Page 57 of Finding Her Heart
She put on her boots, with the little match packet, missing two, lacing them up. After, Doku-ni took she and all the warg family went to the community area. Here, around the central fire, she would be allowed to see and speak with others. Their hall opened to a huge, cavernous space. It felt familiar, a vista she had seen before, but filled with more Orki and humans having positive, friendly interactions than she had dreamed possible. Entering at the highest point, the uppermost circle descended in an amphitheater shape to a fire pit at the lowest point in the center. There were several entrances or exits around the highest tunnels—a honeycomb of them going off who knows where. Dancing in the lowest center circle, radiant with clean, brilliant, the community fire burned. Unnaturally white, it was nothing the mundane fire Anna had cooked food over since she was six years old.
This was where the Orki, the wargs, and the humans became a community.
Lurann, her former sister by marriage sat in the lap of an Orki and was surrounded by several others. She looked for all the world like a queen holding court. And she was smiling.
From where she stood, Anna could see Lurann’s golden hair and her brilliant smile. She was radiant. Anna had seen that smile on her wedding day and anytime she shared a room with Kejere. Kejere and Vejere may have competed for her hand and fought because of it, but Lurann had only ever shared that smile with one of them. Younger and bitter with her own losses, at the time Anna had thought Lurann a tease, but Anna could see now how wrong she'd been in so many ways.
“Kejere told me to take care of you.”Anna remembered Lurann saying. That was engraved in all the horror of those days as something precious. The women trapped together in the cold cellar beneath the bakehouse had to choose who to sacrifice to the ugly maw of raider avarice. Offered up to save their daughters, Benjere’s wife Bess went screaming to a horrific death. Her face swollen and blooded, Anna escaped the same, and later, Lurann’s determination to honor her brother’s last words placed Anna at the bottom of the list of those in line to be terrorized. Her brother’s love. And Lurann’s risk to deliver it.
Anna had known the other woman most of her life. And yet, she hadn't known her at all.
“Is Lurann a redress bride too?” she asked Doku-ni as they approached the group.
Did she remember Lurann naked on her knees with an Orki behind her? A differently colored Orki? The male whose lap she sat in was distinct among the others, with decorative metal piercings in his ears, his nose, even his lip. Doku-ni behaved in such a possessive manner she couldn't imagine being surrounded by so many of his brothers at one time. Watching, Anna saw one of them reach out and stroke Lurann’s cheek. Another curled a lock of her hair around his finger as if fascinated.
No, Anna could not imagine Doku-ni allowing that.
And she didn’t want him to.
“Lurann is succor.”
“Succor?”
“Comfort, ease, sweetness, welcome, succor for Orki community. When she wishes.”
Had she heard him wrong? “Community?”
“Unique, rare, will care for many Orki. Brothers care for succor. She is home for the lost.”
Anna had to process what he meant without adding the judgments of her upbringing. Righteous Way was among the most proper of towns. There were expectations of every person there with weighty social repercussions, and Lurann had always had a questionable reputation, simply because she was pretty and laughed out loud when men talked to her. She murmured, “Home for the lost?”
Doku-ni held none of the same judgments. His voice was pleased and proud when he described Lurann, as if his people were blessed to have discovered her. “Succor to those who will never find redress. Warg die. Some Orki alone, always. No end to their death. Lurann will not drink the milk of the sister, but she can embrace the Orki. Rare. Respected. Many will honor her with their trunks of treasures as I have honored my redress.”
“Warg die?”
“We share beginning, we share ending. We share a heart. The warg smell the universe. Bodies are short-lived but share heart. Not all warg lines survived the making of Orki.”
“Short-lived. I am short-lived. The warg are short-lived but the Orki are not.
“The Orki are not. And no longer my Anna so-humonn-ror'si-ess. Anna will share Doku-ni heart.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Some questions Anna live.” With curving lips, he hugged her close, giving her one of those affectionately dangerous caresses with his sharpened tusk.
He led her to where the human size steps wound down to the community fire, to tables and benches of rough wood, clearly accommodations for women and children. He sat on a sturdier ledge made of stone. Food waited on the tables, in baskets, bowls, and platters. The Orki she saw eating ignored the cutlery, another concession to the humans within their world.
Anna felt shy now that she was here, able to look around and talk to people. But she did not know where to begin or who to begin with. Around the fire, she saw war beasts and what looked like war beast kits. Amazingly she spied many Orki. There was also a young woman, and a girl sitting very close to a large Orki who watched over her as if the very idea of community made him nervous.
And there was the brown-haired woman—the one who she thought she failed—fully dressed clean and watching the Orki children play with bemusement. Anna almost burst into tears looking at her.
She turned to Doku-ni. “You knew, didn't you? You knew she was alive, that she survived. Why didn't you tell me?”
He didn’t flinch. No guilt, no regret. “Who do you see?”
Anna took a breath. This was their culture. But it was hard for her. It did not make complete sense to her human mind. She wanted to argue. But arguing would not change this aspect of how the Orki interacted with their world. Mutual respect for individuality was important for them because in the beginning, as Eid showed her in those visuals, they had no individuality at all.
And their right to be individuals and to protect their own redress woman was a sacred rite. “I see Doku-ni.”
