“Ohh!” he pointed at himself. “Rah-bee.”
“Rah-bee,” we chorused.
“Rah-bee,” he confirmed. Then he pointed at me. “Grhee-ghree.”
“Grighri,” I gently corrected him.
He smiled as if he’d just been awarded a great prize.“Ghree -hree.”
I decided it was close enough and scooped him up, knowing that his knee was going to be sore for several more days, and with the bruises, possibly for a few weeks while they healed. I turned to take him home.
8
ROBBIE
Holy jeebus! This was some straight up Jules Verne shit. My thought that perhaps they were a fallen civilization felt spot on the more I saw of this place. Gree-Gree insisted on carrying me bridal style, which was kind of embarrassing. If that doc had just given me a set of crutches, now that he’d popped my knee into place, I could’ve hobbled along without too much pain from using it. Okay, that was a lie. There was still a lot of pain, but I knew from the time I’d dislocated my shoulder falling out of a tree when I was twelve that it would subside after a few days. The livid bruises I’d seen that were muscle deep from being tossed around as if the alien ship was a crazy salad spinner and we were all the veggies inside it, yeah, those would probably take longer. A piggyback ride would have been awkward too, admittedly, with my wrist wrapped up and my arm strapped to my chest as if the doc had thought I’d go waving it about, smacking my wrist into things.
But once I was done sulking about being carried like a babe in arms? There were some very interesting things to see. This place was inside a massive cavern. It was at least three stories high, with wide ledges which appeared to be natural. They were not only broad enough for foot traffic, but rocks were carefully stacked to form walls of dwellings that looked to be maybe only one room deep but two to three rooms across, with windows and doors that faced outward into the cavern, some of them two stories tall. And they had candles, which meant they had access to tallow and/or something like beeswax somewhere. And unlike what Gree-Gree and the other big dudes who ran out into the frozen wasteland outside wore, the people here inside Cave Town wore clothes made of some kind of cloth and not just leather, because, yeah, okay, I saw one guy inside a particularly stinky building wearing what looked like a giant leather apron. I was guessing the fur pants and coats were outsidewear. In here, which was surprisingly warm, almost like a pleasant spring day if I ignored the rotten egg undertone to the air, I saw everything from loincloths to kilts, to loose woven pants and tunics, though I had an idea that the latter was only worn by females.
Were we in a dormant volcano? Or near enough to a live one that geothermal whatever the fuck kept this space nice and cozy? I wasn’t really big on science type stuff that could supply me the answer, but I would bet my last dollar that this place was here thanks to something like that and that there was little to no danger of this becoming a lava filled nightmare as these buildings looked like they’d been here for a very, very, long time. Not that my dollar would be any use here whatsoever except as a curiosity. Well, it would have been if I’d actually had my wallet with me with that dollar inside. That was probably still in what was left of my poor car, sitting on the console in plain sight.
Gree-Gree trotted up the flight of stairs that led to the third level, hustling past staring eyes and responding in single word grunts to what had to be greetings called out to him by cat people we passed. It struck me then that all of his people were pretty uniform in their fur colors, every last one of them gray, black, white, and silver in a sort of tabby cat pattern, without the M on their foreheads that Earth tabby cats all had. Big gray tabby cats with short fur that was more like that of a lion and gorgeous manes of inky black, silver, white, or gray, regardless of age.
He stopped in front of a door that was one of those sorts that could open up the top half while keeping the bottom half closed. A curtain made of colorful strips of cloth hung down over the open top half. He juggled me a bit so he could press the lever type handle on the bottom half of the door and push it inward. It swung open, and he brought us inside.
“Rah-bee hroshnuh,” he said, settling me down on a chair in front of what looked like a waist high to him brick stove, only made of stone. It must vent out the back of the wall somehow, perhaps letting its smoke out into an empty space between all the house walls and the cave or some shit. I was no engineer, that was for sure, but as this place hadn’t burned down and I’d not seen any recent signs of the buildings having been on fire, and it didn’t smell smoky in here, I was good without knowing how it worked exactly. The top of the stove had a single polished slab of dark stone on it. A griddle or a place to put a kettle or something? Only time would tell.
I glanced around the rest of the space, interested in what else I could see. There were trees somewhere, that much I knew from the chairs and tables both here and back at the doc’s.
Gree-Gree sat down and began taking off his boots, then turned his attention to my boot clad feet.
“Okay, got it, no shoes in the house,” I said as he put the shoes by the door and mimed walking outside, followed by pointing at the shoes and making a crossed arm gesture that quite obviously meant ‘no’. He then proceeded to strip off the rest of his heavy fur garments, revealing trousers made of the same homespun stuff I’d seen on everyone else here, but no shirt. He hung the fur pants and tunic up on a ladder type thing close to the oven. I felt bad then. The coat he’d loaned me was back at the doc’s. I hoped he got it back. And damn, were they all ripped like this? Talk about walking alien sex on two legs!
He didn’t say another word, though, instead, he began rummaging through baskets and clay pots covered in the homespun cloth. He took out some eggs, using a small cup made of carved wood to scoop out some stuff that looked like flour, dumping them into a mixing bowl also made of wood. I watched in fascination as he added some water from yet another pot, along with some orange grainy looking powder, and mixed them all together. He hummed as he worked, pausing only to toss a brick of something into the open oven door, poking at what turned out to be a banked fire which began to crackle merrily to life. Holy shit, he was cooking us something! My stomach growled, and I felt elated at the thought of getting to eat. My mouth began watering for a completely new reason now.
9
GRIGHRI
A very young adult, or a people who did not fly into the places the Star Gods and Demons dwelled, I mused as I mixed the dried hrangae powder into a paste which I slowly dissolved into water. The gourd was now half empty, so I’d have to go to the spring to refill it soon. This would ordinarily be no great chore, as the village spring on this level was only eight rooms away. I only ever needed enough for cooking and making ckha to wash the food down with, as we all utilized the great pools of heated water for bathing.
“Whah tchoo maykuing?” he asked, pointing at the pot.
“Broth,” I replied, guessing he was asking what I was preparing for him to eat.
He repeated the word after me, just as his stomach growled. His skin flushed a shade of deep red, and he looked embarrassed. “Hecks cuooze mee.”
I smiled at him, letting him know that this was a normal reaction after much hunger. For some reason, his skin became even more flushed, the color now spreading to his small, rounded ears on the side of his head and down his neck and upper chest. “Dayum seckzee ayleeunz,” he muttered, looking away.
I decided to let him work through whatever emotions he was feeling and turned my attention back to the broth, stirring it to make sure the paste dissolved evenly and without any lumps. I was certain he had a lot to think about, having been dropped from the sky after the demon grak plummeted from the heavens.
A soft scratching sound at my door alerted me that I had a visitor. I left the broth to simmer and went to answer it.
“Ho,” my friend Rimbet said. “The chief said you found a wounded being, the star demons dropped in their mighty bird. He said Grokah told him you needed your traps checked.”
I sighed, motioning him in. His eyes widened at the sight of Rah-bee.
“Is it a kit?” he asked me.
