by Joe Darris
The self proclaimed Scavenger didn't mind doing all this, far from it. He was fascinated by the birds, obsessed. He always had been. He had idolized Baucis as a kid. It was genius to use vultures to eliminate disease and the unsightly corpses that had begun to accumulate in the gardens. The vultus program inspired him to become an Evanimal Pilot. He had told this to Baucis but the Councilor seemed to think admiration was expected, not earned.
Skup doubted the Councilor had watched just one of the dozens of duels he had had to win just to maintain his place as Alpha. They were a bit of a sensation, garnering thousands of views. People loved anything to do with Nature, and the spectacular aerial battles did not disappoint. Skup did his best to guide the fights to the ancient stone Colosseum. From there, all of the Spire could see, even those without VRCs. Councilor Rufus had congratulated Skup for his work many times. He praised him for entertaining so many people while doing an important job. Skup had accepted the praise humbly, and never called on the Councilor for any favors. Why couldn't Baucis show him the same respect?
Instead the Master Ecologist only praised Urea, his gifted sister. It was obvious she was immensely talented. She had done things with her obsidian-black panthera that Skup had thought impossible. His own acrobatic aerial duels paled in comparison. He didn't resent her the attention, she deserved it. Skup thought his sister was the greatest Evanimal Pilot to ever live.
Skup considered himself more of an ecologist, something he wished Baucis would notice. He maintained order in the flock through intelligence and tactics, not the same animal instincts Urea seemed to possess. He was a great pilot, but he was really interested in managing the Garden as a whole. That was one of the reasons he took a protege so young. He knew the sooner someone could do his job, the sooner he could move on to something even more important, like working on his own evolutionary theories.
He wondered how his sister viewed her work with the panthera. What if the panthera bred with a feral member of the population? Skup doubted this would happen, Urea was as committed as he to the program, but accidents did happen. If she lost control for a few minutes, say from that enigmatic neurochemical, fear, there were untold things that could go wrong, especially if the panthera she controlled was more intelligent than she or Baucis had assumed. Most Evanimal Pilots agreed Skup losing control would be far more disastrous. The flock was adapting constantly. They had picked up all sorts of tricks from watching Skup's own piloted vultus. There wasn't the same risk with other pantheras, for there was only one. Though nothing had ever made Skup feel at risk, nothing save the The Wild Man.
Skup saw the Wild Man he battled as his greatest foe. If the beast understood their tactics, could it see through the Evanimal puppet he had battled with? There was no way to know what it was thinking, let alone control it. But the Wild Man was dead. They had buried it with a mountain.
This thought more than any other hurried him to synchronize. He waved at Elia, his protege, but the thirteen year old only grunted. She looked stressed and was sweating and leaping around. She didn't have her arms out like she was flying.
Skup hurried into his chamber. He powered it up with a thought command and was a different being.
The vultus brain screamed MEAT at him. He felt his own body try to jerk and snap at the food in front of him. He held strong, and raised his head up high to see what was happening. His vultus was still at the nesting ground, as was most of the flock, and they were fighting, not an unusual occurrence, though it normally happened later in the day, once they started to bring back food from the plains. They were all snapping at something in front of Elia's vultus. She defended it viciously, but was beginning to tire. A bit of blood dripped down her neck. Any later, and the bird might have died. Skup and his vultus attacked as one synchronized killing machine.
First his vultus drew back its head and dealt three sharp pecks to the three closest birds. Each peck drew blood and the birds took flight. He threw his chest against another male and it toppled from the cliff, then screeched its discontent as it flew out and away from the mountain. The Alpha leaned its head back and belched at four more birds who promptly took flight. Vultus vomit corroded everything, even vultus. The last two flew off after seeing the Alpha drive off the others. A few beats of his wings sent a couple shards of antler after them. They clattered noisily down the mountainside and the birds flew faster.
Skup yelled, and the vultus did the same.
“Cawww!” the shriek pierced the air and the birds retreated faster. They knew better than to challenge the Alpha. Elia's bird hopped back and forth, she was clearly excited.
she chimed, her voice inside of his own head.
What Skup saw made his heart rate soar higher than any vultus. It took all of his concentration to remain synchronized with the Alpha. There, not but a few feet in front of him, was one of the Wild Men! Though this one was much smaller than the one he had battled. It looked battered and dirty, but it was unmistakably one of the same species.
Elia chimed.
Chapter 12
Things have not always been this way, nor will they remain so forever. Names change... stories are born... the past is as alive as the future.
Halfway up the mountain, the hermit grows too tired to continue.
“The moon wanes,” he gasps.
Kao glances at the pearly half moon hanging in the night sky and grunts. Without the perfect alignment of a full moon, both of their strength is lessened, same as the trees, the insects, the animals, the earth itself. His hunt of the trophy prongelk had culminated on the full moon, as was his people's way. Power fights power. Kao is young and healthy. The full moon makes him twice as strong. A new moon makes him no weaker.
The old hermit is not as virile and Kao offers to tie him to his back like a infant. Without complaint, the hermit climbs on Kao's back, clings to the hunter's warm fur and dons the buckskin and skull helmet. They look like a two-headed, horned monster, worse than the hermit's story of the bear and wolf heads that share a body. Kao wonders if that too was a true tale. It is more believable than a race of men who live among the clouds and play with beasts and storms like sticks and stones.
With the hermit's weight, Kao feels the thin air. The cold stings each time he fills his lungs with more and more empty space. No matter though, they feasted before the vision quest on the bodies of the animals killed in the flood. They dried much of the meat into jerky for the voyage. His body makes fresh blood to fuel his ascent.
He had no idea what lay atop the icy peak. The hermit said it was a place of visions, a place to see, but had been uncharacteristically quiet since. They agreed to travel at night. The cold was little danger compared to a flock of kingcrows. The hermit told him the Hidden would be watching, and it is best to hide themselves.
Kao climbs on the hermit's word alone. He smells nothing of the birds nor his
sister. He hopes the hermit guides him towards her, but he has no plan of his own. It hurts to think. The death of his people weighs more in his mind than the hermit's husk of a body in the thin air.
The hermit answers no questions.
All he says is, “up,” and his crooked finger points higher. Kao grunts and climbs. Part of him, the killer, the survivor, knows he can fling the old man from the mountain if he betrays him. Kao is no tool. He does no bidding but his own. These thoughts sting like needles and weaken his grip.
A rock pulls loose and he slips. The hermit shrieks, but Kao just hangs by his other arm. The prongs are nearly healed. They sting as his muscles flex, but less than before. Another few suns and they will be part of him like Father Mountain is part of the Earth.
They are higher than all of the peaks of their mountain home. Kao marvels at the moonlit landscape below him. He can see the plains to the south, grassy fields between rivers that glow like fish in the moonlight. He sees where he chased the prongbuck that changed his fate. The jungle spreads in all directions. It scales the mountains high as it can until the air grows too cold. All that rises above it is the mountain range that hides all to the east. They passed that threshold a day ago. Kao misses the sounds of the insects and birds. He thinks he can see the tops of blooming fig trees, bright and orange even in the moonlight, but he knows he cannot. They are buried in mud with all the people he loves. The moonlight plays tricks on him. He climbs.
His mind whirs as he ascends. He tries not to, but he must think, and all he can think of is the Hidden. Are they really responsible for everything? The rainstorm that flooded his valley, both kingcrows, the prongelk in that harem? The prongs? Scars grow around them. He can see his skin and knows fur will not grow back there. His arm hurts less since the death of his family. That pain makes all others seem numb. He hopes he can save his sister. Maybe then his mind can scar over all that he has lost.
Step over step he climbs.
“Hermit,” Kao barks.
“Mm?”
Kao can tell from his voice he was asleep.
“A story.”
“Let's stop for the night.”
“Sleep Later. Story now.”
“Mm hmm... well since you asked nicely...”
Kao grunts as the way grows steep. He digs his hands and feet into the stone. The hermit feels each step.
“Do you remember the story of the name, 'The Hidden?',” the hermit begins.
“Don't like words.”
"Mm... Listen and learn to. When I was a boy, a very young boy, before even my father was a story teller, before the flood, The Hidden lived somewhere different.”
“You saw flood?”
“Listen boy. You wanted a story, let me tell it,” the hermit pauses for Kao to grunt, “When I was a boy, the Hidden did not hide in the skies or behind animal's eyes, they hid in the jungles.
“Seen them?”
The hermit raps Kao's head with a knuckle for silence.
“The Hidden lived in the jungles and the mountains, and they never ventured into the plains, ever. For in those days, the plains were home to different sort of beast. There were thousands of them, more than there are stars in the sky. They were smaller than you and hairless, and lived in big lumps and played with things that stunk of death and were hard as stone.
Kao climbs on.
“In those days, the Hidden ate mostly nuts and fruit, rabbits and birds, for there were few prongelk and none as big and fierce as there are today. The beings that lived down on the plains in their lumpy homes defended their elk fiercely. They'd hunt and kill anything that threatened them.”
“The Hidden...afraid?”
“Mmm... not so much as they knew they must hide. Same as today, they hide because they must. The Hidden in those days watched the plains people closely, for they could work magic. They made things that scratched the sky, grew beautiful plants, even flew with birds.
“The Hidden steal magic?”
“Oh no. The Hidden gave them a gift. For they knew the flood would come and they knew how to survive high in the mountains. It is how they have always survived. The plains people would be washed away and indeed they were. The flood washed almost everything of them away, and what was left was changed. I think their power came from a great curse that was locked away, and the flood set it free. What was left melted back into the earth as quickly as it sprung up from it. The Hidden thought nothing remained of the plains people, that they had been washed to sea by Lord Chaos, never to be seen again, but we were wrong. They used our gift.”
“Your gift?” Kao manages to grunt.
The peak of the mountain is sheer rock. Hand over hand climbs, clinging to what even goats cannot. His fingers search out cracks and crevices to haul the last of the tribe's weight up the rock. Sometimes there is nothing to grip at all, and in rage and desperation he claws out handholds from the mountain itself.
Father Mountain will forever remember his ascent.
Finally he can reach no higher and pulls himself onto the top of the mountain. The side they climbed was the only face not covered in ice and snow, surely scaling the other sides would have been more deadly than treacherous. He groans as he pulls him and the hermit to the top of the cliff.
A long time he only breathes. His lungs ache, but feel good. They will be stronger for the climb. Finally he asks, “who are Hidden?”
The hermit looks to the moon and howls, loud and true. Kao cannot believe the little man can make a sound so powerful. Not one to step down from a challenge, he looks to the moon, fills his lungs and howls even louder than the hermit. The two go back and forth, the hunter's raw strength battles the hermit's experience in an animal duel that Father Mountain reckons.
The moon rises another finger in the sky by the time the two stop. They listen to their echoes. Birds call, rocks and snow slide, wolves howl. Nature trembles at their strength.
“There,” the hermit says, then sits down and wraps himself tightly in the prongelk leathers. The young hunter looks West and past the mountains. A field lays inside a caldera. It is round as a melon, and bordered by two rivers, one to the north, one to the south. A single stone towers high, whiter than bone. It reaches higher than the mountain, up and up and up into the clouds. Weeks of travel away, it is wider around than the tree that sheltered the tribe for hundreds of summers. It glows brighter than the moon, and the clouds above it crackle with electricity.
“They became a legend, a story for children. A people who would forever sleep in the depths of the ocean. Our people left the mountains and moved out into the world. Only my father and a few others remained. Someone had to keep our stories, our cave.
“No one believed my father when he claimed they survived. But he knew only the plains people could have made the stones that give them magic over the beasts. He gave them our name as gift. The Hidden. For now they are the ones hidden away in a world being stolen from them.”
Kao sits for a long time. Words grow more and more twisted, like the ends of an oak branch grown from the thick and sturdy trunk. Finally, he asks the only question that matters, “Why sister?”
The hermit shrugs. “I do not know, but I fear the worst. When they ruled the plains they treated us no better than animals, and you have seen what they do to animals...”
Kao looks again to the towering stone. It is like the bone of a giant, dug into the earth and balanced with clouds. It is beautiful. He does not have to destroy it for a little girl who is probably dead, but he will.
The Hidden will curse him as they fall to earth.
The hermit sleeps. It is after midnight, but still long before dawn. The waning moon will soon rest below the horizon. The air is cold. The shriveled old man lies underneath the elk skin. He propped up the skull before he went to sleep and now a dead prongelk sits with Kao. It watches its killer with fleshless eyes. Plumes of steam come from the specter's nostrils.
Kao sleeps little. Mostly he watches the unnatural bone-white totem. He has ne
ver seen anything as tall. It reaches higher than the mountain. It stabs the clouds. They bleed lightning.
Kao can believe that those who built it could destroy his village, control the animals, the storms, even the land. Something more went into making the white tower, a great power, not of the earth. He will take their power from them, for they abuse it.
He gently shakes the hermit awake. The old man raises heavy eye lids and stretches his stiff muscles before unceremoniously climbing onto the wild man's back.
“Onward,” he mumbles.
The hunter descends. Forward, downward, towards the white tower from the top of Father Mountain. The way is slippery, and Kao has to rely on his rope. He ties it to branches and lowers the elder and then himself. Time is wasted flipping the rope loose.
The hermit snorts and sniffs. Kao can feel his hot breath on the back of his neck. He tastes the air.
“I smell kingcrows.”
Kao smells them too: bile and rotten meat. There must be a nest nearby. The monsters slumber in the shadow of the bone-white totem. Kao is not surprised.
“We must find a different path.”
“You were hunter?” Kao asks. Words are always making more sense. They no longer cause his mind to race frightfully, but he still prefers not to speak.
“I was never a hunter. Always a thinker,” the hermit says.
“Hunters brave.”
“Thinkers must be wise... and I think it foolish to get any closer to a kingcrow nest.”
Sleeping, night.”
“Kao, we can't take stupid risks. Chaos needs your help,” the hermit pleads, “I am no hunter, yet Chaos has made the Hidden my prey. I need your strength.”
“Your god, your prey. My sister.”
The hermit only sighs.
They descend in silence down the mighty mountain. Its foothills reach all the way to the river that borders the strange fields that surround the totem. The fields grow no closer. In the half moon's light, the field looks to be lines straighter than spears that stab the shadow of the mountain the tribesmen hide behind. Kao knows nothing so massive or perfectly ordered. Maybe the Hidden do worship a different god. His eyes hurt if he looks at the lands too long. They are too different from his jungled home, where living disorder rules. There was an order of sorts in Kao's lands; paths lead from orchards to swimming holes as they wind through the jungle like gnarled tree roots. The Hidden's lands look different. Nature is tamed. The plants fit a design.