That's what he is, I realize as he carries me through the forest. Lohr wasn't meant to be here anymore than these trees were. He was put here, provided with everything he needs physically, and allowed to grow. Ordered to thrive. And like these trees, he seems to have done just that. But I have to wonder, as he carries me through the woods, if this is exactly what the trees look like on his homeworld. Do they grow stronger and taller in their natural environment?
Soon, the effort of holding myself up becomes too much and I let myself go limp against his back again. I wrap my arms around his waist for stability, and blood rushes to my head from my inverse position. The pressure makes me feel a little sick.
Just as I'm about to complain, as I'm about to beg him to put me down, he begins to slow on his own. I push myself up again, my palms braced against his back, my fingers digging into his thick, fuzz-covered muscles for purchase. The forest stretches out in front of me, which is behind him, and we’ve emerged onto a stretch of land covered in nothing but the strange gray dust, sprinkled with sparse patches of an odd bluish ground covering that looks more like moss than grass.
Lohr stops walking and abruptly sets me on my feet. I wobble for a second as the blood that has pooled in my head finally begins to redistribute itself to the rest of my body. I'm dizzy. The ground seems to shift beneath me, and I reach out for his arm to steady myself. He stiffens beneath my touch, but he doesn’t pull away. I try not to notice that he’s hard again. Or…still.
Maybe Fetoji men are never soft. I was too young to notice something like that, the last time I was on Ratera III.
Out here in the sun, while he waits for me to gain my bearing, I get a much better look at him than I had in the forest. At the front part of him, anyway. He has a thick, flowing poof of golden hair, like a lion’s mane, and sharply pointed incisors. His nose is flat and broad, with horizontally-oriented nostrils and a slit at the bottom that stretches down to the center of his beautiful upper lip. His ears are pointy on the top, and they’re covered in a light layer of golden fuzz—the same as what covers his muscle-bound torso—where they stick up through his hair. His brows are thick and golden, his eyes a brighter shade of the same color, and his skin looks sun-kissed.
This man is simply golden, in one shade or another, from head to foot. And he has a tail, like… Well, like a lion. Only he walks upright, like a human. But despite the similarities to both, he is neither a lion nor a human.
He’s a man of another species.
When I realize I’ve been staring, I turn to find myself facing a hut in the center of an open patch of land. The building is small, of course, and there’s no porch and no stairs. It just sits flat on the ground, and I can tell from looking that the hut has only one room. It’s built from the trunks of those strange bluish green trees comprising the forest we’ve just run through. The roof is thatched with some combination of bark from those trees and a reddish substance that looks like algae.
I follow Lohr toward his home, and when he opens the door, I stand still in front of it, staring. I lay my hand on the outer wall. I don't remember this part—the rough, gritty texture of the tree trunks his home is made of. I don't remember the soft feel of the gray dust beneath my feet or the scent of smoke in the air, as if someone, somewhere is cooking dinner outside.
"It isn't real," Lohr says. "I know it looks real, and it feels real. But it isn't real. It's made out of something that— Well, you know what it does. When one of those glass bubbles rolls by, the whole hut becomes clear. Which means it can't really be made out of spica trees, because they don’t do that.”
"But it is," I tell him. "It really is made out of your trees, it's just that they've been altered on a cellular level."
"I don't know what that—"
"It means scientists have changed the structure of the material, on a cellular level, so that it's capable of doing something the original material was not. In this case, it's able to become completely transparent when the proper trigger is pulled. That way you can still live in an exact replica of your natural environment, but when they need to see inside—" I bite off the rest of what I was going to say when I realize how horrible it sounds.
“When they need to see inside?” he echoes.
The truth is that I’ve never really thought about that. About the voyeuristic aspect of the zoo habitats. They’ve just always been like this, and I haven’t personally seen any of them in a very long time. Since I was a kid.
Lohr goes inside, leaving me to follow. Or not to. I can't really fault the disgusted look on his face, but the fact is that because he and the other enclosure inhabitants are here, their homeworld is protected from miners, adventurers, scientists, and anyone else who might feel that they have the right to explore the less-developed planet, if not for Earth’s complicated system of non-interference laws.
Here, Lohr and his kind are protected. They’re provided for. Great care and expense are expended to make sure that every little aspect of their lives is exactly as it would be on Fetoja. This enclosure has been terraformed with plants from his homeworld. It’s been populated with species from his planet, so his people can hunt, forage, and produce just as their ancestors did. As the natives still do, on Fetoja.
Yes, paying tourists are admitted onto Ratera III to see the various species in their natural habitats. But the residents aren’t harmed. Their lives aren’t interrupted. They’re simply…observed.
I follow him inside. This space is smaller than I expected. It's darker too. I stand in the doorway, unsure what to do with myself while he begins to unload the supplies from his pack. The only real source of light is a few banked coals in the fire pit in the center of the room. It glows a bright red, but it doesn't put out much heat or illumination.
"You may as well make yourself at home," he says. But even if I knew how to do that, I'm not comfortable with it. I'm not really a guest; I'm more of a burden. I understand that.
"Is there something I can do to help?"
Lohr snorts again, as if I've said something mildly amusing. "Just sit somewhere and stay out of the way please.”
I turn, trying to find someplace safe to sit, and I stumble over something on the ground. Something I couldn't see, because there's no real light in here. "Sorry!" I cry, throwing my hands out to catch myself on the floor. "So sorry! I–"
The dark blur of his form moves past me and something squeaks. Daylight floods the small room from the window he's just opened, the woven covering propped open on a small stick. Before I can thank him, he's moved across the small hovel to open a second window the same way. "I forgot humans have very poor eyesight," he says.
I start to argue with that statement, but then I realize that from his perspective, he's absolutely right. I cannot see in the dark like he clearly can.
He kneels on the floor next to the fire pit and stirs the banked coals with another stick. When oxygen hits them, they flare to life, and soon he has a small fire going. He suspends a long stick over the fire pit, cradled in the forks of two other sticks, and he hangs a small leather pouch from the stick, directly over the fire. Then he takes a clay container down from a rough shelf too high up for me to reach, and he pours water from it into the pouch over the fire.
"Would you like some tea?" he asks.
“I—” I don't know what kind of tea he's offering, or whether it's something a human should ingest, but I don't want to be rude, considering everything he's already done for me in the hour I’ve been on this planet. And I am both thirsty and a little chilly. “Yes, thank you, that would be lovely."
I sound like an asshole. As if this is a social visit, and I should be on my best behavior. As if there will soon be little sandwiches and cloth napkins.
That's not what this is. Not even close.
I watch while Lohr takes another pouch from the shelf and pours some dried leaves into the water over the fire. When the water begins to steam, but hasn't yet begun to boil, he removes it from the fire, and covers the top of the bowl with
a thin piece of cloth. Using the homemade strainer, he pours tea from the pouch into two small cups that are apparently made from hollowed out portions of antler or horn.
Lohr gestures for me to sit on his pallet on the floor. When I sink onto it, I am surprised by how soft the fur beneath me feels. And that's what it is. Fur. Though I can't identify the animal that it came from.
He sits next to me holding both cups of tea, and he hands one to me. I hold the cup under my nose to inhale the scent. It smells a little bit like mint.
I take a sip, and the taste is mildly bitter, but pleasant. He's offering me hospitality. He's offering me warmth and sustenance. He's really going above and beyond, considering that he owes me nothing. That he could have left me out there to die.
I'm not sure why he didn't.
"So," he says, cradling his own cup. "How, exactly, did you wind up in the enclosure?”
"I told you, someone dropped me out of a shuttle."
"Who?" he asks.
"I don't know," I tell him. "Really, I don't." I take another sip from my cup while I think about that. Because his question has made a point that he probably didn’t intend. Security on Ratera III is very tight. It’s not like people can just fly down to the surface and drop someone off. There are clearances and checkpoints—a million hurdles—and there aren’t many people who would be able to get me here in secrecy.
Those people all go by the title “employees.” Which means this is an inside job.
But why would an employee want to strand me here? A disgruntled worker, eager for a quick payday? For revenge on my parents? Does my kidnapper intend to call in a ransom, or let my family suffer? Does he have any idea they don’t even know I’m missing?
"Why would someone do that to you?" Lohr’s question eerily echoes my own thoughts. "Why would someone drop a defenseless human woman in the Fetoji enclosure? I mean, humans may run this place, but they don’t come into the enclosures without weapons or a protective glass bubble. Because the environments they’ve tried to replicate for us are not safe for them.”
He’s right, of course. No one knows that better than I do. “I honestly have no idea." I can think of at least a hundred reasons someone might kidnap me and hold me in a warehouse or on a ship somewhere, but every one of those scenarios ends with the kidnapper asking for ransom, of some sort. I can't think of a single reason someone might drop me here, other than a desire to kill me. But if that were the case, why not just shoot me or shove me out an airlock in space? Why drop me in a cage and make sure I survive the fall?
I can't tell whether or not Lohr believes me. He just watches me while he sips his tea, so I do the same thing. The tea is growing on me. Or maybe I'm just so cold that any warmth feels like a relief.
“So, I have to ask. What’s with your dick?” Oh, shit. I didn’t mean to say that. I have no fucking idea why or how those words came out of my mouth. “I’m sorry.” I stand, and his hut starts to spin around me. I grab the edge of a roughly hewn table to steady myself, and I turn carefully to face him again. “What I meant to say is why is it…pointing at me?”
No. Wait, that’s not what I meant to say either. I know damn well why it’s pointing at me: the same reason I can’t stop looking at it.
I set my empty cup down and close my eyes, trying to breathe through the humiliated flush in my cheeks. “Take three. Scratch everything I said before. What I really meant to ask is why aren’t you wearing clothes?” I press my lips together, trying to hold the rest of it in. But that battle was lost before it even began. “And also, why is it always pointed at me? I mean, are you always hard, like, just in case opportunity presents itself?” In case fate drops a pajama-clad woman into his lap? Or into his net? “Is that a common feature of your species?” Because I don’t remember that being a common feature of his species.
Lohr blinks at me. Then he bursts into laughter. “I suspect that my tea is having an unforeseen side-effect on you. As a human.”
“You think? It’s like I drank away my filter.” Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit. I cannot be without my filter right now. Not around him. He cannot know who I am.
“I’m not sure what you mean by filter,” he admits. “Your use of the word doesn’t match the definition I know.” He shrugs. “There are a great many human words in my head that I have no association for.”
“Filter. It means I can’t—” I bite off the end of my explanation. The last thing I need is to tell him that he can basically ask me anything right now. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.” My gaze finds his dick again, and it’s still standing up straight. And long. And obviously hard.
I look away again, but not before he notices.
“To answer your question, I am hard because you are very attractive. It’s an involuntary reaction. If it bothers you—”
“You’ll put some clothes on?”
“No.” He frowns. “I have no use for clothing. I was going to say, if it bothers you, stop looking.”
But I can’t seem to stop looking. That’s my involuntary reaction. So I spin around and begin examining the clay pots and leather pouches laid out neatly on his shelves. "This is beautiful work.” I run my finger over a pot with an elaborate geometric pattern painted in dark blue. "Did you do these yourself?"
"Some of them," he says. "Some, I bartered for."
“And these pouches? They’re leather?" I ask. Lohr nods. "Are they made from an animal like the one you killed today?"
"That was an ezaki," he says. "And yes, some of the pouches are made from ezaki leather, but most are from other creatures. I rarely have the chance to hunt ezaki.”
"And you made those pouches too?"
"Most of them."
I turn toward the shelf on the left-hand wall, and the entire hut seems to spin around me again, only this time I can’t regain my balance. His thatched roof flashes in front of me as I hit the ground, flat on my back. Stunned as my lungs expel my breath.
Lohr kneels beside me, his knees thunking onto the dirt floor. He stares down at me, his golden eyes glowing in the flicker of the firelight. "Hold still," he says, his hands hovering over me without touching, as if he’s not sure how to help.
"Sorry. I got a little dizzy. I think it's the tea."
"You'll be fine," he says. "You just need some rest." Lohr slides his arms beneath me and lifts me as if I weigh nothing. He carries me across the small hut and lays me on the fur pallet, my head propped on a bundle of soft cloth. "Just close your eyes and sleep for a bit," he says.
I shake my head, my hair catching on the fir beneath me. "I don't want to sleep I…" I try to push myself upright, and the whole world spins. "Lohr, I think I'm going to pass out. Another unforeseen side effect of the tea."
He chuckles as he looks down at me, brushing hair back from my forehead. "That one's not unexpected."
“What?” Ohhhh. “You bastard,” I mumble as the world goes dark. The son of a bitch drugged me.
4
Lohr
It takes me all day and at least a dozen trips to and from my kill in order to harvest most of what I need from it. I work as fast as I can—faster than I ever have before—yet every moment that I spend away from my den, away from Syrie, is a moment full of anxiety. She's safer in my den then she would be anywhere else on the planet. I know that. That's why I gave her the tea in the first place, and only took a couple of sips from my own cup. If I took her with me to harvest my kill, aside from the fact that she would slow me down, I would be putting her in danger. I can't do my work and look out for her. Scavengers abound out here, and she's not prepared to deal with them. As far as I can tell, she has no defensive skills, even if I were to give her a weapon.
And I can't let her get hurt.
Every time I return to my hut, I check on her. I press two fingers to her wrist to take her pulse, but I'm not sure how fast a human's pulse should be. Her breathing is even. Steady. Her skin is pink. In fact, it's a rather attractive shade, strange and smooth—and largely hairless—as it i
s.
Everything about her is attractive, actually. Beautiful, in fact. So what if she lacks a golden mane? Her long, dark mane is gorgeous. It's falls halfway down her back in thick waves.
Her eyes are a deep brown, and when I lift her eyelids to check them, her eyes move as if she's seeing something in her sleep. Her pupils dilate in the glow from the fire. Her lips are heart-shaped, a deep dusky pink. And the arch of her neck is the single most graceful line I've ever seen on a woman.
I want to touch her. She's so soft and delicate, and she smells so sweet. I want to run my hands all over her and acquaint myself with her form. I want to experience her. But I want her awake for that pleasure. I want to tug her hair to the side, arching her neck so that she looks back at me as I sink into her.
The fifth time I return to my hut, my handcart full, my shoulders hunched with the weight of my pack, she stirs when she hears me come in. Her eyes don't open, but her head turns, her hands twitching in her sleep. She's about to wake.
I quietly drop my burdens at the door and take another leaf from the pouch. It's dry and crunchy so I dip it in my own still-full teacup, then I break it in half and place one half of the leaf beneath her lower lip. I saw my mother do that for my brother once when he was sick. That way, she explained, the chemicals would slowly seep into his bloodstream and keep him asleep. He had a fever and he needed to rest.
Syrie doesn't have a fever, but she does need to rest. But mostly, she needs to remain safe. Here. Out of sight and out of scent-range of the other predators. I can't afford to let her get hurt, but neither can I afford to give up my hard-fought for kill.
The Lion and the Mouse Page 4