Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 83205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Pinkie hoots with pleasure and furtively snatches another root to eat. I pretend not to see, watching her son lick the bowl of stew I brought for him. I think half of it ended up in his fur, judging from the looks of things. He finishes with the bowl and then flings it at his mother.
"Hey now," I protest, getting to my feet. "Let's be nice."
Pinkie cringes, and I could swear her kid looks indignant that I'm chastising him. I need Corvak to talk with them about respect. Not for me, but for the women of their tribe. They're nice enough to me, but I don't like how overbearing they are to Pinkie and her snow-people sisters. I glance down into the snowy valley far below, where, like every day, there are dozens of snow-people females digging for roots or scrounging plants. The valley has pretty much been picked clean at this point, so they're having to venture out farther just to get enough food. As I pick up the bowl, I notice that there's a lot of snow-people huddled at the base of the cliff.
Like twice as many as I'm used to seeing. Dozens and dozens.
That's…not good. I set the bowl aside and sit down again, trying not to frown. "Pinkie, are there more snow-people down below? More today?"
Yes, she tells me. All come.
"All?" I choke out and remember to sign it. "What do you mean, all are coming?"
All people, she agrees. Skies say come. Say Great One here.
And Corvak is their Great One. "You mean the water in the sky?" I ask, using the words she does for the Northern Lights. "It told all your people to come?"
Fire and water, she says. Pictures in mountain. Water fill sky. Fire come to ground.
She must mean the meteor. I suppose they think the cave art is telling them something, and the Northern Lights and the meteor must have "confirmed" it in their heads. Greaaat.
I sign, I see.
Sky fire always bring people, she continues. Always people.
I frown to myself. "What do you mean? What people?"
Some like you, she says. Some color of water. Some… She makes a gesture for horns on someone's head. All different. All come with sky fire.
"You know these people?" I ask, fascinated.
No. They… She makes the gesture for yesterday and then repeats it so many times that I know she means "long ago." Others here now.
"Others like…Corvak? Other gladiators? Others in the game?"
She makes the gesture for horns and then adds, live at big water.
Big water. A beach? There's a freaking beach here and we're living in the freaking arctic mountains?! For a moment, I'm absolutely furious. "A warm beach?"
Warm here, she says. Snow here, snow there.
That soothes my irritation. Not a warm, tropical beach. A shitty cold one just like the shitty cold mountains. "And people live there? Near the water? People that look like me?"
Smooth people, yes. She touches her cheek, running her claw down it in the gesture we've established for "human." Come from the skies.
Other opponents, then. Gladiators. "And then they leave? Once the game is done, they leave?"
Her expression turns puzzled. No leave. Stay at big water. Many family. Many people.
A knot forms in my stomach. Corvak has said repeatedly that when the game is over, we'll be pulled from this awful planet and sent somewhere else. But if what Pinkie is saying is correct…
What if no one leaves this planet? Ever?
I'm terrified at the thought.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
AIDY
I fight to contain my unease as I make food all day long.
No leave. Smooth people come from skies. Stay at big water.
The thought plays in my head over and over again throughout the day as I cook. I've noticed the amount of food is growing. My soup pouch bubbles all day, and the coals are crammed full of roots. The snow-people are bringing us a ton of food at least. If the roots look chewed on or some of the fish smells like it's been rotting on some rocks, I don't judge. I just toss it into the stew pot and cook it, because the snow-people are not picky.
But feeding them is quickly turning into a full-time job.
By the time Corvak returns to the cave from a day of hunting and training, I'm exhausted and my fingers are blistered from handling hot roots. He enters the cave and puts his carrying sack and weapons down near the opening, then approaches me. "Did you miss me, Aidy?"
I tilt my face up for a kiss, because the moment he arrived, my chest started humming and the longing unfurled in my belly. "Always."
"I brought food for us," he says. "A big bird of some kind."
My heart drops. More cooking. I'd almost prefer we go hungry tonight, I'm so tired of leaning over the fire. Birds are messy, too. The feathers have to be plucked and put aside, the organs removed, and then the flesh spitted and turned so it roasts evenly. It's more work than I want to do, but how can I protest? He hunted all day and I sat here in the cave, safe. "Gotcha. Let me just finish out here."