Chapter 5: Beraza

Being the guy who slept with the Veseed once was one thing. That was like being the object of a scandal you read about in a celebrity magazine. It was all hushed whispers and gossip and stares, be they impressed or disapproving or just plain scandalized.

Being the guy who was regularly sleeping with the Veseed was something else. Suddenly it was like I had been elevated to a new kind of status. Before, people had generally treated me like the FNG, or the village idiot. I was the stranger, the makot, the outsider who didn't really belong or know what he was doing. Now, it was like I was actually commanding respect. People were going out of their way to greet me when I walked by, or offer me extra helpings of food. I might approach a group of people in mid-conversation, who would suddenly stop talking when they saw me, and sometimes even look down as if they were unworthy to look upon me.

It was the same kind of treatment Heleen had gotten all her life, but in my case it was like the world had been turned upside down. Suddenly I wasn't just a celebrity scandal; I was an actual celebrity.

There were more people around the village who started making an effort to learn English. Kezalo and Heleen started teaching more words to the people who either wanted or had to interact with me personally, like Jazum and Shimara and some of the other hunters. It suddenly seemed like they felt more of an obligation to connect with me in a way I could understand.

Everyone I knew personally started acting different around me in their own ways. Jazum was the least noticeable; he still remained his usual jovial, friendly self for the most part. About the only thing different about him was that he didn't seem to laugh at me as much, however in good humor it may have been before. He was less able to look down on me now, and was more prone to clap me on my shoulder and express how proud he was of me.

Then there was Shimara. Wow, my relationship with Heleen definitely changed the way Shimara acted. Suddenly she wasn't beating me up on the training yard so much anymore, and on the occasion she did still whack me when I made a mistake, she would usually take on a worried look immediately after, as if she had forgotten herself and done something she wasn't supposed to, and more often than not she would look around as if checking to see if anyone important had seen her do it. The training exercises she put me through weren't as grueling as they were before, which I got the impression was because she was now afraid of riding me too hard. I had gone from being the unwanted guest that she was obligated to whip into shape to being someone who could potentially threaten her position as Kemkuva if she mistreated me.

I guess being the consort of a princess has more than a few perks.

The changes weren't all positive, though. I was less happy with the way Tekia started acting toward me. Up until recently she'd been all smiles and helping hands around me, constantly trying to practice her English with me whenever she got the chance. Now she would barely look at me, let alone speak to me. She completely stopped trying to practice her English; she would only address me when I asked her a direct question, and then she would answer with only a short, simple response in Azakosian. If I needed help with something, like trying to tie a difficult bundle or work on fixing weapons, she would no longer jump to help me and instead leave me to find someone else. She always used to be the one who would help me put on my body paint when we went out to hunt. She wasn't doing that anymore.

I wasn't sure what I'd done exactly to deserve this cold shoulder treatment from her. But I suspected it had something to do with Heleen. That was the catalyst for all the changes I'd been seeing in people, so it had to be the reason for Tekia brushing me off. But what about it exactly was her problem?

One day we were on the training yard, and I had just succeeded in throwing a spear and hitting a moving target almost on the bullseye. It was enough for Shimara to actually give me one of her especially rare nods of approval. So I was feeling good that day.

I stepped up to the target and wrenched my spear free, when I happened to look to the side and saw Tekia wrestling with trying to string a newly crafted bow. The wood of this one was a little stiffer than she was used to, and it wasn't bending the way she wanted, so she kept hooking the string onto one end and trying to pull it while bending the stubborn wood to hook the other, but the string wouldn't stretch far enough or the bow wouldn't bend enough to reach, whichever way you wanted to look at it.

So setting my spear on the nearest weapons rack, I stepped up to her and asked if she wanted any help. She stopped what she was doing, and she looked at me. She just looked at me, saying nothing for a long moment.

Then she stood up straight, shoved the unstrung bow into my hands and said, "Benemen," telling me I could try if I wanted.

And then she just turned and walked away, leaving me there staring after her.

As I stood there watching her go, Jazum stepped up beside me, shaking his head in disapproval. And then he looked at me, and said one of the few English words he'd learned by now. "Women."

That got a mild laugh and a roll of my eyes out of me. Using my limited Azakosian, I asked him if he knew what was up with her by saying, "Kwed chen mon kaz?" I knew my wording was a bit rough and amateurish, but I think he understood my meaning, because he started grinning widely, and even started to chuckle a little at my expense.

When I furrowed my brow at him, he finally said, "Es sugol."

"Sugol?" This wasn't a word I knew.

The look on his face told me it would have been so much easier if he knew more English. He strained himself looking for a way to explain it, before I held up a hand in a "never mind" gesture, telling him I'd ask Heleen later.

But, of course, that was later. My days still belonged to the hunting party. Training in the morning, hunting in the afternoon. Which meant that I would still have to deal with Tekia's dismissive attitude until evening, at which point I would be all Heleen's.

We finished training for that day, stopped for our midday meal, and then it was time to go hunt. Our party gathered at the rally point to apply our paints. As had been the norm lately, Tekia turned away when I approached, opting to let another one of the hunters apply her paints. Jazum stepped up to me with a shake of his head and a shrug, his paints already done, and set about applying mine. We strapped on our belts, grabbed our weapons and headed off into the woods.

It was a modest hunt at first. Our archers brought down a few lalits and some large birds called skira to stuff in their bags, which would feed a few people tonight. Nothing too exciting.

At least not until Tekia suddenly hissed and held up a hand, signaling us to halt. We crouched to peer through the brush to see what she was looking at, as she started to draw an arrow. Munching on a bush not far away was the biggest pravak I'd ever laid eyes on, with horns nearly a foot long. A prize no hunter could resist.

I leaned closer to get a better look at the magnificent creature as Tekia drew her bow. As I took a few creeping steps closer, out of the corner of my eye I saw Tekia turning her head to look at me. And if I had bothered to look back at her and seen the look she was giving me, I might have anticipating what she did next.

And I heavily stress the word "might."

All at once, while I was busy staring at the pravak, Tekia suddenly shoved me, pushing me away from her and onto my hip in a heap on the ground. I turned a "what the hell?" look up at her, and saw the harsh, angry look she was shooting back at me.

"Tekia!" Shimara barked, appalled.

Tekia looked up at Shimara, her bitter expression instantly giving way to one of shame, especially after she turned to see the pravak she was aiming at had heard me hit the ground and already disappeared into the brush. I could just see her beating herself up, wondering how she could have been such a brofek.

And how did she then opt to make up for doing one stupid thing?

By doing another.

Before anyone could stop her, Tekia leapt through the bushes and took off running after the pravak. I immediately sprang to my feet. "Tekia, wait!"

"Dom kogeelete!" she shouted as she ran, insisting that she could still kill it.

"Tekia!" I called after her, just as I jumped through the brush to pursue her.

She watched the ground as she ran, trying to find the pravak's trail, and took off running in what might have been the direction it went, or might have been a random guess. With the speed at which she was going, it was hard to tell. I hurried after her, jumping rocks and logs and ducking low branches, both of us going way too fast and loud to have any hope of catching anything but a blind and deaf animal unawares. Soon she wasn't even watching the ground anymore. I was starting to wonder if she was running not so much to chase the pravak but more to get away from me.

And when she looked back over her shoulder at me and then started running faster, I became sure of it.

And then all of a sudden she was gone.

It happened in the blink of an eye. One minute I was still chasing her, and she looked back over her shoulder again, her eyes pleading with me to stop. And then I heard her scream as she disappeared down over the edge of a sheer hill.

"Tekia!" I shouted, racing to the edge. I stopped and dropped to my knees, calling her name again as I saw her tumbling down the long, rough slope, bumping and rolling over rocks and sticks and roots, screaming all the way. She finally hit the bottom with a sharp cry of pain, reaching to cradle her ankle, only to cry out again when she tried to move it.

"Tekia?" I called, to which she finally rewarded me by looking up. "Are you hurt?" I called, and then amended, "Akeven?"

And for the first time in weeks, she responded in English. "I ... my foot!"

"Hold on!" I shouted, before doing something that the me that had spent the better part of his life on the couch would never have done.

That version of me would have carefully scanned about the slope and searched for some way to cautiously climb down the hill, possibly finding something to grab onto and then look for a series of footholds, and then failing that, which I probably would have, I would have most likely given up on that idea and tried to look for another way down that involved going around the slope and finding a les steep way to descend.

But that was the old me.

And even with all the training and toughening-up I'd been through in the time I'd lived in Jivalika by then, it still amazes me to this day that I had the balls to do what I did.

I jumped down onto the slope, and I slid all the way down.

I didn't give a single thought to how far down it was, or how painful the descent would be; I just did it. I kept my hands and feet and butt down, enduring every bruise and scrape I took on the way down, gripping my spear in one hand, which I think helped to direct my fall some. I think. When I finally reached the bottom, I was pretty scraped up in more than a few places, but I landed on my feet and was able to keep them beneath me and run to Tekia's side.

She was covered in cuts and bruises, the worst of them being her purple ankle. I planted my spear point-down in the dirt and knelt by her leg, and carefully lifted it up. She hissed in pain and reflexively tried to pull it from me. At least she was still able to move her foot, so it didn't look like it was broken. It was probably a sprain. I breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that she'd probably have to sit out the hunts for a week or two, but was otherwise okay.

At least, she was for the moment. If nature had anything to say about it, she apparently wasn't going to stay that way. Because that was when we heard a blood-curdling growl, and looked up to see the thing that had found us.

I had lived in Jivalika long enough by then to know what it was, even though I had never seen one in person. And if I'd had a choice, it would have stayed that way. The people called it a zalaku; I called it a thing out of hell. As big as a large bear, it most resembled a panther, or maybe a black lion or sabre-tooth tiger, with its huge catlike body and black coloring, but its face and head weren't all that catlike. It had a mouth that looked too big and wide, and a set of long sabre teeth that spilled out of even that mouth, with its drool dripping from them as it approached. Its eyes were big and yellow and staring at us hungrily, though it was a little confusing to identify its eyes at first, because its body had several golden spots that looked like more eyes, making it seem like it was looking back at you no matter what part of its body you looked at. A pair of short pointed ears sloped back from its head along with its mane of porcupine-like spines. Huge paws gripped the ground with splayed claws long enough to eviscerate a grown man, and a long, pointed whip-like tail was whipping back and forth as it drew closer.

Even injured as she was, Tekia's first response was to look for her bow, which she found lying in two broken pieces three feet away from her. She was unable to move and without a weapon. She was completely helpless.

It was all up to me.

I gripped the shaft of my spear and yanked it up out of the dirt, brandishing it against the advancing beast. It looked back at me, seeing a challenge, and began to circle, ducking its head in preparation to pounce at any moment. I circled it back, staring it down, unblinking.

I can hardly fathom how I suddenly grew the balls of steel I was exhibiting. I was facing down a hungry predator that wanted to either rip me apart or eat me, possibly both, and I wasn't sure in which order. One would expect me to run for my life if I had any kind of sense at all right then. But at that moment, I was the only thing standing between Tekia and bloody death on four legs. That was all that mattered.

"Clay..." Tekia quavered, her voice dripping with terror. I could hear how powerless she felt, how desperately she wanted to be able to do something.

The zalaku grumbled threateningly in its throat at me, and then opened its big toothy mouth to hit me with an earthshattering roar. I didn't budge. In fact I actually opened my mouth and roared back at it. I wanted it to see there was nothing it could do to make me abandon Tekia. If it wanted her, it had to go through me.

And it looked like it was finally getting that message. Because it started to charge me. I clenched my teeth, and gripped my spear tighter, determined to see that the zalaku met the end of it before its teeth and claws reached me. Most likely a fool's goal, but I was way beyond caring.

But my reckless bravado went unappreciated, as the zalaku's charge was suddenly interrupted by a rain of arrows from above. As the beast roared and contorted in pain, I looked up to see the rest of the hunting party on the top of the hill above us, barraging the creature with arrows.

I barely had time to appreciate their timely arrival before my eyes widened in surprise at the sight of a human shape that vaulted right over the edge of the hill, landing on the wide branch of a low-hanging tree. By the time I realized it was Shimara, she had already taken a few running steps along the branch, and then leapt right off. I was suddenly holding my breath as she dropped through the air, her spear clutched in both hands with the point aimed down, letting rip with a feral cry.

She landed right on the zalaku's back, running her spear right through its gut. The huge beast collapsed beneath her, howling in pain before it finally let its head drop to the ground and didn't move again.

Shimara gripped her staff tightly, and with a grunt she jerked it up out of the dead creature, and then whipped it down to throw the blood off of it. She turned and hopped down off of its body, standing before Tekia and me, while I could only stare at her open-mouthed.

"Okay, I'm impressed," I said.

Shimara spent a long moment regarding me, while I heard the rest of the hunting party clambering their way down the hill. And then Shimara gave an unexpected respectful nod, and then said three words I never expected to hear out of her mouth.

"You do good."

I was too stunned to speak, or even move. At least until I heard Tekia's voice. "Clay?"

I immediately turned around, and rushed to kneel by her side again. She reached a hand out to touch my chest. "You ... no hurt?" she said.

"I'm okay. Jaka giben."

She responded with a relieved smile. After all the time she'd spent giving me the cold shoulder, it was like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.

As the other hunters assembled around us, Shimara ordered us all to return to the village. I don't think anyone objected to that idea. Tekia went to the pouch on her belt and got some of the putty-like stuff we used to cover open wounds out in the field and started applying it to her cuts, which I helped her do with some of my own putty-stuff. Once that was done, I collected Tekia into my arms and lifted her up off the ground, which she aided me in doing by putting an arm around my neck.

It was only when I was working on carrying Tekia while walking through the woods that I started to feel the pain of all the scrapes and bruises I'd picked up on my slide down the hill. Walking on badly scraped up feet while carrying extra weight in your badly scraped up arms is not a pleasant experience, let me assure you.

But when Tekia laid her head against my chest and dozed off, it kind of made up for it.

When we got back to the village, word spread fast that something had happened on our hunt, and soon people were crowding around us to know the details. Shimara did her best to keep them at bay while I made a beeline for the yubaga's hut.

Thankfully the doctor was in, as were most of his assistants. They all looked up and jumped to attention when I entered, and carefully sat Tekia down on the table. I made some fumbling attempts to explain in what Azakosian I knew what had happened, but it really wasn't necessary. The yubaga could pretty clearly discern her injuries by looking her over, and promptly started ordering his assistants to grab supplies to treat her. He then turned to me, and basically assured me that she would be fine. I was pretty sure of that already, but it was nice to get a second opinion.

Then he got some of his ointments and moved towards me. I wrinkled my brow and was about to tell him I was fine, until he took hold of my arm, making me wince in pain as he touched one of my scrapes. Oh yeah, that. He guided me to another table and laid me down on it face down and started applying his ointments to my injuries. Including, to my embarrassment and Tekia's mild amusement, the ones on my ass, which I jumped a little when he touched.

As I lay there, I looked up at Tekia, who had hardly taken her eyes off me the whole time the yubaga's assistants applied their ointments and antiseptics and bandages to her injuries and massaged her sprained ankle. It may have been hard to get an exact bead on what it was, but something had changed between us today.

After the treatments were done, the yubaga told us to rest for while, and summoned his assistants to go with him to check on the rest of the hunting party. So for the moment, Tekia and I were left alone.

Tekia turned her eyes down in shame all of a sudden. "Clay..." she said, "I sorry."

"Tekia, why did you do that? Why did you push me like that? Why did you run away from us?"

She searched for an answer, and seconds ticked by while she came up with none. Apparently she just didn't know the English words to explain it. In fact, I had the feeling she didn't even know the Azakosian words to explain it.