by Joe Darris
“GO!” the hunter yells at the Hermit.
“Kao speaks!” the hermit replies. The old man kept up with the hunter all morning, his frail form moved with unseen speed, “and you are still going the wrong way.”
The hunter growls at this. He does not know where to go. The storm left only the scent of rain. The clouds left no trails, only death in the valley. He will never wrestle with his blood brothers again. The crones—his grandmother among them—will never share their wisdom with another soul. Lifetimes lost. He will never flirt with the prettiest of the troubles again. Her eyes, forever closed, will not challenge him to impress her as a man. He will never know her as a woman. He will never sharpen knives with the hunters, or swap stories by the fire. He will never hear his mother sing, or hug her, or wonder if she worries about him. He will never play with his sister again. He will never sneak up on her on late afternoons while she gathers berries by the brook and scoop her up and throw her into the creek despite her giggling protests. She will never make him tea with his favorite herbs or braid him another grass bracelet. Why did he never wear them? It would have been so simple, and now he had nothing of her but memories so sharp and bright they burned.
He cannot wallow in the dead memories of everyone he knows. They're all gone, buried in mud, save him and the mad hermit. He curses the hermit again with sounds older than words.
“You could not have stopped this Kao. We're blessed to be alive.” The old man says.
“Blessed?” he roars, “family dead! Home ruined! Kao... alive.”
He collapses and weeps.
He tried to get to the tribe before the storm, but he failed. All night he raced rivulets of mud down the steep cliff face while powerful gusts tore at his fur. By the time he had reached his home, all was buried: his sister, his mother, the chief, the younger, the older, and the birds that kept a careful watch over the village. Even the sky was hurt. The mountains he knew so well and the sky they framed had changed, as scarred by the storm as he.
The sun climbs into the sky and crests the bald mountains too soon.
After too long he finds his tribe's tree. The massive trunk lays horizontal in the earth. Its braided canopy is half buried in mud. Knowing his family is entombed below forces hot tears from his eyes and the hunter frantically digs at the earth. He digs until he can't. Weak with exhaustion, he stops. The entire valley is unrecognizable. Paths are washed away. Trees are upturned. Rock and earth from the mountain covers everything. He recognizes none of it save the tree. He doesn't know if it is where it grew or if the storm tore its roots and threw it down the valley.
His family, his tribe, and his life are buried under earth and rock, never to be seen again. He envies the few dead animals strewn about among the mud. At least they died on the earth and not deep below it. Their bodies will be eaten by others instead of being trapped for eternity. They will have peace, he thinks. His heart aches with the weight of the mountain.
The thunderstorm was stronger than any he has ever witnessed. His tribe lived in the valley because it protected them from such powerful weather. It rained a little each day, sips for the thirsty jungle. The valley was thick and lush with life because of it. It rarely flooded. The giant trees drank much and gave the rest to the creeks and streams that moved water out and beyond the valley.
Now huge pools of water grow stagnant and putrid as the great trees and all that called them home rots in the sun. Streams feed them corpses. They bloat too quickly and rot too fast even for maggots.
His sister and mother must have thought it was just another shower, and perhaps huddled together for warmth in the cold night. Maybe their bodies still clung to each other in an embrace that would last until their bones turned to stone and were pushed to the surface or sucked deep below. If only he could have held them one last time, instead of climbing the cliff to drink poison with the mad hermit in his cave.
“It's not your fault,” the hermit says, then places a hand on the hunter's shoulder.
“Your fault!” he screams. His mind reels but he knows it is the hermit's fault. Somehow, despite all of this death, he can understand the words the hermit says better than before and makes his own words without even thinking. Something changed when he drunk the potion. Magick. He does not like it. His mind is different. Thoughts connect in new ways. He sees patterns in everything. Symbols race through his mind.
Symbols are what the hermit talks with. Everything is symbols. The hunter knows this. Each sound is like a line in the hermit's cave paintings. Together the sounds make words: heard symbols shared through speech. Each sketch is in his brain, for the hermit spent his life chattering away at the tribe, filling their brains as he filled his cave. He taught them language through his tales of the Hidden. The tribe only ever used the most obvious of the old man's language in the most basic patterns, But now the hunter is transformed. He is unique. He has a word just for himself. It does not matter if the cursed hermit told him this or not. It is true.
“The fault is with the Hidden,” the hermit retaliates slowly and gently.
Kao stands and towers over the shriveled old man, “Don't believe in gods!” he yells in the hermit's face.
“That word means something different,” the hermit says meekly, then, trying to hide his excitement “someone else tells stories?”
“Never again!” the Kao howls, then collapses into the mud. He tucks his head between his legs, hugs his knees and rolls over. He feels the cold squelch of the mud as it consumes him. He wants to be underneath it, far below, with his family and all he loves. He does not want to be trapped here with his mind and the hermit babbling on and on and on.
His head hurts, every moment he understands more than he did the last. His brain takes turns between blossoms of new awareness and thorns of agony. Why did he drink that foul potion? Part of him is exhilarated with new understanding, but none of it can bring back his family. His mind swings back and forth, faster and faster.
He understands the hermit, and his environment opens up before his senses. He feels reborn, but he still wishes the effects would wear off. Too much goes through his head too quickly. He smells traces of loved ones and fruit trees wafting up from the mud, never to be seen again. He hears the buzz of insects, calling for their own kin, he feels their loss as great as his, greater even, for more of them are dead. He squeezes his eyes and ears tightly shut to block out the world.
“What am I?” he screams in stolen words.
“Awake.” The hermit tenderly pulls him out of the mud, while the word permeates the young hunter's mind, “and I am sorry...it is painful.”
“Why?” Kao chokes out.
“No one believed me save those that fought the Hidden's beasts and saw the cursed stones with their own eyes.”
“How you know?” Kao’s newborn voice cracks.
“I told the stories for years, and you all thought them nonsense, I almost believed that myself until I saw that stone. I knew that it would bring them here.”
“My family...”
“Is gone,” the hermit finishes, “and I am sorry, but if you did not share the vision with me last night then you too would be gone. Chaos’s only champion would be an old man. I doubt I can convince the Hidden of our tribe’s pain like you can, Kao.”
These words work their way deep into his self. His mind continues to bend and grow in new directions. From each idea two more spring forth, and those lead to more and more again.
His brain replays the battle with the prongbuck. Its strange place in another buck's herd, the anarchic spikes jutting from its spine, its odd behavior. Most of all he thinks of the strange glowing stone stuck in its neck. His mind offers him no other explanation for the thing's use. Why was it so close to the animal's mind? Only now does he understand. The hermit's words explain it: The Hidden.
The Hidden must have been in the kingcrow he had battled too. The bird fought with bizarre skills and fearless resolve until he had confused it. His prize, the trophy, was proof of the H
idden's own weakness and gave him victory.
A symbol.
The elk symbolized the Hidden's loss. He could still hear the terrified shrieks from the disgusting bird when he attacked it with the skin and skull. He had scared the bird with a symbol. He was a symbol.
Kao. The Hunter.
A scream rips his consciousness back to reality. The hermit runs for cover. A kingcrow's shadow follows the old man. The hermit dives under the crevasse of a toppled boulder, but the kingcrow does not follow. Instead it lands on a patch of mud and begins to tear at the wet earth with its talons.
Kao stares dumbly.
The scavenger's nostrils flare as its beak scratches and tears at the earth. Kao breathes deeply and smells berries, soft clay and green herbs, his sister! The scents come from the bird's hole; the scavenger's sense of smell is sharper than his own.
He is on his feet and sprinting towards the kingcrow. It is smaller than the one he battled two days prior, with his knife and armor he will kill it.
The kingcrow knows this. It squawks and digs faster. The hunter runs faster, fast as the spirit of the swift elk he wears.
But the kingcrow beats its huge wings and slowly lifts into the air. The gusts slow the hunter’s pace just enough for the bird to get airborne. A muddy body dangles from its talons. Its wings push it higher and the hunter leaps!
He grabs the dangling arm, slick with mud, and pulls the bird back towards the surface. They battle in equilibrium. The bird cannot fly as long as he holds the arm but it has a much better grip than he. His hands slip down the skinny arm, too much mud. He can smell his sister; the aroma of smashed berries makes him swoon as his grip slips and tufts of golden hair perk up like lilies in the mud. He loosens his hold to grab her body, but the kingcrow was waiting. It has played this game before, the Hunter has not. It shakes its talons as he lunges and he slips. He loses.
The hunter plummets to the earth.
The enormous black bird gloats. It caws and beats it wings lazily as it turns south, out towards the plains. The mud cushions his fall but still knocks the air from his lungs.
He gasps and beats his chest as the hermit pulls him up. Finally his breath returns, but the bird is already too far for his practiced knife throws. So he turns south to rescue his sister.
“It is a trick!” the hermit yells.
Kao growls and trudges faster.
“It means to throw us off. You know this.”
Kao slows down. He does know this. Kingcrows gain height far from their nests. Tribesmen have tried to follow them before, to smash their eggs and end their lives, but the birds are too wily.
“We must go on a vision quest.”
Kao does not like this, but he rumbles a reply deeply. “Where?”
The hermit only points and Kao knows where they will be going. Father Mountain. The king of the valley.
That irksome question bubbles forth, “Why?”
“To see,” the hermit says, and ambles off.
Chapter 11
And trust your elders you must... for they hold power... Trust them and obey them until you've learned all you can, then snatch their power as easily as they snatched yours!
Skup had never been so humiliated in his life. His vultus had been beaten by what would colloquially be called a demon. He was going to do all he could to get his revenge on the monster that half-blinded his favorite Evanimal. Ntelo actually implied he had done it on purpose. On top of that, after the meeting, Baucis had pulled him aside and chewed him out, explaining details Skup had known since his first synchronization.
“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to determine parentage of an egg? Especially with something as polygamous as a vultus! It's a miracle that we have so large a specimen with a VRC, and now it's lost an eye because of you!” Baucis railed on and on. The Master Ecologist was livid, he never used words like 'miracle' unless he was in a rage.
Skup wanted to scream that of course he did, that no one knew the flock better than him. Baucis was so arrogant. He thought that just because he helped pioneer the Evanimal program, he understood it better than everyone else. Obviously he didn't, or else he wouldn't need a bunch of children (Baucis's words) to do all of the actual work.
Skup fumed as he walked towards the Amplification Chamber. He was the first person to pilot a vultus with any real success. Of course he knew how difficult they were to implant. It was his team that implanted the the King! Skup was even training a protege, Elia, who had proved that others could pilot the birds with the deadly grace Skup had pioneered. With a little time, the whole flock could be piloted! Baucis should be proud, but instead he was lashing out. He was too arrogant to share the blame.
Skup wanted to show the Spire that he and his sister were better than Baucis and Ntelo. He wanted Spire City to thank him for keeping them all alive, instead of worshiping him as one of Ntelo's false idols. Skup understood that he and Urea controlled powerful individuals that owed their strength to Baucis's careful breeding, that they were just the latest improvement in decades of work. They could never have synched with an Evanimal without Baucis, but Skup didn't see the need for the Priestess's continual public support. How he dreamt of exposing Ntelo for the lying hack she was. Skup hated Baucis but he could at least give him credit as an ecologist. Ntelo was worthless, yet Baucis threatened Skup if he so much as said a word against her in public. The two acted like they could do just fine without him, ridiculous.
Skup, in the body of his vultus, had killed every member of the flock that didn't have the signature body frame and brain size that the Master Ecologist had bred for. vultus society was more than careful eugenics. There was an established pecking order that's constantly under review and change. If a bird thought it was tough enough to take on the Alpha male, then it challenged it. Skup had honed his skills in duels against dozens of birds, and was Alpha not because his bird was the largest but was largest because he was the Alpha. Did Baucis think the entire flock followed Skup's bird of their own accord? It took constant berating and attacking of the other members. Baucis and Ntelo seemed to have forgotten what it was like before Skup took over the flock.
When he was little the flock had run rampant. They would eat live Evanimals, young and old, defecate everywhere, tear up trees and destroy vegetables. Now that it was Skup's flock, the birds ate only carefully selected elk or dead bodies. They never damaged any crops and even composted their waste. Did he receive thanks for this? Never.
Worst of all, Baucis was always too busy to talk with Skup. He'd always prattle on about the importance of the new panthera line, and what it meant for evolution but he never listened to any of Skup's insights.
Skup had discovered that diet alone could control the birds' growth. Skup saw to it that his vultus ate more than the rest of the flock, and he was larger because of it. The adolescent bird his protege piloted received the same treatment. Skup had tried to explain this to Baucis but the egotistical old man wouldn't even hear him out. He had mumbled something about caloric advantage and excused himself. Skup knew there was more to it than that. Something was making the birds grow bigger, much bigger. They were changing fundamentally, and faster than the standard theory of artificial selection allowed. Their obsidian-black feathers sparkled every shade of color in the sun, same as the prongelk antlers, same as his own long hair. Yet all Baucis would say of his hair was to cut it. He failed to see it for it was, evidence. Of what, Skup wasn't sure.
The young pilot tried to push it all from his mind and got ready to synchronize. He needed to provide food for his flock. If he did not, the birds would venture beyond the Garden. If they flew too far, there would be nothing he could do. The VRCs only worked so long as they were inside of the Spire's electromagnetic field. Too far out and they couldn't override the animal's own consciousness.
Distance had affected his battle with the Wild Man. Distance allowed fear to drive the bird from the battle. Baucis had cursed Skup for this and blamed him for losing control. He failed to realize
that if the bird had simply flown a mile in the other direction, the signal from the Spire would have been too weak to control it at all. Baucis should have thanked him for habituating the birds to return to their mountain nest so near the Spire. If, in its moment of freedom, it had chosen to explore, then they'd still be waiting for it to come back. Skup could only imagine what the flock would be without a pilot in the Alpha male position.
Skup climbed the last flight of stairs and arrived on the Amplification level. Originally designed as a noninvasive form of collective virtual reality, a sort of immersible LAN, the Amplification chambers had the necessary power and wireless configuration to function as perfect synchronization rooms. The birds were powerful, and grew ever wilier, but they were still immersed in the Spire's Field and subject to Skup's commands, thanks to the Amplification room.
He liked to synchronize before sunrise, so he could truly feel what it was to live like his vultus, but the meeting hadn't started until after dawn. Today he'd have to sync up and hope nothing had gone too wrong. His vultus could defend itself easily enough, but didn't usually stop any of the others from killing elk or howluchins if they so desired. Baucis would surely blame him for that, even though he had scheduled the meeting.
The flock needed meat, and lots of it, to stay healthy. There never seemed to be enough carrion to go round. This was creating tension in the flock, for hungry birds are angry birds. Skup's presence had kept the flock from descending into Garden and gorging themselves on the biselk and howluchins, but they had begun to turn on each other. They understood that their rivals were made of meat, and that killing an adversary provided a free meal, while wounding him only gave a free meal to others. Skup was sure that without his constant presence the flock would have long cannibalized itself. He did not like having to delay his synchronization, especially with the storm last night. Surely the flock had not slept well.