CHAPTER FOUR
CAPTIVES!
Funny, even though she was a monster and all, I liked her right off. Maybe because her face reminded me of a fat old tabby named Queenie that my Aunt Cici had when I was a kid. Whatever it was, the big she-beast who was smirking at me like Mama Bear finding Goldilocks in her bed made me feel more relaxed than anything I’d come across so far on this nasty-ass planet.
Not that I had any time to bask in her warmth. One-Eye pushed in behind us, made a quick speech to Queenie, shoved Sai at her like he was a pound puppy, and fast as he could, steered me toward the back of the tent.
There, facing away from us, her four legs tucked up under her on a bed of straw and her gold and purple fur tinged red by the light of a skin lamp, was a younger, skinnier Aarurrh chick, braiding her long mane as if there were nobody in the tent but herself. One-Eye didn’t like this much and got pretty stiff. He made some sort of demand, which she pointedly ignored. He repeated it, roaring, and she at last consented to look around.
I guess she was the goods as far as Aarurrh went; a face like a naughty kitten under a peek-a-boo fringe of dreads, a slim upper torso, and four perky breasts. One-Eye quivered beside me. Kitten played snooty to the limit. She gave us a lazy, half-lidded once over, then looked past us to where Queenie was squeezing Sai’s muscles and checking his teeth and his head wound. I thought I saw an evil little look in Kitten’s eye, and then she squealed like a school girl at a Justin Beiber concert and sprang to her feet. She rushed across the tent, snatched Sai off the ground as easy as you’d pick up a sack of groceries, and crushed him to her.
One-Eye seemed to think this wasn’t part of the plan at all. He tried to get Sai away from her, pointing at me and then at Queenie. Kitten turned her hindquarters on him and started cooing to Sai and smoothing his hair and checking out his clothes like he was a new Barbie. One-Eye began complaining to Queenie. She just shrugged, as if to say, “Girls will be girls.”
One-Eye glared at Kitten, but she was done with him. Growling, he stalked to the tent flap and threw it open. Standing right outside with a hand up like he was about to come in was a young, handsome—at least by giant, tiger-headed monster standards—Aarurrh. I could tell he was heart-throb material: trim, strong, and half a head taller than One-Eye. He had a face like the MGM lion and a swoop of dreadlocks that hung down over his big, brown eyes and made him look shy and sweet. Hell, if I’d been an Aarurrh, I’d have let him take me to the spring dance.
His magic wasn’t working on One-Eye. With a roar like a Harley at full throttle, One-Eye decked Handsome with a pair of simultaneous lefts. Handsome staggered, yelping. I backed up, expecting the fur to start flying, but instead of fighting back, Handsome went down on all fours and bowed his head.
One-Eye growled and and cuffed him on the ear, then started dragging him off by the dreadlocks.
Kitten cried out and started forward, but Queenie held her back. One-Eye stopped and roared something over his shoulder that was definitely a threat, then headed off, Handsome in tow. The kid looked back and exchanged forlorn looks with Kitten as the tent flap swung shut, then Kitten exploded into tears and threw herself onto her straw bed, Sai flopping over her arm like a Raggedy Andy with half the sawdust missing.
Queenie hugged Kitten with a couple of arms and stroked her with the rest, but she didn’t spend too long on it. I got the feeling this happened a lot.
I was beginning to think that everybody had forgot about me and that it might be time for a quick sneak out the door, Sai or no Sai, when Queenie turned and beckoned to me with a paw and a grin. I hesitated. Was I here to be a slave or a pet or lunch? I wanted to pick “none of the above.” Queenie snagged me with a long arm and pulled me close. She started pinching my arms and both of my legs all at once. You know how I feel about being manhandled. I pushed one of her huge hands away with my little one. She laughed, impressed. She spoke the purple guys’ language worse than One-Eye. “Rmmm. Damn strong, hin? Good. Get much work from you...”
Great. Warm, friendly, but still a slave driver.
***
Slave driver wasn’t just a figure of speech, neither. Half an hour later I was out on the prairie digging in the dirt like I was on an Alabama chain gang.
Sai wasn’t with me. Queenie’d had another look at his head wound, smeared some green muck on it and put him to bed on a pile of straw out behind her tent. I guess they didn’t get slaves so often that they could afford to let one die on them.
No spa treatment for me. After a five-minute breakfast of some meat I prayed wasn’t breast of purple guy, and a bitter lump of some kind of grain mash, I was trudging through the camp in a line of slaves and Aarurrh females. I checked out the other slaves. All purple guys like Sai. They didn’t check me out. They just stared straight ahead, glassy-eyed.
This time I was awake enough to case the camp, and came to the conclusion that Sai and me were gonna have our work cut out for us when it came time to escape. Almost every Aarurrh male I saw was a warrior. Even the kids were armed, and the population of the camp looked close to a thousand. It filled a wide section of the canyon all the way to both sheer walls. I liked those walls. I didn’t figure the Aarurrh for good climbers, even with all those arms. Their back ends were just too heavy. With my new leaping ability, I could probably scale those walls like they were so many ladders. But what about Sai? Maybe with a rope. Maybe not even then. Okay then, plan B, whatever that was.
The little creek cut the camp in half. We walked beside it, heading upstream. There were a couple narrow bridges scattered along it, even though the creek was slow and shallow enough that a kid could have waded through it. Maybe the Aarurrh didn’t like getting their fur wet. Maybe that was another way out.
The only easy way up to the prairie was the trail we’d come down when they brought us in. Beyond that the canyon walls narrowed down until they were no wider than the stream. They might have opened up further on, but the canyon took a left turn about a quarter mile up and I couldn’t see past it. I’d have to try to sneak out and go exploring later.
As we slogged up the trail Queenie introduced herself and Kitten. “I Hranan of Hirrarah tribe. That my daughter, Murrah. You say Hur-Hranan and Hur-Murrah when speak, hin?”
I nodded. “Hur-Hranan. Hur-Murrah. Got it. I’m Jane...”
She stopped me with a laugh and a cuff on the shoulder that was like being hit with a sofa. “That not your name. You got only two name: ‘good girl’ and ‘bad girl,’ hin?”
I ground my teeth. “Yeah, I hin alright.” I don’t deal with authority real well. If somebody tells me I gotta go one way, I want to go the other way, just on principle, but all my juvie time, prison time, and my stint in the rangers, and all the beatings, ass-kickings, and “disciplinary measures” that went along with ’em, have taught me that fighting back don’t get you nothing but more lumps and more supervision. If you keep your head down and your eyes open, sooner or later they’re going to forget about you and let down their guard. You just gotta be patient and not ruin everything by tearing some big bitch’s head off with your bare hands.
I rubbed my shoulder and followed along with the other slaves like a “good girl.”
***
The work was boring and backbreaking, but nothing I couldn’t handle. That first day we dug for tubers under the blue grass. They were fat black things, like a cross between a carrot and an eggplant, but they smelled like garlic and dirt. The Aarurrh chicks worked right along with us slaves, doing the same work, but not as much of it. We dug with sharp sticks—the Aarurrh chicks used their claws—wherever we found a little blue plant with circular leaves, prying the thing out of the ground, knocking the dirt off of it and tossing it in a sack. Thrilling.
There were forty or so Aarurrh women, and only about fifteen slaves. I got the idea that slaves were quite the status symbol. Most women didn’t have them. Queenie had her nose in the air like a Beverly Hills mom with a new Mercedes SUV.
As the day went on I tried to talk to my fellow slaves. They were all purple-skins, almost all male, all burned a leathery maroon, and as dull-eyed as cows, but more than half of them spoke languages my translator didn’t understand. I don’t know why I was surprised. Not everybody on Earth speaks English, do they?
When I finally found a guy who spoke Sai’s language he shoved me away. “Quiet! Speak not!”
“What? Why?”
“Foolish woman, we are not allowed to speak.”
“But you gotta help me. I gotta get out of here. Where are we? Where’s the nearest...”
Something clobbered me on the back of the head. I hit the ground eight feet away and looked up, my eyes going in and out of focus.
Queenie was scowling down at me. “Bad girl.”
Another Aarurrh mama started slapping around the guy I’d talked to. He squealed for mercy.
For the rest of the day all the other slaves gave me dirty looks.
***
The day wasn’t done when we got back home. Queenie showed me how to kebab some of the tubers we’d dug that day, and how to chop up meat with a cooking blade shaped like half a circle. It looked a bit like an Eskimo’s chopper. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that the meat had feathers on it. Giant bird I could stomach. I’ve had worse chow. Giant bird tasted like a combination of wild duck and alligator—yes I’ve had gator; I grew up in Florida—and once the tubers cooked up they tasted a little more like garlic and a little less like dirt.
After dinner Queenie sent me down to the river to rinse off the skewers and the chopper. There were no plates, they just chewed everything right off the kebabs. I thought she was crazy sending me off on my own like that, and armed with blades and pointy pieces of metal no less. What was she thinking? All I had to do was slip into the river, float downstream ’til I was below the camp, climb out of the canyon and...
And go where?
I sighed. I finished cleaning the skewers and chopper and walked back to Queenie’s tent.
My bed was the same pile of straw Queenie had laid Sai on. I flopped down beside him, more wiped out than I’d been since boot camp. All I wanted to do was close my eyes, but first I checked Sai’s wound. Queenie’s goop seemed to be working. The edges of the cut were starting to knit together and there was no redness or puss.
Sai opened his eyes. “We still live?” He almost sounded disappointed.
“You’re doin’ fine, Sai. You’ll be up and around in no time.”
He was less than thrilled. He closed his eyes again. I should have let him sleep, but I had a question. “Sai, what’s up with these furry fucks, anyway? Why do they hate your guys so much? What did you ever do to them?”
He sighed. “The myths of the Aarurrh tell them that they once ruled all of Waar, until the Tae stole it from them and forced them to live in the wastelands.”
“The Tae?”
“The Tae. My people.” He closed his eyes again. “The Aarurrh religion is pure superstition of course. We Tae have been here since the Seven created the world and placed us upon it to serve as their custodians.”
“Custodians? You gotta mop the floors and fix the plumbing?”
“Pardon?”
“Nothin’. Never mind. Just bein’ a jerk.”
Sai lay back, but I had something else on my mind. I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Listen, Sai, I know you ain’t feelin’ so good right now, but shouldn’t we be thinkin’ about bustin’ outta this joint and hightailin’ it after your fiancée? You got a wedding to stop.”
He shook his head without opening his eyes. “There is no escape from the Aarurrh. It is hopeless. We are dead.”
“No escape? What are you talkin’ about? We’re not even chained up. We get down to that creek, I can get us up to the plains in twenty minutes. As long as you know your way home from there...”
“Unfortunately, I do not.” He opened his eyes and looked directly at me for the first time since we were taken. “Mistress Jae-En, your enthusiasm is admirable, but useless. Even if I did know my way home we would not survive the journey. If by some miracle we managed to elude the Aarurrh, who are only the greatest trackers and hunters on Waar, we would not escape the savage packs of Shikes, capable of stripping us to our bones in the blink of an eye, nor the dreadful Vurlak, the jaw of which can crush stone, nor the wild Skelsha, which can—-”
“Okay okay okay. I get the picture. But does that mean you’re just going to give up? Are you gonna let that four-armed teenybopper play dollies with you ’til you grow old and die?”
Sai shuddered. “No. That I will not do. I am praying to the Seven for the courage to find a way out. An honorable man would rather die than submit to such indignities.”
I squeezed his shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”
I lay back, feeling better. Sure, Sai said it was impossible, but at least he wasn’t giving up. That was half the battle. If I had to drag him around like a sack of potatoes we’d get nowhere fast.
There were two moons overhead. Well, if nothing else was going to convince me this wasn’t all some big prank Steven Spielberg had decided to pull on me, that would. I don’t care how big your special effects budget is, nobody launches another moon just to make a fool out of some big, dumb biker chick. There was a fat blue moon peeking over the sawtooth skyline of the tents, and a little bright one that zipped across the sky so fast you could see it move. They gave everything around me two shadows. Kind of pretty, but all I could think was that all that light made making a break for it that much harder.
Beyond the moons were stars I’d never seen. Riding cross country on my bike and sleeping rough all those years, I’d gotten pretty good at picking out the constellations. They were all gone. I got hit with another wave of homesickness. Not even the stars were right. Where was I? Where was Earth? I started wondering if any of those little pinpricks out there was the Sun. My sun. Man, I sure went from happy to depressed awful fast, huh? Being stranded on another planet’ll do that to you.
***
From then on things slipped into a routine; not exactly comfortable or happy, but not torture either, at least not for me. Queenie gave Sai about three days to get back on his feet. After that we’d either go up to the plains to dig for the tubers, or along the creek upstream from the camp to hunt in the shallows and under rocks for snails with finned shells and emerald green crawdad things.
The crawdads only had four legs. I began to notice that all the bugs, from winged biters to crawly collectors to hopping blood-suckers, had only four legs. Maybe One-Eye wasn’t just being an asshole when he called me and Sai insects.
Once I got into the rhythm of the life I actually didn’t mind it. I’ve always been more physical than mental, and heavy labor makes me feel useful. It toughened me up too. They didn’t let us wear anything more than loincloths—just another way to remind us we were animals—so after a bad week of pink peeling, I ended up covered in so many freckles I looked like a drop-cloth—which is as close as I ever come to getting a tan. After two weeks, I’d built up and thinned down enough that you could see my abs and biceps, even when I wasn’t flexing. I felt better and stronger than I had in years. I even stopped craving Marlboros, mostly.
But I made sure I didn’t show my true strength. I held back; digging and lifting just a little bit more than the others, just enough for Queenie to appreciate me, but not enough for anyone to take me for a threat. I was a “good girl” and a happy little worker, and I kept an eye out for the main chance.
Sai didn’t take to it like I did. Even though physically he recovered pretty quickly, mentally he was about as lively as a sloth with a barbiturate problem.
After what he’d said I kept expecting him to snap out of it, but he never did. I didn’t know what to think. Was he playing possum like me? If he was, he had an Oscar coming his way. He stumbled through each day in a sleepwalk fog, shuffling and staring at his feet and harvesting about half what the rest of us did. Not that he was allowed to work that much anyway. Kitten, who seemed to spend more time gossiping with her girlfriends than she did working, led him around like a lap dog, petting him, dressing him up in cast-offs that must have come from other slaves, both male and female, tying colorful strings and ribbons in his hair. He took it all with the same rag doll stupor he showed for everything else. He didn’t eat. He didn’t clean himself. He hardly noticed when I tried to cheer him up.
The only thing that woke him up was once when Kitten tried to take off this thin silver chain he wore around his waist. It had a medallion dangling from it that I hadn’t noticed before, probably because he kept it tucked down in his loincloth. When she grabbed it he started fighting like a wild animal. She decked him when he chomped down on her thumb and threw him into a corner, but she let him keep the chain.
I helped him up. “What was that all about?”
“She tried to take my Balurra. ’Tis the token of a man’s love for his lady. He makes it with his own hands in the shape of her family crest, and only reveals it to his beloved or at his death.”
I got a look at it before he put it away. It was a silver circle with a design of green and black diamonds inside. I’d seen the same mark inlaid on some of the luggage from Sai’s coach. Must have been his sweetheart’s stuff.
***
After a while I noticed that there were some intra-camp rivalries going on. There was another clique of Aarurrh chicks who gave our gang the cold shoulder. We’d always make sure we did our gathering as far from them as possible. Queenie sneered at them, “They from One-Eye’s clan. Too good to dig ’cause their men best hunters. Hrrn! They steal kills from other men.”
“So how come nobody says something, Hur-Hranan?”
“Best hunters protect chief. Nobody can talk to him.”
Yup, just like trying to see the boss when his secretary hates you. Not gonna happen.
One-Eye’s clan had most of the top spots in the tribe, and lorded it over everybody. One-Eye was the worst. We used to pass him and his men most mornings on the way out of camp. He always gave Handsome, who was part of his squad, the shit detail, sometimes literally. The Aarurrh used the stream as one big combined dumpster and toilet, and sometimes they threw in so much stuff that somebody had to go dredge it out. Handsome was always the guy, and One-Eye made sure to let Kitten see. It was a funny way to try to impress her, but hell, I’d seen bikers pull the same shit back home.
One day after Kitten had been moping all morning, I asked Queenie why she didn’t dump One-Eye’s ass for good. Queenie grunted, angry. “Can’t do. Chief give her to Hruthar.” Hruthar was One-Eye’s real name. “They join at pregnant moon festival, next moon. Too soon.”
“The chief’s giving her to Hruthar, Hur-Hranan? You don’t get a say in it?”
She sighed. “When I girl, I leave Hirrarah tribe and join warrior from Yurrahah tribe. Yurrahah wiped out by Unrarach Clan and my man die, so I come back here. But too old to have babies now. No use they say. Won’t feed me. Har! I best digger here, but they want warriors. Chief say he take me back if I promise daughter to him to do what he want. I got no place to go so I say okay.” She ripped a tuber out of the ground, angry. “When cheater Hruthar make top man, chief promise Murrah to him when she joining age. Now she is.”
Man, and I thought chicks had it tough back home. I saw how One-Eye treated Kitten. I couldn’t see him changing when they tied the knot. I felt sorry for her and Queenie. But then something happened that made me put their troubles on the back burner.
***
One night Queenie and Kitten left us alone at the tent to go do some secret tribal women stuff. No slaves allowed. Sai was his usual talkative self, so I’d gone down to the creek to rinse the grain for the next day’s breakfast. When I got back to the tent Sai was teetering on top of Queenie’s cooking tripod, the tallest piece of furniture in the tent. Getting up there must have been the most athletic thing he’d done since we got here.
“Sai? What the hell...” Then I noticed the rope around his neck, knotted to one of the tent’s cross poles. “Sai! Don’t!”
He looked down at me. The smeared mess of Kitten’s last rouge and eye make-up experiment made him look like an abused doll. “At last I find hope of escape.”
And with that he pitched forward, tipping over the cooking tripod and falling free. The rope jerked tight and swung as he reached its limit. The whole tent shook.
“Sai!” I leaped up to the cross pole and tore at the knot as Sai made hideous dying fish noises below me. Thank god he hadn’t dropped far enough to break his neck, but if I didn’t untie that knot he was going to choke to death.
It was too tight, and my fingernails were worn to the quick from digging tubers. I looked around, desperate. Queenie’s cooking blade hung “out of reach” on the center pole just below my feet. I snatched it up and chopped down on the knot. The blade bit through the rope and Sai hit the ground like a sack of shark bait. I was next to him in a second, digging my finger under the rope and tugging it lose none too gently. “You stupid butt-smack! What the fuck do you think you were doing?”
It took a minute for him to stop retching enough to answer. When he did it wasn’t to thank me. “How dare you? After shaming myself for these long days, too much the coward to do what must be done, I finally summon the strength and do the deed, and... and you ruin it!”
“Ruin it? I saved your life!” Then it hit me. “Wait a minute. Hope of escape? Is this what you meant by ‘finding a way out?’ You sorry-ass loser!”
He pouted. “And now you make it doubly hard. Now that I know the pain and fear of it first hand, how much more difficult will it be to find the courage a second time?”
I’m sorry to say I bitch-slapped him. Somebody had to. “You whiny little puke. You think you’re being brave by committing suicide? All that crap about honor and courage. You’re just giving up. Sure your life sucks right now, but you’re alive. You’ve got all your arms and legs. They work. As long as you’ve got all that there’s still a chance.”
Sai tried to push me away. I grabbed his jaw and forced him to look at me. “Can you save your fiancée from that dumb jock when you’re dead? Can you fix things with your dad? And what about me? You’re gonna leave me here to fend for myself?”
He flushed at that, turning from lavender to magenta. “Mistress Jae-En, I am ashamed that an outlander should show me the path of honor. You are correct. I have strayed, forgetting in my misery your plight and that of my beloved Wen-Jhai. Ending my own wretched life is a luxury I can not indulge in until I have done my all to deliver you both from your fates. I crave your forgiveness.”
Man, I hated when he got all gushy on me. “Forget it.”
From outside the tent we heard Queenie’s alto purr and Kitten’s soprano whine. They were coming back. I leaped up.
“Quick! The hibachi!” Good thing I pointed too. I had a tendency to mix my old dictionary with my new one when I got excited and half the time Sai didn’t know what I was talking about. He righted the cooking tripod as I shoved the rope under a trunk and leaped for the cross pole, yanked the chopper out of the wood, hung it back on its hook, and was down again sweeping the rug with a straw broom just as the tent flap started to open.
Sai, in a flash of inspiration that made me hope he’d gotten over his suicidal funk, tied one of kitten’s brightly colored scarves over the raw rope marks on his neck. It make him look like a sixties stereotype of an interior decorator, but it hid the evidence. Queenie and Kitten were busy talking and paid even less attention to us than usual. Probably more Hatfield and McCoy stuff.
After we finished making and serving our mistresses their vittles and cleaning up, we were finally allowed to lie down on our straw to sleep.
Sai whispered in my ear, “Again I apologize, Mistress Jae-En. I have been so long absorbed in my own despair that I have ignored you. Have you a plan?”
I hated to disappoint him. “Sorry, Sai, not yet. But stay strong and stay ready. Something will happen.”
And something did.