Yet, the frail craft holds!
The sisters, lashing themselves to its supple ribs, persevere. Daunted but not defeated.
Until, even more suddenly than it began, the storm pauses. And the raging wall of fury draws slowly away.
That is when Em-o-Peia springs to action.
Handing out the flanged poles, she urges her sisters to paddle the craft toward the retreating wall of lightning-streaked cloud. Then, as if to affirm her choice, a ribbon of phosphorescence lances out in its direction.
Following the star-like path into the eye of the storm, they paddle for only a short while when the outline of land ahead emerges from the retreating wall of typhoon.
Soon, the sisters are hauling the wicker craft onto the shore and into thick forest. Where they tie it down to anchor it against the trailing storm they know is fast approaching.
Then, Em-o-Peia plunges into ever denser forest. Toward a high ridge visible above the trees. Arriving at an escarpment pocked with the shadowy mouths of many caves.
She urges her sisters upward to an elevated ledge and into a cave high upon the face of the escarpment. There, they fall out, exhausted, and rest their weary limbs.
Not for long!
Soon, they are shaken by the roar of shrieking wind, the crackle of intense lightning and the crash of falling trees. As the backside of the typhoon thunders across the land.
Even the sea conspires to wipe away the forest as it rises in prodigious waves that crash against the exposed base of the escarpment beneath the elevated ledge.
Meantime, the sisters remain high, dry and protected in their cave. And shortly, even the howling typhoon cannot keep them from the deep sleep of extreme exhaustion.
Hours later, they awaken to a bright new world. Fresh-scrubbed and glistening.
Hefting their long lances and descending to the forest floor, they pick their way among fallen trees. Finding many nutritious fruits among the scatter.
Making their way back to the beach, they find a badly damaged craft, sorely in need of repair before it will again be seaworthy.
But there are plenty of reeds and serviceable wood about, and the sisters resolve to rebuild their craft with light and hopeful hearts.
What they cannot know is that they have landed on a barb-shaped island. The southernmost tip of an archipelago whose string of smaller islands sweeps like a fish hook into the mouth of a great bay. And that this largest island in the string is the lair of an amphibious goliath more lethal than the leviathans of the ocean’s deep!
Meantime, many leagues to the west, on the coastal plain of a vast supercontinent the sisters could scarce imagine, the leading edge of the typhoon is making landfall.
Sweeping across the watery bogs of the open plain toward seven other unsuspecting souls.
Chapter 66. The Quest
Awakened by the warming caress of two rising suns, the Great Northern Fens are vibrant with the symphony of life.
The deep-throated chorus of creatures suspended between earth and water.
The thrumming tympany of climbers clinging to grassy stalks.
The lilting soprano of diaphanous flyers singing unseen.
Nature’s voices, rising to greet the new day.
And among them all, seven silent figures threading their way, Indian file, along the stretches of dry ground that rise above the watery bog. Reaching ever southward like endless fingers pointing a true path.
All the figures wear black beards and little else, save for the breechclouts covering their loins. All are tall and well-muscled, their skin bronzed by long exposure to two suns. And all carry long, flexible poles finely balanced by razor-sharp spear-points at both ends.
They are the grown sons of Noah and Davina. Sharing their father’s physical likeness and their mother’s psychic gifts—clairvoyance and fluency in all languages of reason. But her gifts are lost on this terrain of vast, open marshland where no other creatures of reason dwell.
It is a wild and treacherous swampland, and the brothers continue to trek southward into an unknown world. Beyond the farthest frontier of any previous journey.
In the lead, Adam reflects on the events that brought them to this far place and on this quest to a future destination farther still.
Like so many inflection points in lives robustly lived, it began with a seemingly innocent, offhand remark of the middle brother who, despite his physical maturity, was still feeling his way. Groping for the answers that confer wisdom and manhood in their lives.
“Father,” Japheth asked Noah on an earlier expedition to the fens, “what became of Mother’s people?”
This simple question launched a quest that will remake their world. That will enable and ensure the future of their kind.
“Mother’s people are gone,” Noah answered frankly.
“All life in their polar region must have perished during the great cataclysm when Mother and I crossed the world to get to this auspicious shore we call home. Their fate was sealed in that epochal event, and they are no more.
“We alone survived.
“Crossing the watery and arid lands alike, from the transantarctic alps, into the equatorial rainforest, through the great rift valley, across the endless sea of pampas, into the high desert, to this temperate place.
“Like Mother, I thank the Earth Spirit for sparing us. And we are confident our survival serves some greater purpose. Though we cannot divine what it is. But this much we know:
“You and your brothers will be the inheritors of this new world. And your fate is intertwined with, and central to, the great purpose the Earth Spirit holds in store for all living things.”
Not one to leave fate to others, Earth Spirit or no, Japheth conferred with Adam and the other brothers to determine what actions they might take to hasten and help shape that future. They quickly dismissed any thought of attempting to reach the southern polar region, where no life was thought to exist, or trekking through the inland regions already crossed by Noah and Davina.
Instead, they resolved to plunge directly south, and the route they devised brought them to this remote wilderness, at this time. Determined to explore the unknown coastal region, beyond the Great Northern Fens, in search of others of their kind.
The seven brothers had bivouacked on a raised hammock of dry sand. Near a scatter of large boulders forming a kopje, rising from a depression of a few feet to a height several feet above the level ground of the hammock. Near the spreading fronds of a low, wind-stunted tree on its westward side.
Adam is first to awaken. Thrilled at the clarity of the rising suns and the growing resonance of nature’s calls, sweet and shrill.
Filled with optimism, he marks the lessening of the breeze to gentle zephyrs as he welcomes the bright rays of a day he is confident will speed their passage through the gathering calm.
He could not be more mistaken!
As the other brothers stir awake, Adam wonders at a sudden drop in air movement. At the same time, he sees a black mist rolling upward on the horizon. A mist that swallows the two suns, turning day into night on the Great Northern Fens.
The brothers gaze toward the lost horizon. Wondering what is causing this remarkable change. A change beyond their experience.
Japheth is the first to sound the alarm.
While he does not know what the preternatural darkness portends, he senses danger in the air around them. As it thickens, becoming so close it makes breathing difficult. And the darkness deepens to a blackness so profound it blots out all features beyond the sandy mound they encamped upon.
“Quick!” Japheth cries. “We need to push some of these boulders to form a rampart from the tree, as its anchor, to the kopje on both sides. The kopje provides shelter to the east, but not from other directions. Let’s fortify our position while we can.”
With that, the brothers attack the large boulders with zeal. Pushing, pulling, shoving and manhandling them in place to form makeshift ramparts running from the tree to the kopje. A trian
gular fortification bridging the depression at the kopje’s base on both sides.
Scarcely is the final boulder wedged into place when the blast strikes. It is a shrieking, lashing monster sweeping the fens with unbridled fury.
The seven brothers huddle together behind their stone fortification while the typhoon wreaks its vengeance on the world around them—earth, water and sky.
There are few trees in the fens, and the unabated wind scours the land. Beating ferns and grasses flat. Whipping sand and stone into open waterways. Scooping water from shallow pools.
Changing earth to water and water to earth as it remakes the topography of the fens.
Thanks to Japheth’s quick thinking and his brothers’ herculean efforts, they are sheltered from the brunt of the tempest. Indeed, the only discomfort they suffer is from the sheets of rain. But they are driven down by an east wind at an angle largely repulsed by the high kopje, and the brothers are accustomed to the dampness of rain-squalls from their previous forays into the fens.
Bronze skin easily sheds raindrops, and soaked breechclouts will dry in minutes beneath two burning suns.
But it is many hours before the suns return.
Hours of darkness broken only by a pulsating web of streaked lightning that strobes, snaps and lashes like silver whips across the black mist of sky.
Hours of sheltering-in-place against pummeling sheets of rain that quickly fill the shallow depression nearly waist-high between tree and kopje.
Hours of watching the waters of the fens rise all around the raised hammock. Threatening to flood the sandy mound and wash it away.
Hours of uncertainty for seven who have never experienced a typhoon and cannot know its duration or lethality.
At long last, just as suddenly as it started, the rain stops and light begins to climb the eastern horizon like the lifting of a black curtain.
It is the work of but a few hours for the sky to clear under the brilliant light of two suns directly overhead.
Like the dawn when the typhoon struck, earth, water and sky assume crystal clarity in the clean, crisp air. And just as before, all the creatures of the marshland sing their praise to this new day.
But the twin suns look down upon a dramatically altered landscape.
The rising water has obliterated many of the narrow spits of firm earth. Leaving the seven brothers stranded on the raised hammock with but one route of escape. It is the only visible solid ground near the hammock and, fortuitously, it lances southward across the flooded bog.
Adam leads the brothers out of the hammock, turning south to follow the dry path wherever it may lead. The day’s walk brings high hopes to the travelers as they observe the flood-water gradually begin to recede while patches of firm earth are re-emerging all around them.
By the time night arrives, the fens have regained much of their former, tenuous but navigable character.
What the brothers fail to see is the deeper, mist-like darkness beginning to ascend the eastern horizon just as night is falling.
Adam alone wonders at the more tangible blackness in the distance. But dismisses it as a product of the over-active imagination of an exhausted traveler or some distant natural phenomenon spawned by the storm that has passed.
Thus are the brothers oblivious to the impending doom that will descend upon them, unsuspected, when they sleep exposed on the open pathway!
While across the eastern sea, evil creeps steadily ashore. Threatening to envelop seven sisters. Pursued by greater evil still!
Chapter 67. The Maze-Herder
The sisters devote the following day to a thorough examination of the wreckage of the wicker craft.
Cast upon this unfamiliar shore, they are intent on quickly repairing the vessel and resuming their quest against future perils they cannot imagine. They share a deep sense of their appointment with destiny and know they cannot keep that appointment until they complete the remaining trials of the sea.
What they cannot know is that same destiny has brought them to this barb island for the next challenge in their quest.
Painstakingly probing, examining and testing the integrity of every structural feature of the wicker craft, they are distracted and unaware of the darkness emerging from the surf.
Washing across the white sand in a spreading stain. Cutting off retreat in the direction of the caves.
Lin-o-Peia is the first to notice the strange phenomenon, and the sisters are mesmerized by its throbbing motion.
It is as if the surf is sending dark wavelets over the dry sand. But as they watch in fascination, the same blackness emerges across the beach in the other direction. Pinning them between a dense fringe of forest and the open sea.
As the dark mass edges closer, the sisters discern its multitudinous uniformity of tightly packed black, wriggling monstrosities. As the appalling amphibious creatures crawl toward the wicker craft, they set upon the trampled forms of their brethren. Rending their flesh in a cannibal frenzy of lethal snapping jaws.
Horrified by the carnage and the irresistible approach of the writhing horde, the sisters search vainly for an avenue of escape. As they look to the surf, more of the monsters begin pouring onto the sand directly across from the craft.
As the last of the black creatures emerges from the surf, a giant breaches the waves behind them.
The great amphibian measures 30 feet from jaw to tail-spike, and has a 15-foot girth. Its six legs support more than a ton of muscled mass. The snout is broad, fronting immense spike-fringed jaws that open to a length of 5 feet on either side of its monstrous head.
The giant’s ribbed dorsal fin rises fully five feet above the ridge of its back. From its smoldering-red eyes to its rear legs. Further accentuating the menace of its approach.
It is the apex predator of this archipelago. And this largest, barb island in the chain is home to the largest archetype of its species.
It is a ruthless hunter. But it does not hunt.
It is the moon’s most lethal amphibian. But it does not dwell in sea, lake, river or pond.
It is dimetrodon. The maze-herder. King of lizards. A wily super-carnivore that steers and snares its prey. In a most ingenious trap.
Open sand remains only between the sisters and a narrow length of tree-line. The growth along this stretch of beach appears to form a dense, impassable wall. And just as the sisters decide climbing is their only option, the dark masses on either side of them reach the tree-line.
And commence to climb as agilely as the most nimble arboreal species!
While her sisters are distracted by the climbing monsters, Lin-o-Peia espies a narrow black slash, exposing an open break, in the dense wall of trees not 30 yards farther down the beach from their tethered craft.
The others leap to her side in a mad dash to reach the opening before it, too, is cut off by the spreading black horde.
They find themselves in a broad, straight lane through the jungle. Forming a well-beaten pathway giving every indication of man-made design and care. So even and level is the ground, its surface is worn to a polished finish.
“This is no work of nature,” Lin-o-Peia muses. “It is man-made and in recent use. We are not alone on this shore. People carved this path through the forest, and we must find out whether they are friendly or hostile.
“Whoever they may be, one thing is certain: This will lead us away from the giant lizard of the sea and the monsters that climb trees.”
She could not be more mistaken!
Lin-o-Peia leads the sisters deeper into the forest. Gliding silently along the open lane. Lances at the ready.
The wide, inviting corridor the sisters follow now was hewn out of the forest by dimetrodon’s massive jaws and lengthened over many generations. The path’s surface has been smoothed by the passage of many wriggling black bodies ever following their instinctive attraction to the giant’s lair to deposit their eggs in its singular loam.
The pathway from the sea ends in an extensive maze of tunnels, wending their
way through a forest of bamboo-like reeds. In this island’s adaptation of the wood-wide web, their roots form a vast network with interlocking subterranean fungi.
Like dimetrodon and other isolates that have evolved in unique ways in this remote archipelago, the island bamboo displays a singular pattern: a maze of parallel tree-lines forming narrow lanes leading nowhere.
In lockstep with the fungi that radiate their distinctive geometry a short league from the shoreline of the savage sea. Creating the loam the black, wriggling amphibians require to incubate their eggs.
Unaware of the greater peril ahead, Lin-o-Peia urges the sisters to flee along the tunnel. Their long legs and fluid running style keep them just beyond the reach of the creatures pursuing them.
Until suddenly, they arrive at a thick wall of high bamboo. Barring further flight in that direction!
Lin-o-Peia does not hesitate, but leads her sisters into a narrow defile flanked by thick bamboo on both sides. Running perfectly straight for several yards, then turning at an abrupt angle into another lane. Which again ends at a sharp corner into yet another short, straight stretch of enclosed pathway.
The sisters are trapped in dimetrodon’s maze and, while the monster has not shown itself, they dread the sinister aspect of this fell place and are overcome with a sense of hopelessness and vulnerability. They know they are lost, and they fear the unknown menace of the trap that offers no escape.
Their only consolation comes from the realization that few of the wriggling monstrosities are in pursuit along this pathway. And that they appear more intent on burrowing into the banks at the base of the bamboo than on menacing the disoriented, ensnared intruders.
Scarcely does the sigh of relief escape their lips when an ear-splitting roar rips through the reeds around them. Shaking the thick bamboo stalks and making the ground tremble!
Motioning her sisters to remain alert, Lin-o-Peia leaps to the thickest stalk of bamboo and scurries skyward. Her alacrity is testament to the agility of these practised tree-climbers who from early childhood scaled the tall, fruiting palms of their island home.
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