They are warmth. Breath. Life.
Connexion.
Power.
Awash in it, afloat, a deep-soft drone teasing, tickling, making promises with a tongue he does not understand, but knows.
Somehow.
Clicking within him, piece by piece, answer by answer, and he twitches beneath, whimpers purling in his throat merely to be swallowed by the vast surround of something he has no name for.
And names can sway Power, so he calls it: neverending.
As if with that, things begin to shift. The impossible, incomprehensible shards smooth into pinpricks of light—still unreachable and untouchable, still recognisable.
Stars. Some of them Ancestors lighting lamps brilliant and almost painful; many more of them Other, invaders, unfriendly. Why does he long for the contact, even should he burn fingers upon the impossible?
Small rustles, murmurs he cannot comprehend. Wind tossing the topmost leaves, breathing more gently near the woodLand floor, fingering damp hair over his brow, touching…
Ai, something touching him, holding to him, keeping him pinioned to ground when all he wants is to soar into that glittering dark. He squirms beneath the hold; it merely presses tighter. A presence hovering. Strange. Familiar.
Something within his vision… gives, and beneath the Dreaming a memory coalesces. It has to be memory, for this cannot be. It can never be again, for she is dead, part of those Stars, perhaps.
But still, he whispers: Aška?
Pressed to Earth and heavy-sodden, he tries to open his eyes, deny the Dreaming as she bends over him, answers. Peace. Be still, my son, and soon it will be over.
A drag of cloth over his face, cool and strange-smelling and cloying, and while something within him begs for it, something else screams and bolts upright…
Something impacted with his hand, went sailing in a dark, liquid arc. There was a sharp cry—dismay? anger?—and before he was even halfway up, Tokela grabbed for his knife.
No luck there, only white-hot trails spangling across his vision, tiny sparks like Stars.
Blinking, Tokela shook his head. Growled, low and menacing, as the sparks smeared into blurry figures, hovering. Too narrow, too tall, shrouded by tree shadows and dying spears of Sun’s light.
“Easy, now,” said one of the figures, its deep voice speaking… dawnLands Talk? Ai, if a poor, broken version. “Done be done. You be safe.”
And Tokela remembered.
He had been poisoned by Shaped creatures.
He was surrounded by Chepiś and Matwau.
He wasn’t safe.
His body wasn’t so quick as his thoughts. What should have been a sideways lurch ended up in a sprawl, limbs useless, against a wide pool of sticky-thick indigo sinking into Grandmother’s skin.
Indigo? But indigo was not hued so until it sat, stained.
Several voices, now, rising in unrecognisable, unmusical talk. One in particular penetrated; menace lay beneath it, thrilling Tokela’s muscles to action. Once again he tried to lurch upward.
Once again he went sprawling, facedown in the dirt.
Hands laid upon him and shoved him onto his back. The touch seared into nerve and bone, as if outLand eirn had been laid to skin; it brought Tokela further into his body. He lay stripped to clout, wet warmth puckering and cooling on his chest, arm and leg throbbing hot. Rain pattered all around. Damp moss pillowed his head, roots curving against his spine, giving off strange, white-dark sparks that tingled against his skin. As if the roots had been Shaped to cradle him…
Shaped. He was in Šilombiš’okpulo, with Chepiś Shapers.
Tokela twisted, snarled defiance and fear upward at the Chepiś holding him down.
The Chepiś rocked back, but it didn’t loosen its grip. Three others moved in, the failing light silhouetting them against the vast tree canopy. The tree beneath Tokela… moved. Too quick to be Wind, or anything natural, it curled and stretched outwards with tiny, oddling sparks and shifts, leaves moving, rustling, sheltering from Rain.
“Lie still.” The talk—too deliberate—came from the Moon-haired one that had cut him loose. “We’re trying to help you. The shigala poisoned you, and we’re helping. Can you understand?”
Another growl purling deep in his throat, Tokela hesitated. He wasn’t sure he did understand. He didn’t think the Chepiś lied, but then his own senses were sideways; poison, he remembered, bits and fragments beginning to piece together.
The Chepiś’s breathing was loud in the stillness—indeed, all of them seemed to be panting—but Tokela couldn’t fathom any scent save the sick-sweet. Like the Shaped creatures, he thought with a chill in his gut, and only one heart’s drum he could feel or hear.
Perhaps they didn’t have hearts.
Matwau did, however. The one standing amidst the Chepiś had a heartbeat that echoed deep as the talking drums, steady-sure and unconcerned. Its face was distinctive—familiar—darker than even dryLands people in summering’s midst, displaying lines of both life and living, with an expression that seemed… curious, no more or less. A hunter’s face, used to the control of her own bodytalk… Ai, it was a fem, smoky telltale layering atop a Matwau’s strange odour.
Another Chepiś spoke—it was the one Tokela had run into, with a voice and bodytalk that betrayed anger. Yet the Moon-haired one didn’t so much as blink, its gaze holding to Tokela’s, a courtesy he’d not expected any Chepiś to know. There was silver in the round eyes—indeed in all their eyes. As if the pale gleam of Brother Moon had been captured, and slurried by Starlight…
With a shudder, Tokela broke the gaze. He couldn’t help a flinch, humiliating as it was, as the third of the Chepiś knelt beside Moon Hair..
The Chepiś made more of the strange sounds, its voice warbling soft and light, less menacing than the dark-voiced one beside it.
“It’s a ghoteh, Rann,” Moon Hair replied. “Try not to frighten it, and be good enough to speak in a tongue it can understand.”
“It doesn’t seem to understand even this savage tongue,” Dark Voice muttered.
Savage? Ai, that was a word Tokela knew, well enough. Savage was the way these outLanders were rending talk so ancient and rich! Lacking the sort of ears that would pin, Tokela had to settle for sliding a narrow glare towards Dark Voice.
“Is it young, then?” The soft-voiced Chepiś—was it called Raahn?—kept staring at Tokela with its strange, stony eyes. It spoke his talk even worse than Moon Hair. “It is so tiny.”
“I daresay it’s young, but they are all small, these,” Moon Hair answered. “Even the elders.”
Indignation was swiftly elbowing aside trepidation. FirstPeople were not tiny; it was outLanders who were giants, too big to fit in a proper lodging! Tokela tried to angle forwards, was prevented by not only the grip on his shoulders, but the strange, sideways lassitude.
His slight shift was misinterpreted.
“We shan’t hurt you,” Moon-Hair repeated. “We’re trying to help. You’ve been poisoned.”
He was aware of that, well enough. Frankly he hadn’t expected to wake again. If they had helped him, he owed them for that much at least.
But why had they helped him?
“What unusual markings it has.” Rann started to reach out, undoubtedly towards the hennaed Marks upon Tokela’s cheekbones. Indignation burbled away as Tokela abruptly felt very tiny indeed. It took every scrap of courage he possessed to hold still, and even then his hand crept to where his skinning knife should be. Of course it wasn’t there—he could see it, piled with the rest of his garb at Dark Voice’s feet.
“I wouldn’t touch it, Rann. It could well bite, with those fangs.” Dark Voice’s arms were crossed in a gesture reminiscent of Tokela’s own folk. In fact, all of them had bodytalk not unlike his own. “Look at it! It might be young, but it’s as wild a brute as the shigala it killed. Like the serpents south of this wretched forest, the young even more poisonous than the parents.” Then, to Moon Hair, “You should have let it
die. We aren’t allowed to interfere like this.”
A frown gathered Moon Hair’s too-pale brow, but not once did it take its eyes from Tokela. It was the Matwau who did something so incomprehensible—so normal—that Tokela’s eyes nearly bugged from his head.
The Matwau smacked a broad palm against the back of Dark Voice’s head akin to chastising an errant cub. “Quite a manner, you have, Vox, for not frightening the little one.”
Vohks? It was a ridiculous name; Tokela preferred Dark Voice.
“Perhaps it doesn’t understand us,” Rann put in.
Tokela had often heard his elders make talk past him, but he figured none of his tribe had been “talked over” quite like this. It was more withering than even a scornful glance from Sarinak could inspire.
“It doesn’t seem terribly afraid,” Rann continued.
I’m only as afraid as I need be, Tokela thought. And you’re the ones who have taken my knives from me.
The Matwau’s eyes met his and held. The colour of good amber, and quite canny. As if she’d heard his thought, a smirk touched her mouth. “He understands, all right.”
That he could be so easily read by Matwau was not at all reassuring.
Moon Hair was peering at Vox; the latter shrugged and retreated, coming to a halt before… Ai, it was the bow tree where Tokela had taken refuge. The Shaped creature still lay dead at the bow tree’s roots. A… shigala, Moon Hair had called it.
Returning its gaze to the Matwau fem, Moon Hair lingered there for several heartbeats. There was an intimacy in the shared glance, unspoken but plain; one more odd reassurance amidst all the unknown.
These creatures had friends, not merely companions. Close friends, from the bodytalk of those two—and subordinates, from the exchange between Moon Hair and Vox. That one bristled like a challenged oških, while the one known as Rann seemed young, openly curious as any ahlóssa.
“You know,” Rann was still peering at Tokela, curious as if he had sprouted from the rock mould, “I’ve never seen a ghoteh before. You know the most of us, Sivan. Is it very like to its people?”
Sih-van? Moon Hair’s name?
While all of them—save the Matwau, oddly enough—kept calling Tokela “it”. Well, then, all right, Tokela was doing the same, so taking offence was certainly questionable at this point. His nose told him nothing—again, save with the Matwau—but it seemed these Chepiś weren’t unlike Matwau, if decidedly unlike his own People…
Yet they weren’t so different as the taleKeepers would paint. They didn’t have four legs, or wings, or many eyes like spiderKin sometimes had. Perhaps they were like serpentKin, and hid their sex.
Perhaps they were neither. And if so…
A shiver ran down his nape. If so, could Chepiś sire a half-breed child?
“My brother knows more than any of us, save my father.” Sivan was eyeing Tokela, twitched narrow shoulders in what must be a shrug. “I’d dare to doubt the little one has ever seen such as us, either.”
They had brothers. Fathers. So they had young. Disheartening, the confirmation, full of too many possibilities.
“It is rather slender,” Rann offered. “And not quite as dark as our Maloh.” A sweeping arm gesture, though unfamiliar, made it plain: the Matwau was Mah-loh. The naming rang more pleasant in contrast with the others’ names, hard and angular as dead standingKin. Rann continued, “I’d heard ghoteh painted themselves blue, but that their hides, too, were dark as dried kypros berries. Their bodies solid as stones.”
A glint of metal sparked Tokela’s attention. Vox stood by the bow tree, leaning over the felled creature, drawing a slender, shining knife. Tokela couldn’t help a small recoil of distaste; outLanders seemed to take inordinate pride over their Shaping of the metal they raped from Grandmother’s womb and called eirn.
Surely if these Chepiś were hunters, they would know predators made tough eating… wait. This Vox looked as if he were about to break and parcel Tokela’s own kill. Tokela leaned forwards in protest, but Rann reached for him, startling him into another recoil.
“Perhaps they paint themselves not only blue, but brown?”
Sivan and Maloh exchanged patient looks. Tokela’s own trepidation was swiftly fading, running the length of huffy insult to—admit it—wry amusement. Did all Chepiś truly have that same sickly pallor to their hides? Could they not imagine a Skybow’s wealth of hue? He was of Forest and River, after all, not a Sun-blessed Horsetalker!
“Perhaps it hasn’t been thoroughly painted.” This time Rann actually touched Tokela, fingers rubbing at his cheek as if to wipe the faded Marks away. Those fingers were cool, feathery, not overly unpleasant. But the searching touch lingered, followed by an unnerving tingle. Tokela ducked out from beneath, and when Rann started forwards again, Tokela gave her a warning look.
“Stop trying to pet him, Rann,” the Matwau fem drawled, wry. “The sgralka’s little, but he might indeed bite, and I’m not sure I’d blame him.”
Tokela bristled. Sgralka was even more insulting than ghoteh! Over by the tree, Vox had looped some kind of rope about the—shee-galah?—tying it in a manner suggesting he was indeed about to butcher it.
This had all gone far enough.
“I’m no sgralka!” Tokela burst out. “Nor ghoteh! I’m a’Kowehoklaánutekasha, firstPeople. And I’ve never seen your kind, but I know what you are! And that”—he flung his unwounded arm towards where Vox was putting a knife to the creature Tokela had slain—“is my kill. Matwau are known to take what’s not theirs; are Chepiś also?”
A quartet of round eyes riveted to his. Tokela refused to totter back beneath them. He did, however, swallow hard as the silence pounded like his heartbeats, one into the other.
A sudden, clear peal of laughter rang and echoed beneath the thick canopy. Sivan began, joined softly by Rann, a snort from Maloh, and a roll of eyes from Vox. Sivan rocked from kneeling to sit beside Tokela, still chuckling.
“Well said, young… kho-way-oka!” At least Sivan was trying to pronounce it correctly. “’Twas rude of us to talk about you as though you were not present. And we would not rob you of your prize, though—”
“Though we have little time for primitive foolishness,” Vox snapped, still hovering over the dead creature. “Unless, little animal, you prefer dying to what scant life you do possess.”
Tokela’s lip quivered with the beginnings of a snarl. Sivan turned and snapped something in their flat talk. It seemed exasperation was exasperation in any Land as Vox rolled pale eyes in answer.
“We mean no disrespect.” This from Maloh in her good dawnLands talk. “The bite of a shigala is evil if left untended, and we had to use what means we could.”
Tokela frowned.
“When you struggled”—Sivan motioned to the upended bowl—“you spilt the blood we were using. We’ll have to draw more. If we can.” Sivan looked concerned. “Even with altered creatures, blood coagulates after death.”
“Ka-hagoo…?” Tokela mouthed the odd word. And the only altars he knew of were frowned upon in dawnLands, though his own sire had kept one in midLands tradition, with several spiritDancers balanced upon carven stone bases.
“Thickens,” Maloh put in.
Ai, that Tokela understood.
Sivan gave a small, curious smile and continued, “The creature does not look long dead, but better to move swiftly. If you will allow Vox, we can see to your leg. And your arm.” Again, pale brows furrowed. “We might need Rann’s services after all.”
Vox let out a torrent of the flat talk—clearly protest. Rann answered in kind, this time. Muttering, Vox bent back to the dead creature and Rann came forwards, threading something resembling a shiny, rectangular waterskin on a thong from over her head. “Are you thirsty?”
Tokela was, but eyed the skin-that-was-not warily. It looked to be made of eirn. Perhaps that explained the odd feelings as Rann had touched him. “I cannot drink that.”
“It’s merely water, little one.” Rann extended
the water closer. Tokela angled backward.
Sivan was watching with a frown, then reached out and stayed Rann’s hand. “Take your burl bowl, go to the stream and fill it.”
“Sivan, but surely…” Rann peered at first Sivan, then Tokela, eyes widening. “Are the stories true after all? Is it possible forged iron truly burns these little folk?”
“It has a knife of copper,” Vox corrected from over by the shigala. Its belly opened, Vox was transferring greenish-blue meat—organs, likely—into a large bowl.
“Copper is not forged steel, and many things are possible,” Maloh said. “I’ll come with you. This forest can be treacherous to one who knows it not.”
Still big-eyed, Rann followed Maloh’s retreat into the forest.
“You are not the only one who has found themselves in an odd encounter,” Sivan explained. “Rann never quite believed my brother’s stories of meeting with Gho… firstPeople”—the correction was quick—“though she liked to hear them.”
She. “It… the young one… Rann. Rann is a she?” Tokela blurted before he could halt it.
“She is.” Sivan’s smile broadened. “Save Vox, all of us here choose that guise. We are not so unalike, your kind and mine.”
Guise? It made no sense. It implied a path beyond garb, moiety, or society; a Shaping beyond anything he’d imagined possible. Tokela’s gut gave a sharp twist: confusion, and dread.
What if they hadn’t sired him? What if they’d… Shaped him?
“The claw marks aren’t dangerous, if cleaned properly. Only the bites contain poison.” Sivan leaned closer, inspecting Tokela’s injuries. Following her gaze, Tokela saw they were indeed smeared with indigo-hued blood, and seemed less like rotting flesh than before. Sivan asked, “Are we timely, Vox?”
Vox replied in the flat talk; a look from Sivan, however, forced him to translate. “It is too long dead. But its organs should suffice. We can but hope your little animal responds to treatment.” Despite the dismissive tone, Vox quickly rose and approached with bowl in hand, hands smeared blue-black. It did not look appetizing in any fashion; in fact it looked to be more poison. Tokela couldn’t help a recoil.
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