Salamander

  The deathscape thundered around Cato, the sound of hundreds of Salamander feet slapping against the ground. He fled in his human form, naked with his heart pounding three beats a second, sweat pouring off him.

  He was half-blind as a human, with almost no night vision. This was why they had waited until dusk.

  They would catch him again. They would take him back to their caves and he would never be free. He would live in the hollow and damp, forced to feast on flesh of unknown origins, flesh that sent itself spewing out of him more often than not. Slippery, slimy, gelatinous flesh.

  He nearly gagged at the thought, but forced his stomach to behave. He hadn’t eaten for two days, in preparation for this. Because he was always in the caves, the running exhausted him every time he tried to get away.

  What he needed was a place to hide, a place they wouldn’t find him.

  He stumbled over something solid at the base of a shrub and crashed hard onto his wrists with a grunt. One of the bones had broken, but it would heal. The other was fine. He lay face down against the dead, ashen ground and the dead, spindly-spined shrub, and wondered how long it would take them to catch him.

  He should just give up.

  Beside him, something shifted. It had (brown or blonde?) hair and very human eyes. They were open wide, at least as shocked to see him as he was to see them. He looked down their body. The person was a woman, with (short/long) hair, and eyes of an intriguing (brown/blue).

  Slowly, she raised her index finger in front of her lips. He wasn’t sure whether it meant that she didn’t want him to eat her, or that she didn’t want him to talk. It might have also meant that she couldn’t or wouldn’t talk (or eat him). Regardless of which it was, it was a gesture of trust. He nodded once.

  “You’re human!” she whispered.

  It did not, then, mean that she wouldn’t talk.

  He should talk too.

  Before he had the opportunity, she tugged on his hand. “Quick, inside!”

  She slithered, feet-first, into a narrow crevice in the gray earth, and vanished into a hollow beneath it. Another cave. But no Salamanders.

  With a last glance at the deathscape around him, he slid the same way into the hole, dusting ash off his shirt as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. It was a large space, which she’d decorated with shelves of shiny cans and other supplies he could not make sense of.

  He caught her eyes, a flash of light like flint in the darkness, and warned, “I will kill you if you try to eat me.”

  “Why would I eat you?” she said, her voice husky in the way of anyone who spent enough time roaming the ashlands. “I’m not a skinny frog thing.” She stepped close to him and sprayed him, a metal can that released a mist along with a hissing noise.

  He jumped away, heart racing. “What is that?”

  “It makes us smell not like us. It’s protecting my life, too.” She rested her palm on his chest, her body close enough that he was uncomfortable in new and unexpected ways. 

  She tugged him to the ground and spread blankets over him. They stank of dirt and odd spices, but they were heavy enough to cover any sounds of his breathing.

  Above them, sending a spray of dust with each heavy step, the Salamanders searched.

  He wasn’t sure how long they lay like that, while Salamanders scurried and thumped overhead, whispering in their awful croaky voices, but eventually the sounds faded into the distance.

  And still they lay like that, warm and safe and together.

  Eventually, she shifted the blankets off them.

  “Thank you,” he breathed, barely a whisper. “They always find me.”

  She studied him, the whites of her eyes strangely haunting in the dark. “They better not. Why haven’t they eaten you?”

  Above them, something rustled. It might have been a Salamander, or the wind, or one of the few remaining wild animals that roamed the deadlands. 

  Both of them froze, silent, their gazes locked.

  After a few moments without any new sounds from above, Cato dared to speak again. “They stole me from my family. I can’t get home to my family, and the Salamanders think they own me.”

  “What do they do with you?”

  Here, where the moon could at least nearly reach, where there were no slippery water creatures to force him to bite into like a monster, it was difficult to imagine his life there. Even if he had only left it this morning.

  He had eaten humans before. He was sure of it. His captors would have found great pleasure in making him do so, and they often laughed when he ate — ravenously, despite his revulsion — what little they offered him.

  He ducked his head, ashamed. “It’s a secret.”

  She was quiet. Too quiet.

  He chanced a glance at her and saw that her expression, shadowed as it was in this cave, was inexplicably tender. “I won’t ask again,” she promised. “You can sleep here. I move in the morning, when they’re gone.”

  Move? Move where?

  “Who are you? Why haven’t they eaten you yet?” What if he went to sleep under that blanket and she helped the Salamanders catch him?

  “I’m Naomi,” she said. “And because I know how to hide.” She crossed to the far end of her cave and began rifling through shelves. “I fell into here…eight days ago.”

  “Fell?” Cato asked.

  She handed him something wrapped in hard air. He wasn’t sure what it was, but she had one of her own. He watched in awe as she peeled the hard air away from it like a skin and ate it.

  He did the same, struggling so much with the peel that she did it for him. It made a crinkling sound as it pulled away. She handed it back to him, peel half pulled away. 

  He hesitated, but the aroma of something…decidedly not meat…wafted toward him. He sniffed it a few more times. “What is it?”

  “A chocolate protein bar. It will give you energy.”

  He took a bite, and his mouth was awash in unexpected flavors. No doubt this heavy sweetness was an acquired taste, but it was one he was happy to acquire. Compared to the raw flesh he normally ate, this was divine. He took another bite.

  “We’re not fully alive,” Naomi explained. “But we’re not dead. It’s like a hole between places.”

  He nodded. He had felt not truly alive, but too alive to be dead, all his life. He didn’t want to die, but what was there to live for? The endless deathscape offered no hope.

  He gestured toward her very covered body. “Where did you get those…” He didn’t know what to call them. It wasn’t that she had covered herself in plant matter, but that was the closest thing he could imagine. “…fibers?”

  “Sylem,” she said.

  There was a place. It was a place worthy of having a name. “Is that near here?”

  She finished her chocolate protein bar and tucked the hard air into a container on one of the shelves. “We’re in Sylem,” she said. “But a hole. Like…do you know what spacetime is? And gravity? The fabric of existence?”

  He shook his head.

  She sighed and held her hands in front of her. “Imagine…here.” She reached for his hands and held one up near his face, and the other near his groin. “Imagine this—” She shook the face hand. “—is Life and this—” She shook the lower hand. “—is Death.”

  Yes, and they lived between them. He nodded, understanding. “We’re in the world.”

  “Will you let me explain!” she snapped.

  Above them, something thumped and rustled. A moment later, thumping spread toward them across the great abyss of ash overhead. More dust fell onto them from the ceiling.

  Naomi sped into action, shoving him to the ground and flinging the blanket over him. They lay side-by-side in the blanket’s safe darkness, and quieted their breathing while the night yawned on and Salamanders whispered overhead.

  “This is your fault,” she hissed at him. “You better not get…awake.”

  “Awake?” he asked, although he had a feeling he knew what she meant.

  Her groan was barely audible even within the blanket.

  “Sleep,” she insisted.

  He did sleep, eventually, while the Salamanders stalked them from overhead and this strange woman tucked herself against him and breathed in her own restless sleep.

  He slept, but he was also awake.