Cevic

Chapter 15

Weak!

 

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out. When I opened my eyes, darkness still dominated the room I was in except a small lamp laid on the floor that let out warm glows in every direction.

My bones were aching everywhere, and my head and face were still throbbing. When I took in an unfamiliar room, painted warm colors of beige and sunshine yellow, immediately I looked down at my wrists. They were free of any bondage like cuffs and I couldn’t see a scalpel anywhere.

 “Relax. You’re at my house.” James leaned against the open door. “Are you okay?”

The pieces of memory from yesterday came flooding back, so vividly that I couldn’t doubt that it had been just a bad dream. Evidences were all over my body. My badly hit arm was dark red, there were a couple of blue-blacks on my legs, and my cheek still stung.

 “Yes,” I replied weakly. “What time is it?”

“It’s three in the morning,” said James nonchalantly. “You were screaming, first in English, and then in your planet language. Cevica, is it?”

  I nodded. “I was…screaming?”

He walked over and sat on the edge of my bed, his hair ruffled and bedraggled. “Yes, and very badly. But Rezia sleeps like the dead. She didn’t even flinch when you were screaming.”

  I smiled slightly. “I know. Even if you carry her off and run rounds, she won’t awake. I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

 “No, it’s cool. It’s understandable. Anyone will have nightmares if they went through something like that,” he said, referring to my nightmarish encounter with Dr. Markus.

  “Thanks.”

James scratched the back of his neck. “I heard from Rezia that you two came to find the cure for your king.”

  Hearing Rezia’s real name spoken by a human was still something I needed to adjust to. “Yes.” My throat tightened. I looked down at the pendant. Was it just my imagination that the glow seemed to have dimmed?

 “Would you mind if I help?” he asked quietly.

 I perked up. “Uh-“ It had occurred to me once, but Rezia had been passionately against it.

  James shrugged. “If it makes you uncomfortable-“

“No, no. If you could help us, it’s the best gift we can get. Are you sleepy?”

“Nope. Bad insomnia. Tell me all about it.”

For an hour, I told him of Cevic and our mission. He was fascinated by how we fed on the fruits and nothing else, and added he finally understood my fasting during lunch. He also remarked that it would be fascinating to have a personal abele.

 “It’s way better than having a chauffeur.”

 “So the people of your planet believe that the cure is only on Earth?” he asked after a pause.

 “Yes.”

 “They send you to here, Illinois, because the cure is in Illinois?”

 “Yes. It is somewhere here, that is all they are aware of.”

  James and I, one with dreadful insomnia and the other with nightmares about scalpels and bloodlust-filled Lords and ministers of an alien planet, talked through the night.