Chapter 7
- Callie -
The air smells different after the attack.
Sharp and metallic, like crushed wood and fear.
Beneath it is the familiar tang of the sea, but even that feels harsher now, scraped raw by what just rose out of the Deep.
The village creaks and groans under our feet, like a living thing complaining about its wounds.
The men of the tribe have gathered around us. The boys look at Crat'ax with shining eyes, while most of the men seem relieved and elated that they survived the monster attack.
Some men are climbing up from the sea, drenched after they were thrown in as their huts were smashed. Strong hands help them up to the platform.
I’m pretty happy myself. Shaken and still feeling numb, but also awestruck by what Crat'ax did. He jumped onto the body of that gigantic monster of a crab with its dozen claws the size of cars, then came to my rescue when it tried to snap me in half.
He totally risked his life, not just for the village, but for me. Nobody’s ever done that before.
I simply had to kiss him. It was pure relief, of course. And maybe something else that I’m not going to think too much about right now. It felt good, too.
“This was a test, not a warning,” Crat'ax says with authority. “The Deep is testing whether we are worthy of having a woman among us. For we must be able to protect her against all the Deep can send at us. Even this. Even the krai.”
A murmur of agreement goes through the crowd.
“Crat'ax saved us all!” someone yells.
“It was a test,” the chief agrees, having seen which way the crowd is leaning. “And the tribe passed the test. Thanks to Crat'ax and his spear. The Deep knows we can keep a woman safe. Praise be the Deep, all-knowing and gracious!”
“Praise the Deep,” the crowd roars. There’s an edge to it that raises the fine hairs along my arms.
The Deep gave you. The Deep tests us. The Deep will be angry if we give you back.
I notice things without meaning to. Who rushes to help without being told.
Who stands back and watches. Who keeps their weapon in hand even though the danger is gone.
My brain does this automatically, labeling people, sorting them into categories.
Those are helpers. That one is a follower.
That quiet group are watchers. That one is a threat. That one is quietly creepy.
The scarred man slaps a pole. “How many attacks before we understand these are warnings? Too many strange things have happened!” He gives me a furious glare and marches off, pushing his way through the crowd.
Crat'ax frowns, then straightens. “The krai tried to kill us all, Sprub’ex. But it only succeeded in destroying a few platforms and huts. Let us show the Deep how well we are passing its test! Let’s now rebuild them better than before!”
The crowd cheers. Yes, Crat'ax is the real chief of the tribe. They all follow him, and no wonder. I’ve never seen anyone with more natural authority. Even the older men look at him for direction, including the chief. And now he’s a hero, too.
That scarred guy is a worry, though. He doesn’t seem to like me one bit. Or Crat'ax.
But I don’t care right now. I’m alive! My hands tremble, and my knees are still feeling weak. That monster was incredibly big, and its claws were as sharp as knives. If Crat'ax hadn’t come to help me, it would have killed me in one snip.
Everyone looks over at the destruction. Poles as thick as refrigerators have been snapped in half like toothpicks, and a lot of debris is floating on the surface. Men get in their canoes and paddle over to clean up.
I touch Crat'ax’s hand. “Thank you. It would kill me.”
“It would have killed us all,” he says with a little smile. “I’m just happy my spear was already in my hand. Did you get injured?” He looks me up and down.
“No,” I tell him. “But you did.” I point to his side, where two cuts are dripping dark blood. They’re two red lines with unhurt skin in the middle and could be from the very tip of a claw as it closed. His feet don’t look too good, either. “You almost die, too. You have leaf?”
“We have some leaves for treating injuries,” he rumbles, not too concerned. “But I think that wound is clean. It’s not deep. It will heal.”
“Where are the leaves?” I persist. “You show. Maybe other man is injured.” I don’t see anyone else who was hurt in the attack, but Crat'ax is dripping blood, and it should be taken care of.
“I’ll show you,” he says and puts three fingers at my shoulder, leading me away from the eyes of the others. It’s a possessive move, but I don’t mind it. His protective streak is clearly just as strong.
We walk along the walkways to a storage hut, many men grinning and slapping Crat'ax on the back as we pass.
“Here,” he says as we go in. “These are things that are not food.”
There are shelves of pots, ropes, and tools of all kinds, mostly wood. Crat'ax grabs a stack of red leaves and shows me. “These are what we use.”
We go back out to the sunlight, and I gingerly dab one leaf at his wound. The leaf is surprisingly absorbent and sucks up the blood. I put another one on the wound, and it seems to stick all right. “I think you right. The wound is clean.”
When I touch his wound, I’m very aware of how careful I’m being. And of how little he flinches. He watches me with a steady, unreadable focus, as if committing the act to memory. No one rushes us. No one interrupts. For all their noise and numbers, the tribe gives us space.
Up close, his size is less frightening than it should be. Still immense, still powerful, but no longer abstract. Just a man who bleeds. A man who could have died.
I force myself to focus on the practical task. Okay, clean, cover. Stop the bleeding. This is something I understand. Injuries don’t care about gods or tests.
His feet aren’t as badly lacerated as I feared, judging from the barnacle-like growth on the back of that giant crab. His skin under them is like armor.
I straighten. “And now very clean.”
“It doesn’t drip anymore,” he points out. “Thank you.”
I give him a little smile before I replace the leaves on the shelf in the hut. “Is fine. We help the men?” I point at the cleaning-up operation, where the whole village seems to be taking part.
The village has gone into motion. First it looks chaotic, and then it becomes purposeful. Men shout over one another, but their eyes keep bending toward the same center. Toward Crat'ax.
He doesn’t raise his voice much, and he doesn’t really have to. When he speaks, it’s in slow orders that cut through the noise instead of adding to it.
“Take the broken poles first,” he says, pointing with the butt of his spear. “If they drift beneath the platforms, they’ll be harder to get. Cut them loose and tow them clear.”
Three men immediately change direction, hauling knives from their belts and scrambling into a canoe. One of them looks back for confirmation, and Crat'ax nods once. That seems to be enough.
“Ropes here,” he continues. “We’ll lash temporary supports before we replace anything. We will put no weight on bare joints.”
Someone calls his name from farther down the walkway. Another voice overlaps it, asking about stored timber. A third wants to know where to put the salvaged planks.
Crat'ax answers them all. He’s not hurried and not the least bit irritated. He looks at each speaker when he responds, even when he’s already turning his body the other way. Nobody would think that half an hour ago he was in a battle to the death with a monster the size of a church.
“We have enough timber for two platforms,” he says. “Not three. Strip the ruined huts first. Anything sound gets reused.”
“To the smoke huts?” a man asks.
“No. Those stay sealed. We’ll sleep crowded tonight if we must.”
I trail a step behind him, careful not to get in the way. I tell myself that’s why I’m quiet. Not because I like watching him like this.
It’s different from the way he was during the fight.
Then everything about him was sharp, fast, and terrifying.
Now he’s solid and grounded, moving deliberately.
He’s a pivot point the whole village turns around without quite realizing it.
Or maybe they do. Even the chief has taken a back seat to the real leader and is feebly helping as well as he can, stacking broken pieces of wood.
Men keep approaching Crat'ax, interrupting him mid-step, mid-thought. He never snaps at them. He never waves them away. He just listens and decides, and then answers, often telling the men to make their own decisions. They obviously like that.
At one point, two men argue loudly over who should take charge of a half-submerged platform. Crat'ax steps between them before it can escalate.
“You will both work on it,” he says calmly. “You are both strong, and the Deep knows you are stubborn. Together, you will succeed faster than apart. It is the way of the Deep.”
They grumble, but they go.
I don’t know why that makes my chest feel warm. But I have to seriously wonder if Cora’s highly praised Borok tribe has a chief as good as Crat'ax.
I do what I can without being asked. When men haul dripping bundles of rope up from the water, I help coil them.
When planks are dragged ashore, I stack the ones that aren’t warped.
My hands shake at first, but the work steadies them.
Wood is wood. Knots are knots. Gravity behaves the same everywhere, and so does water.
A few of the men glance at me while I work, little smiles flickering across their faces when I meet their gazes.
It’s not hunger I see, but that could change.
They’re still shell-shocked about my being here in the first place, as well as the attack.
But these are huge cavemen, full of life, and I’m the first woman they see.
I can’t imagine that things will stay this calm.
Crat'ax notices the glances. He positions himself without comment, so that I’m always just a little closer to him than to anyone else. He doesn’t say it out loud, but the message is clear: she is with me. I don’t mind that as much as I probably should.
At midday, someone announces food. No one stops working, but baskets start circulating. There is smoked fish, berries, and sweet slivers of dried fruit, which must be the closest this planet comes to candy. Crat'ax eats standing, barely slowing down.
“Sit,” I tell him, before I can stop myself. “You bleed before.”
“I’m fine,” he says automatically.
“You were bleeding,” I repeat, firmer. “If you fall in water now, it hurt.” It’s a weak reason, but I kind of want to see him relax, too.
He studies my face for a moment, then exhales through his nose. “Very well. A short rest.”
He sits on a coil of rope, long legs stretched out, and gestures for me to do the same. The simple act feels oddly intimate, like claiming a shared space in the middle of all this activity.
As we eat, men still come to him. They lower their voices now, respectful of the pause, but they don’t hesitate to interrupt.
“We found another cracked brace,” someone reports.
“Mark it,” Crat'ax says. “We’ll replace it before nightfall.”
“Some water pots floated loose.”
“Secure them to the inner posts and hoist them up. We can’t afford to lose fresh water.”
Each answer is immediate and certain, but he must be making a lot of this up on the spot. Someone once said something like being a leader means appearing sure even when you’re not, and I’m sure Crat'ax must have read that book, too. Or maybe he wrote it.
I chew slowly and watch his hands. They’re huge, scarred, and competent. They are obviously hands that build and fight. Hands that saved my life not so long ago.
The kiss flashes through my mind again, unwanted and insistent.
My stomach flips. Is it okay to be really possessive if you also are really protective?
Because Crat'ax backed up his “she’s mine” bullshit with some real action today.
He could have jumped in his boat and escaped.
I’m sure he never thought about that, but jumping onto that claw was the most dangerous thing he did. And I’m sure he did it for me.
When Crat'ax stands again, the men straighten almost unconsciously. Someone starts to say something, then stops when Crat'ax lifts a hand. Not really in command, but in acknowledgment.
“We finish this before sunrise,” he says. “The Deep took from us today. We will show it that we endure. We need more wood. Lots more. And some thick trunks to hold up the platforms.”
A murmur of assent runs through the group. Men jump into their canoes and set off for land and the jungle.
As he walks off, spear once again in his hand, I feel it: that strange, unfamiliar swell in my chest. Pride.
Not in myself. Not even exactly in him. But in being here, maybe.
In being beside him while the world reshapes itself around his will.
I don’t understand it, but that doesn’t stop it from feeling real.
The wind picks up, and the canoes are paddling away.
They’re fast, and the vessels are slender and quick.
If they had sails, they could travel even faster.
But then they would need fabrics, which I think are in short supply on Xren.
Cora does some weaving, she said, but I think a sail would need more of her burlap than she can make on her loom.
Men struggle to push big pieces of broken wood from the surface to the platforms. I can’t imagine how they built these platforms in the first place. The main poles must be immensely heavy, and if they float, that just makes it impossible to push them down into the water.
I could probably make some suggestions about building stuff. But there’s no rush. I’m not sure I want to start improving this place. I don’t even know if Theodora will like it.
Thinking of my friend sends a barb to my conscience. By now she must have concluded that I’m gone. And the way I know her, she might start to look for me. She will go into the jungle and face all its deadly dangers.
I close my eyes and think of her. “Don’t go. Stay. I’m fine.” Telepathy never worked for me before, but one time must be the first. Maybe this is it.
“Hey, I am on an alien planet,” I mutter. “They should at least have the Force, like in Star Wars.”
I open my eyes again, having sensed no contact with Dorie. But it might have worked.
“If not, I’ll ask for a refund,” I add.