by Calista Skye
“She’s practicing giving the security talk,” I join her fun little fantasy. “In the case of an emergency, bottles of tequila will drop from the ceiling above you. Take a sip first, then help anyone else to a drink. Yeah, after all this time, you bet she’s got that place on lockdown.”
“Not getting a little worried?”
I sigh. “Oh, I’m worried as fuck. Of all the girls, she’s the one we can least afford to lose. It’s been a good while now. It’s not like her.”
“Yeah. Never any fun when one of the girls goes missing. Everybody gets cranky.”
“Tell me about it.”
We sit in silence for a while, the only sounds the soft sucking of baby mouths on motherly nipples.
“The men are restless these days,” Emilia says quietly. “They think we’re being watched.”
“They always think we’re being watched.”
“Yeah. But now they really think we are.”
“I know. Jax’zan told me. Someone is spying on us. In the daytime, he says. They keep seeing movement. A lot of it.”
“They haven’t done much hunting for a few days, I think. They don’t want to go too far from the cave. They’ve put the smithing on hold, too.”
“They’re worried,” I agree. “But this is why they make me feel safe. They take our safety so seriously. It’s probably just a couple of curious boys from one of the tribes we’ve already met. Or an animal. Okay, looks like this world class gourmet is done with her eats and has fallen asleep with her face still attached to the dispenser.”
“Like all leading chefs recommend,” Emilia agrees. “It’s well known. Okay, you go and get more sleep. I’ll be right in.”
I get to my feet and shift my grip on my daughter. “I think I will.” I stare at Bune. “You don’t think she’s signaling us, do you?”
“I don’t. She has to know we can’t interpret that light. I actually don’t think that’s Delyah at all.”
“Yeah, me neither. Feels wrong, somehow. Okay, good night. Or rather, good morning. The clouds are breaking up. Could be a beautiful day.”
29
- Delyah -
The shaman stares down at me for several long seconds, clutching his sword.
“There’s something wrong with Brax’tan,” he finally says. “What have you done to him?”
I try to find my voice. “You know that’s not me doing that.”
It comes out with a tremble. But also with sincerity.
“You are an alien.”
I just shake my head. I’m not in the mood for this. “Get to the damn point, or just cut me open.”
He plainly struggles with something. “The… his eyes. There’s something wrong.”
“Yes, I know. They’ve lost the light. They do that sometimes. Right before he’s about to do something insane. Have you not seen it before?”
He sighs, and his sword drops, no longer ready to slash. “I have. In short moments. So short I think it was a trick of the light. But only in him. Never in anyone else.”
I think back. “He got that way a couple of times on Bune. Finding our way in. Then he sometimes gets it when I talk about attacking Bune. But as you say, just in short moments before he reverts to normal. He’s not himself.”
Jur’nex shoves his sword back in its scabbard. “Is it Bune’s doing?”
“It has to be. Now he wants to attack my tribe with the other chiefs and their tribes.”
I swear the huge, young shaman goes pale. “He’s going to attack your tribe?!”
“That’s what he told the other chiefs.”
“But… that would be dishonorable! It’s only a small tribe, isn’t it?”
“We’re about twenty-five people in the whole tribe. Eighteen of them are women. Two small baby girls.”
His jaw has dropped. “Babies? Are you sure you heard right? Surely he must have said protect, not attack?”
“I heard right. You’ve seen his eyes. Go to Sas'tar’s cave and ask yourself. Oh, and Sas'tar is very much in on it. Except his eyes are normal. Not dead.”
Jur’nex thinks deeply. “Sas'tar was always very interested in tales about the mysterious new tribe with the women. He could not get enough of the rumors. I suspect he went there to spy at least once. He must have seen something he liked.”
“They’re going to attack my tribe. They want to capture the girls. To use them for… breeding. But they’re mistaken about the girls. They would rather die than go with them alive. It will end in the death of my whole tribe, Jur’nex. Including two pregnant women and two small baby girls.”
“Holy Ancestors,” he whispers. And I’m guessing that when a shaman says something like that, it’s a lot like a priest using the f-word.
“Help me escape,” I urge. “I’ll go and warn them. We’ll escape into the jungle before the tribes get there.”
“They have spies. Right now. At your village. And there will be warriors between here and there. They will catch you. No. You would never get there alive. Delyah. Chief Delyah. You must go to Bune. Confront the evil spirit. Defeat it. Remove the spell that spirit has placed on Brax’tan.”
Even in my emotionally exhausted state, the idea of going into Bune alone, and again, makes my skin creep. “I’m not sure I can do it.”
“From what Brax’tan tells me about you, I think there are no limits to what you can do. I’ve never seen our chief awestruck before. Well, you know what he’s like. But when he talks about Delyah, he’s almost in disbelief. Go to Bune. I think it is where you were meant to go. Defeat the evil spirit. I suspect nobody else can. Free us from its presence. Free Brax’tan from its chains! I will go with you.”
He makes a lot of good points. I will probably never reach the cave on my own. Or even with one shaman in tow.
“Okay, I will. No time like the present.”
Jur’nex quickly climbs the ladder, and I follow. The village is still dark and quiet.
“I have to get my crossbow.”
He looks around. “It’s not safe to go to Brax’tan’s cave. We’ll make straight for the jungle.”
It makes sense. I would really have loved to have my weapon, though. “Well? Shall we go?”
Jur’nex shuffles his feet while checking our surroundings for enemies. “Chief Delyah, if I have been somewhat… unfriendly towards you. Before this, I mean. About you being an alien and so on. Then I apologize. It’s just that so many strange things happened. Bune and the rumors of a tribe of women. Brax’tan’s eyes being strange lately. And then you came here. With Brax’tan. Having explored Bune and found no trace of the Ancestors. I’m afraid I was discourteous towards you on more than one occasion.”
I lightly touch his arm. “Don’t worry about it, shaman. It’s your job to care about those things. I bear you no ill will. Now can we go?”
He gives me a boyish, relieved smile. “Thank you for your generosity. Yes, by all means let’s leave.”
Jur’nex leads me around the village, close to the fence, where we remain in the shadows. Then we go down a hole, through a narrow tunnel that snakes wildly hither and thither before we emerge again, this time on the other side of the fence.
We walk fast and quietly for fifty feet before a shadow blocks our path.
“What are you doing with the alien, Jur’nex?”
“What are you doing with outtribers inside the village, Sas'tar?” the shaman counters with impressive authority.
The deputy chief chuckles and draws his sword. “Oh, the outtribers were the chief’s idea, not mine. But I don’t mind giving one or two of the women to them, as long as we bring a few of our own home to our caves. You could have benefited from it, Jur’nex. You could have had your turn with them. As it is, you will only have a grave.”
He suddenly attacks, and Jur’nex barely has time to draw his own sword to parry the stroke, resulting in a spray of sparks in the darkness.
“More will come,” the shaman hisses to me as he defends himself, his sentence punctuated by
a terrible clang of steel on steel. “I will keep this one occupied. You have to run. With my apologies for understanding our problems too late. Defeat Bune. Save our chief. Go. Go!”
The intensity of his words wakes me up, and I stagger to the side, away from the duel and closer to the trees.
Sas'tar laughs. “You can run, alien. Very good. I prefer my prey warm. Don’t worry. I will catch up with you. And you will make the noises we hear you make with Brax’tan every night.”
I sprint off while he’s still talking. I haven’t seen many sword duels in my life, but it looks to me as if Jur’nex is losing.
I flee wildly into the jungle, while the clangs and grunts of the fight resonate among the trees. I get to higher ground and dare to throw a glance behind me. The village is bathed in the mild light from the moon Yrf.
Outside the fence, not more than two hundred yards away, there’s at least a thousand warriors with long swords. Some of them are from this tribe, but most of them have stripes of different colors. They’re standing in small groups, spread out over a large area. Facing an army like that, the girls will be conquered in a matter of minutes. It won’t even be a fight, just a massacre.
More warriors have joined the fight on Sas'tar’s side, and as I watch, Jur’nex is run through with a sword and falls without a sound.
I have no time to lose.
As I turn to run on, the light from Yrf catches something in the middle of the village, and I freeze.
It’s the top of the totem pole, the head of a creature I could never quite identify. But from this angle I see what it is. It’s distorted, and not as perfect as the real ones I saw inside Bune.
It’s the head of a dragon, all sleek and beautiful and terrible.
The final pieces fall into place in my mind. The mystery is solved. I need no answers from the alien spirit in Bune now. I only need its death.
I crash through the jungle, unarmed and in shock.
It’s not too late. Brax’tan can still be saved.
I will remove that thing’s control over him or die trying.
- - -
I encounter two dinosaurs on the way, but one isn’t interested in me and the other doesn’t see me. I should be grateful for that kind of luck, but my mood is too dark for any positive emotions.
I don’t even really know where I am anymore. I’ve been walking for hours, and the sun rose a long time ago. I walk when I have to and run when I can, slowly climbing a hill that I hope is Bune, my breath ragged in my throat.
I’ve heard no more from Sas'tar. I can only imagine that if he had to choose between chasing one girl through a dangerous jungle and going to war against a small tribe with seventeen more along with a huge army, then the war won.
I try not to think too much about Brax’tan. How much of this is his own desires and how much is some kind of control placed on him by Bune? Can I even fix him? And if I do, is there a future for him and me? Was his interest in me also set up by something outside him?
The thought of living on without him right there by my side is pretty much unbearable. I have to pull myself together.
God, I loved him.
I walk on, through the dense growth, across dry riverbeds and over ridges. This feels like the right way. But Brax’tan and I took much longer getting from Bune to his village.
Of course, that was from pretty much the other side of the mountain. I could shave a good few hours off the travel time if I could find a different entrance on this side…
And then I almost fall right into the dragon Troga’s trench, the one she burned on her way from Bune to guard the dragon girls many months ago. It’s deep and dangerous, and the glass it’s lined with has broken up into millions of sharp shards. But if I follow it, it will at least lead me in the right direction, towards Bune as straight as a ruler.
I walk along the edge of the trench, keeping my distance so I don’t slide down into the broken glass. Little green shoots are already peeking up from between the cracks, just another sign of the insane fertility of this planet. The animal life and plant life is so incredibly active here that the evolutionary pressure must be immense. Every species is always in lethal competition with every other one, and only the very best from each species can survive.
That goes for humans, too.
And cavemen.
The going gets easier along the smooth edge of the dragon’s trench, and after about two hours I see where it leads: right up to the outer wall of the spaceship.
I get closer, to where I’ll have to decide what to do. The door is closed. I did open it from the inside of the spaceship some days ago, but I have no way of knowing if it can be opened from the outside. I might actually have to get down into the trench to do it—
I freeze, then have the presence of mind to throw myself down when the door silently opens from the middle.
Two large shadows approach from inside, and I know what they are before they come out into the sunlight and their scales sparkle with the most otherworldly beauty.
It’s the two dragons from the cylinders. Bune is letting them out.
I make myself as flat as I can against the moist ground, not looking at them, hoping they’re too young and too confused to realize that I’m here.
They must have been brought out of suspended animation just now, taken from their cylinders and probably given some mission.
I think I know what that mission might be. Brax’tan told the other chiefs that they would have some Bigs of their own.
Here they are.
30
- Delyah -
I clench my eyes shut to absolutely eliminate every chance of looking at the magnificently terrible beasts and get hypnotized. Brax’tan never had a problem with that.
There’s a gentle hiss and then a loud whoosh, followed by a wave of heat so intense I seriously consider jumping up and running. But I manage to stay down, realizing that if they had been spewing fire at me, then I’d be too dead to think these thoughts right now.
There are loud bangs and cracks and a strong smell of burning, and acrid smoke is burning my closed eyes and lungs. Those dragons are searing something.
There are intermittent whooshes and hisses, slowly growing more distant as the heat is getting less oppressive.
I stay down and perfectly still for at least half an hour before I dare look up.
Now there are two trenches. One is Troga’s old one, the other is new and goes in another direction. The dragons have spewed fire on the ground, burned off the thick layer of organic earth all the way down to the sand, which has melted into glass.
The trench is smooth and has a perfectly semi-circular profile. It turns hard to the left, around the edge of Bune, turning towards the direction of the cave with the girls. And getting much shallower. Probably the creatures realized that for them, there’s no reason to burn a deep trench. They can just burn a path for themselves through the trees and the bushes.
The dragons are nowhere to be seen.
And the door into Bune is still open.
I get to my feet. My knees threaten to buckle again, partly from exhaustion and partly from the instinctive danger of being this close to dragons. It’s as if something primal in me reacts to it in a most negative way.
I can get into the spaceship now. If so, I have to get down into that new trench and step on glass that was melted just a half hour ago and is probably still pretty damn hot. If I remember correctly, sand melts at three thousand degrees. And I don’t even like to touch glass that’s come straight out of the dishwasher’s drying cycle.
I tap my lips with one finger. It would save me a lot of time if I could get in through this door.
I break a twig off a tree and toss it into the trench. It hisses, curls up and gives off a column of gray smoke before it turns black and looks like a burned match.
“Let’s not walk barefoot on that,” I mutter.
The new trench crosses over Troga’s old one but hasn’t gone any deeper, just re-melted Troga’s old
glass in a wide stripe before it cuts right into the side of the old trench.
I can see what I have to do.
I gather rocks and toss them into Troga’s trench, mostly flat ones so they’re easy to step on.
Then I say a quick prayer, carefully climb down into the old broken trench and use a long stick to put the flat rocks like stepping stones across the wide stripe of hot glass.
The glass has set and is no longer in liquid form, but it still radiates heat like a bonfire. I can’t take too long getting across that stripe of smoldering sand. And I can’t slide on a loose rock — if I place my bare foot on that thousand-degree glass, I’ll probably lose the foot.
I take some larger shards from Troga’s broken trench and place them in suitable places as additional stepping stones.
Then I take a moment to reflect on everything. Less than a year ago I was a pretty successful linguistics student at a second-rate college. Now, I’m about to step into a stream of molten sand in order to get into a spaceship on an alien planet because my caveman boyfriend is being controlled by an alien spirit in there.
“Huh. Did not see this coming.”
I rub the sand off my soles and walk across, one step at a time, ignoring the heat from the glass itself and from the rocks I’m stepping on. The glass shards turn out to be useless for that, because they’re so thin they quickly heat up.
When I finally get to the other side, I dance around for a while, rubbing first one foot, then the other. “Ow, ow, ow, ow.”
I bury my soles in loose dirt, hoping to find moisture down there.
Then I walk back into Bune.
I first make my way all the way through the same level, until I’m at the place where Trak’zor found the miraculous medical gel. After a bit of searching among broken equipment and alien consoles I find some of my own, smear it on my feet and immediately feel the soreness being soothed.