by H. E. Trent
She kept rocking. Kept humming.
He wasn’t getting through to her.
He extended a hand to nudge her, and as his fingers approached her shaking knee, he changed his mind. Touching her in her current state would probably make her strike at him again.
“Can you hear me?” he asked.
Just keep talking.
“I, uh…” Slowly, he took a seat at the edge of the bed. He had no words yet so, stalling, he fluffed the pillows and fiddled with the edge of the coverlet. “I put sheets on. They’re clean. Erin washed them.”
No response.
Though she’d stopped humming, she continued to rock. At least she could hear him without him having to raise his voice.
“You can sleep in here alone tonight. I won’t be here.”
More rocking.
“I’ll try to be better at watching the time. I can set alarms on my COM. Or I’ll get you some food out here you could make yourself. I don’t know if you can see well enough to prepare anything hot. Can you?”
Her rocking slowed.
He needed to see her eyes. He wouldn’t think he’d gotten through to her unless she raised her face and showed him her eyes.
She didn’t, though.
Once again, his hand went to his curls, and suddenly he wished that his hair were long, in the style of Jekhan men. At least then, fidgeting would be so much more satisfying. He’d actually be able to gather his hair in his fist and tug hard, and he’d welcome the pain, because at least then he’d be feeling something new instead of just thrumming from the same old wounds.
He twined his fingers atop his lap and spun his thumbs around each other. “I’ll be back in less than twenty minutes. I’ll even set the timer, and I’ll…I’ll leave the window open so you can have some air. You’ll have to make sure the dog doesn’t squeeze out or we might not be able to catch him.”
She stopped rocking.
“I’ll clean up the rest of the mess when I get back, but if you need to use the bathroom, you should be okay. Just be careful you don’t stub your toes on any of the tools on the floor. There’s a wrench in there that could probably bend a toe out of shape if you stepped on it the wrong way. Actually…”
Remembering his purchase, he strode to the door and picked up the cane he’d bought on a whim.
He slid the stick slowly beside her so the shaft brushed her skirt, her hip.
After a minute, she pulled an arm from her head and patted beside her. She felt along the length of the cane, her fingertips following the lines of the carvings as far as she could reach. Then, she let her other arm down, peeking at him from behind as she lowered it.
He didn’t dare move a muscle. Didn’t dare speak.
Then her gaze fell as her fingers wrapped around the shaft.
“That’s a walking stick,” he said. “The meet-shop in Little Gitano had a bunch. I figured you could use one to find what’s on the ground around you.”
She picked up the handle end and fondled the ornate curve.
“You’ve gotta promise not to hit me with it, no matter how pissed you get. Not one of my kinks.”
She canted her head and raised her gaze to him, swallowing.
“It was a joke, Ais.”
“What is…meet-shop?”
“Shit, that’s right.” He leaned back onto his forearms. “You haven’t been to Little Gitano, have you?”
“No. Nowhere.”
Too comfortable.
He could sit there, staring at her and watching her talk all night, and forget all the other things he was supposed to be doing. He stood before his cringe finished pulling at his lips, and busied himself by freeing the puppy from the pile of laundry he’d tangled himself in. “The meet-shop is a store, mostly. People can buy food and supplies there. There’s also a long-range COM system for people who don’t have them at home. The folks in town also gather there for meetings and parties. It’s the largest enclosed space in town. That’s why it’s called the meet-shop.”
“For Terrans?”
“No. Jekhans built the meet-shop. They built everything in town. Terrans work there now so no one who’s passing through looking for fugitives or who is scouting for land to grab knows there are so many Jekhans.”
“Hide here.”
“Yeah. Pretty much everyone around here is hiding from something.”
“What you?”
What you?
He didn’t always understand her, even after a moment of thought. Sometimes, there was simply too much context missing.
What you?
“What are you?” he asked, turning to read her face. “Is that what you’re asking me?”
“What you?” she repeated, shaking her head and emphasizing the latter word. “You…hide.”
“Oh.” He shook his head, too. “What am I hiding from, you mean?”
Stroking the shaft of the cane, she nodded.
“Nothing.” Or at least, nothing he wanted to explain. She couldn’t have possibly understood.
If she didn’t believe him, she didn’t say so. She just kept feeling the groves on her new possession and staring at nothing in particular.
Had she been Michael, she would have told him to leave already and that she had things to do, but she didn’t. She had no pressing chores or obligations. No one relied on her for anything.
Owen envied her, in a way, that no one relied on her to work miracles, or to be a hero.
He couldn’t picture her as the heroic sort, anyway. He could picture his sisters as scowling action figures holding big guns and wearing their scars like badges of honor. Ais was more like a Christmas tree topper—a symbol of something pure and honest. Something that shouldn’t have been molested, including by him.
She turned her head incrementally in his direction and blinked.
Can she see me? What’s she thinking?
If she was thinking anything at all, she didn’t speak the words. After a few seconds, she looked away, toward the puppy that was nipping at the hem of her dress.
“I’m going to go now.” He leaned over the cooktop and set the timer to twenty minutes. He turned on the voice cues to play every two minutes. “See. Twenty minutes. I’ll be back.”
She blinked.
“You hear me?” he asked.
She shrugged.
She obviously didn’t care.
He forced out some air, standing and watching her for another minute.
She patted the dog’s head idly and looked at nothing in particular.
Leaving her to her thoughts, he locked the door behind him and took off at a sprint. Even without running, he could be back at the cottage in plenty of time, but he’d promised her.
She already thought he was a liar, or worse things. She’d compared him to Reg. Reg might have set the human decency bar pretty fucking low, but Owen didn’t want to be down in the morality basement with him. The least he could do was make good on his promises, especially when they were so small.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Sixteen minutes remaining,” came the cheerful voice from the cooktop timer.
Ais blinked herself free of her meandering reverie. If her dry tongue hadn’t had a demand for water, she probably would have stayed in her corner until the timer expired and she caught Owen in yet another lie.
The puppy shook himself hard and, plopping down onto his hindquarters, tilted his head up at her.
She would have to move to pick him up.
Water, first.
She moved to the edge of the bed and tentatively set the end of the cane on the floor.
Perhaps using such a stick had benefits, though she’d never considered using one. She’d always done the best she could with what she had, and hadn’t had a choice otherwise because she’d owned nothing.
Still own nothing.
She didn’t know if the stick had been a gift or a bribe. Reg had always given her things only to take them away when she didn’t behave. She vowed to pay Owen for the stick somehow
. When she was free of the cottage, she could pick more berries, since she knew where they were, and sort them for processing. That had to be worth something.
Using the stick as her eyes, she tapped her way into the bathroom first, narrowly avoiding the traps Owen had earlier mentioned. She relieved herself of the little bit of urine she had to give up, washed her hands, and then made her way to the little kitchen.
There was a bright red mug overturned in the drying rack. Grabbing the handle, she filled the cup with water from the tap and drank thirstily, one full mug, then another. She even filled the vessel a third time to pour a bit into a bowl she’d set on the floor for the puppy.
He bounded to her, and she wasted some time scratching him between the ears as he lapped up the cool liquid. Then, she let him be, standing so she could rinse out the mug.
She’d had it back in the rack and had the rag she’d used drip-drying over the faucet when the timer announced “Eight minutes remaining.”
“Ha,” she spat triumphantly. She was going to enjoy catching Mr. High and Mighty in a lie.
She straightened up and put her face close to the window, trying to see movement, but rather than the blurry, green field that lie between the cottage and the farmhouse, Ais caught a bright smear of red high up in the window.
She furrowed her brow and turned her head a bit rightward. Sometimes she could make out different shapes if she used her peripheral vision rather than looking straight on.
That helped a little.
In the red smear were two oval dark spots and also two smaller slits farther down. At the bottom of the field of red was a slash.
The slash parted.
Her breath caught.
Not a slash, but lips.
A face, and a familiar sort. She should have recognized a Tyneali face, even if her vision was unable to clearly focus. Those features were unmistakable and fueled her nightmares.
She started screaming, high and loud, and the dog whimpered piteously at her heels.
She scrambled back from the window, stumbling over the puppy’s bowl and hitting the floor hard. With the wind knocked out of her, she stopped screaming just long enough to get back to her feet.
The face was gone, but she screamed anyway because she wasn’t safe. There wasn’t any way she could be safe if that thing had found her. The Tyneali were crafty. After all, they’d made her, and they made spaceships that could move faster than human sight could see, and they made weapons that could do terrible, unspeakable things.
She was back in the corner of the bed with not only her arms over her head, but a pillow and the covers, too.
The cottage door crashed open, and she screamed louder.
They’d found her, and they’d take her back to the lab. They’d be so upset that she’d let Reg steal her. Somehow, everything would be her fault because she’d left her room. She’d showed herself to people when there’d been visitors on the station. She’d—
“Ais!”
She screamed.
Firm hands reached under the covers and the pillow, and shook her by the shoulders.
“Ais!”
She paused her yelling to draw a breath, and pondered the timbre of that voice. It wasn’t full of gravel. That voice didn’t make her name sound like a creature’s hiss.
Her name had been spoken via a human throat with a male voice she was coming to know all too well.
Owen.
Still, she wouldn’t open her eyes. She might see that red face again.
“Ais, why were you screaming?”
Her screaming had given way to sobs. What little adrenaline she had already had dissipated.
She needed to run, but couldn’t. She didn’t have the strength, didn’t have the will.
Crying was easier.
“Fuck.” Owen settled his weight onto the edge of the bed, and laid a hand on her back, but quickly removed it. “What happened?”
“R-run,” she said. “Take Ais.”
“Take you where? What happened?”
“You no saw?”
“Saw what?” He lifted the pillow she’d been trying to jam over her head, but she yanked it back down. The pillow wouldn’t protect her from anything but the light, but hiding made her feel safer. “Tyneali.”
“You saw a Tyneali? Where? In here?”
“Outside window. Sink.”
“Stay there.”
His weight shifted off the bed.
She heard the window close and the rip of Velcro. Owen’s holster, perhaps. She’d learned that sound from Courtney. Courtney had many guns. Before moving to Little Gitano, she’d been a police officer.
“Just stay there,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
He opened the door. A moment later, he closed it.
Her body relaxed minutely when he engaged the locks. She didn’t think she would ever be happy to hear the signal of captivity, but if she were locked in, the Tyneali couldn’t get to her so easily. As far as she knew, they couldn’t walk through walls. They needed to get in to rooms the same way everyone else did.
She didn’t know how long Owen was gone. Instead of counting minutes, she counted her breaths. Focusing on inhalations and exhalations kept her from thinking, and if she didn’t give herself leeway to think, she wouldn’t panic. Wouldn’t scream like a silly little fool.
She hid, and rocked, and hummed. Foolish, but at least she was a quiet fool.
When the door swung open again, she tried to make herself more compact beneath the covers. She was already in a ball, but she imagined herself small—invisible, even.
“I didn’t see anyone.” The voice she heard wasn’t some sibilant, raspy hiss out of a too-narrow throat. The voice was deliciously low, and human. Owen.
“If there was anyone out there,” he said, “they’re gone now.”
Footsteps sounded and the floorboards creaked, but not near the bed. He wasn’t moving closer.
She peeked out from beneath the covers and watched him test the window locks and draw the shades closed all around the cottage. A shade wouldn’t provide much of a barrier for anyone—or anything—who wanted to get to her, but at least one would provide an illusion of safety. The window covering could keep others from seeing.
The thought of them watching her made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
“Tell me what you saw.” He stopped in the middle of the space and scooped up the dog. He’d been pushing his nose against the dinner basket.
She had to swallow twice before she could speak. She rubbed the back of her neck, and her spine tingled at the touch. “Tyneali.”
“What were they doing?”
“Looking.” She pointed to the window behind the sink. “Right there.”
“They say anything?”
“Just looking.”
He passed his free hand through his hair, muttered something under his breath she couldn’t decipher, and then strode over. “I’ll get whoever’s working outside tonight to do a patrol and see if they see anything unusual, but for right now, try not to worry too much. They’re not really dangerous, are they? The folks in Little Gitano said the Tyneali used to stop by and bring medicines and things like that.”
Ais’s fingers were beginning to cramp against the covers. Carefully, she unlocked them and shook them out. “Don’t like.”
“You’ve got to give us some more information about them. I mean, you’d have more knowledge about how they behave than anyone around here.”
“I tell Courtney.”
“You will or you did?”
“Did.”
Ais wasn’t dumb. She may have needed a week or ten days to get comfortable enough on the farm to start telling people things, but once she’d figured out who best to filter the information through, she’d gone right to her. She’d told Courtney everything she thought was important.
Owen’s broad shoulders rose and then fell. She couldn’t tell if the sound he made along with the shrug were a sigh or a scoff. Perhaps bot
h.
“All right, then,” he said. “If you already told her, no need to rehash, right?”
She shook her head slowly.
“Here.” He settled the puppy into a dip in the covers, and then pushed the bench away from the wall and closer to the bed. On top, he set the open basket. “Tonight was stew night. Trigrian said you should be able to digest everything inside.”
She pulled in a deep breath, one that finally filled her starving lungs all the way. “I no problems.”
She wasn’t so sure she had much of an appetite after having such a fright, but still, she took the bowl Owen handed her, anyway, along with the spoon.
He didn’t dip into the stew container for a serving of his own, though. He was halfway across the room when she asked, “No eat?”
“Later. I want to finish getting the stuff off the floor in the bathroom so you can get around easier tonight. There’s only a bit left.”
He emerged from the bathroom a minute later carrying long, heavy-looking things she couldn’t identify from that distance and that she didn’t try too hard to see clearly. He made several trips in and out, nestling things into the toolbox he kept open near the cottage door, and depositing trash into the waste bin.
Her stew bowl was empty by the time he carried a broom, dustpan, and mop into the bathroom, and she was still hungry.
She didn’t want to give up her niche in the corner—not yet. “Owen?”
She hated to ask him any favors, and after speaking his name decided not to bother him after all. She hoped he hadn’t heard her calling for him.
He poked his head out of the bathroom. “You called me?”
She shook her head. “I… Work. Go.”
“Did you need something?”
Her gaze must have fallen to the bowl or perhaps he was simply more intuitive than she’d given him credit for, but he walked over to the bench and put a knee on it.
“Here.” He handed her bread, cheese, and then something in a small, cold cylinder she didn’t recognize.
“What is?”
“Pudding.”
“What is?”
“A kind of dessert from Earth. I think that’s vanilla pudding, but I didn’t take time to have a taste. I just scooped some into the container and put the lid on.”