by Calista Skye
Rax’tar looks away. “We don’t see ourselves as raiders.”
“But do you sometimes attack other villages?” It’s hard to ask that in a light tone.
He concentrates intently on his ropemaking. “No.”
I decide not to push the point, so I bend down to lace up my sandals. “Okay. Well, you put me in a sack and took me with you. Here I am. Now what?”
“Now I think you should make a mepp.”
“A map?”
“One of those.” He doesn’t look up from his work.
“Do you, in fact, know what a map is?”
“Of course. I’ve seen the one you made. Among others.”
“Where did you see those other maps?”
“Oh, everywhere. They’re quite common. Sometimes there are so many you can hardly move.”
He glances up at me, and he has that innocent glint in his eye again.
I scratch my chin. “You need a map of the island?”
“Something like that. I’m not an expert.”
“More than one?”
He shrugs. “You’re the mapmaker. You decide.”
I guess it gives me something to do. “Fine. Well, I’ll need a cured skin, as light in hue as possible.”
“Like this?” Rax’tar reaches under the table and produces a huge, almost completely white skin that reminds me of parchment.
I’m impressed. “That should do.”
I arrange the skin on the table. It’s easily three feet square, more than twice the size of the map I made back at the village. “Now I have to see the island so I know how to map it out.”
Rax’tar puts his rope down and stands up, stretching and placing his palms flat on the ceiling, which has to be a good ten feet from the floor. “I will show you.”
The other guys are busy here and there, doing the same stuff that we do back at the village. Chopping wood, cleaning and sorting various herbs, cutting meat, making clothes and fabrics, curing skin, and a thousand other essential chores that take up most of everyone’s time and make me really appreciate the modern conveniences we had on Earth.
They wave whenever they see us, and I wave and smile back. I feel their eyes on me, and I suppose I put a little bit of a sashay into my walk.
Beside the raft we used, there is another one, almost twice as big. It looks more like a barge.
Rax’tar walks me around the whole island. It’s roughly circular and has a shore that’s fine-grained sandy beach all the way around. In the daylight, the water that seemed so inky last night is really clear, and the bottom all around the island is sand as far as I can see.
“Are there Bigs in the water here?”
“I’ve only seen Smalls,” Rax’tar assures me. “But they’re strange. They have no legs.”
“Can they be eaten?”
He frowns. “Eat something from the water?”
“Maybe they taste well. On my planet, we have Smalls that live in the water and have the most delicious meat. We call them ‘fish’.”
“But we live on land,” he protests.
“We live on land, but some things from the water can be good to eat.”
He scratches his chin, clearly not convinced. “How do you hunt them?”
“There are several ways. But I don’t know if the Smalls you have here are actually fish.” The girls and I have rarely seen fish here on Xren. Even the streams and rivers don’t seem to have them or anything comparable. If there are some here, I’d like to know.
We get back to where we started, right next to the rafts.
“Not a big island.” I state the obvious. “It will be easy to map. Where do you hunt and get the things you need?”
“With the rafts,” Rax’tan says. “On other islands or in the jungle.”
I put the skin down on a convenient rock and start sketching out the island, using a twig and a sticky charcoal paste. Not too big, because I’m hoping to get a decent impression of the surrounding ocean. “Are there many other islands?”
Rax’tan looks over my shoulder at my work. “Not that many.”
“Are they larger than this one?”
“Some are.”
“In which direction are they from here?”
“Oh. There, I suppose.” He waves vaguely in the air, spanning at least sixty degrees. “And there.” Another good forty-five degrees.
It’s not accurate enough for me at all. “Can those islands be seen from here?”
“From the upper floor windows,” he says. “Sometimes. If it’s not misty.”
The food and the fruit juice perked me up a lot, and I’m feeling downright energetic. “I’ll look at that later. Can we take the raft and see those islands?”
He gives the smallest raft a little kick then takes a step back and observes it as if it might spring to life at any moment. “It doesn’t appear too busy.”
I give the raft a skeptical look. It’s even more shabby than I was able to see in the darkness last night. The logs are uneven in thickness and length, they’re only barely tied together, and the whole thing clanks and flexes and undulates whenever a small wave washes under and over it. “Were you in a hurry when you built it?”
“Oh yes,” Rax’tar says. “It tooks us six beats of the heart to build. And it turned out perfect.”
Okay, so cavemen have a slow heartrate, I know that. But six beats has to be less than a minute, even for them. “Six heartbeats?”
“It only took us that long because the first one we built fell apart. So we had to build another one. That one burned up. Then we built this.” He has that glint in his eye again.
Yeah, I get it. I’m being a bitch again.
“Okay,” I concede. “I’m sorry I criticized your raft. Point taken. It’s not a bad raft. But it does look a little bit like it was built fast.”
“It took us a day or so. Perhaps it’s not perfect. It was the first one we built, before the big one. But it does float.”
“It does,” I agree. “Let’s just try to avoid any waves higher than a hand.”
“Probably a good idea,” Rax’tar says and pushes the raft out from the beach.
We get on it, and then we’re sitting like last night. The raft bobs happily in the water, and Rax’tar takes his oar and propels us away from the island.
It is indeed a very small island. And while the hollowed-out tree in the middle of it is extremely thick, it’s actually not that tall. It just towers over the seatrees. It reminds me of old oaks back on Earth.
The sun burns the mist away, and the air is clear and cool. This is ocean air more than swamp air. Sometimes I think I can hear the typical call of seagulls somewhere in the distance, but that has to be my imagination. There are no birds on Xren, as far as we know. The dactyls have a monopoly on the airways.
“Are there many irox here?” I ask.
“Not many,” Rax’tar says and paddles us around a seatree. “Occasionally, one comes along.”
“Have you killed many of them?” I know that’s something the guys back at the village look for when picking cavemen for their anti-dragon army.
“One or two.”
“Uh-huh.”
I make little dots and lines on the map, just sketching and holding it up from the logs so it won’t get wet. I’m not sure exactly what use this thing will be when it’s done, but it gives me something do to. Probably, that was Rax’tar’s intention, too. “How did you guys end up here, anyway?”
It takes Rax’tar a little while to answer as he paddles the raft around his island. “We all have our reasons. Living in a tribe isn’t always the right thing for everyone.”
I nod. “No kidding.”
“Nokidn?”
“Sorry. Earth speech. I mean, I think you’re right.”
“There’s Juri’ex, for instance. He came from the Brinu tribe just a year ago. They are accomplished hunters of irox, since you appear to find that interesting. Juri’ex is probably the best of them all. He used a spear for it, which is unusual.
The reason is that he could never acquire a sword. His tribe doesn’t have much iron, and the swords they have are passed down from the older warriors to the younger ones. But somehow, no sword ever came Juri’ex’s way. Some feel that a warrior without a sword is not a true warrior, regardless of how well he uses other weapons. Juri’ex felt that. He went out to find iron for a sword of his own. Far from his village, he discovered a deposit of iron and spent months refining it to steel and forging a sword. All alone, in the middle of the jungle. He found that during those months he was happier than he had ever been in the tribe. He was his own man, and on his own he had given himself a sword, something his tribe had never done. And so he just never went back.”
“Was it like that for everyone?”
“Yes. For different reasons.”
I finish the outline of the island. It’s not completely circular, and it has a couple of small bays here and there. At this scale, I can’t draw each rock or each tree, but I mark the tree in the middle. “What’s the name of your island?”
12
- Phoebe -
“It’s called ‘The Island’.”
“Ah.” I write it on the map in English. The Island. “So Juri’ex never went back to his tribe,” I prompt. “I thought being alone in the jungle was every man’s greatest fear.”
“It is. The jungle is dangerous to anyone who does not have company. But some of us prefer it, even so. The fear becomes less when you have done it for a while.”
I gently rub out a line and redraw it with more of a curve at the shoreline of the island. “Except you guys do have company.”
“We found each other. Slowly, one by one. Curt’on and I met in the jungle, hunting the same Small. We almost killed each other before we realized we had some things in common. Then the others joined us, one by one. After three years, we were seven. And now we appear to be eight.”
“If only for a while,” I add. I have my own tribe and friends.
“If only for a while,” he agrees. “We’ve been around the island twice now. One more circuit, or shall we go elsewhere?”
I raise my head and straighten up. “That way, maybe. Looks like another island.”
Rax’tan’s pulls the oar powerfully through the water, turning the raft and gaining speed in the direction I indicate in one smooth move. “It is. Smaller than ours.”
“Does it have a name?”
“We call it ‘Smaller Than Ours Island’.”
“Of course.” I’ve drawn a compass rose on the map, with the N pointing in the direction I think is north. I’ll have to verify it tonight when the stars come out, but judging from the position of the sun, we’re going roughly west now. “How many islands do you know about?”
“Some.”
The raft slides close by a seatree, and I pick a little twig off it. It’s soft and bends between my fingers. Yep, the seatrees are more seaweed than trees. “How many is some?”
“A few.”
“Ah. Wait.” I hold up my hand. I can hear something. A distant hiss, low in pitch, but slowly going up and down. That sounds very familiar.
“What?”
I’m not ready to commit to a guess yet. “Nothing.”
Rax’tan paddles on, and now Smaller Than Ours Island is right ahead. It looks a lot like The Island, with trees growing on it, but not one of the oak-like things. This is barely an island, more of an islet. I can see everything on it from where I’m sitting.
I mark it on the map as STO Island. There’s no room for writing it out. “No need to go ashore. Can we keep going in the same direction?”
Rax’tan shrugs. “If we keep going, we’ll lose sight of The Island, and it might be hard to find our way back. We usually don’t go further in this direction than this unless we’re going to the Gate.”
I sit still for a moment. I think the hissing noise is slightly louder now. I mark the position of the sun. Getting back this way, we’ll just need to keep it on the exact opposite side of the raft. Not too risky, I think. “Just a little further.”
Rax’tan paddles on, past maybe twenty seatrees. When I turn around, the trees on The Island can’t be seen anymore.
But the hissing is much stronger. So strong that...
“Are there any more seatrees past those ones?” I point ahead.
“Apparently not.”
We pass a couple more of the strange plants, and then all I can see ahead is yellow. It’s a sand bank, low but wide. And beyond it is the horizon of an azure ocean.
I want to stand up, but the raft wobbles dangerously when I get up on my knees. “Have you seen this before, Rax’tan?”
“I’ve never been this far in this direction.”
I don’t doubt him. Like Aurora said once, cavemen are not natural sailors. They prefer the firm ground under their big feet.
“Keep going, please,” I urge when he seems to slow down. “I want to walk on that sand.”
I jump from the raft and into a foot of cool water when the raft hits the sand. Then I walk up to the top of the bank.
It’s a bay, long and narrow. More like a fjord, maybe, framed in endless seatrees on both sides. The sand bank becomes a beach that stretches out into the crystal-clear water, turning turquoise and then deep blue until it meets the greenish sky far, far out there. The surf rolls in with a lazy rhythm, creating the same hiss and thunder as on any large beach on Earth.
Rax’tan comes up beside me. “A big lake.”
“This is an ocean,” I happily explain, giddy about my discovery. I walk straight into the surf and feel the water splash my calves. For a moment I’m home again, a kid on vacation in California, with the cool Pacific in front of me and the fine sand between my toes.
Rax’tan frowns. “Are you sad?”
I sniffle and wipe my cheeks with one hand. “No, no. Just… it reminds me of my home.”
He slowly comes close and puts his huge arms lightly around me from behind. “It is sometimes good to have a home to be reminded of.”
In a flash it occurs to me that he has never done this before to anyone. It’s just instinct, just the right thing to do. And I thought this guy was an alien. Hell, he’s more human than me.
First, I stiffen. This is the closest I’ve been to him yet. And it feels…
...good. I sniffle again and lean slightly back into his chest, feeling warm and cared for and understood. “Yes.”
“Tell me about your home.”
I take a couple of breaths to stabilize my voice. “My home is not by the ocean. It’s just a place we went to when we had time. When we were not working or going to school. It was a lot like this. A beach and an ocean. No seatrees. And there were booths where you could buy nice food and ice cream…”
I tell him about the beaches and my sisters and our vacations while he just holds me, very lightly, not getting too close. He listens patiently, and when I use an English word I try to explain what they mean.
I’m not sure if I’m telling him about it, or if I’m reminding myself about it because I’m worried I’ll forget Earth if I stay here on Xren for much longer. Anyway, I relax and feel closer to my home than I have in a long time.
“Sorry,” I finally say and wipe my nose once and for all. “I’m talking too much.”
“It sounds good when you talk.”
I turn around in Rax’tar’s arms and look up at him. “You think so?”
His purple laser beams look right through me. “In fact, I think you have talked too little for too long. I think you have more to give than you have been allowed to. The jungle is like that. It binds you. And the tribe can bind you more.”
“Is that why you took me from the tribe?”
He squints out over the ocean. “You were unhappy. I was also unhappy in my tribe, years ago. Then I left, and the world seemed to open up for me. I became the man I should be. I thought maybe the same would be true for you. Except the ‘man’ part. Don’t become a man, please.”
I put my cheek to his hard chest, a
nd the spicy scent almost overwhelms me. With one finger, I trace the border between one purple stripe with the texture of suede and his smooth skin.
I’ve never felt as close to someone as I do now. Nobody has ever done anything like this, seen me like he does.
“Maybe it is true for me,” I admit. Certainly, this whole event has torn me from my usual surroundings and forced me to feel a lot of other stuff. “And maybe it could get even better.”
I let my hand slide down his body, across soft grooves in the muscle, down to the top of his pants. It’s clumsy, I know. But he’s never done anything like this before, either, so he can’t judge me too harshly.
Heat shoots to my center at the touch of his skin and the hard muscle right beneath. He’s so freaking strong. He could have done anything with me. And he has been nothing but kind, putting up with all my bullshit. Being nice, without being a pushover.
Something hard pokes me in the stomach. Yep, he’s good and ready. But he’s not needy. If I now disengage, he’ll accept it and be just as cheerful and mischievous as before. That just makes this more tempting.
The inevitable ‘shit, do I really want this?’ flash goes through my mind. And with any other guy, at any other time, I would have gently pulled away right now. As I have always done.
But here we are. Together, alone, in a place where nobody can see us. On the beach, with the surf roaring around us. Here I am, with Rax’tar, a man who turns me on just by breathing, now that I’m being honest with myself. He is alien. But when you get close to these guys, they’re so freaking human they just win you over without even trying.
He may have abducted me, but it was for the most charming reason ever. He just thought I looked unhappy, and he wanted to fix that.
And we’ve just discovered a whole ocean! If this isn’t the time, then when is it?
I look up at his alien eyes. “Did you stay with your tribe long enough for the shaman to teach you about women and how to worship them?”
The hardness poking me suddenly pokes me even harder.
“Yes,” Rax’tan rumbles. “He taught us about the Worship. And the Mating.”