David: Savakerrva, Book 1

by L. Brown

  The scene bewildered, but not as much as the word. Straight from his birth certificate, the name between David and Redhawk rattled his core, and when added to the fever of the squid-legged cat and invisible craft and the owlish-eyed hulk, it was a madness too much, the dam’s last crack.

  Wavering now, feeling a fade, Garth fainted into the bear, into its deep, enveloping fur.

  Uncounted moments later, the hide of the bear became a seat in a Porsche. Which floated, lazily, somewhere on Lake Erie, a four-wheeled boat Garth shared with Ashley Allezahr. But while Garth drove, steered the wheel, Ashley just tanned on the hood.

  Just a dream, Garth knew, Ashley’s tan came from a bottle, not a Great Lake. Yet dream or not, it was all Garth had, nothing awaited but the delirium of the cave.

  “It’s time,” sighed Ashley, now tapping the windshield and making it crack. “Time to wake up, and when you do? Whoever you are, you’ll never come back.”

  Then through the cracks, the diffraction of shards, the girl of his dreams blew him a kiss.

  Garth woke with a gasp. And wondered, as he blinked at the fire and inhaled smoke, if he’d simply fled one imagining for the next. But as vision cleared and the two silhouettes emerged, he knew this was real, beings like this were beyond his dreams.

  Owl-eye sat to his right. The Man of Scars perched on the bear. Both apparently hungry, the former shoved steaming gristle between his greasy mouth wraps while the latter sliced bear ribs with his curved-blade knife. As for the creature, the four-tentacle thing, its feline head now reminded, up close, of a lynx. A famished lynx, for as the Man of Scars cut off a bear rib, it watched, salivating, while he offered it to Garth.

  Garth didn’t move. Couldn’t move, fear locked every ligament and joint.

  But Owl-eye could move just fine, and after grabbing the rib with his blighted hand, he stuffed it into the spittled maw of his mouth.

  Feeling the bile rise, Garth needed to look away. But before he could, something else caught his eye, a flash of firelight exposed a subtle pattern on Owl-eye’s collar. Symmetrical but subdued, five identical shapes resembled S-like designs, some prior insignia long-ago removed.

  “From my reading—” Speaking now, the Man of Scars patted the bear. “I’d no idea they grew so large. You can train them, ride them to war?”

  Flummoxed first by the language — English? — then by his accent — English? — Garth finally just puzzled on the question; was it a subtle allegory, some twisted, cryptic threat?

  “They ride to war in machines,” Logaht observed, nodding toward Garth. “His people, this world — they’ve begun to progress.”

  Still quiet, abstaining from all reaction and speech, Garth concluded they spoke in code, traded phrases with meanings unknown.

  “And this?” The subject apparently changed, the Man of Scars now hoisted Garth’s iPod, held it aloft by its spliced-wire tail. “It’s a weapon, some kind of bomb?”

  “It’s nothing,” muttered Owl-eye. “Just like the boy.” His tone dismissive, his voice textured with grit, the hulk with too-many fingers sucked fat off a bone.

  Altogether bewildered, Garth wondered if ‘boy’ referred to him; had he just been insulted?

  “Blood doesn’t lie,” asserted the Man of Scars. “Nor does this.” Flicking his wrist, he tossed something through the fire and into Garth’s lap.

  Flinching a bit, Garth beheld an egg-sized lump shriveled and bristled with fine metal hairs. Then sensed, somehow, this was it, the lump that infested his back.

  “You knew you were marked?” asked the Man of Scars.

  Meeting his gaze through the flames, Garth tried to read the fractured map of his face.

  “You’ve had it for years,” the scarred face continued. “And for that, thank Choffa,” he added, spitting into the fire. “He betrayed you in your first year of life, revealed your existence, your location as well. Then you must have been stung, and years later—” He nodded to the lump. “The ovik grew into that. You’re what now; fourteen?”

  Smoke and words swirling, Garth tried to think. First about his age, then how the Man of Scars knew. Then he just nodded, because the fear in his throat choked back his voice.

  “Mm,” grunted Scars, deep in thoughtful chew. “Mm,” he repeated, then nodded to the lump. “It’s harmless now, quite dead, but had we not dug it out?” Pausing, he wiped grease off his knife. “When a mature ovik receives its call, not only does it reveal your location, it starts to move, looks for the brain. And when it finally taps in?” He finished his chew. “From what I’m told, your mind is no longer your own.” And with that, he shoved his knife into the burlap sack, scooped out more horseshoe-shaped bones, then tossed them into the fire.

  “Then again,” groused Owl-eye, now flashed by the flame of new fuel, “if the ovik had reached his mind, would it have simply turned back?” Clarifying his point, he held up a wrinkled comic book, The Death of Superman.

  “It fell from your coat,” sighed the Man of Scars. “You carry more?”

  Wondering what he meant — he wants one, too? — Garth shook his head ‘no.’

  “Good,” Scars replied, retrieving a leather flask. “For now that you’ve lost your ovik, you’ll lose everything else as well, because the sooner you leave this life, the better for all.”

  Baffled by ‘this life,’ Garth tried to unscramble the words, discern Scars’ intent.

  “The ovik is gone,” Owl-eye said, peeking overhead. “But I suspect he remains.”

  “I’m sure he does, he wants the boy as much as us,” answered Scars. “But thanks to your skill, we stole him away before he knew we were here, hah! Nicely done, old friend.” Apparently pleased, Scars toasted Owl-eye with his flask, then winced back a drink.

  “Whatever our success, much still remains,” Owl-eye replied. “Including, unfortunately, our tracks.”

  “Our tracks remain, but so does your diversion. And by the time he follows every false trail? Hah!” Scars sipped again. “So, let us rest a while, eat and drink. I’ve full confidence in your ability to deceive.”

  “Deceive?” Reduced to parroting, repeating the last oddity heard, Garth finally spoke. But when Scars and One-eye looked his way and the squid-lynx peeked over its bone, the boy from the Home missed being ignored. “Sorry.”

  “Sorry for what, you did nothing wrong,” retorted Scars. “In fact, I’m not even sure you could!”

  Smiling now, the ill-fit face regarded Garth with a gaze cut from ice, eyes sharp and gray. “But in truth, any apology must come from us, you might be confused. So as for me, my name? Whatever it was, it’s now just ‘Dahkaa.’ And this—” No longer just the ‘Man of Scars,’ Dahkaa nodded to Owl-eye. “Is Logaht.” Then, to Garth, “And you, of course, your name—”

  “My name is Garth.” His first kick against the maniacal tide, Garth found his voice. “I’m Garth Smith and whatever this is, just tell me what’s happening, where am I!”

  Annoyed by the outburst, the squid-lynx hissed through bloodstained fangs.

  “And that, what thing is that!” Garth demanded, both pointing toward the hiss and arching back.

  “That,” Dahkaa began, grabbing an uncooked rib, “is the look of hunger, she’s starved.” He tossed it high, but with a flick of a tentacle, the creature snared it, then tore right in.

  “It’s a ‘vaalik,’” said Logaht. “Dahkaa’s vaalik. And like the rest of its kind, it’s annoyed by complaint, the immature whine.”

  Maybe Dahkaa smirked, Garth couldn’t tell, the scars defied quick read. “Be kind, Logaht,” Dahkaa admonished. “The boy’s in a fog.”

  A smoky fog, Garth could have added, but he said nothing, just braced for the extra-terrestrial worst, the imminent answer to his question of where.

  “Our location—” Dahkaa dug into the sack, then pulled out an oversized book. “By these planetary charts, I believe we’re somewhere — here; you’ve heard of ‘Green Land’?”

  Expecting exotic, some faraway w
orld, Garth instead eyed ‘Greenland’ on a World Atlas map.

  “Reminds me of home, except for the air,” Dahkaa remarked, now picking up both his straight and curved-blade knives. “It’s always so weak?” And squeezing the triggers on each knife hilt, he crackled faint sparks between the tips of the blades.

  “Ask the boy of family,” said Logaht. “Do any feed him, will they care if he dies?”

  Still trying to reconcile Dahkaa, Logaht, and the squid-lynx with Greenland, Garth struggled for words. “No, I — no family.”

  “Well, that makes it easy,” mumbled Logaht.

  “Quite,” Dahkaa agreed.

  “Easy?” asked Garth.

  “Here, lend a hand,” Dahkaa said, now examining the great carcass of bear. “And since you say you have no family, I’ll tell you of the one you had.”

  Garth hesitated, reviewed once more what he thought he just heard. “Huh?”

  “But first—” Dahkaa ran a hand through the bear’s thick fur. “Brace this creature by its great head, will you? Besides the meat, I believe we’ll take the hide.”

  “Ioso?” asked Logaht.

  “Ioso,” Dahkaa confirmed. “Think she’ll like it?”

  “She’s a woman, how could she not.”

  “You knew them?” pressed Garth, ignoring everything else. “My—?” The next word tied his tongue. “Parents?”

  “I’m told I did,” said Dahkaa. “The head?”

  Following Dahkaa’s nod to the sleek bearish skull, Garth grabbed its ears and held on.

  “But just so you know, my memory—” Dahkaa wrinkled his brow in thought. “What I mean is, so much has passed since we saw them last, I wonder, frankly, where to begin.”

  “It was night,” Logaht reminded. “We crashed.”

  “Ah, so we did,” Dahkaa replied, seemingly recalling the event. “Low on fuel, desperate to put down—” Squeezing both knife triggers, Dahkaa sparked an electric arc between the blades; then cutting and scorching, he began to relieve the bear of its hide. “There were four of us, I’m told: Logaht and I, the traitor Choffa as well — and fifteen years ago, we arrived in this world from another far off.”

  There it was, a simple statement of extraterrestrial fact, Garth shared this cave with others, beings from the proverbial Beyond. And though this seminal event had long been predicted to rock humanity to its core, Garth waited for the real news, something with punch. “And?”

  “And,” resumed Dahkaa, “we also arrived with a man near death, our king.”

  “A great king,” added Logaht. “His name was Kel Vek.”

  “But king or not, the sickness that seized him had no respect of his rank; and because we had no cure, we sailed the River Afar until fate brought us here, until we arrived in your Kingdom of Michigan.”

  “Upper Michigan,” corrected Logaht. “But they have no kings, the boy and his clans choose rulers not by test, but by votes, by those with the most.”

  “Huh,” Dahkaa grunted. “And that works?”

  “Judge for yourself,” answered Logaht, nodding to Garth. “Is this boy not the result?”

  But Dahkaa stayed quiet, resumed his work. “To continue—” Using his blades’ sparking heat, he bonded two flaps of hide. “After we arrived, set down in a wood, we looked for help. Then looked some more, but just as we thought this world grew only trees, we found a house. And when we called forth, we were met—”

  “By my mother?” asked Garth.

  “By her gun,” said Logaht. “Which, it seemed, she quite wanted to shoot. But when our king fell at her feet, when she then saw his pain? That — is how your mother and father met.”

  Garth heard it, but needed to hear it again. “My father — was a king?”

  “A Zahlen king,” said Dahkaa. “A great warrior, gifted leader — and very wise, I’ve heard.”

  “What you’ve heard is true,” Logaht confirmed, now turning toward Garth. “And the truth of your mother is, she not only saved King Kel Vek from death, she helped Dahkaa as well.”

  “And while I don’t quite remember,” Dahkaa confessed, “you may take Logaht at his word, he’s simply too blunt, too callous to lie.”

  “Thank you,” growled Logaht. “And if the boy wants the truth of his mother? She showed us only kindness and respect, even me. So, we were saddened, Dahkaa and I, to learn of her death.”

  Dahkaa stopped working, then looked at Garth. “You knew?”

  Garth thought a moment, he needed to be sure. “My mother, her name was—?”

  “Anastasia,” said Dahkaa. “Her name, I somehow remember; ‘Ana,’ I retain.”

  Whatever he meant by ‘retain,’ Garth didn’t care, ‘Ana’ just confirmed what he’d read in his file. But if his mother really was Ana Redhawk and the newspaper story was right, didn’t that mean the Wraith had killed her, had stabbed her twice with a long, crooked stick?

  “Finally, just so we’re clear,” Dahkaa resumed, “not only did your mother save us, but in the following spring, she gave birth to the King’s first and only son. And that, David, was you.”

  Caught unaware, the name hit hard, David rocked the very foundations of Garth.

  “But soon thereafter,” said Dahkaa, “once Logaht had refined enough fuel, we left, returned to the war. And then—?” His eyes starting to cloud, Dahkaa seemed lost on what happened next.

  “Then,” Logaht continued, “our trusted friend Choffa led Dahkaa and the king into a trap. And though Dahkaa survived—”

  The pause did it, Garth knew what came next.

  “I’m sorry, David,” said Dahkaa. “But your father is dead.”

  Of course, Garth’s unspoken reply. The promise of parents too good to last, of course he’s dead.

  “But though Dahkaa escaped—” Logaht uncorked a flask of his own. “He left much behind, for once their first torture was done, once they took his face, they then took his past, the memories of his mind. And when I found him, finally caught up—”

  “When Logaht arrived,” Dahkaa interrupted, “he killed my captors by breaking their bones, and just so you know, the sound of those moments, the screams and the cracks, are the oldest memories I have.”

  Unnerved by it, by details not clear — Captors? War? Who takes your memory and face! — Garth tried to fill the gaps. “But if you lost your memory,” he began, “then how—?”

  “How do I remember your mother, how do I recall your father the King?” asked Dahkaa. “Good question. And granted, Logaht has helped, has told and retold many events, but it seems your parents made memories not just in my mind, but also my heart. And though I have only feelings, no recollections or facts — for such a mother and father, David, you should forever be proud.”

  Garth heard the verdict, let it soak in. But regardless of the stories, of Dahkaa and Logaht’s abiding respect, it wasn’t pride Garth felt, just a deep, empty ache.

  “As for me,” Dahkaa went on, now sealing more hide with the spark of his knives, “as for losing old memories? Perhaps it was all for the best: no foul deeds to haunt, no grudges to hold or sadness to bear— Yes, maybe it’s lucky, losing your past. In fact, given what’s happened, what my world has endured, I’m quite sure ignorance has been the easier path. Then again, in my experience, easier paths lead only to lesser heights; which is why, I suppose, I became a Zahlen warrior. And why you, David, must come with us.”

  Everything hitting too fast, Garth only had breath for the word most absurd. “Me?”

  “We came for Savakerrva,” Dahkaa declared. “The Son of the King.”

  Garth thought a moment, began to unravel the knot. “’Savakerrva,’ that’s — what it means?”

  “That’s exactly what it means; and yet, it also means more,” said Dahkaa.

  “More?”

  “Mm,” Dahkaa affirmed, backhanding his sweat. “You see, in my world, we’ve had many sons of kings, but only one was foretold, only one Savakerrva was promised in verse so long ago. And because my world now nears its
end? Ah, well, it’s not just you’re our last Savakerrva, David. You must also be, by fact and fate, our Promise foretold.”

  “Or,” added Logaht, “at least there’s a chance.”

  “More than a chance!” snapped Dahkaa. “We have the son of Kel Vek, do you have any doubt?”

  “That he’s the King’s son?” Logaht opened his greatcoat, dug into a pocket within. “You cut the ovik from his flesh, Dahkaa, so regarding his father, no probable doubt remains. But—”

  “Speak your mind,” prompted Dahkaa.

  “I speak only with respect, old friend. But if this boy really is the Savakerrva foretold, would he not, by now, have made some notable impression? Should we not even check?”

  But before Dahkaa could reply, Logaht pulled out a wallet-size square.

  Dahkaa eyed the thing, then glanced at Garth. Then back to Logaht, he gave a quick nod, and with an alacrity at odds with their look, the blighted fingers unfolded the square into a mat.

  “Keep your nerve, David,” said Dahkaa. “Logaht’s tricks may look like magic, but trust me, he’s no Gandalf.”

  Baffled by it — Tolkien? — Garth wondered since when, exactly, did aliens read The Lord of the Rings. Unexpected, yet so was everything else; was this meeting between worlds really happening in smoky fish stink, did every advanced being dine like Visigoths on a sack? Far from sleek and well groomed, Dahkaa and Logaht broke every advanced alien cliché, their scars and blighted skin clashed with an invisible craft. Then again, Garth reflected, by disdaining the facelift and tuck, is that why they advanced?

  “What about risk,” Dahkaa asked. “Your search won’t reveal us, we won’t be found?”

  “Anything lost can be found,” answered Logaht. “Especially by him.”

  About to ask the obvious — him? — Garth instead noticed Logaht’s mat, how the flat-black surface started to flash.

  “But if our deceptions worked,” Logaht continued, “if our false trails kept him on the far side of this world, then perhaps we have a moment, maybe even two.”

  A three-dimensional scene now flickered the mat, pixels of light coalesced into fast-changing perspectives of Garth’s high school. Outside views, inside as well — the sights seemed a collection of signals and reflections, pulses and waves sampled from security cameras and computers and power lines and sounds. Every ethereal bit contributed to the whole, and as the scrying mosaic took form, Logaht enlarged an image, a hall photo of Garth’s class. Fresh-faced and smooth, they smiled under a banner titled ‘Meet Our New Warriors!’”