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“If they try to so much as touch you, I will rip them into pieces and feast on their insides,” I growl.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “I was born to die. I have seen it in the stars, and I have heard it in the wind. Some women are made to bear young. Others are made for sacrifice. That is what I was made for. I have always known it.”
More superstitious human bullshit. I ignore it. She’s not going to die. Not on my watch. Not while I draw any kind of breath.
“Why did they put the painted hands on you?” I change the subject for my own benefit.
“The hands represent the will of the ancestor gods,” she says. “The hands on the walls and ceiling of this cave, they were left by those who came before us. When we paint our hands, the ancestors act through us, as we do their will. It was not my tribe who sentenced me to die. It was our ancestors. To disobey them is to anger them, and angry gods could destroy us all. They could flood our crops, send disease to our houses, or fire storms of hot rocks and…”
Superstitious human nonsense enabling cruelty, in other words. I keep my thoughts to myself. She does not need to hear what I think of her beliefs. Everything she is describing is part of the natural make up of her world, as controlled by gods or ancestors as the communication device I have stashed away is controlled by chanting.
“I don’t want to die,” she whimpers. “But I feel it coming for me, and it is easier to accept it than to fight it.”
“You’re not going to die,” I reassure her. “I am going to protect you.”
She looks up at me with that innocent gaze, uncertain of me. I understand why. She could not trust her own tribe to keep her alive. How could she trust an alien creature like myself?
Tres
“I’m not supposed to change this world,” he says. “That is why I didn’t want to tell you who I am, but you need to know, so you can understand. I am not a spirit. I am not an ancestor. I am no painted hand on a ceiling. I am a creature from the stars. My kind is called Scythkin. And I have already changed the fate of this world.”
“You come from the stars?”
“From beyond the stars, and beyond time, too,” he says, his palm moving over my back in a slow caress. I don’t know if he is even aware he is touching me, he seems distracted by his own words as he pets me. “I come from a time after this world existed.” He looks down at me. “Does it seem strange to you, to know that these rocks themselves had an end?”
“All things do,” I say simply.
“Not quite all,” he disagrees. “I do not intend to have an end.”
If what he is saying is true, then he is as a god. He might deny it to me, maybe even to himself, but I am in the arms of a creature which has been spoken about in whispers. There are those of us who have looked to the skies all our lives and made up stories about what might live up there. We never imagined it would be something like this.
“Why did you come down here? Did you come to save me?”
He hesitates, his hand stilling on my spine. “Yes,” he says, finally. “I came to save you. So stop thinking that you are meant for death, because there is much life ahead of you, little human. You must embrace it. You must fight for it. And you must never allow the idiot tribe you arose from to define the limits of your being. Do you understand?”
He is lecturing me now, though I do not know if he means to. He is angry at Trelok for what was done to me, but I think he is also angry at me, for allowing it.
“I am sorry,” I say, burying my face in the hard lines of his body. He is warm to the touch, his skin much thicker and rougher than human skin, but not unpleasant to feel beneath my own naked body. I know the sharp ridges and blades I saw before are still lurking beneath the smooth surfaces and channels of his body, waiting to spring free. I do not want to anger him.
“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “Get some sleep, and in the morning, find your courage.”
He squeezes me tight and resumes the slow rubbing motion of his palm which lulls me toward a deep, rich sleep.
Chapter Three
Vulcan
Tres falls into a very human slumber. She is exhausted. I do not sleep. I sit awake in that human cave of bones and I let the night wash over us both. I half wish that this Trelok would come and attempt to hurt her again, but she would not like to see what I did to him, of that I am sure, and I am also just as sure that it would cause serious damage to human history as a whole.
