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“Yes,” he said.
He didn’t look at me and focused on preparing our meals. He fell silent again as he slid the lizards onto a pair of sticks and placed them over the fire.
“This is your home, isn’t it?” I said.
I hated pushing him but I was intrigued. I wanted to know everything I could about him. If he didn’t want to talk about it, then all he had to do was tell me.
He took a seat with his back to the door. “It hasn’t been my home for a long, long time.”
He picked up a stray stick and snapped it into tiny pieces.
And he still wouldn’t look at me.
Maybe he felt like he couldn’t tell me he didn’t want to talk about it. His body language didn’t exactly say he wanted to discuss this subject.
“I’m not going to ask about it anymore,” I said. “But I’m here if you want to talk. I know it can’t be easy. And it’s not my business unless you decide it is.”
He nodded but said nothing. We both watched as the lizards heated up, popping and squealing as the meat cooked. The juices rolled out of it.
“These lizards were always my favorite as a kid,” he said. “My parents knew that, so they refused to let me have it except on special occasions. I never understood that. They always said it’s better to keep something special so that when you had it, it would always feel that way. If you had it every day, you’d get bored of it. I regretted telling them it was my favorite. Maybe then I’d have gotten it more often.”
I smiled, reflecting his own. Then he turned sad.
“And now they’re gone,” he said. “And now that we’ll be eating lizards, I wonder if it’ll taste as good as it used to.”
As if in response, the meat popped and sizzled.
I got up and turned the lizards over. Instead of returning to my seat, I sat beside him and placed my hand on his.
“It was the Changelings that came,” Nighteko said. “Their thirst for power and money is unquenchable. They raided villages like mine and took our people as slaves. We were only miners. And the worst part is, you can’t be a smuggler without working with the Changelings. Over the years, I’ve worked with them, helping them do to other species what they did to mine. I won my freedom in the great fightings pits of Klaxxon but I never stopped being a slave. And I never will. Not until I get enough credits so I can leave that life behind for good.”
He’d been a slave his entire life, I realized. From when they took him, to when he fought in the pits, even after winning his freedom, he had few other options with his background and became a smuggler for slaves himself.
I massaged his arm. The wirelike hairs tickled my palms.
“What happened to your parents?” I said.
“They were taken, sold into slavery like everybody else,” he said. “To be honest, I never really knew what happened to them. It’s been so long. They’ll either be so old now that they could never remember me or they’re already dead. The warriors in my clan were recruited for wars and sent on the most dangerous missions. The chances of my father still being alive are… not good.”
“You never laid them to rest, did you?” I said. “You never let them go?”
He shook his head. “Not while they could still be out there.”
“Will you ever find them?” I said.
“Once you’re sold into slavery, it’s impossible.”
I turned to the table and brought down the items I found earlier. I held them in my hands and offered them to him.
His hands shook. He reached for the little toy and a smile curved his cheek. So happy, and yet, drenched with sorrow. Then he fingered the stones and gold and silver rings. He ran them between his fingers.
“The gold rings were mother’s,” he said. “The silver ones were my father’s.”
“Do you remember when we had the funeral for Maisie?” I said.
“When you put her in a box and sent her inside space?”
“Yes. But we’re not a spacefaring species yet. Usually, we bury our dead in the soil.”
