Chapter 16

We were alive, for now. The three of us comprising myself, my new companion Taiwo and the strange creature deemed to be one of the Yrri, were locked in small vertical wooden barred cages inside a hut. I would prefer the name Orc as the woman with the pale green skin, red eyes and sharp fangs reminded me of the sort of fantasy world semi-monsters I had seen in movies back on Earth, but I would stick with their Sevir name. While we were alive, at least.

The three of us were no longer, thank heavens, bound to posts outside and facing, naked, the prospect of a bitterly cold night with the threat of death in the morning. If Itritha was really as powerful as she claimed we would not be harmed for now, providing I found a way to extract information from the silent female and pass it on. Information if I understood the Egri princess correctly would be useful to her in whatever nefarious scheme she had cooked up.

The flaw was obvious here: this Yrri had almost certainly no knowledge of English and any questioning that had been done since ehr capture must have been in Egrin, to which she had resolutely refused to answer. Of course, there were two reasons for this. The first was she was unable to speak Egrin and therefore all questions failed, and the second was she really could endure pain and keep her mouth shut and reveal nothing. Perhaps she was happy to die in silence, though understandably I wasn’t. I doubted, given how Taiwo had gone through so many shocks since she was dragged, inadvertently by me, to the planet Sevir that the girl wasn’t happy about being killed here either. I could sympathise with that.

But to small mercies. The others had been neck freed as I was from the posts and like me, their wooden block gags had been removed. We were all made to kneel while bound, and given a meagre meal of some mysterious porridge-like slop in a large, crudely carved wooden bowl before being put into three cages (like the posts outside, there were four cages in this hut) and we three occupied the majority. In the light of a several sputtering torches on the wall of this hut, it was not reassuring to see dried blood on the floor of the empty cage. Thankfully, our bonds had been removed before they secured the cage doors closed with a long, thick pole fastened to posts where the bindings were out of reach, even though our hands were no longer bound. We would spend the night standing, sleeping as best we could against the strong wooden upright bars, and given some minimal warmth by the handful of torches around the walls. We would be cold but not disastrously so, as the walls of the hut would protect from the cold winds that often sprang up at night on this planet.

All in all, it was better than I feared. Taiwo and I could talk, and I explained as much s I could about what the princess had told me. I avoided saying the threat was a horrible death if I didn’t succeed, but I think she came to that conclusion herself. She just had no idea of what an Uymal could do to human flesh, and I wasn’t going to tell her. At least if she was thinking of death she wasn’t crying, for which I was grateful.

“I have no idea how to communicate with our Orc friend here. No one here among the Wilds or the Egri party can speak Yrri.” At this the green woman lifted her head and stared at me. Her face broke into a sort of grin. So, at least she understood the word ‘Yrri’ and knew we were talking in our language of her. I gave her the thumbs up, which was bizarre and she, albeit hesitantly, copied it even if she had no idea what it meant. But there was communication here, which was curiously pleasing, though telling Itritha we had exchanged smiles and thumbs-up gestures probably wasn’t going to be enough to impress the princess.

I then put my hand on my heart and gave a little bow in the limited space I had, which the green woman echoed, and then she put her fingers up to her lips and moved her hand back to approximately the same place as a human heart would be. I interpreted the gesture as saying she was speaking, or would speak, from the heart.

Taiwo had seen this exchange and was excited. “You know, this is weird, but this thing—this Yrri lady” (again bringing another smile from our Orc friend) “reminds me of my grandmother.”

“In what way?” I asked, avoiding the temptation to ask if she was green too. Also, what was Taiwo’s definition of a lady?

“Grandma was better looking, but her teeth were a bit sharp I seem to remember. What it is though is that Grandma was deaf. I had to learn sign language as a kid in London. I wonder if some of it works on this one?”

I nodded. “Try it, though I doubt she knows anything like the word for television or pension.”

Taiwo had the Yrri-woman’s attention and began doing some of the signing that she had employed with her own grandmother. At first the green creature looked puzzled and then her face opened up. She was grinning—another universal constant I had discovered—and echoing some of the movements. I had no idea what they were but Taiwo looked pleased. When the Yrri made some of her own signs Taiwo was positively hopping with pleasure. “I understand some of what she is signing,” the black girl beamed at me. “I think we can communicate.”

“Like what?” I too was excited but trying not to get carried away.

“I did some things like ‘woman’ and she did it back. Like this,” Taiwo drew a hooked finger down her own cheek, apparently the gesture for good-looking or soft-cheeked. To be honest I wouldn’t have said either as far as the green ‘lady’ was concerned but I accepted she would see herself that way. “Then there were other things, like sleep and eat and all the usual stuff.”

“Okay, but that is hardly battle plans or battalion strength.”

“No, but it buys us time.”

“How?” I asked.

Taiwo chuckled. “Think, Isabella! It buys us time because we show we can communicate.”

I shook my head. “Maybe, but I said I would use my eyes. Hypnotism, basically. Make her say something she wouldn’t otherwise. Not wave her arms signing.”

Taiwo wasn’t put off. “But this princess bitch doesn’t know we didn’t do that, does she? I can tell Gree to stare back at us when we stare at her—”

“Wait! Is her name Gree?”

My companion shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s what I call her and for now it will do. You know, Gree for Green. Actually, I quite like it. Suits her.”

“Okay, well ... So you can tell her to do that? Stare and look, I don’t know, sort of stupid. Like she is hypnotised and under our control?”

“I think so. I did a sort of eye-staring gesture and looking dizzy, sort of, and she got it. Look, it’s going to take all night, but I can understand a lot of the gestures she makes. No, really! It’s bizarre, but I think this works.”

“Fuck me,” I said.

“That’s probably the same gesture for us all,” chuckled Taiwo. “But we have a chance. Leave Gree to me and as we probably aren’t going to sleep in this fucking cage then there’s nothing else to do.”

“True,” I conceded.

The night was long and I tried to keep my mind off being cold and dying tomorrow, but as I watched the two of my feels prisoners gesturing and nodding and smiling and occasionally shaking their heads until something was altered or amended, plus listening to what Taiwo told me, it was obvious the pair were working out a lot of commonality between them. I doubted they were exchanging complicated ideas but this Gree was, dare I say it, agreeable. It struck me that she and Taiwo were like friends. As I thought about it I wondered if it was because in a way, they both looked outsiders: I was, in skin colour, too near the tones of the men of the Wilds who ran this village or whatever it was. They were somehow in this together but I was an outsider to their world. So was I, but whatever my experience and knowledge of this planet, I wasn’t part of all this so much. I simply had to wait and wonder, and also reflect on the fact I ahd seen myself as some sort of expert on the planet and the ways of the Egri (and also thanks to Cerys’ help, knew something of Tankic ways). I had been in battle, and survived (though mostly because I retreated under Akrith’s control) and I was strong. I had also been back to Earth and returned to Sevir.