Lost and Found

by Mary Hamilton

  Despite the comforting tone, the words seemed ominous. “What dark things? What will I know? I’m just a kid.”

  The voice erupted in laughter. “You are indeed a kid, but I would offer that you are not just a kid. You will see what others cannot. For now, though, put your trust in Klunk and the ogres. They are of good heart and will not fail you. You and I will speak again, and before the storm arrives, you must seek me out. But, for now, I shall return you to Klunk’s capable hands.”

  Tovi started to ask another question, but the voice faded.

  Another sound teased his ears. “You are waking up, huh.”

  Chapter 28: Tovi

  By the time dawn broke, so had the fever. With some water and a bit of dried hare meat and nuts, the young Azyrean felt that he could travel. Tovi rode, once again, atop Klunk’s shoulders, as the two trudged toward the kraal.

  The Klunk of several days ago—the jolly, laughing ogre—had been replaced by a quiet, thoughtful one. They traveled in silence most of the morning. After a few hours of riding on the broad shoulders, Tovi would have preferred to walk for a while, but Klunk had insisted on carrying him. They needed to travel fast the ogre reasoned.

  From his high perch, Tovi scanned the horizon ahead. “Why didn’t the others from the kraal come to find us? Wouldn’t they be worried when we didn’t come back?”

  “Worry? Maybe a little. But staying out over the night is not that strange. Sometimes we must. But by the time darkness fell and we were not back, it would be too late to start a search for us. Traveling the desert after dark can be dangerous. They would trust that we had found a safe place to spend the night. And if something had happened to us, they would not reach us quickly anyway.”

  The explanation made sense, sort of. But still, if something bad had happened, something worse than Tovi’s snake bite, they should have come looking, except that they wouldn’t know what had happened unless someone went back to tell them. The problem swirled in his head and made less sense with each passing minute. He was about to ask Klunk to explain when he saw small moving figures out ahead of them. “There.” He pointed, assuming that the ogre could see his arm. “There’s something out there, coming toward us.”

  “From the kraal. They come today, huh.” Klunk picked up the pace, moving almost at a trot.

  As the group approached the two travelers, Tovi noticed the same young ogres that had watched them enter the kraal that first day. The most noticeable features on them were their grins, which seemed to mock. But he noticed something else as well. Each was accompanied by a beast. Two of the ogres had large, shaggy-looking dogs with protruding fangs. One of the others had a boar. And one had a small raptor with piercing red eyes and talons that continuously scratched the ground as it stood still.

  The tallest of the ogres glanced first at Tovi and then at Klunk. “Ah, I see that Klunk and his pet rat are safe.” He shook his head. The others howled with laughter.

  Tovi expected Klunk to fire back, to answer the insult. But the giant ogre hung his head. “We must keep moving. Desert snake bite.” He strode out away from the group at his previous brisk pace. The sound of the others trudging along behind them rang in Tovi’s ears as his temper grew shorter. He wanted to turn and hurl a good insult but couldn’t think of one. And, given his status as a guest, maybe it was best to keep his mouth shut.

  ◆◆◆

  When they arrived at the kraal, Klunk headed straight for his hut. Pulling the leather door covering aside, he entered and let the sheet fall back into place. He deposited Tovi and strode over to the counter where his mother stood, and he began retrieving the nuts and carods they had gathered. “We had good fortune.” But his smile seemed forced.

  His mother nodded as she eyed the haul. “You stayed the night. Did you get the hare traps set?”

  Klunk lowered his gaze. “No. Tovi had the desert snake bite. We stayed at the carod pools the night.”

  Tovi felt suddenly guilty, as though he had caused all of Klunk’s problems. He had gone along to help but ended up causing trouble instead. He eased over toward the counter. “Yes. I’m sorry. Klunk warned me about the snakes. I should have watched better.” The apology felt awkward—it was something he didn’t do very often.

  Mamaw eyed him for a moment and then turned to Klunk. “Put the nuts in the box. Three of the carods I will prepare for dinner. The rest are for others. You can take them around after we eat.” She glanced back at Tovi. “You must rest now.”

  ◆◆◆

  Tovi lay on the pad staring at the ceiling. He could hear Klunk shuffling about, apparently sorting the supplies they’d gathered. “What were those others talking about? Your pet rat?”

  “Nothing.” More shuffling.

  Tovi sat up. “No, really. They all had animals with them. Are those pets?”

  “You should rest. We have to deliver carods tonight.”

  “Why won’t you tell me?”

  Klunk stopped his sorting and stared. “I do not talk about it.” His eyes seemed distant and sad rather than playful, as they usually did.

  Tovi sighed in frustration. “But you don’t have a pet?”

  Klunk went back to sorting the supplies, although it looked as if he was just moving things from one box to another without a reason.

  “We don’t have pets back in Pangrove.”

  Klunk eased over and sat on a pallet, his back to the wall. “In the kraal, we get pets to become men—adults.”

  What a dumb idea. But Tovi kept the thought to himself. “When will you get your pet?”

  “I will get it when I get it.” Klunk crossed his arms on his chest.

  Tovi shook his head and exhaled. “No, I mean, like, when? This week? Next week? Next year?”

  The ogre glared at him but said nothing.

  “How do you get a pet?” Maybe that was a safer question.

  Klunk shrugged. “We go far into the desert. We find the pet we want and then we must fight it. Not with weapons but with our bare hands. And we must not kill or injure it. We fight only until the animal is so tired that it can no longer fight. Then we put a line on it and bring it back here.”

  Tovi had no experience with animals, much less pets. But still, there had to be a better way to tame a pet.

  Chapter 29: Tovi

  Tovi and Klunk delivered carods to four other huts, three roots per family. For this, they collected a total of twelve bluelets, small blue crystal shards. Klunk counted out the currency for his mother, who nodded as she followed with her gaze.

  When he finished, Mamaw gave each of them a single bluelet. “There.” She placed the remainder in the same crystal box she had used several days before.

  Tovi looked up at Klunk, his questioning eyes wide.

  “We get a small amount for doing work. We went out and collected the carods and took them around to the other huts.” Klunk held up his shard in front of his face. “So, we can spend these on things or save them until we get more.”

  Tovi was familiar with the concept of allowances. He did chores—as little as possible, of course—and his mother gave him a few coins. The difference, though, was that the coins were boring. These crystals were different. These small ones were about the size of his finger. But the ones he’d seen before, especially the red one, was larger than his entire hand. He held the crystal up to the candle flame, which looked green through the blue shard. He laughed. This was much better than coins. It would be better to keep it rather than spend it.

  Anyway, there probably wasn’t much to buy here in the kraal. Back home, there were shops which sold candied fruit and toys. There were some book shops, too, but he could never understand why anyone would want to buy a book. He got plenty of books to read in class. He stuffed the crystal in his pants pocket.

  Klunk interrupted his thoughts. “Tomorrow, if you feel well enough, you can go with me to set the hare traps.”

  ◆◆◆

  As Klunk lay snoring beside him, Tovi’s mind shifted back and forth betwe
en the idea of pets and the blue crystal shard in his pocket, not that the two were connected. The ogres seemed unfazed by the beauty of their currency. They treated them with no more interest than Azyreans showed for their round pieces of metal.

  Before he drifted off, he recalled the dream from the previous night vividly—his mother, seeing Marzi, but most of all, the strange voice that spoke to him and didn’t make any sense. He fell asleep with his hand clutching the earned bluelet.

  He and Klunk plodded out of the hut and shouldered their packs as the deep purple and orange streaks in the sky began to turn pink and blue. The ogre turned toward the rising sun and pointed. “That way. We will start setting traps after an hour of walking.”

  As they marched along, Tovi felt something shifting in his pocket as he walked. Reaching in, he felt the shard. He’d meant to leave it at the hut so that he wouldn’t lose it in the desert. He decided to shift it to his pack when they stopped to set the first trap.

  They came upon a grove of small saplings just as the sun peeked above the horizon. Klunk set his pack down, retrieved some wood, a long, thin piece of string, and some bits of carod. He selected a spot near one of the small trees. He fashioned a snare trap that, according to him, would seize a hare by the neck when it tried to take the vegetable. When he finished, he sat back, beaming as he stared at his creation.

  The thought of it made Tovi queasy. “Doesn’t it hurt them? It seems kind of cruel.”

  Klunk’s smile faded. “Whether it hurts them or not, I cannot say. But I can tell you that, without the meat of the hare, our kraal would be very hungry. Mamaw says the small animals are a gift and that we should take them and give thanks.” He shrugged and gazed around the small gathering of trees. “I guess it is the way of life. Some things eat other things. Some things are eaten.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Tovi thought about the food his family ate. He never really thought about where the meat came from, only what it tasted like.

  Klunk set the next trap by another sapling and started the process again. “We set three more traps here and move to the next place.”

  Tovi pulled the crystal shard from his pocket. But rather than putting it into his pack, he held it in his hand, turning it over to examine it from different angles. It was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen. As the sun climbed higher in the sky, he held it up so that the light filtered through the blue shard. A soft stream of blue light came out of the glass. It looked almost like a small moonbeam. What shocked him most, though, was that, on the ground at the end of the stream, a tiny circle of swirling light appeared.

  He moved out of the sunlight and the blue light disappeared. He gazed into the crystal but could see nothing other than the glass itself. He raised it back toward the sun and the light returned. He glanced over at Klunk, who busied himself with his traps. Something about this crystal….

  He started to put it in his pack when a small mouse came out of the brush. Tovi watched in amusement, forgetting the crystal in his hand. As the rodent came closer, it slowed down. The closer the mouse got, the slower it walked. As it moved to a point beside Tovi’s hand, it came to a complete halt and stood as if transfixed.

  Tovi reached out and touched the mouse’s head. It didn’t react at all. Its eyes stared up at him. This was funny. The mice at home would never do that. They scurried away whenever anyone was even close. He stuffed the crystal in his pack and turned his full attention to the mouse. But at that very moment the mouse suddenly sprang to life and zipped away.

  Tovi pulled the shard out of his pack again and studied it. The mouse had sat beside him until he had put the crystal away. Something about this crystal….

  Chapter 30: Jarek

  For the next hour, Jarek’s spirits plummeted. The previous day, his ego had been buoyed by everyone listening with great interest to his explanations about moonbeams and crystals—even if the details were a bit too technical for that group. But this spiky-haired sarcastic girl challenged his every assertion, and things had gone steadily downhill. Finally, he gave up, exasperated and unwilling to continue. “See here, I’m trying to tell you what I know. If you know better, then why ask? I mean, why are we going through all of this if you’re not even going to listen?”

  Burns laughed. “Oh, I’m listening, but you’re not talking. You’re just trying to impress me.”

  “Young lady, I have no need to impress you. I am a captive here and I suspect that my fate has little to do with whether or not you are impressed.” He glared at her, his mouth drawn into a tight line.

  Her laughter subsided. “Well, that might be debatable. But maybe we can just have a regular conversation rather than a battle of the intellects. How about that?” She tried her most endearing smile on him.

  Jarek sighed. “Maybe we can start with this. What is it that you really want to know?”

  “Look, this is all about travel. You came here across some great distance, apparently. Now, if I look up in the sky, I’m not seeing anything really close to this world. And also, what we don’t know is how much time passed. It may seem to you as if everything was instantaneous. But, who knows? Maybe it took hundreds of years for you to get here.”

  The Azyrean once again felt the air, along with any hope, punched out of him. He started to argue, but the young woman’s logic sounded accurate. He hung his head. “I regret I have no answer to that. I know of no way we could discern that kind of information.”

  “Yes. I realize that. So, let’s concentrate on what we can get our minds around, okay? The commander might be interested in the crystals, and they probably are important. But without some sense of the beam structure and properties, they mean nothing. They’re just shiny rocks.”

  The morning flew by with Jarek and Burns lost in conversation. Once he got over his disappointment at having to deal with someone as smart as himself, she was actually pleasant to talk to.

  As the two munched on cold meat and dried fruit, they continued the discussion. Burns had grown increasingly animated as she delved into the details. “So, if we accept that something gives the beams form that allows physical support, and it’s not being done by your people, then there must be something in the atmosphere, in the sky above Pangrove, that alters the basic structure of the light.”

  Jarek took a swig of water and considered the point. “Yes, but if that’s the case, why would beams of sunlight not be affected in the same way?”

  “Good question. Unless it does affect beams from the sun, but the ambient light is so bright that you don’t see it. After all, has anyone ever tried to hop a sunbeam?”

  “I can’t say that I’ve ever given it any thought, nor have I ever heard it discussed.” Still, sunbeam hopping seemed an interesting notion.

  Burns shrugged. “But even with that, it still doesn’t get us any further on the basic question of how it happens.”

  “True. Too true.”

  ◆◆◆

  “Good afternoon, sir.” The voice drew Jarek out of his thoughts. He turned to see a short, older man with brown and gray hair that thinned to a shiny dome on top.

  He stood and straightened his clothes, although not sure why. After all, he had no need to impress anyone here. “Hello.” Jarek nodded.

  The man extended an open hand—a gesture that the Azyrean had discerned as a human greeting ritual. He grasped the offered hand with his for a brief instant and then released.

  “I’m Doc Brower. And you are Jarek Whit? The man who travels on moonbeams?” The man slouched into a sitting position, leaning back against the cavern wall.

  Jarek shrugged. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “I’m not really a doctor, just a medic. The title is a nickname.”

  Jarek wondered why he was being treated to the explanation and was at a loss for any meaningful response. “Well, then I am still pleased to meet you.”

  Doc narrowed his eyes and stared for a moment. “Never met anyone who traveled on moonbeams. Did it hurt?”

  “No. Didn
’t feel a thing.”

  “Curious. Most curious.” Doc shook his head. “I overheard you telling the commander that children in your world ride these beams. Are there any effects, you know, like dizziness or nausea?”

  “Not that I’ve heard of.”

  Doc peered closer, inspecting each side of Jarek’s head as if he was looking for some sign of injury or illness. “Astonishing, truly.” He chuckled. “Please excuse me. I’ve just never heard of such a thing here in this world. Maybe we can talk more as we go along. I’d enjoy hearing about your experience.”

  Jarek wasn’t sure whether he felt annoyed or pleased. It was one thing to be the center of attention but was quite another to be a freak, something to be inspected—prodded and probed. “Uh, sure, okay.”

  ◆◆◆

  The skirmishing parties returned later that day. Jarek assumed that it was right before dusk but, not having a view of the outside, he had no way of knowing for sure. Several of the members apparently had suffered wounds, their clothing darkened with what appeared to be blood. Some limped while one was carried in on a frame of wood and leather, which they called a litter. He stared, recalling the scene in the clearing and the people that remained on the ground there.

  Virgil strode over to the small alcove where West stood. “Same thing as yesterday. An armored patrol just happened to be there. Luckily, we saw them first and they got the bad end of the deal.”

  West gazed at him for a moment without speaking. “Maybe. But we can’t keep playing this game. They can afford to lose more than we can.” She stood for a moment as if she were going to say something else but then turned toward the center of the cavern. “Get the wounded situated and grab some dinner. We’ll talk later.”