Page 1 of Yasmin and the Yeti
CHAPTER ONE
Cold.
Yasmin shivered and automatically reached for her blanket, but her hand found cold metal instead.
Metal?
Why was there metal in her bed? She tried to open her eyes but her eyelids were heavy and unresponsive and she had to blink several times before they opened enough for her to see. A white ceiling hovered over her head, illuminated by some unseen light source that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Not her ceiling.
Where am I?
Her body felt too heavy to move, but she finally managed to roll onto one side and saw bars.
Bars? Am I in jail?
And what kind of jail was this? Why had they left her lying on a cold metal floor?
She forced her reluctant body into a sitting position, putting a hand to her aching head as she tried to remember. A wave of dizziness crashed over her, bringing with it flashes of memory like broken glass. Walking to the bus stop as she did every night after work. A heavy fog drifting in, gradually obscuring her surroundings. A whiff of something repulsive, like the sickly smell of rotting meat, and the sound of heavy footsteps behind her.
She’d tried to tell herself she was perfectly safe, that she’d walked down that street every day for the past two years, but an odd sense of panic started to creep over her. The hairs on the back of her neck rose and before she could stop herself, she whirled around.
There was a dark-haired man right behind her, dressed in a plain grey coverall. He looked ordinary enough, but there was something wrong about him. Before she could figure out what it was, he raised his hand and everything went dark.
Whoever had been behind her must have been responsible for bringing her here. But where washere? And why was she here?
She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly realizing that her clothes were gone. They’d been replaced by some kind of brief white garment that only fastened at the shoulders and the waist, leaving her arms and legs bare. She tried to stand, hoping to get a better look at her surroundings, but her legs were too weak to support her. The aftereffects of whatever had been used to sedate her still weighed her down.
She took a deep breath and tried again, half crawling over to the bars. There were more cells on the other side of a narrow corridor. Most of them were empty, but the one across from herwas occupied by… She blinked again. Why was an animal in jail? And not any kind of animal she had ever seen before.
It had brightly colored feathers, like a parrot—if a parrot were six feet tall. It had piercing yellow eyes and a huge, predatory-looking beak. When it saw her watching it, it opened its mouth and let out a harsh squawk. She had the distinct impression it was asking her something. When she didn’t respond, it squawked again, a rapid series of sounds that seemed far more complex than normal bird calls.
“Are… are you trying to talk to me?”
It tilted its head, inspecting her, and there was something disturbingly intelligent about those yellow eyes. It raised a hand with four thin digits tipped with long sharp claws. It pointed at itself and made one of those squawking noises again. Then, it pointed at her.
“Are you asking me my name? I’m Yasmin. Yasmin,” she repeated, pointing at herself.
The bird creature managed to reproduce the sound remarkably well. “Yass-meen.”
“That’s right, but I’m not sure I can pronounce your name. Can you say it again?”
It made what sounded like the same noise and she did her best to imitate it.
“Kra… Kra’caow?”
It was the closest she could get and after a couple more attempts, Kra’caow shrugged in an oddly human gesture and nodded. It tilted its head, studying her again, then tapped its ear.
“Are you asking me if I understand you? Because I don’t. But you can understand me, can’t you? You have something in your ear which translates what I’m saying.” she added slowly and Kra’caow nodded again.
The sheer strangeness of the situation finally hit her. She was sitting half-naked in a cell, talking to a giant bird. She would have thought she was dreaming, but the cold floor, the lingering ache in her head—the sheer physical reality of her surroundings made it disturbingly obvious that she was awake.
And if she wasn’t dreaming… where was she?
Not on Earth.
She wanted to dismiss the idea, but she couldn’t and she looked over at Kra’caow.
“I’m not on my planet anymore, am I?” she asked, her voice trembling.
