Orphan Tribe, Orphan Planet

by Jonathan Vick

Thurl pulled on the roots and the shield shifted. He dug his feet into the mud and pushed against the ground. The shield with Sohjos moved.

  “Here we go,” Thurl said, and tugged hard. The sled followed slowly behind. The thick muscles on his legs strained. He kept hitting his heel on the front of the sled, but he moved up the tunnel, leaving behind the noise of the creatures still running in the other direction.

  When Thurl came to the first intersection he hesitated. He couldn’t remember which direction he’d come. He could smell the scent of the creatures and the rotting meat of the narvai-ub in both directions. He couldn’t smell Racroft in either one. He turned toward the cooler tunnel, hoping to avoid the chasm with the swinging bridge; hoping to choose paths that led upward; hoping to find his way out and back to the surface.

  As he pressed his shoulder into the root and strained to get the shield/sled moving again, he tried to put decisions out of his mind.

  Another intersection; another decision. The scents were faint, and difficult to distinguish. There was a distant scent of rotting meat; the nauseating waft of narvai-ub. Thurl followed the rot. He turned left, and struggled to get the shield around the tight corner. He didn’t want to find another narvai-ub lair, but he knew the narvai-ub hunted on the surface. They were his best bet to finding his way out of the tunnels.

  Sohjos groaned when his arms scraped against the walls, but he didn’t seem to wake, so Thurl continued.

  With each intersection he was less certain of his way. Then, he came to an intersection with no scent at all. To his right he could smell the narvai-ub. He was fairly sure he would find a lair if he went in that direction. But, to his left he could smell the chill of frost.

  Thurl took the tunnel to the left, away from the narvai-ub. If there was a chance one of the tunnels could lead them back onto the surface, Thurl could pack his father in snow and ice and lower his temperature and slow his heart-rate and, maybe, hopefully, save his life. They would both have a better chance of survival on the surface, in the world they knew and understood.

  The exhaustion was overwhelming. Thurl’s legs ached. His back was a canvas of spasms and knots. Every breath he took was wet and thick. He was covered in mud; drenched in sweat. With every click the echoes were less distinct. With every grunt the information was more muddled.

  Thurl dropped to his knees, panting in gasps. He tried to push forward; to stand up; to move, but his legs were too weak; his chest was too heavy. He fell forward, face first, into a warm, wet puddle and slowly, unwillingly, Thurl’s mind lost control. He slipped into sleep; deep and unshakeable.

  CHAPTER fourteen

  He was chewing. Thurl could feel his stomach churn. There was something in his mouth, slipping down his throat. It felt like he was trying to swallow something too large; something not completely chewed.

  Thurl woke up, drenched in sweat. His whiskers and follicles were pasted to his skin; wet and heavy and coated in mud. His sinuses were clogged. He couldn’t feel the air; couldn’t breathe; couldn’t smell.

  He sat up and tried to click; tried to grunt. No sound came out. He reached his hands behind him, searching for the ground, the walls, his shield, his father. He found his spear pressed into the muck, stuck under his body where he fell onto the shaft.

  He reached up to his face. His mouth felt full; like his tongue was swollen; like it was stuffed with meat he’d forgotten to chew.

  When he touched his lips he found something between them. It was thick and scaled and covered in ooze. He reached both hands to his mouth and tried to pull the object out. It felt like an arm; and entire arm reaching into his mouth, down his throat, clogging his sinuses; but he could breathe around it; no, through it. He was breathing through it. It was breathing for him.

  He grasped the thing with both fists and followed the trail out of his mouth. It was long and cylindrical, wet and grotesque. It had a fan down one side, like a feather or fin. It had small fleshy paddles. It writhed in his grip. The thing was alive!

  Thurl jumped to his feet and dug his fists into the flesh. He could feel the pulse of the monster quicken in his grip. He pulled and yanked, trying to pry it out of his mouth. Somewhere inside him, the thing had claws. He could feel them razing the flesh in his throat; scratching and holding fast. It swelled in his mouth and triggered his gag reflex, making him swallow against his will.

  Panic was racing his mind. He ran a few paces, not sure where he was going. He tripped over his father, still asleep in the shield. Then he remembered his spear.

  Unable to click or grunt or echo, he dropped to the ground and felt around with his hands, slapping the mud like a child in the river.

  The creature was long as it stretched out of his mouth. It coiled on the ground, a long serpentine shape. Thurl fumbled his hands over the scales of its body, hunting for the spear but, instead, found its head.

  The thing had its tail in his mouth, down his throat.

  Its head was wider than the fat, round body; flattened and frilled. It lunged at Thurl, but the thing had no teeth. Its mouth was propped open with a baleen fan: long soft rows of close bone plates that filtered through the muck and the mud, feeding the beast, supplying Thurl with air and water.

  Thurl grabbed it by the head and squeezed. It coiled and writhed in violent spasms and suddenly, Thurl couldn’t breathe. It blocked his nostrils, his throat and windpipe and withheld the air until he let go.

  Thurl dropped to the ground, choked and dizzy, and dropped the head. He wanted to wretch; to vomit the thing up, but it held tight inside him, massaging his throat to make him swallow it down.

  Then, he stepped on the shaft of his spear. Slowly, carefully, trying to keep panic from taking him, he grabbed the spear and found the tip. He gently ran his hand down the creature, feeling each paddle and feathered fin, until he found its head again.

  When he touched the head, the beast swelled in his mouth, threatening to suffocate him. He didn’t panic. He raised the spear, and took a long slow breath, then held his lungs as he prepared to strike.

  Thurl grasped the head and swung it fast, hoping to startle and disorient the creature. Then, finding the tip of the spear, he thrust its head onto the sharpened blade.

  Blood and bile ran down his hand. The creature spasmed and choked him and writhed, coiling around his arms, his head; flexing and squeezing until Thurl dropped to the ground.

  Then, suddenly, it began to relax. Thurl could feel it dying inside him; could feel the pace of its heart slow in his grip. It shuddered and tensed, then drooped and fell still.

  Thurl tried to breathe, but the thing was drowning him. It had filled with blood as some sort of defense. He gurgled and gagged, retching against its scales. Again, he grasped it with both of his hands and tugged until it moved. This time, the claws had gone limp and released. He dragged the foul serpent out of his throat; out of his mouth and threw it on the ground.

  He took a deep breath. It was warm and wet and smelled of decay.

  Immediately, Thurl turned to his father. He tried to click, to grunt, but his mouth had been razed and torn with the scales. He reached down with his hands and felt his father’s face, hunting for a similar creature to kill.

  His father was fine. His mouth was closed. He breathed through his nostrils, unmolested by intruders. Just to be safe, Thurl pried open Sohjos’s mouth and reached his finger inside and felt around. Nothing. Just teeth and a tongue.

  Thurl grabbed the dead serpent and swung it over his head; slamming it against the walls of the tunnel; against the rocks and roots in the ceiling above; throwing it to the ground and stomping his feet; roaring and yelling in triumphant terror.

  Finally, he sat, exhausted, and cried.

  He’d been foolish to think he could rescue his father. He didn’t know if he was dead or alive, but this world underground was like some unending nightmare.

  He wanted to sleep and wake up at home. He pressed his head against his father’s chest, the way he had when he was little. He felt his st
omach churn. Then, he felt it wriggle.

  Something was still inside him. The damned thing had been giving birth!

  Wild frenzy gripped his heart and his head. He began shoving handfuls of mud in his mouth, trying to swallow to drowned the young beast, or trying to vomit the thing back out. His mind raced with horrors. He punched his own stomach. He grabbed for the spear, considering slicing himself open to let get the thing out.

  The more he thought about the serpent inside him, the more terrified and grotesque he felt until the mud and the muck began to come up.

  He vomited with violent, giddy fury. Bile and mud came out in chunks, and then, squirming like some enormous worm, the new-born serpent slithered out; then another; then a third, until seven writhing horrors slipped along the path before him.

  Thurl’s gut was wracked with pain. His throat was torn and bitten. He wretched and gagged and heaved long after he’d puked dry. When he was certain there was nothing inside him, he grabbed the wormy things and one by one, crushed their heads until nothing moved in the tunnel but him and his sleeping father.

  He pressed his back against the wall, panting and crying and balling his cramped, bloody fists. He slipped down the wall and sat next to his father.

  Sohjos was breathing in short, raspy breaths. His lungs sounded wet and clogged and sick.

  Thurl stood up, with tears streaming down his face. He grabbed the end of the rope tied to the shield and pulled until his father moved behind him.

  He pushed past the dead creatures, whatever they were, and trudged through the tunnels, depressed and alone, hoping that one day he would find a way out; but certain that soon, he and his father would both die, and no Racroft would ever know what had happened to them.

  CHAPTER fifteen

  He thought he smelled snow.

  He’d been walking in a slow, trudged delirium. He hadn’t eaten since before he found the narvai-ub lair. He hadn’t had anything to drink but foul, gritty mud. He didn’t know how many steps he had taken; didn’t know if he was moving upward or down. He just placed one foot before the next and kept going, mindless and unaware.

  The tunnel was becoming less wet. The walls were clay, not mud. They felt smooth to Thurl; deliberate; not dug by narvai-ub, but cut and carved by tools. Thurl wondered if he were walking into a trap.

  The air was colder up ahead, but the incline had been so slight, so gradual Thurl didn’t know how he could possibly be near the surface. He clicked and popped for clearer echoes, and they came back with ricocheting reverberations. Up ahead, there was a cavern, and it sounded immense.

  Thurl began running. The root gouged into his shoulder, rubbing the flesh raw and sawing through the muscle beneath, but he continued pulling the shield with the weight of his father atop it. He could sense a breeze ahead; could smell snow; could feel the welcome bite of chilled and frozen air.

  For the first time in unending days, Thurl felt the hope of survival.

  The tunnel opened into a fissure with a high ceiling; a tall, thin cavern created by a long-passed violence; a quaking tear that cleaved the rock and stood open to the void above. Far above, much further than Thurl could guess, the fissure reached the surface where snow was falling through. A snow bank held against one wall, slowly melting in the warmth of the rock, but retaining its chill with fresh falling snow.

  Thurl dropped the rope and ran to the snow. He pressed his face into the cool crystals; rubbed it on his sore, aching, sweat-covered skin. He pushed the shield against it and packed the snow around his father; lifting Sohjos’s head and putting snow in his mouth.

  Then, he chewed ice, let the water coat his mouth, and swallowed and gulped. It was like breathing again after holding his breath for far too long. He lay in the snow, and felt his heart rate slow; felt life return to his numb, swollen limbs.

  He faced the void above and clicked and grunted, wondering how far up the chasm went; how far he would have to climb to reach the surface; how he would get his father up to the top. A few clicks returned news he didn’t want to know.

  The fissure was deeper than any cavern Thurl had known. The ceiling was taller than the cavern that housed the Racroft village. The fissure was wide, but steep, and far too smooth for Thurl to climb. Racroft were not good climbers. The prey though hunted stuck close to the ground, so they never developed the skill or the need. Thurl was much deeper underground than he imagined.

  Thurl lay on his back in the snow bank, exhausted, defeated and lost. He put his hand on his father’s shoulder. Sohjos was cooling. His temperature was returning closer to normal. His breath was slower and measured. Still, he didn’t wake.

  At the far end of the fissure was another tunnel, just like the one he’d come through. He didn’t fear the narvai-ub following him. The tunnels had been carved too small and dug too tight for an adult narvai-ub to travel through. His real fear was the creatures that dug them. He listened for movement, or breathing, or heartbeats. He didn’t hear anything at either tunnel mouth. He didn’t smell anything other than sweat and stone and clay and mud.

  So, he made a bed of the snow bank, put his hand on his father’s arm, and let exhaustion overtake him.

  CHAPTER sixteen

  It was snowing. Thurl could feel the frost covering his body. He was outside, somewhere, but he couldn’t smell the brine of the sea.

  He began to curse his brothers. They were always playing tricks. He wondered if they had drugged him with uanna sap and carried him outside the village to sleep in the snow, like they once did to Tsirc. They didn’t even cover him with a chunacat pelt.

  Thurl grunted, to find out if any of them were hiding nearby. He listened for laughter and taunting and jeers. He sat up, then, suddenly, depressingly, he remembered where he was.

  Sohjos was still asleep in the shield beside him. Snow was falling through the crevice above. The rest of the fissure was exactly the way he had left it. There was no way to know how long he’d been asleep. He had never realized how important the scent of the sea was to the Racroft. Without it, he was lost; unable to determine day from night, North from South.

  Thurl pushed his face into the snow and rubbed it over his head. He was going to have to keep moving. Sohjos was still asleep; probably dying. He needed to get back home as quickly as possible.

  Thurl stood and stretched. He clicked to find the openings to the tunnels in each direction, and was confronted with an echo he didn’t expect.

  There was someone standing on the far end of the fissure. He could hear it breathing. It was one of the creatures. It smelled of warmth and sweat; not unlike a Racroft, but different; alien; dangerous. Slowly, the figure crouched behind a boulder.

  Thurl reached for his spear and wrapped his hands around it. It was too far to throw.

  The breathing was fast, but steady. Thurl thought it might be asleep.

  He crept off the snow bank. His whiskers bristled, feeling every movement of the air. He opened his nostrils as wide as they’d stretch. He rolled his feet so they didn’t slap against the stone. If the creature was asleep, unaware Thurl was awake, he might be able to position himself behind it.

  Sohjos rolled to his side and screamed out in pain as one of his open wounds pressed against the hard shield. The creature jerked and Thurl stood like stone.

  As quietly as possible, Thurl grunted. The creature was moving now. It sat up; grabbed some sort of stick. Thurl heard a strange sound, like wind through a narrow gap, and then a blast of warmth bloomed around the creature. It was holding a stick with the strange warm liquid clinging to the top, shifting and moving, like a waterfall upside-down.

  The creature moved slowly, creeping toward Sohjos. It was coming closer to Thurl. Thurl stood still, pressed against the rock wall of the fissure. When the creature was close enough, Thurl lunged forward.

  The creature leaped back, far faster than Thurl expected. It grabbed the end of Thurl’s spear and twisted the shaft, wrestling it from his grip until Thurl was unarmed. Thurl rushed toward it and g
rabbed the creature from behind. He held it tight; one arm around its waist to keep it from escaping; the other around its throat.

  “Who are you?” Thurl asked. He didn’t know why he was talking to it. He never talked to michau or lutzwock. This creature shouldn’t have been different from those animals, except this one used tools like the Racroft. He wondered if it had a language.

  The creature struggled in his grasp. It smelled like the sweet sap of amblewild and the thin bark of the supak reed, with just enough sharp tang to excite his nostrils and make his mouth water; just enough fragrant layers and mild sweat to race his heart and make his genitals tingle. The creature smelled good; like Oswyn in the early morning; like the women coming back from the warm stream after soaking the rocks, all wet and warm and sweet.

  Thurl held the creature, smelling it, trying to learn as much as he could from the scents; intoxicated by the lesson; distracted by the sensation.

  The creature struggled and brushed against his chest, his arms. Its flesh was smooth and soft and thin; delicate, like the flowering eytod; supple and exciting and rare.

  Thurl tightened his grip around the waist and the throat. The creature squealed.

  Suddenly, Thurl realized he was holding a girl!

  Out of surprise and embarrassment and confusion, Thurl let her go. The creature didn’t run.

  “What tribe are you from?” She asked. “I know all of the seven tribes but I don’t recognize you at all. You’re fat and hairy. You look like something totally different. Do you have a language, or are you livestock?”

  Thurl didn’t know how to answer. She had taken his spear, so he stood in front of her with his fists clenched. He could understand most of what she was saying. They clearly shared a common language. Some of her words sounded different, though; like the creature he’d met in the tunnels before; like the ones that fought the narvai-ub. And some of the words were gibberish; words without meaning like ‘hairy’ and ‘look’.