Diggory's World (Wayworld Book 1)

by T. Daniel Sheppeard

  One stream teamed with hand-sized ‘fishoids’ that looked like a cross between a bat and stingray. I took some time out of following Ankosh to cast a net and collected a decent-sized lunch. I looked up to see I’d lost sight of my companion and called out. He called back and soon I found him approaching a small pond formed by a dam of tree trunks on a stream. He waded out into the stream a short way.

  “Wait here, please,” he said before melting into a snake-like form and diving in. The Ankosh-serpent surfaced several times momentarily. After several such passes, he came to the edge of the pond and waited.

  A large, dark purple form came up next to him. It was shaped rather like a giant slug, though it had a discernible head with a round mouth ringed with five or six eyes. It slithered into the shallows, wrapping a long thick tail (or perhaps body) into a heap to “stand” upright.

  Ankosh assumed a similar shape (a feat he performed better than he imitated me). The two spoke at some length in throaty burbles, the purple slug gesturing with the tip of its tail, which terminated in a number of finger-like tentacles. I wondered if the tail served as its hand. After awhile the slug-thing sunk into the pond and Ankosh melted into his humanoid form and returned to dry land.

  “The hren in the water said it had seen Ankosh only several days ago,” he told me.

  We continued our search. I had many opportunities to forage or fish, so I did not have to dip into my stored food very often. We were still traveling through a forest. There were plenty of natural trails. Few were big enough to allow me easy passage, though somehow Debbie had little trouble.

  “Ankosh, could we be losing ground on finding your pakren, since that one is just going while we try to follow a trail?” I asked.

  “Unknown,” he said. “Maybe.”

  The trail of the other Ankosh led us deeper into the forest. At one point we came across a collection of shanties in a clearing that had been burnt and demolished. Small mounds of stones lay along one side of the clearing near a splotch of soot and ash that suggested a large fire. My instinct was that the survivors of whatever had happened here, maybe less than a month ago, had burned the bodies of the dead and buried their bones beneath the stones. It was just guesswork, but it fit the evidence.

  “Ankosh was here not long ago,” said Ankosh. “The trail is fresh.”

  Very fresh, indeed. Late the next evening the trail brought us to a large, fallen tree trunk, hollowed out by rot. As we approached, a pale green blob oozed out of the trunk and poured itself upward into a rounded stub dimpled with concave eye-spots. Without ceremony it slithered to Ankosh and he walked right into it like a man walking into a puddle. The vaguely humanoid shape that he had assumed melted away and the two shapes fused seamlessly into one. Small flashes of lavender light sparked throughout the mass.

  There had been no formalities or introductions. I had previously thought of this Joining as a sort of mating procedure, maybe something private, and certainly something solemn and mysterious. Now I saw the Joining before me was exactly the same as Ankosh re-absorbing his frama-self that I had witnessed earlier, though taking longer. Faint lights flickered for some time, and he/it sat and quivered slightly for a long time.

  Had I just lost my friend? Had this joining robbed him of his desire for my companionship? Would the experiences and memories of this other mass of Ankosh dominate the one I’d met, or would they blend? How much of the personality I’d come to know as Ankosh would be lost or altered as his body and mind melted into another’s? I sat nearby and waited.

  “Ankosh?” I said eventually, “Are you alright?” There was a pause before the quivering blob reshaped itself into a humanoid form, considerably larger than before, and much less defined. Less me-shaped. The form considered me silently. “Are you, er… is that, um… is… uh, are you still Ankosh?” I stammered.

  “The speaking of ‘Ankosh’ will still suffice,” it replied. “All that happened with Diggory and Ankosh is remembered, except what was lost when the kralsnar ate some of Ankosh.”

  “Oh, uh, okay, that’s good.”

  “Yes,” it replied. “If more memory was lost, it would not be good.”

  “So, now what?” I asked. I was flummoxed. I didn’t know how to respond to a friend becoming part of another being.

  “There is no understanding,” replied the new, larger Ankosh.

  “I mean, what will you do now?” I asked. “The old Ankosh was traveling with me as I sought my pakren, but then we started looking for you—er, I mean, looking for the other Ankosh—I’m sorry, I know ‘Ankosh is not other’—I mean that the old Ankosh and I started looking for more Ankosh, and now you’ve found each other, and I don’t know how much of you has changed now that you’ve ‘Joined’, so I’m not sure what you want to do now.” Ankosh thought a while.

  “Ankosh is content to travel more with Diggory,” it said. “Is Diggory content to travel with Ankosh?”

  “Yes, of course,” I replied.

  “Then Ankosh and Diggory will seek the human pakren,” said Ankosh.

  “I don’t suppose the other—er, the new part of Ankosh knows of humans,” I said.

  “There is no understanding,” it said. “No part is new.”

  “Okay, never mind. What I meant to ask is does Ankosh know of humans.”

  “Only Diggory.”

  Ankosh and I briefly discussed what path to take. The part of Ankosh that we had encountered in the woods knew of a few villages not too distant. However, one was the destroyed village where we had first discovered the Ankosh trail. Another was a kralsnar fortress. A third was more distant, but Ankosh could give no reason why it would be unsafe, so that made for an obvious destination.

  As we traveled, I conversed with this new version of Ankosh to see what new knowledge it had. It knew more about kralsnar than the “previous” Ankosh had.

  The kralsnar reminded me of Viking-style raiders—at least, to my admittedly limited knowledge. They specialized in hit-and-run attacks, plundering, pillaging, attacking targets indiscriminately. They were known to kill, steal, and take captives, carrying them away to places unknown.

  Kralsnar lacked eyes but their other senses were keen and they could easily track by scent and fight by hearing. I wondered if they had echolocation, but Ankosh could neither confirm nor deny this as his hearing range was not far different from my own (an evening experiment while camping confirmed that he could hear noises a bit lower pitch than I could). Ankosh spoke none of their language and wasn’t aware of any non-kralsnar that could. To the best of Ankosh’s knowledge, they demonstrated no interest in communication.

  Ankosh did not know the shortest way to the village from our current location, so we backtracked past the home of the purple finger-slug and through the demolished village.

  Previously I had always thought of Ankosh as male, though of course I knew it wasn’t really, as gender didn’t really apply to the race. Since the Joining that had faded. Part of it was the fact that the new humanoid shape was much less like mine than the old one, more androgynous, and larger by far (it was probably half again as large as an average human). Witnessing the Joining had emphasized the alienness of Ankosh. It was not only not truly male or female, but was not even truly an individual.

  I had half-consciously expected that Ankosh would revisit many of our previous conversations and that I would need to answer the same questions, but this didn’t happen: the memories from those conversations were still present. Once it asked to re-examine the white fluff that may or may not have been a feather and stated that the material was vaguely familiar, but couldn’t place it. Ankosh also asked to reexamine the scrap with the striped field that I had previously thought was an American flag.

  After a few days of winding through the forest, we came to a mid-sized plain, with cultivated gardens and clusters of huts surrounding a walled village. Trees fenced the plain on all sides and a stream ran through it. A small orchard lay on the far side of the village from us.

  “Thi
s place is called ‘ Ch[click]-sikthuswi[whistle][click]-sin’,” said Ankosh. I stared at him blankly a few moments.

  “Nope,” I said, “there’s no way I’m going to be able to say that.” I thought a bit. “I’m just going to call it ‘Clicksville’.” Ankosh did not respond and together we proceeded to the wide-open gates.

  There were several types of hren present in the fields. One species comically resembled (to me, at least) legged gumdrops with huge spherical eyes on the sides of their heads and many tiny arms forming a skirt of sorts. Another were strikingly humanoid in shape, though they were completely hairless with bright red skin and lacked any visible external ears or protruding nose. A third species made me think If humpback whales were land bipeds instead of marine mammals, they’d look kinda like that.

  We were approached by a “land-whale”. It stood nine or ten feet tall, and was at least four feet wide. Its deep voice matched its impressive size.

  “Chumikotase fa [whistle] gluista,” it said, or words to that effect. Ankosh responded in a phrase likewise mixed with clicks, whistles, and hoots. They spoke back and forth for a little while before the whale-man returned to its work in the field.

  “Ankosh met Matmuri last visit here,” Ankosh told me, gesturing to the retreating goliath. “Matmuri says that the kralsnar have not raided here in awhile.”

  “Well, that’s good, right?” I said.

  “Maybe,” replied Ankosh. “Maybe kralsnar have given up on this town. Or maybe kralsnar are due for a visit.”

  We wandered through the village for a while, just looking around. It reminded me of the tupa community. The village was a bit larger than Ami, but much smaller than Black Banks.

  The red-skinned humanoids, Ankosh informed me, were called narvim, the whale-people twug, and the gumdrop-people were tlerokait. (Now that, I thought, sounds like a proper alien species name!) The three species, Ankosh had learned, had come to Wayworld about the same time, and had quickly banned together for mutual protection from the kralsnar.

  The narvim excelled in the village as craftsman, having deft, agile hands (probably not as good as my own povum serta, as their three, nailless fingers were thicker and looked less flexible than mine). I saw narvim weavers, potters, and carvers. Tlerokait worked often in the fields where their many arms made short work of picking and planting. Twug usually put their size and strength to work in heavy labor. All three were space-faring races, though, and were intelligent and inventive.

  Ankosh met with several people whom it’d met on previous visit. They spoke with each other in the unfamiliar tongue of the place. Ankosh translated for me as I asked my typical series of questions. “Have you ever seen creatures like me?” ”We are called humans. Have you ever heard of humans?” I met with the same lack of information as every other place I’d tried.

  One tlerokait stared long at me with one bulbous eye. “Aren’t you a narvim?” he asked. “I thought you were a narvim with moss growing on you.” I wondered if tlerokait were color-blind.

  Ankosh helped me find a narvim metal worker. I showed him the mold for forming ammunition for my zarke (though I did not show him the weapon itself) and asked if he could make pellets for me. We discussed different types of metals and I explained that something heavy was needed.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed, “like for use with a sling.” Yes, exactly, I confirmed. Unfortunately, his price was not cheap. He wanted quite of bit of copper, some for use as part of the alloy, and some for his own payment. Debbie’s pack carried mostly foodstuffs, so I didn’t have much to trade, plus the narvim showed little interest in my wares, anyhow. He did, however, point me to some others that he said might have some use for my supply of hides.

  I spent much of the remaining day attempting to barter. I traded off my largest hides and a little bit of my dried meat. I offered to assist a potter and she allowed me to demonstrate my technique, and while yes, my hands were a bit more nimble than hers, the difference was not so great to account for her far greater skill, and she gently turned down my offer.

  By evening I found a narvim farmer that hired me to help in his field, though the pay was not much. I would earn food and a little more. But I really wanted more ammo, my food stores were low, and, let’s face it, I had no particular place to get to in a hurry.

  Ankosh, Debbie, and I bedded down in a mud-brick stable on the edge of the field. The stable opened to a small fenced pen with a half-dozen animals that resembled the tuskers from Augie Field, but without the tusks earned the latter their moniker. I didn’t sleep well, because the “tuskless” shuffled about and made faint honking noises all night long.

  Dawn arrived and reluctantly I hoisted my aching carcass off the hard floor, partook in a small breakfast, and reported to the front gate to meet with Stergad, the farmer. Ankosh came with me while Debbie was permitted to wander the yard with the tuskless, as neither were disturbed by the company of the other, and the farmer did not want her eating from the crops.

  Stergad set us to plucking small yellow fruit that were shaped like peppers but had firm flesh like a gourd, that grew on wiry bushes. There was a tlerokait also working the same field, its many arms roaming through the bushes, apparently guided more by touch than sight. Ankosh melted down and slithered through the furrows.

  Neither picked faster than I did. I had finished my first row and started a second before either had gotten halfway through their starting rows. Stergad expressed surprise when we were finished by noon, and greater surprise to see that over half of the filled baskets were mine.

  After lunch we were put to work in another field that had already been harvested and needed the remaining plants mowed down to make prepare for a new crop. We were to bundle up the plants and store them in a shed adjacent to the stable where they would serve to feed the tuskless. I secured permission for Debbie to graze the field, though she did not speed our work. At this task I could not outpace my coworkers at swinging a sickle, since both of them could swing more sickles at once than could I. I spent most of the time picking up after the other two and tying the bundles together.

  The next day we worked the same field, teamed with a twug who pulled a plow as I guided it. I was really bad at this, but Stergad accepted my meandering and uneven furrows. Ankosh and the tlerokait planted small blue seedlings once the twug and I were far enough ahead of them. Then Debbie and I carried large buckets down to the stream, filled them, and carried them back to fill cisterns left too dry by recent sparse rains.

  On the following day Ankosh and I were tasked with repairing a shed and a wagon. My own skills at this were greatly lacking, but at some point in its amorphous life, Ankosh had picked up some carpentry skills.

  The farmer allotted us a portion of the produce for our meals, and Ankosh donated most of its share to me, as it was content eating just about anything. I sold or traded the remaining excess. When Stergad paid us on the fifth day, I had more copper than either he or I expected, because I had been more productive than he’d estimated (thank you, povum serta ). Stergad praised our work ethic and the skill of my hands, and offered us continued work.

  That evening, Stergad provided Ankosh and I with dinner, partly as thanks, and partly to hear more about our adventures and what we had learned from our travels on Wayworld. He and his wife prepared a hearty stew of various vegetables and a pale colored meat, the latter being one of the best things I’d eaten on Wayworld, as it lacked much of the faint metallic hint that tinged everything I’d eaten there.

  I joked with Ankosh that I’d finally found something on Wayworld that tasted like chicken, but of course the joke didn’t translate, and wouldn’t make sense anyway, so I wound up just stammering out “It was a lot funnier in my head.” But then, I had no idea whether Ankosh even had a sense of humor, or what its laugh would be like if it did.

  Stergad knew the praad by reputation (it was not a nice one) and apparently they were in more or less constant conflict with the kralsnar. He had met a few shokhung, though they did not trav
el this way often, since it required them to go through kralsnar territory. The other hren I’d known in the Middle Lands were unfamiliar to him.

  Stergad himself, along with his fellow narvim, had been on an exploratory expedition, sent to begin the work of colonization in a new solar system. Numerous drones had been sent to the new planet they were investigating, all with success, but their own ship went off course.

  Stergad was a botanist, and he had made quick work of analyzing the flora of Wayworld, affording him considerable success in farming. A few of the plants he grew had been from their own stores of seeds. We stayed up late talking with Stergad, with him grilling me on the flora and fauna of Earth, along with human dietary needs. We turned to our beds late, and Stergad suggested we skip work the next day.

  I spent the following morning fishing, then the rest of the day in town trying to barter, with limited success. I was still short the amount I needed to fill up the ammunition in my zarke.

  The next day Stergad sent Ankosh and me to work in an orchard, with instructions to be mindful of some of the livestock that constantly got into the orchard. The trees were laden with clusters of purple, smooth-skinned, egg-shaped fruit, each about the size of my fist. At this job Ankosh clearly outclassed me, as it could create elongated limbs and easily walk about beneath the branches plucking fruit from the boughs.

  Stergad checked on our progress around noon and was duly impressed at our (by which I mean Ankosh’s) progress. I took a break for lunch while my companion kept working. By the time I had finished eating, Ankosh had traveled a good ways down the orchard and I hastened to catch up.

  We encountered some of the aforementioned livestock. A tuskless grubbed about the base of some of the trees as wells as an animal new to me—a long-haired quadruped about the size of a donkey, but with comically long, skinny legs, and multiple horns jutting from atop its head. Somewhere nearby, but out of sight, I heard a faint ko ko ko, accompanied by an intermittent deep thrumming noise.