Chapter 7
Melanie strode through the trees into the heart of the forest. After she was sure she’d passed out of sight of the others, she cast a glance over her shoulder, but only empty forest separated her from the lake. As a matter of fact, she couldn’t tell where the lake was.
Not that she cared. She kept walking in the direction she guessed lay the village. She would find it somehow. She couldn’t stand hanging around the lake and waiting for Natalie and Arno to figure out what to do about Tina. If Tina couldn’t do for herself, Melanie wouldn't waste any more time babysitting her. She had her own life to figure out without taking responsibility for someone else.
She kicked at a stone in the forest floor thinking about Tina. The stone was wedged a lot tighter than she realized, and she stubbed her toe. That made her mad. She cursed Tina under her breath. Why did she have to fall apart like this? And why did Natalie have to make it worse by catering to her every whim?
If only she could ditch the whole bunch and associate only with the Eblians from now on, she would be much happier. Even Amber started to grate on her nerves with her constant rhapsodies on what nice guys the observers were. Nothing could be more effectively designed to make Melanie puke.
The farther she walked, the more worked up she got about it. She walked faster, muttering under her breath and cursing. But of course, after a while—a good, long while—she cooled off. She had nowhere to go but back to them. She couldn't throw herself on the Eblians, not without Kyan, and Kyan meant Natalie. Natalie was too kind-hearted to turn her back on anybody, even though….
Even though what? Even though she’d been enslaved by the Toom the same as the rest of them. The Toom never robbed her of her compassion and her humanity. Underneath her irritation with Tina and her impatience to immerse herself in the Eblian culture, Melanie envied Natalie. She treated all her friends with the same unwavering consideration, no matter how traumatized they were. Natalie took personal responsibility for their well-being after she freed them from the Toom. She took the same care of Melanie that she did of Tina.
Melanie was just making up her mind to turn around and find her way back to the lake when she heard the tinkle of water running over stones. The sound soothed her nerves. If she didn’t like the way Natalie ran things, she ought to go back and help out any way she could. Natalie didn’t create this situation any more than Tina did. The more they helped each other, the faster all these obstacles would become things of the past.
Melanie would wait just a little longer, though, before she went back. She would sit by the water until she calmed the rest of the way down. Then she would go back to the lake with a clear head. She followed the sound down a hill and out between the trees to a sunny stream bed—and stopped dead in her tracks.
Squatting by a glittering pool of clear water with his back to her was a young Eblian. A shiver of alarm crawled up Melanie’s spine, and her eyes narrowed. She didn’t move a muscle, but he must have heard her coming, because he turned around and fixed his eyes on her. She recognized him. It was Wit, the observer who urged the elders to turn her and her friends out of the village.
Hatred boiled up from her guts. “What are you doing here?”
His green eyes sparkled in the sun. He held out one hand toward her. “Come here. I need your help.”
Melanie stared at him. How was she supposed to react to that? Here he was, her sworn enemy, asking her for help. She hesitated. He just squatted there with his round green back turned up toward the sky and his hand extended toward her like she was his oldest friend.
In the end, she took a few steps forward and stopped. He pushed his hand farther toward her. “Come. Hurry. I need you.”
Curiosity overpowered her. She had to find out what he wanted. She took the last steps to the edge of the stream and squatted down next to him.
As soon as she got there, he put his hand down into the pool. He was struggling to keep hold of a thick rope of twisted fiber stretching down into the water. A ball of woven mat hung from the rope’s end.
Wit gasped for breath. “I need you to help me hold this up.”
Without waiting for her consent, he passed the rope into her hands. In a flash, the weight hit her, and she dug her heels into the clay to stop it from hauling her head over heels into the water. The fiber, though, was tough and coarse, and bit into her hands so she could keep a firm grip on it.
The first shock of weight straining her shoulders and back subsided, and Melanie set all her strength to hold onto that rope. He asked for her help, and she came to this planet to help the Eblians and build a new life with them. She wouldn’t cave in now. She would show him she could be an asset to his people.
With the weight of the rope out of his hands, Wit lay down on the wet bank and plunged both arms into the water. He grabbed the bunch of matting and wrestled with it under the water. His shoulders and back twisted and strained with the effort, and he puffed and panted for air.
Every passing minute demanded more of Melanie’s determination and strength, but again and again, just at the moment when she thought she couldn’t stand to hold onto that rope another second, her body rallied and tapped a new level of power and persistence she never knew she had.
She hadn’t tested her strength much since Natalie rescued her from the Toom. Sure, Natalie taught her and Amber some fighting techniques in the training studio on board the Mixtidelin. Melanie discovered, as Amber and Natalie did, that the regeneration bed gave her untold strength, speed, and dexterity. But she never really tested herself.
Natalie told them Tina fought Arno and won before she ran away to return to the Toom. If all four of them received the same strength and fighting ability from the regeneration bed, their abilities must be truly marvelous.
But Melanie shielded away from every opportunity to find out just how strong and fast and deadly she could be. She wasn’t the person she thought she was, and she didn’t want to face her new self. Now, though, she dug deeper and deeper into herself to find the strength to hold that rope against all odds. She wouldn't let it go for anything, not with Wit counting on her to hold it. If she failed him and let go, she would prove him right about her and her friends. They weren't worth the Eblians' trouble.
Wit didn’t pay her the slightest attention. He wrestled with that matting with every ounce of his strength. He never considered that she would fail him. He trusted her to hold it.
“I can’t get it,” he muttered.
“What are you doing?” she asked through mouthfuls of air.
He growled under his breath. “There’s a rock moggie stuck in here, and I can’t get the hatch open.”
Melanie didn’t have time to ask what a rock moggie was before he managed to wrench something free under the water. A splash of water hit him in the face and sprayed across Melanie. Then his shoulders relaxed and he leaned back from the edge of the pool. “You can let go now.”
She let the rope slide between her hands, and the weight sank into the pool. She didn’t want to let it go. She hadn't reached the limit of her strength. She would have to test herself some other way. As soon as she let it go, she took her first good look at the mass of woven mats below the surface. They were stitched together with more lengths of fiber rope into a giant sphere that settled down into the mud in the stream bed.
Another splash of water spattered her face, and a chatter of snapping brought her head up in a hurry. A slippery body whipped one way and then another from Wit’s hand, and two vicious jaws snapped at the air in a desperate attempt to fight.
Wit held the creature at arm’s length, and the jaws snapped in thin air. Melanie drew back, but as soon as her surprise wore off, her curiosity drew her toward the thing again. “Is that…..?”
“We call them rock moggies,” he replied.
Melanie cringed. “It’s hideous.”
Wit chuckled. “And very dangerous. But very good eating.”
The moggie lashed out at Melanie to make Wit’s point, and she made a face. “Yuck.”
Wit wrestled the thing to the ground and held its head down with his hand and one foot. Then he smashed its head to a pulp with a rock until it lay still. He stood up, and the thing hung limp from his hand. It stretched all the way down to the ground when he held it as high as his own head.
“You don’t have to eat it,” he told her. “I’ll take it to my father.”
Melanie’s eyes widened. “Your father?”
“You met him at the council,” he replied. “He’s one of the elders. He sat next to Moren when the elders welcomed you to the village.”
Melanie’s cheeks burned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was your father.”
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “He agrees with Moren that you should be accepted.”
Melanie lowered her eyes to the ground. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been very polite to you and your brother since we came here. You have every right to reject us.”
“We don’t reject you,” he told her. “We only felt we had to make the case that you might not be good for our people.”
Melanie nodded. “You’re right. Natalie was right, too. Our people haven’t been all that great for the planets they've colonized. We should be more careful.”
He turned on his heel and set off through the forest. He called back over his shoulder in a way that left Melanie no choice but to follow him. “Forget it. You’ve been accepted. You’re here now, so it doesn't matter anymore.”