Cultivating Heroism Page 4

  The pain eased and he moaned with relief as the spasms in his back ceased. He went completely limp for a moment, rolling onto his front and ending up with his face in the mud.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, pulling him back around by his shoulders. She kneeled by his side, resting her palms on his chest and peering over him. Her bright white hair framed her face like a halo, and the tips of it tickled his face.

  “How did you do that?”

  “Oh, my specialty is healing. I’m an okay fighter, but the aftermath is where I do my best work.” Her smile was adorable and revealed bright white teeth. “You are okay, though? You still look a little pale.” She rested the back of her hand on his forehead for a few seconds.

  “Just… in shock, I think.”

  Her eyes widened in alarm, “Then I need to—”

  “Joking. I was joking. I’m fine.” Mack pushed himself onto his elbows, and suddenly their faces were far too close. His gaze flicked to her lips for just a second.

  She stood up before he could do something stupid, and gestured to the old man who was now checking that everything on their small wooden wagon was still intact. “This is my father.”

  “Right,” Mack said. “Nice to meet you both. I’m Mack.”

  “I’m Kaarina. My dad is Raita.”

  Mack finally pushed himself up onto his feet. He expected his legs to be shaky, but he felt as though he was good as new. He’d had a mortal wound, and Kaarina had healed it as though it was nothing, and now she stood beaming up at him from her short stature of what must have been only five feet.

  He expected Raita to give him a lecture for how he knew he’d been eyeing up the man’s daughter, but instead Raita turned and gave a low bow. “I owe you my life. The best I can offer is a feast, in your honor.”

  Mack’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, I don’t know—”

  “Nonsense!” Kaarina said. “You just saved our lives single-handedly! You have to let us give something back. Please. It would mean a lot to me.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the temple he’d rushed out of. Jakke had been calling him to come back and hear more about the powers he’d been granted, but all he’d said for certain was that Mack couldn’t go back to Earth. Going back to the temple might arouse suspicion and lead to someone following him there, too. “How far away would we be going?” he asked.

  He could come back and listen to what Jakke had to say in the morning, couldn’t he? After all, it was just a hologram. Right now, he was intrigued by the dainty woman in front of him who had healed his wounds so easily. If he was going to find out more about this planet he’d rashly committed to spending an indefinite length of time on, wasn’t the best place to learn about it from the locals?

  “Oh, just a twenty-minute walk,” Kaarina said. “It’s not fair. And you can ride in the wagon! We wouldn’t make you walk, not when you’ve just been injured like that.” She moved behind him now to get another look at his wound. She fingered the hole in his shirt that had been left behind. “These are funny looking fighting clothes, by the way.”

  Mack laughed. He was still wearing a pair of black slacks and a white shirt with navy tie that he’d had on at the office. “I wasn’t anticipating fighting when I put them on this morning.”

  Kaarina pulled at his tie and wrinkled her nose. “And this can only be a disadvantage in combat.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind next time.”

  “So, you’re coming back to eat with us?”

  “As long as you can bring me back here afterward.”

  Kaarina’s nose stayed wrinkled. “Why would you want to come back here?”

  “I have things that I need to do, uh, in a nearby town.” He figured staying vague was his best bet. He had no idea what exactly he was doing here, or how much people knew about the warriors and the temple and Jakke. Kaarina and Raita might not even be trustworthy.

  Just as he was about to make an excuse to stay, Raika had begun to usher Mack into the seat of the cart.

  Mack protested, saying he would rather stretch his legs. He ended up convincing the elderly man to ride in the wagon as they went back to their village so that he could have a feast.

  It was all so surreal that his mind had stopped protesting. It was easier to just go with the flow. And if the last fight had taught him anything, it was that trusting his instincts was the right way to go.

  His instincts were telling him to keep Kaarina close by his side for now.

  Chapter Five

  “So, what are you doing here?” Kaarina asked as they walked behind the wagon. Raita was keeping a lookout from atop the transportation, occasionally bellowing a sharp command to the bulky creature that pulled it, which his daughter and Mack just out of earshot thanks to the creaking of the wooden wagon being dragged over uneven earth.

  Mack hesitated just long enough for her to know that whatever he told her wasn’t going to be the truth.

  She held up a hand, “You don’t have to tell me, of course. I understand how important keeping secrets is nowadays. You saved my life, so it’s not like I don’t trust you. I was just making conversation, is all. You look like you could almost be keiju, but for the ears, right? And I’ve never seen keiju with brown eyes before, it’s so strange.” She peered at him closer.

  He would have responded, but he couldn’t get a word with her excited rambling. And he did like to hear her sweet voice.

  “Do you have one keiju parent, do you think? Still, your ears aren’t even a little bit pointy.” She tapped the end of hers with a toothy grin.

  “I’m human,” he responded.

  “Human.” She pronounced the word as though it was foreign. He still didn’t know how the translation worked between them. It was easier to just act like everything was magic for now. “I’ve never heard of it before,” she continued.

  “We’re not common here.”

  “That makes sense. I’m not going to press you on where you are common.” She winked. “But I’m just glad that you’re here.”

  “What’s in the wagon?”

  “Oh, just food mostly. We were just on the other side of this barren hell hole trading our goods. My father is a blacksmith, but the only place we can get any real wares for ours is if we make the trek out to Novu, and it’s just so dangerous nowadays. Still, we’ll starve otherwise. We have so much tax to pay, if we stuck to trading within the village there wouldn’t be enough food for anyone.”

  “They still tax you, when people are living like this?”

  Kaarina glanced away. “Our Lord has kept us away from the worst of it. He can take what he pleases in exchange.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Well don’t say that too loudly when we get back to the village, or you’ll be putting all our lives on the line.”

  Mack wanted to ask her what had happened to this area, to see if he could get more answers than he’d had from Jakke, but that would reveal how out of place he was on Hauta, and he didn’t think that was a good idea yet. “I’ll keep my mouth shut,” he promised instead.

  They made it back to the village quickly, and he was stunned by how small it was. There couldn’t have been more than a dozen houses in the whole place, and they all surrounded a town square with trees hovering over a long table with benches either side. They were simple buildings of wooden boards and thatched roofs. The trees had yellow leaves and the wood was purple—both the wood of the trees, and of the tables and benches—but other than that it was almost easy to pretend that this was somewhere on Earth, maybe only from several centuries ago.

  As soon as the wagon trundled into town, people swarmed out of houses. Two people carried a huge pot of some sort of delicious smelling food that they set down in the center of the table.

  “It’s only simple,” Kaarina said, shifting her weight. “I hope you like it.”

  “It smells amazing.”

  Kaarina beamed up at him.

  Then people finally reached them. Raita said something in
a low voice that Mack couldn’t hear to someone who looked like the matriarch of the group. She was a short, older woman who wore a very thick woolen cloak around her shoulders despite the temperature being quite mild. Her face was saggy as though she’d once been plump and lost the weight too quickly. Many of the people around them looked like little more than skin and bone.

  The woman came straight up to Mack, and he tried not to be too stiff as he waited to see whether she would accept him or not.

  She dipped into a much limber bow than he’d anticipated and wore a wide grin when she stood back up straight. “Hello, Mack. Welcome to Alavu. I’m Minna.”

  After Minna had given her approval, any tension in the group seemed to disappear. Mack was ushered forward to the table, where he was given what seemed to be a prime spot in the middle of the bench, right in front of the pot of food that was making his stomach rumble.

  He had no concept of time after being transported through space to Hauta, but the sun seemed to be setting in the sky, and he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  Kaarina took the seat beside him, and they were pressed tightly together so that everyone could fit onto the benches. Minna took an earthenware bowl and dolloped a large portion of whatever was in the pot into it. On a plate she put a piece of something black. It looked like bread.

  “Enjoy,” she said with that same wide smile.

  He knew he probably should have waited until everyone had been served, but he ripped a piece from the bread and dipped it immediately into what turned out to be a stew, with meat and what must have been vegetables soaked in a brown gravy brimming with spices.

  The bread wasn’t dry like he’d expected from the color, but was crusty and soft and soaked up the gravy just right. He burned his mouth in his eagerness but didn’t care. “This is so good,” he said to Kaarina in between mouthfuls. “Like seriously, I haven’t eaten something like this in I don’t know how long.” It was spicy but not enough to make his eyes water, and full of flavor from the meat and veg. The others had also begun to eat. Mack was glad he hadn’t inadvertently begun before some alien elf equivalent of saying grace.

  Kaarina hadn’t even touched her own bowl and bread, but had instead been watching him intently, presumably waiting for a reaction. She seemed to like the one she got. “Good! I’m so glad we could at least give you something back.”

  “I don’t want you to feel like you owe me,” he said, though he was enjoying the slight hero-worship he was getting from her. “I just did the right thing.”

  “No, you risked your life for me.” She cleared her throat. “For me and my father. Not a lot of people would do that. Not around here, not anymore. They are too jaded by the cruel land they live in.”

  He almost blurted out that he wasn’t from around here without thinking, but managed to keep his mouth shut. If he was from nearby, he might have taken offense. Only, the people in this village were anything jaded. Rather than reply, he just nodded and continued to enjoy the food, observing the good natured people at the table.

  He could tell they were bad cuts of meat in the stew and Kaarina had said that they were taxed heavily, but everyone was jolly as they talked animatedly to each other. Whatever their situation, they didn’t seem to be letting it affect them.

  A wine skin was passed down the table to Mack, and the woman on his left side put an earthenware tankard in front of him. He poured from the large wine skin until the tankard was nearly full and then passed it on.

  His first mouthful made his eyes sting. “Not wine,” he said, throat burning. “Definitely not wine.”

  Kaarina giggled, and Mack noticed that she had just a small amount in the bottom of her own mug. “I thought you were just being brave. Have you never had Senko before?”

  “I can’t say that I have.” It tastes like drinking straight vodka, and cheap straight vodka at that. There was no way he’d be getting down the whole mug of it he’d poured himself.

  “It’ll grow on you.” She winked. “Or you’ll drink too much of it tonight and never touch it again. It goes one way or the other.”

  He laughed and took another, much daintier, sip. It didn’t taste quite so bad that time.

  The people around him were eager to hear the tale of how he’d saved the lives of Raita and Kaarina, but he kept the details to a minimum. It was Kaarina who gushed about it, leaning against his side and explaining to everyone who was listening how brave he’d been.

  People all seemed enamored by the tale except for one guy, who watched Mack with narrowed amber eyes that weren’t subtle in their hatred.

  “What’s up with that one guy?” Mack asked Kaarina when people had turned to listen to a nostalgic memory of the village from Minna.

  Kaarina shifted her weight in her seat and angled herself away from the guy in question. “That’s Okko. He asked for my hand and I declined.”

  “As in, marriage?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. Still, I mean I don’t know why he’d be staring me down for that. I haven’t done anything.”

  Kaarina gave him a flat look. “Exactly.”

  Mack quirked a brow, and she just shook her head.

  “Yeah. Anyway, he’s a bit of a hothead so I’d try not to provoke him if I were you.”

  “I’m not trying to provoke anyone.”

  Kaarina opened her mouth but was cut off by sudden movement from people at the other end of the table. They were getting up and moving to the open space in the town square.

  “Oh, they’re going to perform,” Kaarina said. “You really have been welcomed.”

  Mack swallowed a large lump of bread he hadn’t chewed properly to ask, “Perform?”

  “Look.” She gestured at the men and women who were now standing in a circle in front of the bench. They’d picked the side that meant Mack could see everything without having to turn in his seat. “All the generations are represented. It’s a showcase of our village, of our skills, our magic too.”

  “Magic? Teho…” Mack uttered carelessly.

  Kaarina chuckled delightfully. “Teho No, of course not. That’s practically just legend these days. Our people have our own natural magics, though.”

  They formed a line in front of the table, going from oldest at the outside to the youngest in the middle. The routine started off almost like gymnastics or cheerleading, with the younger of the villagers flinging one teenage girl into the air where she twisted and tumbled more elegantly and quickly than any human could. The keiju must have had improved reflexes of some sort. Or maybe that was to do with this magic of theirs.

  It wasn’t just the acrobatic skill that was nearly superhuman, though. As she tumbled, villagers from the periphery emitted beams of light from their hands that came scarily close to hitting the tumbling girl but always just missed despite the speed at which she moved. There was no apparent heat created by the lights, so Mack god the belated impression that it was just a visual illusion or something. Nonetheless, it was impressive!

  Mack stopped chewing mid-mouthful, in awe of the display. Kaarina’s magic had been insanely powerful, bringing him back from the brink of death, but it hadn’t been flashy like this. It was almost easy to ignore that it had happened at all because he’d barely felt the pain of the wound before it had disappeared again. Out of side and out of mind. Right now, he could see the reality that his brain had been trying to ignore.

  He really was on another planet, with magical beings that were performing in front of him like all this was completely normal.

  The girl landed in the arms of the people who had flung her, but there was no waiting for her to recover before she was flung straight back up again. And she wasn’t the only one. The people throwing her must have been stronger than the average human, too, because the height she reached when they tossed her up was taller than a two-story building.

  Mack was too focused on her going so high into the sky to notice that the trees had moved until they were wrapping around her arms and keeping her suspended. He
blinked, sure he must be imagining the way the twigs had curled around her arms like vines. However, surely enough, it happened to two other keiju as they were also flung into the air. There were three of them being held there now. It was a damn sight more impressive than any human pyramid he’d seen during a halftime show for a college sporting event.

  He finally looked down, needing to figure out how it was being done, and saw that the elder people of the village were standing in a strong stance, feet shoulder width apart and legs slightly bent. They moved their arms with the movements of the trees.

  “They’re really doing that? Moving the trees?” Mack couldn’t help but ask, leaning close to Kaarina to make sure his ignorance wasn’t evident to the villagers who stood nearby watching the performance.

  “Of course,” Kaarina whispered back. Her face was so close that her breath tickled his ear. It gave him chills, and they were the good kind. Mack glanced briefly at Okko, who was staring intensely at them. Maybe he could see why Okko was annoyed after all. “Being able to manipulate another living thing like that is very powerful magic. They’ve trained their whole lives to be this proficient in it.”

  “It’s incredible,” Mack said.

  Kaarina beamed at him again.

  The keiju and the trees were now working in tandem to perform a kind of dance, filled with gymnastic moves that made his eyes boggle. The trees would fling the villagers even higher into the air so they could twist and tumble before being caught again. The villages were manipulating their bodies around the branches like they were gymnast’s bars, and all the time people from the ground were putting on the light show with their magic.

  It was all over as quickly as it had begun, and Mack was left staring open-mouthed. He began to clap instinctively and realized quickly that people were staring at him as if he’d gone mad.

  “It means I’m incredibly impressed in my culture,” he hurried out. “That was amazing.”