The Ithaden’s Slave

by Daniella Wright

  Sid took a deep breath and started swinging in his hammock a bit. This behavior baffled Kate at first, until she recognized it for what it was: a calming pattern, much like her own habit of running her fingers through her hair whenever she needed to think straight. She decided to allow it. After a few seconds that felt like forever, Sid started talking.

  “Ever since you were returned, I have been operating on the side. I’ve been on a few unsanctioned trips, I will admit. I had to make sure you’re okay, of course”…his voice trailed off a bit here before he seemingly composed himself and kept going, “but I mostly had to make sure that no one had discovered your location.”

  Kate blinked. It was about all she could do, after this man had just admitted he was involved in her kidnapping. Perhaps not in so many words, but there was no mistaking the “ever since you were returned” part; at the very least, he had just admitted knowledge to a crime. The rational part of her brain started suggesting that maybe, just maybe, she should consider running for her life instead of having a conversation with a man who was most likely her abductor? She could definitely outrun him; he didn’t seem to be in a state where he could chase after her. If she started running now… But the rational part of Kate’s brain was interrupted, quite abruptly, by Sid saying: “There seem to be a lot of Xerrks after you, Ith-rassil.”

  Kate had had enough. Enough of this weird language, and of this weird man who said things that didn’t make any sense at all; and of this weird house where the furniture seemed to be from all kinds of historical periods. Her head throbbed, her blood boiled and, on top of it all, she was hungry again. Jolting up from the couch, she reached Sid’s hammock with a swiftness that surprised even her and grabbed the ropes with both hands, bringing her face close to his.

  “Now listen here, Sid,” she said in the most menacing tone she could muster, deliberately pronouncing his name as if it was some kind of insult. “I don’t know if you noticed, but you just admitted to abducting a woman and possibly assaulting her. I’m sure the police, who have been alerted to this location and will be coming soon, would love to hear more about all of that. After all, they only spent eight months-worth of taxpayer money looking for me… So you’d better drop this whole cryptic act and start making sense fast and in English, since you are clearly so fluent in it. What is a Xerrk? What is this place? And what, pray tell, makes you act like you’re my long lost pal? Because I don’t remember offering you my name just now.”

  It felt good, exhilarating even, to say these things to him. Kate didn’t know why she wasn’t more afraid of this strange man who was currently within breathing distance, but something inside her told her she was right to be furious, she was right to…Her trail of thought was interrupted once again — this time by Sid’s hand reaching out for one of her blonde strands.

  “You cut your hair,” he murmured almost absentmindedly, as if her tirade didn’t bother him one bit. Kate recoiled from his touch. That seemed to bother him way more than her words. Good. She didn’t really feel any repulsion toward him (if she was being honest, more like the opposite) but she wanted to make a point that this wouldn’t be a friendly, familiar chat unless he started giving her some real answers. Perhaps now she had his attention. She took a step back and folded her arms across her chest, like a protective shield between them. Sid seemed to catch her not-so-subtle message. He lowered his red mop of hair, burying his face in his hands. It was clear he was in some kind of anguish. Kate felt a pang of guilt, concern even, but managed to subdue it. She was the victim here, she reminded herself.

  Sid raised his head slowly, his blue eyes misty now, avoiding her gaze.

  “You’re right,” he said at long last. “I’ll have to tell you everything. And I will, Kate. You have to understand, you weren’t supposed to remember any of this: of your time before, of this place, of me… You were supposed to be safe and carry on with your life. But things are different now.” His eyes found hers, full of worry and sadness. He said the next words very slowly, as if he was afraid she would attack him again:

  “Kate, we may need to take you away again. Away from Earth, I mean. At least for a year or so, to keep you safe from the Xerrks until you give birth. I need to think of what’s best for you and the baby. Please, tell me you understand. Please.”

  It was Arthur Conan Doyle who once said, “Life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind could invent.” Well, he was definitely right. Although her capacity for the absurd had dramatically increased these past few weeks (it kinda had to, with all the things that kept happening to her), Kate’s brain still couldn’t have invented what she just heard even if she tried. She could hardly process it as it was. She found herself asking for a glass of water, her voice strangely hoarse.

  One of the million things that currently baffled Kate was how attentive Sid was to her needs. Mere seconds after she asked for that glass of water, Sid helped her get back on the couch, procured a blanket seemingly out of nowhere as if he could sense she suddenly got very cold, and disappeared for a brief second before returning with a glass of water and a banana. It was becoming harder and harder to believe this guy was ever in the abducting business — unless all this was some kind of elaborate guilt trip to ease his conscience.

  “Please, drink, eat,” he said. Kate didn’t object. She needed the extra time to think what she should say next, anyway.

  When she could trust herself with uttering comprehensive words, Kate started talking. Slowly, at first. She started with how she found herself one day, at a part of New York city she’d never been, missing almost a year of her life, with absolutely no recollection of what had happened. She went on to tell him how, after a thorough physical examination, she was told by the police that she had been a victim of sexual assault (his expression became stony and cold then, she noticed, the warmth gone from his eyes), which had resulted to her being pregnant.

  She explained that the only logical step she could possibly take under the circumstances was to have an abortion, which she did. She even admitted she was feeling a bit… unsure of the success of the process for a while after, that’s why she even bought an extra pregnancy test to be sure. But even that pregnancy test came out negative. How could she possibly be pregnant, then? That last part came out a bit more shrill than she would have liked, a bit more like pleading than asking. Pleading for sanity in what was very quickly shaping up to be a thoroughly insane world.

  Sid was silent for a second, looking at her. It was a different kind of look this time: his head slightly tilted to the side. It felt less like caring and worrying and more like measuring, examining. If this was a doctor’s office, Kate would be certain he was trying to reach a diagnosis. Slowly, as if not to alarm her, he got up from his hammock and went to sit on the sofa by her side. He raised his hand. This time though, right before touching her, his eyes found hers first, as if to ask permission to touch her belly as he clearly intended. Kate nodded. When his palm touched the center of her belly, Kate felt a sudden wave of warmth inside, relaxing her whole body (she wasn’t even aware how tense her shoulders had been up until just now). She wasn’t quite sure what that meant — if she enjoyed his touch, or if some… thing inside her did. Or both.

  After a pause, Sid looked at her again and said, “Kate, I can feel your child still growing inside you. I could sense it the moment you entered that room, but I just had to make sure.”

  It’s not like Kate didn’t believe him at this point. What he was saying, albeit seemingly impossible, was no different from what her instincts had been telling her all along. But still, the rational part of her brain had to object. Rational Kate demanded more proof than a weird stranger simply touching her belly and proclaiming her with child as if he was a shaman of some weird, ancient tribe, where no such thing as science had been invented yet.

  “But, how?” she said. “Please explain to me how this would be possible. You have to understand, abortions usually don’t fail. The woman on the phone said there was less than 5% chance
for something like that to happen and, even if it did, the pregnancy test would have picked it up. Is this baby invisible or something?”

  Kate was trying really hard not to be rude, ironic or plain bitter. She felt like she was doing fine, under the circumstances. When Sid got up from the couch though, a part of her did wonder whether she offended or angered him somehow (although she wasn’t sure why something like that should matter to her right now).

  He didn’t seem to be offended though. No, he seemed to be searching for something. Sid headed toward the other corner of the room, toward a desk with several miss-matched screens (some of which seemed to be floating!) and assorted knick-knacks Kate couldn’t quite identify. He returned with some kind of… jewelry? It certainly looked like a long cuff bracelet, made from solid gold. Seems like they were back in ancient tribe territory now, exchanging gifts. What was next, trying to read the future in the coals?

  Kate was incredulous when he offered her the cuff to wear.

  “I mean no offence,” she said curtly, “but I can hardly see how the situation warrants for a gift exchange.”

  Sid let a small laugh that caught her off guard. It was a pleasant sound, although clearly one that its host body was not accustomed to making; he was even surprised at himself for a second.

  “No, no,” he said, wearing the cuff himself. “This is a scanner. See?”

  He pointed the thing at his other arm and, after a beeping sound, toward the wall. A projection appeared then, of what clearly looked like bones, arm bones (although, they looked a bit weird, Kate thought).

  “It scans your body and shows you its findings afterwards. All you need is a screen, but a flat surface will also do.”

  Kate had never heard of such technology outside the realm of sci-fi speculation before, but she thought this was hardly the time to raise any more objections. She obediently took the cuff and wore it on her right wrist. It was surprisingly bendy, stretchy even, not the quality one would primarily associate with gold. She took a deep breath… and pointed the scanner to her belly, waiting for a few seconds until she heard the beeping sound.

  Well, it’s one thing to know and another thing to see. Because that image being projected on the wall, that image of her abdominal region Kate just scanned, clearly showed a fetus. It was developed enough for Kate to see its head and limbs, although it still looked quite small. It seemed comfortable in her belly, she thought, a wave of tenderness rushing through her.

  That wave of tenderness though was gone in a second, replaced by apprehension. How was that baby still inside her? How was it still alive? More importantly, how did it get inside her in the first place? It was the question she knew she wanted to ask most of all… and at the same time the question she dreaded the most. Not because she hadn't already considered every horrible scenario, but because she was dreading the alternative. What if, she had it all wrong? What if this wasn’t an unwanted pregnancy, conceived against her will in captivity, but something she actually had chosen — just didn’t remember choosing it?

  But that would mean… that would mean she tried to abort a baby she actually wanted, possibly loved, even. No. “If it looks like a horse and sounds like a horse, it’s probably not a zebra” her dad always used to say. The simplest explanation to all this was the one that unfortunately included sexual assault. Kate braced herself for the truth. If he did something bad to her, or if someone else did, she needed to know. She could handle it. The police would be coming soon, anyway.

  “Explain,” she said simply, taking her eyes from the projection on the wall and looking Sid right in the face.

  After excusing himself for a second (very conveniently, thought Kate), Sid returned holding two cups of something that looked like a cross between hot cocoa and very dark tea. Kate raised an eyebrow, quizzically.

  “Please drink this, Ith-rassil,” he said. “It’s just herbs and spices, nothing artificial. It will calm your nerves a bit and it’s good for the baby. Here, I brought a cup for me as well, so that you don’t think I’m trying to drug you,” he added after a pause, some bitterness in his voice.

  So he could tell she was still alert and suspicious. That’s good, Kate thought. He shouldn’t underestimate her. She accepted the mug and took a sip of the cocoa thing. It tasted vaguely chocolatey and spicy, with an aftertaste of something she couldn’t quite place. Whatever it was, it seemed to agree with her stomach and its current stowaway. She took another sip, while signalling with her brows that it was time for him to stop stalling and start talking. Sid sighed, audibly.

  “It’s this life form, you see,” he said, pointing to nowhere in particular. “It tends to be incredibly resilient even in such an early developmental stage. Unless you know to remove every single atom of it, it will regenerate. I think that’s what happened, after your abortion: it was…hurt, but started regenerating slowly. Perhaps too slowly to be picked up by a human pregnancy test.”

  Out of all this smorgasbord of insanity, it was the word “human” and how Sid used it, as if it was something that concerned other people, that really set Kate off.

  “What are you saying, exactly? That this… fetus is not human?” She didn’t know if it was the tea or simply everything that had happened, but Kate suddenly felt too tired to even raise her voice, yell about how absurd this notion was. Her rational brain currently sat somewhere in the back of her head, her arms crossed against her chest and refusing to cooperate.

  “Fine. So tell me. Humor me. If it’s not human, what is it then?”

  Sid gently placed the mug he was sipping from on the floor. Taking a step back, he rose his left hand to reveal a very thin, golden ring worn on his middle finger. If Jennifer, her sister, was here, she would have definitely noticed this ring from the get-go (she was an expert at deciphering whether a man was married or not, and had a knack for paying attention to even non-traditional looking rings on male fingers). Kate hadn’t noticed it up until that point however. Before she had any time to wonder whether that meant there was a Mrs. Sid lurking somewhere, he gave the ring a slight twist with his other hand.

  Within seconds, the pale skinned man with the dark circles under his eyes was no more. In his place, stood a truly outlandish creature (“outlandish” may be a very literal word for it, Kate suspected). Basically humanoid in form but taller and bulkier, causing his clothes to stretch and reveal some impressively toned muscles underneath. His skin gave off a green metallic sheen that had almost a serpent-like quality. Speaking of, wait, were those scales? Kate couldn’t help but gasp. Without knowing exactly what came over her, she got up from the couch and approached that person who was clearly of non-terrestrial descent. Alien. She was approaching an alien, she realized.

  Sid seemed to be holding his breath, although it was hard to tell: he only had two slits on his face where his nose should be. As Kate came nearer still, she noticed that his red hair was part of the optical illusion too. There was no hair in this sleek, scales-covered body of his, although the skin at the top of his head did take a more copper glow. One thing remained the same though: his eyes. Still blue like the sky — and still bloodshot and tired. Kate realized he felt uncomfortable, exposed even under the scrutiny of her gaze, but she simply couldn’t help it. Just as she was inexplicably drawn to that lever by the door when she first entered his house, she now found her hand, as if it had a life of its own, traveling to his cheek. She touched his skin there and was surprised by how cool and smooth it felt, although her fingers could trace the scales, almost conical in shape…

  Suddenly, Rational Kate from inside her brain realized something: “That was no paper, was it? That note… it was one of your scales.”

  Was that a look of admiration in his eyes?

  “Yes, Ith-rassil. It was the easiest way to make sure you would always find me: my scales are part of my genetic make-up and each one of them can work as a locator, of sorts. It would always let you know where I am, even if I was constantly on the move. They don’t last long outside my body t
hough, so I worried you wouldn’t get the message and find me in time. But you did. You always were exceptionally bright…”

  Kate didn’t just have questions, her questions had questions. Like, why was he pretending to be a human in front of her if they knew each other? He kept referring to her in such a familiar tone... Could it be that these eight months she was missing, she actually spent in the company of an alien? Wait, did that mean that all these other weirdos that followed her were secretly aliens with scales too? Thinking of them made Kate’s stomach churn in an unpleasant way, so she decided to focus on the enigma she currently had in her hands. Literally, as she was still touching him.

  Feeling slightly self-conscious, she lowered her hand and took a tiny step away. She had to admit, strange as his visage was, it felt both familiar and…something else. Kate wasn’t sure what. “Attractive” seemed too inappropriate a word to use in an occasion like this. She pushed these thoughts aside and simply asked the first question on her list. Why was he hiding his true face from her?

  “It was what you preferred,” Sid said. “Before, when you were with me, it was easier for you to look at me when I had my illusion shield on. This shield makes sure that your eyes, or anyone’s eyes really, would perceive me as one of their own species. It can be very useful when I need to keep a low profile.”

  Kate couldn’t help but chuckle. In a way, that red-haired man was a figment of her imagination after all.

  Chapter Two

  “I work for a, I guess you could call it a Time Agency,“ Sid said, now comfortably hanging from his hammock chair, which seemed to have no problem accommodating the extra bulk of his real form. Kate was curled up on the couch at this point, snug under the blanket he’d provided earlier and pleased with the sensible choice of clothes she made when she was getting dressed this morning. She was feeling rather comfy. (Of course, she had chosen those leggings and that long t-shirt in the morning because they were practical for running, should running for her life became a necessity. Perhaps she would still have to do that before this strange day was over, she mused, although she was beginning to doubt it more and more.) She took a sip from her herbal cocoa thing and let him carry on with his story. And what a story it was!