If that girl could lurk so close to us and we never knew she was there, an enemy could as well, and I suspected an enemy might go beyond coming out and asking us our names.  Judging from the silence we shared and the way we kept our eyes on the trees that surrounded us, I wasn’t alone in that line of thinking.

We were drenched in sweat.  The heat grew intense, and the mosquitoes continued their relentless assault.  Slapping became part of the chorus that surrounded us, a percussion to go with the symphony of loud chirps, clicks, whistles, and strings played by some distant multitude of insects.

A rustling of trees up ahead sent a shock through my heart.

The road dropped down further.  The ground beside us was scarcely visible beyond the thick underbrush, and we came to a lower basin where the bright green leaves all about us could hardly be seen in the dense shade above.  We came to a waterfall on our left that tumbled violently over black rocks covered in moss and roared out loud enough to drown the forest.  There was a bridge of stone, ancient and pockmarked, and covered in moss with two wheel ruts running the length of it.  The road then curved around to the right alongside a mass of rock covered in wet plants and mosses of every kind.  We descended further through thick underbrush on both sides, still beneath a dark canopy, and up ahead was a grove where the trees gave way to a field of bright green grasses tall as a man.

I looked up at the scarce dots of sky that managed to break through the trees hoping to get some idea of the time and earned nothing but thick, dark clouds.  Davod spoke so excitedly he nearly slurred through his words.  “Gods, that is a sexy fucking girl!”

Up ahead, standing beside the road, barefoot with a brown burlap dress that scarcely came down below her hips, was a girl.  She had hips like a goddess and hypnotic breasts, and her small waist was accentuated by a black rope that served as a belt.  She was Goloagi, light olive-green skin and dark-green hair that cascaded down her back in glorious curls.  Through large, doe eyes of a deep emerald-green color and lips soft and full she looked at us and smiled.

Ales leaned into me.  “Are you seeing this?”

We all were.  She had high cheeks that belied an inner happiness.  Her arms were exposed, revealing a number branded into each, scars long distorted as though they’d been seared into her skin as a young child but still legible: 773-614.

Standing beside her was a boy who couldn’t have been more than ten.  He had the same dark-green skin as the girl riding the lizard, with long, white hair pulled behind his back, and bright yellow eyes.  He was mostly naked but for a strap about his waist and a loincloth to cover his privates.  He, too, was barefoot, and in his hand he held a large satchel of brown paper.

As we descended towards them, the girl continued to gaze upon us.  Drenched in sweat as I was, the warmth of her smile felt good all over.

It was Davod who came up to her first.  “Hello, love.  I’m…”

“Davod of Gath.  I know.”  She was Goloagi, but spoke Herali with only a faint hint of accent.

He pulled his face back in shock, then turned to look at me dumbfounded.

Then she continued, looking at each of us in turn.  “Caleb, Geraln, also from Gath, Faren of Suuya…”  She turned to Ales and gave off a wicked grin.  “And you must be Thisisweird.”

“That’s not my name!” Ales protested.

She lilted out a light giggle as he continued.  “It’s Ales.  Ahh-less.  It’s not…”

Faren interrupted him.  “Come on, Thisisweird, be nice.”

“Be quiet!” he snapped.  Faren laughed, then swatted his ear.

Davod spoke to her again.  “And what’s your name, love?”

“Ranía.”

“Ranía,” Davod smirked.  “A pretty name for a pretty girl.”

“I’m not a girl.”

Impossible.  We glanced at one another in confusion.  Davod turned to me, and I shrugged.  Geraln shook his head.  How she could, with such an enticing figure, assert such a thing perplexed us until Ales asked, “if you’re not a girl, then…”

“A woman.”

We let out a collective breath and a few chortles of laughter.  Ranía then rested her hand on the boy’s shoulder and introduced him.  “And this is Dayu’u.”

The boy nodded and passed his eyes to each of us with a smile of his own.  He then turned his attention up to her and spoke, “‘iŋe dowaʒo tʌveɣa'aboʒi?”

Ranía then looked at us and spoke.  “Dayu’u would like to know if you’re interested in purchasing some mosquito ward.  It’s very effective, I assure you.”

Geraln didn’t hesitate.  One of his eyelids had nearly swollen shut by then, and he had welts all up and down his arms and along his neck.  He pulled out his coin purse and dug his hand into it.  “How much are we talking about, here?”

The boy didn’t say a word, and neither did Ranía.  Geraln set some coins in his palm, then picked up a five and offered it to him with a questioning look on his face while another mosquito landed on his neck.

The boy looked at his hand, pointed at a bright red quarter, and looked up at Ranía once more.  “dowʊdexa.”

Geraln didn’t wait for a translation.  “This is five kren.  It’s worth twenty of those.”

“Yes,” Ranía answered, “but that one is prettier.”

Geraln looked around flabbergasted, but finally conceded.  “At least… here, let me give you two quarters, then.  How do you say thank you?”

She answered, “ŋʌvɪdesa.”

Geraln turned to the boy and spoke directly to him.  “Nuvidesa.”

With that the boy nodded, then reached into his satchel and pulled out an ovular white bar of what looked like soap, half wrapped in brown paper.

Geraln took it and followed along as Ranía explained.  “Rub it on your skin.  You don’t have to cover every inch.  It lasts for several hours, but if it rains or you sweat too much, it won’t hurt to put more of it on.  That bar should last you a few weeks, and when you run out they will have more in Carthia.  It won’t dissolve in water, but it will melt if it gets too hot.”

Davod paid a quarter for his, as did Ales.  Faren offered two, but the boy protested.  Ranía leaned in close to look.  “That one is chipped and tarnished.  Do you have a nicer one?”

Faren raised one eyebrow high above the other, then searched his coin purse for a different quarter, which the boy accepted.

I watched as my friends couldn’t wait to slather the stuff all over themselves, much to the amusement of our hosts.  Then, it came to me to figure out how to explain that I didn’t have any money.  “I think I’ll manage.”

Ranía tilted her head to the side and gazed at me through those doe eyes.  The boy queried her, “‘iŋe vʊ dowaði?”

Ranía smiled at him and explained, “vʌ ŋo’oze kaθizu.”

The boy nodded, then reached into his satchel and handed me a bar.  “OK.  Hiyigo.”

“Huh?”

Ranía clarified.  “He’s giving it to you.”

“Hiyigo,” the boy repeated.

“Nuvidesa,” I bowed my head and took it from him.  He nodded to me with a warm, welcoming smile.

“What the hell, man?” Ales was upset.  “Why he gets it for free and the rest of us have to pay?  That’s not fair!”

While Geraln turned to him, the boy looked up at Ranía.

“I want my money back!  Tell him I want my money back!”

She answered.  “It’s pronounced, ŋʌvɪdesa.”

“What?  No no no.  Tell him…”

She cut him off again.  “ŋʌvɪ, is gratitude, de is I, sa is you.  ŋʌvɪ-de-sa.  That’s how you say it.”

Ales shook his head through her words.  “No, you’re not listening…”

“Ales,” Faren called out to him.  “I think… you might be the one not listening.” 

I looked at Ranía.  She stood unshaken, perfectly calm against whatever storm he may have been ready to unleash while the boy looked up at her as if waiting for a translation.  Ales turned to look at me with his face fixed in shock, then looked at Davod, then Geraln, and then Faren before turning his attention back to the girl.

Davod stepped forward and bowed his head a little, “nuviii-dessa.”

Ranía blinked and nodded her chin ever so slightly, still smiling wide.

Faren then stepped up.  “Can you say it again for me, love?  Slowly?”

She turned to him.  “/ŋ/ is different from /n/.  It’s the sound you hear at the end of song.  It’s a subtle difference, and honestly, no one will correct you.  Also the vowels are /ʌ/ like you hear in but, and /ɪ/ like you hear in fit.  ŋʌ-vɪ-de-sa.”

Faren took a moment to put it together in his mind, then repeated it exactly as she’d instructed.  “ŋʌvɪdesa.”

We all turned to Ales.  He wiped sweat from his brow and allowed his eyes to bounce from among us.  “I just don’t think it’s fair, is all.”

Then Davod slapped him on his back and urged him forward.  “Come on, man.  It’ll cost you nothing to say thanks to the boy.”

“It’ll cost a quarter kren!”

“Just say it, man.”

Ales stared him up and down before taking a deep breath and finally turning to the boy.  “Nguvɪɪɪ-dessa.”

After that, Ranía turned and led the boy through the bush with a hand gently on his back.  Davod shouted after her, “will I see you again?”

She didn’t answer, but turned her neck so as to glance at him over her shoulder and smile before disappearing into the forest.

We continued along the road through thick forest, walking in silence for a good hundred yards before Geraln turned to look back and finally broke.  “Did you see the arse on that thing?”

Ales shook his head vigorously.  “Gods it feels good to be a man!”  He turned to look behind him one more time.  “Any more of that and I could get used to this place!”

Faren smiled.  “Was that a good way or a bad way?”

“Good,” I said.  “Definitely good!”

Davod said nothing.  He just smiled, chuckled lightly to himself, and kept walking.  Geraln kept at it, “I’d have a hard time with that.  Front or back, gods I don’t think I could choose.”

Ales chuckled and echoed his sentiment.  “Front, back, side, I’d take it all if she let me.”

I turned to Davod.  “You alright, man?”

He turned to me and grinned, then shook his head as a man trying to free himself of the delirium.

Faren added.  “She hit him hard, man.  Look at him!”

Davod turned briefly and answered.  “Do you think she liked me?”

Ales nudged, “she did seem a bit friendly on you.”

“Careful,” I added.  “She seemed like she was just friendly overall.  I fell for that once.”

Geraln slapped my arm.  “Once?”

“Maybe twice.”

“Maybe twice!” Geraln growled incredulously.  “Will you listen to this kid?”

I lowered my head and blushed.

Davod reached out and tapped my arm.  “You gotta help me.  You’ve got to help me out.  Next time we see her, I don’t know, something.  Put in a good word, I don’t know.”

I nodded.  “I’ll do what I can.”

As for the mosquito ward, it worked very, very well.  We kept on for another hour or so without even one of those bloodthirsty savages landing on us. 

The road climbed, then descended once again and we came to an open field.  We emerged from the trees, and some five-hundred yards ahead of us was an expansive building of gray-black stones mortared together into walls easily twenty feet high topped with rows of square teeth and separated by towers encircled with crenellations and arrow slits down the sides, stretched out for easily a quarter mile end-to-end and surrounded on all sides by a ribbon of black water without so much as a sandbar to mark from whence it all rose.

The road forked from the edge of the water where a long, wooden plank held fast by heavy iron chains glistening in oil had been laid across, the right length to cover a massive stone archway in the center of two imposing towers.

As for the field, to the left the road forked away through a village of broken blocks of earth scattered amid black, charred wooden posts, and to the right the black water of the lake continued on while trees cauliflowered over the edge on all sides.  A score of goats grazed about, herded by two women with the same exceedingly dark-green skin as we'd seen before, and as before wearing naught but a loincloth, leaving their breasts, their hips, legs, shoulders, their backs exposed to the elements but for the cascade of ivory hair that fell between their shoulderblades.  One of them looked a little older, while the other had a dark-green infant sitting in her arms with one chubby hand at her shoulder staring at us.

The older one looked up at us and waved as we made our way towards the bridge. 

We waved back, and she resumed her attention elsewhere.  Ales spoke first, “are they all going to be naked like that?  I could get used to this place!”

Geraln echoed, “you’re not alone, my friend.”

His eyes tracked them as we walked.  I stole a glance or two myself.  The one with the baby had a long, wooden staff in her other hand, while the other also held a staff and kept glancing at the trees beyond the clearing.  Up on the rampart, two armored Herali men stood overlooking them with bows strung and arrows nocked.

When we came up to the bridge, a man stood in the center of the archway wearing heavy chain armor over padded leather with heavy boots and trousers, a eupin longbow over his back, and a sword dangling from his belt.  His skin was the same as ours; olive-green with dark-green eyes, and a long cascade of straight, dark hair down his back.

Davod asked, “is this Carthia?”

“Nah, man, you got about three or four hours that way,” he pointed across the field where the road led past the ruined village.  “You're at the Lake of Doom.”

Geraln spoke next.  “Why is it called that?”

He looked off the side of the bridge.  As he turned, I saw a jagged scar running from his ear down the side of his cheek and down his neck.  He then turned back to us and answered.  “Don't swim in it.”

We glanced at one another.  Don’t swim in the Lake of Doom.  Good to know.

“Which one of you is Thisisweird?”

Ales’s head fell straight down.  “Ales.”

The man smiled.  “I'm the quartermaster of this outpost, my name is Hoden of Sayin.”

“Seriously?” Davod smiled and reached out his hand. 

“Yeah, man!”

Davod was first to embrace the man, but me and Geraln also took turns. 

Ales sneered, “let me guess.  Sayin is diamond-tree country too.”

Geraln confirmed.  “It’s in Osenia right next to Gath.  He’s Falcon.”

“Yeah, man; there’s a lot of us!” Hoden confirmed.  “Come on, then, let's get on with the tour.”

He led us inside.  An expansive courtyard opened up, surrounded by the same high walls but empty.  Rows of wooden stalls left bare dotted the sides, several of which hosted piles of refuse grown over with mold while others were home to barrels, boxes, and tools.  Few people could be seen, mostly men pacing the rampart above us but for one old woman with dark-green skin who sat in a garden pulling weeds.  In the center of the courtyard, a massive tree with long, narrow leaves hosted hundreds of green globes, some of which had a red hue to one side.  Other trees also grew nearby, tall skinny ones with an umbrella of a canopy at the top and massive green-yellow fruits hanging down, along with short ones with small red-yellow fruits.

Hoden led us towards a stone doorway at the foot of a nearby tower that looked far too short to step through comfortably.  “So the river bends around.  We’ve got six towers along the river bank, plus Carthia and this place, all of it surrounds an area that’s ours.  Each has its own standing garrison, with other units rotating in and out every few days.  You can expect to spend a lot of time on tower duty.  It’s easy, a bit boring sometimes, but you don’t get killed so much.”

Geraln spoke to that, “I like not getting killed.”

Ales added, “me too!”

Hoden chuckled lightly.  “Also, take your boots off.  It rains a lot this time of year, and if you don’t let your feet dry out you’re in real trouble.”

We did as instructed.  My feet had grown considerably upset over being saturated from the rain earlier, and I presumed the rest of us were in the same situation.  Davod spoke up.  “We met a girl coming in.  Goloagi, about yay high…”

“Ranía,” Hoden smiled.

Ales added, “who’s her master?”

Hoden fixed his jaw and shook his head, “no slaves here.  It’s against their religion.”

Davod replied.  “So she’s a runaway then?”

He nodded and led us through the low arch of the doorway and into the belly of a tower where, inside, a staircase spiraled up to the left and, as with the gate in the pass, the steps were horribly uneven.  This was compounded by the sweltering heat and by the darkness cut only by a handful of tall, narrow slits that offered a generous field of view to the outside.  Geraln tripped, then complained, “what kind of idiot built these stairs, man?”

Hoden laughed.  “It's like that on purpose.  You spend time here, you get used to it.  That gives you an advantage over the bad guy trying to rush up after you.  The other nice thing is if you’re on the high ground you get to fight right-handed.”

“Oh,” Geraln said. 

I poked him in his side.  “I thought you were supposed to know that, Booksmart.”

“Did you know that?” he sneered. 

“Of course I did!”

“No you didn't.”

“I absolutely knew that.”

Geraln shook his head and glared back at me for a moment.  “You did not know that.”

At the top of the steps, an open archway led us out onto the top of the rampart facing the sheer gray-black wall of the Terbulin ridge in the distance, sheets of rock escaping the clutches of the forest into the dense clouds above.  Before that, hills carpeted over with trees rolled away in every direction. 

I could see the Lake of Doom.  We were at the far end of a long, narrow finger of water that wrapped around to the left and disappeared beyond more trees, and on the other side a flat expanse of trees with hills on both sides rose up. 

“Alright,” he said.  “These guys over here,” he pointed in the direction of the land sandwiched between the lake and the imposing Terbulin ridge.  “They're OK.  They're the enemy, but if you stay on our side of the lake and let them count your fish, you shouldn't have any trouble.  I keep count for them when they’re not around, and they seem to appreciate that.”

He turned and gestured beyond the road we'd come in on, the other side from the ridge and out into the forest.  “Over there, they got some real hard-core fanatics.  Don't mess with those guys.  Down that way…” he pointed towards the direction of Carthia.  “Fuck those guys.”

Faren glanced at me, and the rest of us glanced around. 

“I'm sorry,” Geraln raised a hand.  “What do you mean by that?”

Hoden smiled as he led us along the rampart in continuance of his tour.  “OK, so on this side of the river they'll kill you, but in a normal way.  Them on the other side, they'll eat you.  Literally.  They use poison darts and shit, and they'll do all sorts of things just to mess with you.”

We kept on, and Hoden led us up a small staircase to the top of a tower directly overlooking the ruined village.  In the center of the stone floor and covered in a canvas awning was some kind of machine.  It had a metal tube some two yards in length connected to various levers and pulleys and a series of hand cranks mounted atop a rotating wooden platform.  At the base of the tube was a bundle of sharp iron spikes with fletchings at one end, easily fifty or sixty of them tied together with a thin thread.  Along the wall were several more bundles alongside some larger, heavier blocks tipped with iron heads in the shape of a blunted spike some inches in diameter.

Davod spoke up again.  “What more can you tell us about Rania?”

Faren laughed under his breath while Geraln shook his head and covered his eyes.  Hoden chuckled lightly.  “Ranía.  She’s uh… let me think.  She’s not on our side.”

Davod pulled his face back in concern.

Hoden clarified.  “She’s not on theirs, either.  More like… not really a take-sides kind of woman is all.  You’ll find a lot of the people here are like that.  They… the Na’uhui have a saying.  Just because we fight doesn’t make us enemies.”

Geraln’s eyes bulged and he pulled his face back.  “I thought that was the definition of enemies.”

Hoden laughed.  “The way their culture works, war is mostly a my-dad-hates-your-dad arrangement, if that makes any sense.  They’ll try to kill each other one day, best friends the next.  And they all understand that, so they fight accordingly.”

“Is that what happened out there?” Faren asked, looking over the charred, broken village.

Hoden took a moment to allow his eyes to pass over the destruction.  His gaze fell and his tone grew somber.  “Their world is changing.”

He continued to show us around, the sky began to darken, and we heard a horn bellow out behind us.  At that, the women outside started to urge the goats towards the gate, and Hoden led us back through another tower.  As we climbed down the stairs, I imagined myself with sword in hand fending off some invaders, when I tripped on a step that dropped down much farther than I’d expected and fell over.

I heard Davod’s voice, “klutz!”

Hoden added, “yeah, that happens.”

I hoisted myself up, and we came out into the courtyard.  Hoden gathered us around.  “Alright,” he said.  “Three of you for laundry, the other two can take kitchen duty…”

“Look!” Faren called out, “it’s the Yonim girl!”

We all turned.  Standing outside the gate was the same girl we'd seen on the road riding the same lizard.  In its mouth it carried the limp carcass of some small furry animal with an arrow shaft protruding from its back.  The girl kept glancing about behind her, bow in hand and arrow nocked, while the herd passed before her.  Then, only after the last goat had entered and the two women we’d seen before had passed, she urged her lizard forward, and with the heavy noise of rattling iron chains, the gate rose.

“Gentlemen,” Hoden said with a nod to her, “the reason you made it here alive.  Come.”

But I didn’t come.  The others went with Hoden.  I, instead, walked up to her as she urged the beast towards a nearby stall covered in a canvas awning set with padding of some brown, threaded plant material.   As I approached, she turned to face me with her bright yellow eyes wide.

“What’s your name?”

She smiled effusively.  “mɪyaŋi!”

I tried.  “Miyani?”

“Yes,” she nodded, smiling wide.  Her white teeth made a resounding contrast against her dark green skin.  “Uh… Blue.”

“Blue?” I echoed in confusion.  

She leaned forward and stroked the lizard's neck.  “Neim-he Blue.” 

After the blue stripe that ran the length of his body, I presumed.  “His name is Blue?”

She laughed nervously and repeated, “his-name-is-Blue.  Yes.”

As for Blue, he didn't seem too interested in talking at the moment.  Rather, he turned his neck round and let out a few clicks, muffled behind the animal he held in his mouth.  Myani spoke again, lifting her hand to me.  “Wait.”

Mounted atop Blue, she was a head taller than me, though her bare feet dangled only as far as my waist.  She swung one leg around and jumped down, and the top of her head scarcely reached my chest.  She lifted up her hand once more, gluing her bright yellow eyes to mine.  “Pliz wait.”

I waited.  She brushed her fingers along Blue’s neck, and he lowered his head for her to work on a tie that held the harness in place.

A part of me knew I should have turned my gaze away, but every other part of me outvoted him. I stood waiting, studying her body.  Her back was turned to me.  But for a strip of white cloth that hung down the center of her chiseled, muscular arse and a bow quiver that somewhat covered her masterfully sculpted back, everywhere else was skin.  Her off-black green skin pulled taut with a thin sheen of sweat over sleek muscle from her legs to her shoulders and ensnared my eyes.

She moved over to the padded saddle and undid that, then peeked over her shoulder to me and grinned.  “ʒɪ ɣuvude ʃɪ’uti” she said and let out a light giggle.

I scratched my head and shrugged.  “Maybe?”

Blue tried to step away, but Myani held him there.  He let out a muffled chirp that I presumed was some impatient protest, while she reached over to grasp at the arrow buried into his dinner.  He tried to pull his head away, then she snapped at him, “ʒɪtixe ɣemaðase yaŋʊvisa? tuzubo!”

He responded with a peculiar string of muffled clicks and waited while she carefully pulled the arrow out.  Once it was free she released him, giving him a gentle swat on the rear as he rushed over to the bedding that had been prepared for him.  There, he lay down and dug into the feast, holding it down with his forelimbs and tearing off strips of meat.

Myani then took off her necklace of giant wooden beads and hung it over a hook on the post beside him, and did the same with her bow quiver.  Then she came back over to stand before me, holding her hands together before her.

I fought the urge and I lost.  My eyes traversed her, from her feet, up along her powerful legs, toned stomach, small mounds at her chest punctuated by taut black nipples pointing directly at me.  I’d seen girls in burlesque more modestly covered, yet Myani wore her near nudity with utter normality.

She watched my eyes closely as I looked her over, and a pang of shame washed over me.  This was her culture.  Girls simply dressed this way, probably because that was most comfortable in the sweltering heat, and there I was ogling her like some rabid beast.

I needed a word.  Something to wrestle my eyes over to somewhere appropriate that allowed me to fix upon her face.  “Tuzubo?”

“Hehe,” she smiled and let out a shy giggle, brushing her hair over one ear.  “Uh… meen big, uh… no theengk…” then she shrugged and shook her head, still smiling.

I had to chew that one up a bit.  “Big, doesn’t think?  Like… you big dummy?”

“Yes,” she nodded.  “Zhok.”

“Thank you for… uh… nuveedassa…”

She giggled lightly and her smile never ceased.  “ŋuvɪdesa, yes.”

I tried to copy the word as best I could, thinking back on how Ranía had taught us to pronounce it.  “ŋuvɪdesa.”

She continued smiling.  She had an easy confidence that drew me in further, and I wanted to keep the conversation going somehow.

“How do you say, hello?”

“Xelo,” she grinned effusively.  “Eh… zawa.”

“zawa?”

“ti,” she nodded.  “zawa.”

“OK.  What about, uh…”

“Caleb!” Ales called out to me from across the way.  “Am I doing laundry myself, man?  Come on!”

I turned towards him, then turned back to her and smiled, pointing at him with my thumb.  “Chores.”

“Shoz,” she nodded.  “vʌ koðosa.”

“vukodosa?  Is that goodbye?”

“Bye-bye,” she nodded.  As I walked off I turned round several times, and she’d kept her eyes on me the whole way, still smiling wide.