Forest Mage

I leapt sideways and landed in a defensive posture. Clove turned his big head to look at me curiously. The Speck man did not flinch or move. He didn’t shift his eyes toward me, but stood with his hands clasped loosely below his belly and his head bent as if praying. For a long instant, we were frozen in that tableau. The Speck was a man of middle years, naked as the sky. His long streaked hair was held back with a tie of bark twine. He carried no weapons; his body was unadorned by jewelry of any kind. As natural as an animal, he stood in submission before me. I felt foolish in my wrestler’s crouch, with my fists held up before me. I calmed my breath and warily straightened.



“Why have you done this?” I asked him severely.



He lifted his eyes to look at me. I was startled to see that his eyes matched the streaking pigment on his face. A brown eye looked at me from the dark blotch on the left side of his face, and a green eye peered from the tan area around his right eye. His gaze was mild. “I do not understand your words, Great One.”



Clove and my scabbarded long gun were several steps away. I edged toward them as I tried to think of a different way to phrase my question. “Yesterday I buried this man in a coffin. Why have you disturbed his rest by stealing his body and bringing him here?”



He puffed his cheeks at me lightly, a gesture I would later learn indicated a sort of denial. “Oh, Great One, I cannot understand what you say.”



“Speak the language, can’t you?” The woman who suddenly stepped out from the shelter of a tree snapped these words with asperity. She had been leaning against the mottled trunk in a way that had allowed her to blend with it. Now that she stood clear of it, I wondered how I had not seen her before, and wondered, too, why Clove showed no sign of alarm. He paid these Specks no more mind than if they were jaybirds hopping near him in his pasture. When, I wondered, had he become so accustomed to them? A paranoid fear that there were actually unseen Specks all around me suddenly seized me. I glanced about and then put my back to Clove’s barrel body. My long gun was on the other side of my horse. I started to edge around him.



As I took that precaution, the woman walked toward me. She was as naked as the man, and completely comfortable in her bare skin. She reminded me of a large, heavy-bodied cat as she stalked me. She was lithe, but there was nothing slight about her. As she drew closer, I halted my flight. Her modest breasts hugged her body; muscle moved in her powerful thighs. I tried not to stare at her nakedness, but it was just as difficult to meet her eyes. They were the deepest green I had ever seen. A sooty streak ran down the center of her face, dividing her eyes and darkening her nose. She had more specks and larger ones than the man did; at some points, the dashes on her body almost became stripes. Her streaky hair fell in a mane down her back, and in color it reminded me of varnished oak.



If I felt uncouth staring at her body, she was not so inhibited about perusing mine. Her eyes ran over me familiarly, and she said to the man, “Look at him. He’s huge. He could make two of you even now, and yet it is plain that no one cares for him. Think what such a man could look like with the proper care.” She was only an arm’s length away from me, and she lifted both her hands as if she would measure my girth with them.



“Keep your distance!” I warned her, unnerved by her casual attitude toward me.



“Speak the language, I said! Are you rude, or stupid?”



“Olikea! It is dangerous to speak so to a Great One!” The man offered his warning in a humble tone, as if he must defer to her. It made me wonder what her status was; I tried to gauge her age and decided she must be close to twenty. Her nakedness, I suddenly realized, confused me. I was accustomed to dress defining both a woman’s status and her age.



She laughed, a clear peal that shattered the quiet of the woods. The sound woke a memory in me. I’d heard that laugh before. “There is no danger, Father. If he is so stupid that he cannot speak the language, then he will not be offended by what I said. And if he is so rude as to speak his own tongue to us when he can understand the language, well, then I have only returned that rudeness to him. Is it not so, Great One?”



“My name is not Great One,” I replied testily. And then my tongue halted of its own accord. I had spoken Gernian to her, until I came to the words for Great One. That phrase I had returned to her in her own language. I knew then that I could speak the Speck language, and recalled when I had learned it and from whom. They were speaking Speck and I’d been replying in Gernian. I took a breath and tried again. “Please. Keep your distance from me.”



“There!” she exclaimed to her father. “I knew it. He was just being rude. Because he thinks he can.” She turned back to me. “Keep my distance. That I shall. This is my distance, Great One.” She stepped closer to me and set both her hands on my chest. Shock paralyzed my body and my tongue. She ran one hand down my side, and slapped me firmly on the hip as if she were checking a horse or dog for soundness. Her other hand simultaneously traveled up my chest and up the side of my neck and stopped on my cheek. She ran her thumb lightly over my lips. Her bold gaze held my own. She leaned in closer until her breasts brushed my chest. Then the hand that had lingered on my hip suddenly groped my groin. Startled, I sprang back from her, but Clove’s huge body blocked my escape. She squeezed me playfully and then stepped back, grinning broadly. She spoke over her shoulder to her father, who stood, his eyes cast down, as if he wished to avoid seeing her outrageous behavior. “Oh, you see, he regrets being rude already.” She cocked her head at me and wet her lips. “Would you like to apologize to me?”