Reluctant Mates - 21 Paranormal Romance Stories (Werewolf, Vampire, Minotaur and Monster collection) (23 page)

“Don’t know... where Jaraka. Don’t know where went Makel, Krizik, Kel.”

He sucked his teeth again.

“Kalak,” I said, “why are their names so similar? To yours, I mean?” I just couldn’t manage to kill off that whole Anthropology degree.

“Krizik and Kel my oldest sons. Krizik blood son. Kel youngest, came from a war. Adopted into my Jaraka. Take my first sound. Krizik son of Kalak, Kel son of Kalak. Makel is slave from other tribe. Other tribe here.” He gazed out over the grave-filled depression, sweat and sex still trickling down his body. The furry hair marking his lower torso matted with my juice. I just couldn’t keep my eyes off him.

“Why are they alive? I mean, you said all the children, all the women, were dead. Why aren’t they?”

He chuckled a rueful sound full of wrath. I’d never heard anything like that laugh.

“Were gone. Exchanged to Makel’s tribe. When man child grow first braid,” he tugged on the long, silver braid running down behind one ear for emphasis, “he go. Go to other tribe. Never come back.”

“Then, why...” I began before he cut me off with a hand on my shoulder.

“Come back, come back.” His voice took on a far-off melancholy. “Come back because dead. Other tribe all dead, put here.” Kalak swept his hand over the scene laid out in front of us. “Put here with all other honored ancestor. Here so can rest.”

“How many are there? Like you, I mean? How many tribes?”

He scratched his chin. “Many. Too much to count tribes. Before. Now, three. And one run away. Before all the dying, we never saw a...” He poked me in the chest. “Never saw a Gina. Or the hairless man who taught your words. We lived where want lived. Had fights, no war. Had sickness but never...” he trailed off, his voice becoming thick.

Kalak cleared his throat.

“Met hairless man, took... gifts... then die. My sons and Makel, they brought back wagon full of dead. Say hairless man brought same things to them. Some... foods?” I nodded. “Foods. We eat, women die. Baby die.”

The guide, whoever he was. The hairless man. He was the only person that had, as far as I know, ever seen Kalak and his people. That had to be...

I couldn’t think about that anymore. Kalak had decided that I was supposed to be some kind of savior for his people. I was going to help him bring them back from the brink of death. But to think it was our carelessness, our greed and our desire to take advantage of them in the first place that caused all the problems. I just couldn’t do that.

I had no idea what to say. Suddenly the thought appeared to me that the man, the hairless man as Kalak called him, was one-and-the-same who gave us the little trinkets we handed over to Kalak and his group when we came across them.
What were those bundles? Did we...

“Then Gina come. Gina and two hairless man. They run, you stay.”

I had to laugh, “Well, I ran too, at first.”

“You play like Harot No run. Play.” A strange, fond smile crept across Kalak’s lips. Then a tear spilled down his cheek and got lost in his beard.

“Harot?”

He nodded. “Krizik, Kel, Harot mother to them. She run from Kalak, just like Gina.” His longing smile returned and his half-savage eyes misted. I could not believe what I was seeing. 

He shook his head, like a lion does when sleepy and trying to pretend otherwise.

“She – Harot – does not run now. She rests.”

I could not help but put my arm around the tree trunk that was Kalak’s waist. This pain, this agony, and all his thoughts were of saving his people.

“I’m sorry, Kalak, I had no idea. I...”

He shook his mighty head again. And then cocked his head to one side and squinted against the still-rising sun. I had no hope of seeing whatever he noticed, so I looked back to the forest. I noticed his shadow. Long, inky and black. Peaceful in a strange way. Calm.

“No worry. She rest now. She asleep. Kalak join her someday. Maybe take Gina to meet. Harot happy.”

I couldn’t help but smile. He was at peace, as was she. That’s all anyone can ask, I thought.

A rustle of leaves caught my attention and I tried to make out the source of the commotion. I tugged Kalak’s hand.

The rustling grew louder. Whatever it was - a deer or something, I assumed – was getting closer to the clearing.

“Kalak,” I said, tugging at him again, “something’s coming.”

Three – Slave of the Beastmen

––––––––

“G
ina!”

“Gina!” Kalak shook my shoulder, gently at first. “Gina!”

My eyes opened just enough to see the weary face of Kalak, chief of the beastmen, my lover, inches away. Past him there was fire, and past the fire, were his sons. I knew something was wrong.

“Come with Kalak.”

Grabbing my arm, the giant creature led me to the fire pit as soon as I woke up enough to stand. On the faces of the two men – Krizik and Kel – crouched by the stones, was fear. Not the anxious sort of fear you feel when going into a basement at the bottom of a dark stairwell by yourself. This seemed much more raw, more...

“Where’s Makel?” I asked when I realized the third of the young men was missing.

“That the problem,” Kalak answered as he threw an animal skin around Kel’s shoulders. When both of Kalak’s sons were draped with furs, and he was satisfied that they were safe, he led me away from the camp.

“Neither speak. They just say they found other tribe again.”

A second tribe of beastmen had, two days before, been milling around the burial ground belonging to Kalak’s tribe. After a short battle, Kalak’s ‘jaraka’, his little group, beat back the others, who escaped into the forest. I thought the worst of it was over, but evidently not.

“They don’t speak,” Kalak said again, “just say were out to hunt and smelled cold. Then Makel gone. They cut up, bad. Need Gina help.”

Kalak’s eyes softened when he spoke of his injured sons.

“My help?” I touched a hand to the side of his face. “Why my help?”

“Women... witch doctor. Without them, no medicine.”

The women of his tribe were all dead, all wiped out by a plague or a poison that was somehow connected to the man who led me deep into this forest – wherever it was – weeks ago, when my purpose was to film a lost tribe for a television spot.

But that was far off, somewhere in the past and not worth worrying about. The danger of Kel and Krizik getting some kind of infection was very near.

“Women used leaves. Small, green leaves from thorny vine. Mix with water and pack in a cut.” Kalak said, rubbing his fingertips together, I assume to pantomime grinding.

“Thorny vines, alright,” I said, “Do you remember what color? What shape leaves they used?”

He drew his thumb and forefinger together. “This big.”

“Okay, but what shape? There’re tons of thorny vines out here.” I twisted my back to the left, then right, still trying to wake up.

“Hum.” He grunted. “Leaf like this.” Kalak made a five-pointed shape with his fingers. “Grow up tree trunk. Here.”

“Is that the vine you’re talking about?”

“No. But grow up tree like this one.”

“Okay, you gotta help me. Five points on the leaves, and grows up tree trunks. Does it grow near the ground, or up in the trees?”

“Gina.” Kalak looked very serious. “All vine grow from ground.”

After I spent a good four seconds staring directly between his eyes, Kalak erupted with laughter.

“Gina, you look scared like a monkey.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “You are something else, you know that?”

“Leaf – five point, wrapping around tree trunk. We need hurry.” He wandered off, pulling various vines to his nose and sniffing them, tasting some.

Finding the particular vine he spoke of was no problem. The tiny star-shaped leaves did not grow on every tree, but the ones they did were covered in the bushy, soft leaves and woody, thorn-covered vines. More than once I tried to pluck a few and ended up pricking my fingers on the pin head-sized thorns. As I sat, sucking blood out of my finger, Kalak looked over from a different tree.

“Do like this,” he said, grabbing a vine and pulling it away from the tree. “Put fingers. Pinch. Pull down.” As he spoke, he pinched and slid his fingers down the vine toward the tip. “Thorns bend.”

I did what he did, sliding my fingers down vine after vine until they were stained with the bitter, yellow juice that leaked from the stem.

A short while later, we boiled water in a flat, round, clay pot with a burned bottom and stirred in the leaves. As it boiled, the leaves released their juice and the mixture became a foul-smelling, acrid tea.

“Do they drink?”

Kalak shook his head. “Let bubble. Will turn into leaf mud. We pack into wounds. Keep away fever.”

If anything, I thought, this awful stuff probably will keep away an infection. Certainly smells like medicine.

“Gina take smell.” Kalak leaned forward and scooped the scent to his nose, as does a chef. “Mmm... we love smell. Does Gina like?”

I had misgivings about sticking my head anywhere near the pot, but he seemed so eager about it that I could hardly do otherwise. I, too, leaned near the yellow sludge. Without taking a whiff, my eyes already burned a little, and I felt a tickle in the back of my throat. As though he was trying to show me how to smell something, he did it again, and let out an exaggerated “ahhh!” as though he took a refreshing drink. “Smell is good!”

Looking over at him, I frowned. He pointed back to the liquid. “Smell! Very good!”

Throwing caution to the wind, I put my nose near the lip of the pot and took a deep breath, filling my nose with the horrible, bitter smell. “Ugh, God! It smells like rotten eggs!” My nose scrunched and my lips curled up like I had – well, smelled something horrific.

I sat down hard, coughs wracking my body.

“Oh Gina,” Kalak bellowed again, “you fall for old joke – my favorite joke. You smell! Ah hah! So bad!” Tears streamed down his face, and he laughed so hard he was almost purple. I stood right up and kicked him in the stomach. That just made him laugh even harder.

“How long does this stuff need to boil?”

“How long?” He shook his head. “Turn to thick. Turn...” he rubbed his fingertips together. “A while.”

*

“W
e caught animal. Had speared.” Krizik spoke as I packed the horrid paste into his almost countless wounds. “They jump from trees – high up.” He raised his eyes and stared up into the canopy, still shaken, still on edge.

“Where did they take Makel? Why did they take him?” I rubbed a handful of the paste onto the back of a broad leaf and bound it to a raw, painful looking burn on the beastman’s calf.

“Why not take him? We take too. If we can.”

“I see, but why? Do they want to fight with you?”

He shrugged, bored with my questions. “We fight. We always fight.” He said.

For several moments, we sat in silence. I wrapped his wounds where I could. Jagged cuts that crossed his chest and back I packed with the salve and then used leaves, along with tree sap to craft bandages which worked well enough.

“Is there – does this hurt?”

The oldest of Kalak’s sons cringed, but made no sounds. Each time I pressed in a new dressing, or held closed another wound he bared his teeth, and sometimes squeezed my arm, or my hand, but never once cried out.

Before then, I was never particularly close to either Krizik or Kel. At least not since the night they crashed through the woods after me, and took me hostage anyway. I never really paid attention to them. When we traveled, they, along with Makel, ranged ahead, scouting while Kalak and I trailed. There was never any change to that arrangement, and as best I could tell, the giant, silver-maned Kalak treated them as subordinates first and sons later. Of course, after two of them were injured and the third kidnapped, that changed.

“Taking good care them, Gina,” the giant beastman said when he returned with a bundle of thick firewood under each arm and tended the pit. “Get all wound. If any left, fever can come. If fever comes, they die.”

“I will Kalak, don’t worry,” I said, patting his hand. “Get us a good fire going. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of them.”

He held me to his chest for a moment, stroked my hair with his rough, calloused, leather hand, and wandered off. “Very tired,” he said, “I sleep. You come when you done with them.”

I nodded. “Don’t worry,” I said again, although I knew from his face that no matter how many times I repeated myself, Kalak’s concern would last until the wounds healed and we had his third son – the adopted one – back from his captors.

He held onto my hand as he walked away. I watched as he shuffled back to the makeshift shelter far enough from the campfire to be ‘good and dark’ as he said. Of all the things, I seemed to have thrown in with the giant beastman who needed a sleep mask. Just before he disappeared inside the tent, Kalak looked back at me, and had the same look he did when we overlooked the massive graveyard full of his tribe’s women and children for the first time – eyelids half open, and his normally hard, powerful stare pointed at the ground a few feet in front of him.

“Tomorrow,” I said. He looked up.

“Hunh?”

“Tomorrow. We’ll get Makel back.”

“But the wounds. Krizik, Kel, they have bad wound.”

“They’re not that bad. And anyway, if we can figure out where they’re camped, sneaking in and freeing Makel shouldn’t be much of a problem for someone small and quiet.”

That got his attention. “Small and... you? Gina why you do this?”

I paused for a second and watched his face. A sudden wind blew through the forest. Leaves rustled in the canopy, vines brushed against tree trunks on the ground. “I can’t say exactly. I really can’t. In the past few weeks though, alone in the woods with you four, I’ve felt at home. Dirtier, sweatier, more tired and sometimes hungry, certainly, but as weird as it might sound, this forest has become home for me. I might not be one of you, not exactly, but I don’t feel like I’m any different. Does that make sense?”

He took a step back toward me. “We – uh – me and Kel and Krizik and Makel are from old, old tribe. As old as forest, as old as mountain over there.” He pointed to the east, indicating the immense and bald old peak behind which the sun was about an hour from rising. “We very old... ah... people. Nothing have change for us in my life. Nothing have change while my father alive. Nothing ever change. We fight, we run and hunt.”