Beneath the Twin Moons of Haldae (11 page)

When she slipped out of the shuttle, she realized she had left the medikit outside. She glanced at Kris, who was pacing back and forth next to her, then at the approaching warriors. She didn’t have time to put the kit back, so she’d need to take it with her.

Holding it with one hand, clutching the bag of fruit in the other, she looked at Kris.

“All right, then. Where to?”

With a sharp bark, he leapt toward the forest. After another look at the now-invi K th/span>

* * * *

Kris believed that once Zaren convinced the Elders her speaking box was no witchery, things would become easier. He was wrong.

Most questions they asked Zaren received a quiet “I can’t answer this” that clearly frustrated the Elders as much as it did Kris. Some of these questions he had asked her before, and she had answered, so why was she refusing to say a word now?

Confused and puzzled, he frowned at her, and Zaren’s shoulders slowly hunched down as her voice quieted. At first, she had looked toward him every so often as though to seek support from him, but now she seemed to be avoiding his gaze.

It only became worse when, at a sign from Elder Pala, a guard left the room, quickly returning with Elea. Kris’ eyes widened in surprise, and he began to ask why his sister had been brought there, but a glare from several Elders reminded him that he was not allowed to speak now. They sat Elea down to one side of the room and did not ask her any questions.

Elder Pala merely pointed at her and asked Zaren, “Explain to us. This child was ill. Now she is not. How did you cure her?”

“I cannot explain it to you,” Zaren said, shaking her head slowly.

The calls of witchery started rising again. At once, Zaren extended her hands toward the members of the circle, trying to appease them.

“What I mean is, I had medicine,” she said. “I cannot explain how it is made, and I do not know how to make more. It’s just…”

Her voice trailed off when she realized the Elders weren’t listening to her anymore as they talked amongst each other in hurried whispers. Elder Sarly finally cleared his throat loudly, and the rest of them fell silent.

“Many of our people have the same sickness as this child. You will cure them.”

“I can’t,” Zaren said, and even the voice coming from her talking box sounded miserable. “I don’t have any medicine left and—”

Elder Sarly rose to his feet, followed at once by the rest of them.

“You will cure our sick,” he repeated. “If you want your freedom, you will.”

Kris tried to protest as guards took Zaren away, but he quickly realized that he was in danger of being jailed as well. Forcing himself to be quiet, he joined Elea on the side of the room. She looked at him through tear-filled eyes.

“We’ve got to help her,” she said urgently. “We can’t let them—”

“Hush,” he said as he took her hand. “The circle knows what is best. Let’s go home.”

She gave him a betrayed look and protested, using the same words he had uttered moments earlier. Tightening his hand on hers, he told her to be Koldont s quiet again and led her out of the Elders’ compound. After a while, she fell silent, obviously upset. Kris remained quiet until they were back in their home.

“You can’t help her,” he said then, the words passing his lips in a rush. “But I will. You just have to promise me you’ll stay out of this.”

Relief flooded Elea’s face, but was soon replaced by disappointment. “I can help!” she said, clutching his arm. “I feel better and I—”

“No,” Kr
is interrupted her softly. “She’s in trouble because of what she did
to help you. It would be poor repayment if you got yourself killed now. Promise, Elea.”

She dropped her gaze to the ground and sighed softly. “I promise.”

“Good. Now listen. I want you to go to your friend Leana’s house. Stay with her all day, so they won’t be able to say you helped me.”

She hugged him tight, murmuring a quick, “Be safe,” against his chest before she ran out. Kris watched her go, his chest tightening as he wondered
if
he would ever see her again. When their parents had been taken by the sickness, he had promised to take care of her. He had done his best, but he might have lost her to the sickness t
oo without Zaren’s help.

Breaking Zaren out of jail would make him a pariah amongst his people, but it never once occurred to him not to do it.

Chapter 11

In His Own Skin

Zaren followed the wolf—Kris—back into the forest. Every time she heard a noise behind her, she couldn’t help looking back. The vegetation was too dense, however, and she never caught sight of any movement. Still, she wondered if the warriors that had attacked Kris, that surely would have attacked her without his interference, were tracking them, just out of sight. The mere thought caused cold beads of sweat to run down her spine.

She hated being afraid. Fear was useless. Every time she caught herself looking back, she forced herself to look ahead again, and tried to turn her mind to a different set of questions.

Even after seeing Kris transform into this wolf with her own eyes, Zaren still had trouble wrapping her mind around the idea that it was truly him in front of her. She wished she had listened more closely to those make-believe tales of people changing into animals. She vaguely remembered that, in some stories, the transformation had something to do with the moon cycle. Could it possibly be true here as well? She hadn’t been paying much attention to the rising and setting of the moons since she had crashed on the planet, so she wasn’t sure whether the wolf had been around when they were up or not.

She also wondered whether Kris could and would change back to his human form. It had all happened very fast, but he changed at the moment he saw the warriors approach, presumably to confront them. Shouldn’t he change back, now that the warriors were gone and he and Zaren were out of danger?

Unless they weren’t out of danger yet.

That thought made Zaren turn back to look behind her once more. She still couldn’t see anyone following them, but there had to be a reason for Kris continuing to trot so fast that Zaren had trouble keeping up with him.

Eventually, she had to call out for respite.

“Kris! This is too fast.”

The translang at her throat repeated her words in his language. The wolf stopped and looked back at her, his tongue lolling out of his open mouth. He came back toward her, flicked his tongue at Zaren’s hand, and started walking again, more slowly now. That had to mean he had understood her—or at least she hoped so.

“Can you understand what I say?”

The wolf continued to look ahead without acting like he had even heard her.

“Kris?”

He looked up at her at that, gray eyes flat and unreadable. There had always been feelings in his eyes before, whenever the wolf had approached her, but not anymore.

“Can’t you transform back into a human?” she asked. “Is that why you’re still a wolf?”

He looked back at the faint trail they were following and didn’t give any sign she could interpret as an answer. Zaren’s throat tightened painfully.

They walked for hours, stopping every so often for Zaren to catch her breath. The wolf would walk back and forth around her while she rested, eyes and ears searching for… Zaren wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Nightfall was still a while away when their path came within sight of the river. A large curve gave way to an embankment where the water was almost still. On the river edge, a circle of stones—and a handful of dark ashes and branches burned by fire in the center—betrayed that the spot had been used as camping grounds before.

“All right, I’m not going any further.”

She let herself fall at the foot of a tree, the moss that surrounded it cushioning her fall. Every muscle in her body ached.

The wolf looked at her, head tilted to one side. After a moment, it growled once, started trotting away, and then came back to her to growl once more.

Zaren shook her head. “I can’t, Kris. I’m too tired. Can we stay here for the night?”

He looked at her a little longer, long enough that Zaren thought he understood, even agreed. But in the time it took her to blink, he turned around and ran off. She couldn’t have followed even if she had wanted to. For the briefest instant, she wondered if he would return, but she refused to allow that thought to linger. He had always SHe had want come back to her until now, and he would this time, too.

For a moment, she remained under the tree, her eyes on the place where Kris had disappeared, trying to catch a glimpse of him. She could see no movement, though. On the edge of her vision the water glittered softly, almost invitingly. It was the first opportunity she had to bathe in much too long, and she didn’t know how long Kris would stay away. She had no time to lose.

She undressed near a bush on the edge of the river, leaving her suit there along with the translang, and stepped into the water. It was shallow, a gentle slope of soft sand yielding beneath her feet. She stopped when the water was at her waist and lowered herself into it. The river was cool but not cold, a natural pool warmed by the sun, maybe. She could feel her body relaxing, one tense muscle after the other, until she was sighing in relief.

She stayed in until her skin was pruned, until the sun had disappeared behind the trees and the air began to cool down. She looked around carefully, searching for a trace of Kris, and when she found nothing, she hurried back for the cover of the bushes.

After she had slipped her suit on again—and wished for the thousandth time that she had spare clothes to change into; the suit stayed clean but she was tired of wearing it—she walked around and tried to gather fruit like Kris had shown her. It felt different when he wasn’t with her. She was careful as she walked, since she was now barefoot. She wished she could have fashioned shoes the way he had done for her, but she didn’t remember what moss and leaves he had used.

She kept looking around expecting the wolf to return, or maybe even the Kris she knew, but as the birds started falling silent above her announcing the arrival of night, she was still alone. She picked up leaves, trying to remember which ones Kris had chosen as she quickly realized not all of them were suitable for weaving.

By the time night had fallen she had a small hut, but she knew the weaving wasn’t nearly as tight as Kris’ had been, and she could only hope it wouldn’t rain. She tried to make fire, again mimicking the gestures she had seen, but she never managed to light the dried herbs she had gathered.

Sitting inside her hut, she ate the fruit she had picked and tried not to jump at every sound in the forest around her. Somehow, it hadn’t seemed so loud and threatening when Kris was with her, as a human or a wolf.

When the wolf returned, she wanted to sigh in relief. She smiled at him, and he came closer to her, observing the hut for a moment before he entered it and lay down in front of her. Finally reassured, Zaren curled down on the ground with her head resting on the medikit, close enough to the wolf to share his warmth. Exhausted by a day made even longer by surprises, she fell asleep almost immediately.

* * * *

When Kris woke up back in his body, he was lying down against Zaren. He wasn’t completely sure how he had ended up there. Everything that had happened since his final shift was a blur, with only a few flashes clearer than the rest, like drawings in his mind. Every one of them showed Zaren as clearly as he could see her now, no more than a hand’s length away from him.

He couldn’t resist reaching out to her and caressing her hair with his fingertips. It had spilled over her face, red strands like the rays of the setting sun, and Kris was almost surprised it didn’t burn his skin.

He pulled away before he could wake her and slipped out of the makeshift shelter. The sun had risen, but it was low enough that the forest was still coated in gray. Kris looked down at himself and touched his abdomen with two careful fingers. He vaguely remembered being hurt, remembered a little better the pain of metal piercing his body, but what was most vivid in his mind was Zaren helping him. Healing him.

The cut was nothing more than a thin white line beneath his fingertips, a scar to remind him of what had happened during his final shift. It would mean nothing to anybody who wasn’t him; he needed more proof than this before he could go home, another mark on his skin.

It didn’t take him long to find the herbs he needed and to crush them between two flat stones until they turned into a reddish paste. Different herbs would create a different color, but this reminded him of Zaren’s hair.

He plucked a long, thin torn from a low bush and sat down on the ground. Clenching his teeth hard, he started scratching the design into his forearm. The symbol wasn’t complicated, nor did it have to be drawn very big, but the cuts needed to be deep enough to last a lifetime. As he worked, Kris willed his fingers to be steady; he was no child to come back with a botched mark that spoke of shaking hands and frayed nerves.

He was halfway done when Zaren woke up and joined him. She was grinning widely as she approached, but her smile faded as she observed him.

“Kris?” She sat a couple of
paces
in front of him, arms tight around her legs. “Are you all right?”

His eyes flickered to the speaking box at her throat, and he lifted the thorn from his skin.

“I’m fine,” he said slowly. “How are you? I’m sorry if I scared you, I didn’t mean to.”

She shook her head. “No, you didn’t. I was just…” She shrugged. “Surprised, I guess.”

She gave him a half smile, and he replied in kind.

“As surprised as I was to hear you speak my language.”

She touched the box at her throat with two fingers. “Yes, I bet you were. It’s easier this way though, isn’t it?” She took a deep breath and added, “Thank you. For everything.”

He nodded. Still smiling, he returned his eyes to his forearm and started working again. It wasn’t long before her voice rose again.

“Kris? What are you doing?”

* * * *

In Zaren’s mind, the lines of blood on Kris’ skin were as clear as though he had been sitting right in front of her again. He wasnher Ӏ. He wat, though. He was on Haldae, and she was here, in this garden created from plants from dozens of worlds, talking to a woman who had explored dozens more.

“A ritual tattoo?” Brink sounded captivated, her eyes widening a little as she leaned in toward Zaren.

Zaren nodded. “Yes. He scratched the design into his skin first, then rubbed in this… paste. Crushed leaves and roots, I think. He said it was their symbol for the word wolf, and proof that he was now of age.”

“Fascinating,” Brink breathed. “Both the shifting and the highly ritualized customs around it. Did you witness anyone else shifting?”

Zaren swallowed around the lump in her throat. It certainly was easier to speak to Brink like this than it had been to face the council, but she still felt like she was betraying Kris’ trust. She couldn’t stop now, though.

“I didn’t,” she replied. “And Kris was adamant that I shouldn’t mention it at all to his people. He seemed to think we might both get in trouble if his people knew I had seen him shift.”

Brink’s gaze dropped to the leaf she was twirling between her fingers. She seemed thoughtful. “I see,” she said quietly, then looked up at Zaren again, an eyebrow raised questioningly. “Did it have anything to do with the moons like you first thought?”

“Not as far as I know, but there was a lot I didn’t get to ask.”

“Yes, it certainly seems so. Quite a pity.

There was something in Brink’s voice, something sympathetic but also distracted, as if her mind were busy thinking something over. Somehow, Zaren found that the little something she couldn’t quite identify gave her hope. Hope for what, however, she wasn’t sure.