Page 32 of Caveman Alien’s Horn (Caveman Aliens #26)

- Cora -

Melr'ax dies two days after our wedding. He orders the fire in his hut put out and the door opened, 'to make everyone more comfortable'. Then he asks all the Foundlings, us girls, Korr'ax, Anter'az, and Praxigor into his hut. There's no room for more people, but all the men from the Borok and Tretter tribe who are in the village stand outside the door.

“I have nothing more to say,” he says in a weak voice, lying in his bed with six thick furs over him. “Except this. While I no longer believe in the Ancestors, I think the old myths have valuable lessons to teach us. We have been blessed by the company of women, brought to us by the abominable Plood aliens. But there are only six. Would the Plood be happy bringing only this handful of women here? No, surely there must be more! There are more alien women on Xren, mark my words.”

He takes a break, and we girls look at each other. It's something we have suspected for years, and it's interesting to hear the old shaman say it, too.

“I will not,” Melr'ax goes on, eye closed, “tell you all what to do or how to behave in the time that comes now. It will be an eventful time, that much I know. The changes to our planet and our tribes have only just begun. The women will be the crux, the instigators, the whole point. And you must all help them, because these changes are for the good. Sprisk!”

“Yes, Melr'ax,” my husband says and takes the old shaman's hand. “I'm here.”

“Brak,” Melr'ax goes on. “Noker. Dexer.”

Brak and Noker take his other hand in theirs.

I take Dexer's hand and lead the blind Foundling to the bed.

Soon all four Foundlings are holding their old mentor's hands and wrists. It's obvious to everyone that he's the father of all the Foundlings in every way but the biological one.

“I'll leave you now,” he creaks, barely audible. “But I will not be gone. I will watch you from the stars. And I will expect you to… “ He takes a deep breath.

The rest of the sentence never comes out. Melr'ax exhales and then just doesn't inhale again.

The hut is quiet for a long time.

Anter'az the healer, Alba's husband, finally loosens the four Foundlings's iron grip on their old friend. “He's not here anymore, friends. He's in the stars, and tonight we shall look for him. Now let us prepare for his pyre.”

I take Sprisk's hand and lead him out of the hut. We spend some time in the 'penthouse', with the other girls and their husbands, talking about the old man. He was more remarkable than I ever knew, and I regret not having known him better.

It lasts long into the night, and by the end, all I know is Sprisk's strong arms carrying me down the stairs to our cave.

“He's watching over us now,” he says as he puts me to bed and slides in beside me. “And he's happy that my love is such a perfect woman for me.”

“I love you,” I manage before the sleep engulfs me again.

- - -

T he day after Melr’ax’s huge pyre, we say goodbye to the girls, the clan, and the tribe. I’ve already told the girls everything I know about midwifing. I’ve given them short classes and written notes that they say are the closest thing to a textbook anywhere on Xren. It’s not much, but it’s all I can do. I won’t be present for Piper’s delivery, and maybe not for the others, either. Because they’re all pregnant now, we’ve determined.

“Any idea where you’ll be going?” Astrid asks casually as I hug her goodbye. “They say many honeymooners prefer going to a beach.”

“A faraway beach,” I tell her. “I know there is a closer one, but I think it’s on the wrong coast.”

“Bring your bucket and spade,” she says, wiping a tear from her cheek. “You never know what you might find on beaches. Or close to them.”

I adjust my Alba-made dress and put my backpack on. “I’ll bring a unicorn. With any luck, he’ll take all my attention and I won’t find a thing.”

“Okay,” Bronwen says, “but if you happen to come across a Wendy’s, could you send us a smoke signal?”

We start walking. It will be a long journey, but I don't mind that. It's time alone with Sprisk, in the jungle, and he's the master of it. I know I will come to no harm.

We teach each other both our languages, one day speaking only English and the next only cavemannish. We sleep in treetops and make love for hours, just the two of us. Sometimes we stay in one particularly good treetop for days before we move on into the sunset. We are in no rush.

We occasionally come across white mushrooms with a peculiar shape, and we always kick them and stomp on them to make sure they can't grow. Sprisk is even more eager than me, after I tell him what they are. Of course the few we destroy won't matter much — there were billions or trillions of spores in that cloud. But the more we destroy now, the fewer we have to deal with later.

We walk for weeks. I deliberately have not asked Astrid or her husband exactly where to go — with any luck, our search will be cheerfully unsuccessful for years.

So of course we walk straight into it. We can hear the waves crashing against the shore, but we haven't even seen the ocean when Sprisk spots the thing we're supposed to be looking for.

“That looks unusual,” he says, stroking his pitch black beard, which has grown in during the journey and which I have asked him to keep. I like the way his jaw spikes peek out from it. “It’s not from here, I think.”

“It’s not,” I groan. “Can we just pretend we didn’t see it?” But I know that Sprisk is too conscientious to go for that.

“Let just us check it out,” he says in understandable English, and strokes his hand along the smooth, metal-like hull.

The flying saucer is just like the one the Plood aliens used to dump me and the girls on Xren. It’s sitting askew on the ground, overgrown with all kinds of bushes and saplings. It’s been here for years, so that’s expected. What I didn’t expect was that a lot of the grass and underbrush has been trampled down and flattened. I also can’t help noticing the many white mushrooms growing in the grass.

“A flying machine,” Sprisk ponders. “Used by the Plood. I think we should open it. Stand back, my love.”

“All right. Be careful. Astrid never opened the door to that thing.” I pull out the thin sword that the Borok tribe has made for me. I didn’t ask for it, but apparently Sprisk did. He didn’t like the idea of me not having a sharp blade of my own, even though he has a horn and doesn’t need a sword.

Sprisk and I have perfected what to do when we’re approaching a danger, such as a dinosaur or a noise we don’t trust. I pull back about twenty feet, sword in hand, so Sprisk has some freedom of movement and doesn’t need to think too much about keeping me safe.

“I assume the door is here,” Sprisk says and traces an oval outline on the side of the saucer. “Before I use the horn, I’ll try to open it in some other way.” He places his massive hand on the metal.

There’s a hiss and a screech of metal parts, and then the door slides to the side.

The pale, blue light inside the saucer reminds me of the abduction, and I raise my sword in anticipation of something bad happening. There might be Plood inside, despite what Astrid told me.

“Shit!” I exclaim. There’s definitely movement in there, from what I can see, peering past Sprisk’s wide back.

“Hello,” Sprisk growls in English, the muscles standing out on his tense body. But his horn is still hidden and his skin stays its normal color. “We are friend.”

I take a few steps closer. “Who’s there, my love?”

He moves to the side so I can see.

“Oh damn,” I exclaim as the world spins around me. “I mean, hi. I’m Cora. This is Sprisk. Do you speak English?”

They are Earth girls. Dirty and wearing only rags, but still obviously abductees. They’re clenching long pointed sticks that are too harmless to call spears.

“Hi,” one of them says. “Yes, we do. Umm. Who are you guys?”

“Can you come out?” I suggest, replacing my sword in its sheath. “Sprisk, give them room, please.”

Four girls come out of the saucer, hesitant and staring at us and all around, as if they expect an ambush. “We know this isn’t Earth,” one of them says. “So who are you?”

“I’m Cora,” I tell them. “From Earth, like you. I was abducted years ago and dumped here along with a few other girls. This is my husband, Sprisk. He’s a native. A caveman alien. He looks scary, but he’s not a danger to you.”

The girls eye him skeptically, still tense.

“I’m Morgan,” one of the girls says. “This is Callie. Riley. Theodora.”

The girls raise their hands in greeting in turn. “Hi.”

I take my backpack off. “My love, let’s give these women some food. You girls hungry? Because I am.” I hand them some dried fruits and meat from my pack, and Sprisk starts to prepare a campfire. I know he has a bunch of fresh meat in his pack. We were going to grill it on the beach, but this is just as good a purpose.

The girls’ eyes widen when they see the abundance of food and drink that Sprisk and I are just casually carrying around. When we sit down, they all eat fast, and Sprisk cooks all our meat.

“I’ll have to go hunting tomorrow,” he grunts. “Or maybe fishing.”

“Maybe both,” I say softly in cavemannish, suspecting that these girls don’t understand it. “We’ll need a lot of food.”

It’s obvious to me that our long and supremely pleasant honeymoon vacation just ended. Because I can’t just leave these girls. They’re so skinny and pitiful-looking that we have to either bring them back to the village or make some kind of camp for them here.

“So what’s your story?” I ask while we eat.

They tell me.

When I recover from that to the point where I can form words, I tell them ours. When that’s all over, the sun is setting and the girls are in a much better mood as they allow themselves to hope that things are finally getting better for them.

“So what are those mushrooms?” Callie asks. “If they’re not from here?”

I get up and go to pick one I see nearby. “Have you looked at them?”

“Not really.”

I hand it to her. “What does it look like? Big, ball-shaped cap with two black spots on one side, a weird, thin stem with some offshoots in the right places, two roots that start well above the ground. Just imagine that it’s gray, not white.”

“Oh.” She turns the mushroom over in her hand before she sees it. “Oh!” She drops the thing to the ground. “Shit! That’s a Plood! ”

I pick the tiny, growing Plood alien off the ground and hold it up. It’s not moving and it’s cold to the touch. There’s nothing living about it, except that it must be growing. Plood are bigger than this. “A tiny Plood, or the unfinished template of one. Our worst enemy. Grown from spores. I think the big mushrooms that exploded somehow came with the saucer that dumped me. Maybe it carried spores through space. I thought I recognized that place. Now Plood spores have spread all over the jungle. We should destroy them wherever we see them. I mean, it won’t help much. In a while, the jungle will be crawling with them.”

The girls are suitably shocked.

“That’s incredibly creepy,” Theodora finally says.

“Yeah. Meanwhile, does that thing fly?” I nod towards the saucer.

“If it does,” Riley says while chewing, “we haven’t found out. You want to go inside?”

“Maybe later,” I reply, being in no rush to relive the abduction. “I don’t think it’s going anywhere. My love, can we go see the beach before it gets dark?”

It’s not far, just beyond a grove of trees that are different from the ones by the Borok village. The beach is long and wide, and the sand is gray. Waves wash calmly ashore from an ocean that looks normal in the intense, red light from the setting sun.

Sprisk pulls me to him. “Here we are. The beach and the other side of the kontnent . Is this where we’ll find the loyltikard? ”

I squeeze him. “My love, if we find a loyalty card here, or anywhere at all on Xren, I’ll faint from the surprise. I’m sorry, I just thought it was funny to hear you say it.”

“You dare make fun of the mighty unicorn?” he growls as his horn comes out. “Have you ever seen a half glyx angry?”

“Am I looking at one right now?” I ask, grinning and feeling the familiar tingles start down below.

“No,” he sighs heavily. “I’m not actually angry. Just happy because you’re here. And I never cared about the loyltikard .”

“Actually, there’s a tiny chance that one of the girls has one. If she was abducted with her wallet. We can ask them later.”

“Well, we reached the beach, anyway. The journey is a success.” He holds his hand up. “The ritual, please.”

I lazily slap it. “Yaaay.”

“Though it was always a success,” he goes on. “Because how could it not be, when my wife is with me?”

“It was extremely successful,” I agree. “And I wanted to tell you something here, on the beach. About just how successful this has been.”

“Yes?” he says, puzzled.

“Yes. Because all the Mating we’ve done seems to have worked.”

It takes him a moment before he gets it. “Oh! You mean… it worked?” His gaze goes down to my stomach. “There’s a baby?! ”

Happy tears spring to my eyes. “Yes. Soon we’ll have a baby. I don’t know how soon, because it takes less time here on Xren than on Earth. But in a few moons, I will give birth. All the signs are there.”

Sprisk’s horn shoots out by itself, and his skin does the most amazing thing. It’s like every little skin cell runs quickly through all the colors it can be, creating an effect like a rainbow rolling over him and through him.

He takes me into his arms, more gently than ever before, and lifts me off my feet. “That makes me so happy I don’t know how to say it. A baby! A mix of you and me! Half unicorn and half alien woman! It will be a girl, right?”

I laugh through happy tears. Of course this caveman unicorn totally beat the heck out of PCOS and endo without even trying. “We won’t know until the birth. But a half unicorn sounds about right.”

Sprisk laughs so his voice echoes from the trees behind the beach. “A child! I’ll be a father!” His skin does the rainbow thing again. I’ve only ever seen it once before, when I said yes to his proposal. “Like Korr’ax! And you will be a mother! Like Bryar!”

“That’s the idea,” I tell him as I dry my happy tears. This planet sure has made me emotional. Or maybe it’s just this unicorn. “But it’s still some time away. I want to be in the Borok village for the birth, I think.”

“Of course,” Sprisk says. “That’s the safest place for you. If I’m there, of course.”

“I want you to be with me always,” I state. “You know that.”

“There’s nothing I want more,” my husband rumbles. “You’re my love.”

“And you’re mine.”

He strokes my hair. “I’m happy Astrid told everyone that you lived somewhere in the jungle. If she hadn’t, this might never have happened.”

“She kept apologizing,” I tell him, gazing out at the ocean. “She really felt bad. But I told her the same thing: if my secret hadn’t leaked out, I wouldn’t be this happy right now. I might have lived the rest of my life in that tree, living on vismonk charity. One day when we’re back I’ll go and check on them. I want to thank them properly.”

The sky and the ocean glow in deep red as the last part of the sun disk dips below the horizon. A mild breeze rustles my hair, salty and fresh and full of promise. I see at least four good spots to put a loom right next to the beach, with as many treadles as we want. And it looks like some of the trees further inland have good treetops for sleeping in.

It’s a weird planet, this. It keeps you in misery for years, and then it turns around and makes you happier than you ever thought possible. Because, as I discussed with the girls before we left, this intensity of joy probably isn’t realistic on Earth. Everything there is too complicated. There is always something trying to bring you down. Here, things are really very simple, once you allow yourself to see it.

I slide one hand innocently down Sprisk’s muscled stomach, raising a rainbow. “It’s a nice evening.”

There appears a bulge at the front of his new kilt, which is thick Borok tribe leather because I haven’t been able to weave more canvas fabric. “I think we can make it even nicer. Because we have been working today. Walking and exploring flying machines and meeting new friends, cooking food and having success. So it should be time for pleasure.”

We walk back to the edge of the jungle. Between the sand and the trees there’s a wide band of grass and short, hardy plants that can take the wind from the ocean.

We settle onto the resilient grasses, the scent of the alien flora mingling with the salty air. The deep red of the twilight paints Sprisk’s iridescent skin in shifting hues.

He cups my face, his large hands warm against my cheeks. The tip of his horn catches the last glimmer of the setting sun.

“My forever love,” he murmurs, his voice thick with emotion, his gaze filled with a love that feels as vast and untamed as this very planet. Because he is the master of it.

I lean into his touch. We have a future now, a future woven with ourselves and our children as the warp, and our friends, our enemies, our joys, our sorrows, and all our experiences as the weft. That’s going to be a fabric finer than anything we’ve made so far.

Sprisk leans in to kiss me, the taste of salt and something uniquely him on his lips. I put my hand on his bulge. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he rumbles, the deep bass making me tremble.

I think this experience we’re about to have together is going to be a part of the fabric that will really stand out.

And I know that no matter the challenges planet Xren might still hold, with him by my side, and our child on the way, this wild, terrible, and wonderful planet is finally home.