As I start slicing the fragrant mushroom stems, Luiz joins us again, bringing water for soup. Neela helps him in, before leaning down to kiss him and wander off. She still ignores me, but I do not mind.
"Luiz, did you and Neela already have a mating ceremony?" I ask, my conversation with Liana still on my mind.
He pauses, brings a leg of some animal to his own cutting table and nods. "It was quick, private. We didn't invite anyone other than Liana and Ulla."
My brows furrow just as a child comes in, running up to Ulla. The child has long, straight silver hair and bright blue eyes, and she holds a small wicker basket filled with crystal shards. She asks something in the Enduar tongue, smiling with small, pointed teeth.
Ulla smiles, and grabs a bit of mushroom off of my board to hand to the girl. There's more familiarity, but it is different from what I felt taking care of Mikal.
I am used to children, but slaves with children didn't live where I lived. My reading lessons with Ulla have been going well, but I can hardly understand the girl. Ulla says something else, I think it’s about speaking the common tongue, and the girl smiles.
"Look, Flova gave me, Ulla!" she exclaims in the common tongue with a thick accent. It is good to see so many children speaking two languages, just as the slaves once did.
Ulla smiles and takes the basket from her. "These are beautiful, Rila. You should give them to your father for his singing."
Rila bounces on her feet, her eyes darting between Luiz and me. "Help?" she asks, looking up at Ulla hopefully.
Ulla shakes her head. "Not right now, dear. Why don't you go play outside with the other younglings?"
Rila nods eagerly and runs back outside, throwing the door open and letting in a burst of fresh air.
"Mierda1,"Luiz mumbles while grabbing his basket. "Forgot the other meat." He walks back out of the pavilion and I continue chopping in silence for a few more minutes before I speak up again.
"She is sweet. Slaves were taught the common tongue young, too," I say conversationally. It is uncomfortable to put myself out there, but Ulla is kind.
Ulla pauses, looking up at me while she passes her elegant hands over her apron. "Yes. We have something like a school for the younglings. It is small. We have less than thirty children in our halls. Her father is a singer, and her mother is a miner. Siya."
I nod. "That is nice." I think of these people, their culture hidden from the world while they slowly die. "How many Enduares are there?" I ask.
"Around three hundred, with the arrival of you all.”
The silence that follows is uncomfortable. We always had enough children in Zlosa, we never worried about our future, just working. I meant what I said to Arlet—I would enjoy having a child. Especially a child in a place where children were so completely and utterly treasured.
I finish chopping the mushrooms, and Ulla adds them to the pot, stirring the soup and humming to herself. Eventually, Luiz comes as well, and we work quietly while my mind swims with thoughts.
They continue to call me an Enduar, tell me I have something to offer. That I am needed.
Ulla gives me something else to cut, and I start working on the root quickly.
A shout breaks the silence. We all snap our heads up, and my careless knife stroke cuts through my finger. I yelp, and Ulla's attention is between me and the Enduares being brought into the hall.
I stick my finger into my mouth to stop the bleeding and slink back as as a group of Enduares carry one of their men over. Agonized shouts fill the air. I recognized those sounds from when a slave wasn’t killed properly after a punishment went too far.
Another scream pierces the air, and the hair on my arms stands up. It’s an ugly pain that I can’t look away from. He’s covered in blood and thrashes in their arms. Though he is tall, like all the Enduares, the hunter carries him as if he were nothing.
Ulla starts barking instructions as she points to the station I had been working on.
After helping them clear off the mushrooms and knife and any other utensils that I had been using to prepare the food, they put the Enduar with the mangled chest in front of me. His bloody form is something of nightmares. His braid was falling out, and strands were stuck to the hot, red blood, while his powerful limbs hung limply around him.
“Oh gods, Dyrn,” Ulla breathed. “He looks like something chewed him up and spit him out,” she says in the Enduar language. I’m straining to listen to her words and understand them.
Neither the name nor the man sparked recognition for me. There was so much blood leaking from his chest and upper arms, coating his entire body. When he breaths, his spine bows, as if he were a fish gasping for breath. The Fuegorra on his chest flashes.
“What the fuck happened?” Ulla demands in her native tongue, her hands already darting across his body. When she yanks them away, both her apron and her skin is stained with the deep-colored liquid.
It’s so strange to see, especially this close. I’d seen the other man killed, but this is different. Red, just like human blood.
Another hunter who had helped carry him, a man with a scar running along his face, takes out a roll of thin woven cloth from his pack and starts to tear it into strips. As he binds one of Dyrn’s shoulders, the injured Enduar gives a shout in the Enduar language. Ulla shouts back, something I don’t understand.