Chapter 1
The bite in the buttock was sudden and sharp, painful even by the local standards where high pain tolerance was the name of the game.
Clamping a hand over the spot, Adelaide Rye fought tears that threatened to pour in a hot torrent from her eyes. Frozen on all fours under the spiky Qom bush, she breathed through the nose, working through the waves of electric shocks that rode her backside.
“Go back to hell where you belong,” she cursed through her compressed lips at the offending Hicar bug that qualified as a mosquito in these parts. Her violent jerk had dislodged it, and now the gelatinous gray blob the size of a small bird hovered in the air on its ten stubby gossamer wings. The tip of Hicar’s long mouthpiece was dripping acid as the thing was scanning Addie for fleshy parts with its ridiculous googly eyes.
And where were her annoying Yuux companions when she needed them? A little advance warning would have been nice.
Groping for a rock, Addie found one without taking her eyes off the Hicar and threw it. Practice indeed made perfect, and the rock made dynamic contact with Hicar’s body. It exploded with a wet pop and splattered to the ground, the wings slowly floating down.
The bloodsucking creatures were quite slow, and Addie had become quite adept at disposing of them, typically before they had a chance to bite. In fact, she routinely used them for target practice and had no qualms about single-handedly decimating the Hicar population this side of the Olzol Mountains. Precise throwing skills, she had long found out, meant a difference between eating dinner and going to bed hungry.
Addie gingerly rubbed her buttcheek. It would be sore for days.
Sighing, she finished pulling two twisted tubers from the ground where they nestled under the low-hanging branches and backed out from under the Qom bush, careful not to touch the underside of the leaves. Long thorns left scratches on her bare arms, but she could live with the scratches. It was the agonizing rash that Qom leaves gave her that she’d much rather avoid.
The two tubers joined a couple of dozens of others she had collected and piled onto a stiff woven pallet. Addie surveyed the amount and deemed it to be sufficient to yield enough juice for the women.
Quiet chirping drew her attention upwards. The Yuux had returned and were now circling over her head in agitation as if they could sense her pain.
“Nowyou’re all bent out of shape,” she grumbled as she tied the ends of the pallet together to form a sack around the tubers. “I already killed it. But it had already bit me, so thanks for nothing.”
More low-pitched, quiet chirping sounded from the Yuux before they landed on her shoulder. They squabbled a little settling down, as was their custom, then grew quiet.
Addie harrumphed and hoisted the sack over her other shoulder, reluctant to disturb the Yuux even though a small part of her wanted to shoo the pesky critters away.
Slightly larger than Hicars, Yuux weren’t bugs but warm-blooded flying animals. As ubiquitous as a house sparrow where Addie came from, Yuux were known for adopting a host to bond with. These two had taken a shine to Addie and made her their own. She christened them Ihr and Ehr, after this planet's two suns.
She started walking, thinking how Iolanthe didn’t see any value in fostering Yuux. But Sathe, a local woman, disdained Iolanthe’s opinion. Yuux were not merely a companion species, she had told Addie. They were protectors. They alerted their chosen host to danger. They could even defend their host, although Sathe was hazy on how exactly that was accomplished by a small flying furball with no teeth.
Cringing from the pain in her buttock, Addie hobbled down a rocky incline that led to the city. Emerging from the thicket of tall viny bushes, she caught sight of Iolanthe’s teepee, the tallest among a smattering of similar crude structures made of twined twigs, moss, and animal hides.
“City” was a misnomer if there ever was one, but Iolanthe stood firm. They lived in the City of Seraphims, and to drive the point across, she had made a stuffed figure of a six-winged angel and hung it above the entrance to her residence.
Suddenly, an unusual sight made Addie stop in her tracks, and her eyes narrow in attention. At the same time, the Yuux roused and took flight, soundlessly hovering above Addie’s head, watching.
A party of strange men carrying large packs on their backs was nearing the city. Seven of them, all tall and broad with long hair. A For trading party, from the looks of things.
Addie held her breath, observing the warriors.
They were so human-looking from afar that it was easy to pretend they were just men, and yet at the same time, impossible. The distance that blurred their marked facial features amplified their animal way of moving, of rotating their heads in this owlish way that Addie found so disturbing. Soin-human.
She readjusted her load of tubers, reluctant to approach their settlement with the strange men breaching the border from the opposite side. It was the third time the nomadic For came to their camp while she was living here, and exposure hadn’t diminished the healthy fear she experienced in the presence of males who were so potently untamed.
The people in the settlement were clearly aware of the party’s approach. The campus was unusually deserted, but as Addie watched, Iolanthe emerged from her teepee clad in her usual revealing garb that looked like strategically crisscrossed strips of woven cloth. Similarly decked-out Mot, Dannica, and Janna-Beatrix were close at her heels, and a cluster of their own warriors surrounded them. Hoban, of course, walked at Iolanthe’s side, making their formidable self-proclaimed queen look dainty next to his brawn.
The two groups came together in the circle that was their central plaza and began talking, seemingly a peaceful assembly. The trading men set down their packs.
“What say you?” Addie addressed Ihr and Ehr who hung suspended above her head, their sets of five button eyes trained, unblinking, on the settlement. “Is it a good idea to go home now?”
The Yuux didn’t respond, but neither did they express agitation, and Addie took it as an encouraging sign. She was thirsty and butthurt - literally - and the tubers were heavy. Hefting her load, she stepped off the trodden path and went around the campsite, hiding behind the cover of large clumps of bulbous Timpho grass that grew in this steppe in thick profusion.
Finally reaching the shack on the outskirts of the settlement, she dropped the sack with relief.
Sathe was seated in the corner expertly handling a large swath of new skin in efficient motions of her strong crooked fingers. Her strange but lovely eyes - her one eye - shot a quick glance at Ihr and Ehr. Sathe never said, but Addie suspected that it was because of her Yuux companions she had earned a measure of Sathe’s confidence. None of the other women managed to acquire a Yuux.
“They come,” Sathe said in her low-pitched, heavily accented voice.
