vOYAGE:O'Side

by Francis Kroncke

CHAPTER 2

  Until Brok, Frak boasted that he had walked all about the world as the kin knew it. From treks with his kin hunting into the deep warmth where the sipping-sweet wet was itself warmer and blue like the sky, up to the high hills with the magical white spider-web wet which when cupped in his hands melted into a tiny pool for him to lap. There they had found a great silent wet which was hard, but they feared to tread upon it...they did not try to lick it, for it appeared to them like a cleverly camouflaged snare they themselves would set for the larger animals, those it took more than two men to down, he with his spear and they with their rocks. This hard wet, hard like kicking a two kin heavy rock, stuck to them when they touched it...Magx the Wiz said, “Harj shad wet!”

  Harj shad wet made them see themselves as the small animal tethered to a rock used as bait, this all understood, and so they never touched the harj shad wet.

  Harj shad—not only was this wet different—Magx cracks a large, thick piece, throws a skin over it, hefts it up in his arms!...Magx’s magic Grok! strength—but just everything was different. The land about was dead, the air like a twig snapping against your cheeks, no trees, no flowers, a bit of grass...very tiny clumps under masses of white spider-web. Then—Roar!— a harj beast magically appeared, so it seemed to them, rising up out of the white spider-web. Frak had never confronted anything as different, as alien, as horrifyingly scary as this harj creature—even big big big big no-no did not describe it fully. It was as long and huge as a two harj bars but with a spider-webbed wet pelt which made it hard to see until right on top of it—and Frak had stepped right on top of the beast! The harj beast roars and snarls while standing to a three kin height, in doing so flips Frak high into the air, casting him twenty hands away. The harj beast growls and snorts, sets everyone else screaming and frantically in flight. Even Magx hobbled away, somewhat magically vaulting with his staff over rocks and fallen kin, moving faster than all others. Frak scrambles to his feet and lurches, attacks: why, how, when? These do not have to be answered for it was the swift killing which was the answer—a mad, reckless, insane, blind-eyed rush into that roaring mountain, anger of spider-web harj beast...flailing, flashing his tusk-knife...slicing upward striking heart, thrusting his short hardwood spear right through its left eye. All was astoundingly over more quickly than it had begun.

  From that day, Frak’s world and status forever changed. The kin told his tale around the shad's fire, about harj big no-no shad Frak! No one else could claim that name! No one ever then dared to challenge his leadership of the kin.

  More, Magx disemboweled the beast—found it most like a big bar—emptied its stomach of fish and small mysterious animals like thick worms big as a man’s thigh. Ripped out its liver, splayed its intestines, held its heart in his two hands—in time, uplifted it to sol and at evening to m-o-o-o-n. Magx foretold, as was his wont, through auguring the bones and stones, the growls from the sky and the howling winds what was to be Frak’s life—to follow a big big harj shad Wiz into the faraway no-no. All this happening not too long before Brok appeared, so the story Magx at first simply confused and frightened Frak. You shall walk on the grok harj no-no wet. You shall walk to the lands of the shad harj. You shall walk there on the big big no-no shad harj wet! Magx's words evoke hoots, hollers, and gasps! from the kin’s trembling lips. All fall prostrate onto the ground as these long, windy sounds dumbfound and awe-strike! Only Frak remains upright on his feet, looking outward, sighting through Magx’s orx...accepting.

  As it was the kin’s way to open one's heart to the big beast one kills, here, without thought, Frak knows it is his to become to others as this spider-web wet harj bar is to them: a fearsome mystery. Frak cuts off the head of what they now name big harj shad bar. Its head is so broad and thick that only Oolo, the lankiest, can lift it—his arms bounding and finger laced, he hoists it up and carries it to Magx. Once it is skinned, cleaned, and its eyeballs eaten by Frak—honoring all harj shad beasts and their powers—its skull is set above the entrance to Frak’s hum-hum, establishing forever that the power of the fearsome spider-web wet bar, its harj shad heart, are with him forever.

  Frak walks...the group follows.

  Walking. All his life Frak has been walking, but he gave no thought to it. For walking was the image of living, of what life was about. All his images and all his sounds had to do with walking and the things walking showed him—the land, the trees, the strange plants which Magx picked and ate; the other kin. Kin—in his mind walking meant finding the others, those who had markings like his. Upon meeting strangers Frak would halt and stop before he touched them, waiting to know if they were harj—whether their strange markings meant that he himself was kin or harj to be welcomed or killed. As Magx had shown him, all he had to see was a big bar’s tooth. Just this in any marking on any part of the body or dress and he knew him to be kin not harj. But if no like marking, then Magx had shown how to hold the harj one at spear’s point until Frak could tell whether he was at least gen even if not of his kin. Frak pulls down his belly cloth and shows, exposes his third-hand-of-one-finger...if the other does not do so—proving that he is not gen—Magx showed him how to kill quickly.

  Walking. All gen walked, and all his kin walked after breaking camp which happened at every swelling of the m-o-o-o-n...when it was like the belly of a woman with a tiny gen inside. So when the m-o-o-o-n...it was one of the few deeply moaned sounds that everyone knew...“m—o—o—o—n!”...when it became full, they would all begin walking again. They would camp until Magx, high on a hilltop, held up at full arm's length a magical rok, a round stone—one so dark that it was filled only with shad. He would hold it at as high as he could stretch and when it was rimmed by moonlight, so it was for them to walk, again.

  “Gad!” So yells Magx as he slowly moves through the kin. Plodding, with one step and then a staffed hitch of his fleshless left leg—as slow as an old strax with may wounds. He yells Gad! in paced chant as he descends the hill—an echoing yell which is a command all instantly jump to obey, start to walk—Gad!

  On the harj Water-House, Frak was not walking—not as Gad! had meant to him. No, he hasn’t walked for several moons. It frightens him more than walking about the beast, which is not real walking, but he has no other way to image it. He would stride up and down the length of the beast—more strides than he could hold with his fingers—stride up and down and across what he has come to easily sound as “Water-House”—stride up and down, day after day, but on some days being unable to walk for all on the Water-House had to hold onto the sides or a beam or anything nailed down as the angry sun devouring sea heaved and shoved them and told him, so Frak knew, that it didn’t like them “walking” on it...there was to be no big wet Gad! In time, after the third fullness of the moon, Frak began to accept the Water-House as safe. It was like the harj spider-web beast, if he did the right things it would snarl and growl but he would be safe—hum.

  Safe—as long as he could see land.

  Fatefully, upon waking one morning, Frak could not see land. He could not see the sky, either. He didn’t know where the sun or the night were. All about him was a touch of the ocean wet—breathing wet, chilly wet, even some spider-web wet...snow!...with numerous small daggers of hard wet growing like harj bar's teeth, so it seemed, on the bottoms of the several sticks, even the spo-oxs...Icicles on the oars! Frak's heart stops, for he knows that they have been eaten. Died during sleep and are now where Magx told them the old no-no of the gen reside—inside the land, that which was all and forever—Fog! Beware! Frak trembles knowing that the ocean now is truly a magical beast and that it has swallowed the Water-House...sucked them down inside the land—that is why he cannot see the land. It is clear—the ocean, the sea...oh, it is still the big big harj wet in his mind at moments like this...the shad wet beast has tired of them! They have somehow offended it. How he does not know; cannot even force himself to consider. Yet, it’s clear that they have crossed over into the no-no..."No land in sight!"...have walked past
the rim, the horizon, into eternal harj shad..."No stars out tonight!" Dread grabs hold of him in a way he has no image or word or ability to deal with. Numbing fright tears out his heart—he panicks, all of a sudden realizing that he is without Darlm. He fingers her stone but cannot see her nor sense her presence—worse, he knows that she cannot see or sense him.

  Frak stands captured like a small harj beast...inside the big big shad harj wet.

  “Come!” Brok's commanding word, strong but even toned, calling from out of the thick icy fog, a type of harj wet that had only breathed twice in Frak's land. “Og,” they had called it, because it made it hard to breathe. Back then, it had been a rainy fog that in time set like a thick hide upon the land. But this was even worse, it was so frigid and icy that breathing was like pulling a rough hide across his face. “Come!” sounds again, this time with a tone of threat—Be safe or be lost! "Come!" draws him; he cannot not—must not—resist it.

  Frak takes five cautious and courageous steps...Brok’s back is right in front of his nose!

  Brok shows Frak a stone. A flat reddish stone like many which Frak has seen. But upon this was another stone: thin, not like any Frak has ever seen, of a grayness he has never touched. Brok points at the boat’s fearsome head and then at the thin gray stone. Frak’s frown makes him laugh heartily. Brok sees himself standing next to Serda who had first shown him the magically powerful living stone—not Serda himself even knowing it as magnetic lodestone, then, Brok himself had frowned as Frak now frowns.

  “One is one.”

  Frak still frowns. Deeper furrows.

  “One is one!” Brok booms and palm slaps Frak across the back of his head.

  It was the type of slap Magx often used. Frak understands. He sounds out, with great difficulty, a monotone, dead-lipped, “One is one.”

  It was not an unfamiliar effort...so many new sounds, so many jumbled and linked sounds, so many rushing out on one breath! Brok had forced Frak to breath so hard and so long that he sputtered and spit until his jaw hurt, his tongue cramped. Frak now struggles determinedly because he knows these to be powerful sounds: wind sounds, words twisted from his gut but linking him to Brok and the others. Every syllable hurts…eyes pinched closed as he sounds the words.

  Fist pounding sounds: head-aching, stomach churning sounds. Dangerous but magical, like those which only Magx had used to show which plants were safe to eat. He’d take a plant they had been eating and lay the unknown one next to it. If he said, “It-It,” Frak could eat it. If not, no one should eat it.

  Is Brok a Wiz?

  Frak suddenly understands.

  “One is one!” he laughs, almost a giggle. It-It!

  Brok laughs back; a booming, hearty laugh, two breaths long.

  So has Frak come to accept that if he keeps the beast’s head—Brok sounded “prow”—keeps it at one is one with the small slender rock...which upon touching did not feel like any rock he had ever felt, but Frak accepts that, for he knows this is deep magic, that Brok truly is a Wiz like Magx...if he does this, all he has to do is point to one side of the boat or the other and the rest of the men...“Crew!” shouted Brok...would spring into action. Frak is pleased that this one is one is his grok and that he is still a strong and respected leader. When he swings his right arm pointing starboard, the crew moves the sails so that they either fill up with a sea breeze or an oceanic puff or they pull and tie them down.

  Frak eyes brighten: The boat moves where the prow and the gray stone became one is one!

  With equally quick learning, Brok shows him “not one” when the stone—not for two moons would Frak be able to sound it properly as “needle”—that when the mystifying magnetic needle is horizontal, Brok’s call becomes, “Down sails!”...the crew drops the oars into the sea and plies the ship this way and that.

  This is how they escape the icy, sunless, and starless fog. When finally out of this treacherous stretch, the sails are unfurled and a stiff wind blows them forward, but Frak’s mind could not stop imaging being vomited or spat out.

  Prow. Boat. Sails. Oars. Ice. Fog. Snow. New sounds and sounds and sounds!...strung out into long rolling sounds—like moaning. like singing—linked together without pauses or many breaths...these words and sentences made his heart race faster and made him a bit dizzy but he stayed balanced, held his own, swallowed them...for as ever, Frak is an imminent threat, being so because his instincts for survival are fierce...here mastering words and speaking long sentences meant survival. Only one thing did his mind yet refuse to accept—what his eyes could no longer see...that the land had disappeared.

  No, not true, because in Frak’s mind’s eye there is land, there has to be land, land which is there—somehwere!—because for there not to be land meant…?...This is why in his mind's eye he could still see land; must be there!

  Brok was truly a wizard but one strangely different from the powerful Magx. He was stranger, deeper in his silences. He brooded fiercely, striding up and down the length of the ship, lost in thought, seemingly unaware of the others for hours on end—once from sunrise to sunset. On that day, one in the crew pointed at Brok when rapt in deep meditation and secretively whispered to Frak, “Soul-feaster!” The sound, the image, the moment was a turning point in Frak's life.

  Big big big big harj shad wiz—potent wizard and soul-feaster! Frak grasping that "soul" is big big big big big grok! He is sure that Brok is both. The magnetic needle was without a doubt itself magical—a living stone, because it shared Brok's grok—was born from his grok. This was an unsettling insight into Brok's soul—that it grew as he feasted on grok...the souls of others! Here, Frak recalls his own eating of harj beast eyes and hearts—stealing their grok!...but this reverie was shattered as he realized—as the fearful eyes and muffled words of the crew enabled him to see the gruesome scene—that Brok would eat the hearts of his human enemies, not just of beasts! Soul-feaster—the source of his profound command over everything and everyone.

  Brok's personal command over Frak was sensually felt like a strong hand inside the small of his back. Not asking why or how, just accepting, Frak realizes that Brok is sharing his soul-feasting grok with him. More, that this connection makea him strong in a way he haa never been...not now just an imminent threat, but—words and images faile him...he senses a strange, very heavy center of gravity forming within his heart and stimulating his mind. How? Only that Brok grounda Frak's grok both physically and mentally—bonding with him through sharing his power as soul-feaster. So with absolute confidence and unflinching obedience, Frak follows Brok’s orders and becomes a vessel of his grok as he moves the living stone to turn it one is one or not one.

  In Brok Frak haa belly-soothing trust—he had met Brok on land and on land Brok would take him, again.

  With a sustained but tempered enthusiasm, Frak realizes that he is doing something which no one in his kin has ever done. This steadies him for a full cycle of several moons. It is his power. He has, also, shown himself as gen, and so have Brok and the crew. This had greatly comforted him...that they heartily laughed while they did it—stroking their grok wods—did not mean anything to Frak...he was yet to develop a sense of mockery.

  Yet, no other of the gen in the crew had the marking of the bear’s tooth as did Brok. At times, truly only when dreaming does Frak growl out like the snow white bear—stand up and raise his arms and dance wildly about while shouting and yelling and bellowing at the fearsome creature...only in his dreams.

  Fatefully, it was from such a dream, late one night, that Frak was frightfully woken. A huge lick of the pitching ocean slapped him awake as at the same moment angry, clutching hands grappled his legs and arms. Bucking and thrashing, Frak panics as he is pinned down and bound hard by this unknown enemy—one most fearfully painted: blood-dripping faces with high knotted hair, all festooned with feathers and animal bones and long fang-teeth—necklaces clinking, gleaming with savage cat teeth and gory strips of oozing blood red flesh...which, in a quickly passing momen
t of hunter focus and self-control, he realizes are pieces of cloth...in a like snap of focus, that the enemy is the crew! Before Frak can gather his wits they bind him with thick ropes and cast him over board—he's drowning!...tethered and bobbing, gasping and sputtering.

  “Grez!” he frantically screams, “Grez!” The ancient cry for Help! Also for Mercy!

  But the crew does not come to help him. Raucously, they hoot and howl at him. Shout words like spears which he does not know but which he images as piercing him like he and Soark slayed so many small animals... Frak feels deeply, terrifyingly, that they hate him! Want him to die.

  Every member of the crew is jumping up and down, slapping each other and boisterously and menacingly screaming at him; pointing, jabbing at him with fingers and sticks and a long spear with the head of a huge sea snake upon it: eyes still jiggly fresh…“Grez! Grez!” but there was no grez.

  Half-dead. Cold as he has never before been cold. Frightened and expecting that he will be killed...that they will tear off their cloths and show that they are not gen but dev. Dev who made those of his kin do horrible things, like cutting off their fingers, or hurtling off high rocks. Dev who stole the breath from young babies. Dev who turned kin into walking balls of fire—this Frak has seen, twice. Magx had said, “Dev!”

  So dead to himself and the world, unconscious, Frak is hauled and plopped, reeled back onto the ship.

  Bobbing in and out of awareness, he's amazed that they have not killed him already. Strange! He is being wrapped in a mammoth white fur, a pelt thicker than any he has ever before seen: wrapped...engulfed...in it and placed on the ledge where Brok always sat.

  With Frak was another of the crew, as dazed and wrapped like himself.

  Brok’s ledge and the white fur and two other crewmen...one bringing Frak and the other near-drowned soul an elongated finger-thick bundle...burning, sharing a smoke—it is a warm, comforting smoke...mercifully, numbness rapidly riddles his body with each inhale...the second crewman starts tattooing Frak’s and the other’s left arm...drawing an image of the moon—bloodletting but smoke numbed, they are prick-sticking him as Magx had stuck him and others in the kin as they came to the many moons which meant that they were then big adults in the kin clan...so are Frak and this other drugged crew member tattooed with the full-face of the moon—a smoky white orb.

  On the arm opposite his bear tooth tattoo, Frak now bears the image of this full moon—is he kin now to the crew? Arrgggh! Alarmed...blood draining fear, for Frak sees that his and the other mate's moon is not like the rest of the crew. They all have a single red tear dropping from out their moon. Frak does not like this. He fearfully trails his eyes from Brok to each member of the crew. Is he—and this other—being prepared for soul-feasting? Eerily, all the crew are smiling...an unnerving, fearsome smile—a wild-eyed crazed smiley leer.

  Leering and soon lifting high a fat gourd...passing it around, tipping it to drink.

  Frak can smell its sweet yum—a fruity scent...as he sips he also feels its intoxicating blessing. Made totally numbed from the smoke, this brew magically makes his mind fully relax...deeply relaxed while opening his eyes with a clarity of vision, a noticing of details that he has never experienced. He feels like the ship is floating through the heavens. Mates sparkle like stars. Brok face appears to be as wide as the sky itself—his eyes bursting with flames, his breath a smoky billowing....Frak is one with the crew!

  The gourd is passed round and around. The crew, in a sudden common voice, starts singing. All clap rhythmically, setting time to a chanting sing-song. Some dance and whirl—a strange back-to-back, up and down gyration unknown to Frak. In no time, heavy with fatigue and blessed by both smoke and brew, he falls asleep under the smoky protective moon.

  After this night, Brok and the others daily teach Frak everything there is to know about the ship. They tell him how it was created...in the land of tall evergreen trees where the fearsome elk reigns. Frak has seen such never-dead trees and the thundering, majestic elk—Big Ek!—but just once. They tell him how to care for the ship. This comforts Frak because he knows that if the ship depends upon him that it will not "eat him"—yet, although he knows now that it is not a beast, still he knows that it harbors a power he must respect...a grok of its own. He still cannot not trust the ship because he knows that it's grok is its power to hide the land.

  The crew recount how the ship became one is one with the wide-open seas because the ocean is one is one with the sky...even when the sky hides the stars. “Ocean” is a curious and most difficult word for Frak to sound, but he learns to do so properly and then clearly pronounce it because of its power to hide the land. He practices sounding it... o—ce—an...over and over in his mind and out loud so that he, as Darlm had taught him happens with words...that he'd be, if not one is one with it, then at least a kin in heart and so be protected by its grok.

  In all, Frak had no problem with the ocean and the sky being one is one—he had seen the ocean end when the sky darkened, when the old shad had sucked it up. He was not as easily persuaded when they told him that the ocean and the land are one is one. Or, that there is land where the "compass"—the simple name for the mystifying living-stone needle...where it points. The compass would lead them, for it—this was the core of its grok—needed land just as they did. All his life, so Frak is told, Brok has followed the compass. Followed it as had his father and his father’s father—when the old ones called it "hor." All of Brok’s kin have walked upon the ocean following the compass with its ancient hor grok.

  Frak is happy. Where there is land, there would be Darlm.