Take me, too! Yini tried to say but could not move her tongue, jaw, or her eyes. Through her peripheral vision, Yini watched the Emissaries walk Wiley into the flier. Once the flier’s doors shut, the Elves released the mind trap, and everyone could move again. Yini shaded her eyes with her hand and watched the Emissaries’ green flier zip away to the south.
“Guards! Seize this Witch-Rabbit!” Alphus said. He produced a nectar flask from his inside pocket.
“Stop, Father! I am in full command of my abilities. You won’t get close enough to me to make me drink!” She faced him with her lips pooched and jabbed a finger at the guards. “Tell those guards to stop where they are!”
Alphus sighed, then nodded to the Guard-Rabbits. They halted and took a defensive posture holding their spears across their chests. Their long ears poked through slits in their helmets. They reminded her of the guards who had taken her prisoner in the forest.
Seventeen moons earlier, Savu had received a tip to Yini’s location. He and his soldiers traveled far into the forest south of where the Etter bird dropped her. His guards sneaked without a sound as a Rabbit can then netted Yini, surprising her awake. They forced her jaw open and poured nectar into her mouth.
The guards fastened a throat collar beneath her chin, preventing Yini from purring. Savu designed the neck restraint himself. It had steel rods that pushed her chin skyward and shoved her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Savu knew her, having slept with her, and he knew her purring well.
No other She-Rabbit could purr, save a Witch-Rabbit. Yini had told him it took years, a lifetime, of meditation to master enough calm to purr and bring forth her magic. Savu didn’t care about that. He knew that when she purred and vibrated her throat, how dangerous she could be.
But today, Alphus had no opportunity for the element of surprise, no chance to get more nectar in her. Yini stood wide awake and sober and too powerful.
“I want to be free to live my one precious life in peace.” They understood what she meant. Myn and She-Myn used that awful Elven machine to extend their lives. “I have never harmed anyone, and I can’t because my master forbids it. But everybody wants to hurt me, rape me, and kill me!” She aimed those words straight at Savu and Alphus.
Yini’s chest hitched, and her eyes filled with tears. She pointed in the direction that the flier had taken Wiley. “Wiley loves me, and for the first time in my life, I am loved. He moves me, Alphus!” Yini sniffed, shook, and tears rolled down her cheeks.
Yini began to purr, that chesty, guttural but smooth vibration.
Alphus took a step back. He had to.
He had loved her as a toddler until she had visions that came true. Then she showed the ability to enchant Mother’s poultices by placing her small hand over the bandage. She-Rabbits brought their children to Yini to mend. Yini’s enchantments healed Rabbits ten times faster than usual, and the word spread even at six years old.
Yini turned to leave.
When the guards moved their spears aside to let Yini pass, the crowd began to turn and leave, too. Her words moved them. The audience went out of newfound respect after hearing Wiley pledge his love to her. Rabbits had a deep faith in love and family and realized there would be no hanging today.
On her way down the wooden steps, the ruby shard stuffed inside her bra and glowed, warming her breasts. Her mind’s eye, her third eye, opened a vision inside her as she walked. She hesitated, then touched her forehead.
The vision took her inside the sleek oval flier with Wiley.
The Emissaries put Wiley in a comfortable chair behind the cockpit. They did not restrain him; the mind trap sufficed. The pilot flew a straight course over the Great Meadow toward the big city of Piens. Yini had had several experiences with astral projection. At this moment, her ethereal spirit-self wanted to be inside the flier with Wiley, and she freed it to do as it pleased.
Yini’s white, smoky, airy lifeforce stood beside Wiley, and she laid a hand on his shoulder. She put her face near his, and he peered through the cockpit window, and she followed his gaze.
The tall apartment buildings, manufacturing houses, and lumber warehouses came into view. Yini understood, through a witch’s keen intuition, why they took Wiley to the city. They flew him toward the west side to the Elven Shop.
She’d had visions in the past about what went on inside the Shop. The Elven Assistants used their Shop’s machine to diagnose and treat patients. But they did not treat Rabbits there.
Rabbits had a network of healing houses in the Tunnels. They had clinics and hospitals well equipped to handle sickness and injury. Rabbits would not set one foot in that terrifying place of Myn, and they did not want any part of their machine.
Elf Assistants sent patients through their tubular machine on slow floating boards. The device interacted with the patient’s DNA in every tissue and cell as they glided through, one cell at a time.
Elves developed the machine to treat all ailments at once. For example, if a Myn had prostate cancer and chronic bronchitis, it fixed both with one trip through.
According to Rabbits, while the machine treated every disease, it also treated age. Elves didn’t plan it, but the device recognized the aging process as a disease at the cellular level. Rabbits considered the artificial extension of life unnatural and wrong.
Rabbits held firm to their belief that Myn and Elves’ used the machine to live artificial lives – way too long. Myn, She-Myn, and the Elves became abominations in the Rabbits’ eyes.
An odd thing, though, since the death rate slowed among Elves and Myn, so did the birth rate.
Clan Chiefs proclaimed aging as natural, and a device cannot alter the course of life. The Clan Chiefs codified the long-held belief on a scroll. So, Rabbits lived average lifespans of ninety-odd seasons.
What would the machine do to Wiley’s body and mind? Yini asked herself. Would the Elven machine change Wiley to match those gargantuan Myn? Amora’s plan must include turning Wiley into a Myn and molding him into a compliant and loyal subject! He would no longer be Wiley.
And that must not happen. I’m coming for you, Wiley, she pushed to him.
She waited for a tick, a Deamlonian second, but found herself saddened when she heard no mental reply. She took a deep breath. Yini’s spirit returned, and plans raced through her mind in the brief time it took to walk down the gallows stairs.
Then, Alphus’ gruff voice roared from behind her. “Do you think I’m going to let you walk away from here? Guards!” he said. Alphus reconsidered his decision to let her pass. He doubled his fists and stomped, angry he had to let her go. Alphus grew furious at his powerlessness over a female than losing a Witch. But the guards acted like they didn’t hear him and let her keep walking.
Yini heard him, though, and she spun on him, and Alphus stopped. “Yes! I will walk away from you!” Yini said, bitter, spitting her words with her jaw set. “I can stop you with magic,” she said and showed Alphus her Pool of Fire, “but why must I, Father?”
“You are a convicted criminal! I sentenced you to hang, and I will punish those guards for disobedience. Nothing has changed,” Alphus said, pointing his finger at her. “Except that you and Wiley have gained the people’s sympathy today. But it won’t last. Next time I will execute you in private,” Alphus said.
Yini wagged her finger right back at him. “The next time is not this time. Look after your business and leave mine alone!” Yini turned and stomped toward the High Hills, following the farmhands.
The dispersing crowd split, the wealthy entered the Alphus Clan Tunnel front door. The poor walked up the High Hills road, over the top, to the rear entrance on the north side of the hills. Yini followed them, although her birthright allowed access through the front.
Yini followed the farmhands and trotted up the High Hills front slope. She soon exhausted herself and slowed to a walk. During her incarceration in the Alphus Clan prison, they fed her meager rations. Her father ordered it. They fed her one thin strip of fried tulee with a crust of bread once a day.
The farms grew tulee, a root vegetable that substituted for meat. The Clans grew a few vegetables and grains for money crops, but tulee brought the most profit. Myn called it “beef root.” The blue striped root grew up larger than rutabaga and as fat as a cantaloupe around the middle.
It cooked in many ways. Myn sliced it into thick steaks to grill or roasted it like a brisket. They cut and fried the beef root for sandwiches. Although Myn still raised beef and chicken, they ate meat when they could afford it. But tulee served as a low-cost alternative, and they froze and stored it for prolonged periods. But the guards fed Yini a tiny bit of tulee and nothing more.
Yini lost weight from her lean and athletic body, nibbling crusts of bread and bits of fried tulee. They gave her enough food to keep her salivating for more. Her face became pinched, and her frame thinned.
Yini looked down at her skinny legs as she walked up and over the High Hills road’s crest. This north slope gravel road that she descended led down into the Valley of Pons. The Valley of Pons spread out into a vast fertile land her Clan had farmed for two thousand seasons.
These roads enabled the three Clans on this continent to connect to markets in Estiel and Piens. These routes allowed them to reach the Crystal Sea and the Port of Avar at the Leadh River’s estuary. They also sold at the market in the smaller Port of Pons further to the northeast. On the way down, she rounded the switchbacks and remembered what Alphus and Savu had done to her.
“My ex-fiancé, Savu.” She spat in the ditch.
A poor Rabbit civilian had stumbled on her in the forest, and seeking the reward, ran to Savu. She didn’t blame the destitute Rabbit. “The poor do the planting, and harvesting and the rich get the coin,” she said to herself. “Good on him, getting ahead when he could.”
But she did kill the big dumb Etter bird that took her. “Ha!” she said out loud as she reached the level ground of the furrowed fields. The corral’s fence lay ahead, and her mind drifted to Savu.
She would get her vengeance for those nights Savu came to her cell and made her drink honey nectar. He forced her mouth open, and she gulped it down, and then her mind went fuzzy. He had diluted the nectar he gave her, adding extra honey to make her compliant but lucid. Flashes, memories, came of Savu tugging on her prison garb, unbuttoning her shirt and pants. The brawny Rabbit lifted her by the tail and had his way with her. The more that memory flooded her, the angrier she became.
She would kill Savu.
Yini undid the rope latch on the Alphus corral gate, swung it open, and stomped into the stable’s corral. She removed the red prison shirt and the red pants and threw them into a pullow excretion pile. Yini tramped the red clothing in pullow droppings until the suit turned brown. She marched toward the Clan Tunnels’ rough, wooden back doors on the stables’ east side.
Yini wore a green leaf bra and green shorts with a diamond hole in the back below the waistband for her fluffy tail. All Rabbit waistlines, even underwear, had holes sewn below them for their tales.
She-Rabbits had little fur compared to Myn-rabbits. Yini had a light white pelt on her butt cheeks, and the back of her legs, and a soft brown fleece on the front of her legs. Her torso, shoulders, and arms had thin white fur, but her neck and face had no pelt.
She talked to herself as she walked. “The Queen wants to remake Wiley, make him into one of those Myn, and so they took him to the Shop.”
When Myn first used the Elven machines, it studied Myn’s bodies. It diagnosed them and decided they must be more robust for the hard labor they performed.
To their surprise, the first subject exited the machine standing eight feet tall. The musclebound Myn had hands the size of bear claws and shoulders that couldn’t fit through the door. She-Myn came from the machine standing over seven feet tall and supple. Once Amora heard of the She-Myn’s sleek bodies, she stopped the treatments at once. She had to be next and have the big, lithe body for herself.
“I know Amora’s game,” Yini mumbled as she walked toward the Clan door. “The Queen wants Wiley to bow to her like all those fawning Myn and hand over the ruby shard, help her get it. She thinks she will win with a simple trip through the machine.”
“The joke’s on her. Wiley doesn’t have the glass. I do.”
Yini’s head swam, and she sighed. “I cannot be of help to Wiley as weak and hungry as I am. Plus, I need my bedroll, my green cloak, and my long knife. If Savu shows his face, I’ll shove my long knife through his ribs.” She opened the double doors and entered the Clan Tunnel in her underwear and her Pool of Fire in her right hand.
“Thank She-of-the-Moon Wiley brought my Pool of Fire!”
The maze of Rabbit Tunnels went for miles. Each Clan had a city center, complete with markets and family-run stores and shops. They also had artisans skilled in smithing and leathercraft. The Tunnels had industries for processing and packaging their wagonloads of harvested tulee.
Family quarters made up the bulk of the Tunnels. The administration offices sat on the ground level. The Clan Chief and his royal relatives lived in lavish Tunnels dug in the High Hills in the upper levels. The following Tunnels down housed the near rich. But as the Tunnels got lower underground, the more meager and cramped the quarters became. As the Tunnels approached the bottom, those Rabbits lived in poverty.
Down there, ragged Rabbits begged outside filthy and overcrowded rooms. Rabbits assembled at the stairs every morning. They waited on a boss to come and fetch the numbers he needed to round out his hoe and shovel crews.
He paid them in food rations, a small sack of tulee – only enough to hold off starvation for a family for a day. Yini had to go there, to The Deep, they called it. They built the prison down there, and she needed to fetch her things. She hoped the head jailer hadn’t sold them since Alphus put her on the gallows.
The rough double door entrance served the Alphus Clan when workers went to and from the fields. She let the door close, then paused, allowing her eyes to adjust for a moment.
Elven engineers built a centralized solar array along the High Hills’ highest ridge. The photoelectric grid powered the ceiling light fixtures throughout the Clan Tunnels. Elven scientists coated the lights with a layer of nanoparticles that refract light. They mimicked the moisture refraction in Deamlon’s atmosphere. It turned the ceiling into a pale blue sky.
They used the Elven lights to bring starshine into the dim rooms and Tunnels. They made fake windows that showed scenes of the Great Meadow, improving morale.
Yini had a long way to go. Her jailer had stored her belongings in a chest in his office many stories below this level. She had to pass through this long hall, then left down a short hallway to the stairs. They descended fifteen stories to the warm and damp air of The Deep’s Tunnel, which held the Clan’s Jail.
Geothermal springs flowed under The Deep. The springs have supplied the Clan Tunnels with pressurized superhot water for ages. Rabbits designed a piping system that took hot water to all the tunnels through the floors and walls. They used silent lift pumps with thermostat devices, both developed by the Elves. Elven technology made life more comfortable, and Rabbits and Myn made them wealthy for it. The springs supplied hot water to heat the Tunnels and for showers and bathing. The pumps also drew freezing water from the River Pons.
Warm under her feet, Yini hurried along the polished wood floor on her tiptoes. She relaxed and smiled and was thankful no one lived along this stretch of the ground floor. If someone spotted a semi-nude Rabbit trotting the hallway, it would not shock them. Rabbits had a casual attitude toward clothing and would show no more shock than ask if she wanted a robe.
Yini approached the junction, where she turned left to the stairs. Then she heard the creaking of leather armor. The soft slap of leather boots told her that a guard came her way down the short hall that led to the stairs. He must have come from the story below her.
Yini threw herself flat against the wall and froze there in hopes he turned the other way. In case he spotted her, she purred from deep in her chest, readying herself, “hoodle, oodle, oodle, oodle….” Yini held her blue streams in check until the Rabbit soldier entered the junction.
The guard stopped sensing another presence. He bent his knees and leveled his spear. “Who’s here?” he asked.
In her green bra and shorts, from flat against the wall, Yini spun on her left foot and kicked the Myn-Rabbit in the mouth.
Smack!
His head jerked back, and her foot continued over his head as she finished her spin. The Myn-Rabbit stumbled backward and brought up his spear in a deft move as Yini charged in with a fist to his face. But she met his spear shaft. The guard continued with the spear, sending her arm high and opening a path to her gut.
“To arms!” the guard shouted as he whipped his spear around.
Yini wheeled her arm down, deflected the spear, and sacrificed her forearm. Lunging, he met Yini’s arm instead of her gut. Blood spewed from the gash he cut below her elbow.
Rabbits shouted down the hall, distracting them both for a tick. The guard saw blood and let out a yell as he charged. “AAAAAGH!” She turned her head in time to see his contorted, angry face, and he froze.
The guards running to his aid down the hall froze in place, too. Whispers of tiny blue tentacles circled the hallway, and they did not come from her. She recognized the thin strands of blue power. Then, an odd sound came, like giant bugs circling her head, diving, and zipping past her eyes. Under normal circumstances, a She-Rabbit would bat at them, shooing them.
But Yini smiled. She had seen and heard these things before. She knew what Fairies sounded like as they flew. The Fairy stopped and hovered in her line of sight. A wild tangle of blue tendrils danced around the hovering yellow Fairy, then faded. Yini could see her face.
The She-Fairy stood four inches tall and wore no clothes, as per their custom. She had long blond hair and a set of four yellow wings, swept back like a damselfly.
The wings beat in a blur, and the tiny girl spoke in Fairy chatter as she hovered. But Yini understood the words, having learned their tongue as a young teenager.
“I am Cha,” the Fairy said. “Your master sent me. You know of whom I speak.”
“Yes, of course, Cha,” Yini said, still purring while breathing, hoodle, oodle, oodle, oodle, oodle. She purred while she inhaled and exhaled deep from the skirmish. “You used your blue to open the here-and-there abyss and stopped time around us, so this must be important. Why are you here?” Yini asked, speaking Fairy. Yini held a hand on her bleeding arm and sent her blue to stitch the wound closed. Purring as she did, her tendrils stayed close to her lips anyway.
“His Blessed Grace saw it all and is proud you did not use your blue to attack this Alphus Clan guard. By instinct alone, you used your honed fighting skills. He-who-cannot-be-named is sad that Alphus captured you and almost hanged you. He is sad that he could not intervene on his protégé’s behalf. Now your master wants to reward you,” Cha said.
“Wait,” Yini said. Fairy gifts could get very strange, and Yini accepted them with much caution. But before she could say anything, Cha’s blue strands shot from her tiny body in webs. Cha’s webs covered the hall, touching both walls. Then Cha split herself apart, hovering at both sides of the hallway at the same time. She opened a dark abyss between, in the here-and-there.
“The here-and-there is dangerous, Cha!” Yini said, yelling in the Fairy language.
The hallway began to spin with Yini at the wheel’s hub. The Tunnels spun in a dizzying whirlwind of the guards, herself, and spears. It twirled faster. The two-toned green and beige hall blended as everything swirled together. It all flushed down into a point of singularity, and the vortex sucked her down into it.
“Noooo!” Yini yelled as her world went black.
