Note to readers: “2200 Blues” is a novel in progress, and each chapter is an early draft in its unfolding journey. Your thoughts and reactions are invaluable, guiding its evolution and refinement. 2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.
“Stay back!” Li growled at Nickel.
“I want to see him!” Nickel complained as Li gently shoved him back, sending him staggering and bumping into a few other Thraíha who were shouting and clambering to get through the throng.
“No!” Li said, pointing a finger at Nickel. “Not today! I’m not letting another outworlder out!”
“I’m not an outworlder!” Nickel said, seething with anger. He glowered at Li, feeling a rising fume of outrage. He’d had enough of Li and his intimidating behavior. “I’m Thraíha, and I’ve done the work to prove it!”
“Work?” scoffed Aarole, appearing from the bordering crowd of Thraíha. Looming higher over the rock mound next to Li, he stared at Nickel through pitted eyes, his mouth slightly open as if testing Nickel’s response, waiting to see his provocation.
“You’re not one of us. If you weren’t born Thraíha, you’re not Thraíha!”
“I’m going to kill you,” Nickel snarled, his emotions getting the best of him, his sleepless mind fueling his fury.
“Aah, aah, aah,” Aarole said, smiling and crossing his arms, his eyes narrowing even further. “I knew you were good for nothing. You’re outworlder scum, like the Vramung scum.” He took slight steps over the mound of rock, rising above Nickel, moving his body closer to Nickel’s so that he loomed over him in an aggressive proximity.
Nickel gulped, trying to step back, but only moving his heel ever so slightly across the rock before hitting the legs of the Thraíha behind him. He was cornered; the lower nape of Aarole’s chest was barely an inch from Nickel’s face. Nickel had met thuggish bullies in the Military Academy before—worse ones than Aarole and his friends. He wished he hadn’t spoken his last words to Aarole, as they invited new trouble from someone he had already had trouble with among the Thraíha.
Aarole leaned further over him, causing Nickel to cringe and cower back, pressing helplessly into the restless limbs and torsos of the Thraíha men behind him. Their presence was unrelenting.
“Going to kill me, eh?” Aarole hissed.
“We have word!” someone shouted from afar.
Nickel edged backward into a narrow opening in the boulders behind him, only to feel his arm caught in a tangle.
“What do you mean you have word?” came a distraught voice from close behind. It seemed the tangle Nickel was caught in was a group of Thraíha wrestling to hold one another back, one trying to stop the other from breaking through while the other tried to push him out of the way. Nickel felt frozen, unable to pull his arms free, largely out of fear, with no other place to hide or escape from Aarole and the physical altercation sure to ensue.
“Akela will know you threatened to kill me, and after you missed the last hunt, you’ll be gone forever!”
“I know you seek after Kythria,” Aarole muttered, grinning widely.
The alarm turned into a tsunami inside Nickel.
“Who are you talking about?” Nickel asked in a growl, though he already had an idea.
“The girl who painted you for your initiation,” Aarole said. “That’s a courtship test.”
“I’m not interested in the rituals,” Nickel said. So that was her name. Kythria. The Thraíha girl he’d passed through the village square, the one who grabbed the young boy, Kyang.
“But you just said you’re Thraíha,” Aarole sneered. “I’ve seen the way you look at her, the way you go silent around her. If you tried to kill me, I could invoke the courtship rituals over you.” Aarole smiled a large, cruel smile.
Emotions roiled inside Nickel. His heart hammered with anger’s agitation, mixed with his addled sleeplessness.
“What are you talking about?” Nickel husked. His head buzzed with confusion, shock, outrage, and helplessness. He had expected Aarole to get physical with him in response—to shove him off his footing into the crowd and possibly do worse. But instead, Aarole was trying a psychological trick, a manipulative play at a perceived vulnerability. It was seemingly much worse than a physical altercation. What better way to provoke his feelings of belonging—or lack thereof—among the Thraíha than by threatening to implicate him in the courtship rituals?
Before Nickel could respond, a man hurtled into the crowd next to him. Cries rang out in Nickel’s ears as he and the men around him went crashing to the ground. The weight of other bodies pressed on him, causing him to tip over alongside them. Their flailing limbs ensnared Nickel, swatting at him as he fell. Nickel found himself on the ground, leaning against a fallen man, his right eye smarting from an impact with someone’s elbow.
“This is the worst patrol formation I’ve ever seen!” Li shouted over the men. “It’s pathetic!”
“It’s because we have more men than we need!” shouted a raspy voice from behind. “Out! Out!” shouted an older man from ahead in the crowd. “Too many men! This is why we said we had enough! You shouldn’t have come! Our flank is already filled ahead!”
“Vramung can’t see us like this!” came the booming voice of Akela. Many of the men quieted at the sound of his voice. Nickel brushed himself off and got on his knees, dragging his upper body across the ground. The men he had fallen with were dispersing, untangling themselves and getting up.
“We can’t let the Cast-Out spirits affect us like this!” roared Akela. “Up! Ohh! Up on your feet and leave! This is not strength!”
Grumbling, the young men around Nickel slowly dusted themselves off and began walking away, down the slowly declining surface of the dark rock plain. Nickel stood up and followed them, the crowd widening as they moved. He craned his neck to the sides, searching for Aarole, but couldn’t see him amidst the other men. The motion of turning his head made him dizzy from sleeplessness. The dark, rocky terrain below beckoned to him, pulling him under, threatening to topple him into the darkness of the rock.
Where is he? Crossing Steve was one thing, but now Aarole? It felt like one bad encounter after another—another slip-up, another knotty entanglement with someone. For the first time, Nickel wished he could leave the Thraíha behind. The emotional entanglements and sources of conflict were becoming too much. An impassive, hardened Farrul. An infuriated, misunderstood Steve. And now a threatening Aarole, after they had already gotten off on the wrong foot. Nickel had threatened him, knowing it could go nowhere good—an act of impulsiveness. Now he feared what Aarole would do. What he could tell Kythria. Or the Women’s Council. They dealt with interpersonal affairs—and the rites of courtship.
Nickel gave an exasperated grunt, gritting his teeth and wheezing. He squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his hands over them. How much worse could this get? He had just gotten relatively accustomed to Thraíha culture, and now he found himself entangled in a potential courtship plot. He had no idea how the rites even worked and couldn’t believe that Aarole might use this as leverage against him. Nickel had to get to the council before Aarole did. But what could he say that wouldn’t make him sound crazy or wind him up in the very situation he was trying to avoid?
Before he could mull endlessly over that thorny goal, a rough hand clamped down on his shoulder.
“There you are, Nickel,” came the sonorous voice of Akela, a soft tone of his deep, timbered voice sending warm air into Nickel’s right ear. Nickel stopped walking and turned sharply to face Akela. The white irises of Akela’s wide eyes, with their gray pupils, pierced Nickel’s gaze, contrasting with Akela’s lined, worn face and dark features.
“Yeah?” Nickel exclaimed loudly and nervously, scrunching up his shoulders and turning to face Akela.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Akela muttered, still speaking softly. “The council told you to come to the patrol early!” he growled in a quiet husk.
Nickel frowned, confused, looking warily at Akela.
“No, Akela,” Nickel said, refusing to corroborate any guilt. He had already gotten himself into enough trouble by ditching the farm work Luvele had assigned him and fighting with Aarole. He wasn’t about to have another slight added against him. “I was at the farm. That’s where I was told to go this morning… The council never came to me.”
Akela kept his hand on Nickel’s shoulder, continuing to stare at him with a glazed expression, his pitted eyelids betraying confusion, suspicion, or both.
“I came here because I was worried for the tribe’s safety,” Nickel added, hoping to justify leaving his farm work.
Akela sighed, removing his hand from Nickel’s shoulder and turning away. His fur tunic fluttered in the soft but steady wind.
“Doesn’t matter,” Akela said, walking back up the rock at a brisk pace. “This is an emergency, and I need an outworlder to bear witness.”
“Me?” Nickel said, jerking into a trot behind Akela as he gained distance on the rock climb.
“Yes, you,” Akela hissed, without turning around. He jerked to a stop and waved his hands at the few men who were slowing down as they walked back down the rock to follow Akela and Nickel. “Stay down!” Akela called. “Just the two of us going up. Go back down!” He motioned to the few men milling around, pointing back behind him.
Nickel hurried after Akela as he resumed his trek. The haze of orange flattened into a stiller curtain of fog, thickened by the climbing elevation and the brightening tint of the afternoon sun. Fear swarmed Nickel—a flicker of relief at leaving the Thraíha village behind and, more so, leaving Aarole’s threats behind, was immediately met with a dangerous thrill of fear and uncertainty. He was walking into the unknown. The visitor outside the Thraíha had caused all this commotion, a stark reminder that Nickel was in a foreign land with foreign dangers.
The higher they walked up the rock, the more the men below dispersed, until it was just the two of them climbing. Nickel’s heart hammered in his chest, but he followed Akela, fearful of breaking pattern and suffering a worse consequence.
“Vruhá ná khelté huurrhá? Korrath ná jhurrú!”” came a voice in Thraíha from far ahead.
“Sounds like he’s happy,” Nickel said, attempting to recognize the pattern of Thraíha words he was becoming used to hearing.
“Korrath ná jhurrú means ‘go to hell,’” Akela said without turning around.
Nickel’s mouth opened in surprise, wanting to say oh, but no words could form on his lips. Terror flooded back, drowning the momentary ease.
G.R. Nanda 