Chapter 6
The trees closed behind Amber and Wink, and the cool damp air washed Amber’s tension away. It washed the others right out of existence, so only she and Wink remained alive in this world. She took a deep breath and smiled to herself. Then she took Wink’s hand.
He smiled back at her, and a spark of mischief crept into his eyes. Amber peered at him out of the corner of her eye. What was he up to? In an instant, he set off running through the forest with her hand clutched in his.
Amber didn’t think twice. She ran at his side, and tree branches and undergrowth tore past her face. She narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t need any protection. A surge of power coursed through her. She never experienced anything like this before in her life.
The trees blurred into one mass of flying foliage, and they ran faster and faster until nothing remained but one solid wall of flickering green and brown. One tree blended into another. Her senses read the surroundings without sending any message to her conscious mind. Her senses and muscles worked together automatically and carried her over obstacles and through gaps with lightning speed.
The regeneration bed altered her physical structure to make her stronger, more responsive, more reactive. She didn’t have to think. She didn’t have to see the ground to put her feet in the right places. She could close her eyes and run blind, and her body would do the rest.
Only one thing remained alive and real to her—Wink. He remained connected to her at the end of her arm by a connection never to be severed. She could leave her friends behind and never see them again. She could be happy if she never went back to the lakeside. She would lose herself in him and his forest world.
She couldn’t see him when he ran this fast. His green skin blended into the background, but nothing in the world could be more real than he was. He was there, guiding her onward, initiating her into his world. Nothing could harm her as long as he was with her.
How far they ran she couldn’t say, but they weren’t anywhere near the village. They weren’t anywhere near any other people. He was taking her far away, into an uninhabited part of the forest. Only the tiny animals skipped through the treetops.
After an eternity of running, Wink slowed to a walk, and the landscape became clear again. Even then, Amber saw no sign of people. She hadn’t noticed tracks and walkways closer to the lake, but out here, their absence became obvious. No one had came out here for many years.
How did Wink know about this part of the forest? He must have come here as an observer. The observers patrolled even uninhabited parts of the planet. He led her over every conceivable variety of terrain, and always the link between their hands held them real to each other. Did he feel the same connection, or was he just being nice, to make her welcome?
They broke out of the trees into an open area surrounded by hills topped with rocky pinnacles. The sun shone and warmed Amber’s face. Wink set off up one of the hills, but before they got more than a dozen paces, a bank of cloud rumbled over the hill and blotted out the sun. In an instant, a solid curtain of rain drenched them from head to foot.
Amber laughed out loud and lifted her closed eyes into the rain. She could have stood out in it all day and let the pure essence of Eblian sink into her bones, but Wink didn’t laugh. He ran back to the trees. Their inseparable connection carried her along with him, but he didn’t plunge back into the trackless forest. He stopped inside the trees, and shadows covered them up.
Amber blinked the rainwater out of their eyes. They stood inside another shelter like the one in which they spent the previous night. The giant tree lay on its side, and a hollow the size of a small house burrowed back into its massive body. She couldn’t see the back of it, it was so deep.
The opening overlooked the valley. Rain darkened the rocks, and mist shrouded the treetops. A reverent hush fell over the scene. Amber dared not breath. Wink let go of her hand, and she snapped awake from her dream. He disappeared into the shadows at the back of the hollow and came back with two bundles wrapped in animal skins. He laid them down by the opening. “We’ll spend the night here.”
She squatted opposite him. “What is this place?”
“It’s another outpost,” he told her. “We have them all over the territory. Not many people know it—in fact, no one knows it except me and my brother—but we have outposts all over the planet.”
Amber’s eyes widened. “Just the two of you?”
He nodded. “We’re the captains of the observers, but the elders don’t think we need to patrol outside our territory. If they had seen what Wit and I saw in the Paramilitary Corps, they would know we need to patrol the whole planet. That's okay. We do it anyway. It's our job to protect the planet, no matter what they say.”
Amber looked around the shelter. It was even bigger than the one by the lake. Wink unrolled his bundles and took out a stack of dry sticks, a handful of some kind of fluff, and another smaller bundle of something sticky she didn’t recognize. “Do you come here very often?”
“Hardly ever,” he told her. “We haven’t been here in over a year. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to come out here, to check our stores.”
She smiled at him. “What were the other reasons?”
He handed her the bundle of something sticky. “Here. You must be hungry. Have something to eat while I make a fire.”
She frowned at the bundle. “What is it?”
“It’s chickalock,” he told her. “Don’t be deceived by its appearance. It's delicious.”
She poked it with her finger. “But it’s been sitting out here for over a year.” It certainly looked rotten.
“It doesn’t go bad,” he replied. “We leave caches of this stuff all over the place for emergency food supplies. Moren dug up a cache that was over fifty years old, and it was still good. His father buried it when Moren was a boy, and he thought he might check it to see if it needed to be replaced.”
Amber stared at the lump in her hand. “What’s it made of?”
“It's equal parts monini paste,” he told her. “That's a fruit that grows in the upper canopy. And Borenga powder. That's the inner bark of a tree. And a few sprinkles of spike berry powder.”
Amber smelled the mass. It had no smell whatever. She couldn’t bring herself to taste it. Wink peeked up from his work, and when he noticed the expression on her face, he burst out laughing. “Here. I’ll make it easier for you.”
He put out his hand and took a big fingerful of the paste. He stuck it in his mouth and sucked the paste off with a slurp. Amber stared at him. Then she started laughing, too. “I guess it isn’t poisonous.”
“I’m telling you,” he replied, “it’s delicious, and very nutritious. It’s all we eat when we go out patrolling. You can survive for years on this alone.”
Amber took a deep breath. What reason could she have to hesitate? She scooped out a small ball of the paste and stuck it in her mouth. An earthy sweetness spread over her tongue, and then a sharp spike of chili made her eyes water. She coughed and spluttered, and Wink grinned. “That’s the spike berries. Wit loves them, and he puts extra in his chickalock. I should have warned you.”
Amber coughed and gagged. “No, I like it.”
He chuckled. He took a wooden vessel from his bundle and stuck it outside the opening until the rain filled it. Then he handed it to her. “Drink this. It will take the sting away.”
She drank the water gratefully. Then she took a larger taste of the paste. It really was delicious, and a nutty aftertaste made it especially satisfying. She didn’t realize how hungry she was until she started eating.
Wink worked away at his fire. He put the ball of fluff on the ground and stacked the sticks around them in a cone. Then he took two rocks from the bundle and scraped them against each other. A stream of sparks rained down on the fluff and set it on fire. The sticks caught, and a comforting glow filled the shelter.
Amber watched the rain with a full stomach and the heat of the fire radiating through her wet skin. Wink squatted across the fire from her, and they gazed out at the dripping forest falling into dark. They sat in silence until no more light came through the door. Wink kept the fire going with wood hidden in the back of the shelter.
At last, Amber broke the silence. “I’m glad you brought me here. I didn’t think you would trust me enough to show me a place like this.”
He nodded. “I trust you.”
“Even though I’m a stranger and an alien?” she asked. “Just yesterday you wanted to drive us off the planet.”
He shrugged. “That was yesterday. Today you’re Eblian.”
She stared at him. “I am?”
He set another stick in the fire. “Something happened. You changed.”
“When?” she asked.
He peered up at the black ceiling. “I can’t tell. It started when I told you about cutting branches from the trees. Only a stranger and an alien would have gone around chopping away at the forest the way you were, but when I talked to you about it, you changed.”
“Sure I did,” she replied. “I’m not so thick that I won’t do things differently if I have to.”
“I don’t mean doing things differently,” he told her. “You changed. Everything about you changed. You even looked different after that, but you just kept changing, right in front of my eyes. I never saw anything like it before. You changed in the shelter last night, when we were talking. And you changed on the way here, when we ran through the forest, and you changed just now, when you ate that chickalock.”
Amber grinned. “Maybe the spike berries have some chemical that turns your skin green.”
He didn’t smile. He only shook his head. “No. It’s something inside you. You’re a different person than I met chopping the trees yesterday.”
“If I’m a different person,” she replied, “if I’m Eblian now, I have you to thank for it.”
He put out his hand, and their unstoppable connection joined them together across the fire. “You did it. You did it all.”
She scooted over closer to him, and he put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, and the last piece of the puzzle slotted into place. He was right. She was Eblian now, with no way back. She belonged here, on this planet, eating this food, drinking this water, sitting close with him. She would never belong anywhere else.
They sat together without moving for a while. They stared into the fire. Then he asked, “Are you warm enough? There are blankets back there.”
“I’m warm enough,” she told him.
Even so, he stood up and came back with a stack of blankets. He wrapped one around his own shoulders, and when he sat down, he surrounded them both with its folds. Amber nestled into his embrace. She burrowed her head into the crook of his neck, but for some reason, he didn’t respond to her signal. He sat still—too still.
Amber sat up straight and fixed him with her eyes. “You’re not uncomfortable with this, are you? You didn’t bring me out here just to check your supplies, did you?”
His expression softened. “No, I didn’t. But I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. I didn't want to do anything to hurt you.”
She frowned. “Hurt me? How could you do anything to hurt me?”
He hesitated. “You told me you came from the Toom.”
Her mouth fell open. Then she clenched her jaw. “I see.”
He looked away. “No one knows this except Kyan, but Wit and I worked with his Galactic Police Squad to bust Toom traffickers. We rescued abducted women from the gatherings, too, and we took them to the rehabilitation centers.”
Amber’s skin crawled. “I didn’t know that. That must have been hard.”
“I saw the damage those evil creatures did,” he went on. “Not many of the slaves responded to the regeneration beds the way you and your friends did. Most had to endure the pain and humiliation of the gatherings with no help at all, and when they left the Toom for the rehabilitation centers, their lives were destroyed.”
Amber gazed into the fire. “I know.”
“I always told myself I could never touch a woman who had been through that,” he told her. “I never wanted to do anything to make them feel worse than they already did. Wit felt the same way. That’s why we left the Corps to come home, to find good, clean Eblian women to join with.”
Amber closed her eyes against the heat and the images dancing in the flames. “I understand. I’m not clean. You deserve a woman who hasn’t been tainted by the Toom.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around to face him. “That’s not what I mean at all. Don’t ever tell yourself you're not clean. The Toom could never do anything to make you not clean. Do you hear me? Don't you ever let me hear you say that again.”
She studied his face. “But you don’t want me. You just said so. You want a woman who hasn’t been a slave, who hasn't been used by hundreds of men at the gatherings. I understand now why you don't want to get close to me.”
“Will you stop that?” he cried. “That’s not what I said at all. I said that’s why we left the Corps. But now that you're here, everything is different. You're different. You're different from all the slaves I saw there, and you're even different from yourself. You're clean, and you're strong. You're whole. You're as whole as if you'd never been with the Toom in the first place, and it isn't because the regeneration bed healed you. Nothing they did could ever touch you.”
Amber’s throat tightened and she cradled his hand in hers.
“I never wanted any woman the way I want you,” he murmured. “You’re more Eblian than any woman I ever met.”
Her head fell down on his shoulder. Her heart called out to him. He loved her, and her love burst out of her heart to meet him. “Wink….”
He pressed his cheek against her hair, and his voice croaked into her skull. “They didn’t hurt you, did they? I couldn’t live if they hurt you at all.”
She could have laughed out loud for pure joy, but when she tried to speak, only a whisper came out. “No, they didn’t hurt me.”
She didn’t tell him she liked it. She didn’t tell him the Toom and their regeneration beds sparked a desire in her soul almost too intense to tolerate. He would find that out for himself the first time he came near her. He would open up a Pandora’s box of molten passion she didn't know what to do with.
He still didn’t move toward her, though. What was wrong with him? Was it possible she read this whole situation wrong? Maybe she should back off until he made some reciprocal move toward her.
He stood up, and she settled down to wait for him to come back from the back of the hollow. But she didn’t have a chance to wrap the blanket around her shoulders before he pulled it off and laid it on the ground by the fire. When she turned around to see what he was doing, he raised her to her feet by her hand, only to lay her down on the blanket at his side. He stretched out next to her and pulled another blanket over them.
Amber closed her eyes and sank into the deepest level of contentment she’d ever known. This bliss, this belonging, this torrent of passion exceeded everything, even the regeneration bed. His mouth closed over hers, he rolled on top of her, and nothing else mattered.