“Hey! Wait!” He ran after her.
This girl, he knew for a certainty, had never been sent to his hut in the morning. He knew because he was always disappointed that it wasn’t her. There was something wrong with this female. She wasn’t accepted in the village. He’d seen her a couple of times, hanging around outside the circle, always in the mornings. She sat up in the trees watching the women and children with an expression of resentment and want. She had reminded him a little of a dog he’d had as a kid, shut out of the house by the servants and sitting at the back door intently, desperate to be let in.
She must have done something to get herself booted, but he didn’t know what and, at the moment, he didn’t much care.
When he caught up with her she was sitting up in a tree. She looked down at him blandly and ate from the plate, picking up the meat delicately with her fingers.
Denton paused beneath the tree, breathing hard. “What’s your name?”
She didn’t even look at him.
“Let me think.” He tapped his chin. “I will call you… Mary. Why do you not eat with the other people, Mary?”
She sighed, her mouth full, but didn’t look up from her meal.
His eyes were adjusting to the starlight and he could make her out well enough, done up in shades of blue. God, she was beautiful. Her face… He really liked that face.
The Sapphians were not mental giants as a rule. Perhaps it was just the simplicity of their lifestyle and lack of education. After all, what was there to talk about? There was no Frasier or Friends to discuss, no Howard Stern. And the females… Even thinking it made the lump throb, but he had to admit that they were all starting to look alike to him, that making love to them was starting to feel… dang… it was starting to feel a little like having sex with cute animals.
And that was not a place he wanted to go in his mind. Because if he really went there he might eventually have to stop, and that would suck.
This one’s face, though… there was something different about her. There was something other than bland cooperation in her eyes; there was sadness, a depth. Or maybe he was just freaking imagining it.
“Will you come down and talk to me, Mary?”
“My name is Eyanna.”
He smiled. It was a bit rude, but she was communicating at least. “But ‘Mary’ is easy for me—”
“Eyanna.”
Yes, definitely rude. He grinned. “Okay. Ee-yaah-ña.” He said it a couple of times. “Will you come down and talk to me, Eyanna? I won’t hurt you.”
She laughed, as if to say he couldn’t hurt her if he tried.
“You don’t think I could catch you, huh? You’re probably right. I’m too big to climb trees.”
He wracked his brain. He wanted to lure her down, but he didn’t have a whole lot on him. He pulled out his wallet. He had plenty of cash, but he didn’t think that would interest her. He dug around in one pocket and pulled out some old snapshots.
There was a head shot of an ex-girlfriend, an actress. She was a blonde with big hair, a cute girl. He put the others back.
“This is for you.” He held it out.
She didn’t come down, but she looked at it. He held it as high as he could and tilted it into the starlight. “A female, you see? Very pretty. Come look.”
She finished her food, taking her time. His arm got tired holding up the damned picture, but he thought it was working. She tossed the plate to the ground and slowly, keeping her eyes on him, she began to climb down.
At the base of the tree she stood, watching him, as if telling him with her eyes that she wouldn’t put up with any funny business.
He held the picture out to her. “Take it.”
She took a step forward and stretched out her long arm. She took the photo, staying as far from him as possible. She stared at it at the front, then the back, then the front again, her eyes wide.
“I want to be your friend.” Denton smiled. “Here.”
He reached toward her. He only meant to take her wrist and pull her a little farther into the light so she could see the photograph better. But at his movement she was gone, quick as a cat, bounding into the trees.
It was Wednesday, by Denton’s reckoning. He and John and the other males they worked with were at the waterfall having a swim. It was a gorgeous day and the swim was a nice change, but Denton wasn’t feeling too happy. The lump in his throat was worse.
Doctor, it hurts when I do that.
So don’t do that.
Only he wasn’t sure what it was he was doing or how he could stop.
The waterfall was loud this close-up. The Sapphians had brought him to a perfect spot, close to the waterfall but not right beneath it. The water was fast in the middle of the stream, but at the sides there were still pools and some nice big rocks for lounging. He and John were lounging on one right now. The three males were swimming lazily in the water. Denton waved.
“Hey, John?”
“Yes, Denton?”
Denton loved the way John said his name—it sounded like “downtown” and always made him smile.
“I wanted to ask you this for a long time. What does allook saheed mean? Saheed is God, yes?”
The boy was stretched out on his back, his right hand in the water as if, consciously or unconsciously, he was hiding his deformity. Now he sat up. His right hand came out of the water, and he watched it dripping the wet onto his lap as if giving it some thought.
“Yes. And allook is a thing one person gives another person, something nice.”
“Like a ‘gift’ or a ‘present’?” Denton tried to explain the English words with pantomime.
“Yes,” John said, “that is the way.”
Allook saheed. Gift from God. That was nice.
John looked shyly into his eyes. “Do you know… I am also called allook saheed.”
“Yeah? You mean, all Sapphians are allook saheed? Gifts from God?” Denton felt a little bit disappointed.
“No, not all.” Looking humiliated now, as if it were a big deal to acknowledge it, he held up his withered hand. “But I am called allook saheed because of this.”
“Oh.”
Denton thought he understood. John was unique because of his hand, and Denton was unique also. The Sapphians acknowledged that specialness and that was, you know, kind of a mature way of looking at things. It was like the way some Indian tribes thought insanity was a blessing from God. Mysterious World had done an article on that once.
Now that he thought about it, John was treated pretty well by the others. He was never teased about his hand or shut out of reindeer games or anything. And he seemed to have as much access to females as any of the other males. That was cool.
He’d never seen the Sapphians mistreat anyone. Except Eyanna.
“Hey, John? There is a female named Eyanna. She is very beautiful. None of the people talk to her and she stays up in the trees.”
“Yes, I know that one.”
“Why does no one talk to her?”
John looked at the others, as if to see if they were listening. They were not that close and the waterfall was loud. He turned to Denton, folding his long legs in front of him. His face was serious.
“It is best to forget this female, friend.”
“Why?”
“Because it is best to follow the ways of the people. The people do not talk to this female or even say her name.”
“Why?”
John shook his head. In Sapphian that didn’t mean “no” but “you’re stubborn” or something like that; it was a mild censor. “Why do you want this female when you can have every other one?”
“Because I can have every other one.”
It took John a minute to get it; then he laughed and laughed. He seemed to find this extremely funny. Denton laughed, too, but he didn’t drop the subject.