Fade (23 page)

“
Gal un
!” Came the gravel voice of the old man who was no longer carrying his frogs. “
Gal un pok
!”

“He is telling her to get away.” Kah’en smiled. “She is… She wants your hair.”

“Oh. Good.” She relaxed a little (also noting that her many grammar corrections hadn’t been wasted on Kah’en) and the old woman tottered off, seeming unpleased about it. “So, what’s going on? Please tell me there’s water involved.”

“This is Tal. He has said that we can eat and drink here if I go on the hunt with his people this night. I agreed.”

“So,” she looked around at the people and their shanties, “I’m just going to be here by myself?”

Kah’en frowned. “These people are old. They were pushed out of their clan because of it. You are able to set things on fire.
You fear them?
”

She let her eyes survey the small village again. “Guess not.”

“There are cups they are usin—” he chuckled at himself. “Cups they
use
to drink from next to the basin.” He stared at her a moment longer, still smiling, then turned and walked back to the old man.

The place they gave her to lay that evening was much more comfortable than she had expected. The casing was some sort of animal skin, which she still found a bit repulsive, but it had been stuffed with pounds of what felt like downy feathers. The room stank of mud and sweat. But that wasn’t what was keeping her from sleep. She was tired. Every muscle felt flat and buzzed from the day’s walk. Her eyes were heavy and kept threatening to close on her for good. But she kept staring at the tall, rawhide door at her feet. It was the single thing between her and any one of those villagers who decided they might like a closer look at the pink-skinned girl while her friend was away.

“You can set people on fire,” she whispered to herself. Kah’en was right. She could defend herself against any one of these things. However, she was still flesh and blood and sleep felt so vulnerable. But, as hard as she tried otherwise, she did sleep. With the sounds of insects, frogs and the low whispers of the villagers moving away, she slipped into rest.

She might have never woke again if it weren’t for the old woman resting her knee on the tip of her finger. She roused with a start, just missing plunging the knife the woman held into her own face as she rose. She pushed the palm of her right hand into the jaw of the now growling woman. Blood sprang from her mouth, a vibrant contrast against her ebony skin. Her head twisted sideways, but she was right back on Angela with the blade.

“
Dae se toki!
”

Angela threw another punch at her, feeling the old hag’s nose snap just as the tip of the blade entered her right shoulder. She screamed, flames leaping out with it. The old woman’s own scream ended like someone had jerked the needle from the record on which her voice played. Her charred body landed on the smoking rawhide door her weight had yanked free. Angela, shaking, stepped out of the now burning hut. The entire village stood staring.

The others eventually came to take the dead woman’s body away but, after this, they kept their distance from her until Kah’en returned. When he did, a creature resembling an antelope, but with silver fur and large, pupil-less eyes, hung over his shoulders. A giant, hairless man began yelling, pointing in her direction as soon as he was in earshot. Kah’en frowned, letting the beast slide from his shoulders to the dry earth. It wasn’t long before he came to her.

“That woman attacked me with a knife!” She pointed at the shoulder she had wrapped up with the cloth they had in their supplies.

He nodded. “They say we are to leave.”

She scowled. “The woman tried to kill me. I was defending myself!” She kicked the ground, a spray of dirt and rock clattering up, and turned away from him.

“They won’t care.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but growled and stomped her foot instead.

“The man I hunted with gave me water to take with us. There is that. ...And more. But we must go now.”

“Fine. This is insane!” Tears spilled onto her cheeks and she turned, crossing her arms, walking away from the still staring group huddled at the other end of the small village.

***

“On foot, the journey will take us a few weeks,” Kah’en said, having just decided they would go. The village was a spot now in the long, flat distance.

“What are you talking about?” Angela asked.

“The old man I hunted with. He was exiled over a hundred years ago. I asked him if it were true that no one could leave.” Kah’en stopped, taking a pull from the skin of water on his belt, then holding it out to Angela.

“What did he say?” She took the skin with greed.

“He said there is a guardian. He said, years before, he watched a hundred warriors torn apart by the creature.” He stared at her now, waiting for a response. She dropped her head.

“Oh,” she said with zero mirth, then looked up, “But that was years ago, right? Maybe the thing’s gone now.”

“This is being possible.” Kah’en covered his eyes, looking for what, he didn’t know. Finally, he lowered his head, turning it back to Angela. “Time is not right here.”

Angela narrowed her eyes. “What does that even mean?”

“The old man I hunted with. He said he has been here a hundred years. He told me stories. They were stories I had lived. On the other Earth. Stories from that war.” He looked at her with unbelieving eyes. “He told me Aern banished him.”

“Are you sure?”

He grunted.

“So. Once again. What does that even mean?”

“Wait…” He started to turn when Angela bucked forward, yowled in pain, and was pawing at her left shoulder as she tumbled to the ground, limp.

He crouched, scanning the horizon, “Stop! I am Janar!” He said in the guttural growls of his language.

One of the men, large, his eyes as silver as the moon, stepped out, his bow drawn. “This land is ours. All know this.”

Kah’en held his hands up. “We did not. We are new here.”

“You are Janar?” The man lowered his bow, hung it on his shoulder. But Kah’en noticed how his hand lingered around the scabbard at his side.

Kah’en stuffed his chest with air, bobbed his head.

The attacker’s eyes went to Angela. “She is not.”

“We search for a Guardian. Of a way out,” Kah’en said, hands still out.

The man smiled, his head dropped and wagged. “If death is the way out of this place, then you will find it there. Come. We will talk, Janar. A place to sleep. Food.
Tonight
.” He moved his jaw from side to side, examining Angela, the thin, long wooden dart in her shoulder, then waving a hand at her, said, “she most likely won’t die.”

***

A fire was burning at the edge of the Fade’s camp. It threw swaths of orange onto Cynthia and Aern. The air stank of it, and sparks of dying ash flitted past them like falling stars. Each of them waited for the other. Cynthia was aware that she should be afraid. But her rage made her stand, readied her muscles to leap and tear and punch.

Aern reached for his side, the scepter there perhaps, but hesitated, then let his arm drop. Cynthia stood, catching her breath. He had pulled his decimated ranks back, sending three of them to find Jonas and Lucy, letting the rest watch. He meant to kill Cynthia with his bare hands. They stood in the midst of the bodies of the Fade, both the dead and the wounded. “If the yellow-haired girl is alive when they bring her back I will make you watch.” Aern said this, then fell silent. Only stared at Cynthia with those hot-coal eyes.

The silence of the world around them felt strange after such turmoil. But it all seemed strange. Everything she knew about herself up until a few days earlier would have told Cynthia that she should run. This beast of a man who stood twice her size would make quick work of that Cynthia. But now she was able to stand and fight where her friends and family could not.
Where Jan could not.
This truth still felt a lie, but even its truth did not make the enemy before her any less dangerous.

She took a deep breath, knowing all that Jonas knew about fighting these monsters, but this was reality. Still, she was determined to do everything her body would allow in bringing him down.
No more hesitation
, she decided, and threw herself at him. He had looked ready, smug even, but seemed unprepared for her skill. Her fist landed hard on his armored chest and he grunted loud, wheeling back a few paces. She thought she’d hurt him, but it was not as much as she would have liked. It was punching a steel door and expecting it to fly open.

“Good,” he said. It was all he said before he was on her. She felt his punch, which was no small thing. It was no world-ending, face-crunching blow, although it stung worse than the Golem had.

Over the next few minutes they exchanged blows, sizing one another up. Any hope she’d garnered began to wither as her punches seemed not to be causing as much pain as she had first hoped. Jonas had said the Fade were strong but, in her mind, he was saying that most of that strength came from their fabled technology. No. Completely naked of technology, this monster was at least as big a bad-ass as she.

As she fought, she kept thinking that this wasn’t her. This wasn’t what she had ever been about or had to do. But it was what she was forced to do. Yes, she knew she had messed up. She’d brought whichever one of these Fade bastards had followed her that night right to Jan. That was on her. She would live with that for the rest of her life. But Jan’s face, sapped of all the life she had, that pale body they had ripped her from, that was on them. Jonas probably thought different, but Cynthia hadn’t followed him there to die. For the first time in her life she felt purpose: Revenge.

She concentrated on strategy—pulled from every corner of every box-load of information Jonas had dumped into her. But often, he punched her, and she punched him back. He leapt at her, and she launched a rock the size of his head at him. That kind of tit-for-tat wouldn’t end the fight. She realized, thrown to the ground by one of Aern’s more direct punches, that she’d never had the chance to find out just how much damage she could do. As she got up, she decided Aern seemed a good testing ground.

Rushing at him, as he bent forward meaning to grab her, she interlaced her fingers and swung up, landing a blow under his chin. His teeth cracked together as his head snapped back. She jumped after him, onto his chest, forcing him down onto his back. Over and over she brought every bit of her muscle down into his face. Every time he attempted to strike, she struck faster. If her hits weren’t earth-shattering quakes then maybe she could give him enough small cuts to bleed him dry.

When he finally managed to roll away, she was up as quick as he. She shook with adrenaline, fear, and a smidge of pride. Then she smiled. It broke out on her face like an explosion. He was bleeding. And, for the record, she was not.

He wiped at his lip with the back of his hand. “Jonas.” Aern was breathing hard. “He always has surprises for me.” He twisted his neck to look at the handful of remaining warriors still standing behind him. Many of them bridled against the invisible line he made them stand behind, but were obedient.

He’s embarrassed
, Cynthia thought. She hadn’t seen a female one in the Fade’s army, which said something interesting about them to her. So getting put on his back by a girl—especially one of the human persuasion—wouldn’t bring him a lot of testosterone-related respect, she imagined.

“I held my own hand over your friend’s mouth as she struggled. She was so confused. So scared. Urinated down her leg like an animal. I did that with my own hands.”

Anger flashed across her wet eyes. Her cheeks flushed. She wanted to scream at him, tell him what he’d taken away from her, how much Jan meant to her. But it occurred to her that it would give him pleasure.

This time Aern did reach for his side, but past the staff that hung there. He pressed his finger into a notch on the belt attached to the armor he wore. A low humming noise rose in the night air and blue light traced the metal trenches crawling all throughout the armor. All in a second he was unstoppable.

***

Each morning, Angela and Kah’en would rise and he would continue to teach her. She learned faster than he had anticipated. The inhabitants of the small village nestled in the mountains that had welcomed them, the remains of which hinted to have been some beautiful city at some point in the distant past, marveled as he helped her practice control of her ability. Any disrespect they had for this young girl had, at the least, turned to reverential fear.

Warriors in the village even began to spar with her as their short stay lengthened. At some point, she began to match them. Dacus fought her often. He was a house. He smiled this day because he was in control. He had her on the defensive.

“
Kor ne vada
, human!” He pronounced
human
like it had two O’s instead of a U.

Kah’en laughed, sitting nearby. “He says, you will lose, human.”

“I got the human part,” she said, blocking a strike with a fiery arm. Dacus yanked the arm away, but did not falter.

Dacus was sent there a few years before, from the first Earth, which Kah’en once again marveled at, as the war had been over more than
a few years
. Time. Dacus had failed what he considered an ill-advised effort by Aern to take a large city, steal their supplies. Aern was not pleased.

Angela pushed Dacus back, baring her teeth. “Just,” she grunted, Dacus ran at her, “biding my time.” She went down, using his weight against him, pushing him up and over her. He landed hard and she was before him, hands blazing. “
Kor ne
. . . .
whatever
, Dacus.”

He guffawed and she helped him to his feet. She wiped her brow. Arms akimbo, head down, she walked over and sat next to Kah’en. “Thank you,” she said between breaths.

“Why is this?”

“I lived my whole life running from responsibility. She lifted her head to look at him. “People hung out with me because I was important in that little world. I thought it would always be like that. But you guys gave me something I didn’t have.” She stood up straight and looked Kah’en in the eyes. “I never thought I needed anything I couldn’t take. But I needed you. I would probably be dead without you.” She put a hand on his.