Chapter Eight
Annika decided to take advantage of the opportunity Zhor had left for her. She had no idea how long he might be gone. She thought the fact that he hadn’t waited to close the door and block her in probably meant he intended to return immediately, but it was a chance and there had been damned few of them.
And time had begun to torture her—seeming to drag because she had little to do to occupy herself beyond her thoughts and worries and also seeming to fly because she had ticked off at least a dozen alien dawns since the first she’d seen when the ship crashed.
She was running out of time to be rescued.
She was sure of it.
And that prompted her to push her last attempt from her mind and try again the moment she saw an opening regardless of the strain it was bound to put on their relationship if Zhor caught her at it.
She knew there was the possibility that he hadn’t simply forgotten and leaving the door open was some sort of test or trap, but she decided she wasn’t going to just sit tight, twiddling her thumbs when it was possible that he’d just been so pissed off he’d forgotten.
And there was the fact that she had pissed him off—obviously pretty royally—or he wouldn’t have left like that and that added the incentive of not being there when he returned.
For all that, the attempt wasn’t some stupid, girly something she decided impulsively or emotionally.
If she wasn’t already out of time, she knew she would be soon. She had to try to find the wreckage and let base command know she was alive or she might never get home again.
The drop was terrifying but although just looking made her weak all over, she ignored the freefall her stomach took and the urge to puke. Instead, she focused on examining the walls on either side of the opening. To her partial relief, she saw she hadn’t just imagined there were steps cut into the side of the cliff. They looked ancient and crumbling but there were narrow ledges and steps leading to each opening on the cliff and they seemed to go to the top or almost.
It was worth checking out, she decided.
Gathering her courage, she stepped out on the ledge and began inching very carefully toward the first step she saw. She was shaking so badly by the time she reached the first set of steps that her teeth had begun to chatter.
The urge to turn back assailed her but, somehow, turning around seemed more terrifying than continuing in a straight line.
It wasn’t just the narrowness of the ledge and steps and the sheer drop that made moving difficult. There were gusts of wind that threatened to break her precarious hold and snatch her clean off the cliff.
She was tempted to just stop when she reached the next cavern opening—not tempted to go back. She was beyond scared stiff and spit-less. She was so scared she felt like flopping on the ground and crying like a baby—might have if there’d been a nice, safe spot to indulge herself.
She sucked up the urge and struggled to focus minutely—only on hand grips and footholds. By doing that, she managed to make it all the way to the top. She thought for several moments after she’d discovered the cliff edge that she wasn’t going to be able to make it over, but after standing—panting and shivering—for some moments, she gathered herself for a final effort and lurched over the side.
For several terrifying moments, she thought she was going to slide backwards off the cliff. She scrambled for anything to get hold of but it seemed everything she grabbed came away in her hands. Finally, thankfully, she managed to get hold of a clump of grass that gave her just enough stability to wiggle up until she’d shifted her center of gravity to the plain. Panting, she lay perfectly still for several moments, trying to catch her breath, trying to calm her heart before it beat its way out of her chest, trying to think when her mind had turned to jelly just like the rest of her muscles from unmitigated terror.
In the end, she simply inched upwards on her belly like a snake until she was able to grab two fistfuls of grass and lift one knee to the edge.
She didn’t think she would be able to get up even after the horror had begun to dissipate. The adrenaline that had helped strengthen her muscles so that she could actually make the climb had completely abandoned her and she felt like a puddle, a shapeless, heavy mass that had no ability to rise to the commands of her brain.
Eventually, bolstered, at last, by the thought that she would have gone through all that effort to escape for nothing if she kept laying there until Zhor returned, she managed to get her knees up and stiffen her arms to push herself away from the ground. After a few moments, she managed to stand upright and look around.
Disappointment flickered through her. She recalled the plateau as being basically flat, but then she’d seen it from the ship, not ground level.
She supposed it was basically flat, but there was just enough deformation to prevent her from seeing any great distance. Small, vegetation covered hills rolled away from her to the forest—which looked to be maybe two miles away.
There was no sign of the ship. She didn’t spot a single piece of wreckage to tell her the point of impact.
When she’d turned all the way around, she came face to face with … Zhor.
It wasn’t as if there was no warning. A deep shadow passed over her and she caught just a hint of the brush of feathers together and then there was a heavy thud, but all those warnings preceded discovery by mere seconds. Not enough time for her brain to process and react.
She did react when she came face to chest with him, however. She screamed ear piercingly, jumped, and then took off at a dead run.
It took stork man all of three steps to catch her.
She considered trying to fight free for a handful of mindless seconds, but then reality set in. She didn’t have a chance in hell of outrunning him. Even if she decided to take a swan dive off the cliff, he could still catch her!
It was only when she subsided that she realized he was shaking—vibrating all over with some strong emotion.
Her heart jumped in her chest and she twisted around to gauge his expression.
He turned her in his arms, clutching her in an embrace tight enough she wondered for a few moments if he was trying to crush her.
As abruptly as he’d seized her, he released her, almost shoved her away, glaring at her furiously. “You little fool! You nearly got yourself killed! You loathe me so much you would risk death to escape me? It scared me out of ten years of life when I saw you climbing the cliff! I could not even think for several minutes and then I realized you would fall if I startled you and I did not want to take a chance that you might and I might not be able to catch you so close to the cliff.
“I could do nothing but move below you and hope that I could catch you if you fell!”
Annika merely stared at him uncomprehendingly since she didn’t have a clue of what he’d said, but she was struck by his body language.
If he’d been human, she would have interpreted his behavior as that of someone who cared what happened to her, somebody she’d scared with her recklessness.
She studied his taut, angry face, his furious gestures and suddenly she knew what he was saying—the gist of it anyway.
How did she feel about it?
She wasn’t certain, but she felt the urge to soothe and she yielded to it. Moving close in spite of his obvious reluctance to have her anywhere near him, she slipped her arms around his waist and looked up at him. “I’m sorry.”
The angry tirade ceased the instant she embraced him. He stared at her with a mixture of anger and bafflement, but she felt the tension go out of him. He lifted one hand and touched her cheek, lightly stroking it. “Saw-ry?”
She nodded, lifting one hand to touch his cheek as he had hers, a light caress. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to kill myself and I didn’t do it to scare you. Well, honestly, I had no idea you were still close enough to see me and it wouldn’t have occurred to me that you would care enough to be upset that I looked like I would fall any minute anyway.”
She thought about it. “You cared enough to save me the first time—well twice. I should’ve had more consideration,” she added contritely. “But I need to find the men that were with me! I have to signal the people at home that I survived. My family will be worried sick if they’ve heard about the crash.”
But then what she’d said actually registered, triggered memory.
They hadn’t crashed on the plateau! If they had, she wouldn’t have been falling when she stepped out—not unless it was on the edge of the cliff and she could see that clearly enough to see there was no wreckage.
She pulled away from him and began trying to communicate with a combination of words and gestures.
His expression became closed and she wasn’t certain if that meant he had understood and just didn’t want to take her to the crash site or if it meant he hadn’t understood.
He studied her for many moments and finally looked away, not as if he was looking at something but rather thinking. When he looked at her again, she realized he’d made some sort of decision.
He opened his arms to her and waited.
Annika looked at him with dismay because it immediately leapt to mind that he intended to fly with her.
But maybe he intended to take her to the crash site and that was the only way?
For a handful of seconds she was torn between the desire to try to communicate with home base and the complete loathing of the possibility of his brand of flight. Finally, swallowing against a knot of terror, she moved close to him and looped her arms around his neck. He lifted her up and guided her legs around his waist and then clamped his arms around her.
Instead of taking off immediately, he hesitated long enough that Annika looked at him questioningly.
The smoldering look he gave her sent a wave of heat through her and a flicker of doubt, made her wonder if she’d completely misunderstood the gesture.
A wry smile twisted his lips. He took several running steps and then leapt.
Annika felt her belly try to crawl into her throat as they went over the side of the cliff.
She was still preoccupied enough with that look, however, that she more than half expected Zhor to simply head for the cave and the bed waiting there.
Instead, they whizzed past it—or at least past the opening she thought was the one they’d been occupying.
His spiraling descent made her so dizzy she closed her eyes, trying to control her stomach, but she could feel that they were continuing to drop and then she began to worry that she was so heavy Zhor couldn’t do anything but try to control their fall. Finally, however, he slowed almost to a complete stop and she opened her eyes in time to see that he had settled on what looked like a huge tree frond!
“Are you out of your fucking mind!” she gasped in horror, refusing to let go when he tried to put her down.
He bounced.
She screamed and closed her eyes.
And gripped him tighter.
He pried her loose and set her away from him, holding her upper arms to prevent her from launching herself at him and clinging like a leech.
“Fall here,” he said.
Annika gaped at him when he made the comment, very clearly, in English. She went through the motions again, using her hand to demonstrate the fall and her voice to mimic an explosion. He nodded vigorously. “Fall here,” he repeated and then gestured toward the edge of the thing they were standing on. “Ah-na fall dere.”
Unwilling to move toward the edge, Annika lifted her head and eased up onto her toes to look. She saw then that they were standing on the canopy of a tree that looked to be well over a hundred feet tall, possibly a good bit more. Rather than the limbs and leaves particular to earth trees, however, this was one tall ‘stalk’—a trunk that must have been twenty to thirty feet in diameter—no telling how big in circumference. And it had a top rather like an umbrella that seemed solid.
Forgetting her fears, Annika looked around.
There was no sign of the ship.
Well, actually, there was a great deal of sign that something heavy had hit the thing. It was scarred up pretty badly and it looked like fairly fresh damage.
But there wasn’t so much as a loose bolt lying on the surface as far as she could see.