THIRTY-TWO

Tiaan dreamed that a lyrinx’s huge mouth had closed right over her head, to bite her off at the neck. She dreamed that she was whirled in visible currents of water, blue and green and purple. She dreamed that she had swallowed a fish, which was flapping around inside her left lung, its spines prickling.

Piercing, brittle cold; the worst she’d ever felt. A blow in her chest; another. Something with an overpowering gamey smell went over her face.

Thump, thump, thump, fading to nothing again.

Her fingers and toes hurt so much that she woke weeping. She was wrapped in something that itched and her feet felt as if they had been rubbed with broken glass.

Tiaan opened her eyes. She seemed to be in a cave, the entrance closed off by a hanging. A fire blazed behind her, another not far from her feet. Ryll squatted there, rubbing her feet and calves. The claws were retracted. His hand looked fully regenerated. He had a massive bruise above his right eye.

‘My feet feel like icicles that you could snap off,’ she whispered, too listless to question or even wonder.

‘There is broth.’ He busied himself at the fire, returning with one hand cupped. ‘Open your mouth.’

She opened up but, thinking what he might have made soup from, snapped it closed again.

‘What is wrong?’ the lyrinx asked.

‘It’s not …’

Ryll smiled, the first true smile she had seen on him. It was frightening – so many teeth – but disarming too. ‘It’s bear soup. A big old Hürn male, past his best. You’re wearing his skin.’

Tiaan, becoming aware that she was clad in nothing else, flushed.

‘Open!’ said Ryll.

She shook her head, able to think of nothing but that she lay naked in a bearskin at the mercy of this … predator.

Ryll pinched her nose until Tiaan was forced to open her mouth. The soup dribbled in. It was hot. She gagged, swallowed, found it good and swallowed again. A delicious warmth spread through her belly.

All dignity gone, she nuzzled at his hand like a starving calf, desperate for more. He filled his hand over and again from the hollow stone in the fire. Shortly, her stomach aching, Tiaan lay back. The cold was fleeing from her middle, though her feet and hands still felt dead. Ryll’s eyes did not leave her.

‘How did we escape?’ she asked. She could not remember those last seconds.

‘I wrapped myself around you, trying to keep you warm, but you died.’

She sat up, staring at him. She felt a tremendous pain in her chest. ‘What?’

‘The shock stopped your heart. I could not keep you warm enough. I went downriver a long away. Maybe half a … league, before I could get out.’

‘How did you survive?’

‘I nearly drowned. It was the greatest terror of my life. We do not like water.’

‘Why not?’ she croaked.

‘Swimming is hard for us. We do not float, and our wings tangle in the water. Fortunately,’ and she could sense his bitterness, ‘I have no wings. I found a hole but the ice kept breaking off. I couldn’t get out! I nearly went mad with panic.’ Black jags shivered across his chest plates. ‘The current pushed me under but, luckily, jammed me between a rock and the ice. I burst through and ran with you. Then came the piece of luck that saved your life. I found a cave in a gully, and in it was an old bear.’

‘A bear?’ she echoed.

‘I killed it, that you might live. There was no time for anything else. You had not breathed for half an hour but I knew the cold could have saved you. I’ve seen that before, with humans. I dared not make a fire. I took out the guts of the bear, put you inside and packed them in again. When you began to warm up, I struck you in the chest until your heart started beating.’

‘That’s why it hurts so much.’ Her chest felt battered black and blue, and the bloody offal stench came from her.

‘You breathed, but did not wake. I thought you never would. Three days have gone by since we went into the river. In the middle of that night I carried you away. I knew there were caves here.’

‘How did you manage?’

‘We are tough. How has humanity given us such trouble when you are so little and puny and weak?’ Going to the entrance, he pulled the skin to one side and stared out.

‘Where are my clothes?’ she asked.

‘Everything is wet.’ He pointed to her pack, which lay behind her.

She emptied it. The contents were sodden, ice-crusted.

‘Could you make a line for me?’ She held out the rope. Every movement hurt her chest.

‘I have much to think about.’ He returned to the door.

Turning away, she opened the bearskin. The area between her breasts was bruised yellow and purple. He must have struck her many times with those hard hands, but he’d saved her life. The question she kept coming back to was – why?

Tiaan tried to make a drying line while holding the skin around her. It proved impossible. She was too weak; the uncured skin was heavy.

Ryll snorted. His face was distorted in what she assumed was amusement. Yellow streaks around his mouth made a smile as wide as a shovel.

‘What?’ she said furiously.

He let out a great bellow, unmistakably laughter. His chest pumped, his leathery cheeks inflated like a trumpeter.

‘What are you hiding, little one? Had I not stripped off your wet clothes and put you in the bear you would have frozen to death. I massaged every part of you to keep the blood flowing.’

She ducked her head in mortification. When she finally looked up again, he was still staring at her middle. She managed to pull the skin up that far.

‘You are a mature woman,’ he said. ‘Have you been mated?’

‘No,’ she said uncomfortably.

‘You have only just matured?’

‘I am twenty. I have been a woman for six years.’

Ryll looked sympathetic. ‘You are not permitted to mate either?’

For some reason she found his sympathy irritating. ‘I choose not to mate!’ she said sharply. ‘I have had many offers.’ That was not true. Her cool manner and total absorption in her work had been off-putting to suitors and, after all, in the manufactory there were many more women than men.

‘You choose not to mate?’ he said incredulously. ‘But when you are ripe you must mate, if you have been matched.’

‘Human females do not go on heat. We can mate anytime we choose. Or not! I have waited six years for my lover, and now I am going to him.’ Poor Minis. There had been no time to think of him with all her own troubles.

‘Your customs bewilder me.’

Ryll was staring at her, as he must have while she was unconscious. This alien creature had been examining her, while she lay all unknowing. ‘I feel so …’ To her horror, Tiaan began to cry, great choking sobs. Once begun, she could not stop.

The lyrinx regarded her impassively. Eventually the tears reduced to sniffles. She wiped her face and sank down in the skin, next to the fire.

‘What was that called?’ asked Ryll.

She found herself smiling at his curiosity. ‘I was crying. Also called weeping or sobbing.’

‘I know those words. Why do you cry? What does it do?’

‘I felt sad, and embarrassed and ashamed; and afraid.’ She had to explain those emotions as well.

‘Why did you feel that way?’

‘Because you’re a male and you had the advantage of me while I knew nothing about it. You might …’ As the thought occurred to her, Tiaan’s mouth opened wide and she tried to get away. Her bearskin, dragged into the fire, began to smoulder.

He sprang to beat it out. She limped the other way, putting the fire between them and making an incoherent sound in her throat. She felt a churning, vomitous horror.

He went still, baffled. ‘I don’t understand. What emotion are you feeling now? Why were you afraid? I was not going to eat you.’