On the other hand, there hadn’t exactly been a great deal of time for an argument—and if she’d wanted a fight, she’d had a chance for a real one. He decided there was a great deal to be said for having common enemies.
They slept in the forest that night, and it was a cold camp with only a small and nearly smokeless fire. “I’ll take first watch,” Gar offered.
“Why?” Alea demanded. “Because you don’t think I can stay awake?”
Gar blinked in surprise. “Of course not. It’s only that you’re looking terribly tired.”
“You’re not looking terribly fresh yourself.” It wasn’t true, but he was probably feeling worn. “I suppose you think that I have to rest because I’m a weak woman.”
“Scarcely weak, but very much a woman.” Again, that brief flash of admiration that so irritated her. “Still, you should have the right to rest if you wish it.”
“Oh, really? So that you can sit up and feel virtuous?”
“More to the point,” Gar said, “so that I can meditate for a while. I couldn’t sleep, not yet. Too much has happened in one day.”
“Don’t you think I need some time to let the day’s events sort themselves out?” Alea retorted.
Gar nodded slowly. “Then take it.”
“Oh, so now I’m to sit up while you take your ease, am I? Shall I serve you breakfast, too?”
“Only if you take the second watch.”
“So that’s it! You want to wake up and find your food hot and ready, so you’ll make me wake up in the middle of the night and start cooking!”
“Why don’t we make it three watches tonight?” Gar sighed. “I’ll take the first and the third, so I’ll cook breakfast.”
“So you can feel injured and nurture your resentment all night long? Not a chance! I’ll take the first and the third!”
“Done,” Gar said, “if they’re each three hours long.”
“And let you sleep six hours without an interruption? Just how selfish are you?”
“Incredibly,” Gar said gravely, “selfish enough to want the first watch and the third so I can feel like a martyr.”
“Well, it won’t work!” Alea snapped. “I’ll be the martyr, thank you! You can sleep and dream of me forcing myself to stay awake, pinching myself and holding my eyelids open!”
“You win.” Gar sighed. “I’ll take the first watch.”
“Well, I should think you would!” Alea turned away, lay down, pulled up her blanket, and glared at Gar’s back where he sat by the fire—legs crossed, back straight, hands on his knees, already meditating as he had said—and wondered why she felt as though she had lost.
Gar woke Alea in the middle of the night for her watch. She felt as though she were clawing her way up off a sheet covered with glue, but she fought off the yearning for the bed and pulled herself to her feet, then settled on a log by the fire.
Once she had moved that much, though, energy started to flow, and she didn’t feel anywhere nearly as tired as she’d expected. Anger coiled; she suspected Gar had kept watch for the full six hours after all, letting her sleep—but she couldn’t see the sky, so there was no way to tell time by the stars.
Alea eyed Gar covertly as he settled himself under his blanket and closed his eyes. When his breathing deepened in the slow rhythm of sleep, she turned to watch him openly. The man was an enigma to her, a puzzle that she despaired of solving. Her most spritely conversation, her tempers, her arguments, their verbal jousting—nothing could crack his shell, make him seem to care or to reveal anything about himself. Was she so ugly as to repel him, make him want to present only the blank public face he showed the rest of the world? If so, though, why had he invited her to come with him?
And why, in Loki’s name, did he give her that admiring gaze now and then if he didn’t want to do anything about it?
She sighed and turned away to scan the woods to the one side of the road, then the fields to the other. All other men were quite easy to understand—they wanted something, and you either gave it to them and let them go their way, or refused and endured their tempers or even, sometimes, their blows. Of course, since she’d met Gar, she’d learned to give as good as she got if a man tried to strike her—but that was another riddle about Gar: why would he teach her to fight when he knew it gave him that much less power over her?
Her gaze lingered on his sleeping form again; she forced it back to the woods. Of course, Gar was still far more skilled at fighting than she was, and much stronger—not that the last mattered; he had shown her how to use a man’s strength and size against him. Still, he couldn’t think of her as much of a threat.
Or much of a woman? If he had taught her men’s skills, how feminine could he think her to be?
She absently noted the movement among the trees—an owl launching itself from a branch and skimming away to the fields, where it plunged. She looked out over the furrows, frowning and pondering. Apparently Gar didn’t see her as being either feminine or a threat—so if he were to see her as a woman, would he feel a threat from something other than the blows of her staff? Certainly boys verging on manhood seemed to be afraid of the very femininity they desired. Was Gar still a boy in that sense?
She realized that her thoughts had begun to go in circles and gave up the puzzle with a sigh, turning back to scan the fields again, then the road and the woods—but the problem would not leave her alone, it kept nibbling at her mind…
Then she saw the monster and the sight of it made her forget everything but its own grinning presence.
5
It was huge, easily her own height standing, which she discovered she was doing, staff raised to guard, words of alarm filling her mouth ready to be shouted. It might have been a cat, if a cat had had very short legs under a round body that swelled into a great ball of a head, making the whole creature seem to be only a vast face on top of furry feet, and a grinning mouth half that face, filled with nasty-looking triangular teeth that glinted in the firelight, very white, very sharp. The nose seemed only a nubbin and the eyes small, though each was at least the size of her hand, and they crinkled at the corners as if with amusement, making the toothy grin seem on the verge of laughing. But the ears atop the body were halves of a sphere, almost perfectly round.
Alea would have cried out, if the words hadn’t purred in her mind:
Don’t fear, woman. I shan’t eat you.
What—what are you? Alea thought.
One of those who filled this planet before your kind came, the creature answered. Foolish folk, they think they slew us along with all the other animals that lived in this land before they came. We hide now, and they never see us—unless we want them to. Of course, no one ever believes those who do.
Then why show yourself to me? Curiosity, the creature answered. You’re not like the others, you and your mate.
He’s not my mate!
You mean you don’t know that yet? the creature asked. How foolish your kind are! Tell me, though, what was that great golden pie that dropped you like kittens from a mother’s mouth?
The lie Gar had taught her sprang to her mind unbidden—but she looked in the creature’s eyes, and the words stuck in her throat.
We know truth from falsehood, the creature told her, even if you do not. What was that thing—the wagon that brought you from the stars?
How—how did you know? Alea asked. Then anger came to her rescue. If you knew, why did you ask? Because we have never seen one like it, the monster replied. The wagons that brought the ancestors of the people who live here, they were all ungainly, bumpy things that looked like very fat birds with very short wings. Its grin widened, and a drop of saliva dripped from a tooth. We eat birds.