Chapter 11
Ani
He’s a nearly useless climber but I never would’ve gotten down from the tree myself. Just glancing up at where we were makes my heart race. I should thank him, but I don’t.
I can’t.
The Bitch is laid over every inch of my body and voice now, my terror making it even more important to cling to what is most comfortable.
I ignore the voice of my therapist trying to tell me how useless that mask is. What does she know about crash landing on a fucking alien planet?
Every time he corrects me I know he is right… but there is something in my mind that isn’t working right. Something I need to control or it will get me killed. Except the control I have always prided myself on seems permanently out of my reach.
My knees wobble a bit and I’ve never been happier to see a flat surface. I steady myself, holding upright so I seem less like prey in his eyes. Now that we’re on the ground, I wonder what will happen next.
He is standing only a few steps away from me and I can’t help but notice how big he is.
Much taller than most living things I have directly interacted with, and it bends my sense of reality even more than it already has been, scaring me.
The skin on his arms isn’t smooth like his face, with deep craters of wrinkles in a darker yellow in odd patterns around raised blue splotches of skin, no clear uniformity in their size or shape, though the dots are smaller on his long, multi-jointed fingers.
The bottom set of hands have far more joints than the top.
Small, thin, white and yellow feathers are scattered along the roughed skin of his arms, none of them longer than an inch.
His legs are far too short compared to his long torso, something about the way the long toes with thick talons splaying on the ground seem clumsy.
Most of him is a large mass of feathers, making his form hard to discern beyond the fact that he is huge.
I’m just over six feet tall and he is well over double my height. Such an odd alien, but I don’t feel repulsed by him.
More curious than anything. I’m glad I have that privilege and I’m not finding myself in his digestive tract.
However, the song language is fucking annoying.
There are words I cannot convey and not being able to talk directly to someone is killing me more than it ever has.
I pride myself on conversing properly and it is impossible.
His eyes scan our environment, probably on the lookout for these “hunters” he keeps speaking of. I don’t know if it’s the gray alien blobs but if it is, I’d very much not like to get caught.
Though I’m still not sure about this Ree woman.
Not only does she have an overwhelming presence, from when I was kidnapped to me being saved by an alien, she happens to have an unusual rapport with them.
That only comes from someone deep enough in human-alien relations.
Perhaps like me, she can easily speak the language of these aliens.
Communication means someone can choose to work with the enemy.
I’ve bedded down with enough terrible people to know sometimes you do what you have to.
“Bright,” he suddenly sings, staring down at me, but higher than my eyes.
My hands instinctively reach for my head, and I realize he’s talking about my hair. It is indeed a luminous color. It’s not what I’d choose, but that is nothing new.
“Not mine,” I respond grumpily.
He blinks those gorgeous eyes, but I don’t think he understands. How annoying indeed. He gestures to a part of the forest, the place I was actively trying not to look at because of how tall and huge the trees are. He wants us to go in there.
“With me. We go. If short name need, Szhe’ka.”
My eyes narrow at how his name sounds like a familiar bird call. Like from something from Earth I can’t quite place.
“Not mean I trust,” I lilt.
He sings back to me and there is regret in his melody, something sad and forlorn but I cannot bring myself to listen. “I want to help.”
The resonance pulls at something inside me, but the Bitch stays firmly in place.
That regret is especially what is so suspicious about him.
The emotion makes no sense in this context.
It makes me think I am keeping him from some ulterior goal, more than just slowing him down by asking him to fucking explain.
“Take me to her,” I sing, my melody betraying my distrust.
Sometimes ordering someone to do the exact thing they want is the only way to wrest back control.
He trills a happy sound and he leads the way. I blink when I see the disordered and broken feathers along his back, the green liquid making my lip raise again. A flightless bird-salamandar-man? My day has been beyond odd.
I trudge after him, my eyes darting around and my mind going back to its usual mode of trying to think of five things at once.
Does he have a name? If he tells me his name, would it be a beautiful melody or a plain song? Why do I even care? And why is my body running hot?
I have nothing but time and an endless curiosity about my environment, even though everything at the moment is probably trying to kill me.
It does seem unlikely that he’d be leading me to some kind of nest as most birds do not make their nests on the ground.
The ones I can think of on Earth are going extinct.
I snort. Where are we going? He could be a devil leading me straight to hell and I’d still be wondering if the way to hell is truly paved with flowers. I don’t think that would even scare me much. After all, I was birthed by a Witch. I can handle a devil.
With a sharp shake of my head I try to contain the galloping of my thoughts.
My mind settles back on the Witch.
The last thing I heard from her was about an audition that I had to go for in the afternoon. I wonder how she’ll react when she finds out I’m no longer there to be her cash cow.
“Straya korova,” I mutter.
An old cash cow.
Would she freak out? Call the police? Would she talk to the press and cry about what a worried mother she is?
Just the thought of her losing her mind makes me want to cackle in joy. Instead, I hum out the resonance that carries that emotion. It catches the uncanny hearing of the birdman, and he stops in his tracks, putting a firm hand to his mouth.
My eyebrow raises. I really don’t like to be shushed. His stumbling footfalls are far louder than that little hum.
“I quiet,” I sing under my breath.
His eyes bore into me, but he doesn’t say anything. He might have a valid reason to be concerned about how loud we are, but I will not allow him to disrespect me. I’ve had enough of that already.
Still, I keep any more humming to myself and pad behind him nearly silently. If we get caught, it will be because of his stumbles, not me losing my damn mind and fucking humming about it.
The scenery around us remains the same. Tall, large trees with foliage that blocks our vision. With him being so much taller, I’m sure he can see better than I can but even the purple grass to me is a forest.
Even if I climbed down from the tree somehow, navigating this by myself would’ve been impossible.
It makes the Bitch mask slip a bit and I stare at my feet as they weave among roots, trying to figure out what other mask might help right now. None of them are as practiced as that one. None as strong and I need that right now. But the Bitch doesn’t exactly endear people to me.
I have much to be grateful for, yet I’ve only given him skepticism. It’s the same thing I did to my therapist; the one person I paid to help me get better. Even now, I regret not thanking her.
And so, I raise my head to say something to him, only to realize that… he’s gone.
Quickly turning around in the dense foliage, there’s no sign that he’s even been there. Did I stray? Did he leave me behind? Was he a figment of my imagination all along? Am I trapped? Is this a simulation?
No, that’s fucking stupid Ani, I chide.
But what happened? Why? Each question makes my mind race to play the scenarios out and they weave together in an ever-increasing jumble of possibilities. Of fears.
“Szhe’ka, not like,” I chide in a staccato of fear-induced anger.
Four heartbeats. Then five. Six… Still no answer. I spin, slowly, heart pounding as I realize I’m not even sure exactly which way we came from, let alone where we were going.
“Szhe’ka?” I sing out again, voice shaky enough to distort the harmonics, throat tightening more and more by the second.
Still no heavy footfalls or annoyingly longsuffering chirps. He left me.
I deserved it.
The air in my lungs escapes me slowly as my body collapses to the ground, involuntarily curling.
Another panic attack is the last thing I need, but that doesn’t mean I can control it.
I know this well, having been locked in my room plenty of time for “being dramatic and useless.” I try to pull myself out of it, but it is proving much harder than usual.
I open my mouth to talk myself out of it, but the words seize in my throat and only a broken song comes out. My joints are frozen in place, and I cannot move. All I can do is feel the tears as they stream down my face and beg myself to hold it together.
It is as if the combined trauma of all I have experienced since getting to this strange place hits me all at once and like a sledgehammer to the ribs, it knocks all the air out of my lungs, reaching its cold, clammy hands down my throat while whispering portents of doom softly in my ears.
For a good long minute, I don’t know where I am, and I feel another scream pushing its way up my throat, my mind frantic to keep it in, until I hear a soft song from beside me.
It is gentle at first, barely there but I focus all my energy on it. My eyes are screwed shut but I feel something soft rub against me. It is warm and comfortable and instead of making me want to scream, it feels like a weighted blanket.
The singing is also closer and I can tell it is from a familiar voice. His. He didn’t leave me.
I let the song fill my ears and calm the thumping of my heart, slowing my breath until it matches the pace of the song.
He sings a song that has no translation, just a series of emotions, and I cling to each intonation. I allow the song to get to me until I am singing along with him, quietly, my voice complimenting his.
I let it carry my fear outside of my body until the weight around my shoulder is lifted and I don’t feel like I am being chased by my mother and the ghosts of my past anymore.
The song ends when I open my eyes and look up to see the alien’s brilliant green-blue eyes looking into mine, full of concern and worry for me.
I don’t know how to react, so I look away, my body flush with embarrassment. I can’t believe I just had a panic attack in front of someone this new to me. I hate being vulnerable with anyone, much less with this alien who practically dragged me out of the canopy above.
“You better?” he asks in a gentle tone, and I feel myself starting to choke up, my song struggling to leave my throat.
I hide my face behind my palms and turn away from him.
“Yes,” I simply respond, and I hear a sound that closely resembles a scoff of disbelief.
He coos and I listen for a bit, trying to determine if there is any judgment or pity intended but there isn’t, only honesty. “If not, is fine.”
Guilt hits me like a ton of bricks. He’s been nothing but honest and open since our initial meeting and it makes me feel small and stupid. Broken and vulnerable in a way I have avoided my whole life.
That gentle tone makes me feel laid bare and while part of me wants to cling to it, another part is terrified. Others have been gentle. At first. Until they got what they wanted. The memories surge and I know I have to beat them back before they strangle the breath from me again.
I scramble in my mind for my masks, the Bitch slipping back over me out of habit, though I know it is the wrong one for this moment.
I let myself breathe, trying not to overthink it. If I don’t make it out of this alive, it’s far more likely to be because I was weak. Pathetic. If I keep overthinking, another panic attack might just take me out.
He is still staring at me inquisitively, as if waiting for me to answer truthfully whether I truly am fine or not, and with the passing seconds, I start to feel more antsy.
For someone who is used to having multitudes of eyes on her, I should not be as unnerved as I am, but I almost feel as if he just saw me naked and I don’t like it.
I make myself rise, then I put my arms around myself and shift from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. “Stop looking.”
He doesn’t stop but sings back to me instead. “My regrets. Want sure you better.”
I can’t help it when I look up at him and suddenly better appreciate that he is not just a bright yellow-blue ball of insistent sunshine; there are polka dotted dark-blue spots on his many arms, going horizontally across his shoulders and then trailing into feathers.
My eyes rise up to the plume of blue feathers, with softer, thinner red creating a striking contrast.
When he is not looming and creeping me out, his coloring is kind of beautiful.
“I better,” I promise, no maliciousness in my tone, at distinct odds with the Bitch mask I am desperately trying to keep in place like it’s the one thing keeping my mind from shattering.
“Us leave,” I add, running my hands over myself as a chilly wind blows at me, reminding me that it will be night soon.
I don’t think he hears me with how low my voice is, so I look up at him and attempt to repeat myself but the words are stuck in my throat.
There is a familiar tinkle in the bottom of my stomach that travels straight between my legs and if I didn’t know any better, I would assume that I am turned on by looking at the alien.
Which shouldn’t even be possible because we aren’t even the same kind of thing, right?
I scramble up and motion for us to move on, desperate to move the galloping horse thoughts onto something far less confusing.