Page 153 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6
CHAPTER THREE
Carrie
O f course, the next thing on the agenda is a feast. It’s the standard way the raskarrans celebrate everything. When we arrived back from the beach - feast. When Vantos and Rachel mated - feast. When Rardek found Molly hiding in a nearby cave and brought her back to the village safe - feast.
As soon as we arrive at the fire, it’s all hands on deck to chop, peel, slice and stir, as the cooking gets underway.
“I hope some of these new guys are handy at peeling, at least,” Mattie says as she scrapes the skin off some tough barabar roots with a viciousness the roots definitely don’t deserve.
She looks less green now, but her expression is still pinched and her knuckles are white where she grips the knife in her hand.
“It is going to be a big job to feed everyone,” Rachel says, keeping her voice light.
“When the big rains come, we’ll mostly be responsible for feeding ourselves,” Liv says. “Even if they finish converting the storage hut back into a gathering hut, we won’t be cooking and eating there every night. Just every so often. When we’re sick of the sight of our own four walls.”
“I can barely get a fire started by myself,” Lorna mutters to me. “Thank god I’ve got Shemza.”
When the rest of us were learning to strike flints and set fires, Lorna was still struggling with her broken arm, so she never picked up the skill. No doubt Shemza will have her proficient before the big rains are over, but for now it’s something she still can’t do consistently.
“How are you with cooking?” she asks me.
I give her the so-so gesture. I’m confident in my ability to get a fire started, to boil a pot of water and throw a combination of things into it that would be sustaining enough.
I’m just not sure how good it would taste.
But everything I’ve eaten here has been better than bottom tier rations, so I’m not too worried about it.
Lorna shoots me a shy little smile. “You’re welcome to have dinner with us whenever you want.”
I take her hand and squeeze it. Sometimes I think she still doesn’t quite believe that we don’t all hate her for being born top tier.
It isn’t long before the raskarrans start congregating by the fire with us.
Rardek arrives first, accompanied by a couple of Darran’s brothers, who both freeze when they see us cooking.
Rardek smirks, but he leads by example, taking a seat on the log behind where Molly is slicing her roots.
He takes out his hunting knife, and Molly beams at him as he grabs a root from her pile to slice.
They’ve developed a bond since he found her and brought her back to the village - an older brother looking out for his adoring younger sister. It’s cute.
Namson says something to the other two raskarrans and they jolt as if electrocuted before coming to take a seat. Ellie watches them approach, then shuffles up to make room for them, patting herself on the chest.
“Ellie,” she says, then points to them.
It takes them a moment. They stare at her with wide eyes, as if overwhelmed. But then they shake it off and pat their own chests.
“Flarin,” says one.
“Mavren,” says the other.
Next to arrive is a group of elders, accompanied by Harton and Torfen.
They go straight to Namson, talking to him with much enthusiasm.
I guess they’ve known each other for a long time.
Probably travelled between each other’s tribes in the days before the sickness changed everything for the raskarrans.
It’s heartwarming, the way their eyes light up as they talk, and the way Namson puts an arm round Hannah’s shoulder and introduces her with the pride of a father.
Hannah looks shy, but unlike the younger males, the elders only have friendly curiosity.
They grip Hannah’s arm in greeting, but there’s none of the intensity in their gaze that the younger males display.
Then everyone arrives all at once, loud, joyous voices drowning out the sounds of chopping and slicing.
Somehow, there seems to be even more raskarrans now than when they were all arrayed at the edge of the village, their big bodies crowding around the fire.
But even bigger than their physical shape is their interest in us girls.
Their eyes search us out, even when they’re talking with someone else, and I feel the weight of their gazes all the time, tickling over the back of my neck as I slice my roots.
At a bark from Namson, the raskarrans jump to assist with the cooking, and before long, everything is prepped and handed over to Hannah for cooking.
She stirs one enormous pot full of broth while mixing the contents of another smaller bowl with one hand, kneading at it as she sprinkles in some of Namson’s collection of dried herbs.
Namson has charge of the meat, roasting some of the salted ensouka from Callif’s ill-fated hunt.
Our jobs done, we shuffle down to one end of the fire, sitting all together.
Normally, Liv would sit with Gregar, but today she sticks with us.
Rachel and Ellie, too. Lorna sits next to Shemza, but he faces towards his brothers, and she faces us, his tail looped around her waist as if he can’t bear to be separate from her entirely.
Or perhaps letting everyone know she’s taken. Shemza isn’t so snarly and possessive as Gregar or Vantos, but that instinct to claim definitely still exists in him. When the unmated males from Darran’s tribe turn their gazes on her, they’ll see Shemza’s tail and quickly move on.
Jaskry appears with a very sleepy-looking Sally, setting down her special chair for her, folding and refolding the furs before she sits down.
Jassal goes straight to her mother’s side, sitting at her feet and resting her little head on Sally’s knee.
Sally strokes a hand over her daughter’s hair, asking her something in a voice too low for me to hear.
It makes my heart constrict in my chest, seeing such tenderness between them. Even on this alien world, there are so many things that remind me of my mother.
I know I shouldn’t torture myself, that the circumstances aren’t my fault and I have nothing to feel bad about.
But I can’t help picturing Mom back home on Earth without me.
Checking her messages, playing through each of the alerts from Mercenia one by one.
Reduced rations for the next week due to wheat shortages.
Repair works in the clothing sector. Allow ten extra minutes to arrive at your workstations on time.
Adjustment to curfew - permit now required for anyone out past nine pm.
She’ll listen through all of them with a light of hope in her heart, that light diminishing with every message that passes that isn’t from me.
I touch a hand to my locket. Close my fingers around it through my top.
I don’t know how far from Alpha Colony we were when the ship malfunctioned and we were forced into the escape pod, crash landing here on the raskarran planet.
But we’d been travelling for some weeks, and I think the journey was only supposed to take three months.
With the time that’s passed here, I’m pretty sure that we should have arrived at Alpha Colony by now, that Mom would be reasonable to expect to hear from me soon.
I feel the touch of a hand on my arm. Lorna, looking at me with concern in her eyes.
“You alright, Carrie?”
She keeps her voice low enough that I doubt the girls sitting around us can hear, never mind the raskarrans - who might not know our language, but whose attention can still be drawn by voices.
I release the locket, but my throat is so tight I can barely get air down it, never mind words out. I just nod, then tap my head and mouth ‘home’.
Lorna nods, but doesn’t say anything, just wraps her arms around me in a swift embrace. She always seems to know when to lean into my silence and when to talk over it.
Soon, Hannah and Namson declare the food ready, and we’re busy for a while passing round bowls and cutlery, serving up big spoonfuls of broth and juicy chunks of meat.
The herby mixture has transformed into something similar to a bread roll, and smells delicious.
I take a nibble on mine while I wait in line for the meat, savouring the soft, fluffy texture and the freshly baked heat of it.
The girls chat while they eat, discussing how good the food is, showering Hannah with praise that she soaks up, smiling brighter with every passing moment.
I open my mouth to add my compliments, but of course no sound comes out.
I take a few sips of breath, visualising the words in my mind, practise shaping them with my lips.
Sometimes this works, but it’s a slow process.
By the time I think I might be ready to actually speak, the conversation has moved on to laundry, and techniques for hanging it out in the limited space of the huts.
I shrink down into my chair. The girls try, they really do, but it’s difficult to include someone in a conversation when they can’t speak.
When they wait for me to answer a question, the pressure of their silence makes it impossible for me to say anything, so they’ve taken to just not asking me anything.
But that means I fade into the background, always on the edge of things. Forgotten. Invisible.
I hate it. I hate this thing that has its claws in my windpipe. I hate how it’s robbed me of language over the weeks since we arrived here. First making me stutter and pause, then making me say each word as if it were a sentence of its own. And now silencing me completely.