He said no more after that.
CHAPTER 11
The sun went down and the temperature dropped so dramatically that Sasha was shivering by the time they reached what seemed to be a serviceable cave entrance. Quinn offered her his coat, then ducked inside to search for any potential dangers.
Under the cover of darkness, the landscape changed, becoming even more alien. The night seemed to come alive with a million eyes. As she waited, Sasha pushed herself against the side of the cave, trying to make herself small, her eyes straining to track any small motion in the livid night. It seemed forever when Quinn finally returned, and she had to force herself not to throw herself into his arms.
“It looks safe enough,” he announced.
They set up camp at the back of the cavern where Quinn said the mountain formed a natural flue to keep the fire he struck from dry kindling and flint from choking them out while they slept. He thought the fire would keep most of the animals away. Sasha moved closer to the warmth of the flames, and closer to Quinn, licking her parched lips.
“Thirsty?” Quinn asked, his voice echoing too loudly in the cavern.
“I’m perfectly all right,” she answered, watching the firelight flit across his face. She wanted to move closer still, clutch him like she might fall off the edge of the world otherwise, but that would be childlike. And inappropriate.
He stood up.
Sasha felt her heart catch. “Where are you going?”
Quinn indicated the darkness of the cavern with the tip of his javelin. “While I was exploring earlier I heard water splashing. I think there may be a natural underground lake. A lake means food and water. No worries, I’ll be back soon.”
Sasha stood up, too. “I’ll come with you.”
“You look tired, Sasha.”
“I’m not. I’m coming with you.” Clutching his coat, she put her hand on his arm as she had earlier. But now, in the dark, it seemed a much more intimate gesture. But she couldn’t pry herself off him, it seemed. Quinn was safety, and home, and sanity. She couldn’t let that go.
She waited for him to protest, to shake off her touch, but instead he drew her near, so near she could feel the warmth of the fire in his clothes. “Come along, then,” he said. Together they moved deeper into the cavern.
Half-seen creatures flitted far above their heads, and the strong reek of ammonia assaulted them, testifying to the presence of bats—real bats, not bat people. Quinn seemed unperturbed. “What if they’re vampire bats?” she asked. “Won’t they bite us?”
“That’s a distinct possibility.”
She was getting tired of Quinn teasing her. “They could attack us. They could have rabies.”
“I think I’d rather take my chances with the vampire bats than with the things out there.”
He was right, of course. And that made her want to kick him. But she just clutched his arm tighter as lights flickered across the rock walls from a pool of water further on. She could smell the pungent aroma of the underground lake long before she could see it, and her dry mouth was suddenly pooling with saliva. Water. After hours of being dehydrated under a relentless alien sun, water was the most delicious idea in the world to her.
They both had the same idea when they finally reached the underground lake. They got down on their hands and knees and began palming water into their parched mouths and over their dirty faces. It was shockingly cold, but good, so good. After a moment, Quinn stripped off his shirt and waistcoat and began splashing water down his bare chest. He had a stronger physique that she’d expected; his alcoholism had only just begun nipping around the edges of his body. Sasha stood up and moved backward a step. “Don’t splash me!” she said, laughing to cover her embarrassment. From behind, she could see his back bore a thin spiderwebbing of old pinkish scar tissue. Had he been in some war in Africa? Now she was even more embarrassed…and curious.
Quinn stood up, seemed to recall he was naked to the waist, and quickly grabbed up his shirt, slipping his arms into it and pulling it over his head even though he was still dripping wet. He too looked embarrassed, as if he had forgotten himself. “Did you want to bathe? I’d be happy to give you the privacy necessary.”
Sasha thought about that. The idea of swimming in the icy water made her shiver. “No, I think I’ll wait until tomorrow.”
“Very well.” He stepped onto some rocks and, balancing precariously, set the javelin on his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes!”
“Good. Fish is on the menu tonight.” He narrowed his eyes and waited.
Time passed. Sasha slowly sank down on the dirt floor of the cavern, clutching Quinn’s coat about her shoulders. Quinn stayed perched on his rock, moving not a muscle.
Together, they waited for dinner to arrive.
Some time later, a ripple broke the surface of the water for the first time. Quinn crouched low, his javelin, now a fish-killing weapon, at the ready. Another ripple. Quinn smirked.
An amphibious creature that looked like an overgrown toad leaped out at him, its long, black tongue snapping out. The tongue opened like a miniature mouth, snapping at him with ragged proto-teeth. Sasha squeaked and nearly jumped out of her skin at the sight. Quinn leaped backward, landing with remarkable grace and balance at the edge of the water. The toad-thing, which was as big as a pony, glared at him with shiny black onyx eyes, then smoothly ducked back under the water, leaving almost no ripple behind.
Quinn started, then laughed unexpectedly. “I expect we’re not eating that.”
Sasha shivered. “How can you joke?”
“What else am I to do?”
“It’s not funny!” Sasha insisted. “You could have been hurt. And…and you act like you’re enjoying this! Like you like this world!”
Quinn thought about that. “I suppose I do.” He raised the javelin, preparing for round two. “On Sasha’s World, there are no debt collectors, no moneylenders. No one I know, no one who knows me.” He repositioned himself on the rocks and stared keenly down into the pool of dark water. “In a way, it’s like being reborn, starting all over again.”
He was right, in a way. There were no laws here, no rules. No one to tell you what to do. No people, so far as she knew. And if there was a civilization somewhere, surely they had their own rules of conduct. For the first time in her life, Sasha realized she was free. Free to live by her own code, free to make her own decisions. It should have thrilled her, she supposed; instead, she was only afraid. She’d had a beautiful little ruddy chaffinch like that. She’d found him injured one summer in the garden and kept him for months in a cage, nursing his broken wing. Then one day she let him go. The following day, she found him dead outside the back door of the manor house. He’d battered himself to death in an attempt to get back inside. Back to captivity.
Sasha stared at the water, huddling in Quinn’s coat. “All the fish have been chased away again,” she said, depressed by her inner thoughts. “We’ll never catch anything now.”
“Do you always do that?” Quinn asked.
“Do what?”
“Talk like a little girl?”
“I’m not a little girl!” she shouted, then instantly regretted it, because that’s exactly what was happening. She was sounding like a little girl, a petulant child kept up far beyond her bedtime…and without a single parent in sight! She had to remind herself that she was nineteen, a woman. That on Sasha’s World, she could make her own decisions.
As if to read her mind, Quinn quoted, “‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’”
She glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Poor old Albertus. He’s no idea what damage he’s done to his precious little Sasha.” He was laughing at her again, not outwardly, but within, that smirk back on his face.
She jumped to her feet and glared at
Quinn. Suddenly it was too much, all of this. She was tired and hungry and cold and finished. She didn’t feel like a woman, quite the opposite, in fact. And she did not care. She wanted to go home now, sleep in her own bed. She wanted to see her own room, her dolls lined up in a neat row against her pillows. She wanted Toby. She wanted her Papa. She wanted her mother, over ten years dead. It was simply too much to bear. “How dare you speak to me like this?” she shouted, clenching the fabric of the coat in her fists. She had to force herself to keep from sobbing. “How dare you speak of my father this way? You’re so mean and horrible! You’re a horrible old man, Quinn!” Her words reverberated around the cavern, sounding childish even to her own ears. She stopped and sank to her knees and just stared at him as hot tears welled up in her eyes. She didn’t like this world the way Quinn did. She didn’t like him. She didn’t like any of this!
Quinn watched her, his eyes dark and pitiless in the spare light shining off the underground lake.
Sasha gave in finally. She started to cry, great heaving sobs that racked her body and made her tremble. Quinn waited, saying nothing. He let her cry and cry. Toby never would have let her cry herself dry, and neither would her Papa. Her father would have comforted her, held her, and made things right. But nothing was right. And Papa wasn’t here. And neither was Toby. And from Quinn—who was a horrible old man—there was no comfort. There was just cold and fear and loneliness and silence. He stood there, one eye on her, one on the water, waiting until she was finished, all cried out.
“Are you finished, little Sasha?” he asked in a mocking tone.
“I hate you,” she told him, patting at her sodden face with the ripped sleeve of her dress. “I hate you, Quinn.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You don’t care about anyone but yourself! You enjoy hurting people.”
He gave her a bored look, as if her words meant nothing to him, as if he didn’t believe them at all. He said in a whisper, “Have I hurt you, Sasha?”
She pulled at her hair, then let it go. It was as snarled a mess as leaves on a bush, full of leaf litter and jungle debris. She sniffed as her sobs subsided and her anger cooled. The cry had helped. She felt all washed out. “No.” She looked up at him, studying him more carefully. He watched her now, intently. She realized after a moment that he was always watching her, studying her. He looked at her as no one had ever looked at her before, as if he were stripping her down to her soul, and it made something deep and primal in her belly move. She looked away, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
“I was thoughtless.”
“You were.”
She looked back. “But you’re not like Toby, Quinn.”
He raised his eyebrows at that. “Why should I want to be like Toby?”
She didn’t know what to say to that, what was appropriate. Or true.
“Ah,” said Quinn, and went back to watching the water.
“What?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
“What do you mean ‘ah’?” Slowly she climbed to her feet. “Explain yourself, Quinn! Please.”
Again with the little smirk. She sensed it more than she saw it in the dark. “Little Sasha, I think I understand you now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve known Toby a long time, yes?”
“We practically grew up together.”
“I see. So Toby is your playmate. Your friend. Toby is…safe.”
“I don’t understand.”
She watched him tense as he spotted something. But after a moment he relaxed his shoulders as his prey swam away. He held the javelin perfectly still, like he was stone, like he could hold it that way all night long. “You love Toby because he’s safe. You can never marry him because of his station, therefore he’s safe to you. He’s no threat to you, or to your…innocence.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I?”
“I love Toby because he’s Toby.” She raised her chin, pinning Quinn with a determined look. “And I’m not afraid of you, Quinn. You can bluster all you please. You don’t frighten me at all.”
“I’m very happy to hear that,” he said. He was quiet a long moment, as if he were considering something. Then his voice changed, becoming softer, more intimate. He did not look at her. “So if I were to tell you that you were a very desirable young woman, you would appreciate my words for the compliment they’re intended to be. Is that true?”
Suddenly she was afraid again, but for an entirely different reason. She realized she was more afraid of Quinn than the toad-creature that had nearly eaten them. She had to try twice before she found her voice. “Were you to feel that way, I would say you were not honorable, and certainly no gentleman.” She tried to make her voice strong, but it came out a whisper instead.
“Because a gentleman would never desire a woman? Or because a gentleman never speaks his mind?”
Sasha stared at the water. Fish were swarming around the rocks, but Quinn paid them no mind. He simply gazed at the water, or maybe at her rippling reflection in it, wholly concentrated on that. She looked too. In the torn debutante dress, with her hair fallen down, she didn’t look like Sasha Strange anymore; she looked a great deal more like her mother, a grown woman. She wished she were anywhere but here, with Quinn. She didn’t know what to say to him. For all her classes, tutors, and books, she did not know what was appropriate, or what was true. She didn’t know anything anymore. “I’m going back to the camp.”
And so she did.
CHAPTER 12
Quinn returned with what looked like two small, armored sharklike fish on the end of his javelin. The fish didn’t seem to have traditional scales, which made them that much easier to clean. Using his knife, Quinn sliced off long pieces of pale pink flesh and secured them to a long stick that he then held over the fire. The moist flesh cooked quickly, giving off a pungent, salty aroma that had Sasha nearly whimpering in anticipation. Quinn even found some wild berries outside the cave that Sasha believed were related to gooseberries on earth. She was so hungry by the time the fish came her way that she shoveled the still boiling hot meat right into her mouth, burning her tongue and fingers in the process.
“Careful,” said Quinn, laughing, and Sasha endeavored to eat more ladylike in his presence. She did not respond to him, but Quinn seemed unperturbed by her silence. After the fish had been eaten, and the remains and berries rolled up in a piece of fabric to be taken with them, he went about hunting down different flints, gathering some for his pockets, and examining other, larger pieces as potential weapons. After an hour or so of flint hunting, he’d chosen a large, serrated piece and secured it to the end of his javelin with strips of cloth, cursing his lack of catgut, which would have made things much easier. The javelin was now, truly, dangerous.
Sasha watched him work from across the fire, following his example in making her own javelin. She was an amateur engineer, so she found ways of securing the flint better than he, which made him then follow her example. It was good work. She didn’t have to talk to him, and she didn’t want to, not after the lascivious way he had spoken to her. But the angry silence was oppressive, making her feel alone even in his presence. “I’m not a child, Quinn,” she finally said. “I learned to hunt fox with my father. I can ride horses. I can shoot a gun.” She felt stupid after saying it. They were not hunting fox. There were no horses in this world. And she didn’t have a gun.
Quinn finished securing the flint to his homemade spear.
“I can learn to fish. And to fight,” she insisted.
Quinn stood up, testing the weight and balance of his weapon.
Sasha stood up too. “I can learn to use that.”
He glanced at her, finally. His eyes looked dark, foreign to her. She would have called it anger, but it didn’t have that edge. She suppressed a shiver. She stood up straighter and showed him her own, smaller, javelin. “Show me how to throw,�
�� she said in a softer tone. “I’ll learn. I’m not afraid.”
Quinn thought about that, then wordlessly moved to encircle her. He stood very close, so close she could smell the vague, damp smell of the long-dried alcohol still on his clothing. But the smell was fading; he smelled more like jungle than anything else. His heat engulfed her. He took her hand, which held her javelin, and drew it back until it was just past her ear; then, with his other hand, he straightened her arm. He said, in the shivery cup of her ear, “You throw from your shoulder, using your arm, but never putting your whole body into the throw. You must keep your center of gravity at all times.” He extended her arm into the throw. He put a heavy hand on her back to keep it straight.
Planet of Dinosaurs, The Complete Collection (Includes Planet of Dinosaurs, Sea of Serpents, & Valley of Dragons) Page 6