The Reward of The Oolyay (11 page)

“Step aside, old fool,” he demanded.

“So you may slit this child’s throat and leave?” Inlojem asked.

              “I will slit his throat and then I will slit...“ before his sentence could be finished, a massive axe blade tore his shoulder in two as Teftek slammed himself down upon the young Hagayalick. An agonizing scream rolled out of Ilquast. Iogi slipped below Ilquast’s arms and ran as Ilquast’s grip on the sickle blade loosened for a second. In final retaliation, the Stranger plunged the sickle blade backward into Teftek’s stomach. Teftek felt the blade curl through him and pass next to his spinal column. He yanked back on the axe and let Ilquast’s body fall, and then unsheathed the sickle blade from his stomach. Ilquast fell to the floor and writhed in shock and pain, before Teftek stepped on his neck and ended his life. Teftek looked up from his conquest and realized that, staring back at him was the vision he had seen before.

             
“Come on, child! Come through the portal!” Inlojem commanded him, beckoning his hand toward the illuminated archway. Teftek rose to meet him, his mouth dripping with purple blood as he staggered toward the portal. He went to take Inlojem’s hand, but Hagayalick soldiers were already rounding the corner toward the room and racing toward the portal. Teftek instinctively fought them off, his last remaining strength going into battle.

             
“Go!” he cried as Inlojem watched him, remorse overwhelming his soul. He felt Iogi tug at his hand and pull him toward the portal. The Hagayalicks would kill Teftek and get through the portal if they did not leave. “Go, old Vesh! Go!” Teftek yelled in fury as he clotheslined another Hagayalick charging for the portal. Inlojem took two steps and disappeared. Teftek felt several blades pierce his skin and bring him to his knees as his Hagayalick executors raised the blades high above him. Teftek laughed as the chasm began to rumble and sway.

The light from the portal disappeared and the arch was dormant, as if it had never been lit at all. The small transmutation block was missing from its original position. As Teftek’s consciousness began to fade, he felt the ground begin to throw itself about and the rocks rip from their foundations. He saw the cleansing fire sweep through the catacombs and everything closed in on him as the falling alien ship finally made contact and blasted the mountainside into dust.

***

Inlojem’s eyes looked onto an expansive  field of grass that led up to a flat platform made from sandstone. Around the portal, which was also made of sandstone on this side, stood several beings, humanoid in form, but red in color. They all wore well-trimmed, neatly tailored baggy clothing, with headbands and bracelets draped casually off of their slender wrists and smooth white-haired heads. A young female smiled at Inlojem as he stood, shocked on the other side of the portal.

“The Red People!” Iogi beamed, as his face emerged from the light. Inlojem removed the Transmutation Block from the portal, and almost instinctively gave it to the young female who smiled at him.

“Do not fear…this came from our land. We have been waiting for you,” disclosed the round headed red female whose eyes were a glowing yellow Inlojem had never beheld. Inlojem stared back toward the empty arch, and saw that behind it another field of grass expanded endlessly. On the horizon were some tan ziggurats, not entirely different from Vesh structures but built in a bright and welcoming quality. He thought about Teftek, who met his end at this very second, and about Iquay, whose body waited for extradition from this life.

Iogi ran around in circles as Inlojem stood in shock, his unbroken gaze consuming the strange details of his new life. Iogi chanted “The Red People!” loudly and excitedly as he ran around the serene, smiling cadre rosy skinned greeters. They laughed with him and tried to meet his eyes, eager to see the joy of a child.

Inlojem looked back toward the portal. Blank and hollow, it was a hollow threshold that only showed the image of this planet. He stared through it, his eyes widened and fixed on the shallow groove where the transmutation block had been. Teftek had been within Inlojem’s grasp, but had slipped away at the last instant. Now, only the old Vesh lived. He had abandoned the only true convert he had ever known, to die so he would live, still evicted from his faith.

A dark red hand, slender but tough, touched Inlojem’s thick wrists. His arm jutted back and his head swiveled to see her face: a stocky thick boned female with blazing yellow fires inside of her eye sockets. Her half shaven head boasted braided locks of white hair from one side which ascended into a mohawk. She persisted with her hands and wrapped one around Inlojem’s elbow, the other around his hand.

“Don’t be afraid,” she cooed. “It’s alright. You’re alive.” Inlojem shakily gripped her for support as he felt his knees buckle slightly, his mouth standing open aghast and confused. She moved him to the small steps leading onto the flat stone crest where the portal stood, and they sat down together. “Is that your child? She asked, pointing toward Iogi who was telling a tall long haired male about the things that had happened to him.

“What? No,” Inlojem replied, recognizing the language and understanding that life was still moving around him. “No, no…that…that is the prophet, Iogi.” Her smile dropped a little as she discerned the seriousness of his voice and her eyes followed the innocent seeming child who bounced with energy. “He led me to this place. No one…no one would believe him about the Red People. But here you are.

“He knew he would see us?” She inquired, her voice rising with interest.

“Yes,” Inlojem replied ponderously.

“We haven’t met any others like us, with bodies and minds like us- like you,in our time on this world. We’ve met others…from the portals that is. Even from the stars. We’re just mastering how to get off of this world, but we haven’t met any others that were
like us
” she explained. Her sun colored corneas studied his face as Iogi walked toward the ziggurats with several of her colleagues. “Would you like to go with him?”

“Maybe…maybe in a little while,” Inlojem intoned and clasped her hand softly between both of his own. He studied the soft red skin with no abrasions or slashes. It had small callouses from farming on the palms, and healed scars from tending to bushes and vines. He felt the jagged, scorched lines of his mouth arch into a small smirk. “I remember when I was a little child, I was sitting in my father’s arms watching a cooking fire blaze in the middle of my village. They were preparing…preparing for something. I don’t remember what festival it was. There was a Kyrun tied to a stake outside of our home and my father showed it to me. He touched my hand to its skin and I felt the leathery texture of it and the small patches of fur between my fingers. It was a child like I was. It was lost to the world and my father had taken it. He told me that it would be good to eat in a few cycles of the moon.” Inlojem breathed deeply and his eyes tracked the small patches of clouds that skimmed the surface of the atmosphere. “Then, later…my village was raided and destroyed. The Kyrun escaped.” She watched the old Vesh with her head tilted to the side and her eyes narrowed from the strangeness of his story. When she read into him she felt the sorrowful energy wafting off of him, and she moved her hands and drew in closer to him to rub her arms against his.

“My people are called The Ixotil,” she replied, as she wrapped her other hand into his, clutching his large calloused hands tightly. “My name is Tixqu.”

“Mine are The Vesh,” he responded in kind. “I am Inlojem.” She watched tears stream down silently from his dead gray eyes but dared not move to wipe them off as they were blotted up by his furry patched garments. She noticed his sickle-blade, smeared with purple blood still wrapped in its sheath. Small gashes and lacerations were now very clear across his arms and his legs, mauve smears appearing on her arms pressed up against his. She knew Ixotil who lived several centuries and none looked as old and battered as this Vesh named Inlojem. Her face leaned in very close to his and in almost a whisper she asked,

“What happened to you on the other side of the pillars?”

Inlojem’s face grew very sullen, and he pressed his tough old fingers against his eyes, rubbing off the liquid emotions. He closed his eyes and composed himself, keeping his head down until he was prepared to answer. When he looked back at her, it was as if he had transformed back into the Necrologist. He had accepted that death had not come for him and with this understanding he replied,

“We were rewarded.”