HIDE by Biltong

Daniel… or is it Jack lost and alone on a mysterious planet. You decide whom.

I found him lying to one side of the Ancient Eye, in the forbidden area. We had been told by the elders to report any trespassers, indeed, thinking back, I should have done so immediately.

Why hadn’t I? It would have made my standing so much better with the regime.

Maybe it was the fact that he was obviously hurt, and kind of cute.

He was obviously a traveller from another place, anyone could see that from his sturdy boots and back pack. How anyone could hurt himself at the site of the Ancient eye I don’t know, it is as flat as can be for centrums in any direction. When he saw me he held out his hand and said something completely incomprehensible.

So I helped him. I defied centuries of training and stepped into the forbidden area and pulled him out. His leg was obviously broken, but I had no choice. The alternative was death. Surely he knew that?

Just where I got the strength from I don’t know. I snuck in, grabbed him under the arms and pulled. He immediately screamed intelligibly and became a dead weight, complicating matters, but somehow I succeeded, and just in time too, because the militia patrol drove past us not even an eye blink later.

They immediately began heckling me about taking in another stray, something I’m known for, but I didn’t mind. Rather let them think that I’m a mad old lady that a cunning terrorist, or as I prefer, a freedom fighter.

If they really knew what I got to up at my isolated cabin I would be killed on the spot. The regime dislikes resistance.

Leaving his still form in the shade of a Jolipat tree I rushed to call Bellin and Anat, praying that he didn’t awake before I returned. I was fortunate in my choice of comrades that day, 

Bellim lifted weights for what he called fun, and petite Anat was our local healer. 

This man was in need of both of their services.

To my relief, the stranger was still lying where I had left him when we returned, and Bellin wasted no time in carrying his limp form to the trap, then with a flick of my whip, Mischin pulled us home.

It was there, in the safety of my home that we realised that we had found more than another stray.

What we had was…an alien. A person not from our world.

The blood was our first clue, that and Anat shrieking and falling onto her backside.

I was in the kitchen when I heard the crash. 

Being so attuned to anything unusual, I had my weapon in my hands and was halfway up the stairs before my brain registered the location of the crash. So the stray wasn’t so docile after all.

Ordering the others downstairs, Bellin and I carefully entered the room only to find that nothing much had changed. The stray was still unconscious. The only thing different from normal was Anat curled up in the corner. Mutely she gestured towards the stranger making us peer at his still form curiously. And then we saw the blood. He looked like us, a biped, all his features in all the right places and so on, but no one born on Rahmin ever had blood that colour.

At first we were in denial, obviously, an alien here was completely unheard of. There had been legends of people coming through the Ancient eye, only to die here, but they were stories to scare children, so we had thought.

So we were wrong. So what?

Angrily I berated my companions. So he may not be a native of Rahmin, he was still in pain with a broken leg, making it our duty to set it.

It took quite a while to convince Anat that the stray was harmless, why, had he not appealed to me for help when I had first seen him?

Unfortunately, during this time of uncertainty from our companion the stray had made signs of awakening, forcing Bellin to put him back into unconsciousness.

Why he had to hit him so hard I don’t know, maybe it was because Bellin himself was wary of the stray as well. Suffice it to say that the he would be sporting two pains when he awoke again, his leg, and his jaw.

I took some doing, but eventually we managed to convince Anat that no one was going to kill her, and she once more began to attend to the man. We watched as she carefully wiped the area around the protruding bone with cool water before setting his leg. The stray behaved beautifully, staying deeply unconscious the whole time. He was lucky, even if he didn’t know it quite yet. 

Anat was the consummate professional when it came to broken bones, we had given her enough practice in our missions over the years. It was that reason why we were so horrified when the stray’s skin began to blister and peel around the area where she had set the bone.

We were at our wits end. Anat grabbed some water and started to bathe the area frantically, assuming that he had some sort of acid in his system, maybe even in his own blood, but nothing happened, in fact, the skin only seemed to be getting worse, exposing his deep tissue and muscle to our horrified gaze.

It was Bellin who had the answer. Big slow Bellin, still a child at heart who knew what the problem was.

"Through the eye they came

Intent on making hell

Rahmin sent down a gentle rain

And they were buried where they fell."

It was a child’s song, one that adults soon forgot once the pressures of life began to weigh them down. Trust Bellin to remember it.

I was over by Anat’s side in a flash, knocking her hand away.

It was the water.

If our stray was indeed an alien that had somehow come through the Ancient eye, and if the song still held true after all the centuries, then our water could kill him.

This caused another problem. If the stray were to get better, he would need to drink. Without water he would die. The problem was compounded by the fact that all our food contained some amount of water in it. Anat met my eyes, communicating her despair. 

No one liked to see another in pain, like we had unknowing caused this stray. He would wake up in agony unless we could find some way of alleviating his pain. How?

Fruit juice?

I sent Bellin outside to the Quinat tree to get a large juicy quee, hoping against hope that the sharp juice wouldn’t be toxic. He was back in a flash, our urgency communicating itself quite well.

Anat offered up a prayer to Umin as she gently wiped the pulp onto one of the strays toes.

There was no reaction.

We could have cried in relief.

The Quinat tree was poison to every person on Rahmin. 

My husband had planted the tree a month before the regime had him killed, intending to use the juice from it’s fruit to kill as many elders as he could. Needless to say, they got him before he managed to get them. 

I myself had never had the heart to use the fruit for anything as cruel as that. 

Death by quee fruit is an agonising way to go.

Of course the stray would show no reaction. My theory of what was poison to us would be fine for him held true. Not that I would allow him to eat any though, just in case.

We watched as Anat hastily used the fruit to wipe the blistered area clean and bound his leg. She was just in time, because the stray was beginning to moan.

Then he opened his eyes.

Merciful Umin I had not noticed the colour of his eyes before.

I found myself pressed up against the wall, my heart in my mouth and my weapon aimed squarely at his head.

His eyes…were the colour of dejebells in spring. Absolutely impossible.

Every person on the entire planet had the same colour eyes. There were no exceptions.

Apart from the stray.

It was then that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had to go back. We could not hide such a person from the elders, and besides, he would die of malnutrition even if we tried.

We watched him closely, about as closely as he watched us.

It was strange really, I could see the fear and pain in his eyes just as clearly as I would in one of my comrades eyes, had they been lying there. He was suffering, pale faced and sweaty but we dare not give him anything and were unable to communicate this to him. How cruel he must have thought we were.

After an initial hesitation, Anat tried to talk to him, to no avail. His language seemed to consist of a smooth gibberish with none of the strong clicks and accents easily in our own language.

Wondering how he managed to express his feelings in his own world, I wandered to the window, watching the last of the suns dip below the horizon, struggling to get my thoughts in order.

I could feel his eyes following me, instinctively figuring me as the leader of this bunch. 

Clever man.

Slowly twilight took the land, until it was full night. The moons would rise towards morning, as they always did during summer cycle, allowing us plenty of darkness. 

Usually we would put this time to good use, but not tonight. Tonight we would return the stray to the Ancient eye, where he would either find his way home, or die.

My mind made up I turned to my companions. They knew what my decision was even before I opened my mouth, so attuned to each other were we.

Strangely enough, even the stray seemed to realise that we were trying to help him, or maybe the pain was so great that he was beyond caring anymore. Whatever the reason was, he made no attempt to prevent Bellin from once more carrying him towards the trap. In fact he made the only intelligent word he ever spoke on the way down.

He said Teal’c.

He said Teal’c in a wondering voice full of such hope that I knew that he was talking about a different thing that what we knew a Teal’c to be. We used Teal’c to pave our roads with; hardly something that one would form an attachment to.

Nevertheless, it was a word that we recognised, a word that made him just that little bit more approachable.

As expected, Mischin wasn’t pleased to be pulled out to do duty at night; she snorted and protested volubly, startling the stray. Obviously he had never seen such a creature before.

I smiled and tried to tell him that she was harmless, but he didn’t seem understand.

Then we were off, back to the Ancient eye. Bellin sat in front with me, leaving Anat in the back to attend to her patient. Mischen’s impatient clops covered my voice as I gave quiet instructions to Bellin. I was aware that the stray had no idea of our language; nevertheless, I didn’t want my conversation to be overheard at all. Somehow the man might intuitively understand that I was giving instructions on the method of his death.

We were going to take him to the Ancient eye and leave him there. Hopefully he could find a way to return to his own world. If not, well I had reluctantly given Bellin permission to kill him.

He was an injured animal with nowhere to hide. If he could not get home then the humane thing would be to kill him. This would be Bellin’s job.

Hopefully he would not be needed.

We arrived at the eye just as the sliver of the first moon was beginning to silver the horizon, making the countryside stand out in sharp relief. Carefully, trying not to make a sound we carried him to where I had found him that morning, seemingly so long ago now.

There we left him and returned to the trap, avoiding Bellin who was sitting motionless, his weapon carefully trained on the man.

Leaning against the side of the trap I gazed back, only to gasp in dismay. The stray was looking straight at Bellin. Somehow he knew what Bellin had been ordered to do.

Then he did a strange thing. He saluted Bellin, one warrior to another, and shakily pulled himself to his feet or rather, foot.

We watched quietly as he hopped towards the Ancient table, pressing his fingers on the glyphs.

Then we dived under the trap as he somehow made the glyphs glow with accompanying loud thuds.

Merciful Umin, the noise that he made should have woken the dead. Luckily the Ancient eye was nowhere near any residential dwelling, so we were still safe unless a militia patrol happened past.

Thunk…thunk…we heard the noise six times in succession, then a pause. Slowly I crawled out from under, feeling like a coward. The mere fact that Bellin hadn’t moved a muscle made it worse.

The stray meant us no harm.

I stared at him intently as he studied the table; his face was lit by the reflected light from the glyphs, giving him a completely alien-like cast that almost made me giggle like a young girl.

I was watching an alien and thinking that he looked like an alien. How poetic.

Then he tentively pressed a seventh symbol and I found myself under the trap again, this time with Bellin.

What in Umin’s merciful name was that light?

Anat was the wise one who had watched everything from under the trap, and was consequently the one with the most nerve left.

We watched in horror as she slowly crawled out and got to her feet. When the light didn’t kill her on the spot, we followed.

And there he was, the stray, calmly pressing something attached to his upper right arm.

And then he turned to us and waved. For a moment I stood stunned, unable to move, all the teachings of Umin running through my mind.

He wasn’t an alien after all.

He was the messenger.

"My messenger will come out of a ring of fire

Treat him well, for he will judge my flock.

If you are adjudged worthy in his eyes

Then you will be adjudged worthy in mine."

Then he was gone, taking the fire with him.

Were we worthy?

Only time would tell.

* Einde.*