Eyes Open

 

“Sisseku, you’ve done this before. I mean, cook for the queen. Does it happen often?” Fallon followed behind the litter as the elephant plodded up the hill to the queen’s palace. He wanted to ask her about Mellen but didn’t want to offend her.

“We make their daily meals, but not like this.” She gestured to the roasted calf carcass. “My partner was good at roasting meat, particularly the Ibik.”

“Yes, where are the Ibik?” Fallon asked.

“The queen and her kind. They have cut off the passage to the northern valley. They hope to drive the tribes from the mountains.”

Fallon had so many questions. How could anyone block the great herds of Ibik? “Your partner? He’s not here with you?”

“They put him to work in the mine. He had an accident.”

“I saw your face light up when the boy sang,” Fallon said. “You have a child here in the village?”

“No, they took the boy to school. He got sick and died. That’s what they told me.” Fallon suspected that the boy was also working at the mine. “Tell me, how did you come here?”

Fallon hesitated, then stalled for time by rubbing his forehead with his hand. How much had he told her? When lying, stick to reality as much as possible. “I was on a boat, fishing in the ocean.”

“I thought you said you were with the Washiti tribe?” Sisseku asked. “They are far inland. Herders, I thought.”

Lying was such hard work. “My father. We argued. I can’t tend his herd all my life. I need my own herd if I can attract a partner.”

“Yes, that is so.”

“At first, I went south of the Dallesa tribe, then I met someone who was originally from the Cawthingi tribe. Fishing was so much easier than herding, he said. I helped him build a boat.”

“He fooled me. He just wanted to get back to his tribe, the Cawthingi up north.”

“The breakwater pier they have built out into the ocean has diverted the fish schools. Most of the Cawthingi have come south. Not enough fish.”

Fallon guessed she had been here at least a year. He wanted more information but dare not be truthful with her. As far as she knew, Sisseku had lost her partner and her child to these beasts. Why wasn’t she angry? Where did her loyalties lie? Fallon was in too vulnerable a position to trust her. “There were Cawthingi guards who captured us.”

“Where did your friend go?”

“The guards took him away somewhere.”

“He used you to get back to his people,” Sisseku said. The haunch of the calf began to come loose from the bindings on the pallet. She made a piercing whistle and the elephant slowed. They resecured the carcass and Sisseku whistled again and took a position again behind the travois. She pointed to the long building at the top of the hill. “The barracks. Have you been to the castle before?”

What was his story? Stay close to reality, he reminded himself. “Uh, no.” How to steer the conversation back to Mellen? “Did you partner help build the palace?”

She looked sideways at him. “That’s the palace and the barracks of Marten, the leader of all the tribes before the war. Do they talk of Marten in the Washiti tribe?”

Pretend casual, Fallon told himself. “Yes, a great warrior, I hear.” He shrugged. “My father only mentioned him a few times, I’m afraid.”

“Marten was a great warrior, but he underestimated the humans, the queen’s kind.”

“He knew of the humans?” Fallon asked. “I had never heard of them.”

“You are from a southern tribe and never heard of the humans?”

Fallon grew cautious at the suspicion in her voice. “As a child, I heard of them. I thought they were myths meant to scare children.”

She laughed. “They are fearsome in battle, I am told. They have better weapons. The elephants are formidable.”

“They fight?” Fallon was incredulous. They looked like slow, lumbering beasts on the trail.

“The southern tribes, the Dallesa and the Washiti, laid down their arms when the elephants battered down their defenses. You are lucky you left your family, or they would have put you to work in the mine.” They were coming to the steep rise to the plateau where the queen’s compound and soldiers’ barracks stood. Sisseku leaned into her staff to steady her up the ascent up the path. She looked at his hands and Fallon’s easy stride. “You stand like a warrior. Why did they send you to the village to cook?”

Fallon scrambled for a reason and couldn’t find one. He built on his previous lie. “I was surprised also. Maybe the Cawthingi who tricked me into building the boat said a good word for me. I am a good woodcutter, not a warrior. I climb hills like this often.”

She nodded, her breath labored as she spoke, “Watch the calf carcass as we go reach the plateau.”

Fallon stayed close by, steadying the load as the pallet tipped and settled on the flat plain. When he straightened up, he saw a dozen of the human warriors standing together outside the barracks. They were dressed much like the two warriors that he and Drindl had killed and buried. Fallon steadied his breath. He might have been able to fool Sisseku with his story of being a herder and woodcutter, but these warriors would recognize him as one accustomed to battle.