No wonder Margit was weeping! Rigi gulped and nodded. “I’ll try to be harmless, ma’am.” Her escort seemed curious, and Rigi eased away from the others. Thad and one of the men watched, concerned, and the third young man glared at her, as it this were her fault. Margit had her back to them and kept sobbing, but quietly. Rigi’s guess about her feelings for Dr. Sanchez had been right.
Part of the peeled log wall slid up, taking Rigi by surprise. How did they do it? She soon found out, as the Staré urged the humans inside. A lighter colored female, with stripes and a pouchling, met Rigi and urged her to the right of the entrance as the guards steered the rest of the humans to the left. Rigi smelled lots of Staré, river-bank mud and rotting plants, wood-smoke, and something nasty that made her want to gag. Oh dear, was that the necessary pits? She had a dreadful sense that she would find out soon.
Alas, it was indeed the stench of the necessary pits. At least they were downstream of where the villagers fished and drew water for washing. Water for cooking came from a well in the woods, and hoplings brought the water. That number soon included Rigi. After the first day or so of watching and becoming increasingly bored, she decided that being useful would be a good idea. Just after noon that day she saw one of the females with a large pouchling struggling to stir a large pot of something and stoke the fire at the same time. Rigi approached, hand bowed, and made a stirring motion. The female studied her, then after a brief hesitation handed her the stick. Rigi stirred whatever it was, and added some of the wood to the fire, careful not to upset the sparkly stone tripod the large pot sat on. //Approval// wafted from the female. She twitched her ears and made another stirring motion, then walked away, leaving Rigi to stir. The female returned a little later, added what looked like white roots to the pot, and reached for the stick. Rigi gave it to her and backed out of the way.
Later that afternoon the Matron came to Rigi’s part of the village. The younger females, those with young in the pouch, and hoplings stayed in a subsection of the settlement with an additional low wall around it. Rigi had not learned if it was for protection from some kind of animal, or had ritual meaning, or it it was just to keep the hoplings out of trouble when they were not supervised. Rigi suspected the latter, not that a wall meant much when one of the hopling males came up with a way to launch mud-balls at one of the older females from behind the cover of the wall. Rigi’s own backside tingled as she remembered just what an angry Staré female’s forefoot felt like when applied with firm blows to a rump. Apparently hoplings experienced similar sensations, and the male stayed away from both the wall and older females for several days after that. Rigi was helping one of the mothers with a pouchling clean part of the living space when the Matron appeared. She watched for a while, then said and puffed something to the paler but still dark female with her.
From then on the villagers encouraged Rigi to do chores just like the other hoplings, including going for drinking and cooking water at the well. The Staré used buckets that hung from shoulder poles, and after a bit of fussing the male in charge of water found a pole that would work for Rigi, along with larger buckets. Rigi thought once or twice about trying to get away while the others filled their buckets, but the hoplings seemed to have been told to watch her. And then she saw the head.
On the second trip, as they came back to the village, one of the female hoplings made a concerned sound and puffed //wary/confused,// pointing to something mounted on the log wall, near the gate. Rigi saw the weathered heads of two carnifex leapers and of a reptile with a flat head and very large teeth. Then she saw a new head. Mistress Borloug’s head, eyes closed thanks be, hung beside the second carnifex leaper. The hoplings looked from the head to Rigi, and one of the males made a negative motion. They all went back into the village. Rigi felt sick to her stomach, and whisper-sang one of the prayers for the dead. Then she quickly sketched what she’d seen, omitting as much detail as she dared.
After the first few times, the Staré had apparently concluded that drawing was harmless, and ignored Rigi unless they needed her to do something. She in turn stayed out of the way and did not draw individuals. Nor had she gone to what she thought of as a temple, an ornate stone and wood and plaster building at the end of the market space that had designs painted on the outside in colors that made her eyes ache, reds and oranges and a yellow-green the same shade as something polite people only discussed with a doctor. Instead she stayed out of the way, and only drew when no one needed her for anything else.
That afternoon a female sent her on an errand to what Rigi thought of as the market, and her route took her by the house where the others stayed. Rigi saw Margit, who glowered at her. “They killed Mistress Borloug,” Rigi said, stopping as if she needed to adjust her shoe. “Her head is on the outer wall.”
“I’ll tell Dr. Xian. Traitor.”
Rigi ignored the insult and went on her way. She handed a piece of white wood with something marked on it to the male at a meat-covered table. He took the wood, weighed dark-colored meat on a balance scale against some clay balls with other marks on them, and put the meat in a basket. Rigi took the basket, hand bowed, and hurried back to her usual haunts before someone fussed at her. The guards or peacekeepers, she wasn’t certain exactly which they were closer to, did not like her staying out of the hopling area, but then they did not like any hoplings staying out of the hopling area. Two nights later she learned why.
Summer’s heat baked the village, bringing miasmas out of the wetlands along the river and turning the clay and wood houses inside the walls into small ovens. Most of the Staré slept outdoors, in the street. Rigi couldn’t quite do that—the flying blood-sucking bugs liked her too much—so she slept in an open doorway where smoke from the fire helped discourage insects. She’d gotten up to use the necessary pan when she heard a deep, long snarling sound, and scraping on the outside of the main wall. Something clawed at the logs, trying to get in. It sounded very large, and she smelled a mix of wet and rotten-egg foulness, as if rotting plants and river muck stuck to the animal. Rigi hurried to where the closest adult male napped, just on the other side of the hopling fence, and called quietly in the version of Staré that she knew, trying to alert him, “danger—big beast.”
The watchman startled, frowned, then followed her. As soon as he heard the sound he gusted //danger/anger/fear,// then hop-ran up the street. She heard banging, like an alarm of some kind. Males rushed into the hopling section and chased everyone inside the buildings, closing the doors. She heard growling, and Staré yells, and snarls and screams and more yells and a bellowing howl that cut to the bone. The adult female in the building with Rigi put her forefeet on her head, bending her ears over and rocking, moaning and filling the air with //fear/distress.// Rigi tried to mimic how she’d seen other Staré comfort hoplings and pushed lightly on the base of her ears. It seemed to work and the sharp, cutting //distress/terror// smell faded into a dull //fear/upset.// Not until false dawn did the males and older females open the doors and let everyone out. The fresh air felt good, even though it was not that much cooler. The Matron walked up to Rigi, ordered, “Come,” and gestured for Rigi to follow her. The dark female led the way through the gate and outside the walls.
They rounded the end of the walls and Rigi gulped. Near the logs lay the largest land reptile Rigi had ever seen. Dark mud and river muck clung to the green-grey armored plates covering most of the beast. It had to be at least seven meters long, with enormously thick bent legs, and claws as long as a Staré hindfoot. The head resembled the reptile head hanging on the wall, but with larger teeth and eyes mounted on top of the skull instead of out to the sides near the edges of the head. The nostrils looked very high as well, and Rigi guessed that it could walk and swim in water. After she had gaped at the remains, Rigi looked at the wooden wall. Her stomach clenched and she felt the need to use the necessary right then and there. The beast had torn the logs almost in half. Now she understood that second wall around the hopling and pouchling section. Even so, had
it come in… Rigi shivered and tried not to imagine the carnage. Even her military shooter, on full power, might not have stopped it fast enough. Where had the male on watch been? Or were there males on watch outside the wall at night?
The Matron patted Rigi on the head. //Approval/pleased,// “Good hopling.” Then she led her back into the village. The hoplings regarded Rigi with a little awe at first, but that wore off after a few hours. The adults, however, seemed confused and uncertain. Later that evening Rigi decided why. They considered her to be a hopling, but she had acted like a mature adult. Yet she did not smell or look like a mature adult, and had said that she was a hopling. So what was she? Where did she fit?
Rigi thought about it and felt almost as confused as the village adults seemed to be. She also counted up the days and realized that she’d start her cycle soon. She’d just finished when they reached the Scout Site, and in five or six days she’d have a real problem in terms of smells and rank, not to mention sanitation. She knew absolutely nothing about what Staré females did during their cycle, or if they even had one like humans, or if they went into heat. She had not seen any of the egg-nests, although she’d seen two females who had been very round one morning leave the hopling section and reappear two days later, much thinner. No matter how it worked, she needed a bath, a change of clothes, human food, and to take off the shooter’s belt because the hard back of the holster had started rubbing through her leggings.
That night Rigi lay on the floor on her stomach, head pillowed on her arms, tears seeping despite herself. I want to go home. I want a grown-up to make everything alright. She wanted to get away from the strange Staré. She couldn’t forget seeing Mistress Borloug’s head on the wall, or hearing that they’d killed Lukka and Dr. Sanchez as well. She wanted to mourn, to have a place to weep and pray for the losses. She wanted to see Martinus and her parents and Uncle Eb. She wanted to cry, to beg someone to take her home.
The feeling faded a little as Rigi acknowledged that she couldn’t just weep and pray. First she needed to get away, and to call for help. Had Mistress Borloug been able to send a message before the Staré killed her? If not, Rigi needed to get away and try to reach the communications equipment in camp, if the Staré had not destroyed it. Why had they killed Mistress Borloug, Rigi wondered, mind darting down a tumble-gnaw trail. Why had they attacked the humans in the first place? Was it because they were in the ruins? That’s why the Staré had attacked the survey and scouting party a hundred years ago or so, wasn’t it? The account that Uncle Eb had found that Rigi, Tomás and the others on the exploring trip said it might have been.
Rigi couldn’t decide on a plan before she fell asleep, and didn’t think of anything in the morning, so she decided to draw instead of fretting, at least for the moment. So she pulled out her sketch pad and sharpened her pencil, then started drawing the giant lizard thing as best she remembered it, since the villagers had skinned and butchered most of the body, or so it had sounded. It reminded her a little of a hunter-lizard, but not quite. She did not have the words to ask if the teeth or claws had poison, although, as big as that thing was, it probably did not need poison. What did it eat, besides sleeping Staré? Wombeasts? Large river fish? What kind of fish lived in the river, besides fishy fish? Rigi made a note and kept drawing. She really wanted a bath. And to go home.
7
Escape and Evade
Two days later Rigi hid under the long eves of a building near the market, drawing Staré trading. Cold rain had fallen the day before, but had blown out overnight and everyone seemed to move more quickly in the cool, dry morning. As she sketched, she heard an odd sound, a whistle that whispered over head. She looked up, then got on hands and knees and leaned so she could see something besides dry grass and small branches. An aircraft, a military flitter of some kind, flew slowly overhead.
Rigi reached into her satchel and pulled out two more pencils, and eraser, and the signal beacon. It looked like a rock with a small whisker, no larger than her fist. Rigi used a fold of her skirt to cover her hand as she pushed a green button on the side opposite the whisker. She glanced around, saw Staré looking up, or going about their business and ignoring her, and set the beacon on the ground between some of the stones used as a border along the base of the wall. She breathed a prayer and returned to sketching.
The flitter returned twice, lower the second time. Rigi pretended to ignore it, but the Staré acted concerned, especially when it made a third visit. Something about their gestures and words tickled her memory, as if she’d heard what they were talking about before, or knew what bothered them. But she didn’t, did she? The Matron and a very dark, almost pure black male with an enormous head and oddly slender tail stalked into the market. Rigi made herself small in the shadows, listening hard, as the male said, “Wise Ones speak. Is not very-old evil. Is not messenger spirit bird. Flat-faced tiny-feet to blame if is dark spirit bird. Wise ones seek answers, recite laws and signs. No fear. Not us.” Or that’s what she thought he said. Rigi waited until most of the Staré in the market had turned and were talking to each other and asking questions before she scooted out of the corner and made her way through the village to the hopling section. The sun had shifted farther south, casting light on the walls of the south-facing buildings, and new rainbow glitters danced on the white plaster. Glitters? Rigi stopped and studied the wall beside her, getting as close as she could, peering at the plaster. As she moved her head, something caught the light and threw tiny rainbow-colored sparks, almost like the racer vine sap formed when it trickled and dried.
Rainbow walls? Why hadn’t she seen that before? It felt smooth to the touch, unlike the pottery with mica in it. Rainbow walls, she thought, walking on. She wanted to ask Micah De Groet, but the males would not allow her close to the humans’ building anymore. Rainbow walls and old evil. Old evil from the sky, like a flitter? Flying evil, associated with humans, but how could that be if the Staré had only been around humans for a few hundred—
“The end of the First World!” Rigi spoke in Staré, caught herself, and coughed, pretending she’d not spoken. A young male passing by, his forefeet full of textiles and baskets, puffed //curious// at her, but continued on his errand. In the story she’d heard the first Stamm elder reciting six and a bit years before, he’d talked about the end of the First World, when a series of messengers from the sky had warned the Staré to stop taking their creator’s gifts for granted and to return to working. They had not, most of them, the ones in the beautiful cities where no one had to labor, and as a result fire destroyed the cities. Rigi and Tomás had wondered if that tale explained, on some odd form, what had happened to the ruins they’d found.
Rigi tucked the memory away for the moment and walked through the inner fence marking the hopling section. No sooner had she taken five steps but one of the adult females beckoned from a doorway, holding a basket heaped with dirty fabric at forefoot length while she tried to block a very young hopling from escaping. She waved the basket and pointed, telling Rigi to take it to the washing area. Maybe trying to be helpful was a mistake, Rigi thought, trying not to breathe the fumes from the Staré version of nappies.
That evening, after the Staré had gone to sleep, an idea hit Rigi so hard that she felt like saying ouch. She wanted to roll over and pound her head on the polished clay floor for not thinking of it sooner. The Staré had attacked the scout who first explored the Scout Site, or had tried to. He’d grabbed some surface finds and fled, or so the account in his journal and in the scientists’ records said. But what if the textiles had not been on the surface? What if he’d dug, violating a taboo? The black-furred speaker had said that the humans were to blame if something evil returned. What if they thought that the flying thing, the flitter, was a sign from someone, or an evil spirit bird? The Staré who lived on the southern continent where Sogdia, NovMerv and the other human settlements had been built all ignored the ruins, or had forgotten that they even existed. They had never shown any worries about Uncle Eb, Mr. De
Groet and others digging. But these Staré did. And why “evil spirit bird?” That didn’t fit any of the stories Rigi had heard in the south.
Right, Rigi told herself, slow down and think. Uncle Eb and Mr. De Groet had stirred up Mr. Petrason when they said that energy discharges of some kind had destroyed Stela Site and the others. That means internal equipment failure, or meteor strike or kinetic impact. The Staré in the south kept a story and forgot the buildings, if indeed the ruins had belonged to their ancestors. But here, what if the people who survived the end of the First World had decided that not only were their ancestors to blame, but that something about the ruins could bring the bad times back, or could so offend their deities that they would destroy everything again? And humans avoided the plateau, so the Staré had not seen flitters. Of course they might be taken as a sign of evil, since they had come back and had made a funny noise. Oh no.
Fear replaced dismay. What if the Staré decided to do to Rigi and the others what they’d done to Mistress Borloug and Lukka, in order to show the deities that the offenders had been punished, or eliminated completely? Rigi tried to tell herself that she was over-reading the situation, that she was making a bit of interstellar dust into a killer meteor. She’d misunderstood the male—he had not said anything like what she imagined. But Kor, the hunter, the outStamm who knew far more than any outStamm ever did, Kor of the black pelt and silent ways, had called the ruins spirit villages, and had said that the Wise Eye could see them. And “old-evil” sounded exactly the same in both Staré dialects. So if these were the descendants of a group of survivors… The missing cave-dwellers? That might fit, and explained perhaps the differences in coloring. And “cave” in Staré did not always mean a hole in a mountain or a true cavern. Oh, Rigi wished Tomás and Kor were with her, and Lexi, who knew so many words.
Staré: Shikari Book Two Page 10