19. Cherry
19
CHERRY
T he next morning began a days-long stretch of very hard work, and it wasn’t hard because Silar was busting my ass. Far from it. If anything, he seemed reticent about giving me any of the tougher jobs, which only made me want to prove myself even more.
Which in turn meant I probably went a teensy bit overboard. I was pretty sure that Silar was now a stupefied combination of confused by my enthusiasm for mucking stalls, pulling weeds, and milking alien cows, and quietly impressed by his wife’s absolute balls-to-the-walls energy. Which was a relief, because we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere in the romantic feelings department.
At least… he didn’t.
I, unfortunately, was growing more and more attracted to my husband with every passing day. And not just because of his sculpted body, or constant state of shirtlessness; his calloused hands, or the curling strength of that prehensile tail I kept imagining in far too many intimate places.
No, it was more than that. It was in the way that whenever I mentioned something that was missing, like the table for the kitchen or more recently a better set of door hinges for the outhouse, it suddenly seemed to just appear. It was in the way he treated his animals with his particularly disarming brand of gruff, restrained tenderness; the way that he barely ran his claws through his own hair to comb it but spent hours each day cleaning and caring for his shuldu. It was in the way he seemed surprised, maybe even guilty, when I did normal spouse things for him like make him food, darn a bit of torn clothing, or offer to rub his shoulders. He always refused that last one.
Unfortunately.
He also kept strictly to his side of the bed when we slept, lying on his back on top of the blankets. Without fail when I woke each day, he was already up for the morning, elbow-deep in chores that I’d told him the day before I’d tackle for him myself.
I was glad to have the work on the ranch to keep me busy and wear out my body so much. Otherwise, I might actually have to deal with the fact that I seemed to be falling rather fucking rapidly for a husband who, apart from touching my boobs and coming in his pants that one time, seemed perfectly content to keep his distance from me.
At least, that’s what I thought.
Until the stampede.
And this wasn’t the fun sort of stampede. This wasn’t the Zabrian version of the Old-Earth tradition of the Calgary Stampede.
Oh, no. This was the out-of-control, get-out-of-the-way-or-your-human-ass-will-be-a-pancake stampede.
And somehow, I managed to end up practically right in the middle of it.
The day started normally. It was my thirteenth morning waking up in an empty bed and cursing the fact that Silar already had such a big head start on me. I scrambled into clean-ish clothes (everything I had seemed permanently coated in dust no matter how well I tried to wash them), slammed on my boots, had a quick pee, and washed up a bit. Then I donned my hat and headed out to find my husband.
Only he’d already moved on from the shuldu stalls and barn chores and was likely now patrolling the property on Tarion or one of the other shuldu, checking the fences for places to repair. It was one of the chores he refused to let me help him with. I’d pestered him about it a few times – because there was a ton of property and metres upon metres of fencing to take care of all by himself – but his eyes had flashed bright white and he’d finally laid down the law yesterday.
“You do not go near the fences. Especially any damaged areas,” he’d growled fiercely. It was the only time when his body and voice were actually telling me what strong emotion his eyes were glowing with. And it was anger.
“Why not?” I’d pressed, my own irritation rising in turn. Hadn’t I proved myself useful enough to him yet? How many walls did he intend to throw up at me? Or fences, in this case?
But he’d just taken a menacing step towards me, his tail making the leather of his belt creak audibly when it tightened around the hook at the back.
“No. Fences.” Then he’d softened a little. But only a little. “Promise me, Cherry.” His hands had twitched, like he’d wanted to reach for me. I raised my chin and dared him to do it. Dared him to touch me when he’d been so damn careful not to.
But he’d just curled his hands into fists and let out a tight breath. The whiteness of his eyes dimmed, allowing me a glimpse of those oddly beautiful lightning bolts of blue.
“Promise me,” he’d whispered.
And like a love-struck fucking dummy, I’d promised.
So, no fences for me.
With Silar busy on that job, I decided to get back to the gardens. I’d never gotten a chance to work with plants or soil this way on Terratribe I, and I actually really enjoyed it. I loved the feel of leaves and stems and roots. The way the soil coated my hands. It all smelled so fresh and new to me, and I had no idea if it was because this was an alien planet, or if it was just because I’d had no experience in the botanical realm. Either way, it was completely novel and entirely engrossing. And it yielded results I could actually see with my own two eyes. This wasn’t installing the same fucking part on the same model of engine hundreds of times a day on an assembly line, feeling like you’re stuck in a time loop and never actually seeing the finished product. Nope. This actually made me feel like I was doing something real.
For every weed I pulled, I made more room for the vegetables to spread and grow. For every place I watered, new growth sprouted. It had been just under two weeks since my arrival, but spring was in full bloom now. The garden had green and yellow and reddish-brown shoots popping up all over the place, and the fruit trees were so heavy with buds that their coming blossoms promised to be spectacular.
It was like this, down on my knees, my hands turned red from the soil, that I suddenly felt it.
Trouble.
It was tactile before it was audible. A bizarre and untraceable rumbling through the ground. A shy shiver of sensation at first but growing stronger every second.
Planet-quake?
I’d experienced a couple of mild ones on Terratribe I, and I knew Old-Earth had been notorious for really dangerous ones. But somehow, a planet-quake didn’t seem quite right. Because I was hearing things, now. Things like thousands upon thousands of layers of distant thunder.
Only there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
I rose, frowning, dusting my hands on my pants and tipping the brim of my hat back a little to get a better look around. Everything seemed normal back here behind the house as far as I could tell.
But the sound and the vibrating roar was only getting louder.
Panic dampened my fists. I didn’t know where Silar was right now. The ranch, with all its various pastures, was absolutely massive. If something was wrong, would he even know it? With his ears, he’d likely be able to hear whatever it was by now.
But what the hell was it?
I hurried up onto the porch of the house and then into the kitchen. Even in here, I could feel the tremors underfoot. Could hear the increasing doom-rattle of whatever was coming our way.
Seriously , I thought. Is this, like, an invisible tornado or some shit? What the hell is happening?!
Finding no answers in the kitchen, and getting more and more worried about Silar wherever he was, I went through the house’s front door and out onto the road, trying to suss out more information on the situation. I looked up at the astoundingly clear, blue sky, then angled my head the way we’d come from the warden’s property on our wedding day. Nothing on the road. At least not in that direction.
I turned my head the other way and…
Ohhhh. Fuck.
It was as if the ground itself had risen up and was rolling in a great, dusty wave towards me. A roiling mass of movement was pummelling itself over the land, dust rising like nuclear fumes. An explosion of sound split through my skull. The moving mass wasn’t limited to the dirt road the way a train might barrel towards me on its tracks. No, whatever this disaster was, it stretched across the landscape in an inescapable crush.
And it was moving fucking fast.
The house!
I had to get back in the house. I had no idea if the structure would even withstand the thunderous force roaring towards me, but staying here in the road, the only living thing around to get smushed, was not an option. I’d never prayed before, but I did in that moment as I stumbled backwards towards the house, pleading to every Old-Earth god I’d ever studied in school and maybe even a few I’d made up. Please, please let Silar be OK. Please. If he’s in the path of this mess, let him at least be on a shuldu and outrun it. Please!
But maybe I should have been praying for my stupid-ass self. Because when I reached the edge of the road and was about to turn and flee into the house, I stepped on a big, fat, very poorly placed rock and I felt flat on my ding-dang derriere.
The impact slammed up my spine, knocking my teeth together. That, combined with the vicious shaking of the ground and cacophony of noise, left me wildly disoriented. So much so that I actually panicked thinking I might not be able to stand up and that I’d have to crawl back to the house.
I would never fucking make it.
Dust filled my mouth, my throat. My lungs burned as I scrabbled into a wobbly standing position. Everything was sound and shaking and fury and for too-long a moment I didn’t even know which way to turn to get back to the house.
In the chaos, there came a quiet moment of perfect clarity. Clarity about where I’d come from and what I’d done. Every bad decision I’d ever made, laid out in a line, winking at me like marbles in a child’s game. Starting with the day I went to the mob for money.
And ending here. Now. In the midst of what I now could tell were the hooves of about a million raging bracku bearing down upon me.
And in that strangely hushed moment, I didn’t miss Mama or Maggie. I didn’t pine for Terratribe I or wish I could have just one more chance to make it all right. I didn’t pray again.
I just wished I could have seen Silar one more time. Seen him one more time and maybe even told him that –
“CHERRY!”
A man’s bellow – somehow even louder than the bracku horde – smashed through the air like a weapon. Dizzily, I wondered if the warden had somehow come upon the scene, because I couldn’t think of anyone else around here who could get that fucking loud.
But when a hand and tail seized upon my waist in perfect unison, they weren’t purple.
They were gold.
My body sailed upward so quickly it felt as if I flew.
Maybe I really had died. Maybe this was just my soul leaving my body…
But then my body – in particular, my tender ass – crashed back down upon something powerful and rigid.
Silar’s lap.
His whole body strained forwards, crushing me against his chest with his arm and tail while his other hand clutched Tarion’s reins in a fearsome grip. I’d only ridden on Tarion once and it hadn’t been like this – this bouncing, sprinting, mad dash through the dust.
“Hold on to me,” Silar hissed through his fangs. Gasping, I blindly locked my arms around Silar’s muscled torso. I was slung side-saddle, my legs thumping sideways against Tarion, twisting at my hips to hug Silar as hard as I could.
Silar cursed under his breath and tensed, leaning even further forward over both me and Tarion’s neck. We were going impossibly fast, a breathless, fathomless tear of motion. Silar’s thighs bulged with tension beneath me as he urged Tarion into an ever-more-rapid sprint.
There was no way we could keep this up. Tarion’s heart would give out, or one of his legs would buckle and snap. The stampeding bracku herd seemed endless in its writhing size and speed. We could keep galloping down this road forever and it didn’t seem like it would help one bit.
Only…
Only we weren’t on the road anymore.
Silar was aiming Tarion off the road, running us at a steep angle into the dusty pastures across from his property.
And then…
He yanked sharply on the reins, like an archer nocking and pulling back his arrow…
And turned us right around.
Instead of running away from the herd…
We were heading straight for it.
“Silar!” I croaked, panic soaking through me like acid.
My husband didn’t answer. He just kept his ferocious white gaze straight ahead as we pounded right back into certain doom.
What the hell was he thinking? That we could stop this stampede alone? One single rider against an infinite number of frantic bracku?
Except…
He wasn’t alone. He wasn’t a single rider. Through the dust-strangled beams of sun, I saw another man upon a mount. A yellow and orange and black streak. Like flame upon coal.
The other rider was even faster than we were, charging towards the bracku from a slightly different angle. Something else ran beside him – smaller than a shuldu but still pretty fucking big – giving loud, distinctly dog-like barks as it sprinted.
The two men on shuldu and the barking, running thing were apparently just enough to startle the trampling bracku. They didn’t stop by a long shot, but they were no longer content to keep running straight down the direction of the road. The cattle at the front veered off on an angle, and the rest followed.
“Tighter, Fallon!” Silar roared, again with that booming voice I hadn’t even known him capable of. A voice that I felt right down into my core, my very bones.
I couldn’t hear Fallon’s reply, but both men seemed to adjust their course, forcing the bracku into a tighter and tighter curve until the herd began to circle itself, like an animal chasing its own tail.
“ Tighter! ”
I clutched at Silar frantically. His speed never faltered, his muscles never relaxing for a second. His fingers were like iron at my ribs, his tail stronger than any rope could ever hope to be. Fearless and ferocious, like a blade he sliced forward on Tarion, keeping tight hold of me all the way.
The next time I felt stable enough to look up over Silar’s shoulder, I nearly sobbed with relief. The herd had slowed considerably. Forced into a tighter and tighter ball of bodies, they could no longer plough straight ahead with that mindless momentum.
As if satisfied that things were handled enough for now, Silar urged Tarion away from the herd, pounding through the dust until we’d reached the house. Without dismounting, he slung me off his lap as easily as he might a sack of potatoes and deposited me into the still-open doorway.
“Stay here!” he commanded, his eyes whiter and brighter than I’d ever seen them before.
Without waiting for my response, he faced forward in the saddle again and ordered Tarion back into a sprint towards the herd.
Between the dust and all the motion in the pastures ahead, I couldn’t make bracku head from shuldu tail of what the hell was going on.
The roof!
Before I could let my emotions catch up with me and render my legs completely useless, I ran out to the back porch and hoofed it up the ladder. Once on the flat area of the roof, I aimed myself towards the front of the property, leaning my body against the roof that angled up at the front of the house.
It was hard to spot Tarion in the churn of dust, since he was the same reddish colour as the land. But Silar’s bright teal hair streaming out from beneath his hat became my visual anchor. Once I saw that, I could make sense of the scene.
Silar and the other male were trotting at a much slower pace, moving in circles around a tightly packed fist of bracku. The beasts were already moving even slower than before, a shuffle of inertia that was close to dying out. The animal moving the fastest now seemed to be the manic, blurry one doing all the barking.
For the first time in what felt like forever, I took in a full, deep breath and let it out.
Silar was safe. I didn’t get turned into Cherry jam. The bracku had nearly stopped and now the other man was approaching Silar on his mount.
Everything was OK. Everything was going to be just –
Shit.
Everything was going to be just shit.
Because as soon as the other man was in range…
Silar’s tail shot out and wrapped tightly ’round his orange throat.