Sentience, page 17
part #1 of Farm Land Series
Do not be afraid, he said. There are many ways to show affection. There is no rush. We will not do anything you are not comfortable with.
“I am not afraid of you.”
“I know.” He took my hand. “Come with me.”
He led me through dripping trees. On a little incline, nestled within a thicket of reeds and garlic, was a tiny round house. I gaped at the small ditch dug around it and the overspill that allowed rain to run free away from it, at the little roof and walls. It was small, but perfect.
Inside there was a glowing light; a fire had been laid and inside there was a pot of something cooking slowly, cooking for us.
“You built it?” I asked.
“I had help,” he said. “From your friends.”
“Leaf,” I said with a smile. “And Ash.”
“And Bracken,” he said. “We couldn’t have done this without her permission. She thought it was important for you to have something, normal, were her words.”
“You are not normal,” I said, reaching on my tiptoes to kiss him. “You are extraordinary.”
As rain rushed down our bodies, he pulled me to him and brushed his lips against mine.
“Show me,” I said, pulling him towards the entrance.
We crawled inside and I took my wet shirt off, hanging it on a peg on the wall to dry. The fire was glowing low and warm, dry wood stood near it, and a small pot of stew hung above. Baked bread, fragrant and sweet, waited for us on a shelf. To the back of the room, there was a bed, large enough for two, covered in soft sheets and rushes.
Skye pulled his shirt over his head, and I breathed in as I saw his body, beautiful and graceful. His muscles were ruddy in the warm, red half-light, the fluidity of his movements supple… handsome. He saw me staring, and a light blush crept over his cheeks.
“This is just for us?” I asked.
Skye nodded. “The other villagers are not as shy as you,” he said. “But I like the idea of just you and me.”
I stretched my eager body close to his. “I’m glad,” I said, my voice low and husky.
I pushed my lips to his, and felt him respond with pleasure and eagerness. He pulled me, so I sat across his lap, my skin against his, our bodies entwined. His hands ran down my bare skin and mine laced through his long hair. My little breasts bumped against his hard chest as we kissed, and the warmth of his skin was sweet against mine.
He carried me to the little bed. His every caress, every murmur against my ear spoke of love and gentleness. I did not fear him. Under his touch, my hips rose to meet his. His hands pulled me against him, small groans escaping his lips. I opened my mind to his, and flowed within him.
He knew I was there. He opened his mind to me.
I did not feel thoughts, exactly. It was more like the sensations in the spider; flowing thought, the feeling of connection. Wash after wash of love came from him, and was returned. There was nothing to fear from Skye. His every thought was to bring pleasure to me.
As our bodies rose and fell against each other, as our breath escaped in gasps, so our minds joined… dancing, singing, becoming one, lacing together like smoke in the wind. As our minds flowed about one another, I felt him enter me. He was gentle, slow, and careful.
My hands roamed over his supple muscles and my mind flowed through his like water through the river. I could feel his hands on my skin, and the caress of his mind. Pleasure flooded through my blood, and I called out, my voice echoing within the walls of our round room, and through the caverns of his mind. I could feel his growing need, and as I felt his thoughts explode in an ocean of pleasure, so I rode a silver light, through realms of sensuality I had never known existed.
As we came to rest, I did not break the bond of our minds. We lay, exhausted, as our minds nuzzled each other, languid. Pleasure echoed through blood and thought.
Skye looked into my eyes and I smiled. “I did not feel afraid,” I said.
“I felt that,” he said, pulling me close. “When you came to my thoughts, I knew there was nothing for me to fear either.”
“What did you fear?”
“Hurting you,” he said. “Being too eager, driving you away.”
“Nothing you could do would ever send me away,” I said, moving closer to him.
“I have never felt like that,” said Skye, pushing wet hair from my face. “I have never felt like this.”
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, Holt,” he said, bending his head to kiss me once more.
Bracken had been right. There was no way to explain this feeling, but it was there, within me, the strongest sensation I had ever experienced, and the most precious.
We fell asleep, entwined in each other’s arms. Later that night I awoke, freezing cold, trembling with fear. I had dreamed of the man who had hurt me. He had come to take me from Skye, back to the darkness, back to the pits, back to the place where I had been nothing, and everything had been taken from me.
As I quivered, I felt a warm hand on my back. That man cannot harm you, Skye said. I will never let anyone harm you again.
His mind was still within mine. Love rushed from him into me, warming my body, calming my fears. He took me in his arms and held me close, as I curled up against him like a child.
I was not here, I said. He came to take me back to the darkness.
I am here to bring you back, Skye said.
As I nestled against him, I realised something. This was a pact between us. If one of us was taken from the light, the other would go after them. That was what we did; saved each other from the darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Rush of the River
In the dark, early hours of one morning, some moons later, I awoke to a feeling of fear. Even before my eyes had opened, as I lay curled in Skye’s arms in our little burrow, I could feel it… a stalking sensation. Something was wrong.
I sat up. Skye’s arm fell from my shoulders. My mind heard something my ears could not place; a change, something different, subtle, yet dangerous.
Skye’s eyes blinked open. “What is it?” he muttered, his lips heavy with sleep.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Something is wrong.”
Skye sat up, his eyes closed as he listened. I watched his face and saw a dawning realisation of the same danger I had felt. He stiffened. “The river,” he said, jumping up. “The river!”
Even as he said it, I knew what he meant. The rushing sound of the river had changed. Its course had altered. It was closer.
I scrabbled for clothing. Cast aside in our desperate need for each other the night before, it was scattered around me. Quickly, we dressed, and ran from the burrow towards the village.
The sight that met my eyes was one of horror.
The river had burst its barricades. From a huge hole, water flooded, running in vast waves through the centre of our village. Mercifully, most of the round houses were uphill from the deluge, and the water that flowed about their walls ran around the curved edges, rushing away, doing no harm. But one round house stood in the centre of the new path of the river, trembling and shaking. Its roof stood just above the cresting tide of the water and on that roof, people clung desperately.
A sound escaped my mouth; a guttural cry of fear and desperation. I looked around wildly. Mist swathed the village, making everything harder to see. Bracken was shouting to villagers who were hauling carts to try to plug the gap in the wall. Ash, Thorn and others were battling with parts of our defences that were still holding, tying them with rope, trying to bridge the gap. They would not complete their task in time to save the people on the roof.
We have to do something, my inner voice cried to Skye, but as I looked around, I saw him already running downhill, towards a round house. He leapt over a deep section of water, his body rolling through mud on the other side. He raced inside and came out carrying the ladders we used to reach the sleeping platforms. Lashing them together, so fast his hands became a blur, he sought to make one long ladder.
As I watched, I knew he would not be done in time to save the people on the roof.
I looked around. Just opposite the round house was a great tree. My mind moved without me. My body stood, frozen, but my mind flowed towards the tree. Just as my feet had known to run before I had the thought, my mind knew what to do before I even considered if it was possible. With perfect calm, my insubstantial fingers reached into the flesh of the tree.
It was not like Reaching, for to Reach, there must be a mind to enter. I drifted within the tree. I could feel every fibre, every bit of its flesh. At the base of the tree I found a weakness, and I threw my mind against it. The tree groaned, but I was not strong enough to fell it alone.
Skye, I called to him. The tree opposite the round house… help me!
His head darted up as he heard my call, and he saw what was within my mind. Calling to Eryngo and Burdock, he grabbed a stone axe from its place in a cluster of branches, and ran towards the tree. It was no mean feat felling a tree with a stone axe, but as Eryngo and Burdock joined him, their axes raining against the tree, one after the other in a continuous bombardment of blows, the white, inner flesh of the tree started to emerge. Where the axes cracked into it, I released the tension that held the tree together, making bark and trunk pliable under the blows of Skye’s stone axe.
Together, we would drop the tree to the roof of the round house and use it as a bridge.
As the tree started to fall, I braced it, lowering it gently. It fell onto the round house with as small an impact as I could manage. It was still enough to rock the round house, making it sway. The villagers on the roof held on, their eyes white and wild, but when they saw this escape route, they cheered.
There were five of them. They grasped the trunk and started to crawl across the tree, over the rushing water, and down to Skye, who grabbed them, heaving them to solid ground.
He looked over at me and smiled. Even in the midst of terror, I felt his love touch my heart.
Flint, Thorn’s son, slipped on the trunk. His feet fell to either side and his chest crashed against wood. In sudden fear, I lost my concentration. My mind, which had been holding the tree steady, fell from it, racing back by instinct to my body.
As I entered my mind, the tree creaked ominously, its mass suddenly weighing on the fragile, damaged structure. My head whipped about. Flint was up, and off the tree. There was only one person left, and she was scrambling after him fast. Too fast. Crawling, she faltered, and slipped off the side of the trunk.
“Leaf!” screamed Ash, seeing her wife clinging to the wood with claw and nail. Ash rushed forwards, about to climb onto the swaying trunk, but she was shoved backwards by Skye.
“No!” he shouted, pulling her back. “It’s too dangerous.” She struggled against him, her wiry strength more than a match for his. They thrashed against each other, muscles writhing.
The sudden, overwhelming terror of realising it was Leaf, one of my greatest friends, who was clinging on to the trunk in the wrath of the river thrust my mind into blank terror. I could see Thorn. He had his wife and children in his arms, but he had seen Leaf was in trouble. He started to run for the tree.
The trunk groaned and started to sink under the flowing water. Leaf screamed as she tried to pull herself up, but her legs were caught in the river, and it was pulling her down. Ash is too heavy, I thought. That was why Skye was holding her back. If she ran onto the tree, it would collapse, and if she was too heavy, Thorn certainly was. But I was not. I had always been slight. I could do it.
I ran to the tree, past Skye who was still restraining Ash, and threw myself onto the groaning trunk. I had not enough concentration left to Reach, but I would not let my friend die.
Behind me, I heard Skye cry out in fear as I leapt onto the trunk. I could hear him screaming at me to come back, but I did not heed him.
My little feet raced along the swaying trunk. The water, white and blue, under me was a swirling mass of terror. I stuck my arms out and swallowed my fear. I could not think of anything but reaching Leaf.
I raced to her, the trunk quivering, heaving under the impact of my weight. Its branches were caught up in the falling roof, and bits of the round house were being torn away. There was an awful groan as the tree tried to withstand the force of the river. I could almost hear the water chuckling. It knew it would win.
I could see her hands. I grasped them, pulling her with the desperation of terror, shouting her name. The trunk moaned, slipping under the force of the water. I looked at Bracken and the others as they forced another barricade in. Their plan was working, but I knew, with awful certainty, it would not be soon enough for Leaf, or for me.
Bracken was staring at me, her eyes round with horror. I could see her screaming, but I couldn’t hear her. She, too, was not in control of her mind enough to Reach.
My palms slid on Leaf’s wet hands as I grabbed her, shrieking, crying, my words unintelligible under the overwhelming power of my desperation. I could feel her, weak under the surging force of the water thrashing her body.
In one huge effort, I pulled her head above the water and grabbed on under her arms. “Pull yourself up!” I screamed.
Dumbly, slowly, coughing and spitting out water, she hauled herself onto the tree. I pushed her, pulled her, yanked her as the tree shuddered and sank, crushing the round house beneath. As I heaved Leaf onto the trunk, the round house collapsed. The tree started to turn, its head twisting downriver, flowing with the water.
Trees were falling, their roots groaning from the earth. Black mud, uprooted plants and leaves polluted the water beneath us. We would be swept away, through the forest, and we would drown. We had to get off.
I pushed Leaf. “Run!” I screamed, feeling the tree quake. “Run!”
Numbly, she staggered before me. We stumbled and fell on the quivering, juddering trunk. The tree was turning. It would be taken by the waters.
From the bank, I could hear people screaming. But through the mist I could only see Leaf, scrambling, running, falling. Her feet slipped on the wet trunk as it jolted and shook.
There was a huge crack, like thunder. Roots snapped like twigs and the tree came loose… flowing into the path of the river.
I reached out and threw all my weight at Leaf as she leapt from the edge of the trunk. My hands met her back, propelling her forwards. She hit the bank with a strangled cry as she lost what air she had left in her lungs, but hands grabbed her.
As I fell onto the trunk, my body hitting the wood hard, I saw Leaf pulled from the bank. Skye was shouting to me, but I could hear nothing but the river. I went to get up as the tree shrieked and water closed over it. The last of the round house crumbled, and the tree collapsed into the water. I fell, my hands scraping rough bark, my blood falling into the churning water.
I was swept away, clinging to the trunk, into the rush of the river.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Iron
Water lapped against my face. The torrent of the river had relaxed into a calm flow. I lay within it, my arms wrapped around the branches of the tree, my muscles taut and stiff from clinging to it.
I was weak and sick. My eyes closed, I drifted between dreams and reality. Rain fell in mellow mists upon my face and body. My clothing was torn and bloodied from where my flesh had hit rock, river-stone and tree. My head was dazed and my stomach nauseous, but somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, I knew I was alive, and this was a good thing.
“Over here!” came a shout from somewhere behind me. Memories flooded into my mind. They have found me, I thought. The villagers have found me. I am safe.
Muscles in my aching body released their grip on the tree and I slumped, exhausted, into the soothing lapping of the water. Here, the water was slower, warmer than the rush of the river that had carried me, its unwilling prisoner, from the village. I was broken, beaten, but my friends had found me. They would make me well again.
My body flopped into shallow waters and waited for welcome hands. I had held on long enough. I was safe.
Calloused palms grasped my tender limbs and skin. As they turned me over and water washed across my back, I smiled and opened my eyes. “Skye,” I whispered, the word barely intelligible.
But as I gazed up, weak eyes blinking against falling rain, the face I saw was not Skye, Leaf or Bracken, not Ash or any of the villagers. It was a hard face, drawn with hunger, pale with tiredness. It was not a face I knew.
I started. Water flooded my face as my body ricocheted backwards, and I coughed as it entered my mouth. As I struggled away from the unfamiliar face I felt more hands, yanking me, pulling me, holding me.
Feeble though I was, I struggled. Noises of desperation and fear came from my mouth. There were more faces; men and women I did not know had hold of me.
