Alexandria (28 page)

Cirune watches him ride off, then spits and kicks his horse to catch up.

The old pass sidewinds inland for a stretch and they follow it, more or less, cutting off through the woods occasionally and scanning the path behind them. They’ve seen nothing all day, save for the slight glint that caught Lia’s eye earlier, and Jack allows himself a thin sliver of optimism.

The rain falls haphazardly from indecisive thunderheads, drenching them one moment and then ceasing completely. Lia holds her little fur over their heads like a canopy whenever it pours down, though it does little to keep them dry. They haven’t seen the sun since afternoon, but it must hang low in the west and night will come early with the dense, overcast skies drowning out the dusk. Jack veers off course and takes Balazir in search of a bit of water.

“You should teach me how to ride him,” Lia says as she hops down.

“I think so, too.” He drops to the ground and leads Balazir the rest of the way down the ravine. “He’s a good one to learn on.”

Lia kneels down and splashes water on her face and neck to revive herself. She’d been dozing off to the gentle cadence of the horse’s steps, falling asleep hunched over behind Jack with her head resting on his back. A couple times she awoke to find drool running out the corner of her mouth and felt bad that he was too sweet to wake her and mention it. She wets her hands and runs them through her already damp hair and tousles it about and ties it back, and when she rises a glimpse of motion straight ahead startles her speechless and a lump catches in her throat.

“Some of the horses are touchy, sort of, and you never quite know what they’re going to do, but—”

“People,”
she wheezes.

He looks up and sees the two watchers. Only their wide eyes are visible as they crouch behind a fallen, moss-covered tree trunk and stare earnestly from the far side of the stream. A boy and girl about their age, from what little they see. They look neither frightened nor aggressive, but Jack slides his hand along the saddle and grips his bow and teases an arrow out from his satchel just the same. Slowly and innocently the girl stands, and she wears not a stitch of clothing. Jack blushes at her nakedness and Lia watches dumbstruck. The boy kneeling beside her tries to pull her back, but she steps out and raises her hand and waves. Lia flicks a glance toward Jack, slack-jawed by Balazir, then raises her own hand and waves back.

“Hi,” says the girl.

The boy whispers urgently, then fastens a length of cloth around his waist and rises. He hands the girl a rolled up skin of some sort and she holds it limply at her side.

Lia looks at Jack again.

“Hello,” he says, tightening on the bow.

“What are you doing out here?” the girl asks, almost laughing.

“We’re just… going through. We’re leaving now. Okay?”

She eyes him in a fetching manner he’s not quite used to, and he feels almost naked himself under the odd scrutiny.

“I’m Kas,” she says, “and this is Jinn.”

Jinn watches expectantly, keen on the weapon he holds.

“I’m Jack…”

“Lia.”

“Are you hunters?” Jinn asks, and nods toward the bow.

“Yeah… yes.”

“Do you live near here?”

“No… we’re going south. We just stopped to drink. And rest.”

For several moments they stand on opposite sides of the stream and regard each other curiously.

“Are you bleeding?” Kas asks, seeing the deep red stains on their clothing and the sorry bandages they wear.

“We were,” says Jack.

“What kind of hunting are you doing out here?”

“It was a lion. We got attacked.”

Kas splashes across the stream and comes right up to them. “It looks bad,” she says, inspecting them. “Are you two out here alone?”

Suspicion bites them and they offer no answer.

“It’s okay,” she says. “I’m not going to attack you.
You
have the weapons.”

She raises up her hands and displays her nude form. What had looked like streaks of dirt from a distance now appear as ornate designs, painted on finely, strange totems and vines of fire snaking around her limbs and torso. Her hair hangs in knotted, tangled strands. She unfurls the bundle in her arms and slips the tanned leather dress over her head and pulls it down taut.

“You should take care of this,” she says, touching Jack’s bandage.

“We’re okay. We just needed to stop and rest, we didn’t want to trouble you.”

“It’s no trouble.”

Jinn plods across the stream and joins them. “Where are you from? You must have a home somewhere.”

“It’s kind of hard to tell. We left our home.”

“Ah. You’re going south?”

“Yes. For now.”

“To where? What’s in the south?”

“Don’t know. We’re looking for… someplace new.”

“There’s
something
down there,” Jinn speculates. “We just met people from the south.”

“It must be nice,” says Kas, “wherever they came from.”

“Who did you meet?” asks Lia.

“Renny, I think. One was called Renny. And the old man was…” She pauses and looks to Jinn. “What was the old man?”

“Ethan?” says Jack.

“You
know
them?” Kas asks, incredulous.

“Yes,” he says, “yes,
Ethan
, we met Ethan.” A thousand questions flood into his mind. “When were they here?”

“Two months? Three?”

“Do you two live out here in the woods?” Lia asks.

Kas laughs. “No, we live up there now.” She nods toward an obscured structure atop a high knoll. “You should come with us. We can take care of these bites.”

“Yeah,” says Jinn, warming to them a bit. “There’s a storm coming. You should stay.”

Jack and Lia find stupefied agreement in each other’s eyes and consent to follow the two young strangers to their home. They lead the horse along and ascend to the derelict mansion that rests on the hilltop. Lightning plays in the distance, throwing the structure into harsh silhouette, and a dull rumble shakes the ground under their feet. Balazir spooks and neighs uneasily.

They leave the overrun path and step onto a stone walkway, freshly cleared of debris, which leads to an enclosure surrounding the main house. Enchanting voices drift along an eddy of wind that swirls around the courtyard, making their source hard to discern. They seem to be emanating from directly behind them, almost inside their heads, and yet a subtle shift of the wind carries them off distant and woeful, like invisible voices sounding from minute fluctuations in the natural atmosphere.

A tent city stands behind the mansion and the thatching and hide covers flap around in the growing turbulence. Several bodies move back and forth, carrying their provisions inside to keep them out of the coming gale.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Not long,” Jinn says.

Segments of fallen columns are arranged in a perfect circle in the courtyard. Situated at the center is an odd sculpture of rusted scraps—a mechanical man standing brutally atop a pile of other figures, wretched and twisted—overlooking the gray valley. The parts of his body are cobbled from found objects and pieces of old machinery, and he wears patches of sod for hair atop his rusted, canister head. The mechanical man watches them with jagged, sprocket eyes. They skirt around the display and continue toward the gathering of tents.

“We don’t stay anywhere for too long.”

“Why not?”

“We just don’t.”

They reach the outer circumference of the tented settlement and two of their fellows come up to meet them. They wear markings on their barely-clothed bodies as well, and they smile crookedly at the visitors.

“Look what we found,” Kas chirps.

“Hello,” they call.

“They know Renny and…”

“Ethan.”

“Ohhh
. Welcome.”

“This is Tryna and Hilen,” she says, “and here is Lia… and this is Jack.” She touches his shoulder when she says his name and her fingers trail lightly down his arm and play at his wrist. “Let’s get inside.” She pulls them along a crumbling veranda to the mansion’s misshapen entryway.

“Is there someplace dry I can tie him up?” Jack asks, twirling Balazir’s lead in his hands.

“Yes. In here.”

“You want us to bring him inside?”

“You don’t want to leave him out here, do you?”

He shrugs and follows her across the threshold and hitches Balazir to a pillar that separates the front room, facing the courtyard, from a longer chamber that stretches off into darkness. The floor collects a few random pools of rainwater from slinky leaks streaming down the walls and a small collection of goats stretch out their leashes to take sips of it.

“Sit down,” says Kas, “let’s get warm.”

Three small fires burn in a tight formation, their smoke wafting up through cracks and openings in the dilapidated ceiling. In the center of these pyres the strange chanteuses sing a wordless, syncopated aria. Their voices resound like some kind of primal howling, elusive at close range, and their divergent voices suddenly coalesce into one, indistinguishable from each other and beautifully disorienting. The small audience is so enraptured they barely take notice of the two new faces in their midst, let alone the fully-grown horse tied up in the corner.

By and by their chill wears off and the odd performance reaches its conclusion, and after their final cry the painted divas leap over the fire and run out into the screaming thunderstorm. Lia scrunches her face and watches them go.

“What was that?”

“Don’t you have singing?” Kas asks.
“Ah!
Wait here.” She jumps up and runs off.

Jinn sits back and studies his guests. “So… you said you left your home?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Don’t you have a family?” Tryna asks.

“Not really. Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“We should… we probably should have told earlier, we’re sort of running from someplace.”

“You left your family?”

“Our families were killed,” Lia says matter-of-factly. “We were stolen by the people that killed them.”

“Ah…”
says Jinn, and the weight of her words sinks in slowly. He inhales and struggles to form a response just as Kas returns with a basket of fruit and a bowl of goat’s milk.

“You two must be hungry.” She hands out apples and berries, and passes the bowl around.

“Thank you,” says Jack, taking a gulp of the warm milk.

“Kas, they’re
running
… from people who killed their family.”

“Who?”

“They’re called Nezra,” says Jack, and begins to recount the details. As their story unfolds a gathering crowds around and listens. They tell again about their burned village, their murdered parents, and the bizarre clan that whisked them away and molded them to their liking. In a world such as this, Jack figures such tales of harsh cruelty would be commonplace, but as he looks at their confused faces he remembers his own simple childhood naiveté.

“That’s how we met Ethan,” says Lia, taking over where Jack left off. “The night we ran, they caught them just outside the Temple. We found Ethan hiding from them… and he gave us this.” She draws out the map and unrolls it on the ground, then turns it over and displays the stark message scrawled on back.

“They’re dead?” Jinn asks, mystified.

“Most likely.”

“These…
Nezra
… what makes them so mean?”

“They’re not all mean, most of them were… normal.”

Jinn wrenches his head at an angle. “I don’t understand.”

“We don’t either,” says Jack. “But they are looking for us, and they’ll come this way sooner or later. It’s not safe for you to stay here anymore.”

“Why?”

“Because if they find you, they’ll kill you and burn everything.”

“But we never hurt them.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Kas purses her lips. “So we have to leave?”

“Yes. And soon. I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter that we’ve been here, they would find you anyway. They scout along the whole coast and all through the forest. I don’t know how many homes and people they’ve destroyed, but it’s many.”

“Where should we go?”

“As far away as you can. Get away from the coast, and don’t go north.”

They are encircled by the youth of the settlement, and he lets his words rest on them. Their eyes are glassy and dilated, and even though they are enthralled by Jack’s telling it seems they do not respect the weight of it, as if it were just an extension of their amusement, a bit of storytime following the musical performance. The older relations stand in the shadows with hard-set faces, unconflicted about the authenticity of the tale they have just heard.

“Have you been followed?” an old woman’s voice sounds out from the dark gallery.

“I don’t know,” says Jack with a pang of guilt.

“We thank you for the warning,” says the aged matriarch, stepping toward the fire ring. Hard lines crease her brow and a long braid winds around the dark cloak she wears. “But I’m afraid I must ask that you not stay here tonight.”

“That’s fine,” says Jack.

Kas erupts. “No—it’s not fine. It’s raining
terrible
, you can’t send them out in that.”

“I’m sorry for them, but they can’t bring this to us. We won’t allow it.”