“Will they run away?” Reza asked as he let Goliath go.
Esah-Zhurah looked at him. “Why do you ask? Are you afraid of walking back?”
Reza frowned, not enthused at the idea. But watching Goliath devour the nearby plants eased his mind. Unless something frightened him, he would stay here where there was plenty of food.
They left the saddles in a convenient enclave of dry rock and forgot about the feasting animals. Hefting the packs of supplies that Esah-Zhurah had made up for them, they began to climb higher up the mountain face, scaling their way along a natural stairway in a huge crevice that split the mountainside like a mischievous, toothy grin.
They had climbed only a few minutes before they came to a tunnel that disappeared into the mountain. Esah-Zhurah waited for Reza to join her before she stepped off into the near darkness of the tunnel, feeling her way along, her talons lightly scraping the tunnel walls. Reza was fascinated by the echoing sounds of their footsteps and the smell that is peculiar to ancient stone places that have never seen the full light of day. But after a few paces his ears pricked at something new: the rushing sound of water.
“Esah-Zhurah…” he said tentatively, a trace of fear in his voice as his mind conjured up an image of the two of them being swept down the mountainside by a sudden torrent of water erupting from the mountain’s bowels.
“We are nearly there,” came her voice from the darkness, and Reza felt her hand take hold of his forearm to lead him along; she could still see clearly in the dark, while he could barely see a shifting shadow where she might – or might not – be.
The rushing sound grew into a roar, and Reza was opening his mouth to speak again when suddenly, as if dawn had broken within the tunnel, light began to return.
He found himself standing on a ledge overlooking paradise.
“My God,” he whispered, his eyes lost to the wondrous sight before him. Esah-Zhurah overlooked his comment in his old tongue, forgiving him as she herself embraced the scene.
They stood overlooking what had once been an ancient volcano. It was a tremendous crater whose walls rose nearly vertically to a height of hundreds of meters to the clouds that swept along the crest. Mosses and lichens covered the walls like tapestries of fire, their reds and yellows swirling like the surface of a gas giant. Leafy green plants also flourished, clinging insistently to the ledges protruding from the sides like tiny green outposts in the midst of a desert of rampant color. And on the far side from where the two of them stood was a waterfall that roared its existence, born from the tap of a stream far above them to fall into a crystal pool that lay at the bottom of the ancient caldera, forming a beautiful grotto. The surface shone like the shimmering mirror of some great telescope, the falling water leaving behind a gentle mist that floated in the air as if by magic.
“Come,” Esah-Zhurah said, tugging on Reza’s arm. Had he looked down at just that moment, he would have seen the trace of a smile on her face as she saw the wonder on his, but it passed swiftly, as if stolen by the steadily setting sun.
He wordlessly followed her toward an enclave whose overhang kept the rock within dry.
“This,” Esah-Zhurah said as she set down her things, startling a small lizard that disappeared into the vegetation, shrieking, “shall be our home until we return to the kazha, and the Challenge.”
***
Reza awoke the next morning to the sound of a group of lizards, perched somewhere high above, trumpeting their territorial claims to one another like a brass ensemble gone mad. The sun had not yet risen high enough to reach the bottom of the caldera, but it would: on this day, unlike most, the clouds that normally concealed the grotto’s inhabitants from the piercing rays of the sun, leaving it instead in a soft glow of filtered light, had parted. Already some of the more adventurous – and boisterous – inhabitants had gathered to await the arrival of the warmth that would come from above.
He was reluctant to shed the musky skins that had protected him from the slight chill of the night, but his stomach was insistent. Dinner had been light the previous evening, as neither he nor Esah-Zhurah had wanted to spoil the sunset and twilight with cooking chores, and both of them had gone to bed early, lulled to sleep by the steady roar of the waterfall.
Reza listened to the tumultuous sound of the water and thought that it would be nice to see if he could manage a swim later on in the pool below. Reluctantly, he tossed aside the covers and began the ritual stretching the tresh were taught early on to perform, readying his body for whatever lay ahead during the day.
“Late do you rise, my tresh,” Esah-Zhurah called from a few meters away where she was cooking him something to eat. It was a seemingly incongruous task that she took upon herself, despite his protestations.
Perhaps, he thought cynically, she only does it so she can burn the meat.
“And soundly do you sleep. The lizards,” she pointed to a place high on the far side of the grotto, “have long been calling to you.”
“Perhaps,” he said, starting to pull on his black pajamas, as he had come to think of them, “they were simply keeping me informed about what you have been doing while I slept.”
Esah-Zhurah looked at him, then at the lizards, a look of considered suspicion on her face. “Is such a thing possible?” she asked him finally.
Reza shrugged, trying to keep his face straight. “It is something for you to think about, is it not? You believe I talk to magtheps. Why not lizards, as well?” He sat down next to her at the fire, quietly enjoying her mental squirming as she tried to figure out if he really could talk to the animals.
Finally, she looked at him sharply. “I do not believe you can speak with the beasts,” she said. Then she paused, unsure. “Can you?”
Finally, he could stand it no more, and he burst out laughing at the serious expression she bore. “No,” he admitted as he saw her face cloud over with anger for laughing at her, “I cannot. Please,” he told her, bringing his laughter to a swift end, “forgive me. I did not mean to make you feel a fool.”
In reply, she only scowled at him before turning away, thrusting his meat deeper into the coals where it sizzled and popped, then finally caught fire.
“Here,” she said, thrusting the stick that held the flaming meat into his face. “Eat.”
Dodging the flames, he took the stick like the baton in a relay race, snatching it quickly from her hand before she dropped it or impaled him with it, and then blew out the torch that was his breakfast.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “Esah-Zhurah,” he said after a moment. She paid him no attention, focusing herself on paring strips from the raw hunk of meat that was her own morning meal. He reached out and gently touched her arm. She did not pull away. “Please forgive me,” he said quietly. “I meant you no harm. It was only meant as humor, a joke, nothing more.”
“Do not do it again,” she said after a moment of silent consideration, her eyes still focused on her food as her talons tore it to shreds. “I do not like it.” Reza nodded, letting her go. “I forgive you,” she added softly.
Reza sat back, stunned, his mind seeking a precedent for this development. There was none.
After a few moments he asked, “What would you like to do today?” He was unsure if the free time before the Challenge brought with it some kind of unannounced itinerary.
“Today I would bask in the sun, as do your lizard friends,” she said. “To lay upon that rock,” she pointed to a peninsula of moss-covered stone that jutted into the pool, “and become one with the earth is my sole desire for this day.”
“A more noble ambition there has never been,” he said, tearing the meat with his teeth.
It was not long before the sun’s trace began to work its way down into the grotto. The chorus of the lizards – dozens of them now – grew louder as the sunlight dropped deeper into the caldera. He and Esah-Zhurah were finally compelled to put their hands over their ears as the animal shrieks reached a shattering crescendo. But then, as the light reached
the bottom and struck the pool, almost at once the trumpeting and chirruping ceased, the animals now mollified by the sun’s warmth.
“In Her name,” Esah-Zhurah breathed, “such a noise they make!”
As she made her way down to the pool, Reza went and opened his pack, rummaging around near the bottom for what he sought, his hands curling around a thin-skinned case that was roughly as big around as his chest, but not nearly so thick. Pulling open the top flap, he looked to make sure that everything inside was as he had put it. The old armorer, Pan’ne-Sharakh, had given him his own palette of dyes and brushes, and he had eagerly taken up dye-setting – painting – as his escape from the brutal life he had been forced to lead. He used whatever metal he could scavenge for canvas, usually damaged backplates that the armorers deemed unworthy of salvage. He hammered them as flat as he could and put them to use for his own designs. The images he had made did not have the texture of real paintings, being dyes on metal, but his interpretation of the Kreelan art lent them a depth and perspective that made the images almost three dimensional, surreal. He did not consider himself to be a modern incarnation of Monet or Da Vinci; he was content to be himself. It was the only thing he had that, for a few moments of each of his hellish days, allowed his soul to go free.
Turning around, the satchel in hand, he saw that he would not have to search far for a subject. Against the backdrop of a misty rainbow born of the waterfall, Esah-Zhurah lay nude on the chaise of stone that protruded into the pool, her blue face to the sun, her braids hanging toward the pool below like ebony streams. Her eyes were closed; she was probably already asleep. One hand was draped over her torso, lightly cupping her left breast, and the other lay at her side.
Reza’s heart suddenly thundered in his ears as he looked at her. The hot pulse sent a jolt up his spine as he suddenly found himself smitten with the beauty of this alien girl, this young woman, who was at once his ally and his enemy, his savior and would-be killer, all rolled into one. In that blink of an eye, he wanted to reach out and touch her, to hold her against him. He wanted to feel her warm lips on his, remembering how it felt when Nicole had kissed him goodbye when she left Hallmark. He could remember that kiss like it was yesterday. But he could barely remember what she looked like now.
He tore his gaze away. He knew his body was on the edge, or even through, the age of puberty and all its attendant changes, and resolved to blame this treacherous feeling on the hormonal pranks of his growing body. Still, he could not deny the heat that blazed in his core at the thought of how closely he and this alien girl lived together, despite how far apart they would forever remain.
As if in sympathy, thin gray clouds drifted over the caldera, muting the dazzling sunshine reflecting from the pool below and softening the light to an even glow.
Blinking his eyes clear, he quietly arrayed his arsenal of colors and began to paint.
***
The morning stretched into afternoon, and at last Esah-Zhurah stirred from her long nap, stretching like a cat. Reza, his hands and upper body tired from his tender labors over the canvas of metal, surveyed his handiwork as he began to put his things away. Looking at the traces he had made, the first shadings now setting into the blackened metal, he smiled. It would be the best work he had ever done, he thought, the best by far.
“Do you paint your friends, the lizards?” Esah-Zhurah called to him.
Reza looked up to see her lying on her side, watching him, one hand lazily stirring the water lapping at the rock. A thin sheen of mist covered her nude body from head to toe, making her glisten like an unearthly siren beneath the waterfall’s rainbow.
“It is my time to do with as I please,” he told her, knowing that she did not really approve of his undertaking of the old armorer’s craft. “And if it is a lizard that I paint,” he went on, sealing the etching into the satchel, “it is a lizard that speaks in Her tongue.”
“How amusing,” she replied sarcastically as Reza made his way down to the water’s edge and began to take off his clothes. “What do you intend to do?”
“I…” He could not think of the word, and resorted to one of his few acceptable uses of Standard, to explain what words or phrases he did not know in her language. “I wish to go… swimming.” He carefully folded his black underclothes, putting them on top of the pile of metal and leatherite that was his second skin before stepping gingerly into the water, expecting it to be freezing. Much to his delight, it was warm against his skin, a wonderful feeling after having bathed so many times in the ice-cold stream that ran near the kazha, barred as he and Esah-Zhurah were from the normal bath facilities because of his being human. “This is wonderful,” he sighed as he moved into deeper water, wading in past his waist.
“Be careful,” Esah-Zhurah said suddenly, kneeling over the edge of the rock and watching Reza with wide eyes.
“Why?” he asked, suddenly wary. His eyes darted to and fro, searching the crystalline water. “Is there some beast in here that I should know about?”
“No,” she said firmly. “But do not go in above your head.”
“Why not?” he asked, puzzled at her concern. “What happens if I do?”
She snorted. “You will drown, fool. This even a magthep knows.”
Reza laughed at her and then leaped backwards, disappearing in a huge splash that drenched Esah-Zhurah.
“Reza!” she cried, jumping to her feet in a panic. She crawled as close as she dared to the edge of the rock and peered into the water, desperately searching for his body.
She did not see the shadow directly below her. As Reza’s head broke the surface, she shrieked, drawing back in surprise as he spouted water on her like a cherubic fountain.
“What,” he asked, trying desperately to hold back his laughter at her reaction, “are you so afraid of?”
“I do not like the water,” she said angrily. “And you should not be so quick to disobey me when I warn you of something.”
“You cannot do this – swim – can you?” he asked, treading water next to the rock.
“No,” she admitted quietly. “Very few of my people can do this.” She told him the Kreelan word for swimming, one that she had never used with him before. “It is not considered a high priority for the learning period of youth.”
Reza swam up to her and clung to the rock with one hand, sweeping the other through his soaking hair. “Let me teach you,” he asked hopefully.
She looked at him and saw nothing but sincerity in his eyes, but there had always been something about water that troubled her, and sometimes she had dreams. They were nightmares about cold black water that closed in around her, filling her lungs as Death closed its icy fist around her heart, leaving her soul trapped in a lifeless body that would be forever spinning, spinning beyond the reach of Her light, Her love.
“No, my tresh,” she told him, turning away so he would not see the fear on her face. “I know you mean well, but I do not wish to.”
“Is there–”
“I do not wish to,” she said again, facing him now, her eyes hard.
Reza nodded. “Very well,” he said, his heart sinking like a stone. He had so much wanted for her to say yes.
Pushing her from his thoughts as he kicked away from the rock on which she stood, he turned and began to explore the wondrous pool. He probed through the shallow water, imagining himself as one of the ancient mariners about whom he had read once upon a time, the men and women who had explored the great seas of Earth.
Esah-Zhurah watched him swim and dive like the aquatic creatures she had occasionally seen in the river that flowed through the city, faintly envious of this ability of his. He appeared to be enjoying himself tremendously, blowing water into the air and then taking a breath before diving back down again to observe some unfathomable sight at the bottom of the pool.
Something that I will never see, she lamented quietly to herself, unconsciously drawing away from the water’s edge and the waves kicked up by Reza’s frolicking. She saw him wave
to her as he swam under the waterfall, and she managed a halfhearted gesture in return, still uneasy at being able to see only his head above the water. And then even that disappeared as he dove under once more.
Perhaps for the first time since he had been brought to the Empire, Reza felt completely free. Alone in this tiny world of water, where even his tresh feared to come, his heart seemed to unfold. The horrendous load on his mind and soul that sometimes threatened to crush his sanity lightened, fading away to nothing in the warm embrace of the grotto pool. He watched with fascinated eyes the grotto’s creatures – none of them overtly threatening – as they swam, crawled, or scuttled about the pool. Brightly colored fish stared at him with wide black eyes from their tiny holes among the rock clusters that dotted the pool’s bottom, and tiny crab-like things tussled amongst themselves on the bottom, raising a tiny cloud of sand as they dragged one another in a miniature tug of war.
Beneath the waterfall itself, Reza found a darker world. Having taken a deep breath after waving to Esah-Zhurah, he descended into the maelstrom of the waterfall. He emerged on the other side, the light fading and swirling in time with the roiling water behind him. He was about to leave when he spotted what looked like an underwater tunnel in the rock behind the waterfall. Without thinking, he dived into it to find himself swirling down a subterranean passageway that ended in total darkness.
***
Esah-Zhurah clicked her nails on the rock in growing apprehension as time passed and still Reza did not reappear.
“Reza?” she called, finally giving in to the mounting tension that was constricting her chest like a metal band. “Reza!” she shouted again, standing on the rock so she could better see out over the pool.
Nothing. There was no sign of him, only the darting shadows of the grotto’s fish as they went about their business. She had been thinking of asking Reza to try and catch some for their dinner, but that thought vanished as her concern grew. It had been too long.
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