Chapter 4
– Theodora –
It’s a bundle of leather and furs in several layers, made so that it can be carried with two solid, looped straps. It looks like a primitive backpack, twice the size of any I’ve seen on Earth.
Even in the dark, I can see what it contains. There’s an opening with a loose flap, and inside there’s a round little face, eyes closed in sleep.
“A baby,” I whisper. My heart is still beating hard and fast after the encounter with that terrible monster that attacked the caveman. I was expecting to find Callie, not this.
Cora mentioned the Lifegivers, those strange plants that the tribes use to make new men.
Those are all male, because they’re pretty much clones.
So this is a baby boy, which makes it weird for the caveman to keep saying “she” and “her.” But I don’t know the language that well, I suppose. Maybe it’s a dialect thing.
“He yours?” I ask, just to say something.
“She is mine,” the caveman says with obvious pride. “Her name is Aker’iz. She’s asleep. When she wakes up, you will know it. She’s a loud one.”
My hand is still trembling from the attack. Thrusting the spear into that monster was almost pure reflex, and I’m just happy I hit the attacker and not the caveman.
I take a deep breath of cool night air. That was a lucky thing. I did something good, and I fixed the whole problem. I can be happy about that. Now I just need to calm down.
I shift my grip on the spear. This makes me see the caveman in a different light. I completely misjudged him. “Where you take her?”
“To safety,” he rumbles as he opens a compartment in the backpack and takes out a jar made from a hollowed-out rock.
“After I tend to my wounds.” He hangs the pack carefully on a branch, opens the jar, and scoops out some green goop that he starts to smear on the cuts he got from the dino that dropped on him.
I don’t know what to do with myself. I followed him because I thought he had abducted Callie, but it turns out I’m crashing some kind of family affair involving a baby that can’t be more than a few months old.
“I Theodora,” I tell him, as my brain doesn’t come up with something intelligent to say. “You?”
He scoops out more of the primitive wound-healing salve and winces as he applies it to a nasty wound on his shoulder. “Kenz’ox is my name. Of the Tratena tribe.”
“Your village is far?”
“Yes.” He closes the lid on the jar and replaces it in his pack. “Many days’ walk. Four moons we walked, little Aker’iz and I. Though I did most of the walking. She mostly sleeps and demands various things. And she grows heavier by the day.”
I look around and up, worried about more attacks. “Walking in the jungle dangerous.”
“Always,” Kenz’ox agrees. “But we’ve made it so far. We just have to learn not to speak to ourselves and forget where we are.”
“Why not you in village? With tribe?”
He takes the backpack and puts it on, one arm at a time, so that it hangs on his front. I know I’ve seen similar things on Earth, made for carrying babies in. What were they called again?
“The tribe didn’t want little Aker’iz, and tried to set her out in the jungle for the Bigs to eat, or to be taken by Foundlings. I would allow no such thing.”
Ah. I understand most of his words. And I know about the Foundlings.
Sprisk is one, having been taken out of his Lifegiver with several dinosaur features, such as his spikes and horns.
The tribe didn’t want to have to deal with a boy like that, so they put him out in the jungle.
He was lucky and was discovered by a clan of Foundlings that took care of him.
This baby must have some kind of deformation or other problem that means he’s not good enough for a tribe to keep and raise.
“You left tribe?” I ask for clarification.
He scans the jungle around us. “I told the tribe that if they didn’t accept little Aker’iz as one of the tribe, she and I would leave the tribe forever.
They agreed to let her stay, but I sensed dishonesty in them.
One night they tried to take her. But I was awakened by their whispers and killed three of my tribesmen.
Then I set fire to the chief’s hut and the shaman’s hut and brought the baby with me into the jungle. ”
He says it so calmly, but behind his slow words there’s obviously a tale of great drama.
Cora told us that the worst thing that can happen to a caveman is to be cast out from the tribe.
The tribe is both family and community and army and country to them, providing a home, safety, food, identity—everything they need to stay alive.
Being cast out usually means certain death on this lethal planet.
A caveman leaving his tribe willingly must be extremely rare.
But I also note how calmly he speaks about killing three men.
And I have to remind myself that calm doesn’t have to mean safe.
“That… very brave,” is all I can say. My mind hasn’t quite caught up with recent events.
“It was necessary,” Kenz’ox says calmly as he takes several items out of the backpack and sets them on the ground at the root of the tree. “Aker’iz needs a safer place. A better place.”
I nod. “You see other girl? Big girl? Big as me. Long hair.”
He slowly sits down and leans against the tree. “You’re the first woman I’ve ever seen. Aker’iz is a girl. Not yet a woman. Not for many years, if the shaman was right.”
I still feel like I’ve intruded into someone’s home. “I lost a woman. She my friend. This morning she not here. Lost.”
He gives me a sharp look. “Lost from the Plood ship?”
I shrug. “She in the Plood ship last night. Then this morning, not.”
“No Big came into the Plood ship,” Kenz’ox says calmly after thinking for a moment. “She went out on her own. And then she was taken by a Big. Not a Small—they would kill her, but not drag her away.”
The old coldness returns to the pit of my stomach. That’s exactly what probably happened. She went out to answer the call of nature after our day of sipping the alien booze, a dinosaur saw her, and that was that. She probably didn’t even have the chance to scream.
“Maybe she left,” I say weakly. “Left to go to others.”
His eyes narrow. “Left a safe place in the night? To enter the jungle alone? A small woman like you?”
Now I hear someone else say it—it’s clearly an absurd idea. Callie feared the jungle just as much as me. And at night, it feels twice as deadly as in the daytime. She wouldn’t do that. No sane person would. And none of the spears were missing.
It finally hits home, the conclusion I’ve feared all day. Because Cora was probably right, and Callie only stayed in the saucer because of me. And that led to her death only a day later.
Because of me.
My face scrunches up by itself. Oh, Callie…
No. I can’t lose control in front of this freaking caveman.
Kenz’ox looks up at me with piercing eyes. Then he slaps the ground next to him with one massive hand. “Get some rest. We leave at sunrise.”
Well, I’m not going to walk back through the jungle myself at night. So I might as well do as he says.
I sit down with some daylight between me and the giant stranger, then lean back against the tree. It’s not very comfortable, and I squirm.
Kenz’ox reaches over, grabs my shoulders, and easily pulls me closer to him so that I’m leaning on him and the frontpack. My first impulse is to scramble to get away, but his hand holds me in place.
“Don’t worry, Todora. Aker’iz won’t eat you. Her teeth are still very small. But sharp,” he says after a pause. “You are right to be wary.”
I slowly relax, keeping a firm grip on my spear and making sure it’s pointed at him. This is much more comfortable. The warmth from his massive body feels good. But he is a caveman alien. And this can’t possibly be safe.
Kenz’ox puts both his hands around the bottom of the frontpack in a protective movement.
“It is sad when the jungle takes a friend. Often we think we should have kept better hold of them. We feel that we had the power to stop the woods. Sometimes we think we did something wrong to cause our friend to be taken by the jungle. See that tree?” He nods upwards.
“Yes,” I sniffle.
“It is right above us. Is there a drok in that tree? How many rekh are hiding behind that bush? Is there a kronk looking at us right now? Is an eperal burrowing under us? Is there a hyl nearby? Is an irox preparing to dive on us?”
“I not know,” I admit.
“Neither do I,” he rumbles. “They could be anywhere. That’s the jungle. It can kill any of us at any time. It nearly killed me tonight, and only you stopped it. If you hadn’t, little Aker’iz would have starved to death.”
I nod in the darkness. That was the only thing that went right today.
“Your friend may be gone, but that was the jungle,” Kenz’ox finishes. “That wasn’t you.”
It’s the weirdest thing—his words make me feel better.
Maybe it’s the deep, secure bass of his voice that makes my chest shake, or maybe it’s that I don’t want to feel guilty about Callie.
Or maybe I totally get what he means: sometimes there’s nothing we can do.
I did tell her to go with Cora. It’s not a hundred percent my fault, anyway. Just ninety-six point something.
I also don’t want to bother him with my problems. He’s left his entire tribe over this little baby, so it’s not like he doesn’t have worries of his own.
“I want find her,” I state. “If she not killed.”
“If she’s still alive, she will search for you also,” Kenz’ox says. “No Bigs or Smalls take prisoners… hmm.”
I glance up at him. “What you say?”
He adjusts the frontpack. “The tribes don’t take prisoners either. But if they see a woman…”
“No tribe close here,” I tell him, because that’s what Sprisk said to us. “Not see man. Only…” Damn it. I told him I had a big tribe with many warriors. He didn’t believe it, but is it wise to let him know for sure that I’m alone? “Only not see man,” I finish feebly.