by Inmon, Shawn
Miraculously, Drana-eh was the only fatality on The Night of the Zisla-ta, as it came to be known. At least the only fatality at the time. Before the coming winter was done, it seemed inevitable that others would join her.
Alex and Senta-eh climbed a few levels down to inspect their new home. It was no longer new and wasn’t going to ever be a home as it stood. The spiders didn’t eat through the logs—they were too dense for that. However, the chinking had been destroyed and one shutter had apparently not been locked down. This gave the zisla-ta access to the interior, which was destroyed.
When Alex opened the door, he thought the bugs might once again pour out at him. All that was inside was dry corpses, though. Corpses, and what appeared to be eggs.
“Is this their life cycle then? Drop out of the sky like an avenging horde, eat until you can’t eat any more, lay your eggs and die?”
“Everything has a life-cycle, right? We don’t have any say in that, really.”
Alex ran his moccasin through the bodies and eggs on the floor, stirring up a cloud of brown dust motes.
“I don’t want to live in this now. I will burn what’s left of the furniture, take the logs down to the ground and we will start again.”
“Can we send for Klipta-ak first?” Senta-eh asked, barely able to hold the smile off her face.
Alex looked incredulous that anyone would challenge his building skills. Then he saw the expression on her face. He swept her into his arms, and held her tight.
“We are alive. That’s all that matters. Everything else can be rebuilt.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Survival
The zisla-ta had destroyed almost everything that lived in a fifteen-mile swath. Unfortunately for the Winten-ah, they were smack in the middle of that path. That meant that they had to travel almost ten miles in either direction to get out of the complete devastation.
That devastation wasn’t a sharply delineated line, either. It was more of a ragged edge that ebbed and flowed.
All of the horses they had bred and traded so carefully were killed in the long night. There had simply not been any way they could protect them. In fact, the only four-legged creature who survived the night was Monda-ak.
Without horses, each trek to find fertile ground was long and hard. By the time a group of hunters made it to an area where animals still roamed freely, they were already a half-day’s hike away from home. Tracking, running down, killing, and field dressing an animal took the rest of the day. That left a long night of protecting their kill before they could haul it home.
Finding the roots and berries that were also a staple of their diet was equally challenging.
In the immediate aftermath, Alex worried about his friends Harta-ak and Versa-eh, and his allies in the village of Rinta-ah. Alex was aware how close to being completely wiped out the Winten-ah had been, and they had the caves to hide in. He couldn’t imagine how his friends might have survived in the open. Still, there was too much to be done to take time to travel and check on them.
The tribe had already been short on supplies when the spiders arrived. On top of that, winter came early. To Alex, it felt like they emerged from the cave and the next day, the first snowflake hit the ground.
The winter was brutally difficult. They had burned up all their available firewood to save themselves. They were so focused on their food supply that they didn’t want to give much manpower to gathering more. In the end, no Winten-ah starved or froze to death, but when the spring rains finally arrived, banishing the snows, everyone who emerged from the caves was thin to the point of emaciation.
Early in the spring, when the clouds were still heavy with shivering-cold rain, they received their first visitors. Harta-ak, Versa-eh, Rinka-ak, and a contingent of Rinta-ah warriors arrived on horseback. Wenta-eh, sister of Werda-ak, and the warrior Alex had dispatched to warn them of the coming zisla-ta, rode proudly in front. When she hadn’t returned immediately, Alex believed he had sent her to her death just as surely as he had her brother.
Everyone ran from the caves, not caring at all about the rain or the mud that was now everywhere their verdant field had once been.
“You live!” Alex said, beaming.
“Thanks to you,” Harta-ak said. “If you hadn’t sent the warning, we would have been zisla-ta food.”
“How did you survive? There is nowhere in Danta-ah that would have withstood an attack from them.”
“You are absolutely right. But, knowing that we would be going back and forth to Rinta-ah, the first thing we built was a small boat of our own that we could use to cross the river instead of signaling, asking to be picked up. When Wenta-eh rode and told us what was coming, we knew there was no place we could make secure in Danta-ah. So, we made several trips across the river until we were all across.”
Alex pictured Rinta-ah in his mind. A lovely village built into a natural amphitheater that protected them from attacks, but would not do the same against the zisla-ta.
“How did you survive in Rinta-ah? Are there caves there for you to hide in?”
“No,” Klipta-ak said, picking up the tale. “Harta-ak, Versa-eh and all their people came across the river to warn us. We did what we could—reinforced our great building, pulled as many of the animals inside as we could, but we thought it was likely the end of us.”
“Your presence here belies that,” Alex said, grinning happily.
“The zisla-ta passed mostly to the south of us,” Harta-ak said. “It wiped out everything we had started to build, but it did not reach across the river. We all survived”
“We saw a few thousand of the floating creatures, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle. Fortune smiled on us,” Klipta-ak said. He looked around at the unrelenting brown that surrounded them. “We wanted to thank you for thinking to warn us. We brought you new horses to replace the ones we are sure you lost. We are going to leave these here for you and we will walk back.”
Alex and Sekun-ak looked at each other. They had known that the loss of their horses would limit what they could do, and they had no idea how they would get more to start over. They were certain that the karak-ta had been nearly, if not completely wiped out by the zisla-ta, which left them very little to trade with.
“I don’t know what to say,” Alex said.
“Nothing needs to be said,” Rinka-ak said. “I would not be here if not for you and that is not a debt that can be easily repaid. Our lives were not untouched by the scourge of the zisla-ta, but good fortune shined on us.”
“We have one more thing,” Versa-eh said, pointing to two bulging saddle bags. “This trip, we are not just bringing danta. We also brought you these seeds. It is almost time to put them in the ground. It will help make up for the other food sources you lost.”
“We are also looking for information,” Rinka-ak said. “Since the plague of the zisla-ta, every woman in our village who has given birth has died. Every one. We have lost too many before, but if we lose every woman who gives birth we will not survive. What has happened here?”
“It is the same here,” Sekun-ak answered gravely. “On the night of zisla-ta, we had two women with child. They both died within an hour of giving birth.”
“Is it a curse?” Versa-asked.
Lanta-eh, The Chosen One, stepped forward. “It is not a curse. At least, not the way we might normally think of it. Every day, I talk with the monks. We are working on a resolution, but it will be difficult.”
Alex’s mouth fell slightly ajar. If Lanta-eh was in communication with the monks, he wasn’t aware of it. In fact, he knew she hadn’t been more than a few miles from where they stood since they had returned from Lasta-ah. He still had trouble reconciling statements about telepathic communication with the normal young girl he saw before him. If he hadn’t seen a man communing with a rabbit on that journey, he might not have believed it.
Alex realized that their guests, who had traveled so far to see them, were all still on horseback, with the exception of Wenta-
eh, who had slipped from her horse and ran to her family immediately.
“Please, dismount, and let us greet you properly. We will welcome you and give you a place to rest before you return. We do not have much food to share, but what we have is yours as much as ours.”
“We wouldn’t think of taking what you have,” Klipta-ak said. He pointed to his own saddlebags. “We brought a feast of our own to celebrate with you.”
That night, the Winten-ah ate well for the first time since the night of the zisla-ta. For the first time, they went to bed with full stomachs.
Still, the curse that Versa-eh had spoken of hung heavily over them. If they couldn’t have children, how could the tribe survive?
That was a long-term question, though. For the short term, the hand up that their friends gave them allowed them to get through the most difficult part of the recovery.
Versa-eh and Harta-ak stayed behind for a few days after the Rinta-ah returned on foot to show the Winten-ah how to plant a crop from the seeds they had brought for them. They called it krinta, but as soon as the tall stalks burst through the ground, Alex knew it was some form of corn.
He hadn’t thought of corn in the years since he had arrived in Kragdon-ah, but as soon as he saw the first ears appearing, he developed a hankering for it. They didn’t have any butter, since the zisla-ta had killed their two milk beasts, but when they had their first krinta feast, it was delicious.
Alex rebuilt his house using the methods Klipta-ak had taught him. He would never be as naturally skilled with tools or be able to glance at a project and accurately judge its structural strengths and weaknesses, but he was happy with the result.
The small cabin made a happy home for him, Senta-eh, and Monda-ak.
Despite the obstacles of recovering from the zisla-ta, Alex Hawk was busy, productive, and happy.
And then... Then everything changed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Senta-eh
Aside from those moments when he nagged at himself for losing Amy, Alex Hawk was quite content in his life. Though there was no word for love in Winten-ah, he loved Senta-eh with all his heart. More than three years of complete togetherness had only brought them closer together. They hadn’t dared try to have a child, but in many ways, Monda-ak was their child.
A slobbering, farting, manipulative two-hundred-and-seventy-five-pound child.
Because of the dangers of childbirth, they had agreed that it was best for them to be intimate with each other as little as possible. Still, they shared a bed, cared deeply for each other, and were bound together in the Winten-ah tradition. There were times when their mutual attraction overcame all good sense.
Each time that happened, they waited and worried until evidence arrived that Senta-eh was not pregnant.
It was the same battle fought by every couple in Winten-ah. For that matter, the same problem every couple in Kragdon-ah fought against.
Every time a trader or traveler passed through, Sekun-ak would ask them what was happening elsewhere.
Each time, the word was the same. Childbirth equaled death—but only for the mother. The children lived, healthy and unscarred. If not for that, healers such as Niten-eh might have brewed up a concoction to abort the baby. No Winten-ah mother was willing to give up her growing child to save herself, though.
The Winten-ah had always been hunters and gatherers, but the invasion of the zisla-ta had taken them in a new direction. When Versa-eh had brought them bags of seeds to plant and grow krinta—which turned out to be much more like the hard maize than corn itself—they had incorporated that into their lifestyle as well. After nearly starving, the tribe enjoyed being able to store and have the krinta to help them through their winters.
One day a few weeks after the summer solstice, both Alex and Senta-eh were working in the krinta garden. It was an area at the far southern end of what had once been only the field. They were both working with primitive hoes, weeding out the tenacious grasses and weeds that constantly tried to strangle the stalks of krinta. It was hard work, but they enjoyed working side-by-side, doing something they both knew would be of benefit to the tribe.
Alex had suggested a challenge to see who got to the end of their row first, though he knew that Senta-eh was likely to win, as she won most games they played. It didn’t stop him from challenging her, though.
He worked steadily, chopping with the hoe, and throwing weeds out of his path. He was surprised when he finished his row and glanced to his left and saw that he had not only beaten Senta-eh, but that she was nowhere in sight.
Alex stepped into her row and saw her on all fours, twenty feet behind him. He rushed to her, but she held up a hand and motioned him away as she dispelled a thin, sickly thread of vomit.
“Wait here. I’ll run and get some water.”
That was what he said. What he meant was, I will run and get some water and Niten-eh, which is exactly what he did.
Five minutes later, he was back with Niten-eh, who was more bent than ever, trailing behind him as best she could.
By the time they returned, Senta-eh was standing, hoeing her row again. When she saw that Alex had brought Niten-eh with him, she fixed him with a look. A wifely look that conveyed more than a hundred words might have.
Alex held his hands up defensively. “I was just worried about you.”
“We have been in many battles together. I don’t know if I have killed as many men as you have, but I think perhaps I have. Do not treat me like a child.”
Over her objections, Niten-eh had Senta-eh sit in the cool grass in the shade of the stalks while she quizzed and examined her.
Tellingly, she spent an inordinate amount of time palpitating her abdomen. She leaned in close and asked her a question so quietly that Alex could not hear it. Senta-eh answered in an equally quiet voice.
Niten-eh turned to Alex and said, “I think she just ate something that did not agree with her stomach. Get her out of the heat, rest until tomorrow, and she will be fine. Your hut is cool, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Being in the shade of the cliff and near the water keeps us cool.”
Rest was a word that was typically not applied to Senta-eh. Every time Alex left her side, she would attempt to sneak off and do some work somewhere. Finally, when he needed to leave for any reason, he left Monda-ak with her with a command to bark if she got up out of bed, no matter what she said to him.
It was a momentary battle for the dog’s soul. He had given his loyalty to Senta-eh nearly as much as he had to Alex, but in the end, he ratted her out each time she tried to rise.
Within a few days she was much improved and the whole thing was forgotten. Life went on in the cliffside.
They tended their crops, went on hunting expeditions, and told stories around the fire. Alex was the most popular storyteller among the children because he had a lifetime of reading that he could reshape and tell as though set in Winten-ah. Their favorite was the story of the battle between Luk-ak and his father Vader-ak. They never tired of that one, especially because of the magical, glowing swords they used.
A month later, Alex got up early, as was his habit. It was a rare day when he wasn’t up before sunrise.
He climbed out of the soft bed he had built for them with his own hands. Senta-eh was still asleep beside him. Monda-ak, in his own bed beside theirs, yawned and looked at Alex questioningly. Alex put his finger to his lips, which was enough of an excuse that Monda-ak laid his massive head between his paws and once again closed his eyes.
Alex turned back to the bed and reached to pull the soft blanket back over Senta-eh.
He saw something that froze his heart.
Senta-eh’s nightclothes had bunched in the night, revealing her stomach.
There was an angry red rash dotting against her dark skin.
The sign of the sickness.
Chapter Twenty-Five
A Glimmer of Hope
Alex stood staring at the evidence in front of him for long seconds, unmoving. He
was a man of action, but he was frozen.
Finally, he sat back on the bed and took Senta-eh’s hand.
Her eyes fluttered open and she started to smile at him, but then felt the cool morning air on her bare skin. She did not bother to cover herself.
“Gunta, Manta-ak,” was all she said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I did not want to see this face,” she said, touching his chin tenderly. “Because I do not want pity.”
Alex stood.
“Where are you going?”
“To get Niten-eh.”
Senta-eh patted the bed beside her. “Sit down.”
It was obvious that Alex wanted to be in motion, to be doing something. Still, he sat.
“You don’t need to get Niten-eh. I have been seeing her regularly.”
“You mean she knows...” Alex trailed off, but nodded toward her stomach, which he noticed for the first time was slightly rounder than he’d ever seen it.
“She’s known since the day in the krinta field. We both knew then.”
Alex drew a deep breath and said, “What can we do, then?”
“Nothing.”
“There is always something. Always.”
“We cannot interfere with what is happening. It is the way.”
An expression Alex had never embraced. It is the way. The Winten-ah way of saying there were certain things that were going to happen no matter how someone gnashed their teeth and pushed against it.
Alex was quiet for a long time, fighting against a strong tightening in his throat.
“I cannot lose you.”
Senta-eh cocked her head at him, like Monda-ak when he heard a far-off whistle.
“You say the silliest things sometimes. I guess it is because of what you learned in your other time. You can never lose me unless you want to.”
“You know I want you with me forever.”
“Then you have me. Do you remember when we fought the dandra-ta?”