Orphan Tribe, Orphan Planet

by Jonathan Vick

  The chantimer flew in several tight circles, deciding where to drop the grubb again. As it did, Thurl clicked and listened, trying to find his path home. It didn’t take him long to realize the ravine where he’d left Iassa and his father was simply the far end of the Valley of Corpses: the Racroft hunting valley, far deeper than any hunting team had ever gone. Suddenly, Thurl could smell the sea, and the familiar echoes of the mountains he knew from home came back to him.

  He wanted to return to the land; to tell Iassa and his father that he knew how to get them home, but the chantimer seemed to have decided the grubb was lifeless enough, and began flying away from the ravine; up, over the ledge and toward some faraway nest.

  The hunting ground was immense, and though the chantimer was large, it took a long time flying against the hard, cold, strong wind, carrying the grubb and Thurl, to wherever it had nested. It felt like hours passed with Thurl dangling beneath the fowl beast.

  Thurl grunted and clicked, trying to remember every rock and drift and cliff so he could return to Iassa and Sohjos. He was too high up to let go and drop to the ground, and the chantimer was too large, and flying too quickly for him to force it down.

  He had only been to the hunting ground one time, and he’d been following the hunt team then. He hoped he would be able to find it again when the chantimer finally landed. Soon, he recognized the thick tranik vine below; the same one the hunt team had followed around the mountainside toward the hunting ground. Then, he recognized the chantimer nest where he’d made a fool of himself, and was nearly killed. Then, he realized he was riding the same chantimer he’d fought with on that horrifying hunt.

  Thurl’s heart began to race, pounding in his chest like the footsteps of a fleeing chunacat.

  He didn’t think the chantimer knew he was tangled in the quills and hiding in the down. As they approached the nest, the chantimer dropped the grubb again. It bounced off the tranik vine and rolled toward the nest.

  Thurl could hear the chantimer chicks mewling for food. Their beaks clattered together as they opened and closed them, and they whined long, high-pitched chirps that sounded like crying Racroft babies.

  The chantimer softly landed on the tranik vine. Thurl let go of his spear and dropped onto the hard bark of the vine. This time, he positioned himself downwind, and stayed away from the nest ridge.

  The chantimer dropped the grubb in the nest and the chicks attacked it with snapping, noisy violence.

  Thurl could slip away, silently and crawl off the tranik vine. He thought he could probably get to the hunting grounds from memory, and then he would have to cross it to find his father and Iassa. It could take him days. Iassa didn’t understand the world outside of her tunnels, and Sohjos was helpless.

  Thurl knew he didn’t have time to run back to find them. He was closer to the Racroft village than to the Valley of Corpses where he’d left Sohjos and Iassa.

  In the nest, Thurl could hear the squish of the grubb as the chicks tore into the flesh. There was enough noise bouncing off his surroundings that Thurl was able to get near perfect information.

  The chantimer chicks were taller than Thurl, but not by much. Their feathers were still fuzzy and weak. They wouldn’t be able to fly yet for weeks.

  The adult chantimer was far taller, with sharp bristles for feathers and a long neck that ended in the hideous, triple split beak. There didn’t seem to be a distinct head; just the long neck and that gnashing beak. They had extremely sensitive hearing to help them find prey beneath the snow, but Thurl couldn’t detect any ears.

  The adult still had Thurl’s spear lodged between the quills just below the legs. She didn’t seem to notice it was there. Thurl needed to get it back.

  He could smell the disemboweled grubb as the chicks tore it to pieces. Racroft didn’t eat grubb. Their taste was bitter and they smelled foul. Yet, as the rancid stench of the dead grubb drifted around him, Thurl wondered what they would taste like if their flesh was cooked over fire.

  He hid behind an empty shell from the hatched chicks, just like he had done when he was with the hunt team; like he had done on the narvai-ub lair.

  His mind raced with plans of attack; routes of escape; dreams of ridiculous heroics he could never achieve. His heart raced with fear. His mouth went dry.

  He thought about Iassa, alone in the cold with his father. She would suddenly find herself caretaker to a warrior she didn’t know, in a terrain she didn’t understand. Thurl wondered if she was stay with Sohjos at all. She would probably leave him and backtrack to the caves that took her home.

  The sharp tri-tipped beak was suddenly swinging around. Thurl had forgotten to keep upwind. The breeze had shifted and Thurl forgot to shift with it. Now, the adult chantimer knew he was there, and was swinging her long neck around to attack.

  Without his spear or shield, Thurl was defenseless. He remembered the last time this same chantimer had attacked and he’d been trapped beneath her talon. It took the entire hunt team to rescue him that time. This time, he was alone.

  The beak snapped just over his head, missing him by inches.

  Thurl ducked, and ran toward the chantimer, trying to get between her talons and retrieve his spear.

  She lifted one of her talons, meaning to bring it down on him like before. Thurl changed direction abruptly, running the width of the tranik vine and grasping a length of the rope-like vein that ran all along the surface of the vine. It pulled away in his hands, and Thurl slid down the side of the immense foliage, dragging the vein with him.

  He pressed into the snow that banked against the tranik vine. He could have run, hoping the chantimer would be too busy with her chicks to follow. Instead, he pulled on the vein until it caught tightly enough to hold his weight, and he climbed back up.

  He reached the top, standing next to the nest. The chantimer was distracted by her screeching, mewling chicks jabbing their thin heads into the writhing, dying rinne grubb. Thurl took advantage of the surprise. He lunged toward her, past the dining chicks, and grasped his spear still wedged in her quills.

  He tugged but the spear wouldn’t budge. The chantimer tried to turn around to face him, lifting her giant talons. Thurl held on, turning with her. When she stopped, Thurl pressed his feet flat on the vine, recoiled his thick, powerful legs, and thrust the spear upward, deeper into the quills. He felt it touch the soft flesh and stabbed as hard as he could. The shaft of the spear disappeared in the tangle of hard quills. Thurl continued to push until both the spear and his arm were buried in the quills to his shoulder. Soon, they both ran with thick, warm blood.

  The chantimer was screeching, stomping her talons and whipping her beak to find Thurl. He drew his arm out of the quills and raced for the edge of the vine, where he’d left the dislocated vein. He fumbled for it, laying himself flat as the chantimer swung her beak over him. She was howling in pain. Her chicks didn’t seem to notice, thoroughly engrossed and engorged in the dead grubb.

  Thurl braced the rope-like vein over his shoulders. It settled into the raw, torn trenches the root-rope had dug from pulling the sled. He wanted to scream out in pain and anger and frustration. Instead, he ran directly toward the chantimer, dragging the vein behind him. She was stomping her talons and snapping her beak. Thurl ran straight, not ducking or dodging or wavering in his purpose. He ran between her legs and cut left quickly, encircling one of her legs, then the other and pulled them both toward the center.

  The chantimer was tripped off balance. She spread her enormous wings and tried to take flight. She got high over Thurl’s head when the vein, wrapped around her legs, caught hard on the tranik vine. The chantimer spun in the air, out of control.

  Thurl grabbed the taut vein and wrapped it around his arm. He pulled on it as hard as he could, dragging the chantimer out of the sky, forcing her to flail and wail in the cold, bitter wind.

  She screeched and pecked at the vein, flapping her wings harder to free herself from the woody vine and the Racroft below. Thurl played with her, tug
ging against her progress and laughing in the wind.

  Suddenly, the chantimer took a new tactic. Instead of flying away, she turned and flew directly toward Thurl, her sharp tri-split beak cutting through the air like a spear.

  Thurl didn’t have time to click or grunt. He knew she was coming by the change in the air currents. The pressure pressed his follicles hard against his flesh and he could feel her rushing through the air toward him. When the chantimer was close enough to reach him, Thurl leaped aside, letting the long, wicked beak shoot past him.

  He looped the wooden vein down around the neck of the chantimer and leaped for her wing, just moments before it would have clipped his body and thrown him off the tranik vine. He clambered up the wing, toward her back to get behind her long neck; behind her beak where she couldn’t reach him. He wanted to slip down her slick feathers and land on the ground as she raced away from him, but the vein wrapped around his wrist caught him hard and he stuck.

  The chantimer beat her immense wings. The tips of the feathers touched the tranik vine, then the ground, as the pressure of the wind beneath her compressed into a deafening thickness, and drove her back into the sky. Another rapid beat of her wings and she shot upward, straining against the woody vein until it split and tore and trailed behind her - a broken rope still wrapped around her talons, her legs, her neck and Thurl.

  Thurl clicked, popped and grunted, trying to find his bearings, to get purchase on the world as it slipped below him. He was able to recognize the cliff sides of the mountain; the seas in the distance; the bristlewind fields further away. Then, he caught the echo from the valley that took him into the hunting grounds where he had left Iassa and Sohjos.

  The chantimer twisted and writhed in the sky, trying to shake him from her back; trying to unwrap the woody vein from her body.

  Thurl grabbed the vein more tightly and pulled it against her neck until she turned the direction he was pulling. He flew her toward the Valley of Corpses; toward the hunting grounds. The chantimer had taken him away from his father, and Thurl was going to make her take him back.

  CHAPTER twenty-four

  In the valley below, along a high snow piled wall, Thurl detected movement. He tugged the vine to make the chantimer turn so he could get above the moving thing; so he could smell it and investigate more. He’d already found dozens of creatures in the valley: fegion and michau, hinx and chunacat, lutzwock and signie roosk and rinne grubbs. None of them had been his father. None of them had been Iassa.

  The smelled the air above the moving thing, hoping for enough scent through the stench of the chantimer to identify it. He could smell a rinne grubb but it smelled long dead. Thurl grunted and popped. There was a carcass below, but it seemed hollow; disemboweled.

  Thurl directed the chantimer closer, and the chantimer reluctantly followed.

  The rinne grubb was an adult; about as tall as Thurl, and longer than it was tall. Its segmented body had a hard exoskeleton, which made the adults unwelcome prey. Even the fegions tended to leave them along. But, this one was dead. Its guts were exposed, lying in the snow a long way from its body. Then, Thurl could smell Racroft. He could smell Sohjos nearby.

  Thurl pressed the chantimer’s head down to make her land. It flopped into the snow, panting and heaving. Its legs were still tethered by the vine, making it impossible for the bird to stand, to gain traction and altitude to take flight again.

  Thurl leaped off the creature’s neck, still wrapped around the waist by the vine that tethered her to him.

  His father was there, be Thurl couldn’t find him. Thurl could hear his father breathing, his breath echoing as if he were inside a stone cavern. The circle of stones was still there, but empty. The fire had disappeared. Iassa was also gone.

  Thurl ran toward the sound of his father’s breath, growling curses at Iassa for abandoning him there, dodging limp attempts by the chantimer to stab her beak into him as he ran. Before he could find Sohjos, he could hear the old warrior straining to whisper a warning.

  “Narvai-ub,” Sohjos was choking to say. “Narvai-ub!”

  Thurl spun around, clicking and grunting, searching for the creature Sohjos was warning about. There might be nothing out there, he thought. It could be a hallucination or a nightmare. His father had been through a harrowing journey and wasn’t fully recovered.

  Then, he could smell it. There was a stinging scent on the wind that smelled of the tunnels below and the stinking breath of narvai-ub.

  Suddenly, the chantimer cried out and pulled hard against the vine still tied to its neck; still wrapped around Thurl’s waist.

  The hole that opened in the snow beneath the chantimer was so enormous that Thurl first thought the entire world had been split like a kanateed seed popping on a warming rock. Somehow, through its own exhaustion and the gripping bind of the vines around its feet, the chantimer took flight, barely escaping the jaws of the disgusting creature as it burst through the snow. Thurl was yanked off his feet and hoisted into the air by the terrified chantimer; by the vine still wound around his waist.

  Thurl clutched his spear, reaching for the tether that bound him to the bird, trying to detach himself before he was too far from the ground; before the chantimer could fly too far from where Sohjos lay.

  As the chantimer rose from the valley, Thurl heard the crack of splitting air. A thin spike of stone and root-wood cut over his head, and lodged itself in the breast of the panicked chantimer. The bird screeched and lunged toward the attack. Another spike tore through the wind and caught the chantimer in the neck. Her wings lost their rhythm and she began to tumble out of the sky.

  Below, Thurl could still hear the narvai-ub gnashing its jaws, hunting for the meat it had surely smelled.

  Another screaming whistle of wind as a third spike shot through the air, and the chantimer was caught in well of its throat. Blood spurted through the air, and the shriek of the bird became a hollow, gurgling whistle.

  Thurl crashed to the ground, the snow collapsing beneath him. He rolled, trying to push himself out of the way as the dying chantimer fell toward him. The chantimer never reached the ground.

  The narvai-ub leaped from its underground cavern, using the coiled segments of its long body to launch itself at its prey. It opened its jaws and clamped down on the chantimer, nearly devouring the winged menace at once.

  Thurl rolled toward the valley wall, getting to his hands and knees and crawling toward his father.

  The narvai-ub hit the ground with a quaking force, shaking the crust so violently that Thurl pressed his body into the snow to keep from falling over. Snow drifts cracked and rumbled and portions of the valley walls began to fall in on themselves. The shock thundered over the ground, through the air; shook the mountains until the mountains relented. Slowly, the blankets of snow shifted, slipped and began to advance on the valley.

  “Thurl!” The shout came from somewhere overhead, followed by a rhythmic crunching of snow and breathless panting.

  Iassa was running along the top of the valley walls, launching arrows at the narvai-ub as it spun its outer teeth to dig back under the ground with its prey. Thurl was happy to see it go, until the vine tightened around his waist; until he realized he was still tethered to the chantimer.

  “Thurl, your spear,” Iassa was shouting against the whirling, whipping wind. “Cut the vine!”

  Thurl’s spear was tucked under his arm, still entwined in his fingers. With desperation, he wedged the flat edge of the blade between his stomach and the vine. He could already feel himself being pulled through the snow toward the stench of the narvai-ub and the dying chantimer. He twisted the spear until the sharp stone edge pressed between the wood of the vine and meat of his own flesh. He began to saw.

  The narvai-ub had burrowed into the hard, frozen crust faster than Thurl could perceive. The scents and echoes were already disappearing down a fresh hole. Thurl twisted and sawed and ripped through the vine, bleeding from his own gut, writhing in his self-inflicted pain, until the
tether was loose enough for him to begin sliding it down toward his legs. He had stabbed himself a dozen times with the tip of the spear; sliced his own flesh until the muscle steamed, exposed to the frigid air. The cold and panic kept him from feeling it. Finally, the vine split and Thurl crawled out of its grip.

  He could hear it dragging along the snow until it reached the lip of the narvai-ub tunnel, and then fell silent as it slipped below.

  Thurl flipped onto his stomach and scrambled toward the valley wall. He left a trail of warm, stinking blood on the powder of the snow behind.

  Not far in the distance, he could hear an avalanche rolling down the mountainside, crumbling toward the open valley just waiting to be filled. All around him he could feel the blasts of wind as the walls of the valley lost their integrity and collapsed.

  “Father!” Thurl shouted into the wind.

  He listened for moans or for breath or for movement. He could hear little more than the rushing cacophony of crashing mountains and falling snow. The scents were just as complex: cold and sweat and amblewild and narvai-ub and the blood of the chantimer and the blood of himself and the bowels of the rinne grubb.

  Iassa was still running along the crest of the wall, either running away or hunting for a place to descend back into the valley. The banks were fragmenting beneath her steps and she moved away from the edge.

  Thurl got to his feet and stumbled toward the valley wall, searching for shelter, or a cave entrance; anything to shield him from the oncoming avalanche. He clicked and grunted, trying to find his way until he stumbled on a carcass pressed against the wall. The thick exoskeleton of the adult rinne still smelled of blood and bile. The bone-like segments were still held together with cartilage and sinew. Further up the valley, Thurl could smell the ripe and rancid stench of the disemboweled rinne; its contents dragged up the valley and buried a long distance away.