World Warden, page 16
There was a choked sound in the night, and it took Oscar a moment to realize that the voice he heard now was Ute’s. She had started crying.
“We are upsetting her,” Laurie said, also placing her hand on one of Ute’s shoulders. “It is best not to remind her of—”
“My father?” Samantha interrupted, raising her voice for the first time. Nearby, Ute sniffled. “He was brave. He tried to defend his family! And Jörgen—”
“No,” Laurie cut in, and her voice had the rough, cold edge of an icicle. “You do not get to talk about him.”
“He was my brother,” Samantha retorted, her voice slick with rage.
“And he listened to you, and he will never see his own child,” Laurie replied in kind. “Do not ever bring up his name in my presence. Do you understand?”
Samantha stood up, hands balled into fists, shoulders held wide and threatening. “He would have wanted us to fight. He would have wanted his child—my niece or nephew—to be born free.”
“And where is he now, Sam?” Laurie asked, climbing to her feet as well. “Where is he? Do you want to end up like him? Or worse, do you want to end up like your—”
Oscar’s foot crunched on a pebble as he shifted his weight, and the two women fell silent at once. Panicking, Oscar rushed into the house, climbed up the stairs to the attic, and shut the trapdoor behind him. He waited, crouched in the darkness, his heart pounding in his chest. He was scared, but he was not sure of what. He only knew that he had definitely heard something he was not supposed to. He had not understood half of the conversation, but the other half was terrifying.
Minutes crawled by, but no one came to reprimand him or drag him back to his cell. Slowly, he relaxed. When his link showed that it was 1:00 a.m., he undressed and slipped back into bed. Oscar thought he would not be able to sleep, but he had underestimated how tired he was. He drifted off quickly once again and was only woken up by the beeping of his alarm at sunrise the next morning.
Almost on cue, the trapdoor to his room creaked. Oscar sat up in bed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and he had just finished putting on his new pair of pants when Samantha came in.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked him.
“Hold on a sec. Let me—”
“I will be outside. You have five minutes.”
She did not give him time to answer, and Oscar hurried, getting dressed as fast as he could. He then climbed down to the hallway below his room. Samantha was not there, so he went down to ground level and saw she was standing by the kitchen counter, eating something green and purple from a bowl.
“Eat,” she said, gesturing to the container. “It might be a while before we eat again, and you will need your energy.”
“Thanks,” Oscar replied, approaching slowly. He wondered where the other women were.
“If you are thirsty, there is water over there.”
“Right. Um, where we are going, exactly? And for how long?”
“We should be back before sundown,” Samantha told him as she ate. “We will be heading east, beyond the Field of Thorns. We should be able to gather some tubers and tari fruit, which is in season.”
“Is that far?”
“Walking, yes. About forty kilometers.”
“Forty kilometers?” Oscar echoed. “That’s going to take forever!”
“It would if we were going to walk there. But we are not,” Samantha added cryptically. Oscar considered asking more questions, but he had slept through dinner the day before, and the food looked tantalizing, so he ate instead. After they were both done, Samantha led him outside.
“What now?” Oscar asked as he put on his rather uncomfortable dress shoes.
“You carry this,” Samantha said, tossing him a big canvas bag, which he discovered he could wear as a backpack. “And follow me.”
She started walking due west toward the cliffs that overlooked the ocean. The golden light of early morning cast long shadows ahead of them that swayed in time to their footsteps as they crunched on loose pebbles. The world was quiet around them. A fresh breeze carried the faint smell of the sea, and Oscar found himself breathing it in and enjoying the walk in spite of everything. This early in the day, it appeared as though Samantha and he were the only ones around, and it was peaceful. Even the volcano, still towering off to the right, appeared less menacing at the beginning of a new day.
“It is rude to eavesdrop, you know,” Samantha said out of the blue. She was walking next to him on his left, and she did not look at him as she spoke.
Oscar’s face heated with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, really. I, er….” He hesitated, looking for an excuse, but decided against it. “I shouldn’t have done that. I apologize.”
Samantha nodded slowly. “I accept your apology. I assume you have many questions.”
“So many!” Oscar conceded, relief washing over him. “For example, why—”
Samantha raised her hand, indicating he should be quiet. “Accepting your apology does not mean I give you permission to ask me questions. I barely know you, male. For now, be thankful you are not in that cell anymore. Try to be useful during this foraging trip. If you work well, I will think about sharing more information with you.”
“Okay, fair. Just, um…. Samantha?”
“Yes?”
“Didn’t you say we were going east?”
“That is correct.”
“Then why are we going to the edge of those cliffs? That’s the opposite of east.”
Samantha glanced at him, and for the very first time since he had known her, Oscar saw her face break out in a brief one-sided grin. “I also said we would not be walking.”
She stopped a few meters away from the edge of the cliffs, and Oscar followed suit. For a few moments she was silent, almost as if listening for something.
Then she whistled. Loudly. It was a note that went up, then down, and then back up, to the very limits of what Oscar thought a human could make. He jumped at the sound, startled. Up to this point, he’d had the distinct impression that the women avoided being loud at all costs, almost as if they did not want to draw attention to themselves.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
He received no response, and for a few seconds all he did was stand there awkwardly, looking at Samantha, wondering if perhaps she had gone crazy or something.
Then he heard it. The sound of flapping wings.
“Something’s coming!” Oscar whispered urgently, chills crawling up his spine. “We have to hide! What if it’s her?”
“It is not her.”
“But… but…,” Oscar stammered, looking everywhere for the source of the sound. The skies were clear, and the sound of flapping seemed to be coming from below them.
Oscar stepped forward until he could see over the edge of the cliff.
He screamed and backed away so fast that he tripped and fell on his bum. Even as he grimaced with the pain of the fall, his eyes widened in shock as two enormous cobalt wings appeared over the edge of the cliff, swiftly followed by the rest of the slender, serpent-like body of a male Flyer wurl.
He scooted away from the edge, but he knew he would never be able to get away in time. His eyes swept over the muscular frame of the creature, from its incredibly long tail to its four legs ending in deadly azure claws. He stared at membranous wings, crisscrossed by indigo veins, that seemed to blot out half the sky, and of course the aerodynamic angular head. The creature’s eye cluster gleamed in the morning sun, bloodred and terrifying. All three of his eyes were focused on Oscar. A Flyer had found him.
Oscar’s mind flashed back to the day of the storm. The fear from that day came roaring back, and he suddenly found he could not move. His body seized up, and he was left to watch, powerless, as the wurl approached from above.
And went past him.
Mouth agape in disbelief, Oscar followed the wurl with his eyes as he landed gracefully a few meters away and folded his wings into his body with a smooth, almost liquid, motion. His scales looked like sapphires as they reflected the light of the sun, and he wove across the ground with surprising speed, heading straight to where Samantha was standing.
“Look out!” Oscar yelled, jumping to his feet. It was too late, however. The wurl had reached Samantha.
“Do not be afraid,” she said to Oscar. She raised her hand and placed it on the side of the head of the male wurl, who held perfectly still and allowed her to touch him.
“Are you petting him?” Oscar asked, disbelieving.
As if in response to the question, the wurl’s eyes flashed briefly. He was still scary, but the flash was accompanied by something similar to a croon coming from the throat of the large being.
“I missed you too,” Samantha whispered. Oscar watched, mouth still agape, as she closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the head of the wurl with no fear whatsoever.
“I… um….” Oscar tried to say something, but he had too many questions at once.
After a couple of seconds Samantha opened her eyes and looked at him. Unnervingly, the wurl did the same thing. He towered above her, but Samantha projected more strength, oddly. It was almost as if she were the hunter and the wurl her hound.
“This is Doran,” she said to Oscar. “He is the strongest male in Dresde’s brood, and as such he had the privilege to mate with her. He has been my companion for a long time.”
Oscar glanced from Samantha to Doran. Then again to Samantha. And again to Doran.
“Nice to… meet you?” he ventured. He had no idea how to introduce himself to a wurl. “I’m Oscar.”
Doran lowered his head and approached until he was standing very close. Oscar stood as still as he could while Doran examined him, eyeing him from several directions and even walking a full circle around him once. By the time Doran was done and returned to Samantha, Oscar was drenched in cold sweat.
“What do you think?” Samantha asked Doran.
The male wurl huffed.
“Good enough.”
“A-are you for real?” Oscar stammered at last, finally able to break out of his spellbound silence.
“What do you mean?”
“I… okay. Maybe I didn’t mention this, but back where I’m from, wurl are scary. The stuff of nightmares. They prowl around in the dark, and they will kill you if you’re not careful. Well, not so much after what Eli did, but still. You get the idea. And these ones can fly!”
“So?” Samantha asked, raising both eyebrows.
“So? You’re telling me you’re friends with… with Doran? He doesn’t want to kill you? He doesn’t want to eat you?”
“No,” she answered simply. “He is a friend.”
“But,” Oscar protested, gesturing at the volcano with his thumb, “you know.”
Samantha shrugged. “Wurl, as you call them, have personalities. She might be evil, but that does not mean the males in her brood are the same.”
“But they attacked my home!” Oscar protested, and his own sudden anger surprised him. “They came in the storm! They descended….”
Doran growled, and a faint smell of burning rock reached Oscar’s nostrils.
“I was also there, as you might recall,” Samantha said with a scowl. “Did I also attack your home?”
“You… she made you, didn’t she? That’s why you were there. You didn’t have a choice!”
“Exactly,” Samantha countered, looking at Doran. “Exactly.”
“You mean… oh,” Oscar said. “She made him go too.”
“They cannot disobey her, not directly. But that does not mean they like what she does.”
Oscar took a few seconds to process the information. “Wow, I had never thought about it like that.”
“Well, now you have. Now come on, we are wasting valuable daylight. It is time we left on the foraging trip.”
“You said we’re not walking.”
“Correct.”
“So that means…,” Oscar started to say, looking at Doran and at his wings, which he was beginning to unfurl. “Oh. No. No, no, no. No way.”
“Yes. Put these on,” Samantha told him, tossing him a small object.
Oscar caught it. “Goggles?”
“Trust me, you do not want an insect hitting you in the eye when we fly. No need to worry. Doran will fly low so a full helmet will not be necessary. Now hurry. You will sit behind me and hold on tight.”
“Can’t I just walk?” Oscar asked in a small voice.
“No. Today you and I will fly.”
Oscar watched as Doran stooped low to allow Samantha to climb onto his back. She jumped up and settled on a saddle strapped ahead of where his wings met his body. The wurl then looked at Oscar and gave him a soft growl.
“Okay,” Oscar said, mostly to himself. He put the goggles on and adjusted the strap so they fit snugly. “Okay. I already did this once, though I was sort of dangly that time. I can do this. I can do this.”
“Time is ticking.”
Oscar clapped his hands, a gesture that appeared to surprise Doran, who raised his head. Oscar nearly lost his nerve at the sudden motion. He simply wasn’t used to looking at wurl from so close without needing to fear for his life. Every single instinct in his body told him to run, and it took everything he had to walk forward until he was standing next to Doran.
He reached out gingerly and placed his hand on his scales.
They were warm. Hot, even. Oscar was surprised, and he realized that he had half expected Doran to be cold and slimy, but it was the opposite. The cobalt scales were warm to the touch, hard yet surprisingly yielding, almost like the composite polymer the colony used to make the armor for Patrol officers.
“Just go,” Oscar whispered, trying to encourage himself. He grabbed on to Doran and jumped up. “Yaaah!”
He didn’t jump far enough, and he bumped his knee against Doran’s wing. The motion destabilized him, and he lost his balance. He crashed down to the ground in a puff of dust. Thankfully, the canvas bag on his back cushioned the impact enough that only his pride was wounded. His shoulder did hurt, though.
Samantha looked down on him and tilted her head slightly to the side. “Are all males that clumsy where you come from?”
“Sorry,” Oscar grumbled, standing up again while trying to pat the dust away from his clothes. “I’m going to try again, okay? Doran, please don’t eat me.”
Now slightly more emboldened, since Doran hadn’t attacked him, Oscar tried again and managed to jump up behind Samantha’s saddle and steady himself.
“Hold on to my waist,” she told him.
Oscar hesitated for a second. He hadn’t realized how slender Samantha was until then. “Uh….”
The next instant, Oscar felt the muscles of Doran’s back ripple, and the wurl launched himself into the sky.
“Aaaah!” Oscar yelled, holding tight to Samantha in a heartbeat. “I’m going to fall!”
“Hold on tight!” Samantha yelled back. “And open your eyes, in case you are closing them. The view is worth it.”
Oscar opened his eyes, since he had been indeed clenching them shut, but he immediately closed them again when Doran rose higher into the sky. The motion got Oscar in the pit of his stomach, a sensation that was oddly like falling while never really reaching the ground. With every flap of Doran’s powerful wings, Oscar felt himself rising. It brought unpleasant memories of when Dresde had carried him, but the sensations this time were different. He was not in pain. The wind wasn’t howling in his face. He could breathe.
Slowly, Oscar opened his eyes one more time.
He gasped.
They were very high up. Oscar was assaulted by vertigo at seeing that the cliffs now looked small and Samantha’s home was a tiny square almost immediately below them.
“Oh,” he said softly. “Oh no.”
Samantha moved her right leg ever so slightly, and Doran responded to the motion by turning to face the rising sun. Oscar panicked again and held tight, using his legs as well as his arms to try and anchor himself. The fact that he slid just a bit when Doran turned scared him even more. He had read about the roller coasters of Earth, and he had always wondered what it would have been like to ride one.
Now he knew, and he did not like it one bit.
“Doran, go!” Samantha shouted, and Oscar was slightly taken aback at the almost joyful tone in her voice.
Doran roared in response, opened his wings to their fullest extent, and sped forward like a missile through the wind.
The landscape below blurred by. Oscar decided to avoid looking down because all it did was scare him even more and make him dizzy, and he did not want to throw up if he could help it. Instead he looked straight ahead, past Samantha’s whipping braid, and tried to focus on a cloud or something that would not move so fast or so much. It helped, in fact, and after a few minutes he was able to relax more. Doran was flying fast, but his motion was quite steady. Oscar no longer felt like he would slide down to his death at any moment.
“That is the Field of Thorns,” Samantha shouted. The wind whipped away her words, but Oscar was able to understand her. “Below us!”
Oscar told himself that he wasn’t going to look down, but curiosity got the best of him and he did.
He was pleasantly surprised to find that he did not feel like throwing up anymore. Doran slowed down as well, and Oscar was able to see the place that Samantha called the Field of Thorns. It was a crater-like chasm, enormous, fully overgrown by thick brambles that all ended in glassy thorns that reflected the light of the morning sun like miniature prisms. The brambles themselves were completely black, and the result was a mesmerizing and beautiful interplay of every color in the visible spectrum, swathes of vibrant color splashed onto a black canvas. The place looked almost like a work of art, and Oscar was sorry to leave it behind a few minutes later.
“It was beautiful!” he shouted.
“We can go there later today if we finish early!” Samantha yelled. “We are headed over there. Hold on again!”
Oscar did, and not a moment too soon. Although Samantha had not issued a verbal command, Doran appeared to know where Samantha wanted him to land, because he tipped his body forward and began to descend in long, easy spirals. The dizziness came back, and Oscar gritted his teeth and closed his eyes until a gentle thud told him they were back on solid ground.
