“The Goddesses did not forget you,” BoKama said as she piloted her ship, glancing at me with a weather eye.
“If you refer to the heart-home myth, you are mistaken,” I said, avoiding her gaze. “I believe the human CeCe is my mate, but I know she is not my heart mate.” Previously thought to be a myth, a heart mate caused one’s heart to leave the confines of its fibrous heart home in the chest and migrate into an adjacent fleshy region in an excruciating transition. Against all belief, I’d endured that transition when I was but a child, and in recent months, my four hunter brothers had as well, when they met and fell in love with their human heart mates.
BoKama didn’t reply, a wise response. My heart beat steady as ever since it survived its transition so long ago, but I would tell no one of it.
“And I would not tell the human that the Goddesses worked in her favor when she faces pain and death, perhaps as we speak,” I said after a moment’s thought. “I would not worship such a deity.”
BoKama controlled her ship with ease and said nothing else, for which I was grateful. Muscles coiled in tension, my emotions warred with my physical body for release.
But where was the enemy? BoKama, the Sister-Queen to the maniacal Ikma Scabmal Kama, sought revenge for the actions of her co-ruler and had become a friend and ally to the other four humans who now resided on my people’s hunting grounds. Mated to four of my hunter-brothers, the humans had proven resourceful and brave in the face of mortal danger. In fact, we’d worked together in recent days to discover the likely location of a fifth human as well as her involvement in preserving the lives of many of her people. We suspected this human, CeCe, was on the home planet Ikshe, as opposed to the hunting grounds, Certain Death, or Ikthe.
I knew not where to focus my rage, nor where to inflict damage. I could not explain what I knew to be true. Somewhere on Ikshe, the human CeCe suffered torment.
Was she trapped inside the small vehicle VELMA showed me in my visor? Had she crashed in Lake Wazakashe, a body of water so vast that its opposite shores were not visible until one had crossed halfway over in a ship? Or had some other catastrophe befallen her?
I recalled the dream in which I’d traversed the cracked lakebed, approaching an empty pod. In my dream, I’d known with surety that no one resided inside the pod.
Unlike other dreams, there was a quality to that one that penetrated the fog of my mind and pierced my heart. I’d thought of it often in the past weeks, but it wasn’t until CeCe’s subterfuge came to light that I understood the dream to be a message. I would never attribute something so flimsy as a night vision to invisible gods, but I would be a fool to deny the workings of fate I’d witnessed in my lifetime, especially with regard to recent events.
“We should discuss our plan,” BoKama’s words intruded my musing.
“Ik,” I said.
“The Ikma has changed,” BoKama said. “She has not so much as whispered of a desire for raxfathe. However, I cannot imagine she would entertain you with star tea and sister bread when her Blade of the Ancients is at hand.” BoKama glanced at me. “I would drop you elsewhere before taking my ship back to the hangar.”
“Nay, BoKama,” I said with a frown. “If you return empty-handed and uninjured, what will she think? You must bring me to her in shackles and bleeding.”
“You know she will mark you for death,” BoKama said.
“I know,” I said. “But what is it that Naraxthel always says?” I asked with a shallow laugh. “The Goddesses will provide a way. Let us try Them in this small thing.”
BoKama shook her head. “You tempt Them. I hope they do not strike my ship with lightning.”
“It would be no more than I deserve, but I daresay they would not punish one so devout as you.”
BoKama scoffed. “I no longer know what devout means.”
“The Ikma?” I asked. Noting BoKama’s features softening, my nostrils flared and eyes narrowed.
“Her aspect has changed,” she said. “Sometimes she’s like she was in the beginning, and I scarce can believe how ….”
Her throat bobbed when she swallowed, and she averted her gaze, feigning concern over a minor digital readout.
I recalled the Ikma Scabmal Kama’s wrathful face moments after Naraxthel refused her illicit invitation even though it was several months ago. In her anger, she’d called the names of the Lottery Five, we hunters chosen to create offspring, and demanded we travel to the hunting grounds in search of our people’s precious metal and Holy Waters of Shegoshel instead. Known for its perilous dangers, such a quest caused the death of those who journeyed more often than not. Ritual demanded ceremony and lauds before we left, yet the Sister-Queen had commanded our departure without the usual pomp or preparations, ensuring our quest would fail.
“How corrupt she became? How fascinated by the raxfathe, how determined to send five mighty hunters to their deaths out of spite?” I finished the BoKama’s sentence with my own words.
“Stop!” she said, her voice low and eyes blazing. “You have not seen her wasting before your eyes. You have not seen her tears when she places careful stitches into the infant burial cloths.”
Fury seethed in my gut, but my thoughts turned to CeCe and a manufactured vision of her sliding the invaluable card into its slot in the P-MIV with dark slender fingers where we’d found it days ago. The thought of her defiant actions tempered my rage for some reason. Cocking my head, I considered my words with care before I spoke.
“The humans are mere breaths away from death every day they stay on Ikthe,” I said. “Only think of the good that could come if they were free to visit Ikshe. How our children could see intelligence and strength of a different kind. But we both know what the Ikma would say and do were she to discover them. So, they scrap and battle and live, in spite of Ikthe’s terrors.”
“I know she has been unjust,” BoKama said. “We talk late into the night of how she might right her wrongs. I’ve tasted blood rather than divulge the truth of the Lottery Five, but I’ve come so close to telling her that perhaps her choices have not been as dire as she makes them out to be.”
Grasping her arm, I peered into her eyes. “I can smell that you are earnest and empathetic to our Queen’s ailment,” I said. “But should you bear witness that my brothers yet live, you will sentence us all to die at her hand—all. Even the weak and willful humans. Especially them.”
BoKama sighed, dipping her head and relaxing her muscles. I released her arm and settled in my chair, rehearsing the happenstances that brought the Lottery Five to the hunting grounds at the very time the humans had landed one by one in their little pods. My hunter brothers called it the work of the Goddesses, considering each of my four brethren had found their heart mates among the four women who landed. But I did not believe in Goddesses who wove fates together as with tapestry threads. I believed in the suns and the planets that moved with precision and in the workings of intelligent minds. And CeCe’s intelligent mind had brought the humans to my star system.
“Ikshe looms,” I said. “Shall I slam into the bulkhead, or have I angered you enough that you may smite me?” I grinned when I asked, softening the tension between us.
She smirked and shook her head, but then her fist came out of nowhere, and all went black.