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There is something harsh and sad about him all at the same time. I search his face, trying to understand him, but I don't think he likes me looking at him, because he gets up and turns away from me, standing at the mouth of the cave where he is silhouetted against the light.
He could walk away right now, leave me. I am half-afraid he will. And half-afraid he will not. Either way, I know I am still dead. This is just a reprieve. Either Trelok will find me and slay me, or the elements will claim me, or this creature who seems to have handed me life in the skull of the dead will bring about my end. I can feel it in my bones. I have always known I was not made for this world.
I sit back, and I sip the water from the skull and I wait to find out which of the evils will befall me first. I’m not afraid, because fear is only useful when you are trying to live, and I have been so close to death that I have felt the veil between the worlds and I know there is nothing to fear, really. What lies beyond this world is much better than the brutal struggle for existence I endure every day. Even Trelok’s prized wives are forced to bear his babes and make his meals and forage and tend crops and avoid the rough lizards which swim the waters of the river, waiting to take the unwary.
“What is your name, human?”
The question startles me.
“Tres.”
“I am Vulcan,” he says, turning back to me. “And I should not be here. I should not have rescued you from your bonds. It was wrong for me to do that. You are not the only one who will be angry about it. But I could not help myself. You are mine.”
He says those words as if he is declaring it to the whole entire world, as if the declaration is a rebellion against an authority I am not familiar with.
We make a miserable couple, he and I, watching the light wane. I thought he would know what to do with me, would have a plan. But maybe that’s too much to expect. Maybe he’s given me all he can give me already just by cutting the ropes and bringing me water.
I try to stand up. I can limp away now, find a place to hide and finish the process of becoming undone. I can’t see the sense in continuing to draw breath. I have nothing to fight for. I have lost the tribe, and without the tribe I am nothing.
But my legs are as much a traitor as Trelok accused me of being. They are too weak to hold me up, and when I try to stand, they hold me only for a moment before letting me fall again in a cloud of bone dust.
He turns to me. “Stay down,” he says. “You’re not strong enough to walk yet. You need food. I will get you some.”
So his task of heroism is not quite over.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You,” he says, “are starving.”
“I don’t need to eat. I was bound for the ancestors, and to them, I will return.”
He turns toward me, the glowing sun behind his back as it slides toward the curve of the world, descending from view.
“What are you saying, human? That you would refuse life?”
“I am saying that I was made for death.”
His lips split in a smile. His sharp teeth extend. “So was I.”
Vulcan
She doesn’t want to live. She has given up on this world, her life, and her beauty. She would curl up among the bones if I would let her and she would give herself to the end of her being. I could be angry, thinking that my attempt to save her was a waste, but I don’t believe it was. I am fighting for my life, and she will learn to fight for hers too.
“I am going to get us food. Stay here.”
She makes a muttering sound from the pile of bones she’s taken refuge in. I leave her, moving as swiftly as I can. I need to kill something quickly and turn it into food for her. She has not been tied up long enough to be sick from hunger, but she does need to eat. Her tribe neglected her. Her chief abused her. I will not abandon her, even if she wants to be abandoned.
I have to descend the mountain, which means going further than I’d like from the woman whose life I sense I am going to have to save more than once, given she is not overly interested in keeping herself alive.
One of the deer which wanders the plain below gives its life rather obligingly. Soon these animals will learn that they are made of meat, but they are so plentiful and hunted so relatively rarely they are yet to be careful. I wonder, as I complete the slaughter, what truly happened with this planet. Someone or something ripped time and I fell through it, like loose change falling through a hole in a pocket. That’s a very human thing to think. I’m trying to practice human thoughts. They will help me relate to Tres. Maybe. I suspect it will be many thousands of years before there are jeans with pockets with holes which change can fall through.
