Page 14 of Planet Zero
“Yes. Yes, I did. There were others like me, but they died. Not long ago. Then I walked for days and came here.”
But “Hoban” stopped listening. Leaning toward the chief, he said something quietly.
The chief gave him an arrested look, and then bared his teeth and roared, “Zoark!”
Addie cringed as the sound echoed in the teepee, amplified as it traveled through space. It rippled through her, vibrating her insides.
People perked up, looked at each other. One warrior, tall and stern-looking, jerked in surprise. Like Qalae, he also stood out from the crowd with his different coloring. His hair was quite red, and he possessed reddish brows and light golden skin. If he were a dog, Addie thought at random, he’d have been one with a red nose.
There was a moment of heavy silence when everyone fell quiet.
A shadow fell on her when another For male entered the teepee. She shrunk in instinctive fear, but the shadow quickly moved away as the man cleared the door. Her eyes level with his hips from her kneeling position, Addie had an excellent view of his legs as he moved past her. He was tall, like all warrior males around here were, and had sturdy thighs and muscled calves encased in soft slouchy boots.
He moved with a rolling, feline grace - or he would have, if not for a pronounced limp that caused his body to lurch with each step of his crippled right leg. And it was definitely crippled, the kneecap off-center, and the skin covering it a pattern of knotted scars.
He stopped in front of the chief, legs braced, eyes downcast in deference, head held proudly up as if he couldn't help himself to lower it.
“You called, Chief Net’ok,” he said quietly.
“Speak to this creature Addie,” Chief Net’ok pointed at her. “Make her understood.”
The newcomer’s, Zoark’s, head slowly turned around in that owlish fashion, almost a full circle. For several seconds, he and Addie stared at each other before a resentful expression settled on his feral face. He wasn’t handsome. If anything, the animal aspect was more pronounced in his high, flat cheekbones, in the large tiger nose with sharp nostrils that quivered, in the twin slashes of his heavy brows. His wide mouth was downturned at the corners and curiously petulant, even cute. Until he bared his teeth.
“Addie,” he affirmed, and the name came out smooth and clear, pronounced just right.
“Yes, I am Addie,” Addie said in For.
Zoark turned to the chief. “What is it you wish to ask her?”
The chief spoke fast and low, too quick for Addie to pick out but a few familiar words.
Zoark turned his body to face Addie full on. She got a distinct feeling that he scorned being forced to speak to her.
“Did you come from the City of Seraphims?” he asked.
“Yes, this is where I lived…” she broke off, shock rendering her temporarily mute.He spoke her language.
Without thinking, she flew to her feet and launched herself at him - to do what, she didn’t know. To hug him? Grab his hands and squeeze them tight? To touch one person on this planet who she could converse in the language of her people?
Whatever she would have done remained unknown as a club was thrust like a gate arm in her path, abruptly halting her progress. Someone hit her again on the backs of her legs, and she landed into the same position from which she had just risen.
Zoark’s eyes, a dull red with moss green rings of irises, regarded her with disdain, and, she thought, pity.
“Have you lived in the city long?” he inquired.
“Two years. A little more than two years.”
“Why did you leave?”
“The city is no more. Wrennlins destroyed the place. Everyone is dead.”
Zoark’s expression didn’t flicker as he translated what she said to the chief. They exchanged a few sentences.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Human years. That makes you fourteen-and-a-half Roaring Thunders.”
