In time the tupa gathered round and served food. My teacher, whose name appeared to be Wuheka, nudged my shoulder gently in the direction of the meal, so I gathered that I was invited to eat. I approached with mixed feelings. Would their food be edible to me? If I turned it down in favor of my own provisions, would they be insulted?
On the other hand, it smelled really good. They laid a blanket on the ground and placed wooden bowls heaped up with various fruits and vegetables, and something that looked akin to big puffy orange corn. Some was cooked, some raw. Smaller bowls were distributed to each, myself included. The tupa served themselves, and Wuheka and another placed food in my bowl. Once the other placed a turnip-shaped fruit in my bowl, and Wuheka immediately placed a closed fist over it, spoke to his comrade, who then removed it. “Ka shapa uman sta. Shokone shapa nafa he.” Whether the food was not good enough for me, or the other way round, I had no idea, but it was withdrawn and added to the other’s portion.
The tupa sat on their haunches and I sat cross-legged, which seemed to interest the tupa. “Gumu shokone,” said one, echoed by “gumu” from a few of the others. I cautiously took a nibble from my food, a very pleasing grilled fruit. The puffy corn was starchy and sweet. The tupa watched me picking up the food and eating. Again I heard “gumu shokone”, and also “gumu hokavi”. They thrust their muzzles into the bowls and ate.
Only one food was particularly bad, a stringy blue stalk with an earthy, sour taste, but I made myself eat it, afraid to offend my host. My stomach was pleasantly full when a tupa went to the fire and returned with steaming cooked meat. Their resemblance to Earthly herbivores was so thorough that it shocked me to see them eat meat. They dished some out to me, and as pleasant as it tasted, I was sore pressed to put more into my stomach. It was the first meal I’d had on Wayworld that felt like a meal, rather than survival.
Afterward I was tired and drowsy. The tupa rolled up the skin of the legged serpent and loaded their things back onto their cart. I had no idea what was expected of me. Wuheka called me over to where he had drawn an extensive stick figure panorama in the dirt of the road. On the left was a cart and stick figure tupa. On the right, several boxes and triangles with more stick figure tupa standing among and inside the shapes. Wuheka drew me in, then two lines; one followed the road toward the geometry, the other went to the side.
“Tupa vimon homi,” it said, gesturing between the cart and the geometry. “Tupa chaishok ami,” it tapped the squares and triangles. It gestured toward me. “Uman ia tupa vimon homi na.” When I made no response, Wuheka redrew the cart and tupa inside the field of triangles and square, erasing the first, then drew the stick figure me along with it.
I realized they wanted me to go with them to somewhere with more tupa—their village, I assumed. I had no idea whether it was telling me or asking. I hesitated. Wuheka picked up two stone and held the left one forward saying “Uman ia tupa vimon. Vom,” then withdrew its left hand and held the right with its stone, saying “Uman ia tupa vimon. Kaha.” Wuheka was asking if I was going to go. I hesitated.
This was why I left Augie Field, right? To find the users of this road. Here they were, asking me to come see their society. And yet, there was risk. Perhaps they were taking me there to present me as a sacrifice to their dark and angry llama-god, or starting an exotic zoo. But I thought if they intended me harm, the four of them would easily overpower me, so deception was unnecessary. I reached out and took the stone from Wuheka’s left hand. “Vom,” I said, “Uman ia tupa vimon.” Yes, human go with tupa.
Soon we were under way. The tupa strapped their spurs back on and two of them strapped themselves into the harness and began pulling. Wuheka walked beside me, speaking often. The language lessons continued.
The road wound onward, and the land grew hillier as the road turned further south. Wuheka taught me simple words for common things like “sky” and “ground”. Frama seemed to be the word for bat-bird, but it may have meant to fly. I’d always had a knack for languages, and having a conversational command of several was a boon when working with multinational space stations and colonies as an inspector. I learned the names of the other tupa: Chuicha, Shuvo, and Atipa. I was learning by immersion—there was no common language to fall back on.
As evening approached, we pulled off the road into a campsite and set up. I helped Shuvo and Atipa gather firewood (or urumoha) and watched as Shuvo sprinkled the kindling with a clear yellow-brown liquid from a earthen bottle that smelled of mineral spirits and lit it with flint and tinder far more easily than I ever had. After their kindness to me, I felt like reciprocating. It was only a gesture, but I went into my pack to withdraw some of the food I’d brought on the road, prepared to pass it out at dinner.
Dinner was a light fare of cold meat leftover from lunch and a variety of fruit, and more of the puffy orange corn. I dug out some of the smoked fan-eel and passed it around, saying “kenapa”, which I was thought meant either “eat” or “food”. They flapped their ears as their cheek fur rippled forward. As they saw me take a bite they partook, seeming to enjoy it. Shuvo, in particular. He leaned his long neck toward my bag expectantly. I chuckled and began digging through it to see if I had more, dumping out a few things in the process, including the tooth from my one great battle. The tupa let out a burst of noise.
“Ele!” Shuvo exclaimed. His fur thrust forward as he leaned in to inspect the tooth. Soon the tupa were motioning to me and each other. Wuheka and Chuicha excitedly began sketching in the dirt. Wuheka motioned to the sketch. It was a crude rendition of the beast I’d fought. He gestured at the picture and the tooth.
“Epe mi telatas telak na,” he said. “Pelpasha na.” Quite some time and effort went into broken speech, repetition, gesturing, and gesticulating to confirm I had slain a telak. The commotion that followed suggested they were familiar with the monster, and were trying to get the details. It ended in an extended pantomime, with me flailing about and poorly imitating the telak’s roar, climbing a nearby tree, and thrusting down at the imaginary beast below. My antics were repeatedly met with a long hoooiii noise though I could not discern whether it was booing, cheering, or laughter—applause or disbelief.
When I was done the tupa raised their long necks up and beat the ground with their hard middle knuckles. They inspected my spear and axes at some length. Wuheka waddled up to me on his hind limbs and, placing his hands on each of my shoulders, lowered his head down and bumped my chest with the top of his head. He turned to his comrades and loudly said “Uman e iorta cha.” They responded with “vom” or “iorta”.
The light was fading. The tupa placed woven mats on the ground, including one for me, and curled up on them. I lay down and covered up with my thermal blanket.
I woke sometime in the middle of the night to find the tupa gathered around the fire with bowls in their hands. I sat up, drawing the attention of Wuheka, who held out an empty bowl, saying “Uman napa na.” Not knowing if it was a question or statement, I decided to err on the side of compliance and went to the fire and partook of a short meal with my benefactors, all of whom barely spoke during the meal. When all were finished, they returned to their mats and went back to sleep. I did likewise.
In the morning we ate a large breakfast, then packed up. The tupa now addressed me as either uman or iorta. They had already been kind to me, but this morning there seemed to be a sense of camaraderie. Shuvo and Atipa took the harnesses first and Wuheka and Chuicha walked alongside. Both joined in the language lessons today.
I deduced that questions ended in the word na. Words were repeated for emphasis. I failed to distinguish plurals or singulars. Ele was some sort of exclamation that meant something along the lines of “look”, “hey”, or maybe “there”. They used the same word for trees, chimney-plants, and anemone trees—probably any big plant. Another for medium sized plants like bushes and a plant new to me that reminded me both of choral and cactus, and was deep red in color.
The countryside we traveled grew less den
sely filled with trees and the like, becoming a sort of rolling prairie with the river winding lazily through it. Not yet had I seen grass, its niche seemingly filled by the combination of feather-ferns and lichen that had graced Augie Field. Waybeasts of various sorts and sizes roved the prairie in large herds. The tupa called them mohari. Fur lizards, called hodo, darted to and fro. Chimneydactyls made appearances, and were likewise frama. The river was ovit, but I wasn’t sure if that was this river or any river. Early afternoon we took a break to eat and rest. I boiled eggs for the troop, but they did not care for them.
Resuming our journey, we came across an enormous beast the size of an elephant, but shorter in legs (six of them) and longer in body, brown-skinned and hairless. It had a long thick tail that drug the ground, and bent a long thick neck down to the ground to munch feather-ferns. Wuheka called it a pagemot, and like the mohari, hodo, and frama, it did not have hren. The tupa were very wary of the behemoth, their cheek-fur fluffed out for as long as we were near it. I could imagine why.
More new creatures greeted my view: a nameless (to the tupa) quadruped with a body the size of a large dog, but long multi-jointed legs that made it over five feet tall with an odd, spider-like gait; the refik: another huge beast, smaller than the pagemot, four-limbed, with an enormous bird-like beak; and a troop of didigo: horse-size reptilians that ran about like four-legged ostriches. None, apparently, had hren.
The language lesson turned again to the subject of hren and pakren. Still, all that I felt sure of was that hren involved speech. Pakren was a mystery. Tupa seemed to have it. I had it, oh wait—I didn’t; then again, maybe I did. I couldn’t follow their gestures and prattle on the subject. That night around the campfire, from what I could gather, the tupa were asking me about other humans. Whatever their level of sophistication was, they knew I didn’t spring from the rocks, but could I tell them I fell from the sky? They had drawn another crude map in the dirt, with us and the village ahead. Shuvo was pointing at the village.
“Uman kaha homi,” Shuvo was saying, or, if I understood correctly, “No humans there.” He waved to the south. “Uman homi homi na?”—”Humans are there?”
I held a closed fist that direction. “Kaha.”—”No.”
He waved a hand westward. “Uman homi homi na?”—”Humans are there?”
“Kaha”. “No.”
Each possible direction was indicated, one at a time. “Humans are there?”
“No.” I was sorely tempted to point at the sky and say “Uman homi,” but there was no telling how they would respond. Perhaps they would dismiss me as a lunatic, or worship me as a god. Perhaps they would destroy me as a demon or sorcerer. I knew nothing of their mythology or religion.
We ate a simple meal that night. I was introduced to two tupa beverages: a sweet juice poured from a large fruit like a hollow melon, and another that they motioned for me to sniff before drinking. So, the tupa knew the fine art of fermentation! They hesitated to offer it to me, but I encouraged them to do so. It was not terribly strong, and the flavor a little thin, but hey, I hadn’t had a drink in months! I have never been much of a drinker, but life on Wayworld had often led me to wish I had a good stiff drink.
That night I learned their names for the moons, the larger was Gantan, and the smaller was Ganulan. I was commanded to an encore performance of Uman ia Telak—at least, I thought that was what they wanted, because they seemed to be satisfied with the result. I woke sometime in the night to again find the tupa enjoying a quiet repast with each other. I fell back to sleep before they could offer me a helping, and they did not wake me.
Chapter 5: The Village
Late the following morning, we crested a rise that overlooked the tupa village. A stout wooden fence, about five foot high, surrounded the entire village. There were structures like wattle and daub, or maybe adobe, others were log structures. None incorporated stone or brick. Roofs were covered with dried feather-ferns. A few had clay shingles. I saw no two story buildings, but a few had flat roofs with parapets and ramps built alongside one wall. There were a few small windmills, and a brook trickled through the town fed a water wheel. Plowed fields abounding in teal and blue vegetation abutted the fence on most sides. Dozens of tupa, many of them much smaller than my companions, strolled about the fields or walked through the dirt streets.
The village gates stood open. The sounds of life met our approach: voices calling to each other, the creak of wheels, the thuds and clanks of tools working. A pleasant cacophony of smells assailed my nostrils: some sweet, some acrid, some warm and earthy, some cool and minty. The place had a sense of vibrancy—the feel of people working, living, playing, shopping, being born, and dying.
Wuheka and his troop were met with voices calling out “Ele!” My presence certainly garnered the attention of the local tupa, but didn’t warrant concern or alarm. They watched me curiously as we went by, then returned to their own business. Small tupa (surely children) followed for a little while, watching with greater interest.
One little one, with bright blue fur and enormous indigo eyes, trotted alongside me for quite a while, so intent on watching me that it stumbled a time or two. After a while it bleeted in a tiny little voice :”Hwi e shokone nope shokone nope na?”
Chuicha made a chuffing sound and said “Kaha. Sho e uman.”
The little one stumbled again and quickly regained its footing. “Uman na? Voho voho uman na?”
Chuicha chuffed again. “Uman e uman.”
The little one ran back the way it came, calling out “Uman homi. Uman homi. Po asa uman uman.” I watched it dart away.
“Well, you’re just adorable,” I said. Shuvo who was pulling the cart with Chuicha, tilted his head at me expectantly.
“Dorbal na?”
“Adorable,” I repeated, pointing at the retreating hindquarters of the young tupa. “A-dor-a-ble.”
He turned to his comrades “Ha lifi e dorbal kua uman,” he said.
Wuheka replied “vomka, vomka,” and proceeded to speak quietly to Chuicha and Atipa. Atipa flapped his ears and departed the group. I watched him go, curious.
The street led to a large cleared area in the center of the village, where many tupa teamed about. A few approached Wuheka and spoke with him. I could not follow what they said, except the word uman, so I gathered nothing except that they were speaking about me. Some began inspecting the contents of the cart and talking with Chuicha and Shuvo. One sat up on its haunches and, looking me up and down, spoke to me. Wuheka turned to me and stroked the air in the other’s direction.
“Shomekota homi,”, he said, the repeated, “Shomekota.” I assumed this was the name, or perhaps title, of the other tupa. I had no idea how to say “Pleased to meet you,” or whatever was their version, so I said nothing. Meanwhile, the discussion at the other side of the cart ended with a villager walking off with the legged-serpent skin strapped across its back. After Wuheka and Shomekota exchanged a few more words, we continued on our way.
We soon arrived at a large house, surrounded by large, lush fields. A few tupa worked the fields, and came bustling from every corner upon seeing our company. Some helped Chuicha and Shuvo unstrap from the cart, other began unloading the cart, and others, including several young ones, trotted up to greet them with nuzzling of muzzles and bumping of heads against necks. After the initial flurry of homecoming, they turned their attention to me. Wuheka introduced me as uman. I comprehended little else, but soon they were all addressing me as uman or iorta.
Wuheka led me inside the house through a broad doorway covered with a split curtain. Inside I saw a wooden door. The floor was packed earth and covered in many places with rugs. A few low tables graced the spacious entry room. Wuheka and my traveling companions sat and motioned for me to do the same, while other tupa brought us bowls of fruit and earthenware bottles of drinks.
After a brief repast, tupa began filing in and Wuheka stood and greeted them as they walked past him, receiving nuzzles or head-bumps. The visitors exami
ned me with interest, but less than I’d expected. I heard many mentions of uman, and more than once heard Wuheka mentioning “Uman e iorta cha.”
After half-an-hour or so, we were summoned outside where villagers had gathered. Shomekota (at least, I thought it was him) and several others were sitting in a large circle. A few more tupa were walking up, accompanied by Atipa. I was sitting next to Wuheka with about six other tupa in the immediate circle, and several others gathered further out. A meeting of some sort was soon underway. I followed none of it, but I learned something that day: even on an alien world surrounded by bluish plants and talking animals, committee meetings are boring.
I think I was the subject, but who held what opinions about me, and what specifically was decided, I had no idea. There were more mentions of this illusive pakren that I might or might not have—or be, or do, or whatever. If there was any disagreement, the tupa expressed it with great tact and dignity. The meeting ended after an hour or so, followed by more introductions to tupa whom I could barely tell apart, and whose names I was sure not to remember.
I slept that night on a mat in the common room, along with several of the tupa. They woke sometime in the middle of the night, ate a brief meal, then returned to sleep, just as they had on the road. The following day Chuicha and Shuvo took turns showing me around the farms and village. The tupa were their own beasts of burden: carrying items and pulling their own plows, and seemed to be an industrious people. They were working at farms, wood-carving and carpentry, pottery, weaving, and cooking, using tools of wood, stone, bone, and horn.
The young children were bright blue, the color fading to blue-grey en route to adulthood. They faded unevenly, leaving a mottled pattern. That the fading continued throughout adulthood I doubted, since I saw no entirely grey tupa. All the workmanship I saw — houses, fences, tables, tools — were solidly, but roughly, built. No doubt the tupa’s thick fingers, few in number, were ill-suited to detailed work.
Diggory's World (Wayworld Book 1) Page 9