THE BEAVER POND

Mre-vha was holding my right hand; Krum-veh was on my left side, my left hip against her right hip, and her right arm was wrapped around my back as the three of us walked along the trail through the forest. After what felt like about an hour of walking in silence the well- defined and mostly dry trail suddenly disappeared into / under water. And the water was no puddle; no, it was a full-fledged pond stretching as far as I could see to both the left and the right.

"Agiyp yusk muoivx kriun?" Mre-vha's voice broke the silence in an obviously confused tone.

"Beim poux niegz," Krum-veh began speaking before pointing down-hill to the right, as she continued to saying, "vium piekq aii griogx."

I am all but certain this was the first time that I had heard any of those words. For good or for bad, before I could even begin to try to establish what had been said, both Krum-veh and Mre-vha had turned us to the right and we began walking along the water's edge.

Perhaps one hundred feet later we came across a beaver's dam. We walked about twenty feet beyond the beaver dam, then turned and headed across the narrow stream of water that was making its way past / over / through the beaver dam. We made a left turn and began heading back upstream along the other side of the stream, past the beaver damn, and then alongside the pond.

Just as we approached the spot where the path we had been walking on through the woods re-emerged from the pond a cracking sound, coming from the forest undergrowth a little ways further upstream, stopped us dead in our tracks.

In a flash Mre-vha let go of my right hand; while at the same time, pulling her huge knife out of its sheath. She made a series of quick gestures with her left hand before beginning to take a few deliberate and silent steps forwards on the dry land along the edge of the water.

As Mre-vha began moving away from us, Krum-veh placed a finger across my lips. Even without knowing their language, it was obvious she wanted me to be quiet; I nodded 'yes'. Once I had made that acknowledgement, Krum-veh bent down and picked up a softball sized rock that was laying on the ground. Following her lead I also picked up a rock; mine was a bit bigger, about the size of a small cantaloupe. Once we were both holding rocks, Krum-veh began pulling me towards, then into the water at the edge of the pond. She continued pulling me further into the pond, only stopping when the water we were standing in was about two feet deep: putting perhaps a dozen feet of water between us and the dry part of the land.

Once Krum-veh had stopped pulling me further into the water, I looked up just in time to see Mre-vha disappear around a bend in the edge of the pond some thirty feet upstream of where she had left Krum-veh and me.

For a few minutes Krum-veh and I simply stood in the water. It was strange, the only sound in the air was that of a gentle breeze blowing through the trees; no birds chirping, none of the scratching of squirrels running up and down trees, not even the buzzing of flies. For the first minute or so I found the still quietness comforting, then I began to get an eerie feeling in the pit of my stomach...it was TOO quiet.

Suddenly that near silence was shattered by the loudest most blood- curdling scream I'd ever heard. It was quickly followed by a series of other noises: wood cracking, and the sound of objects colliding with other objects; there was an unmistakable clink of metal striking metal, a thump, and a thud. All that was followed by a sound which struck me as more ominous than the scream; a sound that was some combination of a gasp, a groan, and a sigh all at once. The sound was so un-nerving that I actually felt my heart sink a little bit in my chest. I am certain I have never been as terrified as I was at that moment; and that is probably the reason that I managed to hold onto the rock: I could have used it as a weapon if need be.

Not more than two minutes after hearing the ominous gasp-groan-sigh sound Mre-vha re-appeared from around the bend in the pond. She was holding the knife and even at a distance of thirty feet I could see that there was blood on her. As she took a few steps towards where Krum-veh and I were, three other figures appeared behind her from around the bend in the pond. A woman and two men: all of whom were wearing red clothing and had bright red hair. One of the men had a bow in his hand and a quiver of arrows hanging next to his left hip. Both the woman and the other man were carrying swords.

At they got closer I began to notice more details about these three red-heads. All three of them were wearing boots similar to Mre-vha's. Both men were wearing simple red above-the-knee skirts, kilts I suppose; the older man was completely bare chested, while the quiver of arrows at the younger man's hip hung from a web of brown leather straps which went over his shoulders and criss-crossed over his chest. The woman was wearing a just-below-the-knee length brown leather skirt and a red top with an overall shape similar to sports bra. The swords the man and the woman were carrying were quite different: the man's was long with a fairly thick blade, like a knight from the Middle Ages might have carried; the woman's sword was much shorter, with a thin curved blade. I concluded that the woman and the man with the bow and arrows were probably early twenties; while the man with the sword was late forties or early fifties.

The older man was carrying something in his other hand. It kinda looked like a sack, but considering its shape and color (a color I'm certain I'd never seen before and couldn't begin to describe), it clearly wasn't...

Despite staring intently at the sack-like thing older man was carrying, it took until they were only a couple feet from the spot where Krum-veh had lead me into the water for me to even begin to figure out what it was: a HEAD! He was carrying a head by the hair. I'd say a 'human head' but it didn't look like the head of any human I'd ever seen: the hair was long and straight, it looked black but with a decided bluish tinge; the skin on the face was very pale, but looked gray; the black eyes were huge, perhaps two inches across, and so round they might have actually been circular; the mouth was very small and seemed to have no lips; the nose was so small it might as well have not even existed...and then there was the shape of the head...it looked like an overly-inflated round balloon...

A shocking thought went through my head: they had killed an alien!

"Noeigx eii grukc," Mre-vha's words interrupted my train of thought. Suddenly Krum-veh was pushing me back towards the dry land at the edge of the pond.

"Ouhm viecb hrobs leiopt teigw," the younger red haired man spoke as I was just stepping out of the water.

"Paz ruc John," Krum-veh's voice came from behind me. Finally I completely understood something that was being said: she was telling him my name. Finally feeling a sense of ease, I took a deep breath and dropped the rock.

"Aip breo..." the red haired woman stuttered, sounding as if she'd seen a ghost.

"Nier," Mre-vha shook her head, "Yir duix John miexp parl-iump."

The older red haired man laughed a bit then shaking his head slightly smiled at me. He stuck the tip of his sword into the ground, let go of its handle and gave me a firm smack on the shoulder: it felt more like a 'pat on the back' sort of smack than a punishment. "Voiux zemb qiep zeutirr," he beamed at me: clearly a compliment of some sort.

Mre-vha stepped close to the older man a quietly said something I couldn't hear to him. "Aih..." he sounded disappointed.

For a few minutes there was a bit of conversation, mostly between Mre-vha and the older man. The younger man and the red haired woman threw some water from the pond on their faces... Then the three of them left, taking the alien head with them.

Mre-vha jumped into the pond. She rinsed the blood off her arms then cleaned the blade of her knife.

Mere moments later this went back to how they had been before we got to the beaver pond: Mre-vha holding my right hand; Krum-veh on my left side, my left hip against her right hip, her right arm wrapped around my back as the three of us had resumed walking along the trail through the forest...