Chapter Ten

 

 

Fiona’s first steps on an alien world were not graceful. The wind that struck her and sent her skirt whipping around her legs made it hard to focus.

Aarak pulled her close and provided a windbreak at her back. “It is better near the city.”

She smirked. “I am just glad that the fastener goes as low as it does.”

He grinned, lifted her, and flew them both into the city where a large crowd had gathered.

The people of Ekadi were elegant, willowy, and had a smug sense of self-satisfaction that Fiona wanted to smack off their lips.

Their elected representative met Aarak, and the three elegantly dressed women behind him bowed low.

“My lord, I am surprised that you have bothered yourself with such a trivial matter.” The official waved his hand at the women behind him. “We have prepared an offering for you.”

The women smiled and swayed toward him. They paused a few feet away and curtseyed so deeply that Fiona could see they engaged in complete landscaping, the view down their cleavage was impressive.

“We are at your service, my lord.” They even spoke as one.

Fiona looked up to Aarak, who was still holding her. “You are not going to fall for this, are you?”

He smiled and shrugged before setting her on her feet. “You may need a rest.”

“Like hell.” She turned toward the offerings that were nearly a head taller than she was. “Your services are not required. Shoo!”

There was no word for shoo in Ekadi, but the women frowned and tried to go around her. It was a mistake.

Fiona kicked the legs out from under one of the ladies, punched another one in the nose and grabbed the third by the hair, pulling her to the ground by use of her green locks.

“Do not touch him, do not coo to him, do not think to come near him. He is not yours.” She growled it, let the woman go and stood straight.

Aarak wrapped her in his arms, and he apologized. “My mate is a little territorial. Where may we speak about the rising?”

The official stared at Fiona as Aarak lifted her off her feet and carried her into the tent that had been set up for the purpose.

The official waited until Aarak sat down on the specially designed chair with a fuming Fiona on his lap, and then, he took his own seat.

“The archaic practice of tithing to the creature is over. We are an intelligent people, and we do not need to placate an ancient god.”

Fiona snorted.

The official cocked his head. “You find something amusing, madam?”

“We have not been introduced. I am Fiona.”

“I am Master Hedding.”

“Of course, you are.”

“You did not answer me.” He looked offended, like an irritated forest elf.

Fiona looked at Aarak, and he grinned. “Go ahead, you did the research.”

“So did you, that is how I knew what to look for.”

“Go ahead, Fiona.”

She sighed. “Right, so the creature comes out every hundred years like clockwork.”

“Correct.”

“It eats half the harvest of the valley.”

“Correct.” Hedding looked irritated.

“It flies around the world for three years and returns to its home.”

“Correct. This is common knowledge.”

She smiled tightly. “Then, you know about what it does while it sleeps?”

He looked wary. “It sleeps. It hibernates.”

“It releases three years of food altered by the digestive process into the soil of the valley. The first burst of food lets it fly, and the rest of the time it goes looking for enough food to have an offspring that would double the fertility of your area.”

“No, that can’t be it.” He frowned and pulled out a tablet.

“Your land yields less each year following the rising until it returns. It is not a superstition, it is biology and horticulture.”

Aarak kept his hand wrapped around her hips. “That is what I have come to tell you.”

“Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”

“It did not come up. I usually amused myself with your welcoming committee.” He grinned.

“Yeah, that isn’t going to happen again.” She elbowed him in the ribs.

“Of course not. Now that I have found you, I no longer need to dip into other species.”

She frowned. “I have other questions for you.”

He grinned. “I will answer them in our quarters.”

Hedding cleared his throat and asked, “Do you mean that our civilization is built on a manure pile?”

Aarak shook his head. “No, it is dirt. The soil is enriched at a much lower level. Have you already seen the signs of the rising?”

Hedding shook himself out of his amazed confusion. “It will rise by dawn tomorrow. We didn’t prepare the offering.”

“You had better get to it, or the creature may not return. No return means that your valley will lose nutrients and fade away.”

Hedding bolted to his feet. “Please excuse me.”

Before Aarak could dismiss him, he was out the flap of the tent.

“Well, I have achieved what I wanted; do you wish to return to the ship?”

Fiona wrinkled her nose. “I would rather have a look around and see some of the city. I have never seen an alien world before.”

“All worlds are alien to you, as you are alien to them. Excellent attack sequence, by the way.”

She twisted her lips. “Yeah, how did I manage that?”

“You nap a lot, and I thought it a waste, so I have given you some subliminal courses.”

“Self-defense?”

“Nothing so useless. No, you have bar-brawling skills based on the Idel bodies and movements. It is a fairly close match.”

“Speaking of matches, why me? Why not one of the Idel who follows you with sad and wistful eyes?”

“I would kill the Idel. Besides, they are all vaguely related to me, so it is slightly perverse to think about.”

“How so?”

“Another question for the ship.”

She elbowed him again.

“So, would you like to see the city?”

“Yes. Yes, I would.”

He looked down at her with raised brows. “Would you like to see the creature?”

She nodded. “Please. If it is going to wake up tomorrow, I would like to see it just this one time. I won’t be around the next time it flies.”

“You will outlive your lifespan. I am quite sure of it.” He grinned, and his wings parted the closure of the tent before they were out in the sunlight again. He smiled, lifted his face upward, bent his knees, and shoved hard against the ground while propelling them into the air with great scoops of his wings.

The drag of gravity kept her tense and curled against him until they were at the altitude he wanted. When the pressure eased, she was able to look up and around.

“Holy heck. This is a crater.”

He grinned, and their path took them toward the outer rim. “You are very well informed.”

“I couldn’t see it from the crop-level images in the file, but this is an impact crater. Something struck this world with enough force to displace all this soil.”

“Correct.”

“Did the creature come with the asteroid?”

He shook his head and smiled ruefully. “Yes. The Ekadi have a revisionist view of the universe. I barely fit in it, but they certainly didn’t want to believe in beasts with no names that lived in the stars and planted themselves into worlds until they were ready to return to the stars. Ekadi is a nesting ground, but the creatures give more than they take.”

“I get that. I wonder if the rock that hit Earth had something living in it.”

“It will take a century before it would wake if that were the case. If there is one, it will spend its first years clearing the skies of the dust and debris. After that, it will find a nesting area near its crash site and go dormant again. What would your folk do to it if there was one?”

She didn’t need to ask. “Kill it. They would blame it for the destruction and kill it while it slept. That is if they could get close to it.”

He nodded. “That is my guess as well, and what I was afraid the Ekadi would do. So, when I led them here to this crater, I told them that the creature was mine as well. They didn’t dare go after it in the first few centuries when I was living here, but after I left, they began to grow irritated with the thought of sharing their bounty. Now, they are finally mature enough to understand the symbiosis that they are living in.”

Fiona thought about where humans had been a hundred years earlier, and she could see the difference that the years would make. “Time makes all the difference.”

“It truly does. I am delighted by how quickly you are catching on.”

She smiled at the slight insult and watched their flight path take them along the edge of the rock face. There was no indicator of where the creature was, and the moment that Aarak pulled in his wings and clung to the rock with one hand, swinging her into a slight crack in the wall, she realized they had reached their destination.

She looked up at him and could only see the silhouette of him with the halo of light behind him. “Is this it?”

He laughed and helped her to her feet. “It is narrow, but it is here. Follow the path of warm air.”

She stepped into the darkness, and as she slid her foot forward over and over, she felt the sides of the cavern, and when her eyes adjusted, she could see a light in the darkness.

“Is that it?”

“It is. It glows. It is the originator of some of the radiation that runs through my own veins.”

She looked back at him and could make out his features. The band of tattoos on his upper arm and the one across his chest were glowing, and it seemed that they were pulsing in turn with the light ahead of her.

She turned to face the growing light inside the tunnel, and she whispered. “It pulls the rock in when it sleeps?”

“The radiation melts the rock into a natural-looking formation. Unless you know what you are looking for, you will never find the entrance.”

Fiona stepped toward the light, and when she reached the edge of the path, she gasped. Under her was a creature that was breathing so quietly that only the shifting of its skin gave away its activity. Twisting curves of patterns that looked like burns but went into the hide and not upward covered the exterior edge of the glowing cream-coloured hide.

“Is this the only colour?” She crouched to get a better look.

Aarak crouched next to her. “It will darken and take on the radiating colour of the spectrum. When light touches it, it becomes something much more fantastic.”

“Will we stay until it flies?”

The creature shifted slightly, and Aarak tensed. “I think we don’t have long to wait. Quick. Back the way we came.”

She was on her feet and moving with him at her heels. When she would have spilled out of the cavern, he grabbed her, pulled her in tight, and jumped off the cliff edge.

His wings bellowed wide, and he gained altitude once again.

In the distance, at the edge of the enormous crater, was the city. The locals were working outside of their city limits. Fiona hoped that they were preparing the food.

They had just reached a height that was endangering her oxygen when Aarak whispered, “Look.”

She looked down at the stone ridge where they had just been skulking, and the rock blasted apart in an unceremonious explosion. It was as if the cap had been ripped off the ridge, exposing the creature below.

The two hundred metres of creature stirred and slowly began to lift upward. The flat teardrop shape lifted, and as it rose out of its nest, feathery leaves unfurled around the surface, and it lifted out of the nest and took to the sky.

“Holy hell, why is it coming this way?” Fiona was shocked as the creature came directly toward them.

“It wishes to greet us; hold tight.”

Fiona quickly wrapped her arms around his neck and did as instructed. What followed was an aerial waltz of loops, bows, and twists above the surface of the crater. The huge creature matched them roll for roll. It seemed to know the dance and was comfortable with its size in comparison to the Hmrain.

Fiona was shocked when the dance ended, and Aarak landed on the creature’s back. “What are you doing?”

“It wishes to take you on a ride. It is happy I have found a mate.”

She blinked. “It said all that?”

“In the twists and rolls. It got a look at you and asked me what you were, so I said you were my breeding partner, and it asked if it could show you its territory. I agreed, and here we are.”

Fiona looked around, and to her stunned amazement, she was standing on an alien creature that hibernated every century, holding the hand of another alien that she couldn’t even guess the age of, and being shown a world that was in the early stages of development but still more evolved than her own. It was a very interesting way to spend her day.