Temi emulated him.
“We’ll begin with basic footwork and the eight parries in the style I’m going to teach you.”
Jakatra demonstrated footwork and defensive blocks with the sword for the next fifteen minutes, and Temi copied his moves. None of them were hard or complicated, and the ease with which her knee was supporting her made her want to bounce about and ask for more challenges, but she suspected the difficulty level would increase once he started whacking at her with his sword. Eleriss returned before they reached that stage. Even if their expressions weren’t quite human, Temi thought she read grimness on his face. At the least, his usual cheer was absent.
“Problem?” Jakatra asked.
“A message from my father,” Eleriss said.
“Oh? Has he learned of your project?” Jakatra tilted his sword toward Temi.
“I don’t know, but I must speak with him. Continue with her, please. I will come check on your progress tomorrow.”
Temi watched him leave with a touch of trepidation. She wasn’t sure how far she trusted either of the elves, but Eleriss was definitely the more pleasant of the two. Spending time alone with Jakatra in the middle of a forest as it was getting dark wouldn’t have been her first choice on how to spend the evening.
As the training continued, however, he remained professional. Aloof, but professional.
After teaching her how to use her thoughts to turn off the sword’s glow—apparently it would cut through his regular sword if she didn’t do so—he drilled her over and over on the eight parries and what he called advances, lunges, and retreats. With most of the footwork, there was something similar in tennis, and she had no trouble covering the ground quickly, though he corrected her technique often. The parries weren’t similar to racket work, so she had to concentrate on them, especially when it came to figuring out which block to use against which attack. At the speed he was going—obviously a training pace rather than his normal capability—she could get the sword across in time to bat away his attack, one way or another, but with far too much flustered flailing. He would explain what the correct parry should have been, then repeat the exact same attack at least fifty times. Temi accepted the repetition without comment; every sport had it.
By the time full darkness fell, sweat drenched her body, and her limbs had the strength of noodles. Her knee ached, and she wasn’t sure if it was a sign that her recovery hadn’t been as complete as she’d hoped or if the muscles that she had been favoring for so long were simply exhausted from this exercise. Temi hadn’t seen anything that looked like a shower in her tree house; she hoped she had simply missed it on her first perusal and that it was tucked into a corner. Along with a sauna and a masseuse.
Jakatra backed away and lowered his sword. “Enough. You will rest now.”
Good. It was probably close to dawn by now back in Arizona. Her attempt to nod at Jakatra turned into a yawn.
Floating lights had gone on at some point, hovering in the air around the meadow. Temi decided not to find it creepy that she hadn’t noticed them during the day and that they weren’t supported by posts or wires, at least not as far as she could tell.
“I will return in the morning. Dawn.” Without waiting for an answer, he strode across the meadow and into the woods, disappearing into the undergrowth.
Temi could only stare after him, having no idea how she had fared for a first timer. Was she pathetic compared to his lithe people? A disappointment? Or had she done enough right to make him feel he wasn’t wasting his time? From his corrections, one would never know. The closest he’d come to praise was to say, “Yes,” about once an hour when she managed to get the right block to work at the same time as the right footwork. Something more… encouraging might have been nice. Despite her earlier thoughts about throwing the game—pretending to be worse than she was—she hadn’t been able to go through with it. She hadn’t wanted the damned elf to think any less of her than he already did. It shouldn’t matter, but for some reason it did.
She wished Delia had been allowed to come. Her commentary would have been more entertaining at least, and she probably would have enjoyed learning about swordsmanship too. Temi hadn’t hated it—the sport element and the challenge of improving appealed to her—but she had a hard time forgetting that the end goal was to learn not just how to defend herself but to kill things with the blade.
The floating lights dimmed, and she took that as a sign that she needed to get some food and some sleep. A screech sounded in the distance, the cry of something large. Something predatory. Another reason to go inside and lock the door. If it had a lock.
Chapter 4
Temi woke from a heavy sleep, lurching into a sitting position and almost falling out of the hammock as she clutched her chest. Her heart hammered at her ribs, and her disorientated brain couldn’t remember where she was or why. A chilling cry pierced the walls of her room, something between a screech and a roar. The noise filled her with terror, and she stared at the darkness around her, primitive instincts telling her to hide, but where?
A silvery glow arose on the other side of the tiny room. After a moment of confusion, she remembered what it was, remembered everything. By the time a second cry reverberated through the night, she had climbed out of the hammock and clasped her hand around the sword hilt.
“One mile,” she breathed, “wasn’t that what he said? That dangerous animals wouldn’t come closer than a mile?”
Whatever was making those cries—from the different pitches, she thought more than one creature might be involved—they sounded closer than a mile. She would like to think Eleriss and Jakatra wouldn’t bring her all the way here, bribe a doctor, and spend time training her, only to let her be devoured by the local equivalent of ravenous wolves. And yet…
Another high-pitched roar emanated from the forest.
“Definitely not a mile away.” Temi rested her hand on the back of the door, somewhat reassured by the solidness of the wood. There was no lock, she had found, but the latch was sturdy. The wise thing to do would be to wait inside the tree, in case that protective border the elves had mentioned wasn’t quite as protective as they thought.
A scream penetrated her tree home, and she jerked her head up. That was different from the other cries. It had sounded human. Or maybe elven. Was someone out there? Being hunted? Eleriss? What if he had come back to check on her and had run into trouble? She had been worried that Jakatra thought little of her ability to learn swordsmanship. What would he think if he found his comrade dead and horribly mauled on her doorstep? He would know she had done nothing to stop it.
Temi chewed on her lip, wishing the elves had told her more about this world, about these predators.
The scream came again. Male or female, she couldn’t tell, but it definitely sounded like a person. And that person was terrified.
Temi looked down at the glowing sword. “If you can kill monsters on Earth, I hope that means you can kill rabid wolves here.” She further hoped the wolves, or whatever was out there, would oblige by attacking in a manner that matched up with the blocks she had been taught, because she wasn’t ready for extemporizing.
Taking a deep breath, Temi unlatched the door. The lights in the meadow had turned off, and darkness smothered the forest. The cries of the predators came again, from somewhere on the other side of her meadow. Maybe it was her imagination, but those cries seemed more eager than before, closer to the kill.
Temi stalked into the meadow, clutching the sword in front of her like a shield, trying to spot movement in the undergrowth. She had no idea how to track anything in the woods, especially at night. She needed a sign to guide her.
The sign came sooner than she expected. Two hulking black figures ran out of the shadows on two legs. They were bear-sized and shaggy, with clawed digits that reminded her more of hands than paws. Animal-like snouts lifted, sniffing the air, and then the creatures charged in her direction. Their gleaming yellow eyes burned into her soul.
There
was no sign of the person Temi had come out to help. The screams had stopped. Was she too late?
As the shaggy animals raced across the meadow at her, she thought of sprinting back to the tree house and slamming the door, hoping it was enough to protect her, but they were less than twenty meters away and closing the distance quickly. She couldn’t outrun them, couldn’t make it back in time. She would have to stand her ground.
She lifted the sword, bringing it back over her shoulder so she could whip it toward them, rotating her body into the attack. She had no idea if that was the right technique, but Jakatra hadn’t gotten around to attacks yet.
“Bastard,” she muttered, sinking down, feeling the support of the earth beneath her feet, readying herself to meet the assault.
Temi was a heartbeat from swinging when the two creatures split and veered in opposite directions, breaking around her like a river around a boulder. Afraid they intended to surround her, she ran forward and whirled, so she could keep both of them within sight. But they didn’t turn back toward her. They sped across the meadow and ran into the forest. She thought she caught the gleam of something tiny glowing high up on one’s back, but the trees soon hid the creatures from sight.
She turned again, remembering the distressed cry and intending to try to find the person. But a lean dark figure was walking toward her, this one far less shaggy than the animals. A hand waved, and the lights around the meadow turned on. Jakatra.
Temi glanced in the direction the animal with the glowing something-or-other had gone. Its placement reminded her of the microchips dogs received. Could that have been some kind of chip? Embedded to control the creatures?
She lowered the sword when Jakatra stopped in front of her.
“A test?” she asked.
“A test,” he agreed.
She didn’t know whether to feel annoyed or flabbergasted, or both, but she waited in silence for his assessment. Had she passed? Or had she been too slow? Had she waited too long to come outside and help that person—a person who presumably didn’t exist or who had been part of the hoax? Or maybe she should have taken the attack to the creatures, rushing and striking at them instead of waiting for them to come to her.
“It is over,” Jakatra said brusquely. He sounded more annoyed than usual. “Return to sleep.”
Temi gaped at him. Oh, sure. Like it would be so easy to go back to sleep now. And what the hell? He wasn’t even going to tell her if she had passed? Or what exactly the scenario had been designed to test?
“Wait,” she blurted when he turned away.
Jakatra didn’t say a word, but he faced her again.
“What was I supposed to do? Did I pass?” She hated that she sounded like a school kid, asking if she had done well enough to go out to recess, but after being jerked out of her bed in the middle of the night and terrified half to death, didn’t she have a right to know?
A long moment passed as Jakatra stared at her. Just when she was certain he wouldn’t answer, he said, “You passed.”
What? If she had passed, why was he so irritated?
Temi had no sooner had the thought than the answer came to her. Oh. “You didn’t want me to, did you?”
“No.”
Well. He was a bastard, but he was an honest bastard.
“You wanted the Greek guy,” Temi said, thinking of the ancient warrior who had been uncovered and revived in that cave, only to escape before the elves could talk him into helping.
“I wanted no one,” Jakatra said coolly. “This—” he gestured at her, or maybe the sword, “—is a pointless use of my time and talents. I care nothing for a people that are intelligent enough to realize their species has overshot the carrying capacity of their world but too selfish and lazy to do anything about it. Your entire race is going to be extinct within a century, and you’re taking the rest of the species on your planet with you. Helping you stop a few predators right now… it’s meaningless. What will it matter in the end? What Eleriss thinks this can possibly accomplish, I cannot begin to guess.”
“Hey, don’t hold back for my sake,” Temi said, stunned by his vitriol. “Say what you really feel.”
He frowned, probably not understanding the sarcasm, but had a response anyway. “That is how most of the galaxy feels. Do you know why you’re not welcome here? Everyone is terrified that your people will figure out a way off your rock and do it all again.” He flexed a hand toward the stars. “Eleriss and those like him are optimistic fools.”
“Then why are you taking orders from him?”
Jakatra’s eyes chilled a few degrees. “They are not orders. My family has worked with his for many generations. Most of them are great scholars, worthy colleagues. But Eleriss is young. Foolish.”
Temi didn’t know what to say about the insult, about any of his insults. Delia or Simon would have a smart response. She sighed with disappointment at herself.
“Return to your rest,” Jakatra said and started to leave once again.
“No,” Temi blurted before she could think better of it.
“What?”
“I’ve slept long enough. If you’re out here thinking up tests for me, you’ve obviously slept long enough too.” She waved the sword. His dismissal of her pissed her off; his dismissal of all of humanity pissed her off too. She wanted to show him he was wrong. The only way she could. “Let’s get back to training.”
Temi expected him to scoff and walk away. His long assessing stare made her uncomfortable, but she forced herself to meet that cool gaze.
“You promised Eleriss to work with me for a week, right? I want my entire week.”
“If that is your wish,” he said softly.
Something about his tone, or maybe the dark glint in his eyes, made her think he planned to make her regret her decision. So be it. It wouldn’t be the first thing in life she regretted.
Chapter 5
Temi was sure there had been another time in her life when she had been this tired, but she couldn’t remember it. Though she wanted to, she couldn’t muster the strength to try another series of attacks on Jakatra. That morning, he had shown her how to use the curved blade of her sword, as well as the serrated teeth on the back side, and he had insisted she repeat the moves over and over again, as she had done with the parries. They had begun sparring then, exchanging blows like real fighters, but it was hours later now, and she could barely lift her blade to ward off his attacks. Even that was becoming harder, with her legs quivering like Jell-O.
Her stomach was growling, and she desperately needed a break, but how could she ask for one after demanding Jakatra stay up half the night training her? If he was tired, it didn’t show up in his moves. And he had no trouble mounting attacks.
After knocking her onto her ass for the five hundredth time that day, Jakatra backed away and raised a hand, his signal to stop. Maybe he had been reading her thoughts. Or maybe he could simply tell she was about to fall over. Or throw up. Or fall over while throwing up.
“You are making progress,” came a voice from the side of the meadow.
Temi was too tired to twitch in surprise. Eleriss stood there, wearing loose beiges and browns instead of the black leather jacket and dark clothing she had always seen him in.
“Get water,” Jakatra told Temi and walked toward Eleriss.
She held back a grimace. She wanted him to order her to fall into her hammock and sleep for twenty hours, not simply to have a five-minute water break. Nonetheless, she staggered to the side of the meadow and flopped next to her water jug. She thought about heading into the tree house to find some of the semi-palatable, greenish-gray wafers she had eaten for breakfast, but she hadn’t seen Eleriss since the day before, since some call from his family had taken him away, and she wanted to know what had happened. And if it had to do with her.
“She passed your test last night?” Eleriss asked, looking at her and being polite enough to speak in English.
“Yes,” Jakatra said. He still didn’t sound happy abo
ut it, but at this point, Temi expected all of his responses to sound grumpy. If there was something in the world, this one or another one, that pleased him, she couldn’t guess what it might be.
“Excellent.” Eleriss smiled, as unfazed as always with Jakatra’s surliness. “She is clearly tired, but she appears farther along than I dared hope. On that last riposte, she almost hit you.”
Had she? Everything was a blur. Temi hardly remembered any of the individual encounters.
“She did not,” Jakatra said stiffly.
Eleriss’s smile grew wider. “I have eyes, my friend.”
“Many inches parted us. I was in no danger of being struck.” Jakatra switched to his own language then, asking a question, it sounded like, and Eleriss responded in his own tongue as well.
Temi pushed herself to her feet and did her best not to wobble as she headed to the tree to retrieve one of those wafers. They had a vegetable-like taste but had protein and fat in them, as well, she believed, since they stuck with her longer than she would have expected, especially given all the work she was doing. This world’s equivalent of an energy bar. Inside, she sank down on a cushion for a moment, wiping her sweat with a towel, and relaxing, out of sight of the elves, for a moment. The night before, she had discovered a washing device in the kitchen that reminded her of the hand showers in Europe. At least it had given her a chance to bathe, though the effects had long since worn off.
The food gave her some fresh energy, and she wandered back outside to find the elves still talking. They stopped when she approached, and Eleriss looked at her.
“Jakatra says you are progressing marvelously.”
“Somehow I doubt that was the word he used,” Temi said. “Even allowing for a very loose translation.”
“I told him your footwork is passable,” Jakatra told her. Yes, that sounded more like him. Actually, it was the biggest sign of approval she’d received from him. Maybe he felt coerced to make the statement because of Eleriss’s presence.
“You said it was surprisingly passable given how few hours she’s trained,” Eleriss said.