Dzar-Ghan (Alien Barbarians of Vandruk #3)

12. Chapter 12

I didn’t even have a chance to react. It happened so quickly. One moment, her hands were on my chest. The next, she whirled around and hit the tent post head-on. I barely managed to catch her before she hit the ground, but she was out. And a large egg-sized bruise formed on her forehead.

“Grehn-Bzag!” I yelled while carrying the unconscious gallis to the bed of furs.

Alarmed, my Second Blade appeared in the tent entrance. “Khadahr?”

“I need some agrodar leaves,” I instructed, “and waro.”

“Sa.” He threw a concerned look at Jenna.

“And, Grehn-Bzag.” I stalled him for another moment.

“Sa, Khadahr?”

I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering what this gallis was doing to me, sighed, and instructed, “From now on, I require the tentpoles to be covered with furs.”

His puzzled expression showed he had more questions, but he was a well-trained male and only nodded before he retreated to fulfill my original request.

Once I was sure Jenna was comfortable on the furs, I searched her backpack for the moondust we had collected earlier. Wrapped in agrodar leaves, the stone would turn cold as snow. It was one of the many useful things we had been forced to relearn after most of our gallies died. They had been the keepers of herbs and healing, throwing us surviving Vandruks an additional challenge. Many good warriors died senselessly because we had simply lacked the knowledge of how to treat illnesses or wounds. Now every Vandruk had a general knowledge of medicine and what to do for an injured person. Some were more specialists than others and highly sought after. They were valuable citizens in our demesnes and barely ever traveled outside the city limits. At any given time, they were required to have at least five apprentices in various degrees of learning just so that their knowledge would be preserved from now on.

“Jenna?” I called her name, lifting her up to listen to her even heartbeat and gentle breathing.

Grehn-Bzag returned with the requested leaves, and I wrapped them around the moondust to cool Jenna’s bump, hoping it would, if not reduce, at least contain her swelling.

For most of the night, I sat like this with her. Occasionally, Grehn-Bzag would bring me new leaves, always perfectly timed when the effect of the mating between the leaves and moondust wore off.

“Is the little gallis all right?” he asked hesitantly after he dropped off the third batch.

“Her breathing is normal, and so is her heartbeat. She’s just out.” My voice sounded more assured than I felt. In truth, I worried more about her than I had… in a very long time. I never had to worry about Mynarra; she had been a capable gallis, knew how to hunt, how to fight if she had to. She would have been insulted if I had shown any worry for her. I smiled at that thought and remembered how irate she had been the one time she had fallen sick, and I had worried about her. ‘I’m not some fragile little thing. It’s a belly ache, nothing else, you fool,’ she had yelled at me, not wanting me to fuss over her.

A strange sense of peace came over me when I remembered this. The pain that usually accompanied any memories wasn’t there. Instead, I could simply lose myself to it.

“Just a good knockout then?” Grehn-Bzag observed, bringing me back to the present.

“She ran straight into the pole.” I indicated the offensive object.

“I’ll make sure tomorrow night your tent will be adequately prepared.” Grehn-Bzag nodded, and we exchanged a quick look of amusement, but the moment passed, both of us too aware of the fragility of the human gallis and what a treasure she was, what her kind could mean to our species.

I leaned back against the furs, holding her in my arms, and gently pressed the leaves against her forehead, taking advantage of this moment to study her fully. In the firelight, her silvery hair shone like moondust. Long eyelashes hid the most stunning blue eyes I had ever seen. A heart-shaped face would fool anybody into thinking of her as a sweet, easygoing gallis, but I had learned better. An iron will and active mind slumbered behind her slightly, at the moment, bumped forehead.

Her ridiculous clothing covered her beautiful body well, but I still had her half-naked image from the pond imprinted inside my mind. Her body was glorious, made to be worshipped by a male—by me. A small sigh from her interrupted my not-very-healer-like thoughts. Her eyelids fluttered, and I watched, mesmerized, as they opened, then took me in and where we were.

“Oh,” she said, trying to lean up.

I applied gentle pressure to keep her down. “Nek, you’re hurt.”

She seemed to understand me. One of her hands moved up to feel for her bump and encountered my hand holding something. It occurred to me that she would probably love to investigate the mating of moondust and agrodar leaves further, and a gentle tug pulled my lips up a few degrees.

Her eyes blinked a few times, and despite me trying to hold her down, she sat up with a start. I could have easily held her down against her will, but I didn’t want to frighten her. I figured she would probably realize on her own that it was better to lie still for a while.

“Ohh,” she repeated.

She swayed and I kept my hands up in case I needed to catch her again, but she seemed to regain her composure. She was still wildly blinking, which concerned me.

Her next move caught me by surprise and nearly made me gag. “Nek, gallis, what are you doing? Nek, Jenna.”

The tips of her fingers dug into her right eye and pulled something out. By Vorag, what was happening?

I watched, frozen, as she repeated the process with the other eye. Two small, thin, round objects lay on the tips of her fingers, and she sighed in happiness.

“Better.”

“What did you do?” Incredulously, I stared at the objects. Had she just peeled her eyes out? Nek, after blinking at me a few times, I still made out the remarkable blue that had fascinated me before.

“Ineedmybag,” she mumbled, holding the round things on her fingers like trophies. I wondered if humans shed their eyeskin like some animals shed their skins on Vandruk. She nodded at her backpacks.

My curiosity got the better of me, and I moved to the backpacks, holding one up. She shook her head. “Nek.”

The second one I raised found her approval, and I brought it closer to her. She indicated one of the side pockets and I opened it for her. Guessing she wanted me to fish out the contents, I did until she exclaimed, “Sa, thatstheone.”

I held up a small, yellow box, although box didn’t seem the right description for it because two wheel-like objects were screwed on at two sides.

“Open,” she demanded.

Guessing what she needed, I unscrewed the first. It was hollow inside, filled with liquid. She dropped one of the eyeskins into it. Anticipating her needs, I screwed it shut and opened the other, and we repeated the process. So humans were not only shedding their eyeskins, they were also keeping it? Very curious indeed.

Inside the pocket, I made out more containers, all in different colors, like the one we had just filled. Why would they need to keep it? Would it regenerate? Would they reuse it? I wished my English had been better because this fascinated me.

With her hands now free, she dug through the pockets until she held something else out triumphantly and put it over her eyes.

“Ahbetter. Icansee.” She giggled.

I leaned forward to take a closer look at the newest contraption. Something like a very thin crystal was held between a frame, and the same frame held the contraption safely on her face by connecting to her ears. Why though she needed this barrier on her eyes I didn’t understand… unless… whatever she had removed from her eyes had protected them, and since it needed to… regenerate, she had to wear this. I nodded. That made sense.

“Wanttosee?” she asked and pulled the crystal frame off her face to offer me for examination.

Carefully, I looked at it, leery that whatever affliction her eyes had might spread to mine if I tried to look through the crystals. Curiosity, however, won out.

I nearly threw the thing away from me. Looking through it made me dizzier than a pouch of skoff—alcohol.

She laughed, stilling me. I liked that sound. It was light and raised my mood.

“Glasses,” she said, holding up the crystal frame thing.

“Glasses,” I repeated, fascinated. I still didn’t understand their usage, but it was good to have a name for it.

She pulled out the little container and held it up. “Contacts. Can’t see withoutthem.”

I understood part of her sentence. Can’t see? Did that mean she was blind? Nek, it might have explained some of her… clumsiness, but I had watched her examine things, pulling them out. Nek, she could see just fine. And then I understood. Whatever glasses or contacts were, she needed them to see. I made note of that, wondering if the humans had a cure for blindness. We had some Vandruks, especially older ones, whose sight had deteriorated over the years. That would be miraculous for them.

Next, she fished out a red container, which held all kinds of small bags and pouches. She took one out, opened it, and poured two small white oval things out.

“Waro?”

I handed her the waterskin and watched her flush the objects down. Humans truly were curious.

“HavetocheckifIhaveaconcussion,” she mumbled next, digging through the bag until she found what she was searching for: a long instrument, not even half as thick as my finger. Something clicked and a beam of light penetrated the tent.

“Whoa,” I exclaimed, and she laughed.

She handed it to me, and I turned it until the light hit me square in the eyes, making me wince with its brightness.

“Sun.” I gasped. How had the humans managed to catch parts of the sun in that little tube?

“Penlight,” Jenna said. “HaditspecialmadeforVandruk.”

“Penlite.” I repeated her first word, ignoring the rest of her gibberish.

“Penlight.” She nodded.

“Okay, help me?” she asked in Vandruk.

I turned serious. “Always,” I replied.

She took her glasses off and pointed at her eyes.

“Carama,” I said, beautiful.

“Sa, black,” she exclaimed, but somehow, I wasn’t sure we meant the same thing. She noticed my skeptical expression and pointed at her backpack. I had learned that word.

“Backpack,” I repeated happily.

She sighed and shook her head. She pointed at the forgotten agroda leave and said the name of its color in Vandruk, then she pointed at the backpack, looking questioningly at me.

“Blahar,” I guessed. Its color was black.

“Blahar.” To be sure, she indicated more black things, repeating the word.

Then she pointed at her eyes again, saying “Blahar,” and I realized she meant her pupils.

“Sa.” I nodded. Her pupils were black, even though I didn’t know where she was going with this.

She made a circle with her thumb and pointer finger, making it bigger and smaller until she was sure I understood she was trying to tell me something about the size.

“Sa.”

She nodded happily, pointing at her pupils again, repeating it, going wider and constricting. They were fascinating that way. Vandruks’ pupils were slitted, and the slits lit up in different colors on the inside, but they didn’t change sizes.

Next, Jenna used the penlight, moving its beam over her, still making circle fingers, and making the circle smaller when the beam hit it.

She waved the light in front of her eyes without directly shining it into them, looking questioningly at me. It took me a moment, but I puzzled out that she wanted me to watch her pupils. I nodded and then showed her how they constricted when the light hit them, using my finger and thumb the way she had.

She seemed happy about that. I wondered if that was part of her evening ritual after she peeled her eyes out. I shrugged. I had expected humans to behave differently from us. This was kind of gross, but I was sure there were things Jenna would think of as gross that I did. I couldn’t think of anything right then, but I was sure there had to be something.