by Emma Hamm
Jane wasn’t sure what direction she was running. The sun had been blotted out by the swirling sand behind her and every dune looked precisely the same as the last.
She had never been lost in the sands before, but she knew how quickly it could happen. Her heart beat faster as her breath heaved from her lungs.
“Ruric!” She yelled.
They had to hear her. They had to be nearby. She knew where they were. Jane knew that they were in this direction unless the fall had turned her around.
Once more she slipped down a dune and rolled into the base of a tree.
“What?” She whispered, looking up at the barren branches of the tree. She had never seen one before. There were no plants around the mining camps. There were no plants Above at all as far as she knew.
Yet this was the shell of one. A dead tree that still stood strong in the sands. A remnant of what life had been long ago.
The branches rattled as the wind hit it and Jane would swear that the rattling sounded like a death chant. She was going to die here. The sandstorm would hit her without any protection and she would suffocate.
She didn’t want it to end like this.
Looking down at her hands, she tried to control her shuddering breathing. It was then that she noticed the glittering at the base of the tree.
Her shaking hands reached out to touch the crystal shards that seemed to be growing directly out of the roots of the trees. They were bright blue in the waning light. Jane knew that if she shook them, it was likely that they would start to glow. She snapped one off the tree and cupped it gently in her palms.
“Please glow.” She said whispered as she curled in on herself. “Please don’t let me die in the dark.”
“Not if I can help it.” The growled words were barely heard before a weight slammed into her.
Ruric’s large form curled over her. He tossed his cloak and hers over them as the storm surrounded them.
“Ruric?” She yelled over the scream of the storm.
His large claws were digging into the sand around them. Frantically, he shoved sand from underneath the cloaks while shouting, “Dig!”
Sharp shards struck against her face. She couldn’t breath without inhaling the sand that had started to swirl around her. “Ruric! I can’t!”
He didn’t pause. “The crystals, Jane, the crystals!”
The words meant little to her, but his tone made her burst into action. She launched herself at the sand, uncaring of the claws that flashed around her or the sand that made her lungs burn.
All of a sudden the ground around them sank. They fell from the sand and down into a cavern made by the trees roots. Crystals dug into her ribs and cut into the soft flesh of her thighs. But they were safe enough for now.
The sand howled above them and the wind whistled as it passed the opening they had made.
Ruric crawled over to her, a cut above his eye bleeding. His hands turned her and shoved both of them deeper into the crevice the tree had made itself.
“We have to get away from the sand.” He coughed.
Weary, she nodded and made the slow crawl deeper into the roots of the tree until she could no longer move. They both collapsed next to each other and tried to catch their breath in the darkness.
Ruric was the first to speak into the darkness. “Are you alright?”
“I’m alive.” She said quietly.
“That doesn’t mean you’re alright.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She was safe because of him. She was still breathing because of him. Yet there was so much between them that was left unsaid. So much that was still broken. To be alone with him felt as though the air was heavy with words and arguments that would only make things worse.
She heard him shifting beside her, but couldn’t see him. The only light that had spilled in front of the hole they had created at the roots of the tree was now gone. The sandstorm had swallowed every bit of light that remained.
His hand touched hers. The claws trailed over the delicate bones and up her forearm. “I thought I wouldn’t reach you in time.”
She let out a huff of breath. “You always seem to be saving me.”
“And yet you have saved me as well.” His voice was a mere rumble in the strange cave. She shivered as she realized that his voice sounded like the shifting of stones against each other.
“What?” Her mind had wandered to a different place and a different time. A cave like this one where they had been entirely alone. A place where no one had known where to find them and hours had been wasted together and with no one else.
“You’ve saved my life many times over.” He said quietly, and then he was gone. The warm touch that was so reassuring disappeared from her arm.
Silence, once more, filled the space between them.
A burst of blue light from behind her filled the cave. Her eyes squinted against the sudden shock, but she sat up to look for its source.
Ruric held a few crystals in his hands. They were not the circular ones that she had become so familiar with. They were dim, but the tall columns were enough so that she could see. No doubt Ruric had been able to make out most shapes in the cave without the light. But he had always been thoughtful enough to consider her.
She glanced around them. The gnarled roots of the tree created an arching dome as it cut through the sand and disappeared into jagged edges of crystal. The air felt moist against her tongue as she licked her lips.
“Where are we?” She asked.
Ruric shrugged. “Everything living needs water.” His hands trailed along one of the roots of the tree and pointed to where it disappeared. “It reaches for comfort.”
The root was not brown and ashen where it touched the ground near him. Instead, it appeared to be damp and healthy.
“It’s alive?” She said in shock. “The tree is alive?”
Ruric nodded. “She fights.”
Jane’s eyebrow arched. “She?”
“Of course.” Ruric chuckled and handed her one of the crystals. “Only a female would be foolish enough to stay in the desert for one that she loves.”
“So the tree is here because she’s in love?” Jane could not stop herself from rolling her eyes. “That seems like a fanciful tale that people tell their children, Ruric. I am not a child. Nor am I frightened and in need of you to distract me.”
One of his shoulders lifted. “Perhaps not. But the tree stays for love of the sun.”
There was a vulnerability that she could hear in that statement. For a moment, she wondered if he was asking her a question. She rolled the crystal in her hand.
“And where else would the tree go, Ruric? She cannot pull up her roots and simply move wherever she wishes.”
“No?”
“It’s a tree, Ruric.”
He lifted one of his shoulders once more. The blue light turned his skin green once more. Jane realized just how comforting that was to see him as he should be. No longer did the sickly yellow color worry her. No longer did he appear weaker because of his skin. Instead, he was the strong and intimidating goblin that she remembered so well.
Jane settled into the crook of two of the roots. She withdrew from him because she did not know what else to do. There were words to be said that burrowed barbs into her throat so that they could not be freed.
“There are plants that grow, Below.” He said quietly.
He stood in the center of the dome. His shoulders dwarfed the small space and his head nearly touched the ceiling. Strength and power was everything that he was.
“But there are no trees.” She responded in a whisper. “Flowers and fragile things are not the same as bark and growing roots.”
The pain in her voice had him moving. The wind shrieked above them in a crescendo of sound. Yet for the two people whose gazes could not break from the other, there was nothing else but each other. A goblin kneeling at the feet of a human woman.
“There is room for you to grow with me.” He said fiercely. “You bel
ong with me.”
She shook her head. “I belong to no one.”
“You do.” He said forcefully.
Her hand came up and yanked on the chain around her neck. She could not break it by force, she had tried many times. But the harsh tug turned her skin white where it touched.
“I do now.”
If a goblin could turn pale, Ruric did so then. He was haunted by the image of the gold chain around her neck and what he had done to her.
“I had to.” He said quietly.
“You could have done a number of things.” Her voice was harsh. “You chose this way.”
He shook his head. “They would have taken you from me. You are safe where you are. You are with me.”
“I did not choose any of this, Ruric!”
The shout seemed muffled. There was no echo. There was no reverberation of anger, only the dull ache of silence.
His hand raised. His claws ghosted over the beloved curve of her cheekbone and higher to smooth his thumb over the wrinkle from between her eyes.
“You chose me.”
And therein lay the hardest fact of it all.
“Is that what this is?” She asked. “Are you trying to bind me to you? In any way you can?”
His silence was enough of an answer for Jane.
“Ruric. I am already bound to you in chains. I love you.” She could not remember if she had ever said it. Yet the words felt right coming from her tongue. “I love you more than life itself. Those are more binding chains than any physical ones you could find.”
He remained silent. His large eyes seemed to search hers, as though desiring to find the truth.
“I do not lie.” She said quietly.
“Humans lie.”
“I am more goblin than human now,” was her response. What else could she say? Jane was no longer the woman she had been when she had been taken Below. She could not go back to her life in the camps. There was nothing left there for her. Even the City in all its glory did not hold a speck of interest for her.
He nodded slowly. “Then you are staying?”
She had no answer for that. Jane did not know what she would find in the City, or how she would react when her family was found. The only answer she had for him was to press her palm against his heart.
His chest lifted and fell under her hand. When she looked back to his face, Jane realized that his eyes had closed. The goblins had a way of doing that whenever they were struck by emotion. Sight was a weakness that they did not need. Instead, they closed their eyes and used every other sense to feel.
Touch and scent and sound were more important to them than anything else. Ruric was absorbing everything she said and everything he could feel so that he would never forget it. When they returned, he would mark down the moments that had happened here. He would write them down exactly as they happened. Someday, he would tell their children the story of how he and their mother pieced together their lives once more.
The first time she had said I love you and meant it. The first time he had felt her soul touch his.
And the moment when he would release her.
His eyes drifted open slowly and his hand rose. One claw hooked the necklace and pulled.
The strength of his tug and the sharpness of his claw was enough to sever the flimsy metal. It slid down the length of her neck and pooled in the crevice of her lap.
Sand drifted around them. In the blue light created by the crystals, he saw the sand as bright sparks of light that fluttered around her. She was more than just the sun to him. She was now the stars that he had never thought to see. She was the universe condensed into one being.
“Are the others safe?” She asked him quietly.
Numb to anything but the beauty of her, he nodded.
“I was worried the sandstorm would kill you.”
“We heard it long before we could see it.” He said quietly. “The tents are strong enough if they are strapped to the ground. Shusar and Illyrin dug themselves holes and set up the tents in the ground.”
She hadn’t thought of that. “Smart. They should be safe then.”
He nodded. “How long until the storm has passed?”
Jane shook her head. “I do not know. They are unpredictable at best.”
“Did you get what you needed?”
She nodded and pointed towards the bundle that had fallen onto the ground with them. It was half covered with sand. “Large boots, face masks, extra cloaks. We’ll say that you are all ill and seeking help from the City. We will not be the only ones.”
Ruric wanted to ask questions about the City then. He wanted to growl and ask why her people did not take care of their sick. From the amount of miners that they had brought into the caves, he knew that most of their people were ill. The goblins spent long hours healing the new slaves to bring them back to health.
Now was not the time to be asking such questions though. This was a time for healing. A time for the both of them to remember what it meant to be together.
He leaned towards her and scooped her into his arms. Arranging them both into the roots, he curled around her to share his warmth.
“We will wait for the storm to pass.”
“Together.” She said quietly as her fingers traced patterns on his arm.
“Together.”
They were not fixed entirely. Something so small could not have healed weeks of heartbreak and anger. But what had been broken was now mending in tiny stitches as it brought them back together.
Jane settled into his arms and closed her eyes. The day had been longer than she wanted to admit, yet his day was just starting.
“Ruric?” She whispered as her mind started to drift.
He stirred around her, his muscles jumping underneath her head.
“How are there crystals growing at the base of this tree? I thought they only grew underground?”
He shook his head and his chin grazed her hair. “I do not know. I have never seen them this close to the surface.”
“Oh.” She said quietly as she drifted into sleep.
“Perhaps it is an omen.” He said as his claws dragged through the tangled mess of her hair. He spent the next few hours untangling every strand of gold that was spread across his chest.
9
“I did not ask for another delivery!”
The man before her shrugged. “I don’t order ‘em. I just bring ‘em here.”
Catherine hated dealing with people like this man. He thought he could take advantage of her simply by existing. The smile on his face was greasy like the rest of him. His oiled hair was slicked back on his skull and gathered at the base of his neck with a small leather strap. There was dirt underneath his nails and a few teeth missing from his smile.
But the worst of it was that he was looking down at her. She could feel his eyes upon her every time he thought she wasn’t looking. She saw the way his hands flexed when she stood too close.
He lived outside the City. He was a smuggler who made his money on delivering illegal objects and yet he wasn’t used to letting go of opportunities when he saw them. His eyes glinted in the light and the way he ran his tongue over his teeth proved that to her.
If she gave him the chance, this man would snatch her up and sell her to the highest bidder.
“You bring those creatures here for me.” She said angrily. “I tell you when I need more. And I don’t need more.”
“And what do ye want me to do with them then? Eh?”
“Let them go.” The tablet in her hand cracked hard against the table when she set it down. “I don’t care what you do with them. Put them back where you got them.”
“Can’t do that.”
“And why the hell not?” She asked him. The forceful tone should have scared him if the venom in her tone hadn’t been betrayed by the nervous shake of her hand as it trailed through her hair.
“Cause the Doctor told me to bring ‘em. I do what the Doctor says.”
“Don’t we all.” She mutt
ered.
Of course she should have known that this order was coming from a higher power. It would be the Doctor that made the puppets start to dance.
She didn’t need anymore of these animals. Her studies were going quite well so far and most of her test subjects were still alive. Certainly there were a few of them that were missing limbs or losing fur, but at least they were alive.
That was why he kept her. She was supposed to be coming up with miracle cures so that the people of the City never had to experience illness again. Once her tests started working on animals, she would pass off the work to someone else.
Apparently the Doctor had more plans.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to slow down the violent beat of heart. If the Doctor wanted her to be producing more work, than he needed to be much more candid with her.
The man was still watching her with interest. She could feel his eyes sliding up from her heels and following the line of her lab coat. She felt as though that lingering gaze left slime in its wake.
“Fine.” Catherine managed to say. “I will go and see what animals you have brought me. I’ll sign off, but this is the last time. Mark my words, I will be having a good long talk with the Doctor.”
The man spat on her floor.
“Aye, ye do that little lady.”
He was mocking her that time. She could tell that he didn’t believe she would make much of a difference with her “talk”. If Catherine were being honest with herself, she didn’t exactly believe that she would make much of a difference either.
But now she had something else in her back pocket that might just sway the Doctor. The humanoid creature lying upon a table in her lab had potential. So far she had learned much about its species, however, none of that was helpful to her own species. The Doctor was certain there was a cure in it somewhere. Catherine hated to agree with him, but she was of a like mind.
And though it pained her to be testing the limits of that creature, she would rather save the many than the one. Surely if it was as intelligent as she thought it was, it would understand.
Her heels clacked hard against the whitewashed stone as she followed the man. The hidden corridors were as familiar to her as the well worn streets of the City.