by G. Howell
It was going to be a bad one.
Sunlight was waxing and waning as clouds built and roiled across the sky. Gloom was interrupted by sparse moments of golden light as the building storm shifted restlessly, the setting sun finding fewer and fewer chinks in the overcast. I realized it was going to get dark prematurely that evening as I crossed a meadow, aiming for a dense-looking forest where I might have been able to find some sort of shelter. Then, in the middle of a field, I paused. I thought I’d seen something, to the south against the black of the storm. There was something there: a small orange dot diving and swooping against the oncoming wall of rain and thunder. It looked like… it couldn’t be.
I swore it was. That was why I went south.
------v------
I could hear it. I could smell it.
Thunder rolled across the world like God’s own cannon fire. There was the back-of-the-throat tang of ozone underlying everything: the promise of wild rain and a lot of it.
That little speck or artificial color kept climbing and diving against the bruise-colored clouds. Soaring above the treetops, then spinning wildly and plummeting toward the ground again. There’d be a pause, and it’d do it all over again.
Years ago, when I was about eight years old, I’d built a kite. It’d been a simple red triangle with a stubby little tail, a design copied from a picture I’d seen in a children’s book. Hopelessly stereotypical and badly proportioned and designed, but I’d built it myself and against all probability it’d flown. Well, it’d flown just like that. Up, then plummet down to the ground again until the one time it’d gotten high enough that the downward plummet into the ground had snapped its back. But that was so long ago in another world.
I started running across the open grass, then through a grove of birch trees, dodging between white and black trunks. Overhead, the small leaves were alpha’d against a black sky, rattling in the growing wind. Through them I strained to catch a glimpse of the foreign object bobbing and weaving against the stormclouds. I scratched myself up pretty bad pushing through a thicket out into open again, at the top of a gently sloping meadow.
The kite was rising again, orbiting wildly against the constraints of its string in the gusting wind. Probably because it didn’t have a tail, I noted absently. There was a small figure at the other end of the meadow, holding the cable, running back and forth as the orange triangle rose higher against the oncoming blackness, diving and weaving with the gusts of wind.
Lightning marched across the skyline: actual strokes of jagged light that left images on my retinas.
“Hai!” I yelled, waving my arms as the thunder crashed over me. It was too far, several hundred meters. The kite dove, spiraling against its cord before hitting the ground. The cub ran to collect it and tried again.
“Hey! Hai!” I shouted again, starting to run downhill. “Hey!”
The cub saw me. For a second there was hesitation, then it bolted. Released and forgotten, the kite swooped, then nosedived into the ground where the wind caught it again and sent it pinwheeling erratically toward me. The cub was hightailing it away toward the trees on the far side of the meadow, tail tucked.
“Wait!” I called after him, my voice fighting with the gusts of wind that filled the world with the hiss of swaying trees. “Please!”
Gone, fled into the trees.
I staggered to a stop. Of course the cub had run. Seeing a hulking, hairless thing charging out of the forest, I’d run too.
The kite skidded past me, gusts of wind tugging it across the grass. The reel bounced past, the unraveling string curling and brushing past my arm. Automatically, I snagged it, catching the spool. It was just a stick, a bit of branch with the string wound around it. And the whole string was made of fragments, bit of all sorts of materials tied together: Twine, leather cords of various kinds, unraveled rope and cloth. I carefully reeled it in, the kite weaving and bobbing in ever tighter circles at the end of its leash until I was able to grab it, discovering it was an equally patchwork affair. A simple diamond made from scraps of vaguely orange or reddish cloth all carefully glued and stitched together. It looked like someone with very limited resources had spent a lot of time and effort on it.
Thunderheads were spilling overhead, backlit by the setting sun. In the deeping gloom lighting strobed amongst the hills, then thunder grumbled. The haze below the clouds marched toward me, but the outriders of the storm were already there. Fat raindrops pattered against dusty ground, against grass and leaves.
I sighed, then set off in the direction the cub had gone.
As the sun set on my second day of freedom, the storm broke.
------v------
The clouds closed in like a lid dropped over the world. I couldn’t see a damn thing. The temperature plummeted. It had become a dark and stormy night.
Rain hammered down out of the darkness in sheet after clammy sheet. It poured off leaves and branches. It gathered in rivulets that merged and turned into small streams crisscrossing the ground. Gusts of wind drove the rain almost horizontally at times, nearly solid walls of water pelting in from the gloom. The indistinct shapes of trees were barely visible through the driving water, thrashing to and fro, shaking with the wind. Every so often a lightning strike would fill the world with a flare of light that froze flash-frames of wind-whipped trees and left afterimages floating in my vision for seconds afterwards. Thunder rumbled with an intensity I could feel.
I stumbled onwards through the gloom and sheets of rain, slipping on mud and grass that seemed to turn as slick as oil under the deluge. Water collected in my hair, my beard, and ran in streams through my hair, down my face. That downpour was nothing like some warm spring shower, rather it was a deluge that tried to suck the warmth from my body cold. I held the kite up before me, not in a futile attempt to stay dry, but just to try and block the barrage of condensing atmosphere droplets the size of peas that came in like bullets out of the dark, bursting across my face and into my eyes. Ground that’d been dusty dry that morning turned to cold viscous ooze that squeezed through my toes with every step. In that storm, in the wind and rain and darkness I could have stumbled past an entire carnival and missed it completely. I just kept moving in the same direction, the direction the cub had ran.
When I ran into the log blocking my path I first thought it was a fallen tree. When I tried to go around I found it was attached to a post and there was another, then another. They were just rows of crudely cut rails stacked atop one another, but there wasn’t much doubt it was a fence. Beyond…I squinted into the teeth of the storm and could make out the shapes of bison materialized from the sleeting rain. A clanking of cattle bells was audible over the continuous rattling of rain and wind and rustling trees as the animals shied away from me. A farm. It was a farm. That meant food, warmth, shelter.
With a renewed sense of purpose I followed the fence.
It wasn’t too far. I found a corner of the fence and a crude gate. The ground there was churned by milling animal hooves, the rain pooling and turning it to sludge. Through sheets of rain shone a faint light.
There was a farmhouse: a tiny single-story building with rain cascading off the shingle roof and through the cracks in a shuttered window a light glowed: just a small lamp or candle.
Out in the storm I stared at it and dripped and shivered and yearned.
Yes, there’d be food; there’d be shelter; but there’d also be Rris. I turned the sodden fabric of the kite over in my hands. Lightning flashed, rippling across the sky. Suppose the mediators had been here? Suppose these farmers decided I’d be worth turning in? Or, more likely, they’d shoot first and asked questions later. That’d happened before.
So I stared longingly at the light in the window, weighing my choices. No, I’d come too far to risk throwing everything away on a stupid move like that.
There was a barn, of sorts.
It wasn’t much more than a glorified lean-to with three walls of crooked half-rounds caulked with daub and a roof of more overlapping split logs and bark tiles. Under that roof was dried and packed dirt and four stalls: nothing more than some spaces separated by poles, but it was shelter of sorts – a place where I could get out of the driving rain and cold. Rain clattered on the roof and dribbled in steady streams through cracks and holes to patter on the dirt floor. A pair of elk in the right hand stalls grunted and shifted uneasily when I entered, milling and moving away from me. The lefthand-most stall was filled with hay: animal feed or roofing material or something agrarian.
A few hours. Just a few hours out of rain and wind and the storm would die down and then I’d move on. That’s what I told myself as I laid the kite aside and collapsed onto the hay rick. The straw itched, it jabbed and scratched at my skin, but after what I’d been through I hardly noticed. It was soft, and after I’d half-burrowed into it, it kept the wind off and actually started to feel warm. A flash of lightning lit the sky outside, stripes of light glaring through the cracks between the ill-fitting planks in the walls.
Hiding from the natives. Sleeping in a barn. Huh, I’d been there before. I thought back to those times and while I huddled there the kite was lit in another flash, just for a split second, and that diamond of orange against the ground was the last I remember of that night.
------v------
I’m not sure what woke me. I was vaguely aware of voices and birdsong and bright light but was too tired and sore to really care. There was something important nagging at my consciousness. I was…
Late.
My heart lurched and I started awake, opening eyes to sunlight shining in through the door of a rickety shack and a small figure with fur already standing on end gaping at me. I stared back, opened my mouth to say something and another Rris figure stepped into the opening behind the cub. The newcomer was much larger. I saw grey and black stippled fur, a worn leather kilt and rows of dark nipples above that, and a broad furry face with grey tufts on the cheek and high ears. That face changed, the eyes flashing wide to show whites around the amber, the features freezing in shock, then distorting in a snarl as she grabbed the cub and hauled it away, interposing herself between us.
“Get my sword!” she hissed and in the next split second grabbed for a two-tined pitchfork hanging on the wall of the shed, seizing it in a two-handed grip and lunging at me in a smooth, almost-balletic motion.
I only had time to open my mouth before I realized she was deadly serious. The twin tines were wood, but they were still sharp enough to skewer me and I only just managed to grab at them, my chains clattering as I was able to deflect the prongs into the wooden wall behind me and grab the shaft. “Hey!” I said, shocked at the vehemence of the attack.
She was trying to pull the implement back, hissing furiously.
“Will you…” I was speaking English. “No, please,” I changed to Rris. “Please, stop. Stop.”
She froze, then let go of the pitchfork like it’d become red hot and backpedaled several steps out into the morning sunlight. “What?” her eyes were wide, black with a ring of white around the edges. “What the suppuration is this?!”
I caught a gasping breath and tried to get my own breathing under control. “Apologies,” I said from flat on my back in the pile of straw. Awkwardly I sat up. She retreated another step and stared as I stiffly worked myself out of the pile of hay, using the pitchfork as a stick to lever myself up. Muscles creaked. I ached, from my feet upwards. Especially my feet. “Please, don’t. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Her mouth moved, as if she were trying different words for size. Nothing seemed to fit.
“I… I, uh,” I glanced at the pitchfork, then carefully propped it up against the wall with an assortment of other basic tools and awkwardly dusted my hands in a pointless gesture: I was naked, covered with mud and dust and bits of straw. “I was just trying to get out of the storm. I’m not looking for trouble. Oh, and yes: I can talk.”
Her fur bristled anew, “What are you?!”
“Just passing through,” I said, truthfully enough. I just didn’t know exactly where I was passing through. “I’m…Ah, where is this?”
“My farm,” she snarled. “Why did you attack him?”
That got me. “What? Whom? I haven’t attacked…”
“Rothi,” she snarled a gape-toothed hiss. “My son! You chased him!”
The cub? Oh, damn. “Attacked? Ma’am, I was trying to stop him from becoming a scorch mark.”
She bristled as if she were going to retort, then caught herself. Her muzzle tipped slightly.
“I saw him flying that… toy,” I continued, gestured at the kite, “during a thunderstorm. You’ve seen what a lightning strike can do to a tall tree? His kite was higher than the tallest tree around. I was trying to warn him. I think he misunderstood.” I shrugged, my collar chain rattling. “It’s happened before. I returned the toy. It must be valuable to him.”
There was a brief flicker as her gaze went to the kite, then back to me. I couldn’t read the exact expressions crossing her feline countenance, but I could see fear and suspicion and anger and uncertainty.
“I should go,” I said and she eyed me for a few seconds more, then took a few steps to the side and didn’t move to stop me as I limped past.
The world looked better that morning. It was still early, with birds still singing their morning chorus. Tatters of stormclouds – merest islands of the continents that had covered the world just a few hours ago - hung in the sky, glowing in the morning light. I looked around the farmyard. It was small, incredibly so, with just a little muddy yard steaming in the early sun and the tiny house and the toolshed excuse for a barn and something that was possibly an outhouse. Maybe a smokeshed. Bison browsed the glistening fields out beyond the house. Thin mist rose from the grass, insubstantial and pale in the still light of morning.
Just a farm. A tiny little holding. Just a farmer trying to scratch a living.
Halfway across the farmyard my stomach knotted up in a violent cramp. That and my light headedness reminding me of something. Hesitantly I stopped, feeling her staring at my back. I could at least ask… Slowly, I turned and asked, “Ma’am, you wouldn’t have any food you could spare? Please?”
Just as warily she cocked her head, studying me as I studied her. She wasn’t a large Rris, but she was well built. Stocky. All she was wearing was that slight leather kilt with a functional-looking belt. Her grey fur was dark across her shoulders, lighter down her belly where it vanished behind her belt and was speckled with black. An ear– the left one - had a ragged look to it. It’d been chopped off, losing the tufted tip and about half its length, leaving a scalloped edge. On her thigh, down below the line of the kilt, there was a bare patch where the fur didn’t grow properly, revealing grayish flesh and the puckered scar of a type of wound I was quite familiar with. “Who’re you running from?” she demanded, her amber eyes fixed on my wrists.
I looked down at the black iron of my shackles. “I’m not sure. They said they were Mediators.”
“Mediators?” Her ears went back, flat, and her muzzle wrinkled. “Get out of here, now!”
She looked scared again. “Please,” I tried to explain, to calm her. “I don’t know if they actually were Mediators.”
The farmer hissed. “If they looked like Mediators, they were. Go!”
“Then why did they take me from other Mediators?” I asked. “I was with Mediators in Open Fields. We were attacked and I was abducted.”
Her expression was still angry, still afraid, but something else was showing there. Confusion? “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know that they were really Mediators.”
She snorted. “Nobody sane would impersonate a Mediator.”
“Then they were
insane, or they were Mediators fighting Mediators,” I gestured helplessly. “I don’t know what’s happening. I’m trying to get back to Open Fields so I can find out.”
“You come from Open Fields?” the tone of that was more incredulous than anything.
“I was visiting. A guest of her highness.”
There was a reaction to that. She stiffened visibly, muscles tensing and relaxing in a stance I’d seen before. “Ah, then you’ve seen the palace doors. What kind of wood are they? What’s carved on them?”
I smiled tiredly. “They’re cast bronze, not wood. And the ceiling of the sky Chamber is tiny lights. And her Highness is twenty years of age, has a patch of light fur on her outer left thigh in the shape of a maple leaf, and she is partial to honeyed quail pasties.”
She blinked for a few seconds, then: “What exactly are you? Where’d you come from?”
Ah, that was a start. Curiosity and cats and all that... “I could tell you my story, perhaps in exchange for some bread?”
Her eyes narrowed. The cub came pelting back across the farmyard, both hands clasping a wooden scabbard fully three quarters his height. The farmer took it from him and he ducked around behind her. A tail flicked out one side and a fuzzy head peeped around the other to stare at me with huge eyes.