Spider People? My skin crawls just hearing their name. “You’ve got to be joking. How can all those species mix?”
“The universe works in mysterious ways,” he says drably.
“And humans, how many kinds of creatures did we breed with?”
“I am unsure. Only a handful of monsters were able to successfully domesticate humans. Mostly because your people ran, hid, fought to keep your tribes free.”
“So we couldn’t be tamed or enslaved like the other animals.” I believe it. Humans weren’t meant to be controlled, locked up, or owned.
“No. And eventually a group of humans migrated here to escape being hunted. The War People are the result of that.”
The War People, who are distant relatives of humans, evolved by fighting off creatures that wanted to prey on them. Only the biggest and best fighters survived. Eventually, they got bigger. And bigger.
“And the humans who stayed behind in my world? How did they survive?” I ask.
“The Great Monster-Human War was won because you had something monsters did not.”
“What?”
“You do not know when to quit. You fight until your last breath. It is something the War People never let go of all these years. Hundreds of generations. We still maintain human tenacity. We demand to be free, to live our lives as we see fit.”
Interesting. Though, I’d argue that some groups of people have been brainwashed. They actually believe they’re subjects to be ruled over by their governments, instead of their governments being ruled by the people. Idiots.
He adds, “Your tenacity is how you convinced my ancestors to help build the wall—a feat that took many decades. Your people pointed out that with our help, they could construct a great structure inside that would allow the War People to settle down and do more than fight for survival, day in and day out. We could make a home, have a place to raise families and educate our young. The wall would allow our people to live in safety with a much smaller force to protect us—later, the Wall Men would be created for this purpose. So we united in an effort to protect both our ways of life.”
It’s sort of beautiful. “So it was the War People and these humans who built the wall.”
“Yes.”
“And the bridges? How do they work?”
“Dusts.”
“Dusts?” I’m afraid to ask. Every time I learn about a new creature, it gets added to my “things to piss my pants over” list.
“Dusts are our smallest of creatures. They dine on nucleotides. Their kingdom is so tiny, you will never find it, but they vowed to provide an army to man the bridges as long as we vowed to come to their aid should anyone try to overtake them. They are quite small.”
“How the hell do you know what a nucleotide is?”
“Our father made each of us spend ten years with the Scholar People, reading literature—science, math, books on warfare.”
“Never. Not in a million years could I have imagined you get all that schooling or that you have a species of bioengineers.”
“Do you not have bacteria who break down matter?”
“Yes, but ours don’t have their own kingdom.”
“And now that I have answered more of your questions and obliged your woman urges to talk incessantly, are you ready?”
“What’s with the macho-man jabs?” Woman talk. Woman urges.
Tiago ignores my question and stops walking. I notice the other War People stop, too. Everyone’s looking around: up, down, over their shoulders. Even Master is on edge with his spotted ears perked up.
“We set up camp here,” Tiago says to the group and then looks down at me. “And now you must make an offering, or Bardolf will not hear you.”
“Bard’s here? Now?” The backs of my knees tingle, threatening to collapse. The last time I saw him, he attacked me and then chewed on Dave.
“Yes.”
Oh Jesus. “Fine. Do it. Just don’t make me look.” If I have to give up a little piece of skin to avoid what happened last time, then so be it.
Tiago unsheathes a huge hunting knife from the waist of his loincloth. “I will try to be quick.”
“Shut your pie hole and do it!” The suspense is probably worse than the pain.
He grabs a big clump of my long hair in the back and slices. He’s quick about it, but I immediately know there’s a snippet of my scalp missing.
“Ow!” I press my hand to the nickel-sized wound. “You said the size of a pea.”
“I am ten times your size. I can’t quite tell the difference.”
I kick his shin. “Try mentioning that next time.”
“You are a very annoying female,” he says dryly.
I’m about to tell him to go fuck himself, but there’s no time.
Tiago holds out the offering of my long stringy hair with a clump of bloody skin on the end. “Are you ready?”
“I don’t know.”
Something whizzes by and nabs the grotesque treat.
“Does not matter,” says Tiago, “because Bardolf is here. Go with him now.”