by Inmon, Shawn
At first, he thought he was hallucinating. He used both hands to shield his eyes from the sun, blinked and looked again.
To Alex’s eyes, it looked like a parachutist was descending from above. He could see what looked like a parachute, long, silky strings, and some kind of body attached, slowly descending toward them.
It slowly descended, swaying back and forth in the breeze. As it drew closer, Alex could see that it was no parachutist. In fact, it was some kind of bug, although it did appear to be hanging from a balloon or parachute.
Alex touched Reggie’s arm and pointed up, saying, “Look at that. You ever seen anything like that before?”
They both watched the parachute descend until they could see it wasn’t just a bug. It was a spider. It was hard for Alex to judge how big it was as it fell, but eventually the chute dropped to the ground just about ten feet away.
When it hit the ground, it released the chute, which tumbled away. It sat on the grassy field, examining the surroundings it had fallen into. It stretched out two of its front legs and skittered toward Alex and Reggie.
Monda-ak reached his head out toward the bug, sniffing the air, trying to catch its scent.
As it grew closer, Alex got a better idea of the size of the thing. He estimated that it was five or six inches from one side to the other.
Alex and Reggie watched in fascination as it scrambled across the grass toward them. It paused a few feet away and looked at them.
Alex turned to the cliffside and yelled, “Senta-eh! Sekun-ak! Come see what dropped out of the sky!”
As Alex turned back to the spider, it leaped off the ground directly toward his face. It was the realization of every arachnophobe’s worst nightmare.
Alex was not an arachnophobe. Still, and all the same, he didn’t like to have a giant, possibly poisonous spider leap onto his face. He ducked backwards and slightly to his left. The spider’s arc was predetermined by its jump, so it landed, not on his face, but on his right shoulder.
Alex was surprised that as big as it was, it weighed almost nothing,
Again, the spider sat there for a long moment, contemplating. It reached one long, hairy leg out and ran it down Alex’s neck. That was enough for even a non-arachnophobe like Alex to quickly reach up and shoo it off.
Behind him, Alex heard Senta-eh say, “What is it? I don’t see anything in the sky.”
Again, the spider leaped, this time at Reggie’s face. This time, Alex was ready. He unslung his light club from his belt and swung it at the spider in a lightning-fast arc. He hit the spider a foot away from Reggie’s face.
“Whoa,” was all Reggie managed to say, accidentally slipping back into English.
The spider tumbled over and over, but landed on the ground, apparently uninjured.
Alex did not want to have it make a third jump at them, so he closed the gap between himself and the spider, leaped, and landed on it with one moccasined foot. The spider was crushed beneath his foot and again he wondered at how insubstantial it was. It was almost as if it was an empty shell.
Senta-eh ran up to him and said, “What was it?”
Behind him, Alex heard Sekun-ak and a number of other Winten-ah who had been attracted by his call.
Alex lifted his foot up and scraped the remains of the spider off onto the ground.
A crowd gathered around the bug’s corpse. Senta-eh kneeled beside it. She reached out and moved two of the legs aside to look at the squished belly. There was an irregular slash across the stomach, almost like a lightning bolt.
Senta-eh closed her eyes, said, “Oh, no.”
“What?” Alex asked, dusting his shoulder off where the spider had touched him. It had left a dusty spot behind. “It’s just a spider, right?”
Senta-eh only said a single word: “Zisla-ta.”
Chapter Twenty
A Plague
The word spread from one tribal member to another: “Zisla-ta, Zisla-ta, Zisla-ta.”
Each person that repeated it said it a bit louder. Within seconds, word had passed to everyone in the cliffside.
Alex looked from Sekun-ak to Senta-eh. “What? What is zisla-ta and why is everyone so worried.”
Sekun-ak toed the corpse of the spider and said, “That is zisla-ta.”
“It’s just a spider. Somewhere out there is a godat-ta bigger than ten of us put together. Ronit-ta attack us every time we walk across the plain. There are bugs that live in the trees that are big enough to eat this as a snack. Why is this a problem?”
Senta-eh said quietly, “Zisla-ta means from the clouds.”
“That makes sense. It dropped down like it came from the clouds.”
“That’s not it,” Senta-eh said, and Alex realized that in all their adventures, he had never seen her scared. Until now. “It’s not just that they come from the clouds, but that they are a cloud.”
The dread in her voice made Alex look up into the sky, but it looked exactly as it had before.
Sekun-ak stood straight and tall and said, “We’ll hold a council meeting now.” He turned to Wenta-eh. “Choose two other warriors and ride to Harta-ak and then Rinta-ah. Warn them that the zisla-ta are coming.” He raised his voice and said, “Everyone else, prepare now. Bring everything into the caves.”
Sekun-ak looked at Alex and Senta-eh. “Come. I will explain in the council meeting.”
Senta-eh jogged ahead and over her shoulder, said, “I will bring Drana-eh. She might remember something that can help us.”
Drana-eh? Alex searched through his memory, then the name clicked into place. One of the elders who sits in the upper cave. But that’s not quite right, either. Not one of the elders. The elder. The oldest living Winten-ah.
Everyone scrambled away like they’d had a fire lit under them. Again, Alex looked up at the sky, trying to see what the hurry was about. How could a single bug dropping from the sky be such a cause for concern.
A few minutes later, as darkness fell beyond the mouth of the caves, half a dozen council members gathered around the empty fire pit. A moment later, Senta-eh entered, carrying a small woman on her back.
Alex was sure that Drana-eh had once been as tall and strong as any of the Winten-ah, but time is undefeated in its battle with the human body. She was now so gnarled and compressed that she looked like one of the petrified trees in the forest by the ocean.
Sekun-ak stood and offered his chair to her. Senta-eh placed her gently in the chair with a pillow that helped her sit more upright, as she had a strong tendency to lean to the left. She may have looked ancient, but Alex noticed that her eyes were bright and sharp.
Drana-eh opened her mouth and revealed two rows of pink gums, unbroken by the appearance of teeth. “Would someone light the fire, please? I haven’t truly been warm in at least ten solstices.”
Alex scrambled up to retrieve some firewood and flint and soon had a good blaze going. Sekun-ak scooted Drana-eh’s chair forward until she was only a few feet away from the flames. Senta-eh returned with a comfortable blanket which she wrapped around the old woman’s shoulders.
And finally, Drana-eh was ready to speak.
“The first zisla-ta has fallen then, has it? I wondered which would happen first—that I would finally be done with this old body that is now my prison, or that the scourge of our land would return. It would have been better if they had come after I had gone.”
“Were you alive the last time they appeared?”
Drana-eh’s eyes grew misty with memory for a moment before sharpening again. “Yes. I was a tiny girl, barely off my mother’s teat when they came, but I have never forgotten it. One day it was one, then the next day two more, then maybe a hundred. The children made a game out of following them down out of the sky and jumping on them.”
She drifted away for a moment, lost in the memory of a Kragdon-ah of long ago.
“The fourth day, they blacked out the sky.”
For long moments, the only sound in the cave was the crackling and popping of the f
ire.
Finally, she concluded. “It was almost the end of us.”
Alex leaned forward and spoke loudly. He knew Drana-eh didn’t hear well.
“But why, though. Are they poisonous?”
“No. They’ll bite you, but they aren’t poisonous.”
“What then? Don’t spiders only eat bugs? If a whole bunch of them land and they eat all the bugs, why is that dangerous?”
“Zisla-ta don’t just eat bugs. They eat everything. At least, everything that’s alive. Trees, bushes, animals, grass. Everything. Wherever they go, they leave destruction behind them. We almost starved last time the zisla-ta flew by. Even mighty godat-ta hides when the plague comes.”
It was hard for Alex to picture godat-ta hiding from anything, but he didn’t want to say so.
Alex hesitated to ask his next question, but figured nothing was rude when a plague was on the way. “Drana-eh, how old are you? I’m just trying to figure out how long it’s been since the zisla-ta appeared.”
Drana-eh didn’t answer for so long that Alex thought that she had fallen asleep with her eyes open. Finally, she jerked a bit and said, “I don’t know how old I am. The legend is that the zisla-ta reappear every one hundred summer solstices. If that’s true, then I am older than that even. I don’t know how I have lived so long.”
Sekun-ak looked around the circle. “And we are already low on supplies. We will want to send hunting parties out every day until they arrive. Same with our gatherers. The legend says that the zisla-ta will pick every leaf, limb, and bush bare. That we will find skeletons picked clean. I just don’t want it to be any of us.”
“Maybe we should take our normal hunting team and split it in two. Then each group would have at least a few experienced hunters, and we might be able to bring in more game.”
“I will split the groups. You can lead one group and I will lead the other. Ganku-eh, can you organize the gatherers. We need to just grab as much as we can and get it inside the caves. We’ll worry about cleaning and the like later.”
Alex looked around the circle. “Is there anything else we can do? Do we just sit here and wait for them?”
Sekun-ak waited, giving anyone that wanted time to speak. When no one spoke up, he said, “Other than Drana-eh, none of us were alive the last time they came. All we have are the legends, and the legends say they are an unstoppable force. Do you have any ideas?”
“Not yet. But I can’t imagine just sitting here and doing nothing. Let me sleep on it and I will let you know.”
“Everyone knows what we need to do then,” Sekun-ak concluded. “We will start before dawn.”
THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE a whirlwind of activity in the caves. Sekun-ak and Alex led one hunt after another. As soon as they had field dressed and returned with one animal, they went out again, from first light to full darkness. At night, they stayed up and helped process the meat, berries, and herbs.
Niten-eh was concerned that the zisla-ta would destroy the plants she used to heal, so she and the children made a game out of gathering as much and as many as they could.
As the next few days passed, the appearance of the zisla-ta became more common. Initially, they were a curiosity, and everyone ran and examined them. Soon, that passed. As soon as one landed, someone would step on it and continue on with their work.
Both Alex and Sekun-ak found that the hunting was difficult. The animals were scarce and nervous before the hunters arrived—as though they too knew a plague was coming. Even the dire wolves on the plain seemed to have gone into hiding.
By the third day, everyone in Winten-ah was exhausted. Alex was frustrated that he hadn’t been able to think of any ideas to stop the pending invaders.
Sekun-ak, Alex, and Senta-eh sat around a fire that night, not talking, but contemplating what was coming.
Suddenly, Alex leapt to his feet. “I’ve got an idea!”
Senta-eh and Sekun-ak exchanged a smile and a look that said, Of course you do! It was the first smile either of them had since the first zisla-ta had parachuted from the sky.
Alex looked at Senta-eh. “I was just thinking of when we were stuck on that tiny island and the creatures kept coming out of the water to grab us.”
Senta-eh looked at him blankly. “I remember that, but...”
“I know it’s dark, but we need to take everyone out to the forest and cut down branches and small trees, then haul them back to the caves. As many as we can get.”
Sekun-ak did not hesitate. He walked to the edge of the cliff, lifted a horn, and sounded a note that reverberated throughout the complex. In moments, everyone was standing below him, looking up expectantly.
He passed on Alex’s suggestion and everyone headed for the forest. Sekun-ak used the horn again to bring the guards in from the trees. He wasn’t worried that anyone would try to attack them with the zisla-ta on the way.
The entire tribe worked through the night, bringing in extra firewood, plus greenery, small sticks, and long branches. When light showed in the east, they were exhausted, but felt they had done what they could to prepare.
As the pink light of morning spread across the sky, Senta-eh pointed due west. Far enough away that Alex judged it might still be over the ocean, there was a cloud. Thinking back to his fifth-grade science class, Alex would have called it a cumulonimbus—a cloud often associated with extreme weather of all sorts.
Cumulonimbus were typically white, though, and this cloud was an unearthly mixture of white and dark. It was millions and millions and millions of dark bodies and the white parachutes they rode.
A sense of primal awe and fear filled Alex as he looked at the cloud, which extended so high up into the sky that he lost sight of it.
“Into the caves!” Sekun-ak cried.
The zisla-ta had arrived.
Chapter Twenty-One
Zisla-ta
Sekun-ak, Alex, and Senta-eh hung back, letting everyone run to the caves before them. They turned and looked at the approaching cloud.
“That whole cloud can’t be zisla-ta,” Alex said, then immediately had doubts. “Could it?”
“Drana-eh said they blacked out the sky,” Senta-eh reminded him.
Alex Hawk had been in Kragdon-ah for seven years, but still managed to carry the perspective he brought from the twenty-first century. He lived a life that was primitive in every way, but still retained the idea that, at least at one time, something different had existed. He was still—at least partially—a man of his original time.
Until that moment.
Seeing the incredible size of the cloud, he made calculations as to what it meant, then his logical side fled. The primal need to survive, to embrace either fight or flight, took control. He knew there was no way to fight this, so the flight instinct took over. Modern man evaporated and primal man took over.
The three of them turned and ran toward the crowd that hurried to the caves. The cloud was still miles away, but more and more zisla-ta landed as an advance party. Each time, they took a moment to gather themselves, they launched at the nearest movement, whether it was a tree branch, a swaying hank of grass, or a human being. They seemed to be starving and omnivorous.
As the humans ran, the spiders landed on them. Each individual spider was not a real issue. They could be flung to the ground and stomped on. It was only when they landed in oppressive numbers—so great that they could not be shaken off—that they became deadly. And whatever they landed on became a meal.
As the Winten-ah hit the cliffside, they scrambled up the ladders with alacrity, but still turned and held a hand back to help the person coming up behind them.
The infirm had already been tucked away in caves that had been blockaded as best they could with temporary walls. There would be no way to get additional food or water into them until the threat had passed, but they had given them enough supplies to last several days.
No one knew how long it would take for the zisla-ta to pass. Drana-eh had been too young to remember such details.
>
Every member of the Winten-ah had been assigned a cave and they all ran to their assigned quarters.
Alex had argued that he, Monda-ak, and Senta-eh should ride out the storm in their new cabin. It was an exceptionally sturdy construct, built to withstand whatever Kragdon-ah could throw at it.
Senta-eh had changed his mind. “If we shelter there, I believe we will die. We may die in the caves as well, but I believe your plan will give us a better chance to survive there.”
“And we would like to have your calm head with us, not separated.”
Alex had seen the wisdom in that, but as he climbed up the first ladder, he couldn’t help but pause and look at their little house. It was beautiful, a small dot of home in this strange world, and he feared he might never see it again.
He put that thought away as unworthy and scrambled up the paths and ladders that led to the biggest cave, which sat at the very top.
The biggest cave, where they held their communal meetings, presented special challenges. They couldn’t afford to leave it empty, because the population of Winten-ah would have overflowed the smaller caverns. At the same time, the mouth of the big cave was both broad and tall—big enough that birds constantly flew in and out of it and built their nests in recessed corners.
Ordinarily, that was a good thing. They could have a number of fires going and the airflow from the mouth of the cave and the cracks in the ceiling moved the smoke away perfectly.
Now, that opening presented a danger. If the cloud passed directly over Winten-ah—and that was the path it was on—tens or hundreds of thousands of zisla-ta would float in. They couldn’t harm the cave itself, but if they arrived in great enough numbers, they could smother and consume everyone inside. Then they would skitter to the edge of the cave, issue forth a new silk parachute, and float away to the next place of destination on their itinerary.
