by Fox, Jaide
“Ebony,” Pamela ventured, “you’re so much stronger than the rest of us. Why go back at all? Why not stay with these men, or just run away and try to find someplace else?”
“Yeah, I ask myself that question, too. It’s because of my sister. I hate the king, but I do love my sister. She’s going to have a baby, you know.”
“A baby! That’s so wonderful!” All of the other women chimed in about the baby. “Oh, I’d love to have a baby--if I had a real husband!”
“Besides,” Ebony continued, “y’all aren’t thinking this through. How am I gonna go back and not re-enter that horrible life? Those gray aliens have been collecting blondes and redheads for this place, just like these men wanted, and me and my sister stick out like a couple of sore thumbs with all this dark skin and brown eyes and black hair. Now, we’re very exotic and highly desired sore thumbs, but still...I’d never be able to hide who I am and just sneak around the city to see Adrienne and her baby.”
“I see...I see...oh, poor Ebony,” whispered Cassie and the other women, as they all continued to rub their feet and pull the burrs and twigs out of the ragged hems of their skirts. Ebony turned away from them and glanced across the clearing towards Fallon.
She saw him take a brown leather vest from one of his men and then pull a knife from his belt. “I think we can make something with this for a few of them,” he said.
Damon and the other men watched as Fallon cut the vest into thin strips. When he seemed satisfied by what he’d done, he moved to Ebony and stooped down next to her. Taking hold of her feet without so much as speaking to her, he wrapped the leather strips around first one foot and then the other until he’d covered the soles enough to protect her tender feet from at least some of the hazards on the ground. He tied off the strips with some of the same leather cord that they’d used to bind the wrists of their captives, and then sat back.
“Try this. Walk around and see if it works,” he said, grabbing her hand and hauling her to her feet.
Ebony quickly pulled her hands free of his calloused palms, rubbing her hands on her skirt to remove the sensation of warmth he’d imprinted on her skin. She took a few experimental steps and then stomped on a sticker bush. She looked up at him, and nodded. “It works.”
“All right. I’ll get some more leather. You women all wrap up each others’ feet. Then let’s get going.”
Once all the women’s feet were bound, they were herded back into line to continue on. Ebony was grateful to have something bearing the brunt of her walking, at last. “It ain’t shoes,” she muttered, “but some strapping is a damned sight better than humping barefoot through the woods all day.”
The group fell silent as they progressed through the deep pine forest. Some of the men kept their heads tilted up towards the canopy of the forest, while others scanned the trunks of the great trees surrounding them.
Ebony glanced back at Fallon again. It seemed he’d decided to walk right behind her each time they set out to march. Well, good. At least he could provide her with a little conversation to make the time pass and distract her from how cold and dirty and naked she really was.
“Somehow, we managed to get away without anyone chasing us,” she began. “It makes me wonder if you all had someone on the inside of the city to help you carry out your plan to steal us.”
She heard a little snort of laughter from Fallon. “Woman, do you think I would tell you anything about our plans?”
Ebony shrugged. “Well, it makes sense that you might have supporters in the palace. Not everyone could, or would, love the king. It just ain’t in free-thinking people’s nature to unconditionally love their rulers.”
When he remained silent, Ebony kept talking. “Of course, you say that you should have been king. I’m not sure why you think that. Are you any better than he is?”
“It is not your place to ask me anything.”
“Hmm...You think you’re better because you’re brothers, and some kind of sibling rivalry convinced you that you should have been chosen instead.”
All she could hear from Fallon, as he continued to walk through the forest behind her, was a kind of low, angry growling sound.
She smiled to herself. He didn’t realize yet that if Miss Ebony Raines had nothing else, she had tenacity, and she would get some answers eventually. She’d wear Fallon down until he gave her what she wanted, and he wouldn’t even realize what happened. She didn’t have anything else to distract her from satisfying her curiosity, and she rather liked the way she irritated him. Maybe she was just a bitch, but grating on his nerves amused her.
All right, she was a bitch, and she could admit that. The way his jaw tightened, and the vein pulsed on his temple, whenever she opened her mouth made her chuckle mentally.
Then the rushing sound of water broke through her mental conversation with herself--and she looked up to find that they were approaching a river. One glance at the water made her stop dead in her tracks.
This river was wide. And deep--she couldn’t tell how deep. But there were boulders scattered all through it, and rapids splashing white and fast around the boulders. Ebony stood and stared. “Are you kidding me? Where’s the bridge?”
“No bridge,” grunted Fallon, pushing her towards the front of the group. “Walk.”
“Not on your life! Wait a minute!” Ebony cried, digging in her heels and leaning back against Fallon. “My girls and I have been stuck in that goddam harem with no exercise for months. We’re exhausted just from this walking. That’s a swift-moving river. What are you thinking?”
“Not deep. Walk. Go.”
“Hey, it only takes a few inches to carry off a car! I know I’m stacked top and bottom, but I still weigh less than a car. And I’m not a great swimmer.”
He looked down at her forehead, and then glanced at the others. “It’s not that deep. You don’t have to swim it.”
“But what if we slip and fall? We could drown. We’re not even wearing shoes,” she said.
“She’s right,” Damon said.
“All right. Carry them across,” Fallon said to his men. He gave Ebony a warning look and then turned her around and hefted her up like a child, putting her up over his head to sit on his shoulders. “But do not do anything stupid.”
Ebony squealed and then clung to his head, clamping her thighs around his cheeks as he eased into the swift moving water. Slight panic made her heart thump hard in her chest. Fallon mumbled something to her, but she could not hear him.
Then she realized that she’d tightened her hold on him with her legs until her thighs completely covered his nose and mouth. That might’ve made her laugh if her fate didn’t depend on him not suffocating and dropping them both in the water. The water hit him at mid-thigh, which would put it waist high on her--and that was too deep for her liking, especially with the fast-moving current rushing through it.
She moved her hands under his chin, held on tight and relaxed her legs a little, allowing him to breathe and talk. “Sorry, sorry. I’m not used to being this high in the air! It’s gettin’ on my nerves somethin’ fierce.”
“Calm down! You’ll be safe! Just trust me,” Fallon grumbled, grasping her calves and taking great steps across.
Trust wasn’t something she just handed out willy-nilly. But she had to trust him this time. She didn’t have much choice in the matter.
“Ebony,” he said in a strangled voice. “If you do not loosen your thighs around my throat, I will dunk you in the water.”
“Oh! Sorry. I can’t help it!” she said, forcing herself to relax her legs a little more and depend upon him to keep her above the water. She watched from her perch on his shoulders as he powered through the swift current, taking them across the rushing river to the other side with little effort.
His strength impressed her. Being back on solid ground impressed her even more.
Ebony wilted to the ground and sat motionless, watching as the others joined them. The girls all collapsed on the ground in relief, as Eb
ony had done. The men filled their canteens and drank until their bellies were full of water, and then passed the canteens to the women.
“Thanks,” Ebony said, taking the canteen from Fallon.
“For what?” he said, watching her with a steady gaze.
“For not dropping me. You could’ve just dunked me in the water and stepped back to see what would happen,” she said before taking another swig of water. She handed the canteen back to him.
He chuckled, and took a long drink of the water, and then crouched at the river’s edge once more to fill the container back up. “I suppose you think us monsters, but we are not. No more than any man is.”
She gave him a wry grin. “That’s not saying much.”
He stood up, and looked straight at her. “No, it’s not. But then, they haven’t done the things we have. If you knew the truth, you might feel differently.”
“Just waiting on you to tell it to me. One of you. I’ll dig it out eventually. Probably from Damon. He looks easier to break.”
Damon laughed, a short bark of a sound. “She’s got balls.”
Fallon rubbed his chin. “Something like that,” he said.
Ebony looked hard at Fallon. “You going to tie our hands again?”
His eyes flicked from Ebony to the other women. “I think we’ve had enough of the bindings. If any of you run away now, you’ll just be lost in the woods.”
“So we’re still trapped, but you’re giving us the illusion of freedom,” Ebony asked. She stood up and filed into line with the women.
“Exactly,” Damon said. “Don’t think about running away. Our legs are much longer than yours, and I would hate to punish you or any of the others for the attempt.”
The women from the harem looked wide-eyed and wary, but made no answer. The men began moving them down the trail as though herding sheep. Ebony found her temper rising as she watched.
“You know, Fallon,” she said, as she started down the trail, “as much as you men might like to think of us women as being cowed, meek, and mild, we’re all survivors. Circumstances have forced us to become survivors. We’re a lot stronger than we appear, even if we are smaller and weaker than all you big men. We still have backbones. We still have a will of our own.”
“Let us know when you women can carry the men across the river. Then we will listen to you talk about having backbones.”
She turned back glared at him. “We just haven’t had a chance to show our strength because you men insist on imposing your rules onto us.”
He didn’t bother to look at her. He acted as if he wasn’t even listening. “Men’s arrogance never ceases to amaze me,” she said, turning and stomping back along the trail. “Men are men, aliens or not. Not one of you guys has a clue how to treat a woman—that much is obvious.”
“You are needed, Ebony. All these women are. You have your part to play, as we all do.”
“So--we’re just bargaining chips for you to use in some master plan to take over the kingdom?”
No answer.
“Damned meatheads,” she muttered, and continued down the trail.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After what seemed like hours of walking, with Fallon and Damon and everyone else refusing to talk to her to pass the time, Ebony lost herself in her own thoughts. She had to keep putting one foot in front of the other through what seemed like endless miles of forest. When the woods petered out and the foothills began, she thought she just might die of exhaustion.
Her fine red silk gown, edged with golden ribbon, was filthy and shredded from walking for miles over sandy beach and through deep pine forest and then sleeping on a dirt floor. The fragile, gossamer fabric was practically falling apart. Her feet were bruised and swollen, even though the leather straps were better than nothing. And she could certainly see that all the other women were equally tattered and exhausted and sore to the bone.
Ebony had almost gotten to the point of collapsing on the ground, and throwing a massive temper tantrum to get a moment’s rest, when Fallon decided to give them a break. “Stop here,” he called. Ebony kept stumbling on when the others quickly halted at the sound of his voice, and she almost ran into the woman in front of her--which turned out to be Cassie. “Eat. Drink. Rest,” Fallon ordered. “We’ll be moving out again soon.”
Ebony accepted the food she was given--more jerky and, this time, some kind of dried fruit that looked like leathery tomatoes and tasted like apricots--but as soon as she had eaten, and caught her breath a little, she walked right up to Fallon where he sat beside Damon on the ground beneath a lone pine tree.
She put her hands on her hips and looked Fallon straight in the eye. “I’ve had some questions ever since I got to this world, and I’m tired of waiting for answers. Just being a pawn doesn’t sit well with me. I want you to tell me a few things and I want you to tell them to me now.”
Slowly the two men looked up at her, and stared as though she were simply an annoying insect. “And if we do not tell you?” asked Damon.
“Then--then--I will go right on doing my best to escape at every opportunity, and you will either have to tie me up and carry me or spend your nights wondering about whether I really did get back to the palace.”
The men glanced at each other, and then Fallon looked back at Ebony. “What do you want to know?”
Without being invited, Ebony sat down on the soft earth right in front of them. “First of all,” she began, “I might have been abducted by aliens, but I’m still no fool. I have eyes. I can see that you, Fallon, claim to be the king’s brother, and look like you are the king’s brother. I do think you must be the king’s brother, but not just any brother. I think you’re the king’s twin brother.”
The two men stopped chewing for a moment, and looked at each other. “Go on,” said Fallon.
“Well. If we accept that as fact, the next logical conclusion is that you, Fallon, are the leader of the rebels--the rebels which have caused so much trouble in the kingdom.”
He stared up at her with those cold blue eyes. “And if I tell you that I am the leader of the rebels?”
“Then I’ll ask you the next question: What happened to all the women on this planet? We were told when we got here that they all died in a plague. Now, genetic engineering wasn’t exactly my best subject in school, but I don’t see how any natural bug could come along and kill only women and not men. What happened? And who did it?”
Fallon stood up, took Ebony by the arm in an iron grip, and walked with her back to the edge of the forest where the others could not hear. “You are right, Ebony Raines,” he said. “You are right about all of it. I will tell you what happened, but you may wish you had never asked.”
Her eyes grew a little larger, but she only nodded silently and stood waiting for him to speak.
Fallon released her and began pacing. “Sit down. I know you are weary,” he said. She sank down to the earth and continued to watch him.
He was quiet a moment, remembering the fateful day when his life was forever changed.
***
Fifteen years ago…
Fallon slammed his fists on the table that sat before his father, the king. “Father, you cannot do this! I am next in line to rule this kingdom.”
King Erol Anadaru regarded his son with an icy blue gaze that had withered many a man on the spot. Snow white hair flowed around his shoulders, matched by an equally long beard around the firm set of his mouth. “You sound like a petulant child, Fallon. I have made my decision in this matter.”
Fallon straightened up, his eyes moving from his father to his brother. Kore sat beside the king, a smirk on his face. That bastard had been needling their father for years to get into his good graces. Kore had never had an original thought enter his brain.
“This is wrong. I am firstborn—”
“And I am still the king! And you will be quiet!” Erol Anadaru roared at his son.
Fallon did not back down. It was not in his nature to snap in the fierce tornado
of his father’s anger. Fallon closed his mouth, sensing the approach of a tirade such as he’d never heard.
“For years you have asked that I change policies regarding the distribution of necessities and work. The working class will remain in the lottery just as they have always done. Kore has assured me his vision for the progression of our planet is in line with my own. I cannot trust this with you. You’ve made it abundantly clear to me that when you rule, you will change the very fabric of our existence—”