Chapter 5
- Callie -
Crat'ax is very clearly pitching a tent beneath his thick, kilt-like garment, and at least he has the decency to angle his body so that it is not quite so obvious. I take that as a good sign. A man who is aware enough to be embarrassed is still a man who has lines he doesn’t want to cross.
He could cross them, though. Easily.
He is eight feet tall and built like something carved out of stone and muscle.
If he decided to force himself on me, there is nothing I could do to stop him.
No clever trick, no desperate kick, no burst of adrenaline would change the outcome.
That knowledge settles into me, cold and heavy, even as something traitorous stirs lower in my belly at the sight of him struggling to keep control.
“When go back?” I ask around a mouthful of food.
It is good food. Really good. Tender, savory, and fresh in a way nothing on the saucer ever is. The fish flakes nicely as I chew slowly, letting myself enjoy it even though I know I shouldn’t get comfortable. “Back to ship.”
Crat'ax pours more fruit juice from a skin pouch into a shallow cup.
The liquid is thick and fragrant. “Today you will meet the tribe,” he says.
“If you want. Try some of this.” He gestures to a wooden plate holding a small heap of dark berries.
“From the Hidden Reef.” He points vaguely toward the open sea.
Cora was right. The language is surprisingly easy to understand. The sounds are rough and guttural, but the structure has a kind of blunt logic to it. I still miss many words, but I am usually close enough to guess what he means.
“Then go back?” I ask, keeping my tone light, even curious.
I am almost certain he plans to keep me here. According to Cora, being abducted by a caveman is practically a rite of passage for Earth women on Xren. Apparently, now I can check that box, too. Once. That is all I intend it to be. Theodora must be losing her mind right now.
“My friend wait,” I add, more softly.
“The Plood are not your friends,” Crat'ax says. “We are your friends. The tribe.”
“Friend not do this other friend,” I say, crossing my wrists and lifting them to make the meaning unmistakable.
“You were resisting,” he replies evenly, with a flash of clear, purple eyes.
“I had to tie you. But now you are freed from the Plood and safe in this village. The Deep gave you to me. It will not accept me giving you back. That is the worst insult. The Deep would never give me anything again. It would drag me beneath the waves the first chance it got.”
I study him as he speaks. I already had a good look at him this morning, in the pale light before he brought me to this hut, but daylight sharpens everything.
He could be around my age. Maybe a little older.
His eyes are a deep, striking purple, the same shade as the stripes on his skin, and there is nothing dull or simple about them.
His hair is wild, thick, and glossy, but I don’t see him as the kind of guy who takes any particular care of it, except binding it back, gathered with a strip of leather.
His muscles move beneath his skin with slow, controlled power, like boulders shifting.
He is nothing like Sprisk. He might as well be a different species entirely. Sprisk had too much dinosaur in him, all jagged edges and looming menace. Crat'ax is far more human in his proportions and expressions.
Which somehow makes him radiate even more danger. I guess the fangs help with that.
I wipe my hands on the leather sheet he put around me last night and stand. “Where is tribe?”
He rises, too, and opens the hut’s door. “They are everywhere. Most are good men. But no tribe has only good men.”
I get up and step outside onto the wooden planks. They feel solid beneath my feet, barely flexing even as waves slap against the poles below. The structure creaks softly, the way a living thing breathes, but nothing about it feels unstable or poorly made.
The huts are large, built to accommodate eight-foot-tall cavemen without wasting space. There must be close to a hundred of them, spread across the bay like a wooden city floating above the sea. The village does not fill the entire bay, but it fills enough of it to feel commanding.
A group of men approaches.
“Chief Brun'ax,” Crat'ax says. “This is Callie. A woman given to me by the Deep.”
“Not given,” I correct immediately. “Taken.”
“Ah,” the chief says, breaking into a wide, delighted smile. “A woman in the village. Indeed, the only woman on Xren. Where do you come from, woman?”
“Callie,” I say sweetly. “Not ‘woman.’ Callie.”
“Ah,” he repeats, still smiling. “Where do you come from, Callie?”
“From Earth,” I tell them. “Today go back to ship.”
A chuckle ripples through the group, because of my voice or my accent, probably.
But one voice stands out. It has a sharp, unpleasant edge to it. The man who spoke is heavily scarred, his stripes faded and uneven, as if something had tried to erase them. His gaze slides over me in a way that makes my skin crawl. It’s the same troublemaker I recall from yesterday.
“Go back, she says,” he growls. “The Plood must miss her, Crat'ax. Will you take her back, or shall I?”
His eyes linger far too long. I swear he licks his lips.
I shift closer to Crat'ax without quite meaning to.
“No one rejects what the Deep has given,” Crat'ax says calmly. His voice does not rise, but it cuts through the murmurs instantly. “That insult would bring the Deep’s anger on the entire tribe. Callie will stay. She is confused from being freed from the Plood.”
“That would confuse anyone,” the chief agrees easily.
The chief seems kind, I think. Good-natured. But as I watch the men around him, I notice something else. They look to Crat'ax, not to the chief. They take their cues from him. His presence carries weight and authority.
I am not surprised. I sure can’t take my eyes off him.
Dozens of eyes move over me openly now, taking in every detail. My skin prickles, and I resist the urge to fold my arms across my chest. For the first time since stepping onto this platform, I feel very exposed.
“Is this whole village?” I ask.
“I will show you,” Crat'ax says and leads me further along the wide walkway, past the tribesmen. “Chief, I will give Callie a tour of the village. She must know the important things.”
The chief’s smile falters. “But not the—”
“I will show her what she needs to know,” Crat'ax says firmly. “Callie will be perfectly safe with me.”
The scarred man laughs again. “Can you be sure about that? Callie, the gift from the Deep, you should find out what it is he’s keeping you safe from.”
Yeah, that scarred guy is a disruptor. He’s clearly not popular, but I think he’s the kind of jerk who will often say what others are thinking. And his words do make me curious.
“This is the Circle,” Crat'ax says as he leads me past the totem pole and a table that looks like an altar, with offerings of shiny shells, tusks, claws, crystals, carved wood, and other things that may have some kind of religious meaning.
“This is where we have the evening meal and where we sometimes have meetings. That platform down there,” he points down into the water from the edge, “is where we gather the splix when they have their run. We can usually catch a few hundred of them out in the open ocean, and they feed us for the next year. Other tribes come here to trade for them.”
I gaze out toward the open water. The day is calm, with a steady breeze moving in from the sea and lifting the edges of my hair against my neck.
Salt hangs thick in the air, mixed with the sharper tang of seaweed drying somewhere below the platforms. Under it all is the warm, comforting smell of wood smoke drifting out from the village’s central fire.
The fire itself sits on a massive, flat slab of stone.
I pause to really look at it, trying to imagine the effort it must have taken to haul something like that out here and balance it on a wooden platform above the waves.
It is an inelegant solution, but an effective one.
The stone shields the planks beneath from the worst of the heat, and the fire burns steadily.
I catch myself thinking that a hanging fire pan would have been easier and lighter. But it looks like these guys have lived here for decades without burning their village down.
It’s not a bad place at all.
We pass over walkways and past huts. There is no rot, no sagging wood, no sense of neglect.
The floorboards beneath my feet feel solid, worn smooth by years of use.
Some planks look newer than others, with a lighter color and sharper grain, as if they were replaced recently.
The huts are sturdy and uniform, built large enough for eight-foot-tall men without feeling cavernous or wasteful. Nothing here feels temporary.
The men stare as I pass. They don’t try to hide it.
Their eyes follow me openly and curiously, often with something sharper beneath the surface.
But none of them are idle. Every one of them is working at something.
Some are shaping wood. Some are repairing ropes or lines.
Others are hauling beams or fitting planks into place.
New huts are going up at the edges of the village, and several boats sit half-finished along the outer platforms. A few narrow canoes are already heading toward the shore, their paddles flashing in the sunlight as they cut through the water, likely bound for more timber.
This village is alive. It’s even expanding. But I can’t see the most important things.
“Where Lifegivers?” I ask, because Cora’s voice is still in my head, telling me how important those are to tribes without women.
Crat'ax does not slow his pace. “Our Lifegivers live in the jungle,” he says. “They will not survive in this village.”