by Rayann Marse
But reality always has a nasty habit of crashing down on you, right when you think you've got things figured out.
She was stuck. The green wood of the cage could not be splintered. The yellow sealant could not be broken.
The creatures had let her keep her clothes, but a thorough search of her pockets turned up nothing. Every last thing had been taken from her. Not that any of it would have been useful, anyway.
If this had been a movie, she would have discovered that, conveniently, her captors had missed the trusty multitool she kept tucked between her breasts on a chain. She would have whipped it out, unfolded the saw attachment, and gone to town on the bars of her cage.
In reality, all she had was her clothing. Soft, without a single sharp bit to make life as a cosmonaut any less comfortable than it had to be. She also had her shoes. If they had laces, that at least would have been something. She could have crafted a lasso to grab things off the ground outside. But the shoes were velcro. Everything in space was velcro.
But maybe there was something to the idea of grabbing things. The pain and dried blood on her palms was a testament to the sharpness of the rocks in this shitty part of the world. If she could just find one to use...
A cheer went up from the group by the fire. They seemed excited. There was an almost religious aspect to their glee, a sort of chanting, as though they would sacrifice the interloping human to appease whatever dismal, low-level entity they called god.
Kozue, who had stopped believing in any god at the age of four, was very troubled by this.
If there was no God, than there was also no such thing as fate. No matter how highly Kozue thought of herself, there was absolutely nothing to stop her from dying the most pitiful, unsuitable death imaginable. She might have choked on a bite of food last week, or tripped and hit her head. Or she could be roasted alive and devoured by tiny aliens. There was no reason why that shouldn't happen.
Still, she was going to try like hell to keep on living.
Because fate was real. It was simply where her actions and intentions reach a natural culmination. A seamless blend of past and present that leads to a clear future.
Kozue knew that the legs were, generally, the strongest parts of the body. So she stood, bracing her upper back against the ceiling of the cage. She bent her knees slightly and then pushed with all her might. She pushed until her face turned red, until every vein was ready to burst, and then she pushed some more. Other than a few faint cracks, mostly underfoot, nothing happened.
That wasn't going to work.
The creatures must have a way of opening the cage. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to get at their meal. They were primitive, but not so primitive that they wouldn't have stone axes or hammers. She doubted there was any fancy trick to getting the cage open. They would just smash it apart when they were ready.
But she was smarter. That much was certain. She could figure this out.
In her mind, in the dream-version of reality that kept flashing through her thoughts, Amnay would arrive. He would save her, carry her off, and nothing bad would ever happen to her again.
For all she knew, Amnay was dead. Or he was lost, wandering somewhere a hundred miles from here. He might have seen his ship crash, and he might be moving toward it now. But it might be days or weeks before he reached it. And he might never make it at all. The Menin were smart, despite their barbarism, but Amnay had never had to survive outside his ship, where there was always food and where the temperature stayed the same.
She wouldn't break the cage no matter what leverage she applied to it. Her only hope was to cut through.
She made a circuit of the inside of the cage, scouring the ground outside for stones. The only one she found was about the size of a pumpkin seed — completely useless.
Next, she lifted the leaves from the floor and tossed them aside. It turned out that the floor of the cage itself rested on yet more leaves. A stack of them, pinned by Kozue's weight. It would be impossible to move them out of the way.
Was else could she try? Was this the end?
She sat still for a while, more confused and angry than frightened. If there was a God and he came down to her right now, she would have called him on all his bullshit.
This didn't make sense. It didn't compute. It didn't fit in with her view of the universe and her place in it.
Surely, there was plenty of food on this shithole of a planet. The little creatures didn't need to eat her, they just wanted to taste something new. It was stupid. It was nonsense.
Kozue went crazy, flying around the cage like a tempest. She kicked, punched, pushed, and pulled. She even bit, sawing at the green wood with her teeth. All she got from that was a bitter taste in her mouth.
The punching, pushing, and pulling had a better result. The cage actually moved, sliding several inches to one side. She kept going, hurling her weight at the upper half of the wall. The cage abruptly fell off the bed of leaves beneath it and tumbled onto its side.
Kozue threw herself backward and landed on her feet on what had been the wall of the cage, but was now the floor. Since the cage was wider than it was tall, she now had enough room to stand straight up.
This move had finally brought the attention of her captors. Like before, they joined in a single tide of darkness and flowed toward her like a brackish river. The river broke around her cage, surrounding and flooding it. She retreated to the center, away from their searching hands, and squatted.
Like a cornered animal. How many times had she used that expression? And now she was the animal. Watching, drooling, and foaming in terror, eyes wide and heart pounding.
They watched her with insect eyes. They stunk, she suddenly realized. They smelled of cow shit and bile. They didn't even have mouths as much as they had tiny puckered anuses in the center of their face. They were the most hideous things she had ever seen. And soon her high human life, her purposeful existence full of brave ideas and plans for the future, would be turned into so much inanimate meat. All she was, had been, would be, all reduced to nourishment for a hundred ugly beasts on some far-flung planet.
Like a crowd of rowdy sports fans tipping a car, they flipped her cage back to how it had been. One of them reached through bars and brandished a bone knife in her face. A warning. Don't do that again.
She immediately defied him by grabbing his wrist. She pulled him hard, smashing his face into the bars of the cage. The last thing she wanted was to put any part of his smelly body into her mouth, but she saw no other way of getting him to drop the knife. So she bit him, crunching down on the joint of his thumb. He squealed like a balloon with a pinhole leak, and his fingers loosened. The knife fell into Kozue's lap.
If not for the quick action of his comrades, pulling him to safety, she might have used the knife to take a few of his grubby little fingers off.
The crowd moved away, giving several feet of open ground between them and the cage. They watched, speaking amongst themselves in an insectoid language. It seemed they were coming up with a plan to deal with this latest problem.
Kozue's spirit soared. As much as it could in this tight cage, anyway. She had outsmarted, outplayed, outstrengthened them. She was superior in every way, other than sheer numbers.
She started sawing at the bars of the cage with the knife. She quickly realized that it had been fashioned for stabbing rather than slicing. She jabbed the sharp tip of the blade into one of the bars and began twisting and jerking until the moist green fibers separated. After thirty seconds, she had successfully cleaved through one of the bars. It opened up a single square in the grid-like wall. A square three inches across. And she was already getting tired; her arms and shoulders burned, and the lack of food and water had caught up to her. This would take a long time.
Meanwhile, the creatures watched her. They didn't seem terribly bothered by the fact that she had a knife, but none of them came close enough to have it used on them.
Or so she thought. While she was focused on cutting a hole
for herself, one of the creatures had climbed up the cage behind her. When she became aware of its shadow, looming over her desperate work, it was too late.
The creature swung down hard with a stone sledgehammer. The head of the hammer contacted the tip of the knife perfectly, driving it back through Kozue's sweaty hands with tremendous force. She pulled her hands away quickly to avoid having them flayed open; the knife shot backward, striking her chest and ricocheting off to some corner of the cage.
She turned to find it. Outside, the creatures stormed into action. A dozen of them fell on the wall of the cage she'd been slicing at. Using hatchets, they busted out a three-foot square in seconds.
Kozue had time to spot the knife, wedged between two bars on the floor of the cage, before they all grabbed hold of her. This time, they would not drag her to a cage or to some other holding place. This time, they took her straight to the fire.
She was set on the ground close enough to the blaze to taste smoke. Now, after all her failed attempts, she was thoroughly demoralized. She didn't bother to fight as they worked her over. And they knew she wouldn't; they didn't even bother binding her again.
First, they removed her clothes. They did this slowly, crying out in that same religious, chanting way as before. Kozue stared at the spit, straining her neck and eyes to do so. It was sharp at both ends. She had an idea — a terrible, gruesome one — about how she would be attached to it. Vlad the Impaler would have been a popular man around these parts.
When they had her naked, they rolled her onto her back and began slathering her with fat. It stunk like rotting feces and clung to her like a clammy second skin. As though they had some knowledge of the taboo aspects of the human body, they moved with extra care and slowness around her nipples and anus. Her vagina, they treated as just another fold of meat, akin to her armpits or the backs of her knees.
When their fingers touched her more sensitive parts, the fighting instinct kicked back in. But there were too many of them. Thrash as she might, she only ever succeeded in delaying the inevitable.
Using crude leather mitts, two of the creatures took the spit from the fire. The yellow sealant, hardened by heat, now resembled amber. The spit-bearers brought their load over and positioned it between Kozue's legs. Another creature came to her top half with a mask, slowly lowering it to her face while a moan of religious ecstasy moved through the crowd.
Then there came a sound like thunder, rolling low over the world.
Silence fell over the gathered creatures. Then, in a wave that started at one edge of the group and propagated through all of them, came a scream of terror.
Kozue bent her neck, staring in the direction of the noise.
Like a boulder through bowling pins, Amnay crashed through the crowd. He scattered the creatures before him, grabbing and flinging them through the walls of the mud houses, kicking them hard enough to kill them instantly, treading on their skulls and necks with his full weight. They could do nothing to stop him. Even a plunging knife, driven forward with the full strength of its wielder, penetrated a mere quarter inch into the slabs of muscle that covered Amnay head to toe.
He came like a purple avalanche, his clothes tattered and dirty and speckled with blood, his feet bare and his eyes burning with fury.
The creatures that survived his initial onslaught quickly scattered, fleeing from the wrath of their new god.
Kozue passed out from sheer relief. When she came to, Amnay was gathering her clothes and shoving them between his belt and waist. Then he picked her up and carried her away, holding her tight to keep her from slipping in the grease they had slathered onto her.
Chapter Ten
Kozue slept hard. She slept like the dead. She did not dream. She might have been in the long sleep again. Only a huge shock could have stirred her.
Luckily, Amnay found a river of frigid water and dunked her into it. She woke screaming, grabbing his arm and trying to pull herself out of the water. But he held her down, running his hands along her body.
"I'm trying to clean you," he said.
That was the pretense, anyway. The glint of amusement in his eyes couldn't be missed. At least the translator was still working. It sounded rough, crackling as it spoke, but it had come through the crash landing about as well as they had.
"Where were you?" Kozue asked, her teeth chattering.
"Looking for you. I decided that you would go to the ship when it crashed."
"Great minds think alike."
He smiled. "I like that phrase. I was close to the ship when it crashed. I waited there for a while, but then I heard strange noises. I thought you may be in trouble. So I came."
She pulled herself closer to him as his strong fingers scraped the grease from her skin. "I had about two minutes left to live," she said. "I tried, Amnay. I fought them. I did everything I could. I didn't give up. Not until..."
"You're still alive," he said simply.
"Am I? Or is it a dream? Are you really here?"
"I am here. No dream."
She stared into his eyes. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?"
"I almost left you alone, Amnay."
"No. I would not allow you to leave me. Because I know you wouldn't want me to."
He pulled her back out of the water and set her on a bed he had made of her destroyed clothing. He wrapped her in them, tying them off with some rope he had taken from the village.
"It should work," he told her. "We'll find better when we reach the Menin outpost."
"How far is it?" Kozue asked.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a device he must have taken from his crashed ship.
"According to the log," he said, "it is one hundred and thirteen miles."
Kozue whistled. "Long way. But it could have been so much farther."
"We were very lucky. It will be easy, now that I have you back with me. Everything is easy now." He lifted her to her feet. "This water is not safe to drink," he said. "But I have some at the ship. We will stop there for a short period. Then start the journey."
***
The walking was easy, at first. Whenever Kozue got tired, Amnay would carry her. They would make much better time that way. But she always asked to be put back down. She didn't want to be totally useless and put the entire strain of the journey on him.
But she was useful in other ways, as well.
The further they went, climbing into the mountains, the colder their days became. Their best bet at surviving was to adopt the local tricks. The creatures in the village had wrapped their feet in huge, thick leaves. Those leaves grew at the tops of tall, reedy trees. Amnay could not climb the trees to reach those leaves; he was too heavy. But Kozue made it look easy. Because of her, Amnay didn't have to worry about getting frostbite on his feet.
Also, Amnay had never been required to hunt his own food. Kozue, on the other hand, had taken part in many hunts. Mostly as an accepted guest in various tribes. She knew roughly how to craft a snare, as well. And so they got to sample a lot of the local creatures. Just to be safe, they charred every bit of meat until it was black. Not the best way to eat, but it kept them alive.
One day, they stopped in the foothills for lunch and to check their progress. Amnay had just enough time to consult his log and reveal they were halfway through their journey, before a sudden icy wind blasted through the trees. It was immediately followed by an endless current of sleet, driving down their necks and soaking their clothing from the inside out.
With no fire, with no wood to start one, they were in great danger.
Amnay picked Kozue up and held her inside his tattered coat as he ran up the hillside.
Once again, they had a lucky break. Just as thunder burst overhead and the downpour increased twofold, Amnay ducked into the mouth of a narrow cave. Now that they were out of the sleet, he slowed down and picked his way through the stones and dead leaves that littered the floor of the place.
"Do you see that?" he asked. The damaged translato
r was barely audible over the sound of the storm.
She was about to answer no, but then she did see it. A faint light up ahead. Far too white to be natural. Like Earth, the sun on this world burned yellowish.
Amnay kept going. The further they went, the easier it was for them to see. And when they could see, they immediately realized the cave had been occupied sometime in the recent past. Signs had been fastened to the walls, with arrows pointing down various passageways. But only one of those passageways led to light. Amnay took them down that way, pausing to read the sign aloud.
"Sleeping room," he said.
Though she couldn't read it for the life of her, Kozue recognized the script on the signs. It was Menin. Though she didn't think anyone was in residence now, it couldn't have been too long since someone had been here. Whether for prospecting or simple exploration, she didn't know.
The Menin pioneers hadn't done much to decorate the passageways, but the sleeping room was a different story. Beams and posts had been installed to give strength to the ceiling and to define the space. A roof of lashed timbers, sealed with that same yellow substance, offered a leak-proof shelter.
And there were beds. They were handmade, of animals skins stuffed with plant material. But they looked a hell of a lot comfier than the floor. The Menin had even built framed to hold their mattresses and shimmed up the feet to make them level.
Amnay set Kozue down. Together, they moved toward a bed and squeezed the mattress to test its softness.
"To think we found this on accident," Amnay said. "It's not a coincidence. There must be Menin structures all over the area. This entire section of the world, in a radius of fifty miles from the outpost, must be full of such places."
"They aren't here," Kozue said. "They left."
Amnay gestured around. "But not in a hurry. Everything is neat. The beds are made. They probably left because the cold season arrived. They will be back when the thaw comes. I think they were mining. Perhaps... perhaps they were even trying to build a ship of their own. They grew tired of village life. Of terrestrial life. It's not natural for Menin to stay in one place forever."