A Solitary Journey

by Tony Shillitoe

  Chi-hway returned to the two men who were busily charring parts of the wildcat’s insides on sticks over the fire, selected a stick with a black glob and held it aloft in the evening air for everyone to see. The crowd cheered again. ‘What’s that?’ Magpie asked. ‘It looks like the wildcat’s heart.’

  ‘I think it is,’ said Meg.

  Chi-hway lowered the stick and bit into the skewered charred object and as blood oozed down his chin the people cheered and applauded again. Then Chi-hway beckoned to Magpie to join him so the boy rose from his seat, saying to Meg, ‘I hope he doesn’t expect me to eat that too.’

  As he stood beside the tall warrior, Chi-hway announced, ‘I, Chi-hway, wah ahtim, slayer of the wildcat, protector of my people, give to you Efa-chi-hway, who from this night on will be called my son!’ The villagers were caught between surprise and joy as they applauded the announcement. Chi-hway offered the heart to Magpie. The boy hesitated, looking at Meg, but then he grinned and bit into the offering and let the juices run down his chin.

  Meg was paralysed by the news. Did Magpie understand what had happened? She doubted it. She looked into the crowd for her companions, but could only see Glitter who didn’t understand what had happened either judging by her bemused expression. The scene exploded into dance as men started beating on drums and the warriors writhed and jumped around the bonfire. Stringed instruments and voices joined the cacophony, filling the air with vibrant music, and the crowd was drawn into the circle of warriors until everyone was dancing. Magpie appeared out of the whirling bodies with his face beaming and his neck smeared with blood. ‘Did you see that?’ he asked excitedly. ‘Did you see?’

  ‘I saw,’ she yelled over the music.

  ‘What did it mean?’ he asked. ‘Am I a man?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask Chi-hway,’ she lied.

  ‘Come on!’ he yelled, pulling on her arm. ‘Let’s dance with everyone!’

  ‘No,’ she said, pulling free. ‘You go! I’ll watch!’

  The drums resounded with pulsing energy and the stringed instruments shifted key to a higher pitch and faster rhythm to match them. People jumped and spun, shouting in unison, whooping in isolation, and their leaping shadows stretched and contorted across the ground and up the side of the closest buildings. Magpie disappeared into the throng, reappearing as the warriors circled, his face bright with joy.

  Meg moved away from the dancing. Although her spirit was tempted to leap into the whirlpool of celebration she was held back by the thought that A Ahmud Ki was alone and in need of her, and she had to find a way to quietly withdraw to check how he was progressing.

  ‘You show appropriate wisdom.’

  She recognised Ah-tee-wana-see’s voice this time and faced the old woman. ‘I know this is not a place for me.’

  ‘No. It’s enough that my grandson should announce that he has adopted the boy.’

  ‘Magpie isn’t my son,’ Meg confessed.

  ‘I know. So does Chi-hway. That’s why he’s adopted the boy. In our village, no child goes without a mother or a father. It’s law. Orphans are adopted. The boy is very lucky to have my grandson adopt him. He will be raised as a strong man and a wise one.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Chi-hway have a wife?’ The glare Meg received from the old woman made her cringe and wish she hadn’t asked the question.

  ‘Walk with me,’ Ah-tee-wana-see ordered, and Meg obediently followed. The rain had stopped, but the air was chillier than ever and even within the hide coat Meg couldn’t control her shivering. ‘Go home and get in the warmth, child,’ the old woman told her. Realising she had been dismissed, Meg nodded and went to take her leave. ‘As to your other question,’ Ah-tee-wana-see added, ‘my grandson cannot have children. He was not lucky in that regard. He has had three wives.’ She walked into the darkness.

  The old woman’s confession haunted Meg as she crept into the shelter. Why couldn’t Chi-hway have a child? What went wrong with three wives? Was he married to them at the same time? Questions circled like the dancers as she closed the door and listened. The noise of the celebration was dulled by distance, but it was still the dominant sound outside. She shivered and created a tiny light sphere. The straw bed was empty. Meg checked the space in case A Ahmud Ki had crawled to a corner, but the shelter was empty. Whisper’s black head appeared in a gap in the wall. Confused, Meg projected Where is he? at the rat. Whisper sat up on her haunches as if trying to decipher the thought. Meg calmed her panic and projected an image of A Ahmud Ki and imagined him gone.

  Away, the rat replied.

  Where? Meg asked.

  Follow, Whisper urged, and vanished out of the gap.

  Meg extinguished her light sphere and scrambled outside to the rear of the shelter, but in the darkness she couldn’t see the black bush rat. Where are you? she desperately asked.

  Here, the rat answered ambiguously. Meg frantically checked that no one was nearby before she conjured a light sphere and as the white light spread Whisper appeared, blinking. Bright.

  Show me A Ahmud Ki, Meg instructed. Whisper scampered into the night with Meg pursuing.

  Following the rat through the undergrowth at night wasn’t easy and she lost Whisper several times, saved only by the rat backtracking to retrieve her human companion. The noise of the village celebration faded as she wound through the bushes and between trees up a steepening slope. Her feet slipped on loose rocks and she fell several times, grazing her palms and knees. Why had A Ahmud Ki run away? She thought he’d be grateful to her for releasing him from the horror of his imprisonment. As she climbed she noticed white flakes spinning and rolling through her light. She stopped and caught one in her palm. It dissolved into a wet spot. Snow—like the snow she’d first encountered in the mountains. Snow on the mountains was a strange new experience when she and her companions crossed into Shesskar-sharel, but she thought snow only fell on the mountaintops.

  Come, the rat insisted as she reappeared at the light’s edge.

  Far? Meg asked.

  Up. Little, the rat told her. Hurry.

  Meg clambered after the rat, pulling on branches and roots to climb the steeper sections, the light sphere floating above her, the snowflakes drifting down and melting on the earth. How far is a little to a rat? she wondered as she felt the cold numbing her. She knew spells to warm herself. If it got too cold she would conjure one.

  Here, the rat told her. Her light spilled across A Ahmud Ki’s pale figure huddled between a large cream rock and the twisted roots of an old tree clinging perilously to a small cliff. He was shaking with cold and his lips were blue, and he could barely open his eyes.

  Meg stooped beside him and felt his hand. It was icy. His lips trembled and he whispered to her. ‘Don’t talk,’ she urged. ‘I’ll warm you.’

  He whispered again, the words clearer. ‘My Ki,’ he rasped. ‘I’ve lost my Ki.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Getting the man back down from the hillside took all of her energy. Despite the warming stone she created and the additional heat generated from her body, he struggled and collapsed countless times, muttering that he couldn’t go on, and she was tempted to let him stay in the slush, but she persisted, determined to get him inside the shelter. The brief snowfall ended, the melting flakes making the sloping ground wet and treacherous, and as she descended she became aware that the village’s celebratory dancing and singing were over. Whisper ran ahead.

  She had to carry A Ahmud Ki the last steps to the edge of the village. Knowing that there was a chance her light might be seen, she dispelled it and hoisted her burden under the armpits to her shoulder. The challenge from the dark almost made her drop him. ‘Who is that?’ Magpie emerged from the shadow of the side of the house.

  ‘He’s—hurt,’ she said. ‘Help me to get him into the shelter.’

  ‘I’ll get Chi-hway to help,’ Magpie suggested and turned.

  ‘No!’ she snapped. Magpie turned back, staring. ‘Just help me to get him into the shelter. The
n we’ll talk.’

  Magpie took an arm of the semi-conscious A Ahmud Ki and helped her carry him to the door of the shelter. ‘What happened to your light?’ he asked.

  ‘Light?’

  ‘The one you had coming through the trees. That’s how I saw you.’

  ‘It went out,’ she lied.

  ‘Was it magic light like you made in the mountains?’

  She’d forgotten that the boy knew what she could do. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want anyone else in the village to know about it please. All right? I’ll make it again when we’re safe inside the shelter.’

  ‘I haven’t told anyone,’ he reassured her, but she knew that the only reason he hadn’t told Chi-hway was because he couldn’t communicate. It wasn’t the boy’s loyalty to her that she doubted—it was his expanding respect for the man who’d adopted him that was her greatest threat.

  They hefted A Ahmud Ki inside and with a new light sphere Magpie helped her to arrange the stranger on the straw bed. As Magpie squatted on the straw near the mumbling stranger he flinched and stood again. ‘There’s a rat!’

  ‘It’s Whisper,’ Meg said, spotting the black bush rat nestled in the corner ignoring the intrusion.

  ‘What?’ Magpie asked, still looking as though he wanted to chase the animal. She explained her relationship with the rat superficially while she checked that A Ahmud Ki was warm and resting. ‘I thought bush rats were brown,’ Magpie said, studying the little animal as he crept closer. Whisper was in a deep sleep.

  ‘Don’t disturb her,’ Meg warned.

  He retreated and looked at A Ahmud Ki in the light. ‘He’s weird-looking,’ he announced. ‘Look at his face. It’s all thin and his eyes are like the rat’s eyes.’

  ‘Everyone is different,’ she told him. ‘Chi-hway doesn’t look like anyone you’ve seen before.’

  ‘Why is he brown?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Meg replied. ‘Why are you white?’

  ‘Because Jarudha made me like this,’ the boy replied.

  ‘Then Jarudha made Chi-hway brown.’

  ‘Why? That doesn’t make sense. Chi-hway doesn’t believe in Jarudha anyway.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ she challenged.

  ‘It’s obvious in what they do. There’s no praying or anything.’

  ‘Did your parents pray?’

  ‘My mother did. I don’t know about Dad. What about you?’

  ‘No.’ Meg held up her hand before Magpie could say anything more because A Ahmud Ki was mumbling in a strange language, one she hadn’t heard him use. She concentrated on the sibilant, lilting sounds until the words took form.

  ‘Na, Mareg, Ic eom aefter-fylgend. Ic eom draca-baldor too. Gie nyllan sigor-faest be. Gie nyllan sigor-faest be. Ic wyllan abidan!’ Then he fell silent.

  ‘What was that?’ Magpie asked, staring wide-eyed at the sleeping stranger.

  ‘Nothing,’ she told him. ‘It didn’t make sense,’ but she had translated A Ahmud Ki’s desperate anger and vow to survive against the enemy that he called Mareg.

  ‘Should I get Chi-hway now?’

  Meg grabbed the boy’s arm. ‘No. I’ll talk to him in the morning. I need you to get me some dry clothes for this man. Chi-hway mustn’t know. Promise me you won’t say anything about him being here.’

  Magpie pulled his arm away, but he grinned and said, ‘I promise, Meg.’

  ‘Good. Bring back some clothes straightaway. Then we can all sleep.’ She held out her arms to hug him and the boy happily accepted the embrace. ‘I am proud of you,’ she said as she released him. ‘Chi-hway is proud of you too, I saw.’

  ‘I like it here,’ he said, echoing his earlier sentiment. ‘I’m glad we came.’

  ‘So am I,’ she told him, but in her heart she was lying.

  The familiar dream of walking east into the sunrise came in a fitful sleep and left her wondering where she was meant to go. Between bouts of sleeping, she checked that A Ahmud Ki was recovering from his exposure to the cold and listened to the rain drumming on the roof, the irony of the village celebration of the turning point in the weather not lost on her. She had no idea how she would explain A Ahmud Ki’s presence to Chi-hway or what Chi-hway would do as a result, although Magpie’s inadvertent discovery of her returning from the forest with the man gave her a plausible story with which to begin. She trusted Magpie, and the boy had shown his trustworthiness by bringing the dry clothes before retiring for the night, but the nagging fear that he would tell Chi-hway eventually didn’t dissipate. The boy was accepted by the villagers—becoming one of them—and that could only lead to divided loyalties.

  Before dawn, she sat in the straw beside A Ahmud Ki in the dark. The rain was steady, although it had lost its earlier intensity, but the air was still bitterly cold so she retrieved the warming stone created for A Ahmud Ki and increased its generation of heat. Whisper climbed onto her lap and curled up. The pressure and warmth of the little animal was comforting, but it provoked a memory of a red-haired girl arguing with her mother. I never believed in magic, she mused, stroking Whisper. ‘You are an enigma,’ she whispered to the rat. ‘How did you follow me across the land, across the mountains?’ A Ahmud Ki stirred. She looked down in the dull orange light of the warming stone and saw him staring up at her. ‘It’s all right,’ she crooned. ‘You’re safe and warm.’ His pale face showed confusion. ‘I’m Meg,’ she said.

  ‘Woroldbuend?’ he asked weakly.

  She shook her head, remembering that his language was not her native Shessian tongue, and focussed on recalling the language of communication in her dreams—his language. ‘I’m Meg,’ she repeated, ‘and you are A Ahmud Ki. You spoke to me in my dreams.’

  ‘I know you,’ he replied. ‘But you’re human. How did you find me?’

  ‘You found me first,’ she said.

  ‘But you made a portal to Se’Treya. Humans can’t do that.’

  ‘I don’t understand it any more than you.’

  ‘But the Ki—you must know the Ki.’

  His obsession with keys puzzled her, but then a memory stirred—of a book. ‘I read about the Ki, a long time ago. I read a book by someone called Lady Tarnyss.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ A Ahmud Ki said bluntly. ‘Mareg killed her.’

  ‘Who is Mareg?’

  A Ahmud Ki’s eyes widened and Meg was struck by their feline shape. ‘You don’t know Mareg?’ he asked. ‘No.’

  He tried to sit up, but he couldn’t rise without her assistance. ‘Where are we?’ he asked, as she propped him against the wall.

  ‘The people call it Shesskar-sharel.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it. Is it in Ranu Ka Shehaala?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘I’ve come from Western Shess, west of here, over the mountains. The Kerwyn have taken my land.’

  A Ahmud Ki was staring. ‘There’s a rat on your lap.’

  ‘Whisper,’ she explained.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s her name,’ she told him, suppressing a grin.

  ‘Oh,’ he murmured, the humour misunderstood. ‘Is she a pet?’

  ‘A companion.’

  ‘You created this warming stone?’ She smiled. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are the words for the spell?’

  ‘I don’t use words. I just think and it happens.’

  ‘Leoht,’ said A Ahmud Ki, his hand opening. Meg waited, but nothing happened. ‘Leoht,’ he repeated. His shoulders drooped and he closed his eyes. ‘Mareg destroyed my Ki.’

  ‘You had a Conduit?’ she asked.

  He opened his eyes and they glowed orange in the warming stone’s light. ‘A what?’

  ‘A Conduit—a part of the Genesis Stone?’

  ‘You know about the Genesis Stone?’

  ‘I was told about it.’

  ‘Then you are someone very special,’ he said, studying her as if he still did not believe her. ‘The Aelendyell Ieldran only share that knowledge with the Chosen Lore Bearers.’


  ‘I don’t understand,’ she admitted. ‘Who are the Aelendyell?’

  The door latch rattled and Whisper leapt from Meg’s lap as she doused the warming stone. The door scraped open and a dark figure entered. ‘It’s me,’ Magpie whispered. ‘Can you make some light?’

  ‘Where’s Chi-hway?’ Meg asked cautiously.

  ‘He’s in the kitchen. He sent me to wake you to begin breakfast.’

  ‘It’s still dark and raining,’ she said, conjuring a tiny light sphere.

  Magpie stared at A Ahmud Ki who was sitting against the wall. ‘He’s got grey eyes.’

  Meg saw A Ahmud Ki’s eye colour for the first time. ‘He doesn’t understand you. Why is Chi-hway up so early?’

  ‘Wombat and some of the others tried to escape during the celebrations. Chi-hway’s angry because Wombat hurt one of the men.’

  ‘Badly?’

  ‘No—just broke his arm.’ Magpie explained. ‘You’d better come now because Chi-hway wants his breakfast.’

  Meg turned to A Ahmud Ki and said, in his language, ‘Wait here for me. I’ll bring some warm food.’ A Ahmud Ki blinked but stayed silent.

  As she followed Magpie outside, the boy asked, ‘What did you say to him?’ so she explained as they trotted through the rain to the kitchen door. ‘How can you speak so many languages?’ Magpie asked.

  ‘It’s a Blessing I have,’ she replied, an answer that only made the boy more confused.

  The kitchen was glowing with a warm fire and Chi-hway was already cooking eggs and a slab of goat’s meat in a skillet. He grinned as Meg and Magpie entered. ‘I am your servant,’ he said to Meg, before he stood aside to let her continue the process. ‘Your big friend chose well to try to escape when he did,’ he continued as he sat at the table. ‘The rain would have masked his tracks if he’d gotten away.’

  ‘He isn’t a slave,’ she said as she flipped the eggs. ‘He won’t stay here if you try to keep him as one.’

  ‘Then I admire him,’ said Chi-hway, ‘and I will honour him when I see him.’

  ‘Where is he?’ she asked.

  ‘Locked in Ka-sa-tem’s hut.’