by Calista Skye
Something unusual.
No, it won’t come to me. I don’t remember going to bed at all. Did I just pass out somewhere in the village? Maybe someone made one of the many varieties of booze that the cavemen tribes have.
It’s possible. I do have a throbbing headache.
“Ow!” And a sore spot on the side of my head, covered by some kind of fabric.
In fact, I just feel sore all over.
And thirsty.
I slowly raise myself up on my elbows. It’s very quiet. Just the ordinary jungle sounds can be heard. The rustling of leaves and the cries of the wildlife.
But no cries of human babies. Or any human sounds at all, like I would expect in the village. No banging of iron in the forges. No soft talk.
I sit up straight. This feels wrong.
As I try to pull my legs to me, one of them is stuck. There’s a crude rope tied around my ankle, with the other end fastened to the thin trunk of a sapling that grows up and out of the primitive roof above me.
“What the hell?” I yank at the rope, but despite its primitive look, it’s really strong. The knot that fastens it to my ankle is so tight it feels like a rock to my fingers. Who the hell would tie me up?
A coldness settles in my stomach. Yeah, this feels totally wrong.
Then an impulse makes me turn around.
Someone is looking at me from close by. A caveman.
With a burned face and yellow eyes. I don’t know him. But still, he seems familiar.
He’s squatting down outside this small hut and staring at me with eyes that glow yellow.
Damn it. I’ve tried to learn cavemanese, but we dragon girls were stuck for months between Troga’s trenches, and we never spoke to any of the locals. The lab coat girls are all fluent, and one or two of them don’t even have accents that I can pick up. Well, they’re all linguistics students.
I do understand most of the things the cavemen say. Their language is like that. But I’m not sure if my vocabulary is large enough to ask this guy a question. Something like what in the name of fuck almighty he thinks he’s doing.
“You do what?” I try, but my voice is raspy, and it only sounds like a frog gargling kerosene.
The guy doesn’t budge.
I yank at the rope. “What is? Why you… do?”
The guy looks me up and down, and I look down myself. I’m decently enough attired, with that simple dinosaur skin dress on most of the girls wear on a daily basis. But still, this is the closest he’s been to a woman in all his life.
A thought suddenly hits me. I don’t think I’ve been asleep so much as unconscious. Has he maybe already …?
But there’s no particular ache coming from my pelvis, and when I carefully stroke my lower abdomen with my hand, there’s no soreness. No, I don’t think he’s raped me. I think that would feel different.
The caveman stands up and goes away, then returns with the skin pouch that the cavemen use to carry water in.
He hands it to me. “Drink.”
I really shouldn’t. But on this Jurassic planet, normal rules for what to accept from strangers don’t really apply.
I sniff the spout cautiously, then put it to my lips and take a small sip.
It’s water, and it makes me aware of just how thirsty I really am.
I gulp down many mouthfuls before I wipe my lips and give the pouch back. “Thank you.”
The caveman gives me a little nod and disappears again.
“Hey!”
He sticks his head back in. His eyes really are very yellow.
Again I yank at the rope. “Take off this!”
He looks at me. Then he does something to the other end of the rope and ducks out again.
All that does is make the rope longer.
“Hey! Take off!”
I crawl out of the little hut, into the rain.
It’s a hilltop, and while this is plainly daytime, the sky is very dark. The rain is pouring down like crazy, with no end in sight. It’s not the first time we experienced that on Xren. When it rains, it really rains, and it can go on for days.
It’s a warm rain, though. And we girls have long since stopped worrying about what the rain might do to our hairstyles. We haven’t had those since we got here. Some of us for even longer.
The caveman has made a fire under a primitive lean-to roof, and he’s dripping wet.
I have enough experience with this planet to tell that both structures are newly built. They’re just hours old. And the hut where I came to is very well made, with a thatched roof that doesn’t leak at all.
The rope is long and gives me a pretty good freedom to walk around, but I’ll cut it off the first chance I get.
I’m hit by a rush of dizziness, and I have to steady myself on a post to not collapse.
The caveman notices and comes walking very fast, steadying me. He points to my head. “You are injured.”
“Yes.”
He takes his hands off me and looks me up and down again, evaluating. “Also elsewhere.”
I do have some bruises and gashes on my legs, but they seem clean and don’t ache like my head.
He’s injured himself, and he’s put a green paste of masked herbs along three long gashes across his chest. They look fresh.
I take a short step away. “What did happened?”
He gives me a very caveman-ish shrug. “I didn’t see it. Come and sit.”
Another spell of dizziness comes over me, and the caveman comes in close once more and grabs me with gentle hands.
He supports me over to the lean-to while the rain drenches me.
But I don’t sit down beside him. That feels wrong to do. I don’t know who he is or what happened, and he’s not being very communicative.
I stand there and consider the situation. All I know is that I’ve probably been knocked unconscious, that this is not my village, and that this guy has tied me to a tree. And that he seems to have no intention of untying me. But someone has bandaged my head, and I have to assume that it was him.
I don’t recognize this place. The rain and the mist make it hard to see much beyond a hundred yards, so this could be close to my own village or it could be far away.
“This is far from tribe?”
“Yes,” he growls.
He might have misunderstood.
“Far from my tribe?”
He sends me a very yellow glance. “Yes. Come in under the roof.”
I am as wet as I can get. But yeah, maybe I should.
I duck down under the primitive roof where it’s somewhat dry. A small fire is crackling, and thin slices of meat are roasting over it. It actually smells really good, and right on cue my stomach starts growling.
“What happen?” I repeat, touching the bandage around my head. Dammit, I should have asked the lab coat girls to teach me more cavemanese. The grammar is tricky.
“I think you were hunted by a rekh,” the caveman growls.
The raptor. I vaguely remember it now, one of those things staring me down. Or was that a dream? My headache gets worse when I try to remember. “What happen to rekh?”
He adjusts the sizzling meat over the fire. “It’s dead.”
I’m acutely aware of the caveman’s close presence. Steam rises from his huge body and his hair, and he gives off the scent of wet animal skins and dry maleness. Clean, but powerful.
From this side I only see the burned side of his face, gray and withered-looking. But the yellow eyes are very awake.
The rain hammers the trees nearby, and there’s a continuous roar of a waterfall not too far away. There’s no waterfall close to my village. “Where is tribe? My tribe?”
The caveman raises his hand to indicate a direction, without a word.
Yeah, not the talkative kind.
I start looking around for a sharp rock I can use to cut off the rope around my ankle. I should get home.
No suitable rock is within easy reach. I pick at the tight knot with one fingernail. “What is name? You?”
>
“Car’rakz.”
It’s a hard-sounding name, tough on the consonants. It suits him. “Car’rakz,” I repeat.
A few seconds go by.
“You now ask name me,” I suggest.
He gives me a luminous glance. “What’s your name?”
“Tamara.”
He doesn’t repeat it, just takes a slice of meat off a skewer, puts it on a green leaf, and hands it over to me. “Sprak meat.”
Ah. I’ve heard of sprak. They’re large predatory dinos, almost as huge as the T. Rex type of dinos.
I sniff the meat. I am actually really hungry. “You hunt sprak?”
“Nobody hunts sprak. Better to stay away from them.”
I take a bite of the meat, trying to keep it from burning my mouth. “Why you have?”
“We met one last night. It was impossible to stay away from it.”
The meat is tender and reminds me more of pork than the turkeypig stuff we’re always cooking back at the village. “We?”
“Yes.”
“You and tribe?”
“No.”
Okay. Well, nobody expects a caveman to be a sparkling conversationalist. I don’t mind the quiet guys. They can often be the coolest dudes around, once you drag some information out of them. And I talk enough for two, some people say. But his silence in combination with the rope around my ankle is making me pretty uneasy.
I have an idea. Get him talking to take his attention from the fire. “Where from come you?”
He points in another direction than where he claims my tribe is, but he doesn’t look away.
I use the oldest trick in the book and point to beside us. “What that is?”
He glances in the direction I point.
I gently pull on the rope so a loop of it passes right through the fire.
“What is what?” he asks.
“That,” I state and point at a dark heap at the edge of the forest, barely visible through the mist and rain. “Looks like Big.”
“That’s the sprak,” Car’rakz explains. “It is dead now.”
I squint at the heap. That is a huge carcass. And even dead, it looks dangerous. “You kill?”
“My sword is sharp enough, as I told your tribe.”
The rope in the fire doesn’t burn, but I’m sure the fire can’t be good for it. “Very sharp if kill sprak,” I agree. That thing must have been as big as a house when alive. My opinion of this guy improves. “Car’rakz good hunter.”
“Nobody hunts sprak,” he repeats. “But it was attacking us.”
“Us is me and Car’rakz?” I venture.
“It is.”
“And you kill sprak.”
“Yes.”
He must think I’m slow. But I’m trying to create some kind of picture of what exactly happened last night. Now, if he killed that huge dino there, and I was unconscious — how was that possible? He’s just one man. A huge caveman, yes. But that dino is much, much larger. And it looks predatory. Those things can be ferocious.
“How it kill? No. How you it kill? Wait. How you kill it?” The grammar is complicated.
Car’rakz slaps the side of his sword. “With my blade.”
“I did help?”
“No.”
“I was… sleep? From hit on here?” I touch my head.
“Yes.”
“You hit on here, make sleep?”
He turns his whole face to me in alien disbelief. “No!”
It comes as a loud bark that resonates from the trees, and I pull away from him.
Yeah, I did just ask him if he’s the one who knocked me out, so some reaction was to be expected. Well, at least now I know. I have a kind of an old image in my mind of a caveman hitting a woman on the head with his club and then carrying her back to his cave over his shoulder. I mean, the term ‘caveman style’ has to come from somewhere. But that was plainly not what happened.
I’m becoming more confident in my use of the language. “Who hit on here, make sleep?”
He stirs the fire with a stick, casually fishing out my rope and placing it beside the fire. “You don’t know?”
“I not.”
He nods. “I also not.”
“You… hmm. You see Tamara sleep from hit on head?”
“You were lying on a dry riverbed. A rekh was about to attack, and a flash flood was about to drown you. I lifted you and carried you away.” He speaks slowly and clearly, giving me time to understand the words. “After I killed the rekh.” He indicates his chest.
I lean closer. “Oh my God! You got mauled!”
He looks at me emptily. “Hmm?”
Ah, I said it in English. “You injure! From rekh!”
“It got me, but not too well. A glancing blow only.”
I gently touch the skin close to the injuries. The silver stripes feel like suede, not metallic at all. “Is very pain?”
“Is some pain,” he admits. “But not anymore.”
I nod. These are definitely fresh claw marks. It strengthens his story.
“How you carry Tamara?”
He breaks a branch off a tree, bends it in the middle and places it over his back. “Like this.”
Yep, that’s caveman style if ever I saw it. So I was half right. And the picture I’m creating of last night is becoming more detailed.
“Then kill sprak, make… that.” I point at the hut.
He draws breath as if to protest at my simple description of events, then sighs and looks away. “Yes.”
“And then make this.” I point at the rope he’s tied to my ankle, raising my eyebrows in a slight accusation that’s probably lost on his alien mind.
6
- Car’rakz -
She really doesn’t like the rope.
I don’t blame her at all. Nobody would like it.
At first, I tied it there so she would be safe. I’ve seen it before — tribesmen who are injured and unconscious might stand up and do dangerous things, or crawl away or in other ways endanger themselves or their companions. I couldn’t keep an eye on Tamara while I was building shelter for her, so I tied her to the sapling.
And when she woke up and was clearly fine, I just didn’t untie her.
“Yes,” I admit.
“Why?” she asks, logically enough.
What do I say to that? Why do I still keep her tied up?
So she won’t leave, of course.
I saw her tribe. I know it will never be mine. And I will never have a woman of my own.
After carrying Tamara a long way, feeling her scent and her weight and her warmth and the smoothness of her skin, it suddenly became impossible for me to think of her not being with me.
The jungle is an extremely dangerous place. She was here alone, it seems. Those men in her tribe are clearly not taking care of her. She’s entirely too precious to be out in the woods alone. She’s too small, too soft and too round. And too… enticing.
Well, if her tribe can’t take proper care of her, then I can.
There must be a reason she was out in the jungle. And a reason why I found her. Perhaps the Ancestors aren’t as impotent and weak as Brax’tan claimed. Perhaps they have arranged this for me. Then it’s up to me to seize the opportunity and make the most of it. To claim it, as they say in my tribe about valuable things. I wanted to claim this woman for myself.
Many thoughts tumble around in my mind. But the only important thing is this: I want her here with me.
I realize many heartbeats have passed since she asked her simple question. And I have not answered. I must say something.
“I want you here with me.”
She tilts her head in the most alluring way, and her dark eyes take on a quizzical look. “And if I not want?”
Ah. Of course, she can’t want this. My face is ruined, and my tribe is not illustrious. I was practically thrown out of her village, and I’m sure she knows it. She wants to go home.
I have a strong urge to change the subject. “Your tribe is
expecting dragons, they say.”
To my surprise, she raises her little hands to her head and clamp them over her impossibly small ears. “No speak the dragons!”
“Very well,” I say, confused. “But it’s your tribe that talks about them—”
“No!” she yells and clenches her eyes shut.
I scratch my chin. I think this might be a delicate topic for her. Maybe getting hit on the head made her especially sensitive to certain things.
Well, I’ll just bring it up at a later time. Because it needs to be brought up.
I hand her the water pouch, and she drinks greedily once more. “Thanks.”
I notice some blood has seeped through the bandage I laid on her head in the darkness last night. I point. “I have to change that.”
She hands me the water pouch. “You did put on?”
I rummage through my bag to find the bundle of very fine fabric I’ve liberated from the tribe’s stores. Someone must have made it long ago. Certainly, none of my tribesmen could make anything like this now. But, I correct myself, that is only because they now make better things.
I cut a long strip from the bundle with my sword.
“You good at sword,” Tamara observes.
“I’ve had a lot of practice. As long as it is sharp, it can be used for many things.”
I readjust my position so I face her.
She makes no protest when I loosen and unwind the old bandage from her head. The smell of her wet hair and the physical closeness to her makes it hard to concentrate, and again I feel the pressure in my crotch.
“Not too much blood,” I state when the bandage is all the way off. “It was not a deep cut.”
I pour some water on a small cloth and wipe the wound clean through her long, matted hair.
She winces with pain, but doesn’t move. She has some bravery in her.
I knew that, of course. She would need to possess considerable bravery to be alone in the jungle. If she was.
“Were you alone in the jungle?” I inquire.
She takes a while to answer. “Not know. Not… um.”
“You don’t remember?” I suggest.
“Yes. No. Don’t remember.”
“Why were you in the jungle?”
She squints as if thinking hard. “Don’t remember.”
I start winding the new bandage onto her head. “Can your tribesmen not protect you in the jungle?”