Orphan Tribe, Orphan Planet

by Jonathan Vick

  “The cavern is immense,” she said. “The ceiling must be millions of miles high.”

  “It’s not a cavern,” Thurl told her. “That’s the void. The Elders tell us it goes on forever. And there is another planet out there that passes us sometimes; smaller than ours. They say it controls the seas.”

  “What are the ‘seas’?” Iassa asked.

  “Where the water comes from,” he said.

  “All those little fires,” she said. “How many other villages must there be out there, looking back at us? I thought you said the Racroft were alone.”

  “I don’t know about any fires,” Thurl said. “Are there fires in the void?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “Millions of them. Everywhere. So many, I can see by their light.”

  Thurl didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t feel any warmth coming from them. All the warmth came from the center of the planet. There was nothing in the void.

  “We need rest,” he whispered.

  He wanted to run into the snow, whooping and screaming, that he’d conquered the underground and defeated the narvai-ub; that he’d rescued his father and was bringing him home; that he had survived and returned triumphant.

  But Iassa was frightened. She was a long way from home and facing the surface world for the first time; a terrain she’d never experienced. She was like Thurl was when he first entered the narvai-ub tunnels. She felt terrified and nervous and alone.

  It would have been easy to let her return home, but Thurl didn’t want to let her go.

  “My Father will do better now we are on the surface,” he said. “He has the cold and the snow to help him heal now. You can sleep here, just inside the tunnel, and I’ll guard the entrance. When you wake up, we’ll head for my village.”

  He pulled Sohjos toward the valley wall near the mouth of the tunnel. He tried to get him to drink some warmed snow. Sohjos opened his eyes. The cold was making him stronger.

  “Thurl?” He mumbled.

  “I’m here.”

  “Where am I?”

  “We’re on our way home,” said Thurl.

  “Good,” Sohjos whispered. “Good. Tell your Mother…”

  He closed his eyes without finishing his sentence. Thurl lifted Sohjos head, and his father drank all the snow Thurl had warmed. Thurl cracked an icicle off the overhang and rubbed Sohjos lips with it until the fallen warrior opened his mouth. Then, Thurl tucked the ice into Sohjos mouth, between the teeth and cheek.

  When he turned back to Iassa, she had found some eytod leaves to burn, and was building fire.

  Thurl picked up one of the leaves.

  “Eytod,” he said. “Don’t eat them. They’re poisonous. Chunacats like them. It’s why we can’t eat chunacat.”

  “Are they okay for the fire?” Iassa asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Thurl. “The scent might bring a chunacat. I guess we’ll find out.”

  Thurl stepped out of the alcove and puffed his chest in the cold breeze.

  He felt good to be out of the tunnels. His adventure would be legendary, if he survived long enough to get home. He knew he should feel exhilarated and accomplished like the heroes and gods in their legends. Mostly, though, he just felt exhausted; like he wanted to scream and celebrate and cry all at once. He wanted to be home, and there was still such a long journey before him.

  “What is your village like?” Iassa asked behind him.

  Thurl went back to her. She was shivering with cold. Thurl could feel the vibration of the air currents around her. He crouched beside her and she pressed her body into his. A warmth collected between them.

  “My village,” he said. “My village is the happiest place I know.”

  He sighed, then told her everything that came into his mind: the huts, the dais circles filled with piles of warming rocks, the river that came out of the mountain at the back of the cavern in a huge waterfall, the paths made of gravel and dried kanateed seeds. He told her about his brothers and sisters and his mother, and the warriors on the hunt team. He told her about Djinzon and Ciashi and Meisx. He told her about his brothers throwing him in the warming river, and about the mating huts, and mating season, and Oswyn, the girl who’d been chosen as his mate.

  Suddenly, Iassa stood up.

  “I’m warm enough,” she said, moving away from Thurl. “Maybe we need to sleep. My legs are sore and we have a long way to go.”

  She wrapped herself in the chunacat pelt near the fire and turned her back to Thurl.

  “There’s so much more to tell,” Thurl said.

  “I’ve heard enough,” Iassa snapped back. “Go to sleep, Thurl. You have a long journey to your village, and I have a long walk back home.”

  Thurl crouched near his father and listened to Iassa sleep. She seemed angry. He didn’t know why. She had asked him to talk about his village.

  Thurl crouched outside the tunnel, happy to feel the wind blowing against his skin and to smell the chill of the permafrost again.

  After a while, he fell asleep as well.

  CHAPTER twenty-two

  Iassa was squealing. It was a sound Thurl didn’t recognize. He was clicking before his mind knew he was awake.

  They were still beneath the overhang of the tunnel threshold. Sohjos was sleeping. Iassa’s fire was still shifting and leaping.

  Thurl jumped forward, searching the snows and skies for danger. There didn’t seem to be any.

  “What is it?” Thurl asked, afraid there might be a chunacat or fegion nearby, or another narvai-ub coming from below. For all he knew, Iassa had some special scent to warn her of narvai-ub.

  “The fires,” she said. “They’ve all shifted!”

  “What fires?” Thurl asked. He had no idea what she was talking about, but he was sorry he’d woken for it.

  “In the ceiling,” she said, excitedly.

  “The void,” he corrected.

  “Fine. The void. The fires have moved. I wish you could see them. There are millions of them. It’s just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “So, they shifted,” said Thurl. He went back to his place beside his father and squatted again.

  “Either the void is moving,” Iassa prattled, “Or we are! Our Learned-Ones always talked about fires in the ceiling shifting. They used to tell us stories of a surface world where the fires of other tribes on other worlds shifted and moved because our world was spinning in the lake of eternity.”

  Thurl scratched his ear.

  “Our Elders have a story like that,” he said, wanting to go back to sleep. “Doesn’t matter if they’re true. They don’t help me get home.”

  “It’s amazing, though,” said Iassa. “I wish you could see it. If the stories about the fires in the ceiling are right, then maybe the stories about the Giant Fire are true; the one that warmed the surface and brought light to everything.”

  Thurl checked his father. When he put his hand on Sohjos shoulder, the great warrior moaned and turned his head. He was getting better. It would take a long time, but Thurl was getting hopeful.

  “We don’t have stories like that,” Thurl said to Iassa. “We do have stories about Sol, the warming rock in the sky that melted the snow and pushed the seeds into weeds and the roots into grasses.”

  “What if the warming rock and the giant fire are the same thing?”

  “It would mean that our tribes share a common ancestor?” He said, feigning interest.

  “And it would mean that we all lived on the surface at one time,” said Iassa, clearly more excited than Thurl. “Can you imagine all of the seven – now eight, and who knows how many more – tribes living together on the surface?”

  Thurl grunted as his answer.

  They ate some strange tasting leaves from Iassa’s pack, and chewed on warm nuts she’d brought with her and warmed in her fire. Thurl tried to get Sohjos to eat, but the broken warrior was too delirious to cooperate. Thurl packed his father’s mouth with snow and let it melt so the Leader of the Hunt woul
d drink.

  Thurl could hear his world again. He hadn’t realized how quiet the tunnels were until he reached the surface. He was amazed at how many sounds there were: the wind over the snowbanks; the clicks and pops of small animals finding food, or mates, or home. He could hear the triple click of signie roosk somewhere in the mountains; the soft purrs of rinne grubbs nuzzling through the amblewild; the high-pitched howl of chunacats stalking prey.

  The strongest of the winds were blowing over the valley. Thurl knew if he could get into them, he’d be able to smell the sea, and from there he hoped he could find his home. Travelling underground had been unpleasant and miserable. The cramped, claustrophobic disorientation had been maddening. On the surface, Thurl began to feel confident he would reach his home again; see his brothers and sisters and mother; return the Leader of the Hunt to his village.

  Iassa talked about the fires in the void, and the legends of her village. She told him how scared she was of the surface, but that she wanted to meet the rest of the Racroft; wanted to return home with stories of the surface, and the fires in the void, and evidence of a new tribe.

  Thurl promised to protect her and teach her about his world, and when he did she spun around him so quickly he hadn’t time to register the movement. By the time the echoes reached him, Iassa was standing behind him, holding a dagger to his throat and pressing a short spear into his spine.

  “This is how you’ll protect me?” She taunted.

  “No,” Thurl taunted back.

  Slowly, he reached behind him and grasped her ankle. He pulled and stood and swung her in front of himself, so that she dangled, upside-down, over the snow.

  “This is how I’ll protect you,” he answered.

  “Put me down!” Iassa shrieked.

  Thurl tossed her into a soft snowbank. She sank into the powder, and struggled to wrestle herself back out.

  “We need to get out of the valley,” Thurl said, ignoring her battle with the drift. “Stay close to the valley walls. We don’t want a chantimer or fegion to think we’re prey. Stay directly behind me. It makes it easier to run if we are in a line. It helps minimize the vibrations; attracts less attention.”

  She attacked him from behind. He could feel her coming, pushing the air before her, and stepped aside, but she grappled him around the neck and pulled him to the ground. He rolled to his back and she climbed on top of him, straddling his wide chest, letting his whiskers and follicles brush against her legs.

  Slowly, she lay her body down over his and pressed her face against his own. Then, she put her lips against his ear and drew a long slow breath. He thought she was going to whisper something; some threat or warning; some angry taunt or ominous intimidation; or maybe something more sinister; some lithe and gentle supplication; a declaration of yearning. Instead, she stuck out her tongue and drooled slimy spittle into the folds of his ear.

  Thurl tried to jump up, to push her aside, but she held him down, giggling as she drooled, until she was done. Then, she stood over him and slowly walked away.

  Thurl dug his finger into his ear, trying to dry the crystalizing slobber. He clicked and grunted as she walked away, and bathed in the echoes of her fascinating shape as they washed back over him.

  “Ready to go?” She asked, holding her pack on her shoulder and pressing her warming stick into the fire.

  Thurl stood up and felt his heart pounding in his chest. It was a happy, exhilarating, painful sensation that seemed to steal his breath and scramble his thoughts. For a moment, he wondered what was wrong with him; hoped he hadn’t been bitten by some unknown insect while he slept; feared his time underground had driven him insane; wondered if, somehow, the Meson girl had infected him with some strange emotion; something he’d never felt before; something hidden and dangerous and forbidden and superb.

  He didn’t say anything; just wound the root-rope of his father’s sled around his shoulders and pressed out into the valley. Thurl tugged on the ropes and the sled moved more easily than it had in the tunnels. He began running, sucking crystalized air into his lungs, letting the cold breeze dry out his whiskers and follicles; dry out the saliva in his ear.

  He could hear Iassa running behind him. She was slower in the snow. Thurl adjusted his pace to keep her near. He liked listening to her pant and huff; liked catching the scent of her when the breeze shifted behind.

  CHAPTER twenty-three

  They ran for hours. Neither of them knew how long. Finally, Iassa called out that she couldn’t run any more.

  Thurl stopped and turned to her.

  She was hunched over, panting heavily.

  “This snow,” she wheezed. “It’s too thick. I’ve never seen it like this before. How do you just push through it like that? Now I understand why your legs are so thick.”

  Thurl sniffed for any scent of danger, and clicked and popped a few times. He didn’t think there were any creatures nearby.

  “We’ll camp,” he said. “Let’s get up against the ice wall, or try to find an alcove.”

  They walked along the wall for a while. The sled was harder to pull slowly. Without momentum, it wanted to sink into the snow.

  Finally, they found an overhang of rock tall enough for them to get beneath, and deep enough for them to be covered. Iassa found some small stones and made a stone circle in the snow. She pulled some amblewild and filled the circle, then pressed her torch into it until she had made another fire.

  Thurl was hungry. He wondered if there was some small game nearby; something he could hunt so they could eat.

  He clicked and grunted into the valley. In the echo that came back, he detected something coming over the ridge. The snow beneath Iassa lifted slightly, as the air currents pressed back beneath the weight of the creature.

  Without thinking, Thurl leaped forward and grabbed Iassa. He wrapped his arms around her and threw himself backward, nearly landing in the fire. Holding her tightly, he rolled them against the wall in the back-most part of their alcove.

  “What are you-“ Iassa struggled to say, but Thurl clasped his hand over her mouth.

  Before Iassa could see the enormous feathered beast, Thurl could smell it. The stench of fish and brine pushed before the chantimer on the disturbed air currents; the stink of thick feather oils and the pungent odor of the parasitic mites, as big as Thurl’s fist, attached to the bird’s flesh buried beneath the feathers.

  The chantimer swooped over the top of the ridge and circled just above the valley. It beat its wings and the snow blew over them, creating tornadic swirls in the drifts below. It opened its beak and let out the silent sonic blast that it used to hunt, a pitch so high that none of the Racroft could hear it, but all of them could feel as it rippled through the air.

  The sonic wave brushed over Thurl.

  “What is that thing?” Iassa whispered through his fingers.

  Thurl took his hand off her mouth and put a finger to her lips, hoping she would understand.

  As the chantimer circled the gorge, shooting sonic darts hunting for prey, Thurl crept to the wall near his father and grabbed his spear. He turned to face the chantimer, and popped off a volley of grunts for location. He stood behind Iassa, placed his hand on her back, and pulled her against the back wall next to Sohjos.

  “Stay here,” he whispered.

  As he stepped out from beneath the alcove, Iassa reached for her pack and took out the strung staff she called a ‘bow’. She threaded one of the small spears she called ‘arrows’ onto the string and scrambled over the snow to stand next to Thurl.

  Thurl wanted to shove her back; to yell at her for not staying with his father; to ask why she couldn’t trust that he knew more about the surface world than she did; to protect her, the way Sohjos had tried to protect him from the hunt. He didn’t get to do any of that.

  The chantimer flew a wide circle, lowered its head, opened the tri-split beak, and rushed toward them. It unfolded its talons and pointed them forward like daggers.

  Thurl dug his back fo
ot into the snow to brace himself, clicking as quickly as he could. Iassa pulled her arrow back as far at the tension would allow.

  Before the chantimer reached them, however, it drove its talons into the snow, and pulled out a tunneling rinne grubb. The grubb was half the size of Thurl, and writhed in the grip of the chantimer.

  Rather than flying off to deliver the grubb to its waiting chicks, the chantimer flew high into the air, then threw the grubb against the solid wall of the ravine.

  The chantimer wasn’t interested in Thurl or Iassa. It was focused on the grubb, which was fatter and tastier. The rinne grubb was young and hadn’t developed the hard exoskeleton that the adults wore. It was a perfect meal for the chantimer chicks.

  Thurl should have taken advantage of the chantimer’s distracted attention, and grabbed his father and ran down the ravine until he was out of range of the chantimer. But, Thurl was hungry, and exhilarated, and had a score to settle.

  He watched the chantimer fly back to the stunned and bruised grubb. It picked up the poor creature and flew into the air again. Iassa was back beneath the alcove, gathering her supplies, ready to flee.

  The chantimer dropped the grubb again. It fell against the ravine wall, so close Thurl could hear the skin split on the doomed creature. He could smell the grubb blood spilling into the snow.

  The chantimer was circling above, waiting for the grubb to die. Thurl ran to the fat, segmented worm and positioned himself between the grubb and the wall, crouching down and pointing his spear upwards.

  When the giant bird swooped down to grasp the grubb again, Thurl thrust the spear into the underbelly of the chantimer. The spear disappeared into the thick down and stuck between the hard quills. The chantimer sunk its talons into the grubb and lifted back into the air. Thurl tucked the spear beneath his arm and pulled, trying to untangle the tip so he could strike again. He felt his feet leave the snow. The spear didn’t budge.

  Then, he was flying beneath the chantimer. He could feel the cold wind brushing his follicles; could hear the echo of the mountains and the stillness of the skies and the whistle of the wind blowing over the tundra. Thurl was trapped, clinging to his spear beneath the chantimer, too high over the valley to drop to the ground and survive.