Page 41 of Planet Zero
“You are not welcome here. Your motives are suspect.” He glanced between Chele, Addie, and Oma’s teepee. When his brain made the connection, his robes rippled as his body vibrated with outrage, and his mongrel-dog face became tight with indignation. “Oma had a dead baby. What were you doing inside her home?”
“I came to say how sorry I was to Oma.”
“Who gave you the right to disturb her?”
Addie glanced searchingly at Chele. The woman stood next to her quietly, looking down.
Addie was on her own.
“Oma is all alone. It is only the right thing to do.” She kept mum about tending to the woman or giving her food. She was sure as hell not going to mention Chele’s medicine. Chemmusaayl, to put it mildly, wouldn't understand.
But even the small platitude she’d offered didn’t go down well with Chemmusaayl. He appeared to inflate in front of Addie’s eyes, so bloated with wrath that he almost levitated from it. “A filthy foreigner from the city that didn’t move! You should have died alongside the rest of your wicked women who prey on our male outcasts.”
Addie blinked rapidly, her mind coming up with nothing to say at this unprovoked onslaught of hatred.
“Let her go, Chemmusaayl. She isn’t dangerous. Not worth your wrath.” Zoark was infuriatingly unflinching.
His interference didn’t earn him good karma points from the High Counselor.
“You,” Chemmusaayl pointed a stick at Zoark and narrowed his eyes to slits of angry dark red, “a man too weak to walk this land, have no voice.”
“No?”
“No. No voice, no strength. It is the price you pay for debasing yourself with unnatural women like this one. She reeks of mischief.”
Several women abandoned their tasks and came closer to watch the circus show. Chemmusaayl was only too happy to give a performance. He raised his arms, palms out, and waved in front of Addie’s face. “Your transgressions, strange woman, will not be tolerated in my tribe. You’re unnatural! You have no place among us, the uselesshealerthat you are. What a shameful deed, helping to revive what needs to be dead, weakening our blood.”
He made it sound like she cracked open old coffins and created zombies out of the rotting carcasses. Not a long-term, big-picture thinker, the High Counselor Chemmusaayl was. More like a crusty old man blinded by beliefs that conveniently held him in power.
But Addie didn’t know how to constructively address his limitations without getting herself killed, and so she kept silent.
He squinted. “Do you understand my words, foreign woman?”
“She understands, High Counselor,” Chele spoke on her behalf. “The men have returned.”
Behind Zoark, warriors were entering the settlement with the formidable Chief Net’ok in the lead. Their massive shoulders gleamed in the setting Ehr sun. Their stoic faces revealed nothing, but she couldn't see them bringing home any kill.
Queen Qalae tossed her hair and slowly made her way to meet the party.
Using the warriors’ arrival as a distraction, Addie took a tentative step away from the High Counselor.
“What is it that you’re holding?” he inquired with great suspicion. “I smell… blood.”
As if the switch was flipped open, the attention of the entire tribe was on Addie. And this time, the wall of the men’s bodies blocked not only the path to but the view of the steppe behind the settlement.
“Dirty furs.” Addie frowned, thinking that she got herself into a tight spot, yet not sure why.
“Bloody furs?” Chemmusaayl’s voice rose an octave. He speared Chele with his wide-open eyes. “What is it that you did in there?” He threw open his arm, pointing at Oma’s teepee.
“I changed Oma’s bedding,” Addie explained. “It smelled. It would have attracted maggots.”
Chemmusaayl turned to the men. “This woman violated our ways! She entered Oma’s home when her mate was away and disturbed the natural order!” He looked pointedly at a male in the middle of the crowd, presumably Hunlath, as if inviting the warrior to join him in this righteous wrath.
Hunlath hung his head, and his swarthy cheekbones sported a faint color as he silently listened to Chemmusaayl berate her and have hysterics over “disturbing” his wife’s decline.
Addie had had enough. “I broke no rules. Oma had done her best to bring her child forth,” she raised her voice to be heard over Chemmusaayl’s screeching. “Her strength will return, but she needs time. And compassion. She shouldn't lie in filth while she’s recovering. No one should.”
Chief Net’ok scrutinized Addie like he was seeing her for the first time.
