It doesn’t make me less angry. ’Balance’ is what some men call it when they want what another owns.
“I will speak again when there is more to say,” I tell him. “But I hope our tribe will receive this remarkable gift from the Deep with gratitude and respect.”
“Of course.” He bows and steps back. Too easily.
Chief Brun'ax clears his throat. “The splix run will begin within this moon. Already Yrf grows round in the sky. When it grows smaller again, we can expect the splix. We will need more lines. Perhaps more hands.”
“Perhaps more spears,” I say without thinking.
Several men turn toward me. Surprise shows on their faces.
“Spears?” Brun'ax asks with a chuckle. “While you are a good spearsman, Crat'ax, it is a craft that takes years of practice. And only you have enough iron to make all the blades that are needed for a spear like yours.”
“For the shallows,” I say. “The splix stand as dense as straws of grass in a jungle clearing, in many layers. Throw a dozen spears in, and each will catch a dozen splix. The lines can only catch one for each hook. And we don’t have that many hooks.”
“That is how we always catch splix,” someone mutters. “The hooks are good enough.”
“Things can change,” I answer. “Even the old ways.”
The skirr chirps and slaps its tail wetly on the floorboards. The sound draws a few laughs and breaks the tension.
I turn back toward my hut. “She’s sleeping,” I say. “When she wakes, I will feed her properly. She is injured. She will not be questioned today. But perhaps she will come out and see our village.”
No one challenges me. Not openly, at least.
Inside, the hut smells of salt and fur and her. I kneel beside her and set a bowl of softened splix fillets within reach. I pour watered frit into a shell cup and hold it to her lips when she stirs.
Her eyes open, and she immediately pulls away. “Oh fuk! Um. Soree. Eye min, helow.”
The reality of it all hits me. She is here. A woman. Given to me by the Deep. In my hut.
It takes my speech away for a moment while the hut spins slowly around me.
“You need some breakfast,” I manage. “The boys want to give you dried fruit, but I think that can wait.”
She drinks and eats. She doesn’t thank me, but she also doesn’t pull away again.
I sit back and watch her enjoy her food. I wonder if she’s been starved before, because she eats faster than I would have expected from such a small being.
But she’s not too small. She’s not a child, not at all. Her voice is more mature than that of boys, and her deliberate, calm moves tell me that she’s not as skittish as an inexperienced adult would be.
She eats the morning food slowly, as if she expects it to vanish if she moves too fast, and I find that I cannot look away. In the clear light, I see things the dark hid from me: the color of her eyes, deep and warm like wet earth after rain, unlike any gaze I have ever met; the softness of her shape, rounded where tribesmen are sharp, smooth where we are ridged, her body flowing instead of cut from stone.
She is built as if the Deep shaped her with patience, pressing gently instead of striking, and though she is clearly not of Xren and not made as we are, my breath catches as if I have been walking uphill too fast. It’s a desire deep in the body, like the moment before a spear leaves the hand, when the world narrows and everything else waits.
My loincloth lifts quickly in the front, and I have to put my hand on it so as not to make it too obvious.
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.
