Chapter Thirty-Two
A Message from the Past
The small victory of words over Prince Carl had lifted the girls’ spirits in a way that Rolf hadn’t thought possible. They beat out the tracks of the cart and helped in pushing it along with great enthusiasm and zeal. They smiled and bubbled with excitement. Suddenly it was all a fun day out. They were a world apart from the tearful girls of the night before. It had been the tiniest of victories, and yet it had meant so much.
They had all gathered around Rolf and Soo-Kai after Prince Carl and his men had gone and patted him and cheered him. It was probably a sign of how frightened they must have been, the fact that they were so overjoyed that they were all still alive and together. Even Craig looked at him in a different way. But afterwards, all Rolf could remember about it was Soo-Kai’s expression, and what she had said to him. It seemed that, whatever fate and the years might bring, each experience they shared together brought them closer together. For hours afterwards, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. How he loved her so.
It had been many years since that night and the Hunt. Soo-Kai had never spoken of it, never. But what Rolf had said to Prince Carl was both intuitive and exactly true. The memory of it had lived on in Soo-Kai’s mind, whether suppressed or always apparent, it had been there. The look in her eyes as she had glared at Prince Carl gave that away without any doubt. Even Prince Carl himself had seen it plainly enough. In time, the compression of her memories would blot it out, but now at least it would fade without rancour.
It was late afternoon when they began to realise that they had escaped those that pursued them. If L’Roth had been searching for them, he would have caught up with them well before now.
“Maybe he was never chasing us,” Amy suggested as they walked along, all gathered around the cart.
Soo-Kai reminded her of the night before. “He was determined to catch us then, why should he give up now?”
Vanessa had another idea. “What about the way we hid our trail? We’ve kept at it all the time. Maybe he couldn’t find us?”
“Yeah!” Sophia exclaimed from the back of the cart with Jane, a large branch in her hand. It was her and Jane’s turn to beat out their trail. “We’ve broken our backs sweeping that flippin’ forest! It’s got to have been worth something!”
Rolf turned to Soo-Kai. “They may be right, my wife. If there was any a time that was easy to catch us, it had to be now, in the brightness of day. But now it is late, and he has not come. Do we still have reason to fear him, or can we relax and slow our pace?”
Soo-Kai was thoughtful. “Something must have distracted him. His pursuit of us last night was determined. I am sure he would not give up so easily without good reason.”
Bernice then smiled and said, “Maybe Kai-Tai killed him! She attacked him and that Outsider last night! We heard all the noise! I told you she could do it! She’s killed him! She’s killed them all!”
Bernice was triumphant, and this time Soo-Kai didn’t challenge her words. Instead she stared back through the trees, as if she could see right the way to the castle. They all waited for her to speak, and when she didn’t, Rolf reached out to touch her arm.
“Do you think she could be right?” he asked her.
Soo-Kai slowly turned her eyes towards him, and when she spoke her voice was filled with concern. “It would answer all of our questions. An attack last night, or early this morning as he advanced from the castle, this would be enough to delay him.”
Bernice almost bristled with pride. “I told you! She’s got him!”
Most of the girls cheered, but Becky wasn’t so enthusiastic. She pulled at Soo-Kai’s sleeve. “Do you really think he could be dead, like Berni said?” she asked her.
Soo-Kai shook her head slowly, still thoughtful. “I cannot say. I fear only for my mother. But whether he is dead or not, our fear of him is reduced. We will walk more slowly, and tell the others to sweep the grass no more.”
Sophia and Jane didn’t need to be told a second time. They slapped their hands together and threw their branches away.
It was like the lifting of a cloud. On top of their victory over Prince Carl, it made the day seem a lot brighter, and the world a lot safer. If they were happy before, now they were ecstatic. They became like children again. They were chatty and unruly, and they wandered off among the trees to explore. Rolf quickly became worried, and he had to tell them off for being so boisterous.
“Come back here! All of you!” he shouted at them. The day before and his words would have gone unheeded, but now they obeyed him without question.
Rolf wagged his finger at them all as he spoke. “We are not safe yet, and there is still danger ahead. Soon the forest will end and there will be villages and people. The largest village is Jasanta. There we must cross the river and then the Fields of Halafalon. You must behave, and take care. There will be more villages and more people. And if the evening is clear, you will be able to see all the way to the sea where the spires and towers of Ellerkan rise up to the sky.”
As Rolf scolded them, Soo-Kai continued to gaze back along the path they had taken. She had shown little interest in the various activities of the girls, or in Rolf’s obvious distress at their behaviour. Her mind was filled with one thought. Did Kai-Tai still live?
The urge to go back, to find her mother, dead or alive, almost overwhelmed her. The feeling was so strange and so unfamiliar, but it was also so strong that it surprised her. Before she met Rolf, that feeling would never have been that strong. And yet, she knew that it had always been there. But she was a clone of the Tun-Sho-Lok, and these thoughts should be alien to her. The love of a mother was not for her, nor was the love of off-spring. Why did the knowledge of this hurt her? Maybe her genetic structure was not as pure as it should be.
As they moved on through the thinning trees towards the edge of the forest, Rolf left the cart to Craig and the girls. He walked alongside Soo-Kai and put his arm around her, pulling her close to him.
“You worry for her?” he said.
She smiled weakly. “You know me too well, more than I know myself.”
“Did you want to go back to find her?”
“I will not leave you.”
“Then when the girls are all safe, we will return together, and we will find your mother.”
“Then I will be content to wait. What has happened has happened, and the knowledge of the outcome will not change it.”
Soo-Kai put her arm around Rolf and kissed him. In return, Rolf squeezed her tightly and they walked on together, following behind the cart.
Jasanta lay at the beginning of the fertile lands known as the Green Fields of Halafalon. From here the many cultivated fields stretched to the sea, following close to the banks of the rivers as they spread out towards the delta and the distant city of Ellerkan.
Rolf knew they would face the most danger here. At Jasanta they would meet people, and people always brought danger. But there was no avoiding it. To reach the foot hills of the mountains, and the pass that would take them to Falonbeck, they had to cross these more populated lands. And most of the trails through the forest came to the river crossing at Jasanta.
Rolf warned them all once more as they came close to the village.
“Stay close to me, keep to yourselves and speak to no-one. That goes for you, too, my wife. The people here are honest working people, they are not evil or treacherous. But they fear what they do not understand, and they fear Destroyers. And when they are frightened, they are dangerous.”
As Rolf went on to describe the village and the route around it they would take, the girls all listened and nodded their heads in understanding. Even Craig paid attention. Like them, he also had more respect for Rolf since he stood up to Prince Carl.
When they first met, Craig had assumed that Rolf was just some farmer who had happened to be lucky enough to gain the affection of one of these beautiful Destroyers. And Soo-Kai was beautiful; there was no doubt about that.
For a time he was even jealous. But Amy had cured that envy.
Where Soo-Kai was hard and unforgiving in her attitude towards him, Amy was open and attentive. She stood up for him, often and without question. Craig still couldn’t understand why she liked him. He watched Amy as she listened so intently to Rolf. She was also beautiful. Younger, slighter, and with the freshness of youth in her skin. He remembered how she felt the night before, sleeping peacefully in his arms. No, Craig was no longer envious of Rolf. If Amy loved him, he would be luckier by far more than he deserved.
As for Soo-Kai, she seemed to know that his affections had switched. When she looked at him, it was with less distaste. And when they spoke, the hostility of the night before had left her voice. But she was still curt with him. That he could live with.
When Rolf had finished telling them about the villages they would pass and the people they would meet, Craig turned to her. “Have you been here with Rolf before?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes. The people here looked at me with round eyes. I could taste the interest of the men. But in the end it was the women who kept me away.”
Craig looked surprised. “The women? Why?”
Rolf answered him. “They all knew right away that she was a Destroyer. The men coveted her, and it was them that I was most frightened of. But the women-folk were openly hostile. They surprised me. They shouted abuse at Soo-Kai, and one even threw vegetables at her. I asked her not to come with me after that.”
Rowena asked, “Were you frightened that they might hurt her?”
Rolf shook his head. “In the end I was more worried that Soo-Kai might hurt one of them. Then there would have been uproar!”
Soo-Kai then said, “The hostility of the females does not surprise me. I am their natural enemy. I am an Androktone, a clone of the Tun-Sho-Lok. To procreate, I must steal their males from them. While I can bond with a male, there is no such provision for females. Rolf did not wish me to kill one of them because of the reaction there would have been. It would have been dangerous for us, and led to more unnecessary deaths, so I stayed away. But I always worried for him, and I would always meet him on the trail home.”
Becky stared at her. “What about us? Does that make us enemies?”
Soo-Kai turned to her and placed her hand on the young girl’s face. There was a brief silence as all the girls watched as Soo-Kai moved her hand over Becky’s skin, going down to her throat and chest, and then back up to her face and brow.
Bernice remembered the way Kai-Tai had touched her, and knew instantly that Soo-Kai was doing the same.
Soo-Kai let go of Becky. “My mother said that you were very similar to us. She is right, you share many of the same gene sequences, but you also possess many different ones. You are similar, but not the same.”
“What does that mean?” Becky asked quickly.
“It means that without my bond with Rolf, I would kill you.”
Rolf saw their worried looks and was quick to speak up in defence of his wife. “I don’t believe that you would hurt those that are defenceless. Maybe at one time you did such things, but not now. Even without the bond between us, I don’t believe you would follow the same path as you once did.”
Soo-Kai would have argued with him, but Rolf didn’t let her speak. Instead he took her hand and spoke more quickly. “Believe me, Soo-Kai, I know your story, you told it to me long ago. But I remember how you felt at that time, and how dark was your mood. No, the urge for wanton killing had left you long before that night.”
Soo-Kai had expected Rolf to speak up for her, and what he said was true, she only wished she had the same confidence as he did. But it was the response of the girls that surprised her. They gathered around her, and Vanessa was the first to speak.
“We saw the way you fought for us at the wagon. I trust you, and I’m sure the others do, too.”
They all agreed, Amy being the most vocal.
“You saved Craig’s life and mine,” she said. “You could have ditched us, but you didn’t. I trust you, and I know you wouldn’t hurt us.”
All the time that everyone was speaking, Becky looked the most agitated. “But I didn’t mean that!” she said as soon as she could get a word in. “How can we be similar? That’s what I meant! We’re from different worlds, how can genes in our DNA be the same?”
“There can be only one explanation,” Soo-Kai replied. “At one time in your history, either the Tun-Sho-Lok came to your world, or we did.”