Red

He was awake before his eyes were open. For a while, he didn’t even consider opening them. He couldn’t breathe. Wherever he was, it was hot, and it was bright. He could vaguely feel something warm and rough beneath his hands, and he felt it shift as though he had moved, but he had not. There was a sound nearby, but he couldn’t make it out. It wasn’t familiar. He felt an odd burning in his chest, and considered it for a few moments. He thought about where it could have come from. Then he remembered. It was probably water. He’d been sucked underwater by that ship. There’s no way he could have survived that. Maybe this was death. Laying on something warm, unable to see or breathe, unable to hear clearly, and wondering what that pain in your chest is. It didn’t hurt very much, but it was a little irritating. He hoped he’d wake up soon. This was very boring to be death.

As if in reply to his thought, he coughed then, violently, and he felt something hot and wet spill out of his mouth and onto his chest. It felt like he had sat up a little, and there was another strange noise beside him, followed by another, slightly louder. He coughed a few more times, expelling what he presumed was the water he had swallowed all over his already wet self. When he finally coughed up air, he took a few deep breaths, and doubled over so that his chest was resting on his knees. Somehow it was easier to breathe that way, but as he moved, a searing pain stretched across his face and arms, so he quickly laid back down on the warm surface. The sounds were becoming clearer now. He guessed he had some water in his ears, too.

He tried to open his eyes. It was very bright. He opened them slowly, blinking against the light, and gradually dark shapes began to form. He tried to move his arm to shield his eyes from the sun’s assault, but apparently once you know that something is going to hurt, it becomes much more difficult to do it. So he just waited, squinting, until his eyes adjusted well enough to see clearly, and when they did, he could make out silhouettes of three tall human shapes. One of them stood directly over him, and the other two, out of the corner of his eye, he could see holding something between them and seeming much more concerned with it than with him. All three of them seemed to be wearing long clothes that blew in the rough wind, which he had only just noticed. The one above him spoke, with a man’s voice, but in a language that he couldn’t understand.

The tall man crouched down beside him, and leaned in close. At this distance, he could see that the man’s face was covered with pale brown cloth that hid his nose and mouth, wrapping around his neck and head to hide his hair as well. The only part of the man that was visible was a small amount of jet hair that brushed his swarthy face around his eyes, which were a very vivid shade of red. He’d never seen eyes that color before. The man spoke again, louder this time, and reached out a large hand to shake his shoulder as though he needed waking. Then he looked away, and yelled at the other two men, who finally stopped inspecting their bundle. They too drew nearer, and began to talk at him.

The largest man, the one who kneeled beside him, scooped him up with greater ease than should be possible, and carried him off. The pain in his face and arms was horrendous while he was moved, and he fell into black once more as he was hefted over and dropped onto something solid, which seemed to move beneath him.


When he woke up this time, it was much more pleasant than the others. He found himself in what looked like a tent large enough for two people, lying down on a pile of cloth and furs. A woman sitting beside him smiled down at him as he glanced over, and encouraged him to stay down, offering him a small bowl of water, which he quickly swallowed. The woman had a handsome face of dark skin, touched by strings of black hair that had escaped the knot at the back of her head.

“Soor gokekos?”

He felt better, so he nodded and hoped that was what she had asked. He looked up at her, smiling weakly in the hope that she’d give him more water. After a few moments, she did, and laughed lightly as he gulped it down.

He noticed that her eyes were a dark shade of red, and past events came rushing back to him. He tried to speak, and his voice was almost a croak. “You guys saved me, right? Thank you.”

“Morjuho.” She smiled.

He had no idea if she understood him, but he sure as hell didn’t understand her. He figured it didn’t hurt to try. “Listen, could you tell me where I am?”

“Kevo Nesoike Kotoshek.”

“Okay. Guess not. My name is Ross Wallace. Ross Wallace,” he said slowly, touching his own chest in an attempt to make her understand. The pain in his arm was still strong, but now he could see that the cause was a truly horrible case of sunburn. His skin looked like scales, but a kind of oil had been smeared all over it. It felt as though it was on his face as well.

She seemed to get the idea, because she nodded and touched her own chest. “Sati. Saatii,” she emphasized, mocking him. She was still smiling and it vaguely occurred to him that she had very nice lips. Maybe later, when he wasn’t in quite so much pain. “Quz tevuzerke oike. E mer go shenevek gihed.” She stood up then, her dark brown sleeveless dress brushing her bare ankles as she pushed her way out of the tent.
Well. That was interesting.

He thought he could hear her speaking outside, and a few moments later, the flap opened again, and a man entered. He looked down at him over his face covering, sighed, and dropped unceremoniously onto the ground beside him. He lazily pulled the cloth from his nose and mouth, letting it bunch around his neck to reveal the rest of his dark skin, and rested his arms on his bent knees. Judging by his size, this was the man who had so easily picked him up before.

“Ross Wallace, re?” He glanced over at him, and Ross suddenly had the feeling that he was taking up space in this man’s tent. “You’re lucky you’re not dead.”

Despite his better judgment, Ross sat up, and regretted it. “You speak Clearan? Why didn’t that girl just talk to me?”

“That’s my sister. She understands fine, but she doesn’t speak too well. You should thank her your skin hasn’t fallen off. How long were you out there?”

Ross paused as the man reached over and took the canteen near him, which appeared to him to be suspiciously similar to Clearan army issue, and drank from it, pouring some water in his hand to wipe across his face. He shook his head. “I don’t know. What day is it?”

The dark man laughed, wiping water from his chin with the back of his hand. “I don’t think me telling you what day I think it is would help you very much.”

“That’s true. Can you tell me where I am?” That water looked very good, but he wasn’t about to try and take it from such a large man.

“That I can do. You’re just about in the center of the Great Desert. You’re certainly a long way from home, mainlander.”

“I came from Mileen. But wait, what? The Great Desert? I can’t be in the Peninsula, right?”

The other man shrugged. “Well, I don’t have a map, but if you’re not, you may as well be.”

Ross ran a hand through his surprisingly clean hair, the pain in his arms temporarily forgotten. “But it’s supposed to be forbidden, right? Nobody can get in.”

“You are correct. Which makes you being here even more interesting. Do you remember anything about before we found you? You were in the middle of the desert, but you were soaking wet and half drowned. You must have come in by ship, right?”

“Yeah, but it--”

“Wrecked?”

“There was this huge thing, like--”

“Water?”

“And I think--”

“Everybody else died?”

Ross stared at the other man, dumbfounded, not knowing whether to feel sad, angry, or just confused, but it seemed as though he had decided to do all three at once.

The dark-skinned man smiled, and stood, clapping him on the back hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Ross was very glad that he wasn’t sunburned on his back. “My mainland friend, you have just received a warm welcome from Leviathan.”

“Leviathan?”

“It was storming, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then we should know what do to with you in a couple days or so. You should get some rest in the meantime, re? You look like a Neri.” He stood then, and stretched his arms behind his back, then in front of him. As he turned for the exit, the man paused and glanced back at him. “I am Kilen Makatua, by the way. I’m in charge of this little rabble. You need anything, I’ve told Sati to look after you.”

“Thank you,” Ross answered automatically. At least someone around him seemed to know what was going on, even if he didn’t.

He rested all day, as per the order of Sati, and by the time he noticed it growing dark outside the tent, he was sitting up and talking to her whenever she came in. He told her he was grateful, that the food was good, and he was feeling much better. Even though she rarely spoke back to him, and when she did he couldn’t understand, knowing that she understood him made him feel like less of an idiot.

When it was fully dark, and he could hear a fire crackling outside, she came in again, gathered up his blanket, and urged him out of the tent. The fire was large, and six men were sitting around it, all dressed as Kilen was, but most of them had removed the cloth from their heads. Dark skinned, dark haired men lounged on blankets spread out on the sand, talking, gesticulating, and laughing at each other. He watched them as Sati sat him down on his own blanket, and he had a sudden feeling of being completely outside this seemingly happy little community, which of course he was. As Sati left him again and went to the other side of the fire to tend a pot hung there, he noticed that she was the only woman in the whole camp.

For a moment, he felt a flare of nobility, and he feared for her integrity. Surely all these men got lonely. There didn’t seem to be any men around over the age of twenty-five, so obviously her father wasn’t traveling with them. He didn’t think Kilen was the type to let a lot of men have their way with his sister, but then it occurred to him that he didn’t really know what Kilen’s type was.

He watched her stir whatever was in the pot, and when she stood, one of the men near her stood as well, speaking to her with his cheek against hers and his hand shamelessly brushing down her lower back to her rear. Ross was positive he was saying something perverse. Yet Sati seemed to be all right with his proximity until he touched her, whereupon her hand snapped up in a fist and connected hard with the side of his head. Ross winced, knowing what it felt like to be punched in the ear. The man obviously wasn’t very surprised, as he only laughed as he stumbled and flopped back onto his blanket. The men around him were laughing as well, and he thought even Sati was smiling, despite just being groped. Whatever relationship she had with these men, he thought it was odd, but doubted it was sexual. Then he remembered it was none of his business who she was sexual with, and stopped watching her.

He was just about to entertain himself with studying the pattern of the coarse blanket on which he sat when the breath was momentarily knocked out of him. Kilen had slapped him on the back to get his attention, and sat down on the blanket beside him. Ross coughed, and looked over at the other man, studying his face now that he could see it without all the trappings. It was a somewhat slender face, with long eyes and a handsome mouth. He thought it was the kind of exotic face that he would occasionally see on the covers of cheap romance novels, undoubtedly full of untruths and wild misconceptions about the people of the Peninsula, the kind of face that the women in Cleara went wild for, but he wondered if he was considered handsome here.

“Your skin is peeling,” Kilen said, and Ross noticed with a start that the other man had been inspecting him as well. “That’s good, re? You’ll be all right soon.”

“I feel a lot better. What’s that stuff Sati’s been putting on me?”

He shrugged, looking away to scan the men opposite them. “I don’t know. They make it from some plant down in Levan. They have lighter skin down there, get burned sometimes. Works though, re?”

“Yeah. So, listen, about what you were saying earlier.”

“Don’t you worry about that. You just relax until we get word. Then we’ll know what to do.”

“Word from who?”

“Anyone. Probably Quetzalcoatl.”

“Who?”

“Quetzalcoatl is more than likely the reason you’re alive. Don’t worry about it, re? You’ll meet soon enough.”

“So, there are actually people living in the Holy Lands, huh? I mean, I’d heard stories about people living in the desert before, but I thought it was impassable.”

“Well, you’re already ahead of most mainlanders just because you know that much. But sure, people live in the Peninsula. Lots of people. And they didn’t cross the Great Desert to get there.”

“But the water’s impassable too, right?”

Kilen waved his hand dismissively, and looked across the fire. “Mihai!” he shouted, and a slightly younger man with long hair looked up with a light smile still on his face.
“Mevik?”

“Tean kevik tuan quz roisaok ik kevo Sotekepir ritek qoise!”

The other man raised his hand at Kilen, which Ross assumed was a gesture of acceptance. As he got to his feet, his long ponytail of black slipped over his shoulder to lay against his chest, nearly brushing his stomach. All the other men quickly finished their conversations and turned their attention to the standing man, who dramatically cleared his throat and grinned at his seated comrades, causing a light chuckle from around the circle of men. After a moment, he began to sing in a strong tenor, carefully watching his audience and gesturing at appropriate times.

Kilen quietly translated near Ross’ ear as the younger man sang.

When there was no air, no water, no fire, no earth,
The nine Gods made it.
The land was fertile, the people prospered,
The nine Gods made them so.
The hand of time drifted ceaselessly past, and
The nine Gods lost their men.
They denied their faith, they denied their Gods,
The nine Gods that had made them.
Men made their own Gods, called them by new names,
The six Gods stood by and wept.
The three Gods spread their wrath.
The faithful were rewarded, given a land apart,
The six Gods faced the three.
The Gods fought their brothers, and the fallen lie
Beneath the sand in Leviathan’s Valley, where
The six Gods fought for the men who betrayed them.
The Holy Lands were the faithful’s prize,
The rest was left to man.
The six Gods guard their faithful.

When he had finished, the young man sighed a deep breath and sat down again, laughing as the men near him clapped his arms or called to him.

Ross didn’t think he had ever heard anything so sad. The song had been slow, and more melodious than he had expected. The young man Kilen had called Mihai had a very nice voice, and during the song his face had expressed the emotions that Ross had felt. He looked to Kilen, half expecting an explanation, and found that the dark-skinned man had a look on his face somewhere between sadness and bitterness. He spoke hesitantly. “That was nice, but it’s just a legend, right?”

Kilen’s eyes flicked up for a moment as another man stood and began to sing a much livelier song in his native tongue, then he looked back to his guest. “No, it’s not. But, of course, people in the mainland don’t believe anymore. But the Gods are very much alive in the Peninsula. They protect the people who still believe—especially from mainlanders. In fact, you said you met one. Leviathan hates the mainlanders the most, probably. He’s the one who sunk your ship. The God of water, you see.”

“That thing was one of the Gods?”

“Oh yeah. He’s bitter.”

“Do they show up all the time like that? I mean, you can’t really not believe in something if you can see it.”

The men around them laughed loudly. Apparently whatever song the man was singing was a comedy. Kilen smiled softly. “Sure, they’re here all the time.”

“But, we never see them in the Mainland. If the Desert keeps people out, does it keep people in, too?”

Kilen’s eyes moved over to Ross, and his smile pulled to one side of his face. “I guess you could say that. People in the Peninsula aren’t very fond of mainlanders anyway, so they don’t mind.”

“I guess that has to do with the Gods, right?”

“Right.”

Ross only sat for a while, quietly watching the other men clapping in time to the song. He started when Kilen nudged his still-sore arm.

“Are you being philosophical?”

Ross grinned, looking down at the sand. “A little. Wondering why the Gods would still blame the people in the mainland for not believing in them if we’re completely cut off. I mean, completely. No ships can get near it, no planes can fly over it, no trucks can drive through…it’s totally lost to us. Nobody even knows how big it is, or what the terrain is like. It’s a blur on a map.”

Kilen’s smile broadened slightly. “Well, I’ll tell you what, if our only word is to drop you off back home, you can fill in that part for them, okay? You can make lots of money and tell the whole mainland what incredible people us Kogivi are.”

Ross laughed. “Sure.”

“It’s like this, re?” Kilen pulled back the blanket they were sitting on so that he could reach the sand, and with his finger drew a crippled-looking square in the dry earth. “The Peninsula is shaped kind of like this, re, and the mainland is up here.” He drew two indistinct lines trailing away from the northwest corner of the square. “This is the Desert.” He pointed out the bank of land between the mainland and the Peninsula. “That’s where we are. The Gods made the desert to keep the mainlanders out. There’s three big cities in the Peninsula.” He poked three dots into his makeshift map—one on the west coast, one in the northeast, and one in the south.

Ross interrupted him here. “Why are they so far apart?”

Kilen sighed, and for a moment looked a bit perturbed, as though the subject of distance was distasteful to him. “Well, everybody has a God they worship more than the other ones, re? In the old, old days, everybody grouped together with other people who worshipped the same God as they did, and decided they didn’t like the other people nearly as much as they liked each other. So, they went to different parts of the Peninsula so they wouldn’t have to live with everybody else.”

“But there are six Gods left. Why only three cities?”

Kilen shrugged. “They’re the most popular, I guess. Nelhuayotl belongs to Quetzalcoatl, Espikanik belongs to Phoenix, and Fanum belongs to Leviathan.” He pointed to the west, northeast, and south dots respectively.

“Where are the other Gods?”

“Carbuncle lives in Fanum with Leviathan, Bahamut wanders most of the time, and who knows where Alexander is. He pops up at the Valley Festival every few years. I heard he went to the North. He was pretty disgusted with the Gods fighting each other, and he doesn’t stay in the Peninsula long.”

“So those three, though, they live actually in those cities?”

“Sure. There’s huge temples.”

“But they’re enormous! That thing was ten times the size of my ship!”

“Well, they’re Gods. They can be any size they want, re?”

“Luztek roipo veje go, Kilen, us quz mer go iatemosean bezotekuat ir aenevek. Vo mer seak oposeqetevean uzek.”

Ross jumped as he heard Sati’s voice very close to his ear, and he realized that she had knelt on his other side.

“Qoive, e nuzot tu,” Kilen nodded as Sati placed a large clay plate in front of them and removed the conical lid to reveal a pile of red-stained rice topped with small strips of a meat that Ross couldn’t name.

“What did she say?” Ross asked curiously, glancing between Sati and her brother.

“She said to stop talking to you so that she could, because she’ll miss you so badly when you’re gone.”

As Kilen grinned, Sati reached across Ross’ front and slapped him in the head. Ross guessed that that wasn’t really what she had said, but when he looked at her, he thought he saw the faintest tinge of pink behind the dark skin of her cheek. He promptly decided that his ego was seeing things, and turned his attention to the food in front of him.
He looked around, but didn’t see any utensils, and for a few moments he sat pondering on how to eat rice without utensils and still not make a very big mess.

Kilen was laughing about the slap he had received, and reached across to the plate, picking up a clump of rice and a bit of meat with the tips of his fingers and tilting back his head slightly as he put it in his mouth. Ross stared at the other man’s rough hands, almost certain they hadn’t been washed, and felt uneasy. But he was outrageously hungry. The broth-like substance that Sati had been feeding him had tasted good, but it wasn’t very filling. He looked up when Kilen began to speak around his mouthful of food.
“Go on. You must be hungry, re? Don’t be shy.”

Ross watched as Sati took a handful as well, and felt a bit better, though he was fairly sure that her hands weren’t much cleaner than Kilen’s. He decided to try it anyway, and put his fingers into the pile of rice. The rice was surprisingly sticky, and it was easy for him to lift the small wad to his mouth.

Whatever had turned the rice red had also made it incredibly spicy, and Ross coughed, covering his mouth so that he wouldn’t inadvertently spit the rice back out. Kilen laughed harder than before, slapping Ross jovially on the back, which the guest really wished he wouldn’t do.

“It’s good, re?”

Sati handed him a small clay jug of water, of which he drank greedily.

“Oike kevo joike. Eko et auke it vuke.”

When Ross only looked at her, still lightly panting, she seemed to remember that he didn’t understand and picked up one of the strips of meat, placing it in his open mouth. He chewed slowly, and when he smiled his approval at her, she smiled back, looking pleased.

Many more people sang, and after a while Kilen passed Ross another jug, which had made its way slowly around the circle of men, and nudged him with a suggestive nod. Ross warily took a drink from the jug, and as the liquid seared down his throat, he grimaced.
“What the hell was that?” he asked, passing the jug to Sati and watching in awe as she took a long pull and passed it on without missing a beat.

“That’s liquor from Nelhuayotl. Better than that stuff you get in the mainland, re?”

Ross coughed once more and smiled despite himself. “Yeah; yeah it is.”

Well after dark, the jovial company began to thin out as men retired to their tents, some more inebriated than others—the jug seemed to have lingered at one area of the circle, Ross thought. Sati led him back into the tent, and Kilen soon followed. Ross slept between the two siblings in so close quarters that he was touching both, feeling only mildly uncomfortable.