Watcher's Web

Watcher's Web Chapter 10

"Anmi."

Jessica stirred. Something firm and hairy touched her arm. She rolled onto her back. Ouch. The floor under the thin mat was like concrete.

Afternoon light, warm and golden, filtered through a slatted wall, over rough timber floors and rows of humps—thighs, backs, buttocks—on sleeping mats. Arms draped over waists, tails curled around legs, heads of braids with glittering beads, shoulders and backs marked with zebra stripes or leopard spots.

Ikay sat on her knees by the side of her mat, folding a thin sheet and placing it under the pillow.

Jessica struggled to sit up and rubbed her leg muscles. Her head throbbed. Her mouth tasted like raw sewerage.

Ikay got to her feet in a cat-like movement and beckoned. Jessica pushed the thin cover aside. A soft breeze tickled her naked skin, still sticky and greasy from the white and black paint applied to it last night. She rubbed her upper arm, but the stuff was very resilient.

She clambered to her feet, her first steps wooden. Oh, her legs ached.

Now where the hell were her clothes?

Not next to her mat. Not anywhere else between the other mats, or on someone’s body.

Damn it.

And yesterday, she had lost her backpack, too. With her spare clothes, and her first-aid kit, and her rope and tools and everything that might provide proof, however feeble, that she had come from Earth.

She picked up the thin sheet. It was too big to use as sarong, and when she folded it over, it was too short.

Double damn it.

Well, bugger that. Everyone went in their birthday suits here, so apart from the usual stares, she wasn’t going to attract attention for not having clothes on. She flung the cloth down. Never mind that if ever she got back home she’d need clothes. Lucky it was late spring in Australia, huh? Not too cold. Summer on the way. Why worry about walking in the nuddy when there was that little problem about how she was going to get back in the first place? Her eyes pricked.

She joined Ikay on a ramp which led from the sleeping gallery into the large hall. There was a silent throng of striped bodies on the other side of the floor. A smell reminiscent of porridge drifted from a steaming pot from which a young boy scooped long white things into bowls. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and every now and then he yawned, showing his rodent-like teeth. Well, look at that. These Pengali were a lot like people—they got hangovers, too.

Ikay pressed a bowl into Jessica’s hands.

The white things were noodles, bluish and slightly transparent. They were slippery like wet spaghetti and kept escaping the small tongs Jessica was given to eat them with.

Ikay’s fighting Amazons were already eating. Alla wolfed her food down and then took her knife from her belt, and proceeded to clean her nails while sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back straight as a cattle-prod. Her black hair in tight braids glistened with oil. A single drop ran down her forehead.

Maire ate much more slowly, droopy-eyed and slumped over her bowl. Every time she yawned, which she did a lot, a teardrop formed in the corner of her left eye. Eventually, it grew so big it ran down her cheek. Alla scowled at her.

If Jessica closed her eyes, she could hear the deep drumbeats and see Maire in the heaving mass of bodies clutching the waist of some young male. The smell of Pengali male sweat—fishy and stale—still lingered in her nose and so did the pungent stench of Pengali urine and semen, or both. By the end of the long night, most Pengali had been drunk and all over each other, cheering and whistling at bestial grunts of males having their way with females, watched and cheered on by the entire tribe. All night, Jessica had remained as close to Ikay as she could, until the light outside grew blue and everyone retired to the sleeping galleries.