Page 2 of Taken to Heimo
“Get the xok off of her!” I shout, but even my voice is weak and ineffective, growing fainter and fainter.
He holds her down easily and positions himself between her legs. His bare backside gleams up at me. He’s going to violate her. Can she even take him? Will he kill her?
“Svera. Nox…please…” I say, and this is the first time I’ve despaired. This is the first time I’ve felt a fear heavy enough to bring me to my knees.
The full power of the Xanaxana that binds me to Svera explodes through my bones. I roast alive, heating, sweating, burning, shaking,dying…
And then I wake and the dream fades just as it did last lunar and the lunar before and the lunar before…
2
Svera
I’m lying in the dark, wide awake even though my eyes are closed. My whole body is tightly coiled against the sheets. Or well, not sheets. The Voraxians use furs and animal skins to line their curved nests.
The edges are so high I can’t see over them and I fall into the center. Just a little ball, trying to hide from my nightmares. But there’s nowhere to hide. They sweep in like the wind through the trees outside of my window — with blistering force.
“Kiy gadol yawveh mikol ha’elohim,” I remind myself. “Allah alakbar.” I pray to the Tri-God to chase away the visions.
Visions of being chased, of being caught, of being hurt. I picture the horrible four-armed, spiked male that tried to…do more.Nondah. The pirate’s name was Nondah.I remember holding a little dagger and trying to cut at him in order to protect myself. I’m not a fighter. Hurting him had hurt me. I don’t want to have to do it again. I don’t get any pleasure out of it. I’m not a warrior. I’m not like…
The door to my room opens with a nearly silentwhoosh. I freeze. My heart is in my mouth.Allah al akbar. Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai E?ad. Tri-God help me.It’s him. Nondah. The name of the pirate who tried to…
And then I hear a familiar grunt and the same angry stomping that I heard last lunar and the lunar before and every lunar since the two of us have returned to Qath. Since I was taken onto that pirate ship, knocked out when it exploded, and woke up to the sight of Krisxox’s angry red face. He’d been holding me.
And here he is rescuing me again even if it’s only from my bleak and brutal thoughts.Thank the Lord and thank the stars.
I exhale my first easy breath of the lunar as he stomps to the plush seat in the corner and takes it. He unfurls the blanket I left out for him and, for a while, I listen to his agitated breathing until it eventually deepens and I know he’s asleep.
I know because I’m familiar with this sound by now — the sound of him stomping in angrily every lunar, and stomping out at solarbreak just as angrily. Then he’ll go down the hall and start to prepare first mealloudly. And eventually, I’ll get up and fold the blanket he’d been using and wonder the same thing I do each solar — if he knows that I know that he comes to my room, or if he even cares. At the very least, he must have realized that the blanket he uses doesn’t fold itself.
But he never says anything and I never say anything and like this, we both keep pretending.
I sigh contentedly and my muscles loosen and the darkness ceases to feel quite so cold. I close my eyes, still wondering about Krisxox and his brutish silliness and his pretending to be clandestine and my pretending to be asleep until, with alarming quickness, I’m not pretending anymore.
I sleep dreamlessly.
3
Krisxox
She could sleep through a Muxung Boar attack.
No matter how the summer winds wail, every solar I wake up, she’s out cold. Her little body sprawled wildly over her nest, the delicately woven vervu-fiber blanket tangled around her legs, the heavy fur splashed haphazardly over her body.
She keeps her hair covered even when she sleeps. A light-colored silk encases it, but there are still small strands of gold and ashy brown that escape near her face and curl near her cheeks.
I follow the long line of her neck with my gaze. It’s so thin and delicate. She shouldn’t even be alive. None of them should be. And this onedefinitelyshouldn’t be here sleeping the solar away in my city in my home in my nest.
But she is.
And I don’t wake her. I can’t. I need to be careful. I don’t need her knowing that I spend each lunar in her room. I don’t need her knowing that I dream of her. That failing her gives me nightmares.I don’t need her knowing about the pressure in my chest. The fire that spreads across it. The heat that’s so vociferous it makes me stark-raving mad. The colors that sometimes…flare…oh xok…xok!I can feel those colors now rising within me like a sickness, a disease that festers and corrupts.
I’m staring down at her ankles, exposed up to the shin. Her skin is a flawless light brown. The bottom of her feet, very pale and strange by contrast. It’s disgusting.It’s beautiful.I remember what it had looked like to see her full body bared. To hold it in my arms. To hold her. Her.My Xiv— nox. Never.
I swallow hard and turn from her, but the weight in my chest is enough to slow me down. I stagger once, but make it to the door. I wave it open and move down the hall. The farther from her I move, the more the pressure releases. The weight is almost totally lifted by the time I reach the cooking pit.
Only a few steps down and I’m in my lair. Everything is right here. My head clears. After the training flats, it’s the place I feel most stable. I pull out a host of ingredients from baskets below the red werro-wood cooking surfaces. I light the fusion fire cooking trays and I forget that I have analienliving in my house. It’s sickening and so is she. Not she.It.The alien.What would my sires say if they saw me living with it?
