“Well, I for one wish we had one back at our village,” Hroash said. “Then we wouldn’t have to do all the walking and climbing and then more walking to get here.”
“And where would the trees grow?” I asked him.
Thilish hummed thoughtfully. “On the sides of your mountains,” he suggested. “You already have caves, so there’d be no need to create a tunnel and cavern like they did here.”
“I wonder why they didn’t?” Hroash replied. “I mean, this one will take us to the caves along the Great Water, so why are we the only ones without a portal?”
“Shuh,” Rimbet scolded him. “I’m sure the gods have their reasons.”
“And I’m just wondering what those are,” he shot back.
We’d reached the bend in the tunnel, and a door was set in a crystalline wall a short distance along the path there.
“Ah thot thay wur loh tek,” Pahtrik said aloud.
“Ahb vee uhs lee naht,” Rah-bee replied. “Eetz rahthur shahkng eesnt it?”
His friends all bobbed their heads in seeming agreement. Meanwhile, Thilish was tapping out a sequence on the etchings by the door, causing the door to part along its middle seam and open to admit us.
“Ezz thaht uh stahr gayht?” Sahm gasped.
“Let’s get this over with,” Hroash grumbled, tugging his charge through the lit ring.
“Whehrd thay goh?” Rah-bee demanded, looking panicked.
It didn’t take much to figure out their disappearance had freaked him and the rest of his friends out. Exchanging a quick glance with the rest of my people, we grabbed each of the hoomuhns tightly with one hand and surged forward the few steps it took to go through.
“Nohhh!” one of the females was shrieking as she went through, before stopping abruptly. Sahm, I realized, who now said. “Whehr ar wee noah?”
Rah-bee twisted around to peer through the mouth of the cave we were now in.
“Iz thaht uh beech?” he asked.
“Yehs eet iz,” replied the Star God who entered. “Wee wur hohpeng yu wud kuhm.” Turning his attention to me, he then said, “We were alerted to the distress beacon in the crashed ship and, after disabling it, came to wait for news. It has been many days.”
“It has,” I agreed. “We rescued these people and had to see to their health.” I hoped that would alleviate any displeasure over Chief Grishk not sending us right away.
Grokah stepped forward. “I am the Chief Healer and can confirm that they needed recovery time. Their bodies were ill prepared for the snow, and the demons had not provided them with warm clothing nor had they been well looked after.”
The god sucked in a breath through his nose. “Very well. It was to be expected, I suppose, especially as you have to travel to reach a portal.” He wrinkled his nose. “We should hold a quorum to discuss that.”
He made a beckoning gesture, urging us to follow him out, which we did.
“Ah kahnt uhndurstahnd uh wuhrd hee wuz sayeng thehn,” I heard one of the hoomen males say, unsure of which one, as I was only completely familiar with the sound of my Rah-bee’s voice and they were behind me.
“Buht hee spohk eenglush,” one of the females replied.
“Thahtz beecoz thuh pohrtul deetektud whut wuz bee eng spohkun ihn thuh chaymbur beefohr yuu trahnzpohrtud,” the Star god called out over his shoulder.
“Muhst hahv uh trahnzlaytur,” the hoomen male who’d spoken first replied.
“Buht uhv kohrs,” replied the Star God as he continued to guide us along the shoreline of the rocky cliff, and then up a path that took us back up.
27
ROBBIE
It was probably very much to our credit that none of us were overly surprised when a very familiar looking alien entered the gate chamber after we popped through. Of course, the stories about them were completely wrong. For one thing, while gray with solid black eyes, it wasn’t a pure gray. In fact, it was readily apparent why some claimed they were green men, as his skin tone was in fact, a gray-green. He also wasn’t an especially diminutive being at all, either, though he was on the willowy side. I estimated his height at maybe five foot five, so while he also wasn’t particularly tall, his species’s lack of height was a piece of obvious disinformation, as was the fact that they wore clothes. Clothes in the form of a tight jumpsuit that was more Lost in Space than it was Trek, the silvery material snug enough to show our guide was quite well endowed indeed.
