‘So, do we kill it?’
‘No. We’re going to look at it.’
‘Druuuuuuuth. We looked at it all yesterday.’
‘And we’re going to be looking at it again today.’
‘It’s a fish.’
‘A pretty fish.’
‘A boring fish.’
‘Which will make excellent study material.’
The girl sighed. Druth held out the glass jar. It contained a large amount of sea water and a small, silver-shining fish. The girl took the jar, cocked her head to one side and surveyed it critically. ‘Fish.’
‘Study.’ Druth poked a stub of charcoal at her and pointed to the sheet of paper spread out on the book before her. ‘Draw it. Then label up the fins and tail and organs.’
‘It’s not nice! The organs are squishy.’
‘You’re drawing it, not dissecting it.’
The girl sighed again, took the charcoal and began to draw. For some time there was no sound save for the faint squeak of charcoal on paper and the murmur of the sea. The tide was out, and Druth and the girl sat on the dry sand near the small path leading up from the beach back to the village. A few tough clumps of weathered green grass poked out of the sand, rustling in the cold wind. Druth closed his eyes and inhaled the air, cold and burning in his throat. The wind tousled his thick black hair out of its usual straight neatness and blew strands into his face. He exhaled and looked down at the girl beside him, who was sketching with a frown of concentration on her face. She had smudges of charcoal on her forehead where she had brushed away strands of her long dark, wispy hair from her face. She felt Druth’s gaze on her and looked up curiously, her round golden eyes wide in her pointed little face. ‘What?’
He shook his head. ‘Na. Carry on with your drawing.’
She bent her head over her work again. ‘What’re we doing after this?’
‘Sense lessons.’
‘Oh goody!’ she exclaimed, beaming.
‘Only if you get that diagram done.’
‘I am, I am!’ She cast a hasty look at the fish in the jar, still swimming around and around within the confines of its glass-walled prison. ‘I’ve nearly finished.’
‘I want it completely finished.’
‘’Tis!’ she exclaimed triumphantly, holding the paper up for him to see. It was a fairly good picture, well proportioned and neatly labelled. She had tried to shade in the scales, smearing it with the tip of one finger, and it was as though the fish had been caught in a curve of movement, turning in on itself, fins outstretched and tail unfurling.
Druth made a deprecating noise. ‘Not bad. What is the point of the tail?’
‘It goes swishy-swishy,’ the girl said joyfully, demonstrating with her hands.
Druth gave her a look. ‘In mature terms.’
‘The point of the swishy-swishy is to move the fish forward,’ she sighed.
‘Good.’
‘Can we do more Sense-lessons now?’
‘All right.’
The girl gave a delighted squeak and bounced on her knees. ‘Sa, sa, sa!’
Druth sighed. He picked up the jar and began walking down the long smooth stretch of beach to the water. The girl watched him go, one hand raised to push her hair back out of her eyes. Druth’s strong, stocky figure was very black against the horizon, a living shadow against the shining expanse of water and softly pastel-streaked sky. She squinted into the setting sun, saw Druth take a few steps into the waves.
Your trousers will get wet, she sent to him.
They’ll dry.
But they’re wet now.
I let the fish go.
I still say we could have eaten it.
We’ll have dinner when we finish lessons and go home. She saw him turn back towards her. Start preparing your mind.
All right. She closed her eyes. She hummed a few notes, low and buzzing in her throat, and slowed her breathing. The sound of the waves filled her ears, groaning sighs of water rolling over hard sand and rock. A gull mewed, a long drawn-out wild wail. Her heartbeat slowed, her breathing coming as gently as a cat’s purr.
Feel, Druth whispered in her mind. Feel everything. Feel the insects in the air. Feel the gull on the cliff. Feel the fish in the sea. Sense them.
I can Sense you.
Don’t – ignore me, concentrate on one thing. Concentrate on the gull. Feel its heartbeat. Feel each breath it takes. Sense it.
Silence.
It’s moving.
What’s it doing?
Preening. Taking a few steps.
Now what?
It’s… it’s preening some more.
No, Sense the movement. Ignore everything else, just focus on the gull. Can you feel it moving?
I think so.
What’s it doing?
I don’t know… It’s moving its head. It’s looking for something?
Where?
The girl screwed up her face in concentration.
Na, don’t try so hard, Druth warned.
How can I do it if I don’t try? she demanded.
You’ve got to be gentle. Subtle.
It’s flown away now.
All right. Open your eyes.
The girl did so, asking eagerly, ‘How’d I do?’
Druth was standing in front of her, arms akimbo and feet widespread on the sand. He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t preening.’
Her face fell. ‘Then what was it doing?’
‘Turning over stones looking for something to eat. Now don’t be like that,’ he said, as the girl sighed, ‘you’ve just got to persevere. You’re not the best at using the Sense, but with enough time, any idiot can learn.’
‘Oh thanks.’
‘You know what I mean. Tomorrow we’ll do a lesson with Com.’
The girl pulled a face. ‘That’ll be pleasant.’
‘He’s your Sense-familiar. Not your husband.’
‘He’s a cat!’ the girl said in horror.
‘Exactly.’
The girl took a handful of sand and let it trickle out between her fingers. ‘Druth, you’re always going on and on about Com. I don’t see why it’s so important.’
‘You don’t? Sa, then.’ He sat down on the rock in front of the girl, his crooked dark eyebrows drawing together into a glare. ‘You bonded with Com about a year and a half ago when you first came here. Your family was dead, you hated me, you needed something to comfort yourself with.’
‘You’re making it sound like I wanted a special blanket or something,’ the girl said resentfully.
‘Sa. That’s what it was all about. You needed something, and Com was there, so you bonded with him. In a year and a half, you've got closer to Com than I ever did in ten years with my Sense-familiar.’
‘Maybe that’s something to do with you,’ she snapped. ‘Maybe you just don’t feel things as much as me.’
‘Bi i dhos! Com is a cat, and you’re – not a cat.’
‘I know what I am! And it’s not fair.’
‘Not fair? What about in those first few months when you were with me? I had to forcibly stop you from walking on all fours all the time.’
‘You hit me every time I did.’
‘Because that was the only way you’d listen!’
They glared at each other.
‘I can be a cat if I want to,’ the girl said finally.
‘Don’t be stupid. You are not a cat. Unless you start separating yourself from Com soon, you’ll end up as…’
‘As what?’
‘Something bad,’ he finished lamely.
She laughed. ‘“Something bad”?’
He scowled at her and pushed himself off the rock. Turning his back on her, he began to walk back up the beach. She bared her teeth at his back, hissing, and then turned to glare furiously out over the sea. The sun flashed off the surface of the water, turning the blue-grey a bright, dazzling, rippling gold. She flinched away, blinded, and looked angrily back over her shoulder to see whether Druth had gone yet.
He hadn’t. He was sprawled face-down in the sand a few paces away from the path.
The girl stared, her eyes wide. Then she scrambled off the rock and began to run towards Druth’s fallen body. ‘Druth!’ Her feet slipped in the sand, and she half-fell down at his side. She heaved him over on to his back and frantically rubbed the sand off his face. ‘Druth? Druth!’
Druth’s eyes were wide open, rolling widely in their sockets, and weeping clear streams of tears down his face. His mouth hung open and he mumbled something.
‘Druth!’ the girl screamed and slapped his face.
His mouth shut with a clack and his back arched, his neck going rigid. His eyes rolled back in his head and his hands clenched, digging into the sand.
‘Druth!’
‘Roll the dice,’ he slurred. ‘Say it once, say it twice, take a chance and roll the dice.’
The girl grabbed hold of his shirt front and tried to shake him. His head lolled to the side and he began muttering so fast that the words ran into each other. She looked around, but there was no one within sight. A tear dripped hot and wet off the end of her nose and she dashed it furiously away. She took a deep breath. Laying her hand on Druth’s hot forehead, she closed her eyes and reached out with her mind into the mad, buzzing cacophony of thought that was inside Druth’s brain.
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If you've read the other chapter one, can I ask you to forget it and pretend that this is the official chapter one? Because it is, now.
Does this work well as a first chapter? Does it make you want to read more? What do you think of the characters so far? Does the fact that you don't know the girl's name make it too confusing?
I've done this lengthy critique about three times and my computer's deleted it every single time. So forgive me if I sound crabby.
To clarify this, I would either remove 'cold' or 'burning', or rephrase: 'Druth closed his eyes and inhaled the cold air burning in his throat.' That at least flows better.
Gender:
Points: 1979
Reviews: 1176