Butler, Octavia - Survivor

He was saying good-bye to me. I touched the back of my hand to his face in the friendship gesture. I had seen others use the gesture but this was the first time I had used it myself—the first time I had wanted to use it. He covered my hand for a moment with a furry paw, then spoke once more.

“I will tell you a thing that perhaps I should not tell you because I’m not certain.”

“What is it?”

“The Tehkohn Hao has decided that you are a fighter. We told him you were, but he said, ‘Wait. Let her prove it.’ I think now you have proven it.”

“You told him?”

“You had already proven it to us.”

We looked at each other for a long moment, then I smiled. He had asked me once, “Do all your people bare their teeth to show pleasure?” I went to get the spare clothing I had accumulated and my few toilet articles.

“You have worked as one of us,” said Choh. “We will miss you.”

And I would miss them, I thought as I left him and walked out into the dim corridors. But as long as I was not to be punished, I did not mind returning to Jeh and Cheah—except for one thing. Jeh and Cheah did live in the fighter section of the dwelling. They lived near the outside where raiders would come first if they got past the guards, and they lived near the Tehkohn Hao. I would be seeing more of Diut and I would have to make a greater effort to get used to him.

Cheah welcomed me to her apartment, her small body blazing white.

“Ah-la-naaah!” she cried exuberantly. “I heard you fought Haileh—that you beat him to the ground!”

I stared at her in surprise. “You’re glad?”

“Glad! That one was an animal! He tried to humiliate you because he thought you were weak. He tried it with me once because I’m small. I almost broke his neck!”

I laughed because I could picture her doing exactly that. She was not the kind of person who would let her smallness make her a target for other people’s frustrations.

“You are back where you belong,” she said. “Jeh told Diut that you were a fighting woman.” She led me across the room. “Put your things here. We will make a pallet for you. Come!”

I spent five days with them. Easy days compared to what I had been used to. I had the work of the apartment to do—cooking and cleaning—because without any blue at all, I was the lowest-ranking person in the apartment. As I had relieved Choh, now I relieved Cheah. I didn’t like it particularly, but it kept me busy. And Cheah chattered and Jeh and I listened, amused. Jeh said once, “I take her with me to trade with the lake people, Mahkahkohn. She talks and talks and they are all white and at ease and she trades them out of their fur.” I believed it.

Then came the day when Jeh brought home gifts for me. There was a long robelike garment of fur dyed blue-green. It was made from the skin of a single large animal. The fur was coarser than Kohn fur but it was thick and the garment looked warm and comfortable. And there were new shoes of the same ankle-high boot type that I had been wearing, but these were fur-lined, and colored blue-green to match the robe.

“Put them on,” said Jeh. “They are yours.”

“You give them to me?”

“Diut gives them to you.”

I froze. “Diut?” In spite of my fears, I had hardly seen the Tehkohn Hao since moving back with Jeh and Cheah. And I did not want to see him.

“He made me go with him to get that thing,” said Jeh, gesturing toward the robe. “He said you and I were the same size. I had to put the thing on so that he could see whether it was as long as he wanted it to be on you.”

I stood listening to him, hearing what he was telling me, and what he was not telling me. I strove not to believe it. “Jeh, why is he giving me these things?”

“To please you, Alanna. He gives gifts sometimes, though yours are stranger than any I have seen. Get your other things. Gather them all. He’s waiting for you.”

“I… must go?” I managed to keep my voice almost normal.

“You are afraid?”

“Yes!”

“He said you would be. But you must go. Your fear will pass.”

Slowly, I gathered my belongings. But my hands were shaking so that I kept dropping things. Cheah came over, oddly silent, and helped me. Jeh led me out of the apartment and through the corridor for some distance to what appeared to be a solid wall. A hidden door.

Jeh felt for the handhold, found it, and pulled the door open. He spoke quietly.

“Go in, Alanna.”

I didn’t move. It was all I could do to keep myself from running away down the corridor. I had come this far by telling myself that I could talk to Diut—talk him out of this… experiment, or whatever it was. And I did not want to disgrace myself before Jeh and Cheah. Now though…

“Alanna!”

I jumped, looked at him.

“Go in.”

I went through the door and he shut it behind me.

There was no one in the room. It was a large room made of the same gray stone as the rest of the dwelling. There were two long chests of polished wood, one on either side of the room. I dropped my things atop one of these chests. There was a doorway on the opposite side of the room and I could hear someone moving around in the room beyond. So the Tehkohn Hao had at least a two-room apartment. Luxury. I could have lived my life happily without such luxury. There was a large animal-skin rug on the floor before the fireplace. I sat down on it and stared into the low fire trying to think. Everything had happened too quickly, too unexpectedly. It made no sense. Diut had hardly looked at me during my stay with the Tehkohn. And surely I could not have seemed sexually attractive to him.

He came into the room, his feet making almost no sound against the stone floor. I looked at him once, then looked away quickly, closed my eyes in desperation. I would keep still. I would not behave stupidly. We would talk, Diut and I, and end this nonsense.

“Tehkohn Hao,” I greeted. My voice was steady.

“Alanna.”

“Am I to have a liaison with you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why do men and women usually have liaisons?”

He was standing over me off to one side, towering, huge. I felt powerless and afraid and angry at myself for being afraid. I had to keep calm.

“Are forced matings the way among the Tehkohn?” I asked quietly.

“Have I used force?”

“Have I accused you?”

He whitened slightly and sat down beside me. “We have no tradition of forced matings, Alanna.”

“Will you let me go then?”

“But I have chosen you.”

“I have not chosen you.”

“What man have you chosen?”

“I… none. I didn’t know I would be permitted to mate here.”

“Has any man approached you?”

“No.”

“No man would unless I ordered it. None but me.”

I said nothing.

“Your differences keep others away,” he said. “You come to me as a stranger, an alien in spite of all that you have learned. But when you leave me, you will be Tehkohn. When others see that I have accepted you, they will accept you.”

I began to tremble, and to believe, really believe, that there was no way out of this. I was afraid I would lose control of myself if he touched me. When he touched me.

He reached over, took my hand, and examined it much as the Garkohn huntress Gehl once had.

“The fingers are too long,” he said. “And too slender. The nails are too thin, too weak. You are right to keep them short. The hairlessness is ugly at first—wrong, a distortion of what should be. But the coloring is the greatest distortion. Brown. No blue at all. The lowest artisan has some blue, but you have none.”

I snatched my hand away from him, now more angry than frightened.