speak, he bent down and kissed her.
His rough mouth scoured across her lips as gently as she supposed he could do it, considering he couldn’t feel what he was doing. His breath, warm and dry and tasting faintly stale, blew in to mingle with hers. His tongue, hard and smooth as wax, nudged into her, inviting at first and then demanding.
She felt nothing at all for a second or two, and then something inside her seemed to erupt and she was kissing him back the way a drowning woman drinks air. Her hands dug at the back of his neck, pulling him closer even as their mouths mashed painfully together, and closer was never close enough. She sucked and bit and ground at him, making all the semi-mute, unlovely sounds of carnal desperation, and for God’s sake, Nicci was still sitting right over there, but as soon as his hand skimmed beneath the blanket to grip her bare breast, she didn’t care and wouldn’t have cared if they’d been center-stage in front of thirty thousand people.
“You are my—” He snapped his bone-hilted knife out of its sheath and stabbed it down over the head of the bed. “—insufferable—” His mouth scraped at hers, licked away a bead of blood, and came back for another kiss. “—senseless—” The hand at her breast rasped over her skin in a sudden, urgent journey to delve between her ready thighs. “—faithful wife.”
“Don’t!” she moaned, even as she bucked up against his questing hand. “I wasn’t! You know I wasn’t and you don’t want me anymore!”
“Shall I swear it before God?” His hand moved, stroking steadily and with embarrassing ease in and out. He looked down at it, his eyes smoked and hungry. “Upon this altar, all vows are surely made sacred. Let Him hear me. Let you hear me.”
She cried, clutching at him.
“You are always for me, Soft-Skin. Though your nearness and infirmity are a terrible trial upon my years of discipline, I will stand fast with the aid of God against my natural lusts. And when you are whole again, I will fill you. Between those hours, and for every other hour from now until the end of Time, you are for me.” He paused to watch with grimacing, lizard-like satisfaction as she came to a swift, violent climax. His hand stilled, but stayed where it was, cupping and not quite caressing her. “This day will end,” he said, softly. “You and I will go on.”
She caught his hand as he withdrew it, clutching it in both of hers and holding it to her heaving chest. He waited, but she couldn’t find the words to fit the storm of thoughts howling through her, and at last he pulled from her grip.
“Rest now, Soft-Skin,” he told her, standing up and away from the cupboard. The first thing he did was to cinch his belt even tighter, which she guessed meant he was concerned about protruding. The thought made her smile, and he ducked back inside to claim that smile with another of his harsh kisses. “When you wake, I will have tea for you. It will be bitter and unpleasant and you will drink it all.”
“Meoraq—”
He put his hand over her mouth, his eyes sternly narrowed. “And you will drink it all, woman. Give me your obedience.”
She rolled her eyes and raised her fist.
He tipped his head and gave her a warning hiss, then removed his hand.
“Yeah, fine. I’ll drink it all.” She sighed and lay back in the cupboard, rubbing at her side.
He glanced at her hand, then stepped away. He didn’t tell her not to remove her bandages. He didn’t have to. The maggots itched and ate at her every bit as much as they had before, but she guessed she could handle it. She hated it…but she could handle it.
He dressed, muttering to himself as he strapped on weapons and buckled things. The words she caught were enough to tell her it was one of his many prayers, this one on her behalf. When he was done, he came back to tap her shoulder briefly in a parting salute, and then he left. Her man, off about his manly business.
Amber pulled her blanket up with a sigh and tried to get comfortable. Her side itched. Her stomach still hurt from all the emotional craziness. She had a huge pot of bitter tea to look forward to and plenty of cupboard ceiling to stare at until then. It was going to be a long day.
‘Yeah, but the day will end,’ she thought, and smiled.
“I thought he was hurting you.”
Oh yeah. Nicci was still here. Amber felt herself blush a little, but only a little. Mostly, she just felt sexy and quiet and tired and good.
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I flipped out completely.” Yeah. Flipped out. Right before she made out. Could you still call it making out when someone rubbed you into cumming from your toenails? Probably not. Sheesh, what a sleazeball she’d turned into.
“He’s different with you,” Nicci said.
“Is he?” She really didn’t think so, but upon reflection, she decided it might seem that way. He was himself with her. He was different with the others.
“You’re differen
t with him.”
“Am I?” That was less surprising. She’d been different since she first set foot on this planet. Nicci just wasn’t used to the whiny, weepy, hysterical Amber yet.
Nicci got up and came over to the cupboard, looking down at her with an expression that was disturbingly lifeless. “I want to go home.”
Amber stared up at her, more than a little thrown by this statement. What did she honestly expect her to do about it?
“Do you?” Nicci asked.
She still had no answer.
“If we get to this temple and there’s a ship there and someone can fly it and we can go back to Earth, are you coming with me?”
Amber’s mouth moved. No sound came out.
“If there isn’t a ship,” said Nicci, “are you going to take care of me?”
“Nicci—”
“Or do you think you’ve done enough? After you brought me here, after you made me come with you, are you just going to wash your hands and say you’ve done enough? You got your man who loves you and will take care of you and save you forever, so maybe you don’t care anymore, but I’m still here, Amber. I still need you.”
“I’m here,” said Amber, reaching out to touch her arm. There was no answering touch, not even a glance in that direction. It was like touching a corpse. “And I’ll always be here for you, Nicci. We’re sisters. Nothing’s going to change that. Look, I know it’s hard, but you can do it. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to sit around. I can teach you how to make hides and clothes and stuff.”
“You said you’d always take care of me.”
“I am.”
“Not like you used to.”
Amber nodded, accepting this, then shook her head, and then just sat there and stared at the cupboard ceiling. “I don’t think I did either of us any favors hovering over you like that back home,” she said at last. “Mama wasn’t much of a mother…and neither was I. I love you, Nicci, I do…” She sighed and rubbed her eyes, then made herself turn around and face her expressionless sister without flinching. “…but I’m not going to carry you for the rest of your life. The ship crashed and I’m sorry…but it’s time to move on.”