Chapter Five
I sank as deeply down into the shadows as I could while still being able to see the Denynso and the women I assumed to be the human females that had joined their tribe. The fear coursed through me so powerfully that I felt like I couldn't catch my breath and I struggled to hold myself silent as I watched them. I had, of course, seen them before. They had been there only the day before when they had descended from the moss and struck down the pale, disgusting creatures that had been crawling through my home for many months.
I didn't think that any of them noticed that I was there. Just like during the battle, I stayed out of sight, keeping completely to myself so that they didn't know that I even existed. That was the way that I liked it, the way that it had been for several years since the rest of my kind succumbed to an illness so severe that it burned through our families in a matter of days and killed everyone that it touched. I had no idea why it spared me. There have been many times when I wished that it hadn't. It would have been much simpler to let it take me as it had everyone that I knew and loved. Instead, it left me with the memory of youngest sister disappearing into the sky as I let her slip through my fingers.
The creatures that live on the ground above me have never known that we were here. My grandmother once told me that our kind didn't always live in this cavern. We once lived where the Denynso have settled, but a brutal war with another species and a plague that threatened our very existence drove us down into the cavern, a space that the wisest and most powerful of our species living then transformed into a reflection of the land above, the land that our clan loved so deeply. They had no way of knowing that the plague followed us down. It would be many generations before it struck again, but when it did it did so with a vengeance and only I was left behind.
Now I was more alone than I could ever imagine that a person could be. I was not just the last of my kind, the last of my family and friends. I was the last of a species that had been out of sight for so long that no other species on the planet even remembered that we existed. If anything, I was a myth and a legend.
I could see the men clutching their vines tightly as they scanned the reflection of the sky that covered all of the floor of the cavern that they could see. They all emanated fear and uncertainty, emotions that none of them were accustomed to feeling, and that none of them wanted to admit to the others. They all hated to feel as though there was something that they didn't understand so close to a space that they only knew as their own. The human women were more difficult for me to decipher. Unlike the warriors, who presented themselves as cold as stone on their exteriors but in fact presented their thoughts and feelings quite readily, the women held themselves closer, protecting themselves with their own internal forces so that I had to concentrate intently on each of them to be able to see what they were experiencing inside.
Many times I had heard the legends of the Denynso warriors and their incredible might, both on the battlefield and with their mates. It was said that these massive, forceful men fought with more intensity, skill, aggression, and determination than any other creature that had ever existed among the stars, but when they found their mate, they could be tamed as quickly as a pet. The warriors went through a difficult change when they neared their mate, struggling with their anger, primal force, and arousal until their mate soothed them. The blazing heat of their skin kept all but their intended partner away from them, and once they bonded, it was permanent. I had been told that these partners shared a very special gift that enabled them to communicate with each other through their minds even when they were far apart.
I often wished that my abilities were like that. I didn't read the minds of those I saw. Instead, I looked into them and reflected back to them the essence of who they were; their thoughts, their feelings, and their struggles. Now I was struggling myself, trying to grip what the human women were experiencing as they watched the warriors slowly and carefully extricate themselves from the vines and start to make their way out onto the branches that snaked and intersected across the sky. It was those branches that were perhaps the most brilliant element of the creation of that ancestor of our kind. He designed the cavern so that it reflected the space our species knew as its home so that we could always remember what the land looked like, but with that design came protection.
Those that made their way down into our cavern would see the branches and walk out onto them, thinking that they could make their way across the entirety of the cavern. The branches would only go so far, though, and just like the ones on the ground above, some were weak and could snap in an instant, sending whoever stood upon it tumbling into the unknown beyond the sky. There had been very few who had ventured down to the cavern in recent generations, and none in my lifetime until the Klimnu appeared. When they did, it was the first time that I had been truly thankful for the illness that had taken everyone else. Their deaths had been fast, and though it left me alone, I would have much preferred that to watching my family and loved ones go through the horrors I could only imagine those creatures would have inflicted on us if they had found our colony thriving.
As I watched them, one of the men caught my attention. He was not the largest of the group and he, like the others, were definitely under the control and guidance of the tremendous one that now stepped out onto one of the biggest branches and hunched down to stabilize himself as he made his way out a few feet over the sky. There was something about him, though, that made me not want to turn away. His hair was stark white like the hair of the rest of the warriors, but unlike them, who wore their hair in high, spiky mohawks, his was tightly braided down his back and tied with a stretch of dark fabric. I remembered seeing him in the battle the night before. He had been much the same then, exuding an energy that was wild, unchained, and volatile despite being contained within his quiet exterior.
He looked up in my direction and for a brief moment I thought that he might be able to see me. I sank back further into the shadows and watched him narrow his eyes, the energy within him send out aggressive, powerful waves that drew me in even more. Part of me wanted to reach out to them, to tell them about the cavern and unveil its secrets, but the other part was so frightened and unsure of them that I couldn't move from my spot.
The man I had been watching stepped forward onto one of the branches and my heart tightened. I knew that he had chosen one of the weaker branches and the further he stepped, the more likely he was to fall. Keeping my eyes focused on him, I crept out from behind the low hill where I had been hiding. I lifted my hand to my chest as I made my way quickly, but as quietly as I could, toward the very edge of the bank where the land on this side of the cavern would flow into the sky. They couldn't see me where I was standing. They thought that the sky filled the entire space. Knowing that made me feel more secure, but even if they had suspected that there was something beyond the gradually darkening sky, I wouldn't have stopped.
The man took another step and I heard the low creak of the wood. The growing darkness of the sky was making it more difficult for him to differentiate between the branch and the sky, and he took another step onto one of the smaller outshoots of the branch. He stumbled and I heard a gasp rise out of the human women. One of the warriors started toward him, but I acted first. I tore my necklace from my neck, opening the compact in my hand and thrusting it forward. As the reflection of the stone wall across from me came into view on the bottom portion of the mirrored compact I stepped forward into the sky.