Tuya ran, ran, and ran, cutting through forest, climbing over stone, and leaping across flowing water, remembering the joys of movement so long forsaken. She avoided the tamers rushing toward the sands, her mind sensing their hunger for conquest and claims as they hooted like it was a prized khorota’s first blood. Tuya ran, as fast as she could, toward the splashing waters and cracking trees, toward the screams sounding off in her head, toward nightmares, but also toward the promise that she would make pain smaller, perhaps even toward the tiniest hope that she could leave the Hollows behind her.

Tuya ascended the cliffside rocks, scurried along the coastal ridge, and witnessed from high the violence on the sandy shore below. More tamers than Tuya ever saw gathered on the sands where the evil water washed its poison upon the land, with more cascading down each moment like the falling water near the cliff. Any farawaylanders that reached the shore would be swarmed. Indeed, one man ran over the water like it was the hardest ground. The dark figure threw his hands up, shouted something incomprehensible to her ears, and was mauled by a horde of log-swinging tamers.

A woman followed him, leaping from the wooden abomination and soaring through the air like a great, dark bird. She shouted something and swung at the tamer swarm with a long stick with a shiny rock-like point. She stabbed a handful of the tamers before they brought her down, raining punches on her from every direction. The tamers dragged her screaming from the broken farawaylander man, pinned her to the ground, ripped off her weird feathered hides, and took turns punching, kicking, pinning, and planting seed as she screamed and fought them.

Tuya clutched her chest, wishing she had power to save this woman. What was she but one malnourished little girl against a horde of big brawny beasts like this? Her hope dwindled and she felt like a stupid khorota for ever imagining she could make a difference in a world like this.

The farawaylander abomination was a most unnatural sacrilege. Formed from the dead parts of trees stripped of their bark, severed from their roots, bound together with weird vines, and tamed to traverse over evil waters where no tree should ever be, Tuya was repulsed. The tamed creature that rampaged in the waters, a gigantic-headed monster with many handless arms the size of trees, clubbed into the abomination, smashing through the propped-up dead tree in the abomination’s center, seizing the farawaylanders trying to stab it with their pointy sticks. Evil water flowed into the abomination from the hollows the monster punched into its dead trees. Panic spread among the farawaylanders as they fought the evil water, the monster, and the tamed farawaylanders.

Watching from the high ridge overlook, clutching to helplessness and hopelessness, those old hollowpartners, Tuya contemplated whether this carnage was Celegana’s justice for what the farawaylanders did to the trees.

She may have believed that if her mind could not detect the panicked thoughts and the immense emotions of those farwaylanders. This was pain. The dark figures ran along the desecrated trees, jumping and slipping past the monster’s arms as it tried to grab them, stabbing with their long sticks, pushing against the wills of tamers that attempted to seize control of their bodies, screaming out as their tamed allies attacked them, dying inside as they yielded control of themselves to the tamers and hurt their loved ones.

Tuya knew that panic, that misery, that sense of hurting the person you loved most and being unable to stop it. She understood such pain and never wanted another to feel it as she had, no matter whether they defiled trees and thought to tame the evil water. Even if she carried but the smallest hope that they could survive, even if she knew today was not her day to fly away, Tuya would make their pain smaller. She opened her mind to the strength within her and reached out toward the many-armed creature.

Tuya knew this monster, a nightmare the tamers used to threaten little girls like her if they dared disobey. She could hear them still, chastising her for moving slow to do their bidding when she was staving off starvation. You will be food for the kalagoth, khorota. The tamers savored describing the monster’s hunger for khorota blood, the violence of their teeth and arms, and how the death in the waters would not even send them back to Celegana. Touching minds with this monster, the tamers had been incapable of finding the words to describe the pain this terror was capable of inflicting.

The tamer within the kalagoth controlled and directed the immense beast’s hatred, working to keep the farawaylander women alive to be claimed rather than allowing this vile creature to stain the waters to darkness with its toxin, to thrash out and kill them all. The kalagoth lashed against the tamer and he fought hard to hold his control despite his great strength, but Tuya held back, knowing that this creature unbounded would only make pain greater.

Tuya retracted her consciousness from the kalagoth. Upon the shore, more farawaylanders fought the tamer horde. Dark, hairless men with bare, muscular chests and bright hides on their legs evaded tamers swinging crude logs at them with beautiful, impossible movement, then sliced into the tamers with curved weird rock claws. They spun around the tamers, spilling entrails upon the sand. The dark women’s not-hides blew in the breeze as they soared into the sky, bright many-colored feathers fluttering as they seemed to fly, each wearing a vine-thing around their necks with many rocks and shells on them. The women fell from the sky like great birds upon their prey, crunching atop tamers and plunging their long sticks through their flesh.

What amazed Tuya most was not the impossibility of their movement, nor even that they made the tamers look weak. What amazed her most was that the dark men and women fought in pairs with one flying woman and one swift man working in tandem to kill tamers who only worked for themselves. They protected each other, they respected each other, they loved each other, working each moment to make the other’s pain smaller. Hope flared in Tuya like the big lightmaker on the brightest day of the season of heat that there were places in the world that truly were not like the Hollows, places in the world where a girl could love and be loved, where life was more than enduring pain. There was love in the world out there beyond the Hollows and Tuya promised to protect it.

From the Spire and the Hollows, came many streams of smoke, carrying malevolence and misery. The many minds of the tamers seeped into the farawaylanders. The dark people resisted the tamers, empowered by their connections with each other. Those who resisted became sluggish and vulnerable. Dark farawaylander men were swarmed by tamers attacking them with thick logs in their lapses and women were pulled down. Worse, a few succumbed to the tamers and turned their abilities against the ones they loved.

Tuya reached for a tamed woman, her long stick slick with the blood of her beloved. She screamed in her mind for freedom, no longer caring whether she lived in a world without Rahan, without her pearl, just wanting to plunge her spear into as many Celegans as she could. Yet, instead of fighting the tamers, she turned her spear toward Finley, the smiling girl that loved to tease Captain Yaha to her wit’s end.

Tuya cried atop the ridge as her mind touched this farawaylander’s, the pain echoing her own. She lowered every wall, let go of every hesitation, unleashed seasons of repressed hatred, and pushed on the tamer’s consciousness. Be gone, tamer!

Fragile was his hold, and easily broken. Freedom restored to the farawaylander woman, this beloved of Rahan and friend of Finley. The woman leapt into the air, Tuya feeling the weightless flight as the wind propelled her up on mighty legs and then guided her down into a crowd of tamers, spiraling her long stick—her spear—like a cyclone of death.

Please, the woman projected, help the others!

Tuya ended her link with the freed woman and embraced her strength. One after the next, she severed the taming links that controlled the farawaylanders as if she were the sharpest spear and they the softest flesh. As she linked with the farawaylanders she learned pieces of them. In their thoughts of death, some yearned to return to a place with shores of sand the same color as the rocks they wore around their neck, deep vibrant jungles, and a huge good water where the rain always fell and purified hearts and minds. Others blamed their captain and the sultana who formulated this foul proposition to speak with the Celegans. Many offered prayers to Dalis, Divine of the Waters, and her brother Zafrir, Divine of the Winds. Even more beseeched someone called the Fourteenth for strength and wisdom or sought to honor a man called the First Mahagan. All thought of each other, cared for each other, dashed into danger to save friends and spearmates. The thoughts they shared, the love they carried with them, strengthened Tuya, propelling her forward to break every link upon shore and the floating abomination, this thing the farawaylanders called the Sixty-Four.

She tried to bolster them with her own love, letting them know someone in the Hollows cared about them, admired them, and thought them strong. Be free, she told them. Be you. As she thought these things to the farawaylanders, she thought to herself that this was the most she had ever been herself.

Taming consciousnesses swarmed around the freed farawaylanders, seeking any crack to seep through. They found none. Their glory and excitement became terror as they fled the beach without any claimed. The farawaylanders overwhelmed the stragglers with their strange movement and stronger weapons, piling tamers upon the bloody sands. Many tamers thought to seize the minds of their would-be killers, only to find Tuya’s protection dooming them to the spear’s sharp point. In the evil water, the kalagoth’s huge, slimy body went limp and sunk beside the ruins of the farawaylander abomination, its blood darkening the evil waters as a tall, screaming woman continued to plunge her spear into the top of its head. Taming vapor rushed out of the dying kalagoth, retracting back toward the heights of Celegana’s Spire.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Soon the beach was free of either the bodies or the minds of tamers. Tuya lurked on the ridge, watching, hoping.

Their way of speaking pleased Tuya’s ears even though she could not understand their words. Many wept over the bodies of their loved ones, Tuya lingering on the first woman she freed as she crumbled over the man the tamer made her kill. Rahan. For the first time in her life, Tuya felt sad that a man returned to Celegana. She wondered what he was like, to be so loved by this farawaylander woman. She wished she could have known him. She wished she could have been just a few moments faster, then she would have had the chance. Tuya let her tears fall down her cheeks, trying not to hate herself for failing.

The woman who slew the kalagoth leapt to the shore and started barking at the others, pointing at the little abominations that were stuck on the sides of the big, broken one. Tuya shrank away from her, knowing the voice of command well, though seeing it from a woman intrigued her nigh as much as it scared her. She leaned forward, fingers on the edge of the ridge, and watched the woman organize the other farawaylanders.

The men ran over the darkened water, climbed up the broken abomination and lowered the little abominations into the evil water. They jumped in, picked up weird branches, and somehow tamed the evil water by hitting it with the branches. The dead tree things carried them toward the sand, gliding over the evil water. Maybe with the exception of seeing woman who could jump as high as a tree or men that could run atop water like it were solid dirt, Tuya never saw anything so weird.

Ashore, the women spoke, their Ezen listening more than talking. Tuya contemplated seeking a link so she could understand them, eying the first girl she freed as she gestured toward her head and spoke to her master. The master scanned the beach, looking up into the Hollows and barked at the other women.

Soon, several handfuls of farawaylander women vaulted into the air. They searched the shore, leaping on ledges and even going up to the edge of the Hollows while their men pulled the smaller desecrations onto the sand and climbed out of them.

Go, Tuya thought. Go, before they return, before he comes. She pushed her mind outward, with images of the farawaylanders taming the water with their weird sticks and leaving. She could sense their growing apprehension, permeating the air like smoke from a hollow fire. Still, they leapt around, the men now joining them as they searched the beach with growing panic. Go, to where you belong, where you can live and love. Go! Be free! Before he hurts you!

The farawaylanders slowed their hunt, looking to their Ezen woman. She was among the tallest and darkest of them, her night-sky colored hair tied to look like intertwined vines, wearing the same bright feathers on her not-hides. She gripped the vine around her neck with the shells and shiny rocks, her kalagoth-slaying spear pointing up at the sky. “Show yourself!” she shouted, speaking words Tuya knew even if she spoke them wrong.

Tuya froze, making herself small, slinking down to her belly where they would not see her up high on the ridge.

“Please!” the woman howled, desperation from her strong mind loud in the void. “I know you saved us! Please, show yourself!”

Tuya stayed small. Go! Now! Before it is too late.

“Come with us! We can protect each other! Please!”

Tuya tasted guilt, like a woman who killed her own best friend, emanating from the farawaylander. She wanted to make this strong woman’s pain smaller, to preserve her life, and, the dreaming part of her pondered the possibilities of touching those faraway sands where no tamers roamed. Tuya took her mind to the woman, touching the edges with care so she knew Tuya was there, lurking on the fringes of her consciousness. You would take me with you?

“Yes!” Then the deaths of my crew will not have been in vain.

Tuya’s breath quickened, as the idea took root. She could not let herself believe in it, but neither could she deny how much she wanted it. Her body never felt so heavy as she pulled herself up and stood on the edge of the cliff. “Up here.”

The woman said something in her own tongue too quiet for Tuya to hear, barked orders at her people, and leapt through the sky, taking two big jumps to cross the vast space between them and then up, up, up until she landed on the ridge. She fell to her knee and bowed her head, like a khorota and not the Ezen of these people. “I am called Captain Yaha of the Sixty-Four.” She stalled seeking words she could not find in Tuya’s language. Captain Yaha of the Sixty-Four looked up into Tuya’s eyes and extended her hand toward her. “Life protector, it would please me to take you home, where we will honor you.”

Home. The girl with a childhood of dreams of faraway lands clung to the notion that home could be somewhere other than the only place she had ever known. Her mind saw this land of sand and trees with no holes where dark men and women lived as equals and loved with all their beings. Home. A place to be free, to belong, to be loved, and to make pain smaller. Just the knowledge that such a place existed made pain worth enduring. Alas, she could not run, could not hide. She could not make these people’s pain larger by bringing Gurgaldai to them. The dream died, like a childhood that never happened.

The woman rose to her feet. “What do I call you?”

That much, Tuya could give her. That much, should not make Captain Yaha of the Sixty-Four’s pain larger. “Tuya.”

“Tuya of the Hollows.” The woman brushed Tuya’s face with a touch as gentle as a soft flowing good water, like the one in the dark place, like how Zaya used to do. Feelings long buried welled up, bringing the evil water to Tuya’s eyes. Captain Yaha of the Sixty-Four wiped away her tears, just like Zaya would have, only making them come faster. “The Fourteenth binds me to protect you, as you have protected us. Tuya, you deserve to be free.”

Tuya kept her head low, not wanting to show this woman how much she wanted to have a mother again. She would not cause this woman’s pain, could not grow attached. Not after Sarnai. “You cannot protect me. Nobody can.”

“You fear Gurgaldai ezen Celegan. Yes, I do too.” She brushed Tuya’s hair out of her eyes and knelt to her level. “I think we need each other, Tuya. I think Gurgaldai will chase us whether you are with us or not. I think he will hunt you, whether you stay here or go with me. I think we do not just want to be near each other, I think we need to be together if either of us will make it home.”

Tuya lowered her eyes and Captain Yaha of the Sixty-Four squeezed her hand, not unlike how Zaya used to. Her promises to Zaya hung between them. “If I fly away with you, can you make me stronger? Can you help me free all of us?”

“I promise to make it my life’s purpose.” She tipped Tuya’s head up, the memory of that motherly touch alighting her heart, and smiled.

Tuya smiled back, ignoring every impulse the tamers ever taught her. She attached herself to another like moss to a tree, knowing that the tamers would strike that tree down to pain her. Hope was rare in the Hollows, and dangerous too when it rarely ever came to light. Alas, like the flower blooming in the season of new life, it grew in Tuya despite seasons of cold desolation.

“I will go.”

Captain Yaha of the Sixty-Four beamed, her teeth like the shiny rock on her neck vine. “Then we fly away. Hang on tight, Tuya.”

Tuya put her arms around the woman, holding close to her, nestling her head in her side as Captain Yaha of the Sixty-Four slipped her spear into a hole thing on her back and scooped her up. Anxiety and excitement so often traveled in a pair and Tuya felt much of both as the wind rushed up at her. She flew away, and landed safely on the sands below as if she only stepped off a small rock and not leapt off a cliff.

Captain Yaha of the Sixty-Four tapped her shoulder and chuckled. “Good, Tuya.” She barked more orders at her people in her strange, but pleasant, language. Among the words, she heard her name a few times. Tuya kept her eyes down, dreadfully uncomfortable with all the attention, unsure of how these people would treat her or if they blamed her for the dead farawaylanders on the shore and in the water. She tried to make herself small and hide near Captain Yaha of the Sixty-Four, like she would as a little khorota staying behind Zaya.

Many of the woman she liberated from the tamers tossed their arms around her and spoke their weird, melodic words. Tuya tried to appease them, to give them what she wanted, afraid of what they would do. She put her arms around them, touching them with her strength, making them more of themselves. In return, she could feel their overwhelming gratitude buzzing around in their minds. Some of the men approached her, and she retreated from them, scurrying and hiding behind Captain Yaha of the Sixty-Four. Captain Yaha of the Sixty-Four barked at the men, some of the women laughing as well as some of the men. Such a weird sight, like a wolf and a rabbit playing together. One man backed away from Tuya, arms up, hissing, “Captain Yaha.”

Laughter, men respecting a woman, men leaving her alone, dead trees taking her to a new home, promises to grow strong, to free the Hollows, a mother. These things should have made her happy. Instead, she felt nervous, certain they were too good to be true. Tuya watched the hill leading down to the beach as Yaha helped her into an abomination, certain that this must be a dream and any moment she would wake in her hollow, hungry, alone, and unloved, with Makhun standing over her saying, “You did this.”

Instead, Tuya forced herself to believe, to hope, and to dream. She envisioned her future, using her strength in the jungles of the faraway land, chasing her friends in the sand, looking into their eyes as she told them she loved them. She would learn to use these spears, maybe even jump like Captain Yaha, and someday, she would come back and help all the girls she left behind today. As this future grew in her mind, so did her fear. The more one had to live for, the more one had to lose. The more one had lost, the more they expected to lose again. Always watching and waiting for the next sign, for the moment when the good things were ripped away, she kept her eyes on the Hollows where no tamers nor even taming consciousnesses came to stop them.

Could it be? Could she finally be free? With her protecting the farawaylanders from being tamed and them protecting her from being caught, the tamers could not stop them, could they? Tuya resolved herself to believe, knowing that she could face any tamed creature and that Captain Yaha would keep her safe in turn. She was flying away. This dream was real. She would not wake in her hollow, ever again. She clung to the woman beside her, never taking her eyes off the beach as all the farawaylanders loaded into the abominations.

Then, Gurgaldai came, within the terror of every khorota, every tamer beneath the Ezen, of every living thing to ever hear its name. Chimaera.

Some things were too good to be true.