by Joey W. Hill
He thought it through. “Yes. Because it would be easy to misunderstand, before you know me better.”
He suspected the honesty had surprised her, because her tone was less antagonistic when she spoke again. “How will you know it’s time to tell me, when you won’t be misunderstood?”
“Instinct. Like how you know the proper moment to launch into the sky.”
“That is no more a decision for me than walking is for you.”
“Good thing for me, because you knew the right moment to catch me before I was turned into matchsticks at the bottom of that cliff.”
She made a dubious noise, as if she were doubting the wisdom of her decision to help him. But he was pleased. She wanted to converse with him. She didn’t seem hesitant or stumble over her words as someone would who had spent so much time alone, so he expected she spoke a great deal to her snakes or even to herself.
“If you did come through a portal, what is your world like?” she asked, confirming it. “How far in the future is it?”
“You believe me, then?”
“No. But I want to hear the story you’ve created to support it.”
Fair enough. He’d pretty much said the same thing to Maddock when he’d brought his story to JP.
A creak suggested she’d taken a seat in the chair on the far side of the table. It kept several items of furniture between them. He admired her vigilance even as he wished they could just jump ahead to when she would trust him. But as he well knew, the journey of winning someone’s trust gave the relationship—wherever it ultimately ended up—its richness and value.
“Okay, then. We’re about twenty-five hundred years ahead of you. There are a lot of people. Over seven billion, and growing.”
“That is impossible. How do they survive, with so many? There would not be enough to eat.”
He attempted to explain industrialization to her, comparing it to how they worked together in the fields and came up with streamlined processes to make that easier. While not being able to gauge her reaction from her face or body language was somewhat dissatisfying, her attention was a dense heat that never wavered. Plus, her alluring combination of scents, imprinting itself on his consciousness like a permanent memory trigger, compensated for the lack of ability to see her.
He could imagine immersing himself in that scent with her in his bed, beneath him, her arms and legs around him. Her breath sighed along his cheek, her silken muscles gripping him in the aftermath of a climax that sent them drifting through a world for just the two of them, where there were no barriers or misunderstandings left between them.
Remember, she will kill you if you forget yourself, you romantic idiot.
“Those things you describe,” she was saying. “The ideas are clever. You are an accomplished storyteller.”
“I’d like to take the credit, but those things really exist in my time. There’s a drawback to all of it. Most of the people in my world would be lost in yours. They don’t know how to take care of themselves out of range of the nearest Walmart, ATM machine or Starbuck’s. Those are stores that provide us money, food, and basic necessities like what you’ve created from scratch here.”
“The first season was the hardest. It takes time for things to grow, and I had to learn what wild plants were edible and how to hunt when necessary. I did not do much of that at the temple. Others were responsible for that. But I… It was difficult for me to kill other living beings. Then.”
The one word was laden with a bitter darkness he sensed was best not to pursue right now. As much as he wanted to delve into everything about her, he understood what she’d faced on that. He didn’t have to think about who his first kill had been. The faces were always there. He smoothly changed the subject, for both of them.
“I like your home. Can you describe how you’re sitting, my lady? Your voice sounds higher than it would be if you were sitting.”
“Your sense of hearing is exceptional. I’m perched on the chair. Perching is easier than sitting with wings.”
“Do you ever wear shoes?”
A sudden silence. “You looked.”
“Only at your feet. I figured the lack of shoes is how you move so quietly. The snakes you drew on your legs earlier—do you do that often? From your papers here, you seem to like to draw.”
A slight weight landed on his thigh and draped. The eye mask.
“Put it back on,” she said tersely.
He could have argued, pointing out he’d purposefully kept his gaze on her feet to prove there was no risk that he’d foolishly attempt to look at her face. But he also had to prove he would not oppose her needlessly. As he sat up and laced the mask in place, he continued the conversation as if there’d been no sudden injection of tension between them.
“Can you tell me about your snakes, my lady? The ones attached to you.”
She was probably interpreting all of his questions as an attempt by an enemy to gather intel, so there was no point in trying to pick innocuous questions. If she was reacting the way he would in a similar situation, she was probably analyzing each one to determine if a truthful answer would lose her an advantage. Perhaps she would give him an untruthful one to throw him off, but it would still be conversation.
“There are five. Sometimes they weave together to form a crown on my head. Other times, they hang loose, like my hair, and twist together for their amusement.”
“How do they eat?”
“They get their nourishment from what I eat. Though sometimes, despite my wish otherwise, they exercise their hunting instincts on a bug or tiny lizard.” He was amused to hear the grimace in her voice. “I perceive the taste and texture of what they are eating.”
“Complete with still wiggling legs?”
He surprised a chuckle out of her, one she muffled. He marveled again at how girlish she could sound when she laughed. “Yes. But I have tried to adapt to their preferences as they have done to mine. Fortunately, most the time they are happy to steal bits from my plate when they want to ingest food in the normal way.”
“If I pull on one of the snakes, does it feel like someone tugging on your hair?”
This time the mirth in her voice was even more obvious. He’d hoped such whimsical questions would help her relax, and it seemed to be working. “I’ve never had anyone suggest such a thing. Or attempt it, but I expect yes, since they are attached to me, it would feel like having my hair pulled.”
“Are they separate beings?” He wasn’t sure if she’d understand the question, but she did.
“Yes. We share dreams when we sleep, and I know which are theirs and which are mine. I hear their thoughts. Different from mine, much simpler in some ways, yet far more intuitive. They live close to the rhythms of the earth. It is hard to describe, more like feelings than language, but it comes through just as clearly.” She paused. “They told me their names and, though their language is beyond my tongue, they consented to me calling them by the meaning of the name I understand in my language.”
“Would you share those with me?” he asked, intrigued. Maddock would be having kittens. This was the type of data the scientist-wizard snorted up like crack.
“Earthson, Treebark, Waterlight, Tunneltrap and Ratqueen.”
From the warmth in her tone, he had the feeling she was touching each as she spoke their names. “Earthson and Tunneltrap are males. Ratqueen is the leader, in a sense. The strongest personality, though there are times they speak in one voice, or two will speak as one mind. Tunneltrap and Waterlight are siblings. The others are not related, and they are four different species. Treebark and Ratqueen are not of any species I have ever seen before… Ratqueen is all white with pink eyes, an albino, and far larger than the others. Treebark looks like his name, as if he is covered with the rough bark of a tree.”
“Is his head kind of like a fat diamond shape, almost a square?”
“Yes, somewhat.”
“I’d guess he’s a bush viper. Ratqueen I’m not sure about. Albinos are usuall
y a gene mutation, but if she’s bigger, she may be some kind of python.”
“Oh. How do you know of this?”
“I worked in a place that had lots of different snakes. Studied them both to help the species and to educate people so they wouldn’t always treat them as enemies.”
“Oh.” The suspicion that entered that syllable suggested she thought he was playing on her obvious attachment to the serpents, so he didn’t linger on that.
“You said they are attached to you ‘in a way.’ Why did you qualify it? You don’t have to answer anything you do not wish to answer, my lady, but I ask not only for myself. Maddock—he’s the man who figured out how to use the portals and helped me come here—speculates on scientific and magical phenomena. It’s his passion. If he were here, he’d ask you far more questions. You’d want to turn him to stone to shut him up. Depending on how I feel about him that day, I might support your decision. He can be even more irritating than me.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
But he heard a touch of precious humor in the wary statement. She was revealing a sincere desire to enjoy another human’s company if she could, all while she was keeping her distance, obviously ready for it to turn into a confrontation. Though he was glad for her curiosity, deducing what she’d faced while here, he was amazed she was still reaching for that connection. Perhaps after being here so long on her own without human company, it was a compulsion that couldn’t be denied, bursting free and insisting on seeking as much pleasure from the connection as could be found before it ended. Or had to be ended.
He pushed that dark thought aside as she answered him. “It is deeper than just a physical attachment of their body to my head. It is as if the rest of them is…inside me. All through me. They became part of me…”
“After the curse” was implied in the trailing sentence. It reminded him that the challenges she’d faced on the island, as difficult and dangerous as they’d been, probably couldn’t hold a candle to what had happened to bring her here. But he heard the warning in her tone. She was prepared to draw away if he crossed the line into painful, intimate areas he didn’t have the right to know. Yet.
“Sounds like they keep you from feeling too alone.”
She swallowed, a subtle noise that betrayed emotion. Her voice drew farther away, as if she’d moved up to the rafters to perch. But she didn’t leave.
“When I dance, there are times I feel like a snake myself, the way my arms and legs, my whole body, moves. And the snakes move with me, as if they are as influenced by my rhythm as I am by theirs.”
“You dance?”
“Sometimes. I enjoy it. Particularly when the moon is full and all the creatures of the island sing. Sometimes I lay down on the earth so the snakes can stretch out on a rock or the warm earth as they would do if they were free of me. I know they wish for that sometimes. What creature doesn’t wish for freedom? But they are tolerant of me, and we only have the occasional argument anymore.”
He thought of the demonic picture where the snakes were sinking their fangs into her flesh. “Was it bad, in the beginning? Getting along with them,” he added quickly, so she knew he wasn’t asking about other things, probably much harder to discuss.
“In the beginning, when we understood one another far less, we fought. They bit me, and I would seek to pull them from my head.” Her voice held regret. “I severed one from me with a sharp knife, when I didn’t understand. The pain of it struck me unconscious. I was feverish and unable to rise for several days. Another snake grew back during that time. Only when he was fully mature did the agony cease. That snake was Earthson. I never knew the name of the one I killed.”
She took a breath. “But I understood then that they are part of me, and offered gifts to the Snake Goddess and Asclepius to ask their forgiveness and that of the snake spirit. It took quite a while for the others to learn to trust me again, but not as long as it might have taken were they not in my head and able to understand my ignorance, as well as my true contrition.”
She’d come closer again, returning to the chair. From a rhythmic sound, he realized she was likely stroking one of the snakes as she spoke. “When they bit me, it caused them a proportionate amount of pain also. So it only happens now if they get frightened or startled, when it’s unthinking instinct. We’ve learned to live within our limits and discover other strengths together.”
“Like your wings. I’m grateful for your wings. I would have had a nasty fall without those.”
She returned to eating her fruit. He wondered if she was offering pieces to the snakes. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable. He didn’t sense she’d stopped because he’d said something offensive. While she seemed to enjoy talking, she wouldn’t be used to doing it for prolonged periods, at least not to humans. But maybe she was worried she was becoming too friendly, sending him the wrong message. Perhaps…
“Do you like it when I talk, my lady? Do you enjoy that?”
Another thoughtful silence, the kind that seemed to precede almost every question he asked. “Yes. So far. You ask things no one else has.”
“You can ask me to be silent when you tire of talk. I’m fine with being quiet.” Most of his life he’d preferred it, because when he spoke, it was usually to lie, whether he was covering for his mother with the guidance counselor or social services, or convincing a small time drug dealer why he could trust JP with more info about his network. “But I’d love to hear your voice, talking about any topic you choose.”
Chewing. Swallowing. “At the temple, there was a senior priestess who wanted us to be silent unless commanded to speak. When she was not around, the younger girls, we would whisper and laugh. The priestess in charge of us, Klotho, she didn’t mind. She told us we must be demure at festivals and perform the rituals properly, but when not performing our duties, it was acceptable to laugh. She told us Athena would enjoy hearing our laughter.”
A rasping sound suggested Medusa was running her claws over the table, hard enough to betray some deeper emotions. Now he knew the patterned grooves were not merely decoration, but a tapestry of contemplation or agitation, like now.
“What do you have in this odd carrying bag?” she said abruptly. “The weight of it is likely what toppled you off the cliff.”
“I’ve had to climb with it before. It’s usually better to have it with me than not.” He found the pack by feel and pulled it over to her chair. When he unzipped it, her hands brushed his away and she took it from him. He heard it land on the table with a thump and then the sound of the zipper moving forward and back.
“How remarkable. Like tiny teeth.”
As he imagined her peering at it curiously, he bit back a smile. “There are many pockets,” he said.
More zippers were opened and snaps popped free. A different kind of noise told him she was loosening the shoe string style lacing along the back spine, the ties he’d used to sheathe the sword. He’d leaned the weapon in a corner of her abode.
Olivia’s daughter had a doll with plenty of zippers, ties and buttons, a teaching aid to increase finger dexterity and help her ultimately learn how to dress herself. Within a week, she’d torn the dress and lost the laces to the doll’s shoes so the toy was permanently barefoot.
His lady proved she could be an equal force for chaos and destruction. A rattling and a shift of the canvas across the table surface, followed by an erratic thump-thump-thump noise, told him she’d upended the opened pack and was shaking out the contents. As items fell, clattered, clinked and rolled away, he masked a wince, thinking of his careful packing job to ensure he made the most of every inch of space. He heard a couple of hisses, as if the snakes had been startled by the emergence of so many items. Or something had bounced off of one or more of their heads.
“Odd garments,” she remarked.
He’d brought one pair of jeans and a couple T-shirts with the shorts, in case he hopped back through a portal and needed to blend. More for his comfort than anything else, since a man i
n a Grecian tunic in the middle of Times Square would barely elicit a blink from jaded New Yorkers.
“If you hand me what you’re looking at, I can explain more about it. If you wish.”
A lot of debate had happened over the modern items that went into the pack. Maddock had agreed John should bring some things to intrigue her. He’d seen no danger to the space-time continuum from a pair of jeans or Nikes. On the flip side, they’d agreed that firearms were a no-go.
She was a myth, yes, but she was also part of a historical time period. Whether this place was real or a legend in a dimension slightly off kilter with theirs, an advanced weapon could change the course of human history, since war ironically carved much of the shape of civilization.
The jeans landed in his lap, a mute request for him to explain as he’d offered. “These are called jeans. A form of pants, trousers. And that, yeah, that’s underwear, to go, well, under them.”
She took them back from him. He imagined she was testing the elastic of his boxers like a kid playing with the stretchiness of a rubber band, or fingering the holes of the fly. He contained another chuckle because he didn’t want her to think he was laughing at her, but he was charmed by her innocent and uncontained interest.
He heard a rushing noise, like a small rain stick. “You’ve found the seed packets.”
“Seeds?”
“Yeah. Don’t open them until we can plant them, because some of them are pretty small. We thought some plants from my time and place might grow pretty well here. Figured you raised a lot of your own food and might appreciate some new stuff.”
“That is very…thoughtful.” Then her tone changed from guarded pleasure to borderline threat. “This knife is not for food preparation.”
She didn’t hand it to him. As he heard the military grade weapon leaving the scabbard, he quelled his instinct to reach for it, a protective gesture she might misinterpret as an aggressive one. The blade was honed to a lethal sharpness.
“It would be handy for cutting up an overcooked steak, but you’re right. It’s a pretty good throwing knife, but its best use is close quarters fighting. The sword and knife were intended to prove my ability to protect you if needed.”