Chapter Four

What's in a Name?

For the next few days Gana had to be extra careful not to be seen. The humans continued their search for her, though their efforts seemed to quickly deteriorate, and they never found her cave. The small yeti spent her time working out the best way to eat her bear meat. It took almost an entire day to consume enough food so she could make it through the day. In the end, Gana decided she still had some details work to out since blue blood still ended up dripping down her chin. Even though Gana had decided that she'd cried enough for one lifetime, she couldn't help but let a few fall during the day.

Weak, she was so weak.

However, by the next day she had pushed those emotions into the sun to burn away. Sitting in a cave and moaning over all she had lost and her little aches and pains did nothing. She needed to get up and actually do things. It was pointless to do anything less. Now she would do better.

So, when the villagers ceased searching for her, Gana went to explore her new territory. She was careful to stay out of sight as she made sure to memorize every crevice in the land.

Summer ended up being hell. Gana couldn't help but sigh in relief when the nights cooled off. That was usually when she went to look around the area. Unfortunately she went through a small growth spurt during that time. The small yeti was sure that she was taller than Karuna. She wondered if he was tall for a human. He'd seemed to be sure about the same size as the guards. So, probably he was just average height for a human. The humans went out in droves to the fields and didn't leave until the sun started to set. Gana even saw Karuna helping with the harvest.

Actually, human behavior was interesting in general. The yetis Karuna's tribe were in contact with had come to trade once during the change of seasons, that's why she knew what the humans called themselves. Though admittedly, she'd gotten a little too close when spying on them. She had been afraid that they would attack Karuna. It turned out the yetis really were in good standing with them. It was weird to see humans and yetis getting along, treating each other, but like equals.

She'd left after the yetis had started inquiring about her and the humans got upset and defensive.

Now she watched from the sidelines as the humans harvested their crop. Some of them had metal things that helped them that they would get inside to do the work. But for the most part it was just the humans working from sunrise to sunset. It was amazing how much they had in their fields they took back to their village. Amazing how much stuff from the earth humans needed. Gana had only really eaten meat before. It wasn't always clear to her why it worked.

Karuna was out in the fields again when Gana snuck out to watch them. She finally had seen the girl Karuna had talked about when he told her to leave him alone. While Karuna wasn't alone while he worked, he didn't gravitate towards groups like the others did. Most of the time humans his age hung out with other people their age, but while he was friendly, he'd always end up apart from them with only one or two humans to socialize with as he worked.

But he always went to talk with this one human girl, about his age, who came sporadically to work with him. She was interesting. Actually, all human women were interesting. While the only difference between yeti men and women were that women had softer edges and carried their babies. Human females also had these differences, but on top of that, they also seemed to be physically weaker than their male counterparts. More than that, the one Karuna hung out with one seemed even more frail then the rest. She only helped with the harvesting sporadically, and was often seen being dropped off and picked up by an old human with a crocked back.

The girl didn't even really work. She just giggled and gossiped with Karuna. Gana didn't like her. She didn't seem to be doing any actual work. The small yeti also admitted herself, eventually, that she was just a little jealous. He accepted this girl no problem, but he acted so dismissive of her. He didn't send the human girl away when she talked to him.

Gana blew cold air into her hands. Some afternoons could still get really warm, and she could feel herself sweating into armor. Really, she couldn't wait for winter; at least she'd be able to properly reinforce her armor again. Not that she needed it. Her tribe was apparently the only yetis still at war with the humans, well, at least the only ones on this mountain anyway. There was the town, a wall, and another town to get through before they would get to Karuna's village. Really, the chances of an attack here were slim.

Of course, without the threat of attack, and days and nights spent watching humans meant that Gana was bored silly. In the end the small yeti mostly just sat around watching the humans work and trying not to fall asleep. She was also careful to keep up on any gossip she could actually catch that involved her. Apparently the humans did still suspect that she hung around the area and even sent out a scout to check for signs of her at least once a week. Their scouts were pathetic. If yetis in her village had been as incompetent as them they would have been sent back to learn from a trainer until they were up to snug again.

Gana sighed and closed her eyes, resting her head against the stone behind her. It was starting to get dark. The villagers would be packing up soon. She'd just seen Karuna leave the field. Gana wondered how much longer she could keep this spying up. The lulls in fights she got into were too long, and she'd only got to kill a couple of wild animals and spent a band of humans that had been conspiring to attack the small shack on the outskirts of the human village Karuna's girl lived in. She missed the blood and the adrenaline that came from a good fight.

Now she just felt like a slug. A useless slug.

Gana drew in a deep breath of air through her cloth mask, the freshness and crispness of the air filling her steaming lungs. Frost, and not the baby frost they'd gotten a couple of nights before. This one was going to be a true frost. Perhaps Gana would sleep outside. She wanted to feel the frost coat on her skin. It would help rejuvenate her after such a horribly hot summer. Maybe even help lift her spirits. The cold would do wonders for getting her energy up, and her blood through her veins again to perk up her spirits. She just felt so drained.

Yes, a frost was coming. In this time of Gana's life, she would take her little pleasures wherever she could get them. Actually, she didn't really feel like moving at all, though she should. She couldn't really lay out in the open and not get caught by the humans.

As Gana pushed herself onto her elbows, a thought struck her. Yes, a hard frost would do wonders for her, but vegetations usually did in extreme cold. Gana ran into the field. The moon was shining bright to light her way. The small yeti was sure that the humans hadn't finished harvesting what they needed to survive the winter. She quickly fell to the ground, looking around. She had no idea what they were, but there was no way any of their plants would survive this frost. Gana didn't eat much besides meat. Living without meat didn't sound appetizing; yetis were known to eat the meat of their enemies when times were hard. It was practical. But humans apparently needed this vegetation to live, and they needed enough of it not only to feed the entire village, but to grow new crops in the spring.

Everything looked the same to her. Still, she couldn't let Karuna starve because his people were stupid and didn't know how to tell when a good frost was coming to wipe out their food supply. She dug into the earth and immediately had to stop, the ground under her fingers hardened and froze, killing the plant she had been trying to save. The small yeti sat up and looked down on her hands, wondering what she could. She couldn't tell Karuna. She didn't know where in the village he lived, and she was pretty sure the humans would just let her stroll into their village.

A distant sound went off, a crack that ripped through the air and had her pause in her inspection.

Pain tore through her shoulder. Gana stood up and ran away from where the sound came from on instinct as pain roared through her. Her training called for her to retaliate with ice and snow, but Gana resisted the urge, instead trying to make sense of what was going on. She took the spear from her back, and the sound from before, the bang and ripping right before something tore through her shoulder, echoed from the village. Gana summoned all her strength and created a wall of ice. As she turned to retreat, feet digging into the dirt as she ran, she could hear things knocking deep into the icy wall she had created.

Cries of outrage followed her, and it took her a while to realize that running to her cave would only get her killed. The small explosions of sounds had stopped for the most part, but she could faintly see the darkness of blue blood on her hand when she had held it to where her pain emitted from. Some part of her told her she'd received worse wounds, but these humans were so weak, it was hard to believe they had the power to rip into her shoulder with any sort of weapon. At least now Gana understood why it was so hard for her past tribe to kill off such weak appearing creatures.

It wasn't normal, whatever it was they had wounded her with. The projectile was small, obviously, but fast and effective. It ripped deeply into her shoulder, and Gana could now see how it could be used to kill. If it was aimed at the right place, it would mean instant death, and while the bullet only pierced her skin, it didn't go all the way through.

Gana only started to slow when she reached the wall. With a sigh, she leaned against the rock. Perhaps that was not the most ideal location, especially if they patrolled the wall, but she needed a second to calm her racing heart and figure out what to do next.

The cold nipped at her, calling for her to take off her stuffy armor and let in the cold. It was tempting. She hadn't packed the armor recently with snow and a good deal of the reinforced ice had melted away, Gana had been planning on adding the reinforcement during the next frost, or when she took another dip into the pools. Actually, what she really needed was an entirely new set of armor, though that would take time to create, and wouldn't be really as well crafted as what she was currently be weaving. With a sigh, she let her head hit the cool rock, she could already feel the cold air setting on the mountain, but she was having a little trouble turning it into anything after using so much of her energy to throw up that ice wall. Odd, when she was a part of the tribe, she could make a dozen ice walls without losing a beat. Could have gone to the village if she wanted.

Just the reminder of what she did was enough to get Gana up and moving again. She was such an idiot. All she had wanted to do was help the humans, but because of her cold nature, she had ended up killing the plants when she had thrown up her ice shield. And the icing on top was only things the village knew about her were that she had tried to kill one of its members, had thrown a yak at the guards, refused to join the tribe of yetis they had an understanding with, and killed some of their crop. No wonder they were trying to find and kill her.

That was pathetic. Wrong and pathetic, and Abbey had no idea how to even start going about trying to fix it. Why was everything so hard now? Every time she tried to do anything of real importance, it just blew up in her face. What would happen when Karuna actually got in trouble? Would she get him killed?

Gana shook her head and determinedly started walking forward again. She needed to stop worrying. What happened had happened. Now she needed to deal with the after effects. Doubting and second guessing everything she did would make her a pathetic mess. She acknowledged she made a mistake, but this mistake wasn't going kill her. She would learn and move forward and continue to protect. Plants were very sensitive to cold, even to the natural coldness of her skin. The townspeople really didn't trust her at all. She needed to either make sure never to be open like she had been ever again, or try to find sneaky ways to save villagers so they got used to her.

Of course, after so long watching and dealing with rouge humans, Gana was finding she wasn't as sneaky as she thought she was. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. There had always been a delicate balance in her studies and how she adjusted what she learned to her size between adjusting and being more subtle and becoming cowardly in her actions. In her mind, all her actions after she had banished had gone over that line. At the beginning, she had thought she would do anything to protect Karuna, now she knew better. It was probably because they were so small with muted senses and weak bodies despite their size. That was the reason humans resorted to such cowardly and gutless means to get what they wanted.

Still, Karuna wasn't sure any longer why she couldn't kill humans. She had no problem with beasts, and those creatures were just acting on their instincts. Humans on the other hand, they were reasoning creatures whose instincts seemed to lead them to attack everything around them in both overt and backstabbing manners, Gana still remembered the plotting robbers, but she even saw humans in the village attacking cruelly aggressive toward each other. Gana had seen bullying in yeti culture, but it was tame compared to some of things she'd seen and heard the humans doing and saying against their fellow humans. They just didn't seem to have the same unbreakable bond as yetis. Perhaps because they all had so many different jobs. Gana noticed that while the yetis in her tribe shared menial jobs, humans specialized in them. Because they spent so much time with only a small group of humans, they made bonds with those humans and excluded all other humans from their circles. Gana understood specializing in healing and maybe management of all the separate jobs that needed to get done, but not easy ones that needed next to no training.

Getting used to human culture was tricky. Gana supposed that since she was basically the guardian and tied to a human through a life debt. It was good that, despite human failings, she could not bring herself to kill them. Karuna didn't seem to be embroiled in all that drama anyway, but he tended to be by himself. Gana had heard rumors about the training healer girl's temper the one that came to see Karuna sometimes, but Gana had decided to withhold on judging him until she actually met the human girl.

Gana had almost passed the tree line when she finally stopped. The ground was covered by a thin layer of ice and snow. It had been so long since she had really felt ice and deep freeze against her blue skin. A couple of thin clouds littered the sky, but the full moon shown out bright, bathing the land in its light and reflecting off scattering of white snow, lighting up the area in soft clear light that was so much more comfortable to Gana's eyes then the bright rays of the sun. Gana slipped off her fur boots first and needed to one of the snow drifts, relishing in how it molded against her feet.

A shiver of pleasure ran down her spine and Gana gasped a little, the pull of her lips stopping the sound short and almost killing the moment. Gana pushed that thought out of her head and concentrated on enjoying the moment and the biting cold that nipped at her feet. Gana quickly started to strip. While her armor held the cold further down the mountain, here her armor was hot and bothersome. She took off her outer clothes, careful of the ice that needed reinforcement before she returned to her cave the next day. Now she worked on first slipping off the bottom part of her face mask. She then worked on the cloth head gear, briefly pausing over the hard ice chainmail that still held together and needed some work before it fell apart.

With a sigh she let it go. The cold air and moon beams were calling to her, and she stripped down to her breast band and loincloth. There was a nice cover of ice, probably a small pool of water for a while, now frozen solid. Gana walked to it and spread her body on it, face looking up toward the moon and stars.

As Gana closed her eyes, she felt a small groan escape her lips. Her whole body seemed to be overheated. She hadn't realized how overheated she felt. As she lay under the moon, soaking in the cold. She could almost feel her blood turning from slush into living ice. Her bones seemed to become stronger. The sweat that had been coating her skin for the last month, froze, becoming a flaky crust of ice coating her skin.

Gana contemplated cutting off her hair as close to the roots as she could. She brought her hand up to her hair, over the months, with so little time to untangle her hair, it had become longer and knotted at the base of her neck. Gana pulled strength into her body from the cold and then she pushed down with her magic, her body sinking into the ice as she manipulated it to suck her in. Her hair flowed through the ice like Gana had melted it to water. She carefully started dealing with the worse of the tangles, running her fingers through the strands and then picking at the places the hair had become almost impossibly tangled.

She was so caught up in her grooming that when she finally opened her eyes, she almost jumped out of her skin.

It took Gana precious seconds to push herself out of the ice and grab the spear she'd left too far from her from her body. The yeti that had snuck up on her watched her calmly. His grip on his club was loose, and he even seemed to be entertained by her scrambling. Gripping her spear, trying to figure out how to be ready for a fight, but not goad him into it. Gana felt her heart beat faster in her chest. She tried to snarl, fear pounding through her veins, but the leather pulled at her lips and she felt blood surge onto her tongue.

"What other marks did your tribe give you when you were thrown out?" asked the yeti. He had a deep voice and was one of the tallest yetis Abby had ever seen. She couldn't stop the glare that wrinkled her forehead. Slowly, not sure if it was a trick, she let go of her spear with one hand, and showed the underside of her hand to him.

The crosses on her hands, while they had scabbed over fairly quickly were as horrible looking as the day had been made. Maybe it was part of the ritual. The scars being more important than her pain or bleeding to death, after all, she was sure that normal leather would have started to fray after a while, especially where it rubbed up against her lower fangs.

The big yeti started walking toward her. Gana took a hesitant step back. The yeti raised an eyebrow and there was a second where Gana was tempted to attack him. It would be idiotic, on many levels, but he was definitely her nerves rubbing the wrong way. She felt her body shake, as she tried to contain her nerves. The yeti continued toward her and unwrapped her hand off her spear. He traced the cross ripped into her skin.

"So, which did you do? Kill a member of your tribe or turn traitor and stab someone in the back?" asked the yeti, he laughed, but it wasn't a nice sound. Gana snarled and then couldn't help the small expression of confusion that crossed her face. How were those two things different? It just sounded like the last one was just worse than the frost. Though, maybe that was the point. He probably figured she would be cowardly and backhanded in her actions because of her size.

She wanted to snap that even with her size, if she found herself needing to take up attacks on a fellow tribesman, she would challenge him properly. Perhaps her fighting style might be a little backwards, subtle, and misleading, but she would make her intentions clear.

"I would have guessed it was your size," said the yeti. "But they would have known about that years ago. Perhaps the tradition of your tribe are different then our old ones, but that doesn't tell me what you did."

Gana stared at him, unsure what to do. She had a feeling that even if her mouth wasn't sewn shut, she would have been tongue tied. Gana had known the punishment for failing the test was death, but would he believe her if she said they made an exception? And would that make any difference to him? Yes, he had ties to the humans, but that didn't mean he threw tradition out the window. While his tribe might not kill humans anymore, he would probably see her inability to kill a human as a weakness, might even finish off her just to get rid of a weak link.

"Which is a problem. My tribe's greatest allies are the ones your harassing," he said darkly. Gana quickly slipped Gana's hand out of his grip before he could tighten his hold enough to trap her. Still, he was steadily backing her up. Even with the spear, she was no match for him. Instead she shook her head furiously. "The humans told us little, which we thought might be out of a sense of confusion about our culture and not wanting to step on toes, but it could simply be because of your inability to speak."

Gana shrugged and the yeti sighed. This whole not being able to talk thing really was starting to grate on her nerves. Really, humans seemed to do it too much, and they endlessly wasted breath on inconsequential small talk that they seemed to think they had to participate in to stay allies with the other humans surrounding them. Then it occurred to her. This was a yeti, not some silly human who wasted too much breath and seemed to use body language as a secondary way to get their meaning across instead of the primary one.

Gana slowly put the spear down beside her, which the yeti watched with the same, almost amused, expression. Gana gulped and started with some simple signs. The yeti almost immediately began shaking his head. Gana let her hand fall to the side. She thought for a second about getting her spear again, but just let it stand. With a sigh, she stood straight, looking the other yeti in the eyes. She had to lean her head back quite a bit to do so, but it was better than looking at her feet or his torso. No more looking and being weak.

"Are you in love with the human you're stalking?" asked the yeti. Gana grit her teeth, keeping her lips closed shut carefully. "Do you mean to protect him?"

Gana nodded, grasping onto someone besides Karuna knowing what she meant to do.

"They don't want you there," said the yeti. Gana made a face. She knew that already. She could still feel where the bullet had gone into her shoulder. She touched the area self-consciously, taking a step away from the yeti as he seemed interested in getting close to her. He continued to watch her closely, and she shifted from foot to foot.

Finally, he sighed.

"I'm guessing you don't want to go back to me with my tribe?" the yeti asked. Gana glared at him. He didn't want her to go with him anyway. "We told the humans that a frost was coming. But, if you're so insistent on sulking around their village, then keep your head down. The humans aren't found of you."

Gana rolled her eyes and turned her back on him, picking up her spear and heading back toward her armor. Maybe she was being extraordinarily rude, but she couldn't really bring herself to care. He could try to kill her; she was fast and had had plenty of time to soak up the freezing temperature around her had built her stores up, Gana was very good at manipulating ice. If he actually tried to attack her, she would be able to get away at the very least. It wasn't really cowardly. She had no problem with him and was in no position to fight him. She was within her rights to act cowardly if he choose to try and club her in the back.

When she started to look through her armor and add reinforcement. The yeti sat beside her and helped her. It took them almost the rest of the night. Gana spent a lot of her time on the chainmail over her clothe head cover. The small yeti strengthened the ice, trying to harden it. She felt the moon ice at her neck. She imagined it gave her power, while it fed into her she didn't know if what she felt was only her own power, the moon's, or if it allowed her a little bit of a connections to her old tribe's power.

The yeti watched as she carefully pulled on the armor. She had checked over his work herself. Learning to make her own armor had been a basic skill that she had to learn while training to be warrior. She wasn't perfect, she was too young, but she had all the basics and just needed experience to hone her skills.

She looked back at the yeti, spear in hand as she lifted her face mask. She already missed the night air, but the moon had already set. After a moment she gave Gana a nod of thanks.

"If you ever are in good graces with the village, there's a young man, Seth, who has learned our meditation techniques. That will help with your control," said the yeti. Gana looked at him in confusion and titled her head to the side. "You'll see. Good luck Abbey."

Gana faltered, taking a step back as she titled her head to the other side, but the yeti had already started to turn his back to her

"It's what the boy has named you," shouted the yeti over his shoulder. He also muttered something under his breath, but it was too muffled for Gana to understand him.

No, she had lost her name with her tribe. Not just her tribe name, but her identity. She had only continued to be Gana because, well, what else was she going to call herself? Abbey was a better name for what she was now, more human. A perfect name for a cowardly human servant.

Abbey sighed, shaking her head and heading into the hills. This time she would stay out of the village's way for a week or so. The cold air called her. Just a little higher and she would find herself in a small snowstorm, but knowing her luck it would turn rain when it reached Karuna's door. It was weird, either humans had a weird way of naming people, or they had figured out she was a girl. Who knew. It didn't change anything anyway. Human's had to know that female yetis were not weak like human females. After all, females and males had always fought side by side, to not use females in the field of battle would be a waste of resources.