He tilts his head to the side.
“Please,” I say, “I need to pee. Pee?” Helpless, I move one hand over the thick blanket and grab my crotch. The Nahx nods and, sliding his hand behind my back, helps me stand, the blanket wrapped around me.
I sway for a moment and he moves to lift me, but I wave him off. “Help me walk,” I say. He walks me, limping excruciatingly slowly down the narrow hallway, and opens the door to a small room. There is a flash of light, and a second later a candle in an ornate candleholder illuminates a toilet and a sink. There is a bucket of water on the floor next to the toilet.
Shrugging off the blanket, I look down at my body and realize I am wearing nothing but the bloody rags of my undershirt and some soaked men’s boxers. Suddenly, I’m horribly embarrassed. The Nahx simply points to the toilet and the bucket, and then he stands there, looking at me.
“Can I have some privacy?” I ask.
He turns around.
“I mean actual privacy?”
He glances back at me, then walks off, disappearing down the hall. After I use the toilet and rinse it out, I sit on the closed lid and use the rest of the water in the bucket to wash my body as well as I can with one hand.
I emerge, hopping on my good leg, wearing nothing but the blanket wrapped around me. I left my reeking underclothes in the sink. The Nahx stands in the middle of the living room, watching me carefully. The effort of hopping soon catches up to me and I stumble. He grabs me and eases me into a chair. I look up at him.
“Are there any clean clothes?” I ask. He disappears into a room, returning with a pair of men’s pajamas. He turns politely, while I struggle to put them on. My muscles are variously stiff and floppy as noodles, my whole body lopsided.
“How long have I been here?” I ask while I dress. He reaches back without turning around, holding all five fingers out. Then he closes his fist and opens it again, this time with three fingers.
“Eight days?” I can’t quite believe that. It seems impossible. But what would be his motive for lying?
“You can’t speak?” I ask. I can’t remember if we discussed this before. Probably should have, but I was busy dying. “Like, with a voice?”
He shakes his head.
“You can turn around.” He turns and helps me sit on the low sofa, kneeling on one knee in front of me.
“Can’t you take your armor off? We’re not in a battle now.”
He shakes his head and, laying both hands on his chest, closes his fists tightly.
Crush.
“Oh. Our atmosphere is wrong or something?”
He nods. And then we have an awkward silence as he stares at me and I stare at his weird segmented boots.
“Do you have a name?” I ask when it finally becomes too awkward, even for me.
He looks at me for a moment, and I see daylight shining in from the window and reflecting in the black lenses of his mask. I wonder if there are eyes behind the mask or if the mask is all he is. Have we talked about this, too?
He points to the second finger on his left hand.
“Finger?” I say. “Your name is Finger?”
He flicks his head back a couple of times, and there is a little grumble in his breathing. Is he laughing?
He reaches over to the bookshelf and taps his finger theatrically on the books. One, two, three . . . all the way up to ten. Then he taps again on the eighth book.
“Eight?”
He shakes his head, tapping the book.
“Eighth?”
He nods.
“Your name is Eighth? That’s a weird name. Eighth what?”
He points to the sky and draws a circle with his finger.
“Sun? Moon! Eighth Moon?” I’m playing charades with an alien who has knocked me unconscious and seen me pee my pants at least twice. I’m not very good at it, clearly. He’s unsatisfied with “Eighth Moon.” He draws a circle in the sky, then moves his hand and draws a half circle, then moves his hand again and draws a thin crescent.
“Moon cycle? Like month?” He nods enthusiastically. “Like the eighth month. August?”
He gazes at me for a moment, not moving, then nods.
“August,” I say, trying it out. Though I have a feeling it’s not quite what he was trying to tell me, it does seem to suit him somehow. He’s very imposing. And imperial. Like the emperor that watched Rome burn. But that was another guy, I think. I almost laugh at the thought of social studies classes. Ancient history? We are the ancient history now. We are the dead civilization. This thing saw to that.
“I’m terribly hungry,” I say, to cover my disgust. He starts to get up, but I stop him. “Wait.”
He kneels back down, his hands resting on one raised knee.
I examine him properly for the first time with a clear head, free of pain. He is extraordinarily tall; even kneeling, he is looking down on me where I sit. His shoulders are broad, and in the daylight I can see a small mark in the segmented armor where he pulled Topher’s arrow out. It seems, somehow, healed, like a scar, although how there can be a scar on armor I don’t know. There is a similar, larger but possibly older scar on his chest. I wonder, again, if this is his skin.
Skin or armor, it seems to suck the surrounding light away, making him difficult to focus on. The hard plates cover his whole body, moving and rippling as he moves. His chest rises and falls. It looks like he’s breathing, but the buzzing sound this makes is more machinelike than alive.
My heart is pounding, I suddenly realize, and I’m frightened, so horribly frightened of him. I see the Nahx in the stadium falling on me, I see this Nahx, August, wrenching me out of the toilet in the trailer and hanging me by my wrists until they almost broke. I think of him with his rifle pointed at my head, the tiny sharp spikes quivering on his face. Can this gentle August be the same Nahx, changed somehow? Reformed? Or is this some perverse new game? How many of my people did he kill with that rifle before he took pity on me? Was he the one that killed Sawyer and Mandy? I’m so sickened I want to look away. I want to run away. I turn my head to the door, the window, trying to find a way to get out. Perhaps I could get up and leave, walk down those endless flights of stairs and through the city, somehow find the tunnel again, and then go back to the barn, find the others. But that was days ago. I’ve been missing for over a week. They have returned to the base by now and told everyone I’m dead. If I am to survive, much less get back to the base, it depends on him. Whatever his plans for me, I’m at his mercy. This makes my stomach turn. I want nothing more at that moment than to hide from him.
I’m hanging my head, unable to look at him anymore, when he makes a noise, like a purr.
“What?” I say, looking up. He points to his own chest, then to mine. When I don’t react, he repeats it, raising one hand, palm up, like a question.
“Oh! Raven,” I say. He nods and points to the sky, making a waving motion with his hand. “Yes, it’s a bird. A black bird.”