Chapter 3
- Callie -
I wake right before the sky changes its mind.
Night still lies heavy on the water, but the black has thinned to a bruised blue, and I can tell by the rhythm of the paddling that we have been moving for a long time.
Long enough that my body has stopped screaming and settled into a wary ache.
Long enough that the saucer is not coming back into view, no matter how hard I stare behind us.
We are going away from it, pretty fast. That fact lands in my chest like a dropped plate. Not shattering, just a sharp, spreading crack. There must be a current that helps speed us away.
Damn. What will Theodora think when she wakes up and I’m not there? She’ll look for me. I know it. She won’t rest until… shit. She’ll go into the jungle. She’ll think I’m in there. And then some monster will get her. Because of me.
No!
I get to my feet and give Crat'ax a hard slap across his huge back. “Go back! Back! Now!” My voice goes shrill. That monster kind of scared me into silence, but I’m not coming willingly, and he has to know that.
Crat'ax spins around, alarmed at my sudden outburst. But he sees no danger and glances at the rope I snapped before. “You should be quiet.”
“Go back,” I repeat. “Go there!” I point behind us, to a random point on the beach.
“No,” the caveman says, glancing at the rope, then back at me. I get the message: I can tie you up again.
Powerless, I sit back down. I’m not going to jump into the ocean again. That monster could be lurking just behind us, and I never want to feel those tentacles around me again.
Crat'ax goes to stand at the stern, bare feet braced, shoulders rolling with each stroke of the oar.
The boat has no sail. The tech is all based on muscle, balance, and stubbornness.
Each time he lifts the oar, water beads and slides down his forearms, catching the faintest gray light.
He moves with perfect confidence, eyes scanning the horizon and often the sky above us.
It’s unfair that fear and attraction can coexist so easily. It makes me suspicious of my own brain.
I draw my knees closer and tuck my hands into the leather sheet he draped over me earlier. I did not ask for it. He did not ask permission. He hesitated anyway, as if unsure whether touching me would burn him.
That hesitation kind of matters. I cling to it. He may not be all bad.
The current drags us along, a steady pull that makes the paddling easier.
I can feel it in the way the boat glides forward between strokes, like a conveyor belt I did not agree to step onto.
If this were a river back home, I would be calculating miles per hour.
I would be estimating how long until the next bend.
I would be doing math instead of panicking.
Well, he knows I’m not coming willingly.
But next time I have a chance to get away, I have to make it count.
I swallow and force my attention outward.
The skirr surfaces alongside the hull, slick and dark, its finned back catching the light before it vanishes again.
When it reappears, it chirps softly, a sound like wet glass tapped with a fingernail.
It keeps pace with us, never quite touching, never straying far.
It’s a mix of otter, tuna fish, and a good amount of beaver in its tail, too.
“Your friend,” I say, shaping the words carefully. My mouth still trips over this language, like my tongue is wearing the wrong shoes. I don’t have fangs like the cavemen do. “Plik.”
Crat'ax glances down, then away. “He’s not a friend.”
Plik pops up again, closer this time, and bumps the hull with its head. It makes a pleased sound.
I snort despite myself. “Sure.”
He pretends not to hear, although my tone should have been obvious enough.
Crat'ax feeds me when the light grows strong enough to see my own hands. They are dried strips of something chewy and salty, handed over without ceremony. I hesitate only a second before taking them. Hunger is persuasive. So is the realization that if he wanted me weak, he would not be offering food. Accepting food doesn’t count as consent, anyway.
The juice comes next, poured from a sealed bladder into a shallow cup. It is tart, cold, and startlingly good. I drink too fast and cough, and his hand lifts as if to steady me, then stops in midair. He waits until I catch my breath before lowering it again.
“I will not hurt you,” he says, awkward and earnest.
“I know,” I tell him, then remember myself. “Know,” I repeat, tapping my chest.
It’s not true — for all I know, he may be planning to cut me into pieces. But letting him think that I hold him to be an honorable man can’t be wrong. He might want to prove me right.
His mouth curves, just barely. It does something inconvenient to my stomach.
As the sun creeps up, he starts to talk. Not in a rush and not like someone trying to convince. Just words, offered into the space between strokes.
He points ahead, where the coastline bends and the land darkens into layered greens. “My village,” he says. “There.”
I sit up straighter. I know that word. Village means people. People mean eyes, opinions, and decisions that will not be mine. And possibly not Crat'ax’s.
“How far?” I ask, not thrilled that I will soon be surrounded by dozens of these giants. I haven’t even gotten used to this one.
He thinks, then lifts his chin toward the horizon. “When the sun climbs high.”
Great. A solid unit of time I can’t argue with.
He tells me about the houses, built on tall legs over the water. He tells me about splix runs, storms, and how the bay breaks the worst of the waves. He tells me about the Deep, using his hands as much as his words. Downward motions, receiving motions, open palms. He means the ocean.
“The Deep gives,” he says. “The Deep takes. We live as the Deep decides.”
No gods or spirits with names. Just a vast, wet logic for someone who lives on and in the ocean.
I also file away the fact that he has not said a single word about women. It likely means I’m the first one he has seen. I will also be the first woman his village sees. A village of cavemen virgins.
“Just what I always wanted,” I growl to myself. I peer into the waves. Would the tentacle monster be better after all?
My brain, traitor that it is, starts building scaffolding.
If this were Survivor, I think this would be the boat ride where you decide who you can trust. This would be the confessional where you admit you are scared but determined.
This would be the part where the music swells and the camera pans over the camp you are about to enter.
I almost laugh. The thought steadies me.
Okay, Callie. New show. New rules. You cannot brute-force this. You cannot run screaming into the jungle and expect to win. You need an alliance. You need to read the room. You need to stay useful.
My eyes drift back to Crat'ax without my permission.
He is not handsome in a safe way. His scars are old and pale, some crossing muscle, some puckered and deep.
Some cross his purple stripes and vanish.
His hair is pulled back with a strip of leather, keeping it out of his eyes.
He moves like someone who has never had to perform strength for an audience. He simply has it.
I wonder, not for the first time, what he thinks he is doing with me.
When I shift, the sheet slips, exposing my shoulder. The morning air is cool here on the waves, in a way it never was back in the clearing. I don’t rush to cover it. I tell myself this is strategy. I tell myself I am not noticing the way his gaze flickers, then snaps back to the horizon.
“Saucer,” I say, the word rough in my mouth. “Friend. There. Dorie. Theo-dora. Friend. Go back.”
His jaw tightens. He nods once. “That place you came from? The Plood ship? They are not your friends.”
“My friend,” I insist. “Sleep. There.”
He exhales through his nose. “The village is much safer.”
“For me,” I add, then point back the way we came. “For her.”
He does not answer right away. The silence stretches, filled with water sounds and the skirr’s soft movements. When he speaks, his voice is lower.
“The village doesn’t know you,” he says. “But they will.”
That, more than anything else, scares me.
The coastline opens up as the sun clears the horizon.
The bay unfolds. The water calms down, and the waves shrink.
The smell of smoke reaches me before I see its source.
Then the village rises, looking like it hovers, a web of wooden walkways and stilted platforms hovering over the shallows.
Canoes bob beneath. People move along the planks, their silhouettes crisp against the brightening sky. Cavemen, striped, wide, and tall.
I forget to breathe. It is beautiful, absolutely. A boon for any documentary about lost tribes. But it is also the scariest thing I’ve seen since the space station.
As we glide closer, heads turn. Movement slows. A hush seems to ripple outward, visible even at this distance.
Crat'ax straightens, subtly putting himself between me and the shore. Not blocking my view, I think, but shielding my body in a possessive gesture that I wish didn’t feel this good.
I clutch the sheet tighter and tell myself, again, that this is just another show. New tribe. First impressions. No immunity yet.
The skirr chirps and nudges the hull, as if pleased to be home.
I look at Crat'ax, at the village, and at the water beneath us. I could still slip out. But I know I won’t.
Okay, I think. Let’s see what happens when I walk onto set.
On Survivor, they always pretend it is about trust, strength, or harmony. It never is. It is about whether you belong before you open your mouth. And about whether you will keep the viewers’ interest, if you can create so much drama that they just can’t bear the thought of you leaving.