by G. Deyke
~*~
Ty is less silent and more pointedly unfriendly as we journey back across the Desert, mocking us both at every turn. He must be doing all he can to make us hate him. He is not unsuccessful: I can see Mel's hatred for him deepening by degrees, day by day.
I do not hate him, because I will not hate. I will fear or dislike someone easily enough, but never truly hate, I think; I don't know how it feels, what it means, except when I see it in others. I am afraid to feel loathing. I hope I never do.
And I do not fear him, because he has done nothing to make me afraid. He does not hurt me or yell at me or threaten me. He ignores me more often than not, and he makes a mockery of Mel far more often than of me. So I do not fear him, any more than I would fear any other stranger. But I dislike him, and my dislike grows stronger with Mel's hatred. I begin to wish we could go on without him.
But between his taunts he is a helpful guide. In the evenings he helps me to forage, telling me what is edible, even showing me a nest of insect eggs one night. These are as large as my head, and they taste better than I would expect of anything that came from an insect.
I expect he helps only because he is paid to. He has made it so clear that he dislikes us both. I might be grateful, except that whenever we are alone together he speaks to me; and whenever he speaks to me, I find more and more reason to dislike him. He accuses Mel of all manner of evil. I try not to listen.
During the day we walk in silence. Ty is not much given to conversation, I think, although he never resists making a derisive remark when Mel speaks first. And she says little, knowing this.
One day I sense insects running toward us – I cannot count them, they move too quickly, their lives run together in my mind – and I turn to face the feel of them, trying to blot the image of their mandibles tearing into my flesh out of my mind. I break the silence to yell a warning: “Insects!”
At first they are only a distant cloud of dust, but they scurry quickly over the dunes with their feet drumming on the sand. My legs tremble as I watch them run toward us – there are five of them – and I stifle a scream; I try instead to whistle to Snake, and find I can't hold my lips together long enough to bring out a sound. My mouth, my face is twisted with fear.
I want above all to flee.
Ty has drawn his sword, and he holds it comfortably. I do not doubt he will be able to kill both of those that run his way. Mel is firing her little blue spells at one of the others; it is still coming for her, but by the time it reaches her it will be weakened, and perhaps she can fight it off with her dagger. I can only hope.
The other two race toward me. I cast around for something – anything – with which to fight them off, but there is nothing. I stand my ground as long as I dare. But in the end I can't stay there while they come for me, I can't, and I turn on my quivering feet and run.
My feet sink deep into the sand and I stumble, twisting my right leg beneath me as I fall. A feeling like fire pierces up from it. The pain does not replace my fear, but strengthens it; I can feel the tears on my cheeks and the burning sand pressed close against my face, and I know the insects are just behind me, and any moment they will be here, they will be here, and I dig my fingers into the sand, struggling to pull myself away from them, to do anything at all to get away, to run away where they can't follow; and I know, I know, that there is nothing I can do – nothing at all – that even if I were on my feet I could not outrun the great insects, that they are faster than anything else in the Desert, that I am hopelessly slow, that I cannot even stand, that the pain in my leg is so great that I cannot even think of standing, or running; and now they will reach me and they will touch me, they will touch me with their abominably segmented legs and their clicking mandibles and they will eat me, they will tear me apart, and they will touch me, and I weep with the helpless knowledge that they will come so near to me as to touch me.
I fear the great insects of the Desert above all else.
I try to pull myself away with my arms – even that hurts my leg. I flatten myself against the sand, trying to stay as far away from them as possible (until they catch me), but I don't know where they are – I can't see them – and I can't sense them; my attention keeps slipping from my nature talent, fixing itself instead on the pain and fear. I can't bear not knowing where they are. I push myself up and turn at the waist, looking about wildly for the insects.
The two which threatened to kill me lie dead before me now, half-buried in sand, still bleeding. I push back from them as much as I can, but I can't go far with this pain in my leg, and they will not hurt me now. Still, I do not like the thought of their nearness. I wish I could flee.
I tear my gaze from the things and look for the others. The one attacking Mel is meeting death: it is being taken apart by a little whirlwind sandstorm elemental, like the one Ty summoned before, the first time he saved us. Now it seems he is saving us again. He is directing the elemental with his left hand, and using his right to fend off another insect with his sword. The last lies dead beside him.
When the insect by Mel has fallen he brings the elemental around, to finish the one still alive, before letting it fall apart.
I wipe my face roughly. My hands are covered in hot sand, so I dirty my face rather than cleaning it, but I do manage to dry it a little. My tears have mostly stopped. I am still shivering with fear and repugnance, though, and I don't dare to stand on my hurt leg. I whistle to Snake for comfort.
“Arri! Come!” shouts Mel. I push myself to my good foot and hop toward her. Though I don't step on the hurt leg at all, each little hop jostles it painfully, and soon new tears are coursing down my dirtied cheeks.
When she sees that I cannot walk normally she comes toward me, and we reach each other near a pikhin tree. I let myself fall to the ground.
“What have you done to your leg, Arri?” Mel cries. “How can you walk? I ought to leave you here; you'll slow us terribly; but you must come with. Somehow, you must walk.”
I nod miserably and whistle again to Snake. I wish I had not run away so foolishly. I know that I have hurt Mel's mission, and I am sorry. But I don't tell her so; once when I did she told me that it wasn't important how sorry I was, or what I meant by it, or what I did not mean. All that mattered was what I had done, and my words could never make it right. So I say nothing, knowing it would only anger her more.
I am afraid to see her face. I know what I'd see there, but I do not dare to look. Her voice is hard enough to bear without the sight of it in her eyes.
After a long moment she leaves me sitting there and staring at the ground. I can see her from the corner of my eye, walking to the top of a small dune and staring out into the Desert impatiently; and I can hear her footsteps, one after the other. I can feel her presence dimly, but my nature sense is not so strong that I can watch her in my mind, and besides I cannot take in so many different things all at once. It is almost too much to hear her footsteps and Ty's at one time, moving at different speeds, the one coming toward me, the other moving away.
He kneels beside me. “Hold out your leg.”
I don't like his tone of voice, his quiet command, his calm. There is no reason for me to listen to him or do as he says. He is nothing but a hired conjurer under the thrall of Mel's gold, and she hates him. I shake my head obstinately, looking at the ground.
His only response is to shift his weight and sit down, as though to wait more comfortably. I try not to listen.
For some time I do not move at all. It is too much for me, too much all at once, and it takes a while for my mind to catch up to itself. The pain in my leg is sharp and urgent, and through it I have hardly enough attention to spare for anything else.
The uneven sand beneath me is in shade from my body and from the pikhin tree near us. I am leaning heavily on my left hand, and it has sunk into the ground a little, where the sand is a little cooler and doesn't burn me as much.
I am breathing through my mouth, and the heat of the Desert is beginning to dry out my
tongue. I am very thirsty. My lips taste salty, like tears. I can hear Ty's breathing below mine, slow and even.
I want water.
Ty is still waiting, patiently, and it is clear by now that he can wait longer than I. I stretch my leg out toward him, as far as I can bear to move it.
He takes off my right boot and examines the leg roughly. Several times I nearly cry out, but I try to stifle the sound into a low moan of pain.
“So you have hurt your leg, and rendered it useless,” he says, “and not killed nor wounded even one of them. Will you hold still, at least, if there's nothing more you can do?”
His words sting me; but he is nothing more than a hired conjurer, and his words mustn't matter to me. I have disappointed Mel. Perhaps I have even dismayed her. There is nothing Ty could say that might deepen my remorse. I hold still, and say nothing to him.
He uses a fallen branch of the pikhin tree as a splint, and ties my leg to it with scraps of cloth. My tears have come back, and I find myself wondering how much water is left in me now. I am still very thirsty.
“A hurt like this is quickly made and slowly healed,” he says. “I can do no more for it, but perhaps the Queen may.”
I don't understand. He must mean the Queen of the Dark-dust; but the Queen of the Dark-dust has no reason to heal me.
“Now come, before she abandons you after all,” he says as he stands. He is smiling, as always, faintly, derisively. I say nothing. I will not respond.
We make camp early that night. Mel is very tired from using her little blue spell so many times, and does not hunt. Instead she eats something from her stores while I fetch water, and falls asleep soon after.
I try to sleep, but the pain in my leg is too strong, and I am hungry. I lie on my back, not wanting to turn, and unable to sleep.
Ty is sitting up, still, making a meal of some dried meat. I can hear him eating, and the sound reminds me of my hunger and distracts me from my rest. I sit up, at last, and watch him in silence.
He sees my gaze and tosses me a scrap of meat. I brush it aside, push it back toward him. “I am no dog to be fed by your scraps,” I say.
“Aren't you?” he asks. He seems almost amused; the faint smile is on his lips as always. He reaches and takes the meat back, and eats it himself. “You ought to eat well, for now,” he tells me, “so that your leg heals more quickly.” But he does not offer me another piece.
He finishes his meal and lies down. He lies perfectly still, and I cannot see whether he is already asleep. Again I lie down on my back, but I am restless. My eyes will not close.
“What do you care how quickly I heal?” I ask. Much as I dislike the man, I would still rather speak to him than lie here in silence without sleeping. I hope his voice may distract me from the constant pain in my leg.
It seems he is awake after all, for he answers me: “I am hired to help you reach Qualin, and I have no interest in prolonging that journey.”
I don't know why he is with us at all. He didn't want to join us, not for the mission, not for gold. What was it that decided him, in the end? I can't remember; I must not have found it important then.
“It hurts,” I complain. “I can't sleep.”
“I am not here to make you comfortable. I am hired only to speed and guide your way and to summon your demon.”
“Why?” I doubt he will give me an answer, but now that I have thought of it I cannot shake my confusion. “Why are you still with us, when you dislike us so much and are bound only by gold?”
For a long moment he is silent, and I wonder if he will answer at all. At last he says, a little shortly: “I wish to set aright a wrong I did when I met you. Now be still, and sleep.”
“I'm hungry.”
“The Desert is full of food.”
This is true, of course, and Ty has taught me something of how to find it. But I am afraid to leave the camp. What if I should lose it? What if Mel awoke to find me gone? So I say nothing and lie still, and at last I fall asleep.