by Jenny Foster
Terror took hold of every cell of her brain. She tried to escape the hold over her entire being that had tentacle-like arms firmly in place. The throbbing that had first been soft, grew louder and faster. The increasingly ear-piercing, deep gong rang in her ears, until it became one with her heartbeat that was racing, beating, and knocking like a rabbit in a trap, and then the foreign heart slowed. Her own beat matched it of its own will. The anxious knocking turned into a regular beat, and even she had to notice that the panic had vanished.
She looked around as the tentacles released her. Without words still, the creature that existed only in her imagination pointed to a box in the middle of the room. Cat went over to it and opened it. Even now, in this extremely strange moment, she was still surprised at what her thoughts alone could do. Everything, from opening a box, to seeing and feeling things, was possible even if she wasn’t there physically.
She forced herself to stay calm when the lid of the box popped open and a figure started floating towards her. It was a Krak – its tentacles raised high in a pleading gesture. A woman. She was dead. The Krak, in whose head she was, shared this information with her without speaking. Slowly, and piece by piece, the foreign head filled her own with the woman’s story.
She was the one whom Ferthoris had taken as his wife. She saw the pompous wedding ceremony and felt the woman’s hope that everything would be all right, even though the foreigner had separated her from her people. The planet where she lived now was very different from her own cool and wet home. Here, the sun burned her sensitive skin, and even at night, she couldn’t find enough shade to cool her hot and glowing body. She wanted to go home, back to the cold floodwaters. To swim with her family one more time. To dive to the bottom of the ocean, where the fish were blind and the sun didn’t shine.
Unfortunately, the king, who in the beginning had looked upon her with good will, tired of her quickly. The water in her pool wasn’t changed regularly anymore, and the only food she received were leftovers and food that didn’t sit well. She grew weak and irritated the king with her weakness, so he started to use her for his cruel games. He chopped off tentacle after tentacle, until she couldn’t even dream of swimming in the dark ocean anymore.
The man who was supposed to drop her off in the desert welcomed her. He could not speak her language, but she could see the sympathy in his golden eyes. She followed him without a word, and begged him, also without a single word, to end her life.
His orders had been to let her dry out in the desert sun. This was the cruelest farewell from a king who was closer to insanity than ever before. The man, whose name was Talon, told his men to leave, and closed his eyes before slitting her throat with one swift lash of his claws. She spent her last few minutes connecting with her people in her thoughts, so she could let them know that she welcomed death happily and willingly.
Chapter 3
Talon started to get anxious when Cat still hadn’t emerged from her trance after a good half an hour. He had seen her body freeze before when she had jumped into someone else’s head, but those instances had only lasted a few moments. Now, she was lying in his arms, her eyes closed as if she were sleeping, and the only way you could tell that she was alive, was by watching her chest rise and fall.
Only five more minutes, he told himself. If she isn’t back in five minutes, then he would… what? What could he do? Slap her face, so her spirit returned to her body? Damn it, he just didn’t have enough experience with such things! He could shift into an unscrupulous predator. He could fight and kill. He could do anything a man needed to be able to do, but nothing in his life had prepared him for a situation like this. Talon forced himself to stay calm as he kept an eye on the Krak around him. This was not an easy feat, because he had to watch Cat at the same time, reassuring himself that she was still breathing.
Her eyelids fluttered. A soft moan crossed her sweet lips. He couldn’t look at them without wanting to kiss them. The ocean beasts had taken up their irritating swaying again. At least they were silent, because the buzzing in his ears had been unbearable. That was a sound that could drive a man insane. Maybe his ears were just too sensitive for that particular frequency, or maybe it had just been the annoying chorus that made him lose it.
Four more minutes. His inner clock worked perfectly. What else could he distract himself with? His eyes fell on one of the Krak. Had they come in closer? He growled threateningly, but Talon himself knew that he didn’t stand a chance against the sheer number of them. His growl, however, didn’t seem to impress the Krak, because they didn’t react to the sound at all.
Three minutes. Had it really only been two minutes since he had started counting? Time passed in slow motion around him and Cat, so they were subjected to more suffering than the others. Never in his life had he experienced something as hard as staying patient right now.
Two minutes. He had passed the halfway mark. What should he do when the next two minutes were up, and Cat was still somewhere else? In his head, he went through his options. Pick Cat up and throw her over his shoulder, and then jump over the Krak in one huge leap – this was the only option he had.
One minute. A minute that turned into the longest of his life. He could feel the predator prepare. One minute, during which Cat’s eyes rolled, an anxious motion under her lids, and it seemed as if it was getting faster.
And then Cat opened her eyes.
At first, all he could do was stare at her, stunned. They were her eyes. They were alive and filled with light, intelligence, and something else, looking up at him. Without knowing what he was doing, he squeezed her tight against his chest and covered her face with kisses. Come what may, the two of them would fight against anything that stood in the way of a future together. Cat’s muffled cough tore him from his overflowing joy. He didn’t dare ask the deciding question, but then he saw what had happened since Cat’s surprising awakening. The Krak were pulling back.
This time, thanks be to the powerful Harkubis, they weren’t moving as one. Every one of them shuffled, slid, and swayed back to where they had come from, and that caused the mighty Talon fear. No, fear wasn’t the right word. It made him uneasy. Fear was what he had felt when he was counting the minutes.
The retreat could mean only one thing.
Cat had been right. The Krak wanted something from them, and Cat had given them whatever that was. He froze while she desperately fought for air with a gurgling sound he never wanted to hear again in his life. She coughed, and he held her with one hand. With the other, he grabbed a handful of snow. The white stuff melted in his hand, and he gently let the water drip into her slightly open mouth.
She was so pale. This business had driven her to exhaustion. Talon wondered how he was going to make it back to the library before Cat lost consciousness or froze. There was another option, but did he dare use it? The rite wouldn’t take more than a few minutes. It contained nothing more than words that, through mutual understanding, rose to a magical level, even though he didn’t know how. He looked at her in despair, at the blue circles under her eyes and her blood-starved lips. She needed strength and warmth. Should he risk it? He closed his eyes, desperately trying not to react too emotionally. This damned Earth atmosphere was not good for his usually even temperament.
Thoughts were racing through his head. Talon was used to making hard and quick decisions, but never before in his life had anything seemed this difficult. The decision he had to make would not only affect him. If he made Cat his companion with those few words, then they would be bound to each other irrevocably for the rest of their lives. He had seen what happened to one part of a couple when the other died. Just as they shared vital energy with each other before, so they also shared death. If the vital energy of one faded, then the other’s days were numbered, too.
Cat was still taking breaths, but they were markedly shallower. He didn’t need to put his ear to her chest to know this. Her pulse was stuttering irregularly and skipped a few beats. The cold worried him the most, becaus
e it was taking over her limbs. To buy a little time, he rubbed her hands in his, but without much success. They stayed ice-cold. He put his head back and let out a desperate cry.
He made his decision when Cat opened her eyes. Her eyes had gone from taking him in to staring ahead without seeing. They rolled back, until all he could see was white.
He sat on the ground, ignoring the wet and biting cold that spread through his body. Talon closed his eyes and pulled Cat to him, holding her limp body against his chest. He needed to say the words. He had no choice. It was this, or Cat would die in front of his eyes.
Talon concentrated. He pictured the warm desert wind blowing through his hair and chasing the cold from his bones. In front of him, he saw the flickering sun that never went down completely, and felt the sand under his claws. Then he raised his voice. Loud and without hesitation, he said the words that would bind Cat to him forever.
I am today.
I am yesterday.
I am tomorrow.
Striding through my recurring births,
I remain youthfully strong,
Until one of us goes to meet the sun.
He saw and felt the sun that surrounded them both for a precious moment, and let out the breath that he had been holding, in a misty cloud. Harkubis had accepted her, even though she was a woman from an alien people. Thank you, he thought silently.
The most fervent prayer of his life consisted of that one word.
Chapter 4
Cat had felt the strength seep out of her, like blood from an open wound. “There you have it,” she thought. “You went beyond your limits and will pay for it.” She almost giggled, because this had never happened to her before in all of her years as a Mind Reader, even though Darren and Anna had warned her about it. Cat had always managed to get out of the stranger’s head before her body rebelled. As if from a great distance, she thought it probably had less to do with the amount of time she had spent in the Krak’s head, and more to do with the mass. Somehow, it hadn’t been just one Krak she had been bound to. She had felt the presence of many different thoughts, each of them stemming from a different being. They had been moving at the edge of their own awareness, but very carefully, as if they knew what could happen. If they had all decided to come at Cat at once, she would probably have been reduced to a dribbling blob without any self-awareness.
However, she thought, as she stared into Talon’s golden eyes – it hadn’t happened. The only thing she felt was exhaustion taking hold of her body making it feel like lead. It was not uncomfortable – quite the opposite. She sighed in contentment, giving in to her fatigue. Just one or two minutes of blessed peace before she got up. It was just strange, because she couldn’t close her eyelids anymore. It was as if they were being held in place by invisible fingers, forcing her to keep staring at Talon’s eyes. Or at the gray sky above his head. The sky seemed to be getting closer, settling around Talon like a blanket of snow. Thinking about the swirling, white splendor made her realize how cold she was. It didn’t matter, because very soon she and Talon would be traveling to distant galaxies, and maybe they would even visit his home planet, Kanthari 7. There, he had told her, the sun never set all the way. Talon’s eyes were like the sun, Cat observed numbly. They shone, even when they were filled with concern that bordered on panic. She wanted to reach for his hand and let him know that she was okay, and that the Krak weren’t demanding anything impossible from him, but why go to all that trouble? Talon could always tell what was going on inside her, anyway, and she was so terribly tired.
He was mumbling something to himself, his eyes closed. She couldn’t understand his words, but she felt the power emanating from them. That was nonsense, of course. Actions speak louder than words, but no words had ever sounded like the ones he was speaking. It was almost unnatural, like she herself was. A force of nature reaching for the stars. Something that wasn’t possible within the laws of physics.
That something turned into a light, and the light turned into a source of heat. For a moment she gave in to the pleasant sensation of feeling the cold leave her body. Then the warmth turned to heat. A torrid heat that tore through her insides, looking for the very core of her being – scrutinizing it. She wanted to defend herself, to get away from this strange force that was now taking her heart in one hand and reaching into Talon’s ribcage with the other. Cat thought she might faint, but she was probably just delirious. Just? She felt like laughing, but she couldn’t even manage a smile.
The heat melted into one glowing core, and now it only warmed her instead of burning her. Talon was sitting next to her, that much she could see. With great effort, she sat up, but noticed that she was not nearly as weak as she had expected. Where had the fatigue gone, or the cold? Instead of the leaden heaviness, she felt an unexpected surge of energy. It lifted the fog from her eyes. Talon smiled somewhat sadly, but at the same time, he seemed very proud and relieved when she sat up and looked around.
Had the wave of strength come from him? Cat didn’t dare think about it any further, but her thoughts kept unwinding on their own. She knew that she had been close to death, and that whatever Talon had done, had saved her life. It took a moment for her to notice that something was different than before. If she paid close attention, she could tell what he was feeling, just a little. It had nothing to do with her gift. This felt final, as if an invisible thread bound both of their lives together now.
A thousand questions were on the tip of her tongue, and it was hard to find the most important one. Finally, her curiosity won. They stood up, but before Cat could ask him that most important question, Talon answered it. “I am sorry, but I had no choice,” he whispered as he brushed the snow off her back.
“What did you do? And please, for now, the simple answer will do just fine.” She tried to take the sting out of her words. At first, he avoided her eyes, but then, his pride won.
“Our people have a rite that binds a man and a woman to each other. We can share strength and energy through the bond whenever it is necessary.
A storm of feelings raged in Cat’s chest. Outrage, because he hadn’t asked her. Relief, because she had cheated death once more. Gratitude, because Talon had made a decision that she had not been able to make for herself, and last, but not least, love, because it surely couldn’t have been easy for him to bind himself to her forever. Cat stayed silent at first, afraid that she would say the wrong thing. She chose her next words carefully. When they had finally left the zoo behind them, she carefully asked him how long the bond between them would last. “Please Talon, don’t misunderstand me,” she said and looked at him directly. “I am grateful to you for everything you have done for me…” She fell silent. How could she explain to him that she felt safe in his presence? That she loved him with every fiber of her being, but that she would have preferred to have been asked? “I know you didn’t have a choice,” she added quickly.
Talon’s silence had taken on a different quality. It wasn’t a pleasant silence anymore, during which they didn’t need to say anything, because they already knew what the other one was thinking. He stomped through the snow, his eyebrows furrowed darkly, and his face unreadable. Cat could barely keep up. His long legs made him at least twice as fast as she was, and he was furious. At the edge of her own consciousness, she could feel his feelings brewing, driving him onward.
She had already dropped back several feet behind him. “Talon, please,” she cried after him. “I didn’t mean it like that. Please give me a chance to explain!”
He responded by increasing his speed even more. If he kept this up much longer, she would lose sight of him. Cat noticed that his anger boiled over into her. It was like a quiet and smoldering fire, coming closer and taking hold of her. Why wouldn’t that idiot give her a chance to explain? She consciously fell back even more. She could barely see Talon’s broad back anymore, especially because it had started snowing again. Cat could still see his footprints. She would just have to assume that he knew the way back to the libra
ry, because when she had left it the last time, she had been unconscious. Cat didn’t know these outer districts very well, so it was hard for her to navigate them at night. In the inner city, on the other hand, she knew every street and door.
The moron, to whom she was now bound, disappeared from her line of sight. Cat followed his footsteps grumpily. They were increasingly hard to trace, the further she went from the zoo. She came to a fork in the path. It looked vaguely familiar to her. Had she passed this place when she had been on her way to her first meeting with Talon? She looked at her surroundings and tried to make out any landmarks under the heavy blanket of snow. “No chance,” thought Cat. She was lucky that she could even still see a path. She turned to the left, in the direction where she saw some movement. It must be Talon waiting for her.
Forcefully, she pushed his feelings to the side. This wasn’t as easy as it sounded. She was bound to him, and to make things more difficult, she couldn’t touch his feelings. This was different than mind reading, where she could reach for things just like she had learned. She mumbled a half-hearted curse to herself about machos who didn’t give you a choice, and then went after him. When would they finally get there? She could hardly wait to return to her comfortable camp of blankets in the library. She would be able to wash up, and if she was lucky, nobody had taken the supplies that the warriors had left behind before leaving. When she thought about the fact that Talon was now separated from his people, she suddenly felt a rush of guilt. No, it was more than a rush, and there was something else in the back of her mind, nagging her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. The harder she tried to find the thought, the more it seemed to hide from her.
Talon had sacrificed everything for her. He had sent his men away, knowing well that he would have to stay behind on Earth, alone with her. He had openly opposed his king, and not just by staying behind. She stopped abruptly, realizing with a pang what Talon had really done. His decision to bind himself to her, to make her his companion – that was equal to an open rebellion. Ferthoris had won her in a poker game, fair and square. Maybe the king didn’t have the law on his side though, because games of chance, in which humans or other intelligent beings were the prizes, were illegal. The poker games happened in a legal gray zone. More important, however, was that she had signed a contract, and had received a large sum of money as part of that contract. Morally, Cat was obligated to take Ferthoris III as her husband. She wasn’t supposed to take his chief warlord as her husband. Ex-warlord, she reminded herself with a grimace.