Nothing saved them from Judith’s wrath when they stole Garth from her.
Judith gave up on the world long before those fools destroyed it. She didn’t run out of her forest looking for survivors, didn’t seek out those she knew of. She wanted nothing to do with any human until Garth fell out of the sky. He aroused one emotion she had left, curiosity. Where did he come from and how did he get there? Why did he have a perfect adult body and the mind of a child? What terrified him? To get the answers she must first educate him and then protect him from the survivors down the mountain, wanting a healthy, mature male to rebuild the human race.
Excerpt
A rumbling sounded like thunder in a cloudless sky. A flash lit the area, more akin to heat lightning than an electrical charge, and a body fell to the ground from some twelve feet or so above, coming from nothingness. Her hair settled, the sound disappeared, and there were no more flashes.
Just the body.
She stared at it, and it wasn’t what she expected. Aside from something abnormal, one didn’t expect what appeared to be a perfectly normal human being to fall out of the sky.
He appeared to be a normal, though superior in body structure, with facial features more regular than most. Still not abnormal. Obviously one male still lived who was not old and decrepit, but where did he come from? And how, in this world, before or now, did the technology exist to drop him there?
His chest rose and fell, his breathing erratic. The trip, wherever it had been from, did not seem to have been an easy one.
She threw open the curtains over the glass doors in the dining room to let in the morning sun. Even as isolated as she was, she preferred the closed in feeling at night. The sight outside the glass doors, one she barely looked at, drew him like a magnet.
The bell on the micro went off. He jumped and shrank back from the simple sound, and Judith realized how tense he was and how frightened. He nearly tripped in his hurry to get away from her when she carried the tray to the table.
The way he moved was no longer simply in a hurry. He was in a panic, and she couldn’t understand why. To ease him, she moved back into the kitchen. A man his size in a panic could be dangerous. She wouldn’t mind being killed, but did not want to be maimed.
“Sit down and eat,” she told him in her best humoring voice.
“Sit?” he asked with a blink of astonishment.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know what sit means.”
“I know.” He turned sullen again. “No sit woman.”
“You no sit Mother?” she canted back at him.
“Lay Mother,” he said seriously.
Judith had to take a deep breath to control a temper she thought she no longer had until she met Garth. “You don’t really expect me to believe you can lay a mother and not sit with her,” she said tightly. “I think this farce has gone far enough.”
“What farce?”
“You’re lying to me!”
“No lie. You know lay breed. No sit breed.”
“I don’t really care to hear how you breed your Mothers.”
“You know,” he said bitterly. “You make breed. You make fight.”
“Now I know you’re lying. No woman can make a man your size do anything he doesn’t want to.”
“You know!” he screamed at her on the verge of tears and panic.
Seeing what he was going to do the instant he moved, Judith tried to stop him, rushing to intercept him, only to make him run faster. He hit the glass door at a full run with enough force to hurl him backwards. He rolled to his side, curled in a ball, and wept.
Judith stared at him in disbelief. The only explanation she could think of for something so stupid was they didn’t have glass doors where he came from. Fortunately hers weren’t the old fashioned shattering glass. Or maybe he expected to break through, giving him a way out regardless of the danger.
The senseless desperation hurling him at the glass was the same as he’d fought the ropes. He’d never tell her anything truthful if he had that much distrust and fear.
She knelt beside him and touched his arm. She expected him to push her away. He didn’t move except to stiffen. “Turn over so I can see if you hurt yourself.”
He did as she said, as meekly as he had allowed her to tie him. He submitted to her administrations, and it was submission, while he watched with hatred behind the tears still in his eyes.
“Garth, I’m not keeping you a prisoner here. You can leave anytime you want.”
“Lie.”
“No.” She stood and slid the door open. “It was just something you didn’t know. I tried to stop you.”
Erratic was a mild word to describe him. One minute he was weeping and panicky. The next he was angry and defiant, rubbing tears off his face with the heels of his hands. He sat up and pushed away from her with his arms. “You no will band. No punish.”
A retort came to mind. She held it and walked off. “Do whatever you want.”
“You want leave.”
“I don’t care what you do,” she told him, which was true. Her curiosity had been dampened by his erratic behavior. He was either an idiot, incapable of telling her anything, or the most accomplished liar and actor she had ever seen.
She watched him from the kitchen, thinking how childish his actions were. From his place on the floor, he wiggled on his butt toward the door, stretching his leg until he could push the glass panel back and forth with his toes. An angry, willful, defiant child, determined not to do anything he was told and expecting some kind of reprisal for his refusal. A frightened, confused child who refused despite the punishment he expected.
“Garth, are you going to eat before you leave?” she asked softly.
The door stopped sliding. “I no lie.”
“Neither did I. I’ll believe you if you’ll believe me.” He behaved a child; she’d treat him like one.
“No want you lie. No pretend,” he said sullenly.
“I wasn’t pretending. I asked you to because you wouldn’t believe me.”
“You want me leave.”
“I wanted you to know you can if you want to.”
He stood up, the defiance back. “I go I want.” Without hesitation or fear, bold and aggressive instead, he shut the door. “I want.”
“When you want,” she agreed. “Do you want to eat?”
“No eat.”
“All right, I’ll save it for you.” He didn’t seem to understand again, and he didn’t look good. He was still too weak for the exertion and shock he’d put himself through. “Are you…” She stopped to think of a way to phrase it he would understand. “Do you have pain?”
“Hurt,” he agreed with a nod.
“Maybe you’d want to rest for a while.” She gave it as a suggestion, not an order. If nothing else, her encounter with him could refresh her psychology techniques, especially reverse psychology.
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