Snake Keeper by Alexandra Norton

CHAPTER NINE

I HAD NOchoice but to try my best to make this work. I wasn't coming home - likely ever, but especially if I made life difficult for my Keeper. Through the course of my brief conversations with Zeetha in the bathing room, I learned Xioumar was now entirely responsible for my actions on the station. I was an extension of him: if I screwed up, he would be punished.

My mind jumped first to ways to exploit this, conjure some plan that would make them take me home. But after trying to visualize this fruitless scenario and that, I realized I was tired. One desperate human would not outsmart a system designed and perfected by generations of different species in the Federation. I either cooperate and (maybe) survive, or I die. All I had to do was live out these five years making as little trouble as possible. Then, hopefully, I’d be free to go home and never have to see the inside of a spaceship again.

I didn’t sleep balancing on the edge of the nest bed anymore. The night after we met the Father, Xioumar arranged for a blanket made of a wool-like material for me. I twisted it around me and curled up next to him. He did not touch me. At least, not yet. The fear that each night would be the night he forced himself upon me slowly faded when the threat seemed to pass. Eventually, I used the blanket less as a barrier from any potential advances and more to shield myself against the cold I woke up to each morning. It mostly worked.

I spent my days exploring Xioumar’s planetoid, which I now had more freedom to. Zeetha no longer trailed me to every nook and cranny of the planetoid. Despite the spiral hallway looking identical to my amateur eye when I got here, I developed a sort of spacial awareness around the nest. I knew the bathing chamber was a right turn, five doors down. The dining hall was a left turn and ten doors from the nest. Zeetha’s quarters were to the right and six doors down, next to the bath. I had explored some of the other doors, too. Some opened up to more hallways. The halls spiraled up and down through the insides of the planetoid. I imagined the tunnels as an ant nest. I got lost, a lot, but somehow intuitively managed to find my way back to the nest, around which everything was oriented.

The Keeper made me try all the meat. Most of it was disgusting. When we learned that the more well-roasted, soft pieces were more to my taste (and chewing ability), he offered these at our meal times. Usually several other Xiorn ate with us, but none of them talked to me. They conversed in their own language among themselves and with Xioumar, paying me no mind at all.

“What does ‘ashthi’ mean?” I asked Xioumar as I placed a chunk of roasted kor (as he called the animal) on his plate. My inexperienced tongue butchered the pronunciation.

He put the meat in his mouth and regarded me for a second before answering: “It means ‘skin’.”

‘Skin’, I later learned, was very important to the Xiorn. As days, then weeks, passed, I slowly adjusted to my situation. Xioumar, however, became more withdrawn and irritable. Tired shadows appeared under his eyes, and I could swear the bright crimson of his eyes grew darker and less vibrant.

“Is he sick?” I asked Zeetha in the bath one night.

She had been combing out my hair as I soaked. The pull of the brush on my curls paused, and she sighed behind me. “He will be soon, at this rate.”

“Why?”

I waited as Zeetha searched for words. She seemed uncertain of how much she could tell me. Was she afraid to reveal a weakness she thought I could exploit?

“I don’t care to use the information to harm him, Zeetha. Not anymore. Not that I could,” I assured her.

She began to tug my hair again in quick, irritated jerks.

“Ouch! What are you doing?” I sat forward and turned around to face her in the tub.

“You say you don’t want to harm him, but that’s exactly what you’ve been doing!” She snapped.

“What are you talking about?”

Zeetha fingered the teeth of the comb nervously. Finally, she decided to spill whatever it was I hadn’t been aware of.

“We need touch, skin contact, to sleep. Those of us who aren’t pair bonded sleep in large nests for this reason. But a Keeper, or someone with a mate… they can’t do that. Well, a Keeper could, but Xioumar won’t. We tried to convince him.”

What was she talking about? “He sleeps every night, I’m right there.”

“No, he doesn’t. He closes his eyes and maybe he’ll drift off for a few minutes at a time. It’s easy for you. All you need is a quilt. That doesn’t work for us. We need ashthi. We need to feel something warm and alive to rest.” She blinked rapidly, refusing to look me in the eye. Zeetha was clearly very upset on my Keeper’s behalf.

“You care about him that much?” I asked.

She looked confused. “What? No. But if you see one of your kind, a human, being tormented and unable to rest for weeks, wouldn’t you be upset? You’re torturing him.”

***

THAT NIGHT WHENI came to the nest (I could find it myself now, and could walk there unescorted after bathing time), Xioumar was already there. He lay on his side, looking out onto the view of the inner planetoids through the sprawling window. Tight muscles, knots, and occasional scars painted a story on his broad back.

I hovered in the doorway for a moment. The emotion in Zeetha’s words made it clear that this wasn’t a preference, or some attempt to trick me. Dad had been a POW in the war. I didn’t know much, but I knew one of the worst things he remembered was being forced to stay awake for days at a time.

I tugged on the side of my silksuit, allowing it to detach and fall silently to my feet.

I walked to the bed on my toes, my gut clenched in a ball of nerves. I crawled into bed next to the Keeper. My heart pounded a wild staccato as I pressed myself against his back, his electric warmth crawling under my skin at our points of contact. He tensed under my touch. His head turned slightly. The light emitted from the planetoids through the window fell onto his jawline. I wrapped a hesitant arm around him. His long fingers tangled with my own to press my hand against his chest.

It took only a few minutes before I felt all tension leave his body. I felt him slip into sleep. It took me longer. My heart would not calm down; the goosebumps on the nape of my neck would not subside. I tried to parse what I was feeling with my body pressed against my captor: electricity, warmth, and… could it be affection? At that moment, I hated myself. I could only imagine what my father back on Earth was feeling right then. Was he blaming himself for what happened? Was he trying to get me back? And there I was, warm, safe, enjoying myself.

Finally, I fell into an uneasy sleep.

***

I WAS NESTLED between the Keeper’s long, heavy legs. I curled up there with my head on his hip, my arm hugging his thigh to my chest. Warm hands sent tendrils of electricity down my scalp as he stroked my tangled curls.

I looked up at him from my spot between his legs, then lower - his arousal was evident in glowing crimson eyes. I slithered up his body to straddle him. He brought his hand to my mouth, and I took it. I kissed his fingertips, palms, wrists… My lips and tongue traversed the black line that ran up his arm.

He clasped my waist with his other hand, engulfing it easily as he positioned me, dripping, over his hips. We locked eyes. I was ready. His pupils grew wide, black holes surrounded by pools of crimson…

I was falling.

***

MY EYES FLEWopen. I panted, catching my breath, the remnants of the dream dissipating in my mind. The Keeper’s heavy body was still deep in sleep. My skin burned. I bit my lip, grinding my hips into the bed in a futile attempt to relieve the heat between my legs.

Fucking idiot.

I squinted in the darkness at the Keeper’s form beside me on his back. I let myself look lower and barely fought back a whimper when I saw his own sizable arousal.

I turned on my side with my back to him and moved away to create some distance between us. The last thing I needed now was contact. I sighed, a failure, when his arm shifted immediately against me and his leg sprawled over my own. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself to dream of home.

***

THE NEXT TIMEI woke was at the appropriate time. I was on my stomach, with a comfortable heaviness pressing me into the bed like a weighted blanket. My lids flicked open, and I was faced with Xioumar’s hard chest directly in front of me. He was half-sprawled on top of me: an arm across my back, a leg tangled between both of my own. His warm breath disturbed the curls around my face. For the first time waking at the station, I was not cold. Xioumar’s heat radiated through my body.

I shifted a little under him to free an arm that had fallen asleep. The alien responded by tightening his arms around me in his sleep, pressing me closer against him in a hold that was almost painfully tight. I groaned, face squished against his chest.

He shifted. This was the first time I woke up before him, I realized. For all of these mornings, the Keeper had already been awake by the time I opened my eyes. A pit of guilt knotted in my chest as I realized that fact was simply an indicator of him not having slept at all.

“Kaliuthro,” he muttered groggily in my ear.

“Kaliuthro?” I asked, mouth muffled against him.

“‘Good morning’”

“Ah,” I wriggled from his grasp to lie on my back beside him. He did the same. We looked at each other. He looked better that he’d been in days.

“Did you sleep?” I asked.

Xioumar searched my eyes. He must have guessed that Zeetha had told me. He nodded. “Yes. Thank you.”

“I didn’t know,” I explained.

“I didn’t want you to. I wanted you to come to me yourself,” Xioumar frowned.

I stared at the ceiling. “I did.”