“You love other woman?” she asked, her face crumpling with sadness, and she began to withdraw.
I grabbed her and held her close to me. “I love you.”
She started squirming and pushing away from me. Now she was angry.
“You love other woman – ”
“She died, Lelia. She died.”
She stopped struggling. After a few seconds, tears sprang to her eyes.
She touched her own chest and whispered, “Sad, Jack.”
I smiled sadly at her. “Thank you.”
Then a look of shock and worry flitted across her face. “She died with you?”
“No – she died a year ago. Hundreds of days ago.”
Lelia looked unsettled. “She is rakala, too?”
That stopped me in my tracks.
I had never even considered the possibility that Katie might have been come here to this world.
“You came here to find her?” Lelia asked, and I could hear the fear in her voice.
“No, she’s not a rakala,” I said, not knowing if I were telling the truth or not.
Lelia immediately relaxed. “Not rakala?”
“Not rakala.”
She relaxed and cuddled up against my side, her head on my shoulder.
“Jack mine,” she said jealously.
I grinned and kissed her forehead. “Jack is all yours,” I agreed.
She looked up at me and smiled. We kissed and lay back down on the fur.
“What is her name?” Lelia asked.
“Katie,” I said, and choked up.
I hadn’t said her name aloud for… could it be months?
One of the reasons I’d avoided talking to friends was because of that very reason: it hurt too much to say her name.
“You have baby with Katie?” Lelia asked quietly.
I shook my head ‘no,’ and my eyes brimmed with tears.
Lelia saw my reaction, and leaned up and kissed my cheek repeatedly… soft, gentle kisses meant to soothe me.
I smiled at her sadly, then kissed her on the lips.
Satisfied that I was okay now, Lelia lay back down in my arms.
Then a thought came to me.
“Did you have a man you loved?” I asked.
I heard the hesitation in her voice.
“…yes.”
I looked down at her. “He was like you?”
She frowned in confusion.
“Blue?” I clarified.
“Oh. He was people, yes.”
“Not a vaklik.”
She grinned. “No, not a vaklik.”
“Not a rakala, either.”
She frowned again in alarm, like I was crazy to suggest such a thing. “NO, not a rakala.”
I chuckled, then grew serious. “What happened to him?”
She gazed off at the cave wall. “He died.”
“I’m sorry… how long ago?”
“Hundreds of days… many hundreds.”
“What happened?”
I was expecting her to say something about sickness, or an accident during a hunt.
Instead, there was a barely suppressed fury in her voice. “Skiris killed him.”
“Skeer-us? Who’s Skiris?”
She shook her head. “Not people. Vaklik. Bad vaklik.”
“Like me?”
“No, you good vaklik.”
“No, I mean – white skin?”
She thought for a second, then ran a hand over the cape beneath us. “White fur.”
Aha.
“An animal? Like a deer or a wolf?”
She shook her head impatiently, like, Don’t you GET it? “No, VAKLIK.”
Huh… so a vaklik couldn’t be an animal. Apparently it meant a humanoid of some sort.
“What does a skiris look like?”
She thought for a second, then stood up.
Though we were discussing a serious topic, damn it was nice to watch her breasts sway back and forth with her movement.
She flipped her long, white hair over her head so that it covered her face – then parted it just enough so I could see her mouth.
Then she bared her teeth, curled her fingers into fangs, and growled. “Rrrraaar!”
Okay… hadn’t seen anything like that so far…
“How big?” I asked.
She flipped her hair back over her head, then stood on her tiptoes and held her arm up as far as she could in the air.
So – taller than me.
Definitely hadn’t seen anything like that so far.
Thank god.
She got back down on the fur cape and nestled next to me.
“And… a skiris killed your man?” I asked.
“They killed all men.”
They?
ALL men?!
“How many skiris were there?” I asked, shocked. I was assuming skiris was both singular and plural, like ‘moose’ or ‘deer.’
Lelia paused to think. “Thirty. Maybe more.”
Jesus.
A whole pack of abominable snowmen…
Thank god I hadn’t run into any skiris.
“How many of your men did they kill?” I asked.
“All.”
“Yes, but how many men is that?”
She paused, then counted by mouthing words silently. I was guessing she was saying their names.
“…eleven.”
“Did the skiris kill the women?”
She shook her head ‘no.’
“How many women were left?”
“Same. Eleven.”
One man for each woman – that was a little odd. Not only was it a pretty small tribe, I would have expected the numbers to be a little off in one direction or the other. Either more men would have died in dangerous situations, like warfare or hunting, or more women would have perished in childbirth.
“So there were 22 people in your tribe?”
She frowned. “Tribe?”
“Group of people you live with.”
“Yes. Eleven women, eleven men.”
“No children?”
She shook her head sadly. “No.”
I frowned. “How do you have a tribe and not have any children?”
She looked at me like I was crazy. “We not have time.”
Okay, now it was getting crazier. She and I had had plenty of time to devote to the baby-making process after knowing each other for just a couple of weeks.
What were the guys in her tribe thinking? Were they all gay? Or were they just REALLY into hunting, or spear-making, or anything else but having sex?
Seeing how hot Lelia was, I didn’t really see how that was possible.
“No time to have sex?”
She looked at me in bewilderment. “Yes, we have sex!”
“No, not you and me – the women and men in your tribe.”
She made a face like I was an idiot. “YES, we have sex.”
“But no children?”
“No time,” she repeated impatiently.
Okay, either these elf women were, like, working corporate jobs in the forest that took up all their time, and so they were on the Pill (yes, that was sarcasm) –
Or what Lelia meant by ‘no time’ was that the men hadn’t had time to impregnate the women before they were killed.
“The men died before anyone could have babies,” I suggested.
“Yes,” she said, smiling in relief that I finally understood. “Skiris kill men before have babies.”
That didn’t make any sense either, though.
