by Amanda Milo
“Of a prolonged back muscle contraction,” Jonohkada finishes, sounding a little more sure of his assessment. “You indicated your muscle tissues rather than your vertebrae, so I don’t believe it is a herniated disc. I strongly urge you to contact the medical team that has been approved to treat humans. They’re located within the preserve for convenience. They can perform testing. They will be able to offer more knowledgeable advice.”
“Thank you,” I tell him. My hand is still squeezing Bubashuu’s tail—but now the prehensile limb is squeezing back—not scary-hard or anything, but it has wrapped all the way around my wrist, and it’s creeping up my forearm. I feel like I’ve unwittingly invited an anaconda to shake hands with me. “Be sure to tell Gracie that you did great.”
Jonohkada brightens. “I will. Thank you, Isla! I’m glad I could—”
“Go,” Bash cuts in, like he’s finishing Jonohkada’s statement for him.
“I don’t think that’s what he was going to say,” I point out. Bash’s tail has managed to wrap me up to my elbow, with the blades lying flat against my shoulder.
“If you need the customary high-five,” Bash offers him in a silky-but-dangerous tone, “I volunteer to apply it to you.” He raises his five-clawed dragon paw to the level of the hob’s head, not his hand.
“That’s not how we give high-fives,” I say quickly. “Your high-fiving privileges are revoked until you can give them out nicely.”
“Um, before I take my leave,” Jonohkada pipes in hesitantly, eyes bouncing between Bash and me, “I have something that might help. While you rest your back, apply this.” He holds up a squishy oblong jelly thing. Almost seeming to brace himself, he turns a guarded, so guarded, extra-cautious look to Bash.
Bash blows fire between Jonohkada’s hands.
No warning, just spits a stream of flames on this very nice, very nervous hob.
Jonohkada fumbles and nearly drops the gel thing.
I gasp-hiss, “You are so mean!” His tail stops me from doing more than shifting back and forth. “Jonohkada, are you okay?” Wriggling, I whisper furiously, “Bash! He’s trying to help! What is wrong with you?”
“I’m fine, Isla,” Jonohkada says. “Thank you for inquiring.”
Bash’s tail doesn’t release me. “I don’t like how he’s looking at you,” he replies almost loftily, not bothering to whisper.
“Like how? Helpfully?” I’m still whispering. Because if you’re going to talk about someone while they’re standing right there, you should have the decency to pretend to whisper, geeze. “Were you raised by wolves?”
“I was raised by the finest Rakhii dam and sire,” Bash informs me. “What the hells kind of alien creature are you implying my parents are?”
Jonohkada’s wings sparkle; he fans them, just once, clearly excited to have the opportunity to supply an answer he’s confident about. He’s cupping his hands, or the thing he’s still holding in his hands, I can’t tell. “Wolves are fierce and stately predators that prefer to live in packs often made up of family members.”
“Oh,” Bash says, still looking down at me. “Then yes. I was essentially raised by wolves.”
I don’t want to smile. I definitely shouldn’t laugh.
Shame on me. Because I do.
Bash’s face turns smug, his mouth relaxing, his lids lowering—and his tail completes its last wrap around me, so that I’m done up from ankle to shoulder, with his blades now dangling down behind my neck, harmlessly resting behind my back.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. But I’m distracted, because something smells good. “Guys? Is it just me, or does anyone else smell s’mores? We need to get another human over here, someone who knows what s’mores are.”
“I have eaten s’mores,” Bash informs me, his tail flexing. His grip on me is warm and weirdly reassuring. I’ve never tried serious rope play, but I’m starting to understand the appeal. It’s amazing, the things you learn about yourself in the average day.
“That smell you believe you recognize? That would be my hands,” Jonohkada offers a little glumly. He’s looking down at the gel pack pinched in his fingers when he shares, “We’ve found that your fire-crisped human treat bears an unsettling resemblance to baked hob flesh.”
I gape at him. “You got burned?! And you didn’t say anything?” I turn a horrified look on Bash.
Bash is unperturbed. “Jonohkada?”
The hob’s eyes dart to the Rakhii.
Bash spits on him.
On his hands, but still. I know that it’s not the insult it would be on Earth, but I’d swear Bash thoroughly enjoys spitting on the other male.
“Thank you,” Jonohkada says with absolutely no sarcasm, with no reserve of irritation. He’s inhumanely polite. “Here, Isla,” he hands me the still very-hot gel thing from his saliva-coated hands. “Apply this to your back muscles, and reheat every two…” He checks what looks like a watch on his wrist, “human owwers,” he finally settles on. Then he gives me a grave look. “Reheat very carefully by Rakhii fire.”
“I would never burn Isla,” Bash claims, sounding seriously offended.
I stare at Jonohkada. “For real?”
He nods. “It’s designed for Rakhii field-use.”
“Like, what, I just lift up my shirt and have Bash blow on my back?” I ask in disbelief.
The loudest, dirtiest cackle erupts from not far away.
I can feel Bash bristle. See it too, but even his tail—where it’s snaking down my other arm now, circling around my limb as it goes, snaps tense. “Gracie,” is what Bash growls in acknowledgement of the eavesdropper.
Gracie calls, “Just imagining Bash blowing on your back, Isla. The image—oh man!”
Several girls titter nearby for all of half a second before Bash’s glare slices around us and everyone goes dead quiet. “I take it that this phrase is open to an indecent interpretation. Care to explain what about that image is humorous to you humans?” he asks through his teeth.
“Nope!” Gracie chirps, and the leathery sound of Dohrein’s wings means she’s getting dragged off before she can get into real trouble. Or her mate starts to drag her off, but Gracie shouts, “Wait! Rein—do you smell… s’mores?” I can’t see her around Bash, but I know the moment she confirms that what she’s smelling does indeed smell like burnt marshmallows and chocolate. “Bash!” she hollers. “You arse! Did you burn Jonoh? You better not have—!” she sounds like she continues snarling, but the sound fades because Dohrein has picked her up and flown her back to the safety of her stolen throne.
Jonohkada watches in her direction, a soft smile playing on his face as he listens to his friend’s concern for his wellbeing. Then he turns, takes in Bash’s freshly irritated mood, and starts to cringe once again, clearly nervous. Still, he sallies forth, making eye contact with me. “Light movement for the rest of the day with gentle stretching.”
“Guess I should have stayed for that Pilates class this morning.”
The compound offers some pretty nifty amenities. Silly me, I didn’t know I needed to turn myself into a noodle today for my health and wellness.
He nods. “Research on humans who partake in Pilates proves it’s very beneficial for you. Walking would be good. Staying still could make your muscle stiffness increase which may exacerbate the problem.” He’s freezing up, his gaze darting up and behind me, his face taking on a rattled look.
I sigh. Bash has that effect on people. I pinch his tail since it’s in handy reach. “Would you stop?” I ask the Rakhii who’s got me tail-trussed. I glance up at him before sending a meaningful look to Jonoh. “He dropped everything to be nice and help. Thank you, Jonoh.”
Bash doesn’t thank him, but his tail begins to uncoil from me. It does it sluggishly, even sullenly. The coils drop heavily off of me, one loop by one. When I’m freed, he’s not even looking at me. He’s staring at Jonohkada.
Jonohkada gulps and gives me a small bow. “I hope you feel recovered soon, Isla.”
Bash’s hand, which had been locked under my shirt care of his tail ropes, slides free from my clothing, making my skin sad to feel it go. The heat pack is applied, and big claws carefully pinch my shirt and tug it back down. “How do you feel?”
I heave a grateful breath. “You are so horrible to Jonoh, but I’m supercalifragilistic now, thanks.”
Bash sounds uncharacteristically hesitant. “Half the time I don’t know what you’re saying. Nearly all of the time, I’m sure I don’t want to.”
“You should really think about apologizing to Jonoh. Or at least try harder not to actively roast him.”
Bash gives me nothing. He doesn’t even spare the direction Jonoh left in a glance. He only grunts, “Good. Now that you’re repaired—”
Like I was a busted television or something.
“—perhaps we should test out your ability to walk, as the hob suggested.” His gaze moves over me assessingly, and actually not-so-flatteringly, like I’m a crumbling old nag going hooves-up before his very eyes.
“His name is Jonohkada.”
Bash’s arrogant stare is on me but far-off at the same time, clearly not giving the point about Jonoh’s name any consideration. “Let’s have you help me clean up the tool table. Nice light work.”
We leave the scattered rocks in favor of hitting the shade at the blacksmith shanty, and Bash and I begin organizing and putting away his various craft gear.
Referring to anything Bash owns as craft gear in my head has me grinning right up until Bash raises a hammer and uses his informative voice to tell me, “This tool is called a hammer—”
My grin dies as I groan. “Thaaanks, but I know what a hammer is. I’ve even used one before. Believe it or not,” I tell him very, very dryly, “humans have managed to be that advanced.”
He picks up on my sarcasm just fine. He fits the hammer in a toolbox and keeps giving me shit. “Ah, that’s good to hear,” he says, sounding so pleasant I’m immediately suspicious. I’m right to be. “It’s extra impressive when you consider that your people were dying from eating their foodstuffs raw.” He rolls his eyes, clearly remembering my story about the raw meat movement I saw in the news before I was abducted. I did tell him we weren’t all doing that. Some of us like our meats well done. I try to snap a tool drawer shut on his tail, but he twitches it out of the way in time and continues, “It’s reassuring to learn that your people managed to devise designs for basic tools even while they failed to grasp the basic rules for surviving life.”
“I said it’s a fad diet. The rest of us have known to cook our food for centuries, argh! You’re being a pain on purpose.”
To my delight, Bash flashes me his gleaming sharp teeth in a smile and chuckles.
He has a laugh that’d be a perfect fit for any supervillain, but it’s still nice to hear him being happy.
CHAPTER 16
ISLA
It’s the morning after my freak back injury, a day that was supposed to be a special day. Today would have marked fifteen whole days that Bash had managed to make it without making anybody cry, if he hadn’t ripped into Helen’s group. We’d wanted to do something special for him. To surprise Bash for managing his incredible, unprecedented stretch of two weeks without causing any tears, each and every human scheduled to work today at the quarry had planned to scurry their butts to get in early.
We still did that.
We decided last night that we’d keep to our plan no matter the counter’s number.
We beat all the aliens here. (All the aliens who aren’t mated to a human and coming with their woman, that is.)
When Bash appears, he gets an eyeful of us being dutiful employees, already caffeinated and already at work without being yelled at to do it… and he’s clearly stunned. His quills are up; his spines even look shocked. His tail trails out behind him, lying on the ground like it’s fainted.
“HI!” I call brightly. “You’re looking surly today!”
Bash’s face snaps into a scowl, which he aims right at me (affectionately, if you know how to spot these things), and he loudly asks the hobs and Rakhii walking in with him, “Where is that human lip adhesive?”
But then to the rest of the humans, he calls over the sound of us working, “You have all done very well. I appreciate your ethic and initiative,” he tells us—and he sounds like he means it. “What has incited this incredible phenomenon?”
Gracie shoves a bucket of popcorn at him. “Check out your crying counter.”
Bash twists, shooting a look to his throne, and to the counter behind it that reads fifteen. He doesn’t take the popcorn. “Look there,” he says, sounding awed. “It’s a miracle.”
The smile Gracie gives him is understanding, but there’s also a warning in her eyes. “Helen said they were late and that she was flirting and kyacting around—”
“What’s kyacting?” I whisper.
“British alien for ‘clowning at work,’” Jonoh whispers back from not far away.
“—so although you were too harsh yesterday, she still felt you deserved a fifteen on your counter. Try to play nice today, okay?” Gracie says, slapping the air with the back of her hand like she’s smacking his chest in a friendly way without actually making contact.
Bash peels his eyes from his counter to take in all the people. “Thank you…” he says gruffly.
I make my way to the closest wagon, grinning at the pride and pleasure my friend is experiencing at his accomplishment.
Then he yells my name. “ISLA! What the tevek are you carrying?”
I hold it up for him to see. “A very small rock, boss.”
“It’s still a rock! Put. It. Down before I beat you with it!”
I drop the rock and hold up my hands. “Down, boss.”
Bash snarls something and stalks towards me. “You need to recover!”
What I hear is ‘I care about you.’ I repress my happy sigh and just give him a smile. “I’m done.”
“You’re right that you are. I’ll assign you something where you won’t damage yourself. Here, take this rag. I have a tool you can polish.”
I make a face. “All day?”
Bash cuts me a look. “I have a very large tool.”
Gracie, leaning against the throne in the shade, erupts in a hacking, choking chortle. Her bowl of popcorn almost spills.
“Those little popcorn hulls,” I pretend to commiserate sadly, winking at her. “They attack you out of nowhere.”
Gracie is struggling through snickers and coughing, but Dohrein nods solemnly to me as he pats her back, his wings clamped together behind him.
Bash drops his tail over my shoulder and none-too-gently ‘guides’ me to his blacksmithing station, where I wave to Cyden the hob, who is putting on his smock and sliding on his gloves.
He smiles to me politely but only for the briefest of seconds—then he’s skedaddling as fast as a man can walk without making it look like he’s running from Bubashuu, who seems to be increasing in size behind me, his tail steering me ahead of him almost aggressively. “Here,” he grunts, stopping us in front of a tall set of thin-doored drawers. He reaches past me and opens one, pulling out a jar of burnishing powder. He hands it to me and indicates the tools that were under it. “All of these need to be cleaned and polished.” His tail spins me around. “As does this.”
We’re facing the anvil.
“How do you clean an anvil?” I ask.
“And polish.”
“Okay, how do you clean and polish an anvil?”
His scales look deep purple-red today, like a dark, dark wine, and I think this is his natural color, not yet coated with the pervasive dust of quarry stone. Likewise, his shirt is still white and his pants are still dark black, no dusting on them either. He looks sharp. “I will show you,” he says easily.
I glance down at myself and take stock. I’ve been in the quarry long enough today to have accumulated a dusty
sheen on all of me. My hand comes up to check my ponytail, but I manage to stop myself. Worrying about my appearance is a waste of time. I’m presentable, and that’s the best you can hope for when you’re doing manual labor and dirty work.
As my eyes move back to the anvil, I know I’m definitely facing the latter. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
“First, start by polishing the chest of tools. This will allow me time to get your herdmates settled in their duties. Creator knows if I leave them to their own devices, I’m sure to run myself into apoplexy when I behold the damage they’ve wrought.”
“Your faith in us is stunning.”
Bash’s tail squeezes my shoulder, in warning or affection, I’m not sure.
He moves to the mouth of the open-faced shed, calling out, “You and you and you with the wild gahtusi-colored mane—yes, you, human—you will all make tiles today. Report to the head potter by the kiln house.” He points to the far end of the quarry, where he and I made the grapevine run.
Mandi—the one with the ‘gahtusi’ mane—makes the mistake of sending Bash a questioning look, and then she actually questions him. “But why? Isn’t it better for us to be useful out here—”
She stops speaking. She doesn’t trail off—her words just die. Because Bash is pinning her with all the power of his death-stare. “You think shingling isn’t useful? I challenge the lackwit who thinks to build a castle out of stone but forgets the importance of covering her roof. One slab of fired clay upon another looks like ‘nothing’ to you? You will have exactly one monsoon before you learn this wisdom: there is nothing of insignificance when you’re assembling your rookery—least of all your roof’s tiles. And each one of your rookeries,” he directs his gaze to all of us now, because everyone’s watching him, eyes glued on him like he’s a moody sabertooth tiger looking down on a herd of itty bitty edible antelope, “will require thousands of tiles.” His eyes lock back on Mandi. “And today you will learn to make them.”
Mandi wisely has no argument for this and instead looks to her man-cat—(Gracie is totally right: wow, is he fun to watch!) who has been staring at her. Strangely, his gaze drops to her hands. Pointedly.