Chapter 4
Inkiri
Later that day, when we went to soak in the baths, the fear of not being able to talk to my mate or understand his culture had faded, and I was eager. Like a kid on Christmas Eve, Vergis would say.
Vergis hadn’t joined us in the baths. He’d said he wanted to do some shopping in Esaka, though he’d not elaborated, and none of us had pushed him.
The baths’ vaulted ceiling made other Raikengana’s voices echo, but we had found a secluded pool in the far back.
Where the walls met the floor, there was a spot here where the makers had used some dark green tiles that didn’t fit with the warmer yellows and oranges that made up the magic-imbued mosaic of the cupola above us.
It was like they had run out of those or had wanted to use up the green.
It was a small detail I had never noticed about these baths, no matter how often I had visited.
Even so, as I watched, a shimmer ran through those tiles, like wind over grass, showing that they had magic just like the rest of the mosaic that glimmered with light.
“I’ll miss this on Earth,” Fellisse said, relaxing against the side of the pool.
I turned and looked at all of them. “Just one more time, so I can be certain you all have heard: you do not have to accompany me to Earth.”
Lissir trailed his fingers through the water. “We know we don’t have to. But see if you can stop us.”
Nokim frowned. “I think he could stop me. Unless I get to use my vials. Oh! I’ve also been working on a powder that can make you sleep, but so far, it only makes you sneeze a lot.”
Fellisse chuckled. “That’s the opposite of sleeping.”
Nokim splashed around as he moved to the middle of the pool. “It’s not.” And he dunked, holding his breath and letting himself fall to the deepest middle section of the pool.
“I think Earth will be fun,” Lissir said. “Earthians have so many forms of entertainment.”
“Humans,” I corrected, using the English term.
Lissir rolled his eyes. He spoke very little English, but he had an unusual skill for languages—one of the reasons he was such a good spy.
“Human entertainment, then. Fellisse, are you going to find entertainment with Hove later?”
Fellisse’s expression went dreamy. “Yes. The visdena is very, very entertaining.”
Nokim came back up, splashing us all with water, so much so that we splashed back. We stopped before we behaved like children entirely, but it was a narrow thing.
There were many things we talked about, and I don’t remember all of them.
I do remember sinking back against the side of the pool after we’d already been there for a long time.
I looked up at the mosaic above us, the yellow and orange mixing until the colors were nearly indistinguishable in that faint, magical shine.
Once, mages had lived and trained here. There were fewer and fewer now, each one more precious for their rarity. Like the mages had left this place, so would we come morning, and there was no telling when we’d see the cupola in its sunshine colors again.
After all, if my mate was on Earth and if he accepted me, I would never force him to follow me here. Aer didn’t have the technology Vergis had so often shown us, all the things a human might want and need. I wouldn’t force him to give up what he’d been born to.
Still, with the mate call pulling me, saying goodbye to the familiar sight of the bright cupola was easy.
We headed to Earth the next day. Vergis had been quiet and focused on preparing his ko circle. He’d said nothing to me, and I wasn’t going to push.
My heart jumped when we arrived. Vergis had taken us close to the origin of the radio signal I’d always listened to from the home Raiken of our sentenmen, the Ueskona Raiken.
Vergis had asked, and I had felt that my mate was close to that.
How the mate call gave me that knowledge, I had no idea, but then, a mate call was a magic all its own.
Vergis had set things up so we arrived in a wooded area.
The forests were small here, not good for hiding in.
I looked around and went through all the English words for the things I could see in my head.
Bark with its cracked texture; brown, green, tan, olive, those were all color words.
Trees had branches and roots, then leaves or needles, depending on the shape of their greenery.
I spotted what I thought were mushrooms that had made a terrace on some tree bark. I hadn’t known they could do that.
Seconds later, there was a scream, odd and distorted. I didn’t know what kind of thing made that sort of noise.
“What was that?” Fellisse asked.
Vergis froze. “Don’t know. Might be some assholes playing with some app. Technology. Let’s ignore it. Inkiri, you should take the lead. Follow your mate call.”
He didn’t look at me when he said it, looking alert in a way that told me he wasn’t completely ignoring that scream.
“That way.”
I walked, and everyone followed. The scream rang through the trees again.
Nokim looked around, fearful rather than curious. “Is this really what technology sounds like on Earth?”
Vergis switched to English. “I… There’s always something weird trending, and you never know. Some scare challenge, maybe. Or a video of something. Humans like weird shit.”
I couldn’t be certain, but I thought what he was saying was meant to hide that he didn’t know what had made the scream. He sounded like a scholar who wanted to hide the fact that he was explaining something he didn’t understand himself, and he was tense.
Minutes later, whatever it was screamed again, and we all froze.
“It doesn’t sound like technology.” I pulled one of my swords, the middle length with the most flexible blade. “It sounds real.”
Vergis snorted. “How would you know, from your radio signal?”
Before I could respond, something large and green broke through the underbrush and flashed its teeth in attack.
It went for Nokim and he yelped. He was close to me, and I reacted without thought.
My blade almost cleaved the thing in half, cutting deep into it behind its shoulder blades.
It spilled blue blood, which I knew wasn’t right for Earth.
Like ours, Earth creature blood was red, except for a very few and strange exceptions.
The beast fell to the side, and I moved my blade to a ready position after flicking the blood off it, tense and alert.
Nokim jumped back, stumbling and landing on his butt on the ground. Fellisse held out a hand to help him up.
“Good thing the forest floor is soft,” Nokim mumbled.
“Technology?” Lissir asked, staring at the green thing as it bled and spasmed.
The thing’s muscles jerked, and I rammed my blade into the head to end its death throes.
Vergis walked up to the corpse and squatted next to its head. “This… No. This isn’t right.” He pulled his electronic phone device out and did something with it.
While I knew the blood was wrong, the creature itself didn’t strike me as out of place.
I knew some Earth fauna, as animals of all kinds were called, but I wasn’t familiar enough at the time to understand that the reptilian head of the beast was too large for anything found in Ireland, that its color was an unnatural shade of green and the wrong texture for something native to Earth.
Even if I didn’t understand all of that yet, I saw the wrongness reflected in Vergis’s eyes.
He excused himself to “make a phone call,” and when he returned, we learned some of what had happened on Earth while Aer had experienced the Lagasar. A terrible catastrophe had befallen all humans.