Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Hunger's Harmattan (9 page)

She had to bite her tongue to keep from
hissing at the men. When Tariq pointed to a leather-draped doorway off to his
right, she strode over to it and ducked inside.

“Angry women do not make good bed partners,
Ailyn,” Tariq said with a sigh then held his hand out for Ailyn to precede him
from the hut.

The two Reapers walked away from the stand
of huts so their talking would not bother the villagers trying to sleep. Though
the moon had set, neither needed a torch to light their way for their eyesight
was as keen as a wolf’s in the darkness. It was to the waterfall they went.
Sitting down side by side on a broad, flat rock, they stared out over the
water. Neither spoke for a long time. Finally it was Tariq who broke the
silence.

“From the dawning of time when man awoke to
find a rib missing and a woman lying at his side, it has been the duty and the
obligation of the male to protect the female, to care for her, to provide for
her, to give her children. It has been the female’s task to care for her mate,
to keep his hut, to bear his children and to give him the pleasure of her body.
Traditionally, she is the weaker, he the stronger, and it is his will that is
done.”

Tariq said nothing for a few minutes as he
let his companion absorb those words. When he spoke again, he drew one leg up
and rested his wrist upon his knee.

“Now consider the Amazeen,” he said. “They
are a race of women who believe it was not they who came second into creation
but that they were here first, life having been breathed into them by the
goddess. The first man came from woman’s womb as a child to be led and taught
and controlled. Because they believe males are inferior, the Amazeen bow to no
man. They are fierce warrior women and are deadly, capable fighters. They
capture and enslave men of other races and think nothing of castrating them if
the mood strikes. They think nothing of cutting off their breast to enhance
their ability to pull a bow. What man—I ask you—would cut off one of his balls
to better wield a sword? Amazeens make formidable enemies.”

Once again Tariq fell silent to allow Ailyn
to think about what he’d said.

“Are you telling me I should go back with
her to Riezell?”

Tariq turned his attention to Ailyn. “No
man can tell you what to do, my friend. You are a Reaper. You will do what you
wish to do.”

“What if I don’t know what I want to do?”
Ailyn challenged.

The Prime Reaper smiled knowingly. “The
moment you looked into her eyes, you knew she was destined to be your mate. You
felt the pull toward her. You felt what my people call the
eolach
, the
knowing. The moment you put hands to her, she was yours and you were hers.” He
laid a hand on Ailyn’s shoulder. “You will not be able to allow her to leave
Theristes and return to her world without you. She cannot stay here for she has
a destiny on Riezell. You cannot ask her to put aside her desires, her beliefs
and her goals simply because you are the male and she is the female. That might
work with a Riezellian woman but I can promise you it will not work with an
Amazeen.”

“I don’t want to go back to Riezell,” Ailyn
stated.

“I know this but I also know it will be
hell for you here without her, a hell much worse than anything to be found in
the laboratories on Riezell-Nine.” Tariq’s hand tightened on Ailyn’s shoulder.
“You know Reapers mate for life and no matter where you are or where she is,
there too will your heart strive to be. It is a miserable existence when your
heart is separated from hers. It is a misery I do not want you to ever know,
Ailyn.”

“We have not mated yet,” Ailyn said.

“Aye, but you have,” Tariq said, and when
Ailyn would have protested, the Prime Reaper moved his hand from the younger
man’s shoulder to over Ailyn’s heart. “You have mated here, my friend. She is
yours and you have claimed her as such. You will no more allow another man to
touch her now than you would willingly put your neck in the lunette of a
guillotine.” He patted Ailyn’s chest twice then removed his hand, got up and
headed back to his pallet and the woman whose sweet body waited for his.

Ailyn was still sitting there beside the
waterfall as the first fingers of dawn stretched toward the heavens. Weary and
no closer to making a decision than he had been during his vigil beside the
waterfall, he went back to Tariq’s hut and entered the room set aside for
Shanee and him. His lady was lying with her back to the door as he slipped onto
the pallet beside her and put his arm over her, drawing her to him. The moment
her body touched his, the decision was made.

“I missed you,” she said. “I don’t like
being apart from you.”

“Nor I from you,” he said, his warm breath
tickling the hairs at the base of her neck.

“Then what are we going to do about it,
ehemann
?”
she asked.

“We,” he said, yawning before he could
continue, “are going to go back to Riezell.”

She turned over beneath his arm and met his
gaze. “Truly?”

He reached up to cup her cheek. “I can’t
fight this feeling growing inside me,
ionúin,
and I don’t wish to. I sat
out there all night thinking about what Tariq must have gone through when he
was separated all those years from Bahiya and I knew I’d never survive such a
parting without losing what little mind I have left.” He ran the pad of his
thumb over her bottom lip. “So you will have to be content to keep me in the
style to which I intend to become accustomed.”

A slow, happy smile stretched over Shanee’s
face and she caught his thumb between her teeth. “Aye?”

“Aye,” he said, “but…”

Her smile wavered. “But?”

“I don’t do housework.”

She giggled.

“And there’s the problem of my mother,” he
said, all traces of humor gone from his amber eyes. “She’ll learn I’m there and
she’ll do everything in her power to get to me.”

“With any luck, she’ll have gone into the
arms of the Gatherer before we get back,” Shanee said, hoping that would be the
case.

He yawned again.

“You get some sleep,” she told him, sitting
up. “You don’t get enough as it is.” She’d slept beside him every night and he’d
tossed and turned, mumbled in his sleep, and gotten up in the middle of the
night to sit outside the cave more than he’d slept.

“My kind doesn’t sleep very well,” he told
her.

“Well, try,” she ordered. “If you’re to
beat Tariq in a swimming contest, you need to be at your best!”

* * * * *

Ailyn sat down on the shore of Lake Briza
and shook his head. After five tries, he now knew there was no way he’d ever be
able to best the Prime Reaper in swimming or diving. Tariq was a veritable
dolphin with the grace and power of that commanding creature.

“Cheer up,
ehemann
,” Shanee told him
as she laced her arm through his and leaned against his shoulder. She lowered
her voice. “Your cock is bigger than his.”

“I’ll remember that the next time I get
into a pissing contest with him,” Ailyn grumbled, petulantly tossing a stick
into the bubbling waters of the lake.

“And there is something else to remember.”

“What?” he snapped.

“You have me and he doesn’t.”

Ailyn glanced at her. “Aye, well, there is
that,” he conceded, and lay down on his back with his knees drawn up, his
breechclout covering that part of his anatomy Shanee knew he kept hidden from
everyone else’s eyes.

The sun was warm and most of the villagers
were cavorting in the lake. Those men from R-9 who had yet to test Tariq’s
reassurance that the water would not harm them lazed about the shore looking
longingly out over the dark blue depths of the lake.

“What is it again they call going naked?”
Shanee asked.

“Sky clad,” he replied. He had laced his
fingers over his taut belly and was staring up at the leafy branches above
them. “Why?”

“They are so beautiful,” she said. “So
stunningly perfect.” She was watching the men and women who were not
self-conscious about their nudity. Many of the concubines who had come to Theristes
to mate with the Reapers had embraced the habit readily.

Ailyn lifted his head and looked in the
direction his lady was staring and grunted, lowering his head once more. “Stop
looking at that warrior’s cock or I’ll relieve him of it. He won’t be so
beautiful or perfect then.”

“Jealous?” she teased, stretching out
beside him.

“Of that puny dangly?” he scoffed then
snorted. “Not gods-be-damned likely.”

“Isn’t it true that it isn’t the size of
the weapon but how a man wields it that matters?” she countered as she trailed
her fingers up and down his bare arm.

“I suppose so if you prefer a blunt paring
knife to a well-honed dagger,” he replied.

They were quiet for a moment then he turned
his head to look at her. “I am nearing my time to Transition,
ionúin
.
When the day draws near, I will go back to the cave and you will stay here.”

“Why can’t I go back with you?”

His eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
“Because I never want you to see me like that, Shanee. Never. I hate what I am
with every fiber of my being. I loathe this demoness within me. Every time I
feel Her move, another part of my soul dies. It is an ugly, evil thing I am and
I will not have you seeing me in that way.”

“You are
not
evil,” she said, her
fingers wrapping around his biceps. “You are not what is inside you, Ailyn.”

“You have no idea what I am,” he said. He
sat up to plow a hand through his wet hair. He grimaced, tugging at the length
he was beginning to hate with a passion. He said as much to her.

“All right,” she said with a sigh, and
scrambled to her feet.

“Where are you going?” he called out.

“For a pair of scissors,” she muttered.

He tossed his wet tresses behind him,
circling his knees within the perimeter of his arms as he watched Tariq and
Bahiya playing in the water. He wished he could be as carefree as Tariq and
many of his fellow Reapers, but he could not seem to find the solace they had
discovered on Theristes. He turned to look at a few of them.

Cristiano was an artist and he was painting
a canvas of two lush women reclining naked beneath a tree. Damian was also an
artist but he worked in wood, carving the most intricate and realistic
figurines Ailyn had ever seen. Both men did superb work and were much sought
after by the villagers.

He looked the other way at Gregory who loved
to entertain the children—all little boys—with his sleight of hand that amazed
even the adults. Joshua was an acrobat and never failed to have a crowd of
spectators cheering his nimble moves. Marcus was an artist like Cristiano and
Damian but his expertise was in fashioning complex knotwork that was truly
spectacular.

Ailyn sighed. The men he was watching had
something they could do, some contribution they could make to the village.
He—on the other hand—had no skills other than his swimming abilities and the
warrior tactics that had graduated him at the top of his class at the Academy.

“Okay,” Shanee said as she came back and
plopped down behind him. “How short do you want it?”

He mentally shook himself, burying his
thoughts and the memories of his first Transition. “What?” he asked.

“How much do you want me to cut off?”

“To here,” he said, putting a hand to the
nape of his neck. He twisted his head around to give her a warning look. “You
aren’t going to butcher it are you?”

“You never know,” she said, and put her
hand on the top of his head to turn it away so she could put the scissors to
the heavy, wet mass.

“I don’t want to look like Jared,” he said,
staring at the man whose hair looked as though it had been frothed with an
eggbeater then pomaded with glue.

“Then you’d best be nice to me this eve,
warrior,” she told him.

“I’ll stick my fingers so deep inside you…”

“Hush!” she said, her face flaming for two
men were walking close by and had heard him. They turned to give her an
appraising look.

“Eyes ahead or you’ll lose them!” Ailyn
growled at them. He flinched as the scissors clicked together and he felt his
shorn hair fall down his back. He swallowed, hoping she wasn’t going to take
her embarrassment out on him. As more hair fell—one long tress over his shoulder—he
picked it up and looked at it, twisting it this way and that like a switch.

“Sorry I’m cutting it?” she inquired.

“I’ll let you know when I see what it looks
like,” he replied.

“Hey, I like it, Ailyn!” Jared called out
and stuck his thumb into the air.

“Shanee!” Ailyn gasped. He tried to turn
around but she swiveled his head straight again.

“Oh be still or it won’t be even,” she
warned him.

He muttered beneath his breath but when she
thrust a mirror in front of him and he saw what she’d done, his eyebrows shot
up.

“Well?” she prodded when he said nothing.