“Cold is.” More real words, this time from the mouth of the stick-stranger. They were oddly slurred, as if its teeth weren’t quite right. “Back go. Back go!”
It couldn’t mean into the water, Aryl hoped fervently.
“No.” This from the Om’ray-who-wasn’t. He gestured to Aryl, a beckoning. “Come.” His tone and expression were kind.
Like the flowers that lured biters close, she decided. The kind that snapped shut to devour their helpless prey. She rose to her feet and edged closer to the shell-stranger. She couldn’t take her eyes from the Om’ray-who-wasn’t. “What are you?”
The stick-stranger rattled off a stream of angry-sounding syllables. The shell-stranger interrupted with more of the same, much louder and low enough to vibrate through the floor. Aryl quickly stepped away from them both, glancing with dismay at the nearness of the railing and the water beyond. She looked back at the Om’ray-who-wasn’t. “Om’ray,” she stated desperately. She put her hand on her chest as if to reassure herself. “Om’ray.” She thrust a finger at him. “Not.”
His lips twisted up at one corner. Not quite a smile. “Om’ray, not.” He repeated her gesture, putting his own hand to his chest. “Human, me. Human.”
Meaningless sounds. She shuddered as much from frustration as chill. Why didn’t they talk in words that made sense?
He frowned and beckoned again, the gesture indicating she go to the building. The stick-stranger began shouting something incomprehensible, clearly unhappy with this decision. Aryl winced.
“Responsibility, mine,” the Om’ray-who-wasn’t said firmly. This silenced the other. An inner lid closed over each of its eyes, giving it the look of something dead. As if this expressed some final opinion, the stick-stranger walked away, swaying from side to side like a tree that had forgotten to fall.
Under any other circumstances, she’d have laughed.
“Responsibility, yours,” agreed the shell-stranger, but Aryl thought it sounded amused. “Better, how?” it said with a sly swing of several eyes her way.
“Better?” Belatedly, she realized it was asking her to help it speak. Which was ridiculous, since everyone knew how to talk from the moment they were old enough for their parents to give them words. Still. These obviously weren’t Om’ray. Maybe—Aryl took a wild guess—maybe for some reason they had to learn words, the way she had to learn the Tikitik’s writing. Why was another question. “It’s your responsibility.” This with the barest nod to the one calling himself Human as she said “your.”
“It’s your responsibility, Marcus!” The shell-creature appeared to delight in adding emphasis to its words. And words of its own.
Aryl rubbed her bare arms, starting to warm from the sun despite the breeze. Two could play the learning game, she decided. “ ‘Mar-cus?’ ” she echoed, making it a question.
The Om’ray-who-wasn’t bowed his head to her and touched his finger to a line of small symbols on his shirt, reminding her of the Tikitik when he said, as if reading, “Marcus Bowman. Triad First.” Then he pointed to himself. “Marcus.” Then at her, his eyebrows rising as if in question. “Arylsarc?”
“Aryl,” she corrected, unsure if she should fear her name in his mouth or not. But it was, she decided, civil behavior. As her mother would say, that was a start. “My name is Aryl.”
“Welcome, Aryl,” boomed the shell-stranger. It tapped its bulbous head with a claw, producing a dull thud. “My name is Janet Jim-bo Bob. Triad Third.”
“Your name not,” said Marcus quickly. He was, she noticed with astonishment, blushing. “Mistake was.”
The shell-stranger patted Marcus on the back with its great claw, making the other stagger. “It’s your responsibility.” Then it gave its booming laugh.
The two acted like friends, Aryl thought, despite their physical differences. Marcus made a face, just as Costa would have done when teased.
Marcus wasn’t real, she reminded herself, aghast at how quickly she’d begun to ignore her inner sense.
“My name is Janex Jymbobobii, Aryl.” This with another tap of claw to shell. “Janex.”
They both seemed to be waiting for something. All she could think of was to copy Marcus’ bow and repeat their short names. “Marcus. Janex.” How peculiar, to move her lips around totally new words. She tried another. “Human. Both?” she asked, pointing to each.
“Human, yes,” agreed Marcus, seeming pleased, then nodded at Janex. “Human, not. Carasian. Om’ray, you?”
Aryl sagged with relief. Despite the awkward phrasing, the meaning was clear. She couldn’t sense this Marcus as an Om’ray because he wasn’t one. He was this “Human”—some other creature altogether. There were many mimics in the canopy; some so perfect only a knife could tell them apart. Perhaps, she told herself gleefully, his blood was blue instead of red.
All she had to do was keep reminding herself he wasn’t what he appeared to be.
“Aryl. Come, please. Cold, not.”
The unexpected courtesy surprised her almost as much as Marcus’ worried frown. She took a step forward, a gesture he understood, for it brought a quick smile and wave toward the building.
Aryl walked between the two of them, the Carasian doing an excellent job of blocking what wind rose from the lake. It moved quietly on what looked more like balls than feet. When Janex noticed her interest, it paused and leaned to afford her a better view. “Rocks, good,” it informed her.
She eyed its bulk, amazed it had managed to walk along the nekis branch.
Did they recognize her? Could they?
Aryl wondered about this only until they reached the door, which was like no door she’d ever seen. There was no spindle on which it could turn open, nor handle to grasp. She looked at Marcus questioningly and he indicated a light green square of metal on the wall. He laid his palm against it.
The door moved itself out of the way.
Startled, Aryl stepped back. As quickly she moved forward again, her hands exploring the exposed doorframe. The door hadn’t disappeared. It had gone inside the hollow wall.
She flushed, angry with herself. Of course the strangers had unfamiliar technology. That was why she was here—to confirm whether they’d sent the device to disrupt the Harvest. The Tikitik were waiting for the answer.
Her hosts didn’t appear in a hurry to deliver her back to them.
Hopefully Thought Traveler would wait, she told herself, stepping through the strangers’ door.
“You’re not touching me.” Aryl kept her back to the wall as she glared at the stick-stranger.
“Safe are!”
She eyed the object in its twiggy hands—an object it had tried to press against her bare skin without permission—and shook her head. Hair tumbled into her eyes. She was a mess. And cold. And hungry.
And this thing persistently got in her way. If she wasn’t afraid it would snap in two, she’d push past it and out of this odd little room where they’d left her. “Stay away from me,” she ordered.
A stream of incensed babble issued from its lips. It tossed the object on the smooth white table that was the room’s only furnishing where it lay, blinking like a glow about to fail.
She smiled in triumph. “I’m glad we understand one another.”
“Aryl?” The Human, Marcus, stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame. After a look, he said some of their words to the stick-stranger, who answered with more of the same in a surly tone, giving an unmistakable glare at her in the midst of it.
“Om’ray don’t touch one another without permission,” she said, knowing it wasn’t being fair. She waved at the object. “What is that anyway?”
The Human eased to one side to let the stick-stranger leave, which it did with relieved speed. He came into the room and picked up the object.