Aur Child
Chapter 51

Sann-Na considered if it had been rash to send Alai off from her cottage in such haste. Cruel as his words were, he had seemed befuddled. Certainly, she thought, he hadn’t thought through the difficulty of the journey ahead of him. His mind would not be clear enough to do so. She knew he carried no more food than the safety rations crushed beneath the Aur boule in his pack; he didn’t even know the way to the southbound trails. If he remembered what she taught him, he might manage to boil what moss bunches he could replace from beneath snow drifts and work his way south-southeast by dead reckoning. That was the extent of a plan she could imagine for his return to Dragon’s Snout.

From the steps of her cottage, Sanna scowled out to where the man from the southern continent strode off clumsily into the forest. She was shaking as she caressed Tieri-Na’s puukko in her hands. She could imagine him wobbling uneasily on his skis, weaving between one tree and then another, pushing without confidence. Could she really replace fault in him? He’s just as confused as I am. There, unaccosted by any immediate threat, she could tear away the thick defenses that made her so impenetrable. She could allow some space to exercise her well-groomed ability to read people. Uncertain. That’s what best described him. But it didn’t matter. It was just as she had told him yesterday: no help. If Tieri-Na was indeed trapped in that cave as they had nearly been, she had learned nothing from their experience – after all her effort to bring Alai there – about how to replace her. She can’t be dead.

As she stood there, she grew suddenly warm with alarm. An inexplicable inclination to scan the yard came over her. It may have been the odd mound of snow that caught her attention. Perhaps, a rustle in a typically quiet place. Something nondescript was out of place. She stepped silently into the snow with her felt boots. Approaching an injured animal - for that was her initial expectation – required extreme care.

Kjell-Tors appeared to be preoccupied with packing when the fall of snow came from above. The wind might have been knocked out of him when he first observed the ferocious snarl of Sanna hovering over his camp, a wicked forest knife gripped in her hand. Before he could react, Sanna boomed down upon him in a furious voice that must have rung in his ears.

“You’re stalking me now, Kjell? Have you completely lost your mind!”

Kjell struggled to turn around under the pressure of the situation. He was compressed against the collapsed bivvy and the snow. Sanna had a foot pressed over his chest and the sharp tip of Tieri-Na’s puukko pointed up precariously like a demon’s thumb.

The man gasped for air but did not reply.

“This is going too far!” She screamed at the outrageous transgression. “Harass me when I pass the Tors clan village; what can I do to stop you there? But to come here and spy on me is beyond all acceptable limits!”

Kjell wheezed, sweating and shaking under her foot. Attempts to speak words were being made, but no legible sound to that effect could be heard. His mouth seemed to be jammed.

With a croak and some spittle forming at the sides of his mouth, Kjell finally spoke in a strange accent. He gazed off into the frosty treetops like he was trying to recall the lyrics to an old song.

“I should have checked again to see if she was outside before I started packing up.”

Sann-Na curled her nose in confusion.

“What are you talking about, you beast?” she said.

“Me, a beast? Ha!” He mumbled to himself. “These creatures are only good for an occasional romp.”

The man’s body was convulsing. He seemed to struggle with something painful from within. Sanna was reluctant to allow any more nonsense. What’s wrong with these men? She pressed her weight against his chest. This seemed to yank him from his thoughts.

“Sanna, you don’t understand.” He yelped. “I came here to protect you!”

“Protect me? Look at yourself, you foolish imp.” Her emotions had been pushed too far this morning. She growled in a swollen rage. “How dare you presume I need your protection?”

“That was the wrong thing to say;” he mumbled again, looking into the distance, and again seemingly speaking to himself. “Try the thing about her sister.”

“What thing about my sister, Kjell?” Sanna was now exasperated.

Kjell convulsed and yelped out in pain. A raven popped out of nearby bushes and fled the racket. Sanna listened to it caw skyward. Emotions must not interfere with learning any information about Tieri. Kjell-Tors was kind-hearted. Perhaps he did have something to tell her. She relaxed the pressure of her foot from his ribcage and, noticing for the first time it had been held in such a violent position, she lowered the puukko. The red in Kjell’s face faded to a sickly pale. He turned to look at her. Only a brief window had been granted during which he might make amends.

“I’m here because I care about you both,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know I would do anything for you two.”

She stared at him blankly. It would take more than cliché words to substantiate his presence. She noticed he was shaking; that was not like the bold and confident Kjell she knew.

After a pause, Kjell spoke again.

“And, of course, being pledged and all, surely you can understand my concern for her safety and yours.”

It wasn’t the words that shocked Sanna as much as the fact that twice in one morning she had been utterly confounded by two different men. Two men she had thought she might be able to trust, albeit in different ways, but nonetheless for whom she had at least held out hope. Now, again, some unexpected obfuscation appeared to annihilate earlier assumptions. And again, she was forced to endure nebulous talk to replace clarity.

“Pledged with whom?” she said warily. It was more of a groan than a sentence.

Kjell seemed to shrink at the narrowing of her eyes, as if he had expected the opposite effect from his words.

“With me,” he said in a croak of a voice.

Sanna leaned over to get closer to his shivering body.

“With whom are you pledged, Kjell?”

“With Tieri-Na?” It came out as a question.

It was only a slap. It was just something that one child sibling might use to strike another in frustration. A primitive reaction. But a strike of any kind was so extraordinary in the nonviolent culture of Tellurians, that to Tieri, her action immediately reeked of impurity. Elders would frown and wag their fingers. She had responded to the cruelness, the betrayal, the realization that this man, Kjell-Tors, was not or perhaps never was the man she thought him to be. A desperate brute willing to go to any lengths – to say anything – to save his hide. How could he? She didn’t believe him for a moment. She never questioned that Tieri had pledged herself to Kjell without telling her. That was preposterous. Kjell had courted Sanna. He had openly made it clear that he wasn’t interested in Tieri. FarFar Tors had encouraged Sanna to accept Kjell. And Tieri had told her years ago that she felt disappointed but supportive.

No, that was not the cause of her visceral reaction. It was the audacity of the lie. The shamelessness to broach this subject in such a twisted way with the preposterous expectation that it could explain his situation. Even if she was to let the slug of a man creep away, their friendship was damned. They could never trust one another again. Her frustration, her instant agony of that fact, that was what she had communicated to him in her brief act of violence.

In return, she received information herself. His face was clammy. Even with that slight glance she registered its wetness, its coldness. It added to her earlier observations about his complexion and odd focus. Despite her anger, she knew this man intimately, and she could tell something was wrong with him. He was quiet and motionless. He stared up beyond her shoulder. Like a worn mattress, he did not resist her weight pressed upon him. Instead, he seemed to deflate from it.

She released her foot from his chest. He inhaled deeply.

“It’s gone bad,” he said in that same mumble as he had done earlier. “Take me back if you can.”

She knew it wasn’t to her he spoke. He muttered more words.

“Take me back. Before it’s too late.”

It sounded like another’s voice. Sanna looked down at Kjell. He was now shaking violently. His eyes had closed, but they rolled around behind the glistening eyelids as if he were in a nightmare. He mumbled in his tremors. The words were just barely discernible.

“Bad intelligence. Must come back to Yellow Reserve. Get me out of this body. Abort if you can. It’s too weak. Take me back. Put him back. Do you hear me, you stupid machines?”

Back to Yellow Reserve? She had heard that name used by Freyja in the cave.

Kjell wagged his head about. Sann-Na trembled as a new kind of fear welled up inside her. What Kjell had said was not like him. None of it. Neither were his actions. Nor the way he had been looking at her. She had expected him to flick her off him the moment she surprised him from behind. She did not know what it was, but whatever Kjell was doing – or whatever was happening to him – she feared for him, and herself.

She bent beside him and grabbed his large head.

“Kjell!” she yelled. She tried to drag more of him into her lap. He was too big. His wildly jerking body slipped from her hands.

“What’s happening here?” A deep voice behind her jolted her from her focus.

Sann-Na looked up to Rik-Na.

“Help him, Uncle!” she begged.

“To the sauna,” Rik said. He leaned his large body over and hoisted the bulk of Kjell’s weight from under the latter’s arms. Together, they dragged the quivering body. Step by step, they struggled through deep snow between trees and boulders. The whole way, Kjell mumbled nonsense words.

“Weak human body – Shouldn’t have trusted Freyja – A trick of Tieri-Na.”

Rik looked at Sanna, shaking his head in confusion.

With grunts of effort, they heaved him up onto the wooden sauna bench. Together, they stripped him naked. Sanna threw more logs onto the glowing embers; the oven roared back to life.

“What’s this thing?” Rik said. He picked at triangular tack stuck behind Kjell’s ear. Shallow pins extended from it center through Kjell’s skin. The area began to glisten crimson from Rik’s probing.

Sanna stepped nearer. It was difficult to see much in the dim firelight.

“What is that?” she asked.

Rik looked up at her. It couldn’t be explained, but he could answer her anyway.

“Meddle not with what we do not understand.”

Sanna’s stomach lurched. A litany of meddlings in which she had engaged over the past week stampeded through her mind. Before her lay its epitome. Not once had she asked an elder. Not once had she consulted the wisdom of Our Order. How foolish she had been. And, she thought, she seemed to have dragged Kjell into it as well. Now, even Rik was ensnared.

“I’m sorry, Kjell. I didn’t know what would happen. I don’t know what is happening.” she said to him, tears rushing down her face.

Kjell opened his eyes. He gazed back and forth at her and Rik. Still, his body shivered. In a warbly voice, he said, “She’s a clever woman, your sister. I should have known that pledge nonsense she fed us was a trick.” He chuckled between convulsions, “Oh, what a clever one, even outsmarting those pretentious computers!”

“Tieri? Where is she, Kjell?”

“Of course,” he wheezed. “You want to know where she is. Gone, Sann-Na.” The man’s weak laugh still rang cruel. “Well,” he continued, “her body anyway. Buried at sea. I heard what he told you earlier. I heard it all. Didn’t you believe him?” He coughed miserably. Foamy saliva dripped from his quivering mouth. “But her soul is at Yellow Reserve. Better off, she is. Like the rest of us.”

Sanna gasped. Horror or excitement, she could not tell.

“Yeah ...” he laughed, “with that oaf Kjell, stirring up trouble there, they are. Not all bad, that man. Let me take his body for a spin around the forest, he did!”

Sanna felt her chest shake uncontrollably at these frightening words. Rik made eye contact with her and shook his head. She knew what he meant to say. She could hear herself thinking the same thing. But Sanna would not let go. There were answers to be had.

“Let you? What do you mean? If… if you are not Kjell, then who are you?”

The man laughed again amid weak coughs. His mouth opened and closed several times. He murmured in struggle against a choked throat. In a croak, he said, “The soul of Thyme Baddin, at your service.” A heavy breath, and then with a smile, “I can see you’re horrified. If it’s the last thing I ever see,” he grunted and swallowed hard, “I’ll take solace in knowing that my last words were used to prove once again how utterly ignorant you people are. So ignorant, that you’re surprised to replace a spy from the cave at Yellow Reserve stuffed inside Kjell’s body and sent to chase you down and get the Aur boule. But the know-it-alls screwed up and now you’ve caught me here,” he laughed and his eyes shifted down towards his waist, “with my pants down.” New spittle collected on his lips. “As you can see, I’ve had a setback …could use some caretaking.” His smile doubled as a wince, “So give us a kiss goodbye, love!”

Sanna maintained her fixed expression. She wiped the saliva from his mouth and leaned over to hold his nervous stare.

“Who is Digambar?” she asked. Rik turned his head and looked at her from the corners of his eyes.

Thyme smirked, and then, in gasps he said, “Oh, did she mess things up! Could have made it back, but she ditched your sister’s body instead. That’s the cause of it all, really. They’ll never let her back on Earth again.” He was quiet for a moment, and then, with a grimace, “Me neither, I suppose.”

“Where is Digambar now?”

The man laughed through his nose. “You know that one already, love. Your man Alai handed her back to Freyja. On a silver platter. She’s safe and sound back at Yellow Reserve.”

Sann-Na’s jaw dropped open. A clenching in her throat made it difficult to speak.

Thyme flickered another smile of wicked indifference, “No need to worry about us, hon.” He coughed again in a raspy, congested way. “These bodies …they’re just costumes.”

“But is Tieri in danger?” she pressed him.

He chuckled. “The Aur boule, love. That’s what’s in danger.” He turned his head to the side. “I should have just grabbed it last night. Oh, well.” He said in a whimsical tone. “The stewards will catch Alai and Calliope. We need the Aur…” he stopped speaking and his eyes shut. He continued to tremble in Rik’s arms.

“Kjell?” Sann-Na attempted to rouse the man to no avail.

“He breathes, faintly,” Rik said, shaking his head forebodingly. “Let him be here.”

Sanna looked up at her uncle. The big man seemed absolutely baffled. He had likely come for noontime tea. Now, the nephew of Farfar-Tors was dying in his arms.

“Will you watch over Kjell? I must get to Alai.”

“Who’s Alai?”

“He’s a man.” Her eyes welled up, “He’s a good man. I must catch up to him before they do.”

“Who’s they? What’s happened to Kjell?”

“I don’t really know, but please take care of him.”

“Anything, Sanna, but aren’t you in danger?”

Sanna looked at the small bead of blood behind Kjell’s ear.

“I don’t know, Uncle. But I must catch up to Alai.”

“Be careful, dear girl.”

Sanna rushed from the sauna. She scrambled furiously to gather her gear. She thought again about how hastily Alai had left without any provisions. He didn’t even know how to get back to Lohkkuno. She was going over the essentials in her head when she heard Rik calling to her.

“He’s speaking again, Sanna. Kjell asks for you.”

She returned to the sauna. Rik was sweating profusely in his winter layers, the red-bearded head of Kjell-Tors in his lap. The naked body of the debilitated man was sprawled across the soft bench.

“Let me out.” he moaned. His hands groped forward as if he were searching for something to grab. “Open this door.”

“Kjell, can you hear me?” Sanna spoke to him as she gently pushed the matted hair from his forehead.

“Where did you go, Sanna?”

“I am here, Kjell. Right here. With you. Can you hear me?”

Kjell opened his eyes. His eyes darted around the room. He looked up at Rik and then over to Sanna. His body shivered despite the intense warmth in the sauna.

“How am I here?” he asked.

“You came here sometime last night. I found you hiding in the stand near the greenhouse, remember?”

Kjell looked confused. His gaze switched back and forth between Rik and Sanna. Aside from the tremors, the rest of his body seemed immobile.

“No, Farfar told me to follow you.” He slurred his words. “I followed you last night to those cliffs. Checked them out after you took off. Then he trapped me.”

Sanna looked up at her uncle. “Last night? The cliffs? He’s skipped a night. He’s missing last night. He’s talking about two nights ago.” She looked back down at Kjell who didn’t appear very comfortable. “Who trapped you, Kjell?”

“That outlander, I think.” There was a gradual improvement to the assembly of his words, but the sentences still came through in a halting stutter. “I can’t remember how. After you left, he shut me in there. Couldn’t get out. Now I feel sure Tieri was there too. After that,” he said, shaking his head, “I don’t remember after that.”

“Who is Thyme Baddin?” she asked.

“Who?”

She wiped his mouth. “What is Yellow Reserve?”

“A steward at Yellow Reserve.” he said.

“A what?”

“That’s what she said to me.”

“Who said that to you, Kjell?”

“A woman. Freyja. She said I would be a visitor there.”

Sanna rapidly shook her head to regain her focus.

“Did you see Tieri?”

“I don’t remember anything after that. Or, maybe. I don’t know.” His breathing was heavy and short. “Sanna, I’m sorry I didn’t stop him earlier.”

She pushed his hair back. She tried to understand what he must have been through. He had, after all, been trying in his clumsy way to protect her.

“You’re wrong about him.”

With a grunt, he shook his head. “Is that guy really the kind of –”

She leaned over and pushed a kiss into his dense beard, muffling his words. “Kjell, try not to speak. You’ve had a rough enough time this morning already.”

As she exited the sauna, she heard her uncle murmur, “Man, you really need to learn to hold your tongue.”