“Are you Racroft?” Thurl asked.
“I don’t know what that means,” she said.
“I’m Racroft,” said Thurl, uncertain how to explain. “It’s what I am. I’m not michau or narvai-ub or chantimer. I am Racroft.”
“Is that your name?”
“No,” said Thurl. “My name is Thurl. We are Racroft.”
“Oh, it’s your tribe!” The girl said. “The Racroft tribe. I’ve never heard that one before, and I know all the seven tribes.”
“Seven tribes?” Thurl was confused and amazed. The Elders talked of ‘tribes’ sometimes. They said there might be other groups like the Racroft, living in caves or beneath the mountains, but it had been hundreds of years – maybe thousands – since anyone outside the Racroft had been seen. Now, this girl was telling him there were seven tribes!
Sohjos bent his knee and tried to lift his leg. He groaned loudly, still not waking.
“I think your friend is hurt,” the girl creature said.
“He’s not my friend,” Thurl said. “He’s my Father.”
“Oh,” said the girl, then: “Oh, that’s why you were chasing us!”
Thurl clicked and discovered his spear was on the ground, just past where the girl was standing. For some reason, she’d thrown it down like it didn’t matter; like she could defend herself without it.
“What is your name?” He asked, trying to distract her.
“Iassa,” she said. “Of the Meson tribe.”
“How many of you are there?”
“How many in the Meson tribe?” Iassa asked. “I don’t know. Thousands. Why?”
“I mean, am I surrounded?” Thurl growled. “You’re the only one I can detect in this chamber. How many more are hiding behind the rocks?”
“It’s just me,” said Iassa. “I’m not even supposed to be here. If my father found out where I was he’d feed me to the narvai-ub.”
“What do you want with us?”
“Nothing,” said the girl. “I’ve never seen anyone like you before. I guess I just wanted to know more about you. Like, where do you come from? What are you doing here?”
“I’m not talking to you,” mumbled Thurl. “You’re just trying to distract me so the others can attack.”
“There are no others,” the girl insisted.
Neither of them seemed to know what else to say. They stood, facing one another, breathing. Thurl could still smell her and didn’t know how he had missed the scent before.
“What about your Father?” Iassa finally asked. “What happened to him?”
“Our hunt team was attacked by narvai-ub. He was taken. I came after him.”
“We have healers in our village,” said Iassa.
“I’m not going back,” said Thurl. “I have to get him home.”
“Okay,” the girl said, backing away a few steps. “Where is home?”
“I don’t know,” Thurl growled. “I don’t even know where I am. I have to get out of these tunnels to know how to get home.”
“What’s wrong with your eyes?” Iassa asked.
“Nothing,” said Thurl.
“They’re white. Are you blind? Can you see?” She was waving her hand in front of herself. Thurl didn’t know what she was talking about, but he knew how to use the distraction.
He dove forward into the mud, grabbing his spear and rolling onto his back, wielding it in front of him. Iassa stepped aside and back a few paces to allow him to pass.
He grunted and popped and let go a volley of clicks to get full bearings on the situation.
Calmly, without fear or anger, Iassa said, “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Thurl spat.
“Okay,” said Iassa. “I’m not afraid of you, either. If I was going to kill you, I would have done it when you were sleeping. So, now you know I’m not planning to kill you.”
“I’m harder to kill than you think,” said Thurl.
“And easier than you think,” Iassa said. “I can help you get out of the tunnels, but you’re going to have to calm down or this just isn’t going to work.”
Thurl lay on his back for a few moments, holding the spear in front of him, weighing his options.
“I’m faster than you,” said Iassa. “And I have better weapons. If I wanted to hurt you, there is no way you could stop me. But, I don’t want to hurt you. Besides, if I hurt someone from a brand new tribe, Akthu would kill me! Now there are eight known tribes! If I can prove you exist, I’ll probably get a festival named after me!”
“I’ll make you a deal,” snarled Thurl from the mud. “You help me get my Father home – alive – and I’ll go back to your village with you to prove we exist.”
Iassa was silent. Thurl grunted to make sure she hadn’t moved. Finally, she said: “Deal. Do you want me to help you up?”
“I can do it,” said Thurl, but he didn’t. He wanted the help; wanted the girl to touch him again.
CHAPTER seventeen
Thurl explored the entire fissure. The snow continued to fall from above, and the wind screamed through the hole in the ceiling. Boulders and stones littered the floor, but the ground felt solid and stable. Higher up, tucked into an outcrop in the wall, a long abandoned signie roosk nest rotted. There was a collection of bones in the center of the chasm: hinx and fegion and chunacat, all tangled together where they fell and died; broken and splintered and picked clean of the meat by derwigs and polysod bugs.
The girl seemed to be telling the truth. She was alone in cavern. Thurl found no evidence of any other creatures.
When he was satisfied, Thurl went back to her and sat against the rock.
Iassa had hidden a large pelt sack . Inside, she had packed enough meat for days, and water and rope made of deep roots from long dead trees. Together, they tied the rope to the shield. It was longer and stronger than the roots Thurl had been using. He could pull the shield without hitting his heels, and wrap the root around both his shoulders to use his chest for pulling.
They ate some sort of meat Thurl had never tasted and chewed on a sweet root Thurl had never eaten. Iassa bathed the meat in the liquid that clung to the top of her warming stick before eating it. Thurl tried it, but the meat was too warm and tasted strange. He didn’t like it. The rest of the meat was good. Iassa said they had stolen it from the narvai-ub. She said they let the narvai-ub do the hunting for them. She’d never been to the surface before.
Thurl tried to get Sohjos to eat, but the warrior wouldn’t let anything be put into his mouth. He was delirious and combative and afraid. Finally, they were able to pack some lumps of snow in his cheeks. Racroft could go a long time without food, but without water they would die.
“Did the Muson carve all these tunnels?” Thurl asked after they had eaten.
Iassa wrapped up the remaining meat and put it into the pack.
“Some of them,” she answered. “Some of them were hollowed out by other animals. You’d be surprised how many creatures dig tunnels big enough for us to walk through.”
“Other animals?” Thurl was amazed. “How many creatures live underground?”
“Hundreds. Maybe thousands,” Iassa said.
“But you know how to get to the surface,” said Thurl.
“I can probably find a way,” Iassa shrugged. “I’ve never been to the surface. We don’t leave the caves and tunnels. It isn’t safe up there. And it’s cold. And dark.”
“What is ‘dark’?” Thurl asked.
“You know,” said Iassa. “Without light.”
“’Light?’” Asked Thurl.
“Have you always been blind?”
Thurl sighed, exasperated by the language barriers.
“We share many similar words,” Thurl told her, “But you use too many words I don’t know. We’ve rested long enough, I think. I need to get my Father home.”
He stood up, clicked a few times, and began packing Sohjos in fresh snow.
Ia
ssa put all her supplies back into the pack.
“This tunnel doesn’t go to the surface,” she said. “The only tunnels I know that go all the way to the surface are made by the narvai-ub. We’ll have to find one of their deserted passages.”
“You’re coming with me?” Thurl asked.
“I said I would,” she answered.
“You said your father would miss you,” said Thurl.
“He thinks I’m on a hunting mission,” Iassa answered. “We’ve only been gone a few days. He won’t know I’m missing for weeks to come.”
Thurl tucked his spear under his arm and wrapped the root-rope over his shoulders.
Iassa stuck her arms through two loops on her pack and picked up her warming stick. Pressing it in front of her, she began leading Thurl back through the tunnel he had travelled to get there.
As they walked, Iassa talked. She reminded Thurl of Oswyn and his sisters, even his mother back home. She was different and strange, almost from another world, but she was also very much the same. Thurl felt better with her, less alone.
“The seven known tribes,” she chattered on, “were discovered by our ancestors a long time ago. At one time, we all lived together on the surface; before the fires went out and we were forced into darkness. That was when the tribes split up. A lot of them were wiped out completely; some of them by the cold and the dark; some of them by wild animals; some of them by other tribes. But the ones who survived moved into the caves, and then, eventually, deeper under the ground. The closer we dig to the core of the planet, the warmer it gets. That’s why we don’t all freeze. There are caverns below our village that are so warm we need protection; so vast it rains inside them. That’s where the Meson farmers grow all their trees and plants that feed us.”
Thurl was barely listening. He couldn’t understand most of what she was talking about, so he pressed his shoulders in to the rope and tried his hardest to keep up.
Iassa was smaller and fleeter and fast. It didn’t take long before Thurl realized he was lost. He could hear Iassa ahead of him, chattering nonsense. Every time she turned down an intersection, she had to wait for him to catch up.
Hours passed; maybe days; maybe weeks. Thurl was covered in sweat and mud; panting and dehydrated and dizzy with exhaustion.
Finally, they entered a large chamber where the air swirled cooler and Thurl felt he could breathe.
CHAPTER eighteen
“There used to be a family of narvai-ub who lived here,” Iassa said when Thurl had caught up.
They were standing in a hollow chamber; a cavern carved out of the clay. There was a pit dug in the center of the cavern; empty except for bones. Huge tunnels led in several directions on all sides of the lair. There were broken egg shells littered across the floor; ancient and crumbling and worthless. The chamber smelled of bygone meat and the musk of decaying plants.
“We don’t know what happened to them,” Iassa continued. “Usually, they mate in three’s, with the two females hunting and the male remaining in the lair to protect the larvae, but when we found this one, no narvai-ub showed up. We killed the larvae, of course, but it has been empty ever since. I don’t know what kind of creature can kill an adult narvai-ub, but I don’t want to meet it.”
“Which passage will take us to the surface?” Thurl asked.
“I don’t know,” said Iassa. “Like I said, I’ve never been to the surface before. But I assume all of them would, eventually. The narvai-ub hunt on the surface.”
Thurl dragged the shield further into the cavern and tried to press it against a wall. Iassa ran toward the center pit, as Thurl clicked loudly and ran toward the closest tunnel mouth. He stood in the center of the opening and took deep breaths into his nostrils, sniffing the air deeply for hints of snow or wind or the brine of the sea. He only smelled mud and decay.
He ran back to Sohjos and knelt next to him. He pressed his hand over his father’s heart. It was still packed with snow, but most of it had melted. His Father was holding a cool temperature, and he was breathing slowly and evenly. Thurl didn’t know how much longer he could survive in the unmeasurable warmth of the tunnels. He needed to reach the surface; needed to get him home.
Iassa handed Thurl a bladder filled with water. The water was warm and made him feel worse, but he drank it anyway. He needed it. Then, he lifted his father’s head, and poured the water into his mouth. Sohjos swallowed, but didn’t speak. He raised his hand, like he was reaching for something, then let it fall limp again.
“Is he still alive?” Asked Iassa.
“He’s asleep,” Thurl answered.
“It’s so hard to tell with eyes that don’t close,” she said.
Thurl didn’t understand, so he ignored her comment.
“I can’t get him to wake up,” he went on. “He’s been like this since the attack.”
“What happened to him?” Iassa asked.
She was handing Thurl some kind of leaf filled with seeds. It smelled strange; not bad; just different. She pushed it to his lips.
“You eat it,” she said. “Our farmers grow it. It’s food.”
Thurl took a bite. The seeds fell out of the leaf in his mouth and rolled around his teeth and tongue. It tasted like deep roots and soft, chewy bark. It was good; surprisingly good. Better than any plaka or kanateed Thurl ate at home. He swallowed, took another bite, and explained Sohjos’s injuries to Iassa.
He told her about the narvai-ub attack; how he chased the beast and ended up in the lair. He told her about the underground hunt team, and his encounter with one of her fellow hunters.
He checked on Sohjos, dug under the melting snow to feel if the wounds were healing.
“He’s not getting better,” he finally said. “He needs to get home to our healers.”
Thurl ran to the nearest large tunnel mouth and stood in the center of the threshold, sniffing the air, tasting the scents. More mud and roots; more stale warm air; more rot and death and decay. From one tunnel to the next, he repeated his routine. Until he heard an odd sound echoing down a threshold he hadn’t examined yet.
It was a hard rattling, like an enormous bowl of empty seed shells clattering together as they scattered on the rocks.
Thurl turned and clicked a few times to discover Iassa’s whereabouts. She was standing on the lip of the center pit. She was looking down into the hole, pressing her warming stick down into the opening.
“Do you hear that?” She shouted to him.
“Yes,” Thurl answered. “I think it’s coming from this tunnel. Doesn’t sound like narvai-ub.”
“I can hear it at the bottom of this pit, too, but I can’t see anything,” Iassa said.
“What does ‘see’ mean?” Thurl finally asked. He didn’t get an answer.
The sound was suddenly much louder. Thurl began backing up, stepping slowly, clicking and grunting in rapid succession. Something was coming down the shaft; some shifting, rolling, amorphous shape. Whatever it was, it was everywhere; on the ground, the walls, the ceiling of the tunnel, clattering and chattering with a deafening sound.
Thurl ran to his father, shouting to Iassa: “What is it?! What’s making that noise?”
He wrapped the root-rope around his shoulders and pulled the shield out of the mud, back toward the small tunnel they had entered the cavern through.
Iassa was still standing on the edge of the central pit, waving her warming stick over the hole. Something small climbed out of the void and raced across the lip toward her; some small, insignificant insect.
“Barrasc,” Thurl heard Iassa whisper to herself. Then, she was running for the same tunnel Thurl was running toward.
“Barrasc swarm!!” Iassa shouted, waving her arm over her head, swinging the warming stick all around her.
Behind her, the abandoned lair was a nightmare of movement and noise. The insects were filling the cavern, streaming from multiple tunnels at once, crawling up out of the central pit, clattering over one another until the room undulated impending
death.
Iassa and Thurl entered the tunnel together. Thurl pulled his father down the shaft, trying to get him away from the cavern. Iassa immediately began grabbing grasses and roots that protruded from the walls and ceiling of the tunnels. She ripped them out in giant handfuls and threw them into a pile in front of the opening.
“Make a fire!” She screamed at him, nonsensically.
“What?!” Thurl shouted back. “I don’t know what that means!”
“Just pile up any roots you can find!”
Thurl’s hands were larger than Iassa’s, so he was able to pull much larger roots from the walls. They built a sizeable pile in the mouth of the tunnel, filling the gap as high as they could, stretching almost the entire width and reaching to nearly their shoulders.
Then, Iassa touched her warming stick to the pile, and the strange clinging liquid oozed onto the roots and grasses. It grew in size and warmth until Thurl had to drag his father further down the tunnel; had to get himself away from the painful, cracking heat.
Behind the wall of roots, the clattering noise got louder.
“What is that noise?” Thurl shouted.
“Barrasc swarm,” Iassa said, keeping her body toward the tunnel opening, waving the warming stick in front of herself.
“What’s a barrasc swarm?”
Before she could answer, a wave of insects clattered around the threshold of the tunnel. They hugged the walls and ceiling, avoiding the clinging liquid and writhing through the gaps. There were thousands, maybe millions, with millions more behind.
They were unlike any insect Thurl knew on the surface; unlike the derwigs and polysods that lived in the tranik vine; or the rinne and grull beetles that foraged on the plains. These barrasc had hard exoskeleton shells and sharp, pointed legs that clicked together as they moved. Each one had a set of pinchers below a gnarled and jagged mouth, and a curved, spiny tail that housed a fist of projectile stingers. They weren’t very large – not larger than Thurl’s thumb – but what they lacked in size, they made up in numbers.
Thurl was clicking and grunting, trying to guard Sohjos behind, swinging his spear in front of him, smashing as many insects as he could hit. They would fly through the air, but didn’t crack or break when they landed. Their exoskeletons were too thick. They simply rolled over and continued coming.
Orphan Tribe, Orphan Planet Page 10
