Trin gave her a knowing nod and nudged her cousin forward. The line snaked out of the village toward the meadow. Frieda trotted away and waved back over her shoulder. “Good-bye! See you later.”
When they couldn’t see her anymore, she broke and ran for her own house. She ran into her house and turned her back on the door so she wouldn’t see them out there. Whatever they were doing, she didn’t want to see it.
Chapter 8
Frieda bent over her sewing, but she couldn’t make the needle obey her. No matter what she tried, it slipped out of place and stabbed her in the finger, or the thread tangled and went where she didn’t want it. She couldn’t stop thinking about whatever was happening out there in the meadow. After hours of trying, she threw the cloth on her table and paced around the room.
At least it was dark outside. She didn’t have to worry about seeing the convocation outside her door. But she couldn’t rest. She paced around the room. Had she missed anything vitally important by staying away? Would the Aqinas resent her sleeping with Deek and then shunning their most sacred institution? Was she in or out? Was she under the water or was she on land? She had to make up her mind once and for all and stand by her decision.
She lay down on her bed, but her mind wouldn’t let her sleep. Deek wasn’t there to rock her to sleep. Would he ever come back? He kept insisting the convocation was optional, so why did she doubt it?
The first dawn light filtered down through the surface of the water to light the meadow. A brisk wind gusted over the waving grass and flowers. It blew the scent of warm soil and verdant fields to her. The soft wind and subtle smell calmed her as much as she could be calmed on this knife-edge of indecision. She stepped out of her house and set off through the forest.
She steered well clear of Sasha’s house and struck deep into the heart of the seaweed into a part of the Aqinas territory where she’d never ventured before. The trees blocked out most of the light, but as the day grew overhead, she could see enough to make her way.
The plant life changed. Different colored flowers clustered by her path. They looked more like anemones, and spiky balls rolled along the ground in the wind. A yellow flower on a thick stalk drew its roots out of the rocky soil and tiptoed across the ground. The longer she spent in the Aqinas world, the more it lost its Earthlike appearance and looked like the bottom of the ocean. Maybe in time even the pretense of the meadow and the air around her would disappear. Maybe in time she would accept her situation enough to see this world as it truly was. She wouldn’t need the fantasy anymore. Would that be so bad? She would have to ask Sasha what she saw in the meadow. Did she see wind blowing through grass and wildflowers, or did she see water waves and coral banks?
How long and how far she walked, she didn’t know, but walking didn’t answer her questions for her. The decision would never get any easier, yet she couldn’t reject one world in favor of the other, or make one people more important to her than the other. Whichever way she turned, the one she left behind called her back until she didn’t know which direction to turn.
All at once, she came to herself and looked around. She didn’t recognize the forest. She’d wandered away from familiar territory. She walked back the way she came with a faint hope she would find the meadow and the village and her house again.
Full day streamed through the waving tree tops. The plant life changed again, and she began to recognize her own territory again. Her spirits soared. She would see Deek and her friends again, and her old familiar meadow and her quaint little house. The whole Aqinas territory beckoned to her with such a loving and nourishing embrace. It was her home as much as anything on Earth. Nothing on Angondra could touch it for its nucleus of perfect comfort and ease.
She quickened her step. She couldn’t get there fast enough. What would she find waiting for her? Probably no one would have noticed her gone. She might have been gone only a few minutes, but to her, she was coming home after an eternity of wandering in the wilderness. They say home is where they have to take you in, and the Aqinas would take her in. Not only Deek, but his relatives, and Sasha and Fritz, and all the other Aqinas would rejoice at her return. No one else on Angondra would do as much. She couldn’t even be sure she could show her face in any of the other factions.
That wasn’t true, though. The Lycaon and the Avitras would both welcome her back, but who could compare to the Aqinas? Who had come out to welcome her with song and dance and laughter? Who had made her so settled and at home? No one.
A light broke through the trees, and she caught a glimpse of the meadow beyond. She could live in that meadow for the rest of her life and never get tired or bored with it. She loved her little house, especially with Deek in it, and Sasha proved she never had to leave it if she didn’t want to. She even loved the frustration of her sewing. She only needed a few lessons from Jen to make it enjoyable. She might even try some other kind of work—pottery, perhaps.
A shadow crossed her view, and a figure stepped out from behind the trees. His eyes flew to her face, but he didn’t smile. His jaw tensed, and his shoulders stiffened. Frieda walked faster until she almost ran. He strode through the trees with stiff tread, his hands flexed and his muscles tensed. Frieda’s heart fluttered. She didn’t belong anywhere but with him. She never had to see the land or her sisters or breathe the upper air again as long as she could catch him and hold him.
She broke into a run. She stumbled and ran on. He didn’t run, but he pushed toward her with all his power. She gasped for breath to run faster, to get to him sooner, to erase the distance between them forever. A cry broke from her throat, not quite a sob, not a laugh, but something unknown, a call for him to bury her under the ocean, never to be seen again.
Then their bodies collided at full force, and their arms flung around each other in desperate need. Deek lifted Frieda off the ground and crushed her in his embrace. She pressed him closer to her with every ounce of her strength, but he was still too far away. She could never get close enough to him to satisfy her. She caught at him with her legs, and he lifted her the rest of the way to sit with her legs around his hips.
He sank his teeth into her neck and growled. She nipped his ear. She grasped the back of his head and pushed him down into her. As fast as he consumed her, it wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough until the water dissolved them completely and mingled their molecules in its solution.
He staggered forward under her weight, but neither slackened their grip one iota. He walked one way and then the other. She paid no attention. She burned in feverish desire for him. She no longer cared where or how he took her as long as she was his. She no longer held out any hope for anything but him.
He slammed her back against a tree trunk and knocked the breath from her lungs, but she only clung tighter to him with all four limbs. He held her against the tree with his body and tore at her clothes with his hands. The tender caution of last night vanished in the wind, leaving raw animal desire in its place. She clawed his shirt away with ravenous fury, but she couldn’t reach anything else. No matter. Deek handled the rest. He didn’t bother with her shirt but went straight for her pants, and then his own.
He exposed only those parts of their bodies needed to bring them together in wet contact. Then everything else vanished in explosions of light and heat. Frieda raised her voice to the treetops, and Deek howled into her ear until he couldn’t keep his legs rigid against the tree anymore. They sank to the ground in harmonized groans and fell into unconscious bliss.
Frieda’s eyes hovered half open. Waves of energy sparkled over her skin and through her body as if every tissue sizzled with independent life. For a moment, she could believe she dissolved in water, and her cells floated away in a diffuse cloud to the limits of the ocean.
The wind turned cold, and Frieda shivered. Deek stirred on top of her, but neither moved. Frieda blinked up at the sky. The sun slipped behind the canopy, and the shadows deepened. Deek sighed and shifted on top of her. Then he cleared his throat.
>
“Do you have to go?” she asked.
“I don’t have anywhere to go but home,” he replied.
Frieda let out a shaky breath. Home—where was that? Was it her little house, or was it the family house in the village? What difference did it make? One was as home as the other. She no longer cared where she went.
Deek murmured into her ear. “Come with me.”
She blinked, and her vision cleared. “Where?”
He pulled back and studied her. “I’m going to the village. I’m going to my family. Come back to the village and stay there with me.”
Her cells congealed once again into a body she could inhabit. “I’ll come. I'll come anywhere with you.”
He stared at her, but didn’t respond. Then he buried his face in her neck again with a long sigh. The heat of their union dissipated and left them cold. They clung to each other for warmth, but the cold came from inside them, from being separated. “We should go soon.”
She ran her fingers into his hair, “Let’s go.” But they made no move to get up.
He held himself still against her chest and waited. When he finally spoke, his voice quivered. “Are you sure?”
She pushed him back and gazed deep into his eyes. “I’m sure. Let’s go. I want to.”
He rose on his elbows to give her room to get up. She wriggled back into her pants. How coarse and unwieldy they were. The Aqinas’ white gown was much more practical and comfortable. She would have to find one for herself.
Deek got to his feet, too, and they set off through the forest. Frieda slipped her hand into his and smiled at him when he raised his eyebrows. Everything was right. Nothing could spoil her certain solidity of mind. She’d found her place at last.
When they emerged from the forest, the sun broke through the treetops once again and warmed Frieda through. She raised her face to the sky and drank in the beauty of the meadow with its smell of flowers. She cast her eye back toward her little house, but it no longer called to her. Her home was elsewhere, with Deek.
“Do you want to stop by and pick anything up?” he asked. “What about your sewing? You could bring it with you.”
She shook her head. “I’ll come back for it later.”
They walked on without a word in undisturbed tranquillity. Frieda caught sight of the village ahead, and her heart laughed in pure joy. No one could ask for a better home or kinder people. What more could life offer but family, and work and comfort?
They rounded the corner of the forest, and Jen came out of her house. Frieda smiled up the hill at her. Then Sasha and Fritz came out of another house. Deek stopped. Frieda looked at him. “What’s the matter?”
He stared up at the village. More people came out of their houses. They joined hands and filed down the hill. More and more people took their places at the end of the line until hundreds of people, from every doorway, descended the hill and passed Deek and Frieda. Frieda stared at them. The front of the line turned the corner and disappeared into the meadow. More and more people, people she didn’t recognize, flooded the village byways and joined the procession.
Frieda could barely choke out a whisper. “What’s going on?”
“It’s the convocation,” Deek murmured.
“You just had one last night,” Frieda pointed out. “Why are they having another one?”
Deek shook his head, but at that moment, Trin burst out of the house and hurried toward them. “Come quick, both of you!”
“What’s happening?” Frieda asked.
“It’s the factions,” Trin told her. “The Felsite and the Ursidreans are meeting on the frontier. They’re making peace.”
Chapter 9
Deek took a step forward to follow Trin to the convocation, but Frieda held back. He glanced back at her. “Are you coming?”
She tried to pull her hand out of his grasp. “I don’t think so.”
He brought his face closer to hers. “Come now, Frieda. If you’re going to join the Aqinas and stay here with me, you should come now. We need you.”
Frieda’s eyes flew open. “You need me? What for?”
“For the convocation,” he replied. “We need every Aqinas to participate so we can get a clear vision of what’s happening on land. Help us. It’s the best way we can help the other factions put their differences aside.”
Frieda watched the long line of white-clothed people. The end of the line approached the corner. They would enter the meadow in a minute and leave her behind, alone. Was she with them or not?
Deek loosened his grip on her hand to let her go. He would leave her to join his people. She couldn’t let that happen. If the convocation was good enough for him and his family, it was good enough for her. She caught hold of his hand again and squeezed it. “I’m coming with you.”
They ran to catch up with the last Aqinas in line. Deek caught the man by the hand, and Frieda held onto Deek. She couldn’t go wrong if she only kept hold of him.
The line emerged into the meadow and circled back on itself. Frieda couldn’t see any faces in the enormous circle beyond those closest to her. White specks dotted the landscape and formed a huge ring. The front of the line looped back and Jen, the first person in the line, took Frieda’s hand. A surge of power ran through the circle, and the grass and flowers inside the ring shimmered with watery waves.
Frieda’s head swam, and before her eyes, the whole landscape disappeared. In the middle of the circle, an arid plain stretched from one horizon to the other. A bleak, yellow sun glared down from an empty sky. None of the colors of the Aqinas world decorated that country.
A chasm cut the plain in half, and on one side, a column of people crossed the expanse. Some rode on palanquins off the ground, but most walked in files of three and four. A leonine man with a burnt orange mane of hair around his head stood on the palanquin at the column’s head, and a small, dark-haired woman sat at his feet. She had no mane. She was human.
A murmur rippled through the convocation. Was it a voice, or just a silent knowing transmitted through the water connecting them all? “Alpha Renier, leader of the Felsite. And that’s Carmen, his mate.”
Across the plain, on the other side of the chasm, another column rose out of the parched ground. They rode on some kind of vehicles, most with massive guns mounted on their fronts. The people all carried weapons, and the weapons buzzed with strange energy.
A burly man with black hair and powerful shoulders sat on one of the vehicles, but he didn’t show himself the way the Felsite leader did. He sat among his men, with only a burning intensity in his small black eyes and on his heavy brow to indicate the weight on his shoulders.
“Alpha Donen, leader of the Ursidrean faction,” the water whispered. Frieda didn’t see any females in the Ursidrean column, and none accompanied Donen on his battle machine.
The vision pulled back to take in the whole scene, and a tiny hint of movement caught Frieda’s eye from somewhere deep inside the chasm. She narrowed her eyes, and the vision focused on the spot. All of a sudden, she cried out in surprise.
Four tiny specks, lonely and insignificant, appeared in the very bottom of the canyon. Two women and two men raced along the stream that cut through sheer clay walls. They ran on an intercept course with the two columns. The first man was Lycaon, with slender, supple limbs and pointed ears sticking up through his rusty brown hair. Frieda recognized Turk, younger twin brother to Caleb, the Lycaon Alpha. He’d visited the Lycaon village a couple of times while she was there. He visited his brother and mother and sister. Then he disappeared into the forest. A rumor went around the village that he lived with a human mate up on the mountain, but no one had seen her.
In the vision, a tall human woman ran at his side. She wore clothes made of skins like all Lycaon, and she carried a short blade in one hand. Her long hair hung down her back braided into a thick rope, and it swung back and forth as she ran. She must be Turk’s secret mate.
Another surprised cry
broke the silence of the vision, and Frieda glanced to her right. Sasha moved forward, but the Aqinas kept hold of her hands to keep the circle complete. “That’s Chris Sebastiani,” Sasha cried out. “She was with me when the Romarie ship crashed. She had to leave me for dead when the Lycaon rescued her and the other women.”
The other man in the little group was Ursidrean. Frieda didn’t recognize him, and the water gave no hint who he might be. But she tried to tear herself out of the circle when she saw the other woman. Her brown hair hung loose past her shoulders, and she wore close-fitting pants and a fitted shirt. She didn’t run as fast as the Lycaon. She kept close to the Ursidrean. “Emily!”
Deek murmured into her ear. “Don’t step out of line. You’ll break the connection.”
She yanked harder at her hand. “That’s my sister Emily. We thought she died when the Romarie ship crashed.”
A watery knowing swept over her. No images interfered with the collective vision of the convocation, but some buried part of Frieda understood what happened to Emily. She fell out of the ship when it broke up in the atmosphere. She must have found her way to the Ursidreans somehow. That must be why she stayed close to that big Ursidrean male now. Anybody could see they cared about each other.
“Don’t break the connection,” Deek told her.
Frieda took a step forward against his restraining hand. “I have to go to her. I have to at least tell her I’m okay. She probably thinks I’m dead. This could be my only chance to find her and communicate with her.”
He pulled her back with such force that she spun around to face him. “Don’t step out of line, Frieda. This is much too important. The factions are making peace, after centuries of war. We can’t allow anything to interfere with that.”
“I have to go,” she insisted. “I can’t be happy here until I see my sister.”
“I thought you’d settled that,” Deek remarked. “You said you would stay and join our family.”
Frieda glanced toward the vision. “That was before I saw Emily. She’s right there in front of me. I can’t turn my back on her.”
Rohn (Dragons of Kratak Book 1) Page 58