“Yes, that’s about right.”
He translated. The Yellow Robes chimed in nasally.
“The High Counselor wants to know if you are deformed.”
Addie blinked. “Deformed? In what way?”
“You are a grown woman in years, but you look like a child.”
Addie sent a covert glance at the raven-haired voluptuous Qalae. “I may have lost some weight.”
At only five-two, she had always been on a short side with a normal, if average, woman’s body. But even at the height of her plumpness, she couldn't have matched the likes of Qalae in terms of womanly forms. She got where the Yellow Robes was coming from.
She looked Zoark straight in the face. “I’m not a For.”
“Everyone can see that.”
As Zoark translated what she had said to the Yellow Robes and the chief and listened to their next questions, Addie felt this man’s antagonism wash over her in waves.
“Our people have watched you since Melmie told the story about meeting you in the uplands,” Zoark said again in his slightly accented, low voice. He had a clear voice, the low tones of it soothing and smooth, without the gravelly, hoarse undertones of most male Fors. “Why are you looking for us?”
“I wasn’t looking for you, specifically,” she explained. Not knowing what to do with her hands, she folded them at her chest, belatedly realizing what a supplicating gesture it was. “I was looking for people. Any people. After I met Melmie and Oh’na, I wanted to locate their tribe. I know very little about your land. I hoped to meet you, and maybe… learn from you how to survive.”
Zoark translated her words in the same low voice with little inflection.
The Chief fixed Addie with his brilliant otherworldly eyes.
“What is your strength?” he asked, and Addie understood him without Zoark’s help. He wanted to know her skills, what she could bring to the tribe.
Her spirits fell and her shoulders slumped. “I was a healer for my people,” she replied on her own and with as much dignity as she could muster. The For may scoff at her profession, but she was proud of it. Where she came from, there were few more needed or respected occupations than a nurse.
Chief Net’ok and “Hoban” sniffed with disdain. Yellow Robes gave her a withering look. He raised his fist up and uttered a string of exclamations in a hoarse grating voice. People around the teepee expressed their agreement.
“What did he say?” Addie asked Zoark.
His heavy brows lowered but he replied, reluctantly, “The High Counselor Chemmusaayl asserts that ‘healer’ is a word for a charlatan. Bodies heal themselves. A person has no such powers.”
Addie bit her tongue and didn’t argue, but her gaze involuntarily slid down to rest on Zoark’s sorry sight of a knee. He noticed, and his face hardened.
To think of it, this Zoark person was the worst of the bunch. The antagonism radiating from him was palpable.
Squaring her shoulders and stifling a groan, Addie slowly rose to her lacerated and bleeding feet. Tuning out Zoark and his disapproval of her profession, her gender, or her species altogether, she gave a sweeping glance to the crowd and spoke to the room at large in her halting rudimentary For language.
“I mean no one harm. I am not a thief or a liar. I belong to a different species who came to your land by accident. There were others, but now I am the only survivor. I want to make friends. It’s hard to live alone.”
Net’ok exchanged a glance with “Hoban” and stood up in one fluid surge. He was spectacularly built, brawny with smooth light-gold skin stretched tightly over his rock-hard muscles. He came over to Qalae and stopped, gazing lovingly into her face.
“What say you, my queen? Should we kill this strange woman Addie, the last of her species?”
Addie’s insides shriveled, and her already dry mouth turned to pure cotton.
Qalae’s gaze skimmed over her wild tangled hair.
“No.”
The worst of Addie’s stomach cramp eased, but the burning heartburn remained.
“Is she welcome to the tribe, then?” Net’ok addressed his beloved.
