This is not the second chapter, nor even the rest of the first chapter. It's the second third of the first chapter. Yes, these chapters are horrendously long.
Ren was lucky to live on the tenement’s second floor, because she couldn’t fathom dragging the unconscious macor up more than one flight of stairs. With every stair she ascended, her breaths shortened and her legs burned. The macor weighed almost twice as much as her, and she could barely keep him upright because he was more than a head taller than her. His lower legs dragged like logs on the concrete stairs and his head lolled on her shoulder, almost crushing it. It took all of Ren’s effort to keep her arms wrapped around his torso.
Why was she doing this? She should’ve left him in the alley for the authorities to collect and deliver back to his master. Wasn’t she a hypocrite for helping a runaway macor, when she’d previously resolved to have nothing to do with Munera? Too late to change her decision now, though.
And Ren had to admit that she was intrigued. He had, after all, appeared to her in that strange vision. Ren didn’t consider herself very superstitious, but she’d never received such a clear omen before, either. He’d called her a shaman… When he was healthy enough to speak, she would have to ask him what he had meant.
Luckily, at this hour the only people around were passed out, too drunk or drugged to notice her and the macor. Just the way she wanted it. If anyone saw her hauling around a naked, beaten-up boy, she’d be the target of district gossip for the rest of her life.
Ren breathed a sigh of relief when she reached her apartment door. It was cracked slightly open, spilling a line of golden light into the dark hall. Figured that the boys would’ve forgotten to lock it. She leaned closer to it, listening to her brothers talk; they seemed to be arguing.
Rau’s voice, the raw tones of a boy becoming a man, rose in laughter. “Hahaha! Take that! And he wins yet again, the revolutionary Rau, scrappy star of the slums!”
“I think your title is stupid.” This was Lepo’s high, sulky voice. “And you always win. It’s no fun.”
“That’s ‘cause you suck! I’m just such a champ!”
“No, you’re not. You cheat! You’re not even following the rules. The rules say that you can’t breach twice in a row, but you did in that fight, you did your first breach and then your second right after. That’s not fair.”
“It’s my special ability, lame-o!”
A shiver ran down Ren’s spine. The boys had—once again—been playing pretend Munera.
She shouldered open the door and stumbled inside. “That’s enough!” she shouted. “Have either of you even looked at your homework yet?”
Both boys whipped around. They looked heartbreakingly similar, just like her: all three shared chocolate-hued skin, straight black hair, wide dark eyes. Rau was twelve and gawky, even taller than Ren now, and Lepo was eight and tiny. Ren’s heart broke again when she saw that Lepo was still wearing his school tunic. The boys must have begun playing Munera the instant they’d gotten home, and Rau hadn’t bothered to help Lepo change out of his school clothes. They bore the tell-tale signs of their playing—both had penned jagged lines around their necks and wrists, meant to approximate a macor’s contract marks.
“Who’s that?” said Rau.
Lepo squeaked and scampered behind Rau. “Blood,” he whimpered.
Ren was still burning with indignation and heartbreak, so the boys’ comments blindsided her. Then she remembered the macor’s weight on her body.
“I’ll explain later,” Ren said. “Rau, help me carry him to the bedroom.”
Rau, much to Ren’s surprise, ran up and snatched the macor’s arm without hesitation. He practically skipped towards the bedroom door, forcing Ren to run to keep up with him. She had the nasty feeling that this couldn’t be comfortable for the macor, but he didn’t wake up.
“Ren has a boyfriend,” said Lepo solemnly, following after them.
“No, I don’t!” Ren shouted as she and Rau dumped the macor upon the big bed. “Careful—slowly, you don’t want to aggravate his injuries.”
The macor lay flat on his back on the hard mattress. His head rolled to the side and his arms and legs spread out, and Ren realized that the bed wasn’t that big after all. It looked barely big enough to contain him. Ren averted her eyes when her gaze slid to inappropriate places.
“Who is he?” Rau said. “Holy—look at those bruises! Did he try to…”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure he tried to jump the ward,” Ren said. She wondered if she should tell her brothers that he was a macor, but she glanced at the penned lines on their necks and wrists and decided not to.
Hold on a second… Ren glanced from her brothers to the macor and back again. Her suspicions were confirmed: the macor didn’t possess any contract marks. That couldn’t be right. Ren had never once seen an unmarked macor. If he wasn’t marked, did that mean that he wasn’t in a contract with anyone? Did that mean that he was…free?
She recoiled at the notion. It must be something else. Maybe he’d been released? She didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. Right now, nothing was more important than ensuring that he stayed alive.
“But he’s breathing,” Rau said in fascination, bending over the macor to better examine him. “Is he…still alive?”
“He is,” Ren said. “But he won’t be for long if we don’t anything to help him. Rau, go ask Jemaina down the hall for some ointment. Lepo, see if you can find some cloth for bandages. I’ll watch over him, make sure he’s still breathing…”
“Sure thing,” Rau said, running towards the door. Ren watched bemusedly, wondering when was the last time he’d been so helpful. Maybe the few months after Mama'’s death. Perhaps she ought to bring home mysterious injured boys more often.
Lepo didn’t move. He remained at the edge of the bed, staring wide-eyed at the macor. Ren frowned at him.
“Come on, Lepo. Get moving. Unless you’d like to watch over him.”
Lepo said, “He’s waking up.”
“What?” Ren said. “Don’t be silly, look how injured he is!”
“He’s waking up,” Lepo said again. “Look!”
Ren looked. The macor was still lying flat, but little tremors ran down his spine and his head tossed back and forth. His breathing became more uneven, like grunts of exertion. Despite herself, Ren was afraid. If he was a free macor, who knew what he’d do to her, or worse, Rau and Lepo?
The three siblings stood around the bed, holding their breath together. The macor slowly moved, rising to wakefulness. His eyes fluttered open, and he used his elbow to prop himself up as he lifted his head.
Ren found her gaze drawn inexorably towards his. Towards eyes as bright and huge as a cat’s.
It was like trying to throw off a heavy, burning blanket. Kutho struggled for seconds that felt like hours, moving the smallest parts of his body—fingers, toes, eyelids—as a sea of tar encased him. The pain blinded him. It was him. Every time he moved, it shot through his veins and through the other network of lines in his body, the network through which he channeled his power.
He cast out his consciousness like a line, searching for something on which to anchor himself. There was a firm and scratchy surface beneath him. And leaning above him were three people. He couldn’t see them, but he sensed them, both their smoke-oil-salt human scent and their weak, flickering presences. Except not all of them were weak. There was one in the center. The scent had a clearly female essence, and the presence was firmer than those the other two, more solid. It reminded him of those of the old warriors in his tribe—or of a shaman.
Kutho couldn’t be certain, because he had never met a shaman before. The humans had killed his tribe’s shaman before he’d been born. But this was a powerful presence, and female at that. Who could it be but a shaman?
Was it the human female of whom he’d dreamed?
Using every ounce of his resolve, Kutho cracked open his eyelids. The tiny motion sent lances of pain into his skull, and when he’d fully opened his eyes, blinding light rushed into his vision. He blinked. Each blink was a dagger driven into his pupils. But the more he blinked the clearer his vision became, and the less all-intrusive the light. Soon he made out the surface beneath him. It was some kind of cloth, like the hemp used to make sleeping pallets, but less coarse. The light was a flickering glow that cast the surface in a harsh contrast between light and shadow. Kutho hauled himself up on his elbow—the movement hurt, but less than it would have before—and faced the three humans.
He locked eyes with the girl. She was the girl in his dream, small and dark-skinned, with a pixie-like face framed with black hair. Her clothes were plain and human, a tunic and breeches, and though her presence radiated power, nothing in her appearance suggested that she was more than a typical human female.
The girl spoke. It was nonsense to Kutho; she was using the human tongue. He glared at her and at the two younger humans behind her, and then glanced around his surroundings. At first, Kutho wasn’t sure that he was seeing right, but as he frantically hunted for a sign of the night sky or the whisper of a breeze, he realized with a chill that he was locked in a tiny space between four walls. In a human dwelling.
He tried to suppress his panic, tried to tell himself that he’d break out of here in no time and return to the city and his mission, but sweat prickled on the back of his neck and he breathed faster and his vision spun. He clung to the surface beneath him—a human bed, elevated unnaturally from the ground—to keep himself from falling over. Stupid, stupid, stupid, STUPID. You knew what you were getting into when you chose to come here. Don’t start chickening out now…
The girl continued talking and the two boys interjected with their own unintelligible comments. Kutho wished they would shut up. His eyelids drooped shut again and he slumped upon the bed. He knew he ought to get up and do something, but every muscle throbbed and his injuries hurt anew. If only he could lie down…
But lying down meant giving up. That was the last thing he’d ever do.
The girl reached for him, shouting another string of nonsense. Kutho reacted on instinct.
With reflexes born from rage, he leapt to his feet, snatched the girl by the tunic, and slammed her into the wall. The wall shuddered—human-made things were always so flimsy—but he shoved the girl deeper into it. Her eyes widened and she trembled like a leaf. Why wasn’t she fighting back? Weak.
The taller boy grabbed Kutho’s arm, but his grip slid off Kutho’s hard bicep like water. Kutho jabbed his elbow in the boy’s direction and he flew and hit the bed. His siblings screamed and the girl thrust her head forward as if she wanted to bite Kutho, but Kutho easily held her at arms’ length.
“You damn humans,” he hissed, not caring that the humans wouldn’t understand him. “I don’t have time for this, I’ve got to save Sazuk and you’re getting in the damn way.”
The girl thrashed like a speared fish. The boy who’d attacked Kutho had recovered and charged the Icim, roaring incoherently; Kutho lashed his leg out and the boy doubled over, clutching his stomach. His little brother unleashed a high, keening wail. Stupid humans, they made so much noise. Icim children were taught since birth to be quiet and strong.
The human cacophony tore at Kutho’s ears and hurt his head. The girl shrieked, the little boy wailed, the older boy gasped and groaned. Growling, he pressed harder on the girl, scraping her back over the rough plaster wall. The girl snatched his arm and tried tugging it away from her. Kutho didn’t move; he barely felt her little fingers, even when they brushed against his bruises.
“Stop fighting,” he hissed. “You’re in the way.”
She didn’t understand, of course. The girl’s fingers dug deeper, until actually started to hurt. At the same time, the power slumbering inside her tiny body began to grow. No. It had been growing all along. He hadn’t sensed it because his rage had been overpowering him. It started as a dim flicker, like the haze of sunlight around a solar eclipse, but became stronger and brighter until it resonated in his body’s spirit lines. He gasped when the girl’s power entered him. Power unlike any he’d experienced before—not the slow resonance of the earth and sky, nor the wild rush of a makhorre’s magic. Was this human magic? Or shaman magic? Clean and sharp and scented of lightning.
The humans’ shouts changed pitch; they sounded surprised. Kutho was surprised too. He’d thought that the girl had used magic deliberately, the way that sorcerer Icim did, but she seemed more astonished than anyone by the white glow emanating from her palms. It washed the room in a harsh light that chased shadows away.
Kutho writhed, but the girl’s hands were glued to his arm. He couldn’t break free. But he had to! Who knew what this infernal human magic would do to him? It subdued his natural Icim magic, replacing fire with light, earth with concrete, the sun with gas lamps. He sank to his knees, breathing deeply like a man saved from drowning, and scrabbled at the air with his free hand, seeking something—anything—that would save him from the girl’s magic. But the air here was not cool and crisp and scented of grass like that of the forest. It was heavy, laden with the stench of human bodies and the bitter bite of machine oil. It would not help him.
The girl released him, and he released the girl. They tumbled to the floor. Pain flared anew in Kutho’s bruises and then it vanished. When he examined his body he saw that his injuries—every bruise, every cut and scratch—were gone. His head swam and he had to suppress the urge to throw up.
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I did not end at a scene break, so if the ending seems a bit abrupt, well...it's not supposed to be an ending at all.
Like always, all reviews are welcome.
