Chapter 15
In the morning, the four of them were quiet, occupied with their own thoughts about the island they were on. The Empyreans
traveled through space, but the ships were often staffed by people from the islands on Bellis. Everyone knew someone who had
visited one of the other planets that had the same atmosphere as Bellis. So what did the Empyreans mean when they declared
a person a “misfit?” What kind of people were on this island? The two men quietly armed themselves.
The four of them did their best to clear away any sign that they’d been on the ledge, but they didn’t close off the entrance
to the opening.
“You can just roll the rocks back into place,” Aradella teased Tam. When he didn’t reply, she looked away, disappointed. Her
attempt at friendship had been turned down. Had Bree poisoned him against her?
Zeon had put backpacks in the tapestry bag and they put them on. Mekos showed them the bag of coins.
Through it all, Bree was silent, standing to the side of the others, just watching.
When they were ready to go, Aradella turned to her.
“Stay with us,” she said. “We’ll protect you if there’s any danger.
Mekos can hear anything and we have the advantage of Tam’s extraordinary strength.
Don’t be afraid.” She didn’t wait for a reply before turning away to follow Mekos to the path leading down.
Tam tightened the strap on his pack and looked at Bree. “My great strength will protect you.” He was smiling. “Just so you
know, anyone comes after us, I’m getting behind you.” He winked at her.
Smiling, Bree followed him to the path.
For all their bravado, the unknown they were facing made them tense. The path down was steep. The bits of sheep’s wool they
saw showed what the trail was used for.
Ian flew ahead, then returned.
“What did you see?” Aradella asked.
“There’s no one like me,” Ian answered. He looked past them to Bree. “There are many like you.”
They turned to look at her, but they weren’t sure what that meant.
Ian would say no more but his laughing manner reassured them.
They came to a crossroads and to the left they could see what looked to be a town.
“I hear people.” Mekos listened. “They’re laughing and talking.” He looked at Tam. “There are children.”
Their pace increased and their fear left them.
The town they entered was clean, well-kept, and busy. There were two-story buildings with shops below. Stands containing fresh
food, meat, fruit, and vegetables were abundant. An elegant fountain was in the center and children were running around it.
They’d been expecting monsters but what they saw were normal people. Old, young, little, big, they were all there.
The only thing unusual was, as Ian had said, that many people looked like Bree.
That meant pretty. Like Bree, they had perfect skin, lustrous eyes, hair that glistened.
On Pithan, the Beauty Girls, with their lavish makeup and hair, stood out.
But on Abicis, most of the people were, well, beautiful.
Both men and women were exceptionally good-looking.
Few of them seemed to have made an effort to look good but appeared to have rolled out of bed looking like that.
“My goodness,” Aradella said, her eyes wide from staring at men who, in normal circumstances, would have women gathered around
them.
A farrier looked up from a horse’s hoof. His dark eyes were like burning coals. The blacksmith was enough to make a woman
swoon. Storekeepers had chiseled jaws and shoulders as wide as a broom handle.
Mixed with these male and female demigods were people who, indeed, were “different.” There were people with crooked backs,
faces with birthmarks, others with obvious mental disabilities. There were people with crutches or in wheeled chairs.
In spite of their differences, they all seemed to be equal—and happy. Smiling, laughing, friendly, they went about their daily
business.
As they walked through the town, they asked about Qip, but no one had heard of him—or that was what they said.
The team hadn’t gone far when they began to realize that Aradella was the focus of attention. The other three were barely
looked at, but everyone looked at Aradella as though she was different—and highly desirable.
Mekos stepped closer to her. When a man so gorgeous he could have been the model for a deity, halted and stared at Aradella,
Mekos put his arm around her and sneered at the man.
Aradella had never experienced anything like that and she couldn’t resist turning his own question back on him. “Tell me,”
she said, “are you going to be jealous of all the men who look at me?”
Mekos gave her a look that said this was no joke, but Tam laughed.
As for Bree, her steps slowed and the distance between her and “them” increased.
That they didn’t notice her absence was new to her.
All her life, her physical appearance had garnered attention, but now she was being ignored.
She saw a woman better looking than her standing over a tub of water.
Not one man had so much as glanced at Bree.
The experience was quite liberating.
Bree stopped walking. Aradella, between Mekos and Tam, was far ahead of her—and they’d not noticed she wasn’t with them. Is this how the world has seen me? she wondered. The most desirable woman commands everyone’s attention? No wonder Aradella hates me!
“Is it two boros of moringa or one?” she heard a man say. The voice came from behind a curtain hanging across a doorway.
“It’s one and a half,” she said without thinking.
There was a pause, then the voice said, “Get in here!”
She pushed aside the curtain and saw a room that made her feel comfortable. There were pots, vials, glass jars, and bunches
of herbs hanging everywhere. Just like Reena’s house.
Behind a long, stone-topped table set close to a wall was a man. She was relieved to see that he wasn’t heaven-sent beautiful.
He was short, his head barely reaching Bree’s shoulders, with a long gray mustache, and one arm was longer than the other.
On the table was a tall stone mortar surrounded by bowls of ingredients. On the side was a cloth doll of a woman with babies
sewn all around her.
“I assume you’re making a fertility potion,” Bree said.
The man frowned at her. “Who are you?”
She was hesitant to tell him her name. “A Book.”
“Ah. For Reena?” When she nodded, his smile filled his round face. “Brilliant woman but very lazy.”
“True. She doesn’t want to deal with all those volumes.”
“She still have a spell on her books that burns the hands of anyone who touches them?”
“Oh yes! It’s easier to put some bored, useless girl under a forever spell than to try to memorize them herself.”
He raised his bushy eyebrows. “Do you know all of the books? Even the ones she stole from her father?”
“Yes.” Bree was surprised that he knew about those dusty old volumes. “I sneezed all the way through them.” She looked at the bowls. “Do you have wild rose? Hibiscus? Any dirt?”
“Taken from the grave of a woman who had twelve children.”
“What about a snakeskin? It helps the man last from how this excites the woman.” She watched as he opened a box that looked
ancient and pulled out four snakeskins, each a different color. “Just a tiny bit is all that’s needed.”
He used his thumbnail to snip off a piece, put it in the mortar, then picked up the pestle to begin mashing. The table was
tall and the mortar made it taller. The man had to stretch to reach the top of it.
“Let me do it.” She started to go behind the table.
“There’s not enough room,” he said.
Bree picked up one end of the heavy table and moved it a few inches farther from the wall. Then she moved the other side.
She went behind the table and began to crush the ingredients.
The man was staring at her in awe. “It takes two of my big male assistants to move that table.”
Bree shrugged. “I inherited a bit of strength from my father. He’s a giant and very strong.”
“Do you always explain what you can do by giving the credit to your father?”
“I guess I do.”
“I’m called Cappie. It’s for Copernicus. Ridiculous name, but everything from the Empyreans is absurd.”
“I’m Bree Varlon from Pithan. We’re trying to find a man named Qip.” She began stuffing the doll full of the contents of the
mortar.
“Qip doesn’t like to be found. Why do you want him?”
There was so much to that answer that Bree didn’t know where to begin. “Have you ever heard of Queen Olina?”
“I’ve had some dealings with her mother,” Cappie said.
“Yes. Urah. She—”
Cappie held up his hand. “That’s more than enough for me to understand. Qip is my friend.” He handed Bree a sewing kit, watched her thread a needle, then she began to sew the fertility doll closed. “If you want to stay here on Abicis, I need a Book.”
She smiled at him. “You’re very kind, but I’m here with others and we have something to do. We must—” She broke off at the
sound of a familiar voice on the other side of the curtain. It was Aradella—and of course she sounded angry.
“Where is she? I know she hasn’t the brains to find her way around, so why did she wander away?”
Cappie looked at Bree. “Does the owner of that voice mean you?”
“Yes.”
His eyes twinkled. “We can mix something that’ll change her attitude. I’ll ignite it for you.”
Bree laughed. “How kind you are! But I promised someone that I’d be nice to Aradella. It wasn’t added, ‘Unless she’s such
a bitch that you want to tear her head off.’”
Cappie didn’t laugh.
“This is my fault,” said a man’s voice from outside. “I should have been watching.”
“Your lover?” Cappie asked.
“Oh no! That’s Tam. He has a wife and child.”
“And who do you have?”
“I—”
Aradella’s voice came to them. “How can we accomplish anything if she gets lost every few minutes? We’ll never find this man
Qip if we have to deal with her.”
“I better go.” Bree sighed. “I wish my cousin could see that my life isn’t the perfection that she believes it is.”
“I might be able to arrange that.”