Chapter 4
My mentor just jumped off a cliff!?!? (Well, sort of mentor. I bet she’s younger than me, in which case she has no business bossing me around.) I wait for the sound of the sickening thud on the ground. (Yes, I know it’s a long distance to hear, but remember.. I’m still superhuman through and through, and that means superhuman hearing).
Instead, I hear a splash, and she’s swimming through the water that I only saw just now. When Arcya sees me, she groans. “I told you to go back to your hut.”
That’s when I see the tigers. They’re everywhere- swimming around her, sunbathing on the rocks, snoozing in the mud. At least, until she brings the packet out from under her shirt. Then they’re all circling her, and I panic, thinking she’s going to be attacked.
Then I do the world’s stupidest thing ever. I jump off the cliff.
Jumping off a cliff isn’t as bad as you’d think. There’s just you and the air and you feel like you’re flying, if only for a little bit of time. What’s worse is when you impact water
after
jumping off a cliff. That seriously hurts. You drop straight to the bottom, like a stone.
What’s the all-time worst is when you jump off a cliff to distract a friend from tame tigers that you forgot were tame. Then when you surface after the awful impact, she screeches in your ear about being such an idiot (the ungrateful wretch) as the tigers fight over their food.
That’s pretty much what happened. I enjoyed the wind blowing back my hair as I fell and then Arcya told me off for trying to save her. Anyways, once she’d relaxed (after about fifteen straight minutes of screaming in my ear about how I’m an idiot and she should’ve never accepted the role of mentoring me and how could I do this), I began to survey my surroundings.
There was a rushing waterfall, not too fast nor too slow. The greenery was gorgeous, but it didn’t hide the fences, which blocked the tigers into their pen. Ha, I never thought I’d say or think that ever. Maybe there used to be these places called ‘zoos’ but now they’re gone.
Anyways, the tigers have a huge amount of space to spread out in, and let me tell you, they needed it. There are about fifty or so of them, and after the food is gone they all go swimming for a short period of time before most of them come back out and fall asleep.
Arcya looks at me with a sideways smile as I drink in the scenery and look at the tigers.
The tigers look fierce (and act fierce a lot of the time, too), but they behave like giant cats in their enclosure (which is what they are, I guess).
“How’d you tame the tigers?” I ask.
“That’s only a recent, ah, task. I, uhm, saved a baby tiger from a net we’d set up to keep away predators. There were all the other tigers there, ready to attack me. Somehow I convinced them that I was there to help. Since then, they love me and tolerate the other clan members. They’re intelligent, you know. I picked up their language, somehow.”
I nod, reeling and secretly sort of impressed. She saved a baby tiger with all the other ones ready to attack her? Most people would be impressed about her speaking tiger language.. I’m more curious how she actually learned it, because the would-be casual tone in her voice made me detect a lie.
We enjoy a few more hours in the tiger enclosure before we leave, heading back to the village and murmuring more than a few ‘blessings of Ajuhn be bestowed on you’ and ‘atry omnizar’ greetings as we went through the village.
As I lay awake in my bed (which, by the way, rocks after living in caves), I wonder how Arcya actually picked up the language of the tigers and who she was talking to earlier today, when I was in the Ricomuz (which I finally remember the name of).
After all, I think drowsily, she couldn’t be talking to a ghost.
I fall asleep before I can think about what had happened any further.
Chapter 5
I wake up the next morning when somebody decides to wake me up by screaming in my ear. (Guess who?) Yup, Arcya, of course..
“Come on!” she says. “Get changed. Breakfast is soon, and then you’ve got to start work in the fields.”
I groan in response, and she tugs me to my feet, thrusts clothing into my arms, and leaves the room glowering. Deciding not to fight the inevitable, I yawn one last time before getting changed. When I’m done, I open the door, only to be tugged impatiently by Arcya.
She forces me to near-sprint to the food hall, where she mumbles a hasty ‘blessings of Ajuhn’ etc. to the elders. (I hurry too, because she glares daggers at me for not saying it immediately after she says it and then walks away. I barely get the words out of my mouth before she somehow manages to tug me away, despite being laden with two plates of food.)
When we sit down at the least full table (the one in the very far back corner), she practically inhales her food.
“Why are you eating so fast and rushing through everything?” I ask.
Instead of responding, she shovels more food down her throat and motions for me to do the same. I finish eating at the same time as her, partly because I had a smaller portion of food and partly because she kept motioning for me to go faster.
When we’re done, she again mumbles a hasty ‘blessings of Ajuhn’, etc. (now referred to as ‘BOA’ for the sake of shortness, with no relation whatsoever to the boa constrictor) to the elders before alternately shoving and pulling me all the way to the crop fields (which I forgot to mentioned are half-enclosed by roofs), where she grabs a set of tools and a bag of something.
She plants some unidentifiable things, motioning for me to try after she does it.
She gives a different set of tools to me, watching with hawk eyes as I follow her instructions. After she’s watched me do the first row, she gives me a perfunctory nod, marks off another three rows for me to plant crops in, then continues making even more rows for me as I begin work.
It’s tedious, but I’m used to tedious jobs from digging in the tunnels to move from city to city. After about four hours working, the dirt is caked under my nails, my hair is all over the place, and sweat is dripping off me, but we completed so many rows of crops, I won’t bother to count them.
“Not bad, for a newcomer,” says Arcya, surveying the land with a half-smile. “Lunch time!”
We walk to the food hall, giving the BOA (blessings of Ajuhn, for those unfortunate enough to forget abbreviations rapidly) to the elders before stacking our plates with tons of food.
I eat quickly, as does Arcya, before I follow her out of the food hall (which, by the way, I think I’ll skip writing about eating at all as much as I can) and she walks to a smaller hut, walking in and coming back out with two items that somewhat resemble towels and a package.
“Meat for the tigers and materials to dry ourselves off after we jump into the water to feed the tigers,” she says in response to my questioning look, and we set off on a walk.
“They get three meals a day?”
“No, six, of course! Only humans get three meals a day,” she says with a deadpan look on her face as we continue walking.
“Really?”
“Of course not, idiot, they get two meals a day. I just change up when I feed them depending on what happens every day. For example...” she says as we reach the cliff and jump off.
I’m flying and flying until… I splash into the water, sinking to the bottom immediately. When I resurface, she doesn’t bother to finish her sentence. After she’s fed the tigers and gotten her hair out of her face, she continues her sentence.
“Tonight we have the races. Men go against men and women go against women. I’m not competing, but you and your friends are welcome to.”
I gasp. “Races? For real?”
She nods. “That’s why I’m feeding the tigers now instead of later.”
This is just all so surreal. Races and swimming in waterfalls and farming like we did in the olden days. Not even to mention taming and talking to tigers.
I’m so caught up in thought that I almost don’t pay attention when she speaks next until I realize she said the words ‘practice’ and ‘swimming race’.
I jump into the water, looking at the long river, which goes off into the distance farther than I can see. The tiger enclosure (if you can call it that) is humongous, and the stream runs along all of it.
“I suppose I’ll take that as a yes,” she says, and we’re off.
The actual swimming race is just a blur of moving arms and legs and taking breaths and glints of sunlight until we reach the end of the river, where she stops immediately and I slam into the dirt at the edge of the stream. She laughs hysterically as I stumble out of the water, dizzy.
“I won,” I say.
“Nope, it’s a tie.”
I sigh, “Come on!”
When my bout of dizziness ends, I stand up straight and we both go back into the water, splashing and playing and having a good time. I swear I saw a tiger practically rolling his or her eyes, until Arcya growls at it and it grumpily growls back at her before it gets out of the water.
We splash and play in the water until Arcya finally interrupts.
“We better get back in time for dinner,” says Arcya, and I gasp when I realize a couple hours have passed.
I nod, hopping out of the water. We walk through the gate, jogging all the way back to the village.
Chapter 6
Dinner’s an unimportant, trivial affair, except for when Ben and his brunette mentor sit down at a different table, away from everyone else. He’s actually smiling (which I only rarely get him to do), and they’re chitchatting animatedly. I sigh and look away, finishing my meal quickly. My appetite strangely disappears.
After dinner, I line up for the race outside of the village, pretty close to the Ricomuz. Ladies go first, which despite nobody actually verifying my suspicions, I know is just because they want to see increasingly better competition and has nothing to do with ‘ladies first’. Apparently we’re supposed to be weaker or something.
Arcya whispers into my ear that the eldest elder’s name is Elder Manoiv, and he’d be the judge. Anyways, Elder Manoiv comes to the front, nearest to the track.
“First one to reach the end wins, and if she so chooses, may compete in the men’s race at her own risk. The others may not participate under any circumstances. The race begins when I say so. Last place has to pick up any obstacles before the next race. Now… You may begin!” Elder Manoiv calls, and we’re off.
It’s a fairly difficult track, twisting and turning just when I least expect it. There are at least ten broken branches that I know last place will have to pick up. Regardless of the irritating branches, I’m in the lead, with Lily and Aria closely behind me. The other non-superhumans don’t stand a chance, poor things.
I’m sprinting harder and faster with Lily and Aria keeping pace, but they both trip over branches in the last stretch before the end of the race and I win.
“Congratulations, Miss…” says Elder Manoiv.
“Sarah Sindile,” I say.
“Sarah Sindile!” finishes Manoiv. “Would you like to try your hand at the men’s race?”
I nod, noticing Ben looking at me with a mixture of pride and determination while everyone else cheers. He mouths at me ‘I’ll win’ and I mouth back ‘Yeah, right’. It’s on.
The race begins, and this time it’s even more tough and competitive. Ben, some strange brawny dude, and I are neck and neck, with the rest barely lagging behind.
I barely notice the branches I nearly trip on or the other people, instead concentrating on sprinting as fast as I can. The other brawny man is panting heavily, but manages to keep up with Ben and I. When I see the finish line is only a few yards away, I put on an extra burst of speed, somehow managing to find the extra strength to beat the brawny man.
Unfortunately, so does Ben, and we cross the finish line at the same time, tying for first place. The brawny man who kept up with us for quite some time is panting, looking at us, stunned.
“This is most strange, but may I present the two winners… Sarah Sindile and Ben Clorcay!” says Manoiv before continuing. “The strangers that outran Ociri, who was undefeated and the fastest runner in the whole village!”
I eye Ociri, who looks back at me with a sort of grudging admiration while the crowd cheers. He mumbles, “Good job.”
I nod before yawning and managing to dodge through the crowd, all the way back to my hut, where I enjoy the silence. When I shut the door behind me and sit down on the bed, I’m suddenly majorly exhausted. I lie down and fall asleep almost instantly, not dreaming of what was to come.