Snake Keeper by Alexandra Norton
CHAPTER FIVE
THE WORLD LURCHEDand my eyes flew open.
“What was that?” I addressed no one in particular, wincing at the pain in my throat.
“We Jumped. We’re almost home,” The Snake Xioumar answered from his spot near the wall. He seemed to not have moved at all.
“I need water. A bath…” I noticed my straining bladder.
“Soon.” If the alien had sympathy for the needs of a human body, his voice didn’t reveal any. Surely they had to relieve themselves, too?
“Look.” He tilted his chin to motion behind me.
When I turned around, the wall of the shuttle was gone. In front of me was endless space.
My head spun, and suddenly I was tilting, falling out into the abyss. I shrieked and scrambled backwards on all fours, body pinned low to the ground. My frantic hands grasped for any nook or cranny I could hold, finding none. In my attempt to get as far away from the hole as I could in this godforsaken tiny shuttle, my back collided with Xioumar. I lurched to the side to get away from both the deadly nothingness in front of me and the Snake behind me.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and pinned me back against his chest. I clawed at his legs to get away, but it was no use.
“Calm down, it’s only a window,” he said. And then… was he shaking? I sensed an escalating vibration in his chest. I twisted my neck to look back.
He was laughing. He was silently laughing at me. He made no sound, but I could see his mouth curled in cruel amusement.
I squeezed my eyes shut. He had taken me from my world, drugged me on this godforsaken shuttle. And now he had the audacity to laugh after jarring me with a sight that I had no time to even begin mentally preparing for? What monster would find this funny?
I sat still as a statue... or a deer in headlights. Fighting would be of no use. Xioumar slid his hand to my upper chest. My heart pounded a rabid staccato through my rib-cage against his palm. He squeezed my shoulder. A threat?
“Open your eyes.” Hot breath on my skin and the steely voice in my ear made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. In the silent moment, I became aware once again of the constant buzz of charge flowing from our contact points into my body. I focused on it, honing in on the sensation in an attempt to calm my panic by blocking out all else.
I released the breath I’d been holding and slowly opened my eyes to a squint, as though having them half-closed would make it less scary. Finally, I took a good look.
Looming in the abyss before me was a massive ring. I could not even begin to fathom its size. It was dotted with thousands upon thousands of tiny windows spread across multiple levels. Not only that, but there were tiny moving specks of light on the surface of the ring. Was the surface populated? Impossible. I saw no glass, nothing to keep an artificial atmosphere above it. The ring encircled a cluster of planetoids. Lights glinted from openings all along the planetoids’ surface; they seemed to be inhabited on the inside. They hovered, rotating slowly in the ring’s center. Small glowing dots slid between the edges of the ring and the planetoids on silk-like spiderwebs - cables of some kind; too far to make out properly.
And all around it, space. Nothing. Death. I glanced back at Xioumar and made to lean forward. He released me and I crawled slowly, cautiously to the edge of the shuttle on hands and knees. I held my trembling hand out in front of me, feeling for the glass.
There was no glass. I flinched back, but my curiosity got the better of me and I reached my hand farther. I was met with a strengthening resistance, like two magnets facing each other’s poles, repelling my arm back into the shuttle. I crouched closer and watched the station grow as we approached. The shuttle continued to rock gently back and forth underneath me, a sensation I had already gotten used to.
I sat in awe of the view as the shuttle rounded the ring. The shuttle dipped beneath the ring and made for one of the rotating planetoids in its center: relatively small compared to the others, pockmarked with round craters on the surface. My stomach tensed and I backed up as we suddenly accelerated, swooping fast toward one of the craters in the dark gray rock. But there was no need to fear: the shuttle slid smoothly into the crater and came to rest in what turned out to be a small, well lit room, rocking to a halt on a floor that appeared to be made of marble.
“You can exit now,” I jumped when Xioumar spoke directly behind me. I had been too enthralled with the landing and the station to notice him approach.
I hesitated. He wanted me to get out now? We were in an open crater, with no doors to hold in any kind of atmosphere!
“The same type of membrane protecting the shuttle regulates the atmosphere in my base,” The Snake must have read my mind. “I assure you, the oxygen levels are quite livable.”
Slowly, I reached my hand toward the “window” once more. Unlike last time, no magnetic pull repelled me this time; my hand slid through the hole with ease. I reached out with a tentative toe and finally performed a tiny hop over the smooth threshold of the shuttle.
Bare feet slapped cool stone. I wiggled my toes on the pleasant floor, noting the light whorls in what appeared to be gray marble. I swayed on my feet, head spinning from rising too quickly after lying in the rocking shuttle.
The three Snakes - Xioumar and the two who had been my constant escorts - led me through a sliding door in the side of the crater, down an enclosed spiral hallway. The walls seemed to be made of a similar stone material as the floor and ceiling when I ran my fingertips along them. The color shifted before my eyes: white whorls turning to gray, then gold, then a dull crimson. It had to be a natural material of some kind. Where did they mine stone like this? Did anything like it exist back home?
I was led to a large room with a low, long, but exceptionally narrow table at the end. My eyes darted instinctively to the platters set up along the table, looking for a pitcher of water… or liquid of any kind… God, please.
I noticed other Snakes here, too, all approaching the table. I stared as they conversed with Xioumar in a language unlike anything I’d ever heard.
The table was just wide enough to hold two stone bowls in front of each other, and pairs of them had been lined up along its length. I was directed to sit in the spot directly in front of the Keeper. The chairs were low cushions made of some type of foam on which all the Snakes sat cross-legged. I followed suit.
I had been growing increasingly concerned about the fact that there were no glasses or cups at the table. The edibles which filled the bowls seemed to consist almost entirely of meat. And while at least they cooked it, as I could tell by the roasted smell of flesh and herbs drifting to my nose, it didn’t exactly look delicious to a vegetarian. There was some plant matter stacked in a few of the bowls: dark brown, bulbous fruits a little larger than my palm.
Do these things not drink? What do they expect me to do?
I almost laughed in my delirium, picturing them dragging me all the way here by force only to have me die on them from dehydration.
Xioumar picked a brown bulb from a bowl sitting next to us. I stared as he cupped it in his left hand and dug his right thumb into the fleshy surface with a quick, practiced movement. Thin liquid dripped from the internals of the bulb and ran down his hand, dripping into his stone bowl.
Water. I licked my cracked lips as I stared at the transparent juice. The alien reached his hand across the narrow table towards me, the fruit offered in his grasp. It oozed precious liquid down his forearm.
I made to accept the bulb, hand held out and reaching for the offering, but he drew back.
“Not like that,” he shook his head.
“What?” I croaked. I realized what he meant only when he brought the fruit directly to my mouth with the pierced opening facing me. I flinched back. What the fuck?
I looked around the table. The other aliens were busy handing each other slices of meat. They passed it around from plate to plate, hand to hand, mouth to mouth. My face twisted in mild disgust at the uncivilized sight.
“Give it to me, then,” I grasped for the bulb once more. Xioumar’s crimson snake eyes narrowed and in a flash he had my wrist in the vice of his hand. He jerked me forward by my arm.. My stone bowl crashed to the floor, protesting with an ear-piercing clatter against the stone.
The vertical slits of his pupils narrowed as I shook. He must have thought I was afraid. I was. But I shook from anger. I shook with the scream building in my gut. I shook from the dry pain in my throat and my parched, swollen tongue.
The Snake pressed the broken bulb against my mouth until the juice seeped between my lips and ran down my chin. When the liquid hit my tongue, I could not resist. Eyes trained on the ugly bulb, my free hand slid up of its own accord to grab his own and press it closer. I tried to bite into the bulb’s flesh, but it was too tough.
“It’s not for eating. You have to suck out the juice.” I glanced up as he spoke. A small smile played on the Snake’s lips as he watched my desperate attempts to sink my teeth into the thing.
I sealed my lips around the ripped gash in the bulb and sucked hard as I could. The liquid flowed freely into my mouth. The electric heat radiated from his hand into my flesh as I gripped it with both of mine and drank until my belly ached.
When I no longer felt as though I would drop dead of thirst at any moment, I finally released him and the now shriveled bulb. I sat back on my foam cushion. My cheeks burned. I refused to look at him. I hated myself for giving in so easily. But it was this or dehydration, and I was not an idiot.
He tried to make me feed him, then.
“It is custom,” he said.
I refused, of course. If he wanted to grab my hand and force me to hold his rotten meat and put it in his mouth, he could, but I would not go willingly.
He was displeased, clearly, but fed himself. The Snakes ate with their hands. I refused the meat. The juice of the fruit had not been just water, and I felt oddly satiated after drinking it. With luck, maybe I wouldn’t have to subsist on mystery meat after all?
After the sounds of bowls scraping and alien chewing died down, the chamber seemed to fall into a quiet, relaxed digestive hibernation. The aliens fell silent. At some point, a strange sound began to emanate from the surrounding walls. It was… music. Of a sort, anyway. There was no rhythm or pattern to it. It sounded most akin to wind-chimes in disarray.
“Dance for me,” said the Snake.
I scoffed, “No.”
He raised a brow. “As you are now Kept, you will do what I say.”
“No thanks, Snake.” this was the first time I referred to him as the disdainful label I made up in my head. Did he flinch, or did I imagine it?
“I am here to evaluate your kind as much as you are mine,” I said. “And frankly, right now I’d be happy if we cut this little five-year visit short. I think humanity would be better off without your… Federation’s… cooperation. Besides, your deal with Earth stipulated that the human representatives were to be brought back to Earth unharmed in five years. You can’t harm me. At least, not unless you want to be the man, if that is what you even are, who broke a deal with a new species on behalf of your entire Federation.”
I realized I’d raised my voice. I brimmed with anger as I spit the words at my captor.
Xioumar sat perfectly still for several seconds. Snake-still. Striking-still. And it made me fear I had made a terrible mistake. Did I overestimate my position?
“If you won’t dance for me, you will dance with me,” he hissed. In a flash, he was up, dragging me from the table to the middle of the room. I writhed against his grasp. I dug my bare heels in, but my protests were no match for his strength. The towering alien half-carried me into position, then plopped me flat on my feet and grabbed me by my forearms.
He began to physically position my limbs with his own, dragging and spinning me around the room. The “dance” was all angles and elbows and furious resistance. I was eye level with his chest, rage making sharp movements sharper, forming strange angles to the “music”. I stepped to and fro as my kidnapper led us in a strange robotic waltz.
As we moved, the wind-chimes intensified. They became less discordant, more fluid, and so did Xioumar’s movements. The sharp, rough movements in which he positioned my arms with his own turned into large waves and arcs. The momentum swept me away, forcing me to follow as we moved through the room. The discordant chimes morphed into a strange orchestra in my ears, into something with a rhythm that guided both of our bodies through the room. I soon realized, as our torsos shifted and bent, that he was no longer holding me at all. His hands hovered just above mine as we flowed in a unified wave, our movements shifting seamlessly from agitated ripples in a pond to a rolling tsunami crashing upon city shores.
I stumbled as what I was doing hit me, as though I was watching the scene in third person. The music deescalated. We looked at each other. His brows were knotted slightly in confusion. I caught my breath as I found my footing and tried to parse what had happened. How had I gone from being forcefully jerked around the room by my cruel captor to being swept up with him through these strange instruments?
Behind him, the other aliens watched us from the seats with Chershire cat smiles, as if I was a dog they had just watched please its master. I suddenly felt very naked. I looked down at the skintight white material on my body, leaving not much to the imagination. I folded my hands on my chest defensively. I wished they’d just stop fucking staring.
I ran.