Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
TIA
W aking up is a struggle. I drift back and forth between vague consciousness and sinking back into sleep. I want to stretch and turn over, but my bladder feels full and urges me awake. Or it tries to, anyhow. Opening my eyes is difficult, and when I finally manage it, a headache stabs right between my eyes.
I groan, squeezing them shut again.
“Shhh,” says a familiar voice in my ear. “I have you.”
Rem’eb. A shiver of delight runs through my body, my senses awakening.
I’m dimly aware that I’m cradled in someone’s arms, my head resting against a warm, broad chest. Other than my bladder, I’m not at all uncomfortable, and I could drift back to sleep again. In fact, I just might…
“She is going under again, Rem’eb. Use the leaf.” A different voice.
Something wafts under my nose and then an acrid stink makes me recoil. I cough, only to have the headache stab harder.
“Wake up, Tia,” Rem’eb cajoles. “We must go soon.”
Go?
It’s that word that bounces around in my mind, echoing and enabling me to shake the last of the sleepiness off. I force my eyes open, pushing against Rem’eb’s gentle grasp. The lighting is dim in the room, but it still hurts my eyes. I’m dimly aware that there’s a blanket over me, but as my eyes focus, I realize this isn’t my cell.
I’ve been moved.
“Easy,” Rem’eb says, his hand skimming down my arm.
I push out of his grasp, panic replacing the sweet, burgeoning feeling of anticipation I get when Rem’eb touches me. “Where the fuck am I?”
“Move slowly, Tia the Stranger,” Rem’eb says in that easy voice. He hands what looks like a burned mushroom cap to someone else. “She is fully awake now.”
I look over to see another alien—another one of the four-armed ground-dwellers—watching me. He looks older than Rem’eb, his expression more resigned than anything. He’s dressed the same, but his body fur seems to be a deep gray instead of Rem’eb’s reddish one. He wears a couple of the beads fitted at the base of his horns, and one pulling his bushy hair back from his face. The look he gives me is more fatigue than anything else.
Even so, I scoot a little closer to Rem’eb, because I don’t know who this is.
“Easy,” Rem’eb tells me in a soothing voice. “Cas’zor the Loyal is helping us. It is risky, but I do not think you will resonate to him.”
Resonate ? I’m more worried this guy is going to rape or kill me than resonate to me…but now I have a new fear. Great. I glance between the two of them, and wet my lips with my tongue. “I have to pee.”
Luckily Rem’eb recognizes that word. He glances up at the stranger—Cas’zor—and nods. “We must leave her alone for a moment.”
“Is that wise, Chief’s Fist?” Cas’zor looks suspicious of my request.
“Of course.” Rem’eb’s expression is slightly puzzled even as he gets to his feet. “I trust Tia. Come.”
They both exit, and I find the facilities in the room, along with a pitcher of water and a bowl for hand washing. After I relieve myself, I search the quarters looking for a weapon of some kind. Or I try to. My hands feel numb and tingly from whatever they’d given me in my sleep. When I knock over a stoneware bowl by mistake, the door opens again and Rem’eb looks in.
I pretend to collapse on the ground with a weak smile to distract him.
“Tia!” Rem’eb rushes to my side, pulling me back up to my feet and supporting me with a strong arm around my waist. “Are you not well enough to walk? Shall I carry you? We do not have much time.”
“Time? Time for what?” I cling to him a little more than I probably should, and it’s not only because my legs are wobbly and slow to respond. It feels good to let him hold me. It feels right. Like my chest could start resonating at any moment.
And I don’t know if I’m scared for that to happen or if I’m excited about the prospect.
“We are escaping my village,” Rem’eb says in a low voice. “I am taking you back to the garden above.”
The garden above? “The fruit cave?”
He nods, even though I know he doesn’t know what I’m asking. “Where we found you. And we will retrieve your suitor as well.”
I make a happy sound and bounce in place. The urge to kiss his cheek happily—or kiss more—rushes through me and I force myself not to. If I kiss him, I might never stop, and the realization feels more weighty with every moment that passes.
If I’m here another week, I know without a shadow of a doubt that I’ll resonate to him. It’s a gut reaction I have, an instinctive feeling. Something is going on with my khui. It’s not ready to resonate, not yet, but it feels as if it’s waiting for something. I’m alert to its presence in a way I never was before.
“Can you walk?” he asks me again, and I nod.
He seems pleased with this response, and the color of his skin shifts to something muted and dark, matching the shadows around us. The only thing that remains the same color are the garishly golden loincloth, the necklace with the claw around his neck, and his bright reddish mane. But at a glance? It might be enough for him to slip away unnoticed.
I manage a few steps and then we emerge from the room into what looks like a large, somber chamber. There’s a pool of water with a trickling fountain in the center, surrounded by mushrooms of every shape and size. A garden of some kind, I realize. The ceiling overhead is nothing more than a decorative lattice with an intricate weave, made out of the same strange material the door was made from, and through the holes in the lattice, I can see rock overhead. The chamber itself has a few stone benches set along the walls, and one large seat at the head of the room that looks like it belongs to the man in charge. There’s a golden banner behind it with a woven pattern that looks like a double starburst—or twin suns.
“Come,” Rem’eb says, taking my arm and leading me through the room. “We must travel as far as we can this tide-fall.”
The stranger arrives again—Cas’zor—and carries a large pack and a long tube that looks like a waterskin of some kind. He hands them both to Rem’eb, settling them over his shoulder. “Hurry.”
“Are you sure you will not come with us?” Rem’eb asks the man. “Everyone will be furious when they have found out what you have done.”
“I have done the right thing,” he tells us in a stiff voice. “Let them be angry.”
Rem’eb hesitates, clearly torn.
“They need a voice of reason right now,” Cas’zor says. “And your female needs your help.”
Rem’eb looks over at me and that decides him. He nods, adjusting the pack over his shoulder and looping the canteen over his head. “We will go as fast as we can. You have my thanks, Cas’zor. I will not forget this.”
“Be safe.” He nods at Rem’eb and then leaves us.
Rem’eb clasps my hand again. “Come. I am taking you to your suitor and then we will return both of you to the surface. Tell me if I move too fast for you. We must make haste.”
Then he tugs me behind him and races out of the room, with me dragging along after him.
At first, my legs tingle and I worry that I don’t have shoes, but the floors in the cavern seem to be smooth and there’s a cobbled street. I’m able to keep up with him, and the more I move, the stronger I feel. It takes everything I have not to gawk at my surroundings, though.
There’s an entire city here in the vast stretch of caverns.
Everywhere I look, there are more of the square houses made out of stone bricks, just like the ones back in Croatoan. Here, though, there’s so many that I can’t count all of them. They line up in neat rows along the main street, and it’s down this street that Rem’eb pulls me along. The huts here have no roofs that I can see, but they’re so familiar to me that the sight makes me ache. The doorframes are not privacy screens covered in leather like back home, though. Here they’re doors just like the strangely made one in my old cell, and some even look to be made of metal.
Tubes of light made out of the same strange wavy glass are located along the street itself, and the ceiling high above glows with faint light—more of the strange moss, I think.
I want to stop and examine them, but there’s no time. “Where is everyone?” I ask, confused. Rem’eb has never indicated that there’s anything but a bustling city around him, but this place looks deserted and terrifying. “Is it the middle of the night?”
He turns at my hushed tones, never stopping. When I make a hand gesture for “people” and mime walking legs, then point at a doorway, he nods. “You are wondering where everyone is? They are asleep.”
“Asleep?”
“Cas’zor the Loyal is indeed loyal. He added something to the communal stew and now they will sleep soundly all night…which is why we must be gone by tide-rise.”
Man, these people sure do love to drug a bitch. With a shiver, I speed up just a little. “How many people?” I repeat myself twice before he understands me. To be fair to him, we are power-walking through the place as quickly as we can, so I get it if he misses a few of my gestures.
“Perhaps one hundred,” Rem’eb says. “We are all that is left after the great sickness.”
A great sickness? I want to ask more questions, but the timing and our language barrier makes me sit on my questions.
Rem’eb rushes past the last few houses in this area, heading for what looks like a long wall made of more of the same bricks. To my surprise, it narrows in, splitting off the cavern and the city itself in half. The wall is decorated with carvings, mimicking the ones back in Croatoan and leaving no doubt in my mind that these people are related to the ones that lived there, once upon a time.
“There might be a guard here,” Rem’eb warns me. “If there is, let me take care of him.”
As if I’m going to fight him for that honor? Not likely.
Rem’eb leaves me behind and I lean against the strange wall that bisects their underground village. I watch him as he surges ahead, and his big body is graceful and silent despite his size. His sandals make no sound on the cobblestones, and when he goes around the far side of the wall, I feel a surge of anxiety. It bothers me when he goes out of sight.
A moment later, though, he peers around the corner and makes a beckoning motion at me, and I scramble to join him.
We pass by a large door on the far side of the wall, a guard at the front asleep at his post. The door has a large bar on the outside, which seems strange to me. What are they keeping locked in there? Livestock, maybe? I try to think of what I ate in the last few days that could be cultivated. Lizards, maybe? But all the ones I had were tiny.
“Come, we must keep going,” Rem’eb tells me, taking my hand once more. “We will be in the tunnels soon.”
“What’s behind the door?” I ask, gesturing at it as we hurry past.
He glances at it one last time and then leads me down a tunnel in the opposite direction. “That is where the females are kept.”
Wait…what?
“Females?” I repeat, using his word for it. I jerk my hand from his. “Why the fuck are your females barred in?”
He pauses, glancing at the wall and then back at me. “What is wrong?”
“Why. Are. Your. Women. Behind. A locked fucking door?” I’m doing my best to keep my voice down and failing miserably as I stab my finger at the offending door with each word. “Do you realize how fucked up that is? Why are they prisoners?”
“Come,” he says, reaching for my hand again, and when I don’t give it to him, he frowns, trying to understand my furious gestures. “I am not happy about it either, but there is no time to explain. Come with me and I will tell you more as we travel.”
I cross my arms over my chest and glare at him.
This clearly makes Rem’eb antsy. He paces back and forth, anxious. “Tia, the others will not be asleep all night. If we are to escape, it must be now. All it takes is one to alert the others that we are gone. I will tell you more, but you must walk with me. If we are caught, I will not have the chance to help you leave again.”
I hesitate, but when he impatiently glances down at the sleeping guard and puts his hand out again, I slap my palm into his. I’m the worst person in the world for leaving these women—these prisoners —behind. But you can’t save anyone until you save yourself, and right now Rem’eb is my ticket out of here.
I hope those faceless women on the other side forgive me for leaving them behind, because I’m not sure I’m going to forgive myself.
We race down another tunnel, and the buildings disappear. Another tunnel, and the walls are no longer smooth, the path beneath my feet no longer cobbled. It’s clear we’re getting into the less traveled parts of their underground city, and some of the tension seems to leave Rem’eb’s shoulders as we do. He glances behind us over and over, but when we make it to a third tunnel that forks off from the others, he seems to breathe a little easier.
Pointing at the next fork in the maze of tunnels, he says, “Your friend is being kept in a cell in that direction. We will be there soon.”
I pull my hand from his. “I can walk alone.”
Rem’eb flinches, and I feel like I kicked him while he was down. “I suppose to an outsider it does not seem fair. A great many of my people do not like it, the wall. But it was my father’s decision after the great sickness. It seemed like when it spread, the women would always catch it first, and catch it worst. No one could protect them. If a male was sick, any female that had been near him would grow ill. The khui would die slowly, and then the sick person would follow not long after. My father felt that the women were catching the sickness from us, the men. He had all of the men moved to the far side of the village, and the women into the houses on the other end and told the two groups to stay apart. No one grew sick, and so my father felt that the only way to keep all of his people safe—women and men—was to separate them. A wall was built in the village, and the women are brought food and goods into an antechamber. They have their own water supply. They live a life entirely separate from us.”
“That’s fucked,” I tell him, shocked. “What about families?” I make a gesture of rocking a baby.
“Resonance is allowed,” he says, moving forward and walking again, leaving me no choice but to follow if I want to hear the rest of the story (and, well, get out). “It is all very orderly. All the males of the village pass by the wall several times a day. If resonance begins, the female is separated from the others and brought into a house separate from the others, so they can celebrate their union. When the female is carrying and resonance is fulfilled, she is returned to the safety behind the wall. When the child is born, if it is male, it is given to the father when it is old enough to be separated.”
I jog up to his side and touch his arm. “You realize this is batshit insane, right?”
He might not understand my words, but he understands my tone. Rem’eb nods, and his expression grows melancholy. “No one is happy with the arrangement, but ever since the wall was erected, the females no longer grow sick. It was either that or let them all die. What choice did my father have?”
“How about a healer?”
He tilts his head at me, slowing. “I do not mark you.”
“A healer, you know…” I pretend to put my hands on his chest, but that only confuses him more. After several attempts of trying to explain what a healer is, I give up. “Okay, never mind, you either don’t have healers or the language barrier is greater than I’d hoped.”
“My people are split in spirit as well,” Rem’eb tells me. “There are rebels that would like nothing more than for my father to be removed from the chief’s seat, but who would take his place? And if we let the females walk freely among us, is that worth watching them die before our eyes? There are no answers.”
“Or it could be something that hits women harder than men? Hormonally related? Like your period?” I chew on my lip, thinking. I’m no doctor—I didn’t even finish health class in high school because it was boring—but there has to be a reasonable explanation for this. When measles killed people on Earth, it didn’t single out women. I’ll have to talk to Veronica when we get back. Maybe there’s an herb that can help…
“That is why you were hidden,” Rem’eb continues, his voice soft. He’s stopped walking, and he watches me with eyes that are both haunted and full of yearning. “If the rebels knew my father had kept a female aside for me to resonate to, they would rise up.”
So that’s why I was kept separate? I recoil. “Okay, first of all, that’s freaking gross?—”
“And I should have let you go,” Rem’eb continues, his expression even more miserable. “I know it was wrong, but I took one look at you and my heart was lost.”
Goddamn it. How is it he always says the thing that defuses my anger at him so quickly?
“I want to be selfish,” he tells me. “But not at your expense. So I must free you…even if it means giving you up.”
“You could go with me?” I offer, feeling a little insane as I do. This guy is my kidnapper. Kinda. Why do I want him to stick around?
“I must go back. My people need me. Even if it is the very last thing I want.” He seems sad.
“What is it you want, then?”
He doesn’t understand what I’m asking. “This connection between us. Do you feel it?” He moves closer to me and brushes a knuckle along my jaw.
If this was any other man I’d slap his hand away.
But because it’s Rem’eb, and because I’m feeling the exact same connection he mentioned, the small touch fills me full of hunger and want.
So yeah, I feel it. I feel it even though all of this is an absolute clusterfuck.
“I know I should want you to stay with my people,” he murmurs, tilting my face up. “But all I can think about is you. And I would not do anything to make you sad.”
“I’m not going to kiss you,” I tell him, even as I step closer into the circle of his arms.
I’m a terrible person because I kiss him anyhow. And I enjoy it far too much.