Free Red Moon Rising by K. A. Holt Page B

remains of my tattered shirt off, leaving me in only my bloodied, sleeveless shift. My wounds are fully exposed now, as I feel the rest of me is, too. Even more heat rises to my face.
    He releases my hair and squats in front of me. He holds up the bottle and tilts his head to the side. His eyes close and then open, staring at me intently. He says, “You. This. Hurt.” His mouth stumbles over the words, but I understand them. I open my mouth to respond, but before I can he’s standing as fast as an electrical bolt, one hand grasping my hair at the scalp, the other pouring the liquid from the bottle across my shoulders. It is like the suns themselves have set fire to my flesh. I cry out and struggle to leap from the chair, but Fist holds me fast by the hair, with a knee across my legs. He pours most of the contents of the bottle over my wounds as I shout and hiss at the pain.
    Surely, we are in an evil apothecary shop.
    He then wrests my head back and pours a slosh across my split lip and into my mouth. The liquid slips down my throat even though I resist, and I splutter and cough as it burns a path into my belly.
    I feel a quick heaviness in my arms and legs, a cloudiness in my brain, and I wonder why Fist would have risked so much to drag me into an Old Settlement building only to poison me in the end. When he is satisfied that I am tortured enough, he takes a large gulp from the remnants of the bottle and sighs deeply. Not poison, then. But what is it?
    And then I realize. Spirits. Like Papa drinks in the evenings of the nights he snores louder than usual. “For the constitution,” he often says. I guess whoever abandoned these buildings had many constitutions to build, for there’senough of a supply of spirits to last a thousand summers.
    Fist now inspects each of my wounds with one hand, while still clamping on to my hair with the other. Grunting a sound that I hope means I won’t die from my wounds, he pulls me to my feet. I am dizzy from the spirits, or from the blood loss, I don’t know, but I have no choice but to follow the Cheese as he pulls me roughly behind him, the orange fireless flare leading us out of this room.
    The next room is empty but for a pile of . . . something . . . in a corner. Fabric of some sort, I cannot tell. Fist walks to the pile, and, yes, it is a bunch of stained and ripped shirts and pants. There are also discarded vials and needles, empty medicine packets stamped with the Star Farmers seal. But how can that be? Homesteaders have never been allowed in these buildings.
    Fist pushes and kicks at the pile until I see that underneath is a hatch, just like the hiding pit at home. I wonder if he means to take us into a pit to hide from the storm. It seems to be over, but they are known to flare back up and last for days.
    Fist lifts the trapdoor and descends a rickety set of metal stairs, pulling me in behind him. The stairs go some distance. This is no mere pit. By the time we hit soft dirt my heart is stopping and stuttering from the exertion and from the feeling of darkness closing in on me. Just when I’m afraid I will cry out from the dark, Fist holds the glowing orange stick in front of my face and gestures for me to stay. He then begins climbing back up the stairs.
    What?
    Is he going to leave me down here? Alone? With no light?
    I scramble for my gogs, knowing the night sight will only last seconds. They can barely hold a charge on normal days, and today the suns were blocked by those awful storm clouds.
    I click on the gogs and see Fist climbing the stairs. I zoom in, watching his lean bronze back covered in silver and gold spirals as he ascends. His clothes are a shirt and pants combined into one piece. The back and front of the shirt part are open, showing the paint. And the material fits him tightly, almost like a stocking for his body. It’s made of a material I do not know. Perhaps dactyl skin.
    Fist reaches the top of the