Chapter III: Kamaes
As Stefi, Gemmie, Maya, and Rhaka walked towards Joven, talk turned to the fateful night that had befallen the Otsukuné all those years ago.
“So,” Stefi said casually, “how did it all start? What exactly happened? We humans never really hear the details.” Of course she had, and until just one day ago she would have believed them. But school’s history books, she realized, may have sanitized the truth somewhat. Just as they had likely soiled the Furosans’ reputation to be one of violence and hostility, if people were so driven to hunt them.
Rhaka cringed at Stefi’s lack of tact. “It…it is very painful to speak of. I am sure you would feel the same were all your kind killed. But humans did come, killing and burning everything they found: the females, cubs, our dwellings, the forest itself. They took my son Sansonis too. Or perhaps I ought say adopted son. He is human, raised by those not his kind…” He trailed off into silence and no more was said between them. Still, Stefi couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that there was something else, that Rhaka wasn’t telling her everything.
They continued walking well into the evening, following the road to Joven and hiding whenever someone veered too close to their path from the main road, now more for Rhaka’s sake than Stefi’s.
Finally, Stefi broke the silence like someone throwing a rock into a still lake. “Where do the Otsukuné live?” she asked. Then checking her tenses she hastily corrected herself, “Sorry, where did they live?”
“Home, Shangara, lies far to the east, beyond the Sumarana mountains in the land of Acharn, inside a forested valley where humans never tread. Some of us dwelt also in this forest of Sumarana, and they were the first to go.”
“How did they find you?”
“You can find almost anything if you search hard enough.”
Stefi found no response to this, and her silence was like the ripples fading from the lake until only stillness remained once more.
It wasn’t long after that that Joven at last came into view. It was a lot like Albana, Stefi found, only it lay further still inside the forest’s fringes. There was no fountain. Instead, the deep and lazy Altu river cut through the road ahead, crossed by a small bridge wide enough for two average sized dirriwan or horse drawn carts. The latter were rarely found in the west. Somehow the four-legged beasts had never found as much favor as the more easily trained (and edible) wingless birds of burden.
“I must wait here,” Rhaka said as they approached the bridge. “If I entered a human town I would surely draw unwanted attention unto us. I shall be waiting nearby come morning.”
“I can’t leave you out here by yourself,” Stefi said. “You’ll get lonely.”
“One does grow accustomed to it, especially under my circumstances,” he said with a low growl that Stefi took to be a sigh. “Now, company, that is much harder to get used to.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about that for much longer. I’m going to help you find Sansonis first thing tomorrow morning. It’s the least I can do, considering you saved the ferrets and me.”
“I did what I was fated to. It was written in the stars that I would find you. The Three Sisters and the Ancestors never lie. What they foretell has always happened and always will.” He glanced skywards even though the trees all but obscured the emerging stars.
“I’m sorry,” Stefi said, “but I have absolutely no idea who the Sisters or the Ancestors are…”
“Ah, I forgot. You humans are not versed in the ways of the heavens, finding instead gods in your own being and image. Yet the end of the day draws nigh and you must seek shelter for the night.”
“Wait, before I go, what does Sansonis look like? I’ll ask if anyone’s seen him if you want. You know, keep an eye out for him.” Now some distance from home, the risk of being recognized had all but faded. That, and after her near-death experience it now seemed like the least of her worries.
“He would be about your age, possibly older, yet there is one matter that may compound things for us,” Rhaka said.
“What’s that?”
“He is Kalkic.”
Ever since she was a young girl, before Gemmie and Maya had come into her life, Stefi had learnt that the Kalkics were second-class to the rest of Humankind: hated by most, barely tolerated by the rest. However, long before her birth, before even the island nation of Minhera had disappeared beneath the waves, the Kalkics and other humans lived side by side along with the Furosans. A rift created by religious teachings formed between the humans and Kalkics, and many of the Kalkics sought new lands in the far north. Some remained amongst their human brethren, but they were delegated to jobs of low pay and even lower dignity, their land in recent years confiscated by the Sol-Acriman military under a decree by the head of the Church, Karick IV.
“That doesn’t matter,” Stefi said. “I’ll still look. When I was young I used to play with a Kalkic girl, but she had to leave when they kicked her family off their farm.”
“You need not say any more. I can see in your eyes–strange eyes, at that–that you do not bear the same irrational hatred and willful ignorance which is oft born of religion. Now go.”
Stefi started across the bridge and turned back when she reached halfway. “Would you like me to buy you something to eat?” she called as he slipped out of sight, although she already knew the answer.
“No, thank you. And be careful. You are too important to lose, and so are the ferrets.”
She turned her back on the strange creature that had saved her life and entered Joven.
As she walked towards the inn, Gemmie’s voice popped into her mind. What’s a Kalkic? she asked. Are they like humans?
“You could say that,” Stefi said, “but they’re also slightly different. They often have blue color in their hair, and their skin is darker than the rest of ours.”
They sound pretty, Gemmie said. So why does everyone hate them?
Humans hate everyone! Maya said. Just look at what happened to us, and we’re a damn sight cuter than Kalkics.
“True.” Stefi smiled. “But it’s because of religion. Apparently the god Kardin declared in his holy book that Kalkics and Furosans are bad because they’re different to us and not made in His image. I think it’s a load of crap. I mean, what’s next? Persecuting people with orange hair or freckles?”
I know you’re all right, Stefi. It’s the others I worry about, Gemmie said with a tinge of sadness in her voice. It was humans who abandoned us and it’s taken Maya so long just to trust you.
“I know, Gem-girl, I know.”
As she finished talking to the ferrets, she arrived at the door of the inn. Two starfire lanterns hung from the porch. Their cold, stark light beckoned both travelers and moths, and with darkness nearly fully settled, their glare sent Stefi’s shadow stretching out behind her. It reminded her briefly of the Dazrhug.
With a little nervousness, and half-hoping to find Sansonis right away, she pushed open the door. Immediately a torrent of voices mixed with the discordant notes of an old piano hit her in a wave of noise. She hurried inside, squeezing past a young man as he left. Although Gemmie was fascinated by the sheer number of people and the exciting goings on (as well as all the new smells and treasures to acquire), Maya muttered rudely about the noise and retreated into Stefi’s pack. He scratched about to make himself comfortable.
She scanned the mass of people as she eased her way through the crowd with Gemmie riding proudly upon her shoulder and Maya sulking in her bag. Everyone else appeared to be humans like her, much to her disappointment, although that was to be expected. And most were too old to be Sansonis anyway, or were women. It was much busier than the Albana inn. She soon found out why.
What’s that picture there? Gemmie asked as she stared at a large poster tacked to the wall. Stefi followed Gemmie’s gaze and found a poster with writing and a scrawled picture of a female Furosan on it. She read it aloud.
“Sol-Acriman Military Decree 76-2112: Reward offered
for the capture of Furosan sighted near Joven: 200,000 manyas alive, 100,000 dead. Substantial reward also offered for information leading to apprehension.”
Below was some extra writing about where to bring the captured creature and a religious reference reminding the reader of the “offense” she had apparently committed. Stefi didn’t bother to read it out.
“So Savana was right about the amount…”
She looked about the inn again and suddenly realized why it was so busy. Few of the people were what she would have considered normal guests. Most were older men and were armed, some with horrible looking traps and cruelly curved blades on their belts. Evidently they didn’t care which reward they got. Greed at the expense of another’s life had blinded them.
These people all want to hurt the Furosan, don’t they? Gemmie asked.
Stefi nodded as a lump formed in her throat. “I can’t stay here, knowing most of these idiots want to kill someone who hasn’t done anything wrong.”
She hurriedly brought some food for herself and the ferrets and left, stifling the urge to tell the patrons where they could stick their weapons. She walked for a few minutes until she found a small alley between two houses. It was sheltered from the elements but not very comfortable.
“We’ll sleep here tonight,” she said. She fitted Gemmie and Maya with their harnesses and leads before securing them to her belt. After eating, the three slept under the stars, with Stefi leaning against a hard wooden wall while her two friends snuggled inside her blanket. After her earlier encounter, she never wanted to sleep in the forest again if she could help it.
Once again Sansonis found himself called to the same clearing by the voice inside his head. It wasn’t so much a command, he thought, but more of a calling, an invitation, though it spoke no words. Whatever it was, he was now certain it was connected to the Furosan girl. In what way, exactly, he couldn’t tell.
Sansonis left his usual room in the Joven inn and slipped out the door virtually unnoticed, glancing towards a girl about his own age who shuffled inside as he left. She had ferrets on her shoulders, he saw, but thought nothing of it. All that mattered was getting back to the clearing.
As he’d found earlier, he wasn’t the only one to have seen the Furosan girl of late, and word of her presence had soon spread; a substantial bounty was placed on her head just as quickly. Now the inn was packed with people who had come from all over in an attempt to claim the reward and filled every room. He felt a twinge of pity for the girl with the ferrets and hoped somebody would make room for her.
Earlier that day a poster on the town’s notice board declaring the reward for the capture of the Furosan had caught his attention. 200,000 manyas alive, 100,000 dead. Either way, it was enough to keep anyone comfortable for a long time. Thoughts of claiming the reward for himself had briefly fallen upon him, but he had dispelled them from his mind and torn the poster down in disgust. Although not without difficulty.
Soon Sansonis had reached the same clearing. Empty. He sat on the moonlight-splashed ground, on the very spot where the grass was still flattened from the other night, and strained to hear the calling in his head. Nothing. It had stopped. Maybe one of the hunters had gotten to the girl first. Or she’d caught wind of the danger and taken off to wherever she had come from. He only hoped it was the latter.
As he sat thinking, a sudden cry from somewhere in the forest winged its way to his ears. It was a shrill, high note at first sounding like a bird or yowling cat, but upon a second hearing more like a cry for help. He stood up and strained his ears in the direction of the sound. There was an element in those two cries that, like the singing, seemed almost human.
He tiptoed towards the cries, careful not to make much noise. Now they pierced the air every few seconds and, he felt, were becoming sobs. He pushed his way through some overhanging branches and there was the Furosan girl again, suspended from a tall sapling by a snare around her right ankle. The trap had no doubt been set by one of the bounty hunters who would return come morning to claim their prize, he realized. Tears streaked her dirty face and she seemed drained of her former energy and happiness.
As the Furosan caught sight of Sansonis, her sobbing stilled and she hung limply, swinging back and forth while staring, never making eye contact, into the forest behind him. Her wild hair, the color of dried flax, swept the ground beneath her.
Sansonis knelt in front of her, his attention drawn to the way her brilliant blue eyes and soft features were accentuated by the moonlight. She seemed so human yet so unusual with her large furry ears, elongated canines, claw-like nails, and, most strikingly, a long tan and black tail. He reached a curious hand forward to touch her.
Without warning, in the time it took him to blink several times in surprise, the girl’s gaze darted and stabbed through his. She bared her teeth, let out a sound that was a cross between a hiss and a scream, and raked her claws across his left cheek.
He fell backwards with a cry and clutched his burning face. A strange warmth, and his hand came away sticky with blood. He climbed to his feet and, pressing his hand to his stinging cheek again, staggered backwards.
For a moment hostility towards the girl boiled in his heart and the thought of the reward money crept back into his head, but he forced them deep down with mixed feelings of regret and disgust. Yet the taste, coppery and blood-like in his mouth, refused to leave, as did the dark cloud he felt drawing across his mind.
“It’s all right,” he said and held up both hands, one now red with blood, to show he wasn’t armed. Yet the girl still glared at the two knives on his belt as if they might leap up and stab her of their own will.
“You do remember me, don’t you?” he said levelly, breathing deeply to keep his emotions and the darkness in his mind in check. “I saw you the other night in that clearing. It’s hard for me to explain, but I felt you calling out to me… in my thoughts.” What he just said sounded stupid, he thought. Creepy, even.
She nodded and her angry snarl melted into a crescent of remorse.
“I’m going to get you down,” he said. “Just please don’t hurt me again.”
She averted her gaze with a sniff.
As Sansonis unsheathed one of his knives, the girl winced and her ferret-like tail puffed out in panic, a sight that nearly made him burst out laughing. She let out a small sob.
“Calm down, I don’t want the money that’s been placed on your head,” he said, not knowing if he was trying to convince her or himself.
He took a step back and observed the situation. A nearby tree, a tall and leafy kind with enough branches to make climbing easy, was growing next to the one that had been used to ensnare her. He clambered up, his nimble yet strong Kalkic body making short work of the task. Then, having shimmied out onto a handy branch with the knife clamped in his teeth, he reached out, sawed the soft rope, and dropped her carefully to the ground.
He climbed back down, dropping the knife from his sweaty hand as he did so. He ignored it, focusing instead on the Furosan. He turned his bloody face from hers when he realized how frightful he must look. Even though he’d just saved her, the thought that he’d even considered turning her in weighed heavily on his mind. He only hoped she couldn’t tell.
As for the girl, she tugged the remains of the snare from her ankle and rubbed the life back into her numb foot. A mixture of gratitude and regret at having hurt her savior stuck her
as the feeling returned. It was soon joined by surprise that, despite being a human, he’d helped her even though she’d just injured him. Perhaps this meant the stories weren’t all true… Then there was another feeling altogether, one that made her heart flutter when she looked at him, despite his bloodied face.
“Thank you,” she said, still sitting on the ground and holding her foot.
Sansonis didn’t respond, too surprised at her lightly accented Common Language: a universal tongue of trade and diplomacy long ago adopted between Feregana’s races.
“I am sorry I h
urt you,” she added meekly.
She stood up and tore off one of her shirtsleeves with some help from her claws and stepped lithely in front of him, her bare feet making only the slightest sound on the grass. Without a word she stood before him and pressed the sleeve against his cheek, and while holding it against him she stole glances at his gray eyes. He managed a nervous smile in return.
Once the scratches had stopped bleeding she dabbed away the drying blood as carefully as she could and threw the makeshift bandage into the bushes.
“I am sorry,” she said again. “I thought you’d set that trap and come to, you know, take me in. I know how you humans hate others who aren’t like you, especially us.”
“Like I said, I didn’t come to harm you,” Sansonis said. “Forgive me for asking, but what are you doing around here? This is no place for a Furosan. Or someone like myself either.”
At the last part she raised a curious eyebrow. He seemed normal enough, except for the blue streaking his messy brown hair. But that was pretty, she thought, fighting the urge to touch it.
She turned and walked towards the tree while talking softly. “I… I think I came to find you.”
Sansonis waited as she crawled into some bushes and emerged a moment later holding his knife. She handed it to him handle first, her eyes refusing to alight on his.
“What do you mean, you came to find me?” he said and resheathed it. “Wait, something called you here, didn’t it?”
The girl’s ferret-like ears twitched and she smiled. “Yes,” she said, “I heard you calling and Lady Cédes said I should go looking, although daddy didn’t want me to. So I ran away.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t calling to you.”
“You were, just not consciously. This is difficult to explain to a human… and I can’t be sure until we see Lady Cédes, but I think, no feel, that we’re kamaes.”
Sansonis tilted his head slightly, a gesture she took to mean he had no idea what she meant.
“It loosely means ‘fate-friends’,” she said. “I shouldn’t say too much to a human, at least not until it’s confirmed by Cédes.”
“Fate-friends?” he repeated. “And who is Cédes?”
The girl fiddled with her hands and flashed an awkward smile. “Perhaps you should be asking who I am first. And I you.”
“Oh! I’m sorry. Call me Sansonis. That’s it, just the one name.”
“And I’m Ifaut. Ifaut Bayaurun Mafouras, only daughter and child of Phastus III and Rivista of what was once the Mafouras kingdom.” She seized Sansonis in an over-exuberant hug that forced the air from his lungs.
“Nice to meet you, Ifaut,” he choked, trying to draw breath as odd warbling noises bubbled up from somewhere in her throat.
She released him and hopped impatiently from foot to foot. “So, where do we go now?” she asked. Her eyes shone with expectation.
“I should get back home,” he said as his breath returned, “but you want me to see this Cédes, don’t you?”
“It is entirely you own decision. Wherever you go, I follow. Even if you should become so possessed by irrationality that you wish to picnic in Sol-Acrima itself, I shall follow you,” she said and bowed slightly at the waist, hands clasped before her chest.
“But why?”
“You saved my life. As a bearer of Furosa I’m bound by the laws of Keet the First to follow you everywhere you go until such a chance to repay you arises.” She clung to his arm and again made the odd staccato sounds that sounded like rapid-fire “dooks”.
“You can’t be serious…” he muttered, not quite believing the strange girl beside him.
“Of course I am,” she said earnestly. “And because the possibility of us being kamaes is so strong, it is even more important for me to accompany you and ensure your well-being.”
“The thing is,” he said, feelings of shame welling up from within, “even though I didn’t set that trap, I… I thought about turning you in for the reward.”
She released him and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “But you didn’t, that’s how I know I can trust you. You didn’t succumb to the greed many others would have. The reward would have helped you though, yeah?”
“Yes.” He nodded, his eyes downcast. “I have to pay to stay in the Joven inn, and three times what others do at that. And few people offer work to someone like myself.”
Again she was puzzled by the mention of “someone like him”. He certainly seemed nice enough, she thought. Almost cute, even. For a human. Except for those stubby little ears. “Don’t worry about having somewhere to stay,” she said at last. “I’ll look after you myself when we go to see Lady Cédes.” Then blushing she added, “I’m a pretty good cook, too.”
“Thanks,” he said, truly touched by her gesture. “You know something? It’s been forever since someone’s been this nice to me. I might as well go with you; it’s not like I have a life back there anyway. But before we do, I have to get some things from the inn. Will you wait here? I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Ifaut cocked her head to one side and sniffed. Her ears twitched. “You didn’t happen to come walking with friends, did you?”
“No, why?” Sansonis asked suspiciously.
“Someone’s coming,” she said. Her eyes widened. “I-”
But before she could finish, a shout came from somewhere in front of them and two armed men appeared from the trees. The larger of the two, a brute of a man with more hair on his face than his head, drew a knife from his belt and spat in Sansonis’s direction.
“Why am I not surprised to see the Dog here?” he said and sauntered towards Sansonis while fingering his knife. His companion hung back and watched the scene unfold.
Ifaut ducked behind Sansonis and, clutching his arm, peered over his shoulder. “Why did he call you a dog?” In reply he shrugged her off and took a step forward. She couldn’t help shaking as the other man nervously grasped the hilt of his short sword.
Despite the fact she had been trained to fight since she was young, fear froze any thoughts of attacking first. These men had weapons and she had never been involved in a real fight before. Still, the anger and fright growing inside balled her hands into fists.
“Leave her out of this,” Sansonis said levelly and pushed Ifaut gently away from him.
The man shoved him so hard he staggered backwards and pressed the knife to his neck. “I’ve always wanted an excuse to kill you, Dog, just like I killed those four-legged devils you used to live with.”
Sansonis felt the cold steel of the blade against his throat, smelled the man’s sour breath and unwashed odor. But he felt something else. Something new. For ten years he had suffered in silence, not knowing who exactly had killed his family or their reasons for doing so. And it was the first time he had stood face-to-face with one of their killers. As nausea churned in his stomach, he was vaguely aware of that dark cloud again descending over his eyes, blocking out both sight and consciousness.
“And now,” the man continued, drawing blood as the knife eased into Sansonis’s skin, “for helping this Furosan I can finally kill you, an affront to Kardin and disgrace to the rest of us. And when I’m done I’ll have my fun with your little friend there.” He jerked his head in Ifaut’s direction and two more men materialized from the trees behind her.
“I’ll make her talk, find out where the rest of those disgusting things live. Then I’ll see if I can make her squeal before I kill her.” He grinned, showing his blackened teeth.
For a moment Sansonis felt as if time stood still, frozen by the chill spreading through his heart. And without warning the dark cloud eclipsed his eyes completely.
Ifaut stared in amazement as Sansonis gripped the man’s wrist and twisted it backwards effortlessly until, screaming in pain, the man collapsed to his knees and dropped his knife. With an unnatural strength Sansonis’s fist collided with the man’s gut and sent him tumbling several meters into a tree where he crumpled to the ground and didn’t move. The assis
tant drew his short sword and charged, yelling in rage. But before he could land a blow, Sansonis caught his wrist and stopped the blade’s path. The second man flew backwards, propelled by some unseen force, and landed out of sight somewhere in the bushes. His weapon fell at Sansonis’s feet.
“What just happened?” Ifaut said, her voice barely more than a panicked squeak. She dashed to his side as the two men behind her drew closer. He didn’t respond. He only picked up the sword and strode past her towards the other two. She shivered as the cold aura now radiating from his body brushed her bare arm. And maybe it was just the light, or her imagination, but his eyes seemed completely black, empty of warmth or life. That scared her more than anything.
As the two other men moved to attack him, he parried their sword strokes and countered one with a left hook to the head and kicked the other so hard in the stomach that he fell and remained motionless.
Just as suddenly as the fight had started he dropped his sword and collapsed unconscious to the ground.
“Saun, I mean, Sansonis!” Ifaut rushed to his side and fell to her knees. She seized him by the shoulders and shook him, all the while yelling his name and pleading for him to just wake up already.
After much shaking and yelling, though probably not because of it, he came to, disoriented and not knowing what had happened.
“How did you do that?” She fell on top of him and hugged him tight before he was fully conscious.
“Do what?” he asked and bolted upright. He soon saw the four men lying scattered and unmoving on the ground, though dead or unconscious he couldn’t tell. “Did I do that?”
“Yes, but it was like it wasn’t you at the same time. You don’t remember, do you?” Even though he felt warm again and his eyes were their usual steely gray, an icy chill shot through her back.
“No. All I remember was hearing him say he killed my family and that he was going to kill you too, after he’d done something else…”
Ifaut winced and, taking both his hands, hauled him to his feet. “Now I am twice indebted to you,” she said, although she didn’t seem too bothered by the prospect. In fact, she smiled a toothy grin. But inside she was worried. What had caused him to attack those men so violently and coldly? Was she also in danger? She didn’t think so, but couldn’t be sure. After all, these humans were notoriously violent and unpredictable. Just like he had been moments before. “Why did he call you a dog?”
He let out an exhausted sigh. “I’ll tell you, but first we need to get far away from here.” He took a step forward and stumbled, falling into Ifaut’s arms.
“I have you,” she said and supported him by threading her arm under one shoulder and over the other.
“Don’t worry,” he added with a smile that made her heart beat faster. “I’d never hurt you.”
Supporting Sansonis, the Furosan Ifaut Mafouras began the long walk back to her home. She’d acquired what she had run away to find. And a new friend.