Page 15 of Ice Planet Barbarians

Is there something wrong with her chest now? Is she trying to tell me her khui is gone? It’s as obvious as her dull white eyes. “Yes, I know,” I tell her. “Fear not. We will perform the ceremony when we return home to the tribe.”

“Shhheorshie,”she says, patting her breast again, and then reaches out and pats my chest. She looks at me expectantly.

Is she asking about my resonance? I press her small hand to my chest so she can feel my khui vibrate. She jerks away, startled, and looks up at me with wide eyes. “Whtws tht? Thtcher naym?”

“Resonance,” I explain to her, and my khui hums at her touch.

She looks at me with such shock that I start to feel a sense of unease. When she puts her hand on my chest again and I resonate, she pulls her hand away so quickly that it’s as if she’s touched something ice cold.

“Hiee cnt pru nownsce tht,”she tells me and presses her hand to my chest again, then back to hers. “Sheeorshie.”

“Sheeorshie,” I echo.

Her face brightens. “Ys!” She gives her chest a happy pat. “Shrsie!”

It’s not her trying to tell me about her khui or her lack of resonance. It’s her name.

She touches her chest again and looks at me expectantly.

Baffled, I touch my own chest. “Vektal.”

Her jaw juts, and she tries to say my name properly. It comes out more as “Huptal.” She’s unable to make the swallowed first syllable properly. It’s all right. It’s a start.

“Huptal,” she says happily and pats her shoulders again. “Shorshie.”

Her own name is garbled syllables, but I try to pronounce it to make her happy. Shorshie she is.

And Shorshie is a mystery to me. She has no tail, no fur. She wears strange leathers and walks the dangerous hunting lands with no weapons. She’s weak and soft and has no khui, and she does not speak a word of proper language.

It makes no sense. How can Shorshie be here? Every creature has a khui. My people, the sa-khui, are the only intelligent people in the world. There are metlaks, but they are covered in hair and no smarter than rocks. They have not yet mastered fire.

Shorshie is smart. She doesn’t flinch away from the fire like a metlak. She recognizes it. And she is wearing cured leather. Her boots are finer than any I have seen. Shorshie has come from a people, from somewhere.

But where? I can’t ask her. We can barely communicate.

And then it occurs to me that . . . she is not resonating. She doesn’t feel what I do, because she has no khui. Maybe she never has.

I’m hit with a sense of loss so strong it makes me bare my teeth. This . . . this cannot happen. How is it that she cannot resonate to me? That we are not connected? It is as if I have found my other half after so long…and she is dead to me. The thought chokes me. To lack a khui is a death sentence. To see Shorshie so vibrant and so doomed makes my soul ache.

But no. She is my mate. My other half. I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep her.

GEORGIE

He’s got fire. That’s a big plus in my book. I rub my hands close to the flames and bask in its warmth. It’s driving away the chill from the outside. The wind is whistling through the door flap, and I can see it’s getting dark outside, but I’m decently warm in this cave as long as I’m near the fire. Guiltily, I think of Liz and Kira and the others. Surely they can stay warm by huddling together, can’t they?

I look up as Vektal begins to pace in the small cave. He looks troubled, and that makes me feel edgy. It’s like I’ve done something wrong, and I’ve no clue what. He keeps purring at me, so I thought he was happy? But I guess not.

My stomach growls, and I press a hand to it. Time for a seaweed bar. I check the pockets of my stolen jumpsuit, but I don’t find anything and begin to panic. Now I’ve lost my food and my weapon. The only things I’ve got left are the boots that pinch my feet and the jumpsuit. Man, I am shitty at this exploring thing. Ugh.

He moves and kneels next to me, and I instinctively shrink back. I give Vektal a wary look. His mouth felt good on me a short time ago, but I know what he wants and I’m leery of him standing too close.

But he only gestures at my stomach. “Kuuuusk?” There are a wealth of tones in that word that I won’t be able to emulate. It’s like he’s doing some weird vibrating thing in the back of his throat.

“Hungry,” I say to him and pat my stomach. Then I mime eating.

He points at my teeth and asks another question. Right. Something about them bothers him. I bare them to show him they’re fine, and he bares his own in response to me.

Fangs. Of course he’s got fangs. His canines are three times the size of mine, and they look brutal. No wonder he’s mystified by my short, blunt teeth. “Hope those are for chewing vegetables,” I tell him brightly.

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