Chapter 2: CHAPTER TWO

Forests spread out over most of the area below her, trees stretching skyward. Rivers wiggled through these forests, and lakes dotted the landscape like random splotches of paint on a canvas. She didn’t see all this by herself, of course, she watched it through the eyes of her whistling dragon, Jhevharel, who had taken to the air about half an hour ago, enjoying his daily morning flight.

Since she and Jhevharel were linked she felt his joy, his eagerness, his curiosity. When her parents conceived her, so had Jhevharel’s parents. When her mother gave birth, so had Jhevharel’s mother. Linked throughout their lives. When it came time to pass on, both would leave this world at the same moment.

They called this place Colbert’s Landing, a village built for the Tereskàdians and their whistling dragons, although a couple humans had decided to stay. An old human named Arak had wandered into the village a few months ago, asked if he could stay even though they told him it was off limits to humans. The female human who owned the diner already lived there, so the aliens had no choice but to tell him he could stay.

His white hair and beard confirmed his long life, but he moved with the competence and finesse of a human half his age.

There had been other humans, curiosity seekers who had ventured to the forbidden and foreboding region to see the aliens. Some of them scientists, some government workers, but they had been turned away because their main interest was the study of the Tereskàdians.

Jhevharel rose higher, showing her more of the landscape. She could see the ship that had brought them here, a ship they could no longer enter, thanks to an onboard computer that decided this planet was sufficient, and they didn’t need to search further. Not far from the ship was a large generator that worked ceaselessly to provide power to the street lamps built by those who had erected the village. These lamps turned on once dusk settled over the village, and turned off in the morning. The villagers had been told that power lines were scheduled to be set up in the near future but Chandrha wasn’t too sure about that. Miles and miles of poles running through the forest, connecting with power stations to the south.

That was said months ago, and nothing so far. Maybe the humans had given up the idea because of the cost and labor involved. For now, the generator was doing its job just fine. To keep it running smoothly experienced workers wandered into the forest, checked it once a month.

Come down, she sent.

Jhevharel descended, landing on all four paws. The size of a large tiger, his fur the same as hers, reddish brown. Head like a canine’s, the muzzle more roundish than her own fox-like pointed muzzle, no external ears. While her tail was long and bushy, his own was longer, not as bushy, ending in a tuft, much like a lion’s. He had large, black, bat-like wings which folded into his side when he was on the ground.

They read each others thoughts, conscious and subconscious. Telepathy ruled Tereskàdian and whistling dragon. When they communicated, no words were exchanged; every connection of their minds was like a communion.

There’s prey out here, he sent.

We’ll hunt later.

The village lay behind her, but she had no desire to return right now. Even though the chilly air nipped at her, the sun was already awake, warming the region ever so slightly. What was the name of their sun? The yellow star that hung up there in the sky didn’t have a name. Orovha was the name of the star that dominated the seven planets which orbited it, but here the humans referred to their star as the ‘sun,’ as if it were the most important star in the universe. She chuckled in her mind, and Jhevharel asked her why she was thinking of suns and stars. She told him she didn’t know, the thought just flitted into her mind.

^Chandrha.^

That was her mate, Rheôvhan, communicating with her via their whistling dragons. Rheôvhan sent his message to his whistling dragon, Dharhonha, who in turn relayed it to Jhevharel, who announced it to Chandrha. That was the way it was done, had always been done. While whistling dragons could communicate with all other whistling dragons, a Tereskàdian could communicate only with his or her own whistling dragon.

^I’ll be home shortly,^ she sent.

^Are you bringing something? Lhorhanha (Low rah’ nah) is hungry.^

Lhorhanha. Their ten-year-old cub. One of about four dozen cubs living in the village. They ranged from newborn to fifteen years, when they became adults. Each Tereskàdian couple produced three cubs, born five years apart. After that, the reproductive process ceased. Cubs were always the same sex; Chandrha and Rheôvhan’s cubs, Lhorhanha and her sisters, Ad‘herha (Ah’ dyeh rah) and Mykharha (Mich’ kah rha), were all female.

^Jhevharel saw something,^ she sent. ^I’ll hunt later.^

When she entered her home Rheôvhan stood in the middle of their home, Ad‘herha clinging to his side, Lhorhanha behind him. Ad‘herha ran to her mother, held up her arms. Chandrha picked up her daughter, licked her cheeks.

“Arak thinks an overhead plane was a little more than curious,” Rheôvhan said. “Kept circling around like it was looking for something.”

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“Oh.” More curiosity seekers. Humans with cameras, and cell phones, wanting to record their supposed wisdom. The beings from the stars, their ship landing in a remote area deep in the northern forests of a country called Canada, had no choice but to stay. The force field made sure of that.

The humans had come, from Canada, and a country called the United States of America, and some were more than curious. They wanted to take the entire group of passengers and deposit them in some kind of secret facility, wanted to deny their existence even though too many humans had already seen them, spread their news across something called YouTube. Those in uniforms, from a place called The Air Force, had come to Canada illegally, assuming they had every right to handle the aliens.

The Canadian government put a stop to it. The possibility of the aliens returning to their home planet was nil, so they passed a law protecting the aliens. The village, called Colbert’s Landing, named after a politician named Evan Colbert, the human who first proposed the law, was built in the northern regions of Ontario, wilderness to the west, James Bay to the east. When it was completed, a hundred and sixty-eight Tereskàdians and a hundred and sixty-eight whistling dragons made themselves at home. The government placed the village off limits to any and all humans, although when Arak showed up they allowed him to stay.

“We have to transfer Mykharha,” he said.

When humans learned a bit more about Tereskàdians, they called them marsupials, beings whose cubs spent part of their early lives in pouches. Chandrha learned of a large animal in a far-way country called Australia, an animal called a kangaroo which carried its young in a pouch. She had seen pictures of these animals, and their young, called joeys, peeking out of the pouch. But a Tereskàdian didn’t possess a pouch, more like a cavity in the abdominal region. When the humans learned that both the male and the female nursed their young it brought on many interesting questions. On this planet feeding the newborn was left to the human female.

They stood snout to snout, bellies touching. Both chambers opened, and their cub, guided by a special scent, crawled from her chamber to her father’s. She sought the single teat, grasped it in her toothless mouth, and nursed. Like all cubs still in the chambers she didn’t resemble her parents. No fur, bare skin, her tail nothing but a nub, and non-existent claws.

The plane Arak had turned away bothered her. Could have been one of those small planes that flew over the area, trying to locate the village, which wasn’t that hard. The problem was the landing. A small airstrip not far from the village had been built for small planes, but Arak had taken control of it, and he had the final say on who could or couldn’t land on the strip. Most of the time he refused planes permission to land, unless a medical emergency brought the appropriate personnel. Or it might be an important official. The prime minister of Canada had come up here two months ago, smiling his eternal smile, but Chandrha had read him as a liar. And the president of the United States of America had visited the village a few weeks ago, had requested their attendance in a place called Washington, DC. where they’d be treated royally, but he too had lied. Humans had a great capacity for lies, something she couldn’t fathom. Tereskàdians didn’t have the ability to lie, yet they could detect lies in others. It was more than listening to others, and watching their body language, they just knew.

She wouldn’t mind meeting more humans, honest humans, if that was at all possible. This village was so isolated, in the middle of a wilderness of endless forests and lakes and rivers. Innumerable cities sprawled on every continent of this planet, but she hadn’t been close to any to find out what life there would be like. On her planet, she had lived in a sprawling city of multi-millions called Treskebhar (Trě’ skě bahr) but it had never appealed to her.

“Sometimes I wish we could leave,” she said, “and sometimes I’m glad we can’t.”

“AT774 closed the ship,” Rheôvhan said. “I don’t like that, but there’s nothing we can do about it. I’m not about to go into that forest so I can ask it to take down the force field. I’ve tried. It’s shut itself off.”

She didn’t want to believe it. There was no reason for the ship to land in that manner. Too convenient that it happened to land on this inhabited planet, although AT774 was well aware what planets circled one particular sun in this galaxy.

“We can hope,” she said.

Hope won’t get us anywhere, Jhevharel sent. Lying on his side, eyes closed.

What if they come? She asked. The ones in uniform, the Air Force.

He opened his eyes, stood up. He went to her, nuzzled her arm with a cold wet nose.

They don’t like us, she sent. They want to take us and hide us, and study us...

Do you want a drink?

Yes.

He lay down, rolled on to his back, exposing two teats in the lower abdominal region. The liquid in those teats belonged to Chandrha and to Ad‘herha’s whistling dragon. The only liquid she could drink, she had sucked Jhevharel’s teats from the moment she stopped nursing at her parents’ teats at the age of five. The liquid, whistling dragon milk would, along with raw meat, sustain her for the rest of her life.

She went down and grasped the left teat in her snout, and the liquid rushed down her throat.

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