Nights of Alsitor: Xanthe & Narciss Ch. 02

Xanthe awoke to sunlight. From the platform high in the tree, the sunrise came much earlier than the lowland swamp she had grown up in. There was a plate of strange nuts and fruits beside her on the dry, well-sanded planks, and a small block of cereal loaf. She sat up and ate breakfast as the sun came up, glittering over the expansive desert that surrounded the oasis.

As she'd finished eating, she nimbly hopped down the gnarled trunks of the live-oak, touching down on the carefully-maintained graphene-soil moisture turf, wandering off. Xanthe spent a good three hours wandering the oasis- at that time of the week, most of the boys that would have been playing in the waterfall or helping to weave baskets and hunt scorpions all over the oasis were back either in their caravans or one of the shimmering desert cities- Xanthe's time at the oasis had been carefully planned. She wandered the camp in amazement, wondering at the science to maintain such a lush biome in that unforgiving sun.

She'd abandoned her heavy cloak once the sun neared its zenith, and lounged by a clear pool, fully naked under the shade of a date-palm, her sides and flanks still painted with red and black figures. The sound of a bell startled her, and as it kept ringing she followed it up to a wide, low-roofed hut balanced between seven trees over the top of a small waterfall. She entered the hut, finding Narcissus sitting cross-legged on the thick-roped mesh net that the roof was built over. There was a cutting-board in the middle of the hammock-floor, as long as a man and covered with bowls of diced vegetables, piles of spices, and several short, curved knives. Narcissus had a burlap bag on his lap and as he saw Xanthe approach, he opened it and reached inside.

"Salutations," he said, "I hope you slept well?"

"Yes, Cxyeiur," Xanthe answered, using the polite honorific for speak to a Myieaoul, "And I'm grateful for breakfast."

"Oh? You enjoyed it?" He answered, pulling from the bag a large brown dune-hare with double-black stripes running down it's back. "Good, you'll like lunch even better. Have you thought about what I asked you last night?"

Xanthe nodded. The hours she had whiled away around the oasis were spent mostly reliving the dream that had been the night before. "Yes, and I'm ready to answer your question."

"Alright. Are you afraid?"

"No."

"Why not?" Narcissus asked, looking calmly into her eyes as he grabbed the hare's head and twisted, snapping its neck. Xanthe gasped as the body twitched, and Narcissus grabbed a knife from the cutting-board and began flicking it up the rodent's belly. "You're far from home, in a strange land. You're at the mercy of a complete stranger, you don't have a clue who I really am." He had neatly separated the hare's flesh from its fur and scooped the offal into an empty pot. "You see this?" He pointed the bloody knife at a cluster of dried, dark-red fruits. "We grow these peppers special here. They have an amazing property, the flavor of a glowing-hot ember, inflicting burns on whoever tastes it... and not just their mouths. See this?" He picked up a dried scorpion and turned it over in her view. "They have a stinger with powerful venom. We take it and make a tincture that can be mixed with wine, a powerful soporific that renders its drinker helpless to fight back. For all you know, I'm putting some into lunch right now. Are you so naive as to think there's no danger here? Do you think the only purpose of this tribute is to teach you not to care for your own safety?"

Already pale by her ethnicity, she grew even paler as Narcissus, as he was talking, chopped the hare up by joints and dropped them into a pot hanging from a rope. He untied a rope stringing from a lever and lowered the pot down to the fire on the ground below.

"Lunch will be ready in two finger-widths of the sun. You may have the day to enjoy the oasis however you please. Tonight, I will try the initiation again."

Hours later, the sun was down and torches were lit around the platform on the high tree, where Xanthe stood, bare-skinned and with a stern face. Narcissus looked back.

"I'm going to give you an order," he repeated in a rumbling baritone, the torchlight playing across the lines of his taught muscles, "And you're going to obey. Do you understand?"

"I understand," Xanthe answered, squeezing her clammy palms.

"Tell me what you feel."

"I feel nervous, and excited, but I am not afraid." She spoke with certainty.

"Why are you not afraid?" he asked calmly, listening intently.

Xanthe clenched her fists, taking a deep breath and straightening her back to look up at Narcissus without flinching. "I trust you."

Narcissus gazed at her. A smile crept onto his face, growing wider and wider until a toothy grin pushed his eyes shut. "Good," he answered, putting his hands on her shoulders, "That's good, Xanthe. That's very good." He reached back and pulled something from his belt, lifting it to Xanthe's neck. He dragged it under her hair and twisted it around her neck; a leather strap, lined in fine, smooth, velvety fur that Xanthe realized had come from the hare, with the two ears draping down the front like ribbons, the white fluffy tail on the back, four hare's-feet resting on her shoulders, and the edges lined with a double-black stripe.

"I, Narcissus, claim you, Xanthe, as my ward and prisoner. This charm marks your status under my control, and its talismans shall ward off danger and ill fortune." He took her hand and turned around, walking off, his face still chiseled into that grin. "Come. Let's begin."