Page 16 of Lost and Stolen Gods
They spotted me and hurried over. “You okay?” Dharma looked me over. “Did they hurt you?”
“No, we did not.” The guard looked offended. “Your friend needs to relieve herself, and you must also need to do…mortal things.”
“Are you telling me that you don’t shit?” Dharma said with a curl of her lip.
He blinked sharply, then pursed his lips, twin spots of color appearing high on his cheekbones. “This is not a subject I wish to discuss.”
Another guard, shorter, stockier, and heavily bearded, appeared behind him and slapped him on the back. “Don’t mind Eesha. Yaksha are notorious prudes when it comes to speaking of the baser things. Ironic considering their connection to nature. But my kind, the rakshasa, don’t have such issues.” He grinned, flashing blunt white teeth from the forest of neatly groomed hair on his face. “To answer your question, yes, we shit, we piss, and we rut. The former not so frequently. The food of our world is different than yours, and not much is wasted. Now that’s cleared up, you mortals can go piss in the woods.”
I shared a look with Remi, because what the heck were yaksha and rakshasa? But Dharma and Priti had gone still, sharing a look of their own.
They knew.
“Be quick,” Umbra ordered from somewhere up ahead. “The sun will set soon.”
I didn’t get the chance to query why the sun setting was an issue before we were joined by the other humans from Lomis’s haul and ushered into the woods by the yaksha guard and his boisterous companion.
The forest closed in around us as the guards led us away from the road, and I moved closer to the sisters. “Do you know what we’re dealing with here?”
“Creatures of myth,” Priti said. “From the tales my grandmother told, yaksha are nature spirits, and rakshasa…They’re demonic shifter creatures who devour flesh.”
Remi glanced over at the rakshasa. “He doesn’t look demonic.”
“You mortals have much to learn,” Eesha said. “Like how sharp a yaksha’s hearing is.”
“And a rakshasa’s too,” the bearded guy said. “No matter, you’ll be educated soon enough.”
Why did that sound like a threat?
“Here is good,” the bearded guard said. “That large flatleaf tree will do. Go fertilize it.”
“Cor, please, have some decorum,” Eesha said.
Cor leaned in and loudly whispered, “You didn’t mind the lack of decorum last night.”
Eesha’s cheeks flushed bright red. “Cor, please!” But there was a definite twinkle in his eye now.
We took it in turns to pee, covering one another to provide an illusion of privacy, but knowing everyone was listening made it harder to find release. It took Remi the longest, and we all had to cover our ears, even the guards.
By the time we were done, the sky was the rich russet of impeding sunset. We’d just set off for the road when a low humming sound vibrated my ears, and a moment later, a wave of dizziness washed over me. I’d climbed a mountain once, and this breathless, lightheaded feeling felt just like an altitude change.
The moment passed as suddenly as it hit, leaving the world as silent as a tomb.
My scalp tightened, and ice pooled low in my belly.
“No,” Eesha said. “It can’t be. The passage route is safe.”
“What’s happening?” the guy with the black eye asked. His good eye darted this way and that, scanning the gloomy forest.
A loud crack like lightning spliced through the silence, then a rage-filled roar shattered it.
“Get to the carriage!” Cor bellowed. “RUN!”
My body reacted to the unseen threat, falling into a sprint toward the road. It was as if someone had turned up the volume so that the thud of our boots and every snap and crack of bracken, even the wind in my ears, was amplified.
Someone screamed, and horses whinnied in terror.
I caught movement in my periphery, something large and dark running parallel to us.
