by Lucia Ashta
“No.”
“You’re really that ready to stake your life on my intuition?”
I stopped and faced her. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, my love? I’ll follow you wherever you lead me, however you go.”
“Even if I lead you into death.”
“Even then,” I said, and set off again, passing Aletox without a glance, hoping very much that Ilara’s intuition had a viable instinct for self-preservation.
12
Breathing through the fabric of my shirt was a bit like trying to breathe inside one of the outdoor ovens used to bake bread on Origins. The air was hot and stuffy and it felt like each breath could be the one that killed me.
“This is worse than the Wilds,” Dolpheus said. We traveled in a loose line, all except Aletox, who walked on his own several paces behind us. We were happy to give him his space, and I mostly was able to forget he was with us at all, which meant my mood was improved, even if the Sahara Desert was making a competent attempt to kill us.
“I’ve never been to the Wilds,” Kai said.
“Well then you can look forward to a visit there as a vacation,” Dolpheus said. “Even if we met rebels and mowabs, I’d rather be there than here.”
“Especially if it were a particular rebel that we were to meet, right Olph?”
“Right,” he answered with a grin, seemingly oblivious of the irritated look Lila was giving him.
I considered poking the she-dragon for a second, then decided against it. It was never wise to poke a she-dragon. I should always know better. I spoke only to Dolpheus. You thinking about Duleene, Olph? You had plenty of good times with her. Maybe you should go take a little vacation with her when we get back.
Aye. I could feel him grinning even now that I’d directed my attention forward again. I could do with a little Duleene vacation.
I bet you could. Maybe you’ll even get lucky and she won’t try to kill you first this time, and you can get right to the fucking.
Aye. That’d be quite nice.
I’m sure it will be, but maybe you’d better wipe that grin off your face so there’s something left of you to go spend some Duleene time. That she-dragon looks like she’d eat you whole before she’d share you with another woman.
A pause. Oh shit, Tan. She looks mad.
Told you. Be careful, Olph. Don’t mess with the she-dragon.
Never ever mess with the she-dragon.
Never, I confirmed. Some lessons I was content to learn without the usual hard experience.
What’d I do to deserve the attentions of a she-dragon? Dolpheus whined.
I would’ve chuckled, but Lila’s fierce brown eyes were moving back and forth between my friend and me. The last thing I wanted to do was reveal that we were mind speaking—and about her. You did what you always do to garner the fierce devotion from the ladies.
Which is to say, nothing. I never do anything to get their attention. Well, not always at least. There is the occasional woman I very much want to bed.
Right, I said. You’re just your usual charming self and the ladies fawn over you because they can’t help themselves.
Exactly, Tan. I’m a victim.
A chuckle escaped at Dolpheus’ play of innocence before I could stop it.
Lila glared at me over the scrap of fabric that covered her nose and mouth. “What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing,” I said, apparently too quickly. She glared at me furiously. Perhaps I should’ve said something else, but I couldn’t think of anything safe to say beyond that the space jump and the heat were affecting my mind. I didn’t want to imply myself feeble even if it was likely that the jump and searing heat were affecting all of us in some way or another. They’d been enough to leave all of us, save Aletox, weakened to the point of diminished capacity to function, and in the end, Aletox had collapsed, even if he wouldn’t tell us why.
“Ilara,” Lila said, directing her anger toward my lover in clipped, blunt words, “why are we going this way? Because you feel that we should? Because Tanus trusts your feelings just because they’re yours?”
Lila already knew the answer to her question. I was about to scold her for misdirecting her frustration when I saw something in her face—what, I wasn’t sure—that made me suspect she was more delicate inside than she let on. Like the small padlune bears on O that attacked at the slightest provocation, to intimidate through aggression where their size wouldn’t, Lila lashed out before anyone could hurt her, in the process guaranteeing no one would care to get close enough to her to do any real damage, the kind that tore your heart in two and then stomped on the pieces until they squished and oozed.
How about that? I thought. Could Lila, the she-dragon, be a small, furry padlune instead? Being a soldier didn’t require reading people and their personalities. It was a bonus, but not required. As a common soldier, you showed up to battle and killed indiscriminately. But to be an excellent soldier, as Dolpheus and I were, you had to understand your opponent well enough to predict their reactions. If I was right about Lila now, then I’d misread her badly, and that was worrisome.
My mind hadn’t been the same since the universe tore Ilara from me, announcing her dead and stilling my heart.
“What?” Lila said, interrupting my blossomgathering and startling me to attention. I couldn’t afford to let my mind wander like this. “You’re not going to answer me?” Lila addressed Ilara, and I whipped my head around to look at her.
Ilara continued on, appearing unperturbed by Lila’s comments, meant to poke and instigate. It didn’t seem as if she’d succeed.
Lila continued, “Am I not good enough for the maybe-princess of Planet Origins?”
“I don’t know,” Ilara said, sounding as if she were reminiscing about good times instead of putting the she-dragon-maybe-padlune-bear in her place. “I think that’s up to you. We each determine our own worth. That’s your job, not anybody else’s. You’re good enough for me if you think you are—and if you adjust your attitude sufficiently to be pleasant to be around, or at the very least tolerable.”
“Hunmph,” was all Lila had to say to that. She turned her gaze away from us.
“I’m thirsty,” Kai said. “Can we drink water or do we still have to wait?”
“Well,” Ilara said, “that very much depends on how far away we are from any place that will allow us to replenish our supplies. And since I don’t know how far away we are or how long it will be before we can get more, I’d say drink only what you absolutely have to. Don’t wait till you’re so overcome with thirst that you can’t think of anything but that, because dehydration is also a serious risk. But don’t drink more than you need to keep your body just on the edge of health.”
“Just the edge of health?” Kai said, sounding mildly amused, and I instantly admired his apparent ability to find humor in our dire situation. We’d be lucky to get out of this with any of our healths intact. If we escaped the Sahara Desert with our heartbeats still ticking along, I’d consider it a victory.
“Just the tip of it,” Ilara said and laughed—hard.
“What’s so funny?” Kai and I asked at the same time.
She withdrew her hand from mine and drew in a few deep breaths to try to regain her composure. “Never mind. It totally doesn’t matter, trust me.”
But it totally felt like it did. “Tell us. Or at least tell me.”
“Never mind, really. Forget I said anything.”
But there was no way I’d forget. “Ilara—”
She cut me off. “Why don’t we stop for a quick drink and to get our bearings?”
“How are we supposed to get our bearings when we have none?” Lila said, and no one answered her, because she had a very good point. We couldn’t exactly call Ilara’s intuition an infallible guiding compass.
Even Aletox worked his water canister from his bag and stopped to drink.
“Remember, just a sip,” Ilara said.
And I asked, “What was so funny about the tip?
”
Then Ilara started laughing again. It became clear she had no intention of answering me, at least not then. But by then, I didn’t care. I was entranced by her laughter, content to lose myself in it while she could still laugh. Before the day’s danger could grow heavier and dampen any desire to laugh at all.
And even if I hoped to never lose the desire for laughter, I had the feeling the challenges Planet Sand would throw at us would test my ability to hold onto whatever optimism the jump across space hadn’t shaken loose.
My gut feelings were rarely wrong.
My gut had told me Ilara was alive when everyone else claimed she was dead, and here she was, in the hot and tasty flesh, reminding me to thank my blessings and find my way inside her again as soon as possible. I’d never been inside a woman in the Sahara Desert before, much less inside this woman, the one who made everything that much more extraordinary.
Perhaps I’d even be lucky enough to discover this woman the same one I first learned to love.
Maybe my luck would hold and my gut feelings would be wrong.
Yeah, when was that ever the case?
13
The sun was nearing the horizon. It was perhaps the only time I’d ever wished the sky wouldn’t explode in its predictable array of brilliant color, which I assumed must occur on Sand much as it did on Origins. Sunsets were one of my favorite things and yet I didn’t want this particular one to arrive, even to witness my first sunset on an alien planet.
Everything darkened in the night, not just the sky, and according to Ilara, the night on Sand lasted far longer than it did on Origins.
Our water supplies were nearly depleted. Drops were all that were left in my canister. Drops, and the heat was unrelenting, even while darkness approached. My cracked lips were past the point of bleeding—the aridity and heat of the air had probably sucked even my blood dry, slithering through my skin and into my veins. When I finally fell over from dehydration, I might shatter, every drop of moisture absent from my body. I’d be a brittle shell of a man. I hoped I wasn’t one already.
Then things got worse. My gut hummed the annoying tune of I-told-you-so.
The hairs on my arms tingled before I realized why. I noticed Dolpheus and Ilara facing away from the path of our progress—whether or not it was real progress, we still weren’t sure—before the reason for our instinctual alarms split the borderless silence of the night.
“By the oasis, what is that?” Kai asked, his voice evincing the terror that pounded within my chest cavity.
“Yes, what is that?” Lila said, her voice softer than I’d ever heard it.
“I’d guess it’s hyenas. Or maybe jackals, I don’t know. I’m no expert on the region, remember that. I’ve never even been anywhere near here before.” Ilara mentioned this fact with increasing frequency as the hours and interminable footsteps passed, denying us the salvation we sought.
“Are hyenas or jackals some kind of... monster?” Kai asked.
Before Ilara could answer, their eerie cries again haunted the night. An hour ago, the landscape had shifted from the gently sloping hills of pure sand to the occasional outcropping of rock. We’d been encouraged by the change. Any change was good when all we saw was sand and more sand. I never thought I’d grow tired of the pure sand that signified vast fortunes on Origins. Certainly not so quickly.
But if I never saw sand again, I’d be fine with it.
The rocky cliffs hadn’t brought any relief, and now they cast long and dark shadows, capable of hiding any manner of beast.
The calls came again, and I shivered. Not even mowabs instilled this kind of paralyzing fear in me. They echoed over and again in a loop that threatened never to end. Just when I thought they’d stopped, they started up again.
“What, are they laughing at us?” Dolpheus said.
“Before they tear us to pieces?” Lila added, and it was what I was thinking too.
“They’re animals, not people,” Ilara said.
But she didn’t say they wouldn’t tear us to pieces. It was often what went unsaid that was more important than the words themselves.
“You said there were nothing like mowabs on this planet, or at least in this desert,” Dolpheus said. “These animals sound worse than mowabs. Are they worse than mowabs?”
Ilara said, “I don’t know what mowabs are like, but I do know I don’t want to get caught by a hungry pack of hyenas. We need to move, and faster.”
We’d been moving as fast as we could, considering we were still recovering from interstellar travel and had insufficient water for the human body to survive. But now we moved faster.
For the first time since we set off from the transport machine, Aletox walked next to us and then passed us, setting the pace at fast and desperate. Being hunted by a pack of wild animals was apparently all the motivation he needed to get over himself.
“Come on, guys,” Ilara said. “Faster.”
“Are they hunting us?” Kai asked, not slowing to talk.
“I don’t know. Maybe. We’re likely the biggest game out here. They could be hunting something else, if we’re lucky.”
Dolpheus exchanged a glance with me in the fading daylight. He and I had a tricky relationship with luck. She wasn’t always on our side, but when she was, she was in a big way.
Aletox threw words over his shoulder. “Only a fool allows luck to carve his path for him.”
“Or her,” Lila muttered.
It was a fresh thing for him to say, given that he’d forced our hand. We were on this forsaken path because he forced us on it. Not because we chose it. Not because we allowed luck to steer us. (And I was happy to leave out the fact that I’d allowed my gut more or less to lead us to the splicing facility in the first place. Once we’d arrived there, however, Aletox had maneuvered us far better than he had his damnable transport machine.)
I didn’t spend the energy to express my thoughts out loud. What good would it have done, anyway?
I reclaimed Ilara’s hand and marched steadily across never-ending sand, my sword slapping against my thigh, my bag jumping against my lower back.
There was a lull in the animal calls that I didn’t allow to spark hope. I knew better than to underestimate an opponent, especially one as vocal as this.
“How fast are hyenas or jackals?” I asked, trying to move faster with every step, to pull our company along with the sheer force of my will.
“Fast,” she said. “Faster than us.”
“What are they like?” Dolpheus said.
“What do you mean?”
“No legs? Two legs? Four? Six? Furry? Scaly? Slimy? Tall? Short? With teeth?” Dolpheus rattled. It was what we’d need to know to defend ourselves against the animals. Ignorance was as dangerous a threat as any other.
“Do you have dogs or cats on Origins? Or wolves or coyotes?”
“We have dogs and cats.”
“And do they walk on four legs and have sharp teeth?”
“They do,” Dolpheus said.
“Then imagine a big, wild dog that has to fight for its every meal. Next imagine a big pack of these big, wild dogs, and from the sound of it, there’re quite a few of them. That’s what’s after us.”
“Then we need to move faster still,” Dolpheus said.
“Aye,” I agreed, but Lila protested. “I’m moving as fast as I can, short of running. Should we run?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But maybe not. They may be after something else, and if they are, we can’t afford to squander the energy we have left. To push hard when we can’t replenish our water levels would be unwise.”
“Unless we have to do it,” Dolpheus added.
“Right. Unless we have to do it.”
“I’m hoping very hard we won’t have to,” Kai said.
“Aye, me too,” I said, and I was. I was also hoping we’d reach a settlement soon and that no one there would try to kill us, or at least not skillfully, and that we’d get whatever we needed quickly so I could find th
e other Ilara, the one that could prove the woman next to me was the princess, the woman it would be easy and uncomplicated to love, once I got past the fact the laws of the Andaron Dynasty forbade it. And I hoped Aletox would be able to fix the stabilizer on the transport machine and deliver us back to Origins safely and—was it too much to hope?—comfortably. And I desperately wished I’d have time soon that I could spend alone with Ilara, so I could really share with her all that I longed to share, far beyond what I could give her through the pleasure of my body—before it was too late. Because at this rate, we’d be lucky to live through this day, and if not this day, then the next.
I wished to share a lifetime with Ilara. That was based on the average life span of healthy citizens of Origins, approximately a millennia.
That seemed like a lot for a man who was trying to outrun a pack of hyenas to wish.
One step at a time, Tanus. That’s all I’d ever had and yet it had gotten me here. Yeah, on the run again.
But I wasn’t running from my past anymore. I was running toward my future, one I hoped to share with the woman at my side and the friends that ran with us.
Faster, I thought and, as if we were all connected as one, we picked up the impossible pace.
14
“I need to take a break,” Lila said, wheezing, pulling to a complete stop and bending in half.
“We can’t stop,” Kai said frantically, breathing heavily.
“I know that,” Lila said, too tired to snap at him. “Don’t you think I know that?” As if to punctuate her point, the hyenas let an unholy cackle into the night. It rippled across the endless sand to still my heart for a moment.
“I hear the monsters as well as you do,” she said, even though Ilara had explained they were animals, not monsters. “Don’t you think I’m terrified?” She straightened, though her breathing was still heavy. “But I just can’t keep going right now. Leave me if you have to. I’ll do my best to catch up. But I’ll be sick if I keep going at this pace.”
“Dammit,” Kai said, but he didn’t say it to her. It was the predicament we were in. There were no easy choices, no clear answers.