by D. H. Dunn
She breathed in, her lungs rejoicing in the fresh, crisp air. Air that contained the smells of flowers, not dust. A sweet scent that reminded her of apples with a hint of spice to them. Underneath the flowers, the faint scent of something else, salt, perhaps. Like the grass, it was something new and unknown to her.
Just as unusual were the birdcalls she heard above her, new sounds flying in the warm sun. No choughs these, these birds sang joyfully to each other overhead, long calls for reasons she could not begin to guess.
Nima sat up, keeping her eyes closed. She breathed in again, reminding herself of where she was not. She was not home, worried about Pasang or Awa. She was not in Gorak Shep with Drew, or Gyalzen and Dorjee, trying to find the next problem to solve. She was not on Everest with Wanda, trying to fulfill some legacy.
Nima opened her eyes, ready to see where she was. She gasped as the new world rushed at her from every direction, an assault of green grasses, blue skies, and yellow flowers such as she had never seen.
She was, in some sense, clearly still on Everest. It didn’t take her more than a moment to get her bearings. She was on the mountain’s South Col, with Lhoste’s face and peak in front of her and Everest’s own summit not too far behind her.
Both Everest and Lhoste were green with grass, shimmering fields that ebbed and flowed with the wind. Trees of yellow flowers dotted the sides of the mountains, white long-winged birds sailing through a sky so blue it almost hurt her eyes to look at it.
The ground she stood on was a short, flat space. Nima realized it was a mirror of the ridge upon which the portal to the Under had stood, the one the Yeti had run into.
Where all their problems had started.
Turning, she could see the same stone wall where that portal had been on that snowy, cold morning that seemed both hours and years ago. No portal graced the surface of this wall, though. It was simply a collection of moss and some ferns clinging to cracks in the surface.
She was alone in the small clearing on the ledge, the only other occupant being a small flowering bush and a large round stone. Beyond the bush, she could see hill after hill leading down the mountain. Past Everest was another mountain, and another before leading to large forest. She saw smoke trailing lightly through the trees of the forest. A village perhaps.
Beyond the forest was the most striking scene of all. Water, glinting against the setting sun. More water than any river or lake Nima had ever seen. Water stretching on to the horizon.
A sea, with Everest on the shore.
Her stomach rumbled, a familiar feeling of emptiness inside her. Kneeling over the bush, she was disappointed to find no sign of berries, only more yellow flowers.
Nima looked past the shrubs and down the rolling slopes as her stomach rumbled again. Far off, the sun was beginning to set against the sea, casting the sky in a wash of reds and pinks.
It would be dark soon, and it was sure to get colder. Nima smiled, looking down the slopes of Everest again. Everything she needed would be just over the next ridge, or the rise after that. Somewhere out there was food, shelter. Somewhere out there was adventure, a life for her.
A good life.
Venom and Vines
Venom and Vines: A Fractured Everest Story
Author’s note: VENOM AND VINES is a short story prequel that introduces Valaen, one of the main characters of SEAS OF EVEREST, Book 2 in the series.
SEAS OF EVEREST and Nima’s story will continue immediately after this short.
To Val, the dense humidity of the Great Wood was the next best thing to being in the ocean.
Perspiration ran from his sea-green hair down his scalp, droplets passing through the faint emerald scales in his skin, bringing a pleasing coolness that worked against the heat. The crystal embedded in his forehead glowed with a crimson light, small rivulets of moisture wicking off its smooth surface and running down his nose.
The mid-day sun burned far overhead, the rays of light streaming in around moss-covered branches. A heavy mist rolled through the air like fog, leaving all it touched damp and ethereal. He was only still at the edge of the Wood, his feet sore from the long half-day’s walk from his village of Caenola.
The person he sought was likely much deeper in the Wood, where the light would be dimmer and the humidity even heavier. There the many dangers lurking in the bushes and trees would be harder to spot, if he detected them at all.
The moisture coating his skin brought only slight relief to his tension. The humidity was the only thing good about today. As of last night, his father was now roaming this Wood as an exile, if not dead.
If Valaen wasn’t careful, he was likely to end up both as well.
As he pushed through the damp, heavy underbrush of the Wood, he reached out with his senses into the forest, looking for life forces as his father had taught him. Lessons learned at the edge of the forbidden Wood when he was just a boy. Now a man of twenty years, he never imagined he’d be searching those trees someday for his own father, in direct defiance of the Elders.
With his head crystal as his beacon, he focused on the sensations of life all around him. He passed over the hungering throng of insects, the nervous skittering of numerous small animals and the peaceful serenity of the birds high in the branches.
Still stepping lightly between the vines and deep beds of leaves on the forest floor, he concentrated on the emotions and feelings brought to him by his crimson crystal, placing them in his mind like shells drying on the beach.
After a moment, he could sense the essences of three different lives, their emotions higher and more complex than the simple denizens of the wood.
Standing still, he closed his eyes and focused more deeply, as his father had taught him. Few among his people held this gift, this ability to sense other life with their mind. Yet as both Val and his father had learned, it could be a burden as well.
He released a sigh into the air, the sound immediately lost in the endless argument between the insects and birds of the Wood.
None of the three essences he could sense had the sharp edges of his father’s passion, the fire with which Adda had attacked both life and what he felt was his people’s refusal to grow.
Val’s heart sank. Adda is here somewhere, he has to be! Val had risked everything on that belief, his freedom as well as his life. Yet Adda’s essence was nowhere to be seen. His father was either out of the reach of Val’s sense or he was…
He pushed the other possibilities out of his mind, focusing instead on the trio of sensations he could detect.
As the moisture dripped from the leaves all around him, he paused and closed his eyes to better allow himself to concentrate.
Focusing, he was able to determine two of the beings he sensed were fellow Ceanolans, walking just at the boundary of the Wood, alongside the Field of Calm.
The third sensation he detected meant certain death, either for himself, or his friends.
The strong emotions of Zelquan and Yanare resonated against his crystal, their essences a distance behind him, back towards the village road and a life he may have left behind forever. They pulsed in his mind’s eye like twin ripples in pond water, their powerful feelings of worry and frustration felt like shooting stars in their brilliance.
The worry was Zelquan’s. The previous evening, as the Elder’s exile ceremony still hung in the night air, Zel had begged with Val not to go searching after his father. His lifelong friend had reminded him he could be cast out of the village as well for the crime of entering the Wood, as if Val did not know this.
Adda was an Elder himself, after all. Or had been, before yesterday.
Though he nodded to his friend at the time, Val had been unable to convince himself to stay behind, or reconsider his hopes of rescuing his father from the dangers that lurked inside the Wood’s damp confines.
It’s not just about rescue, Val reminded himself. The village Elders may have heard his father’s words, but Val needed more from him than that. He had seen his people judge
his father, and watched his mother weep as Adda was cast out.
He needed answers. You cast aside everything, Adda, and plunged our village into danger. How could it have been worth it? Why didn’t you ask me?
Once the sun’s light began to breach over the golden hills of the Field, he had set out before he could lose his nerve. He had been out of the village and on the road long before fishermen like Zel were even awake.
Now Zel stood at the boundaries of the Great Wood himself, surely here to try and find Val. He was not breaking the word of the Elders, not yet. But he was at risk from the dangerous animals of the Wood just the same.
Zel’s worry and conflict were clear as the sun in the Sky to Val, fears for both his friend and his village. Dark days were coming for Caenola.
Zel’s companion Yanare seemed less conflicted in her thoughts. Val could sense her frustration through his headcrystal as clear as if it were his own. He had known her most of his life as well, Yan’s family living in the hut right next to his parents ever since the last Tempest.
Val was sure Yanare had come today mostly out of a courtesy to Zelquan, the stories of their romance had been the talk of the village the last few weeks. Like Val, Yan’s parents were both Elders, yet she had fallen for Zelquan, the latest in a long line of fishers in his family. Many would consider this beneath her station, yet Yan had been proud to braid Zel’s shells into her green hair, asking Val to walk with them through the village to make their relationship known to their people.
Most of the time, Val liked Yan. Even after yesterday and her support of his father’s exile, he didn’t want to see her get hurt.
Yet death stalked the two as they walked at the edge of the Wood, a death on six legs in the form of a darkeel. The third life force radiated strongly, Val sensing its pulsing hunger and pain as he crept forward.
Only a stone’s throw from the edge of the Wood, he saw the beast. It was low in the tangles of roots and leaves, nearly invisible. Had Adda not spent so much time with Val training him to use his eyes as well as his crystal, he might never have spotted the shadowy form of the darkeel.
Its ebony body was long and thin, nearly as long as Val was tall. It looked like a snake or an eel from the sea. It crawled through the underbrush upon six short legs, each of them tipped with claws sharp enough to tear through the thin leathers his friends were wearing. Every few seconds, a small blue spark would appear on its back as it used its magic to eliminate a fly or other pest that had landed upon it.
The back of the beast showed a long gash where the creature had battled with some other denizen of the Wood.
Looking at the depth of the wound, Val guessed it came from the tusk of a grun. He had seen a herd of the massive brown gruns pushing through the field earlier in the day.
Whatever the cause, this darkeel was hungry and injured. Its emotions were strong, Val feeling the hunger in his own stomach, the pain lacing through his back as though he were hurt.
The beast’s fear and desperation were a good match for his own.
Due to its wound, the pack had expelled it from their protection, in a sense no different than his father’s fate had been. Darkeels valued the safety of their packs above all else, something Val’s own people did to their detriment.
Those are father’s thoughts, he reminded himself. Not mine.
The brush became denser still as he fought to stay in sight of the eel while not alerting it to his presence. He stepped carefully around the many sleepvines strewn across the woodland floor, sharp thorns ready to pierce his clothing. One scratch from the plant’s barbs would only slow him down, but enough of them could incapacitate him, leaving his friends to the eel’s mercy.
Most of his people would not have known a sleepvine if they saw one, nor would they recognize the faint tracks of a darkeel as it slithered through the underbrush.
Val was not just the son of an Elder, his father had been a trained guide as well. Assigned to bringing the Thartark ambassador to the sap trees once a season, Adda had more Wood-lore than most of his people combined, and he had been proud to pass those lessons on to Val.
Just two days ago it had that same task, guiding the Thartark ambassador, that caused everything to go so wrong. Long an opponent of his people’s willing subjugation by the Thartark, Valean’s father had taken matters into his own hands.
A day later, Adda had been exiled and the ambassador had angrily departed Caenola, promising retribution from his people. The high elder had said his father’s actions had been in direct defiance of the Elder’s teachings.
Watching his father walk from the village, three words echoed in Val’s mind.
Avoid. Appease. Accept.
Words his father had used in anger many times, describing what he felt was the flaw in the Elder’s path. The Caenolan way, his father called it. According to Adda, it had been how their people dealt with any threat, be it the weather, a pack of darkeels, or even the Thartark.
Yet Caenola had existed safely for many generations. Despite threats of tempests from the Sea, or packs of beasts from the Wood, or the war-like Thartark, the path of the Elders had kept Caenola safe.
Listening in his cot as his mother and father argued about the direction of their people, Val had never known what to think. He loved them both, and they both seemed right.
Val could recall the Elders holding court by the sea when he was very young, the other children sitting alongside him as the waves lapped upon the shore. They were told the tale of Liname the Lesser and how he his appeasement had saved their village from the Thartark, thousands of years ago.
Yet that was also the beginning of the restrictions from the first Elders, rules his father said were built on fear. Regions that could not be visited, food that could not be eaten. Thoughts that could not be spoken aloud.
Avoid. Appease. Accept.
The darkeel moved from its hiding place underneath the leaves, slithering closer to where Zel and Yan were walking.
If he called to them in warning, they would run. Built to stalk and chase its prey, even injured the eel would be faster. At least one of them would fall.
He had to find another way. With the deadly beast a few arm’s lengths away and actively tracking his friends, he could think of no other options save those he had been taught.
He could easily avoid the deadly darkeel that he was now tracking. Driven by its blood lust and its injury, it would pursue Zelquan until it fed or died. Val was nothing of interest to the creature. Yet avoiding it would mean the death of his friends, and that was something Val could not accept.
That only left appease.
With delicate care, Val removed two large round fruit from the thin blue sleepvines that ran through the underbrush. The thorns of the plant were toxic, but his father had taught him the large berries they grew were safe to touch.
A tangy sweet scent ran from the large blue spheres in his hands, sticky juices trickling onto his webbed fingers as he gripped them.
Forbidden juices, he reminded himself. The food of the Wood was not to be eaten, a temptation Caenolan children were taught by the Elders to avoid.
His father had taught him much about the Wood the Elders had not, including the love the darkeels had for the fruit he held. Now Val had to hope the sweet scent of the berries was more appealing than his friends to the beast.
He was close enough now to hear the crunch of Zel and Yanare’s boots as they walked through the drying grasses at the edge of the Wood. The eel tracked them with silent grace through the vines, the tiniest of blue sparks running down its back
The beast’s hindmost legs twitched as Val caught sight of Zel’s silhouetted form crossing through the bushes. Poised and ready to strike, he was sure it would leap any second.
Holding his breath to keep the fear inside himself, Val squeezed both of the fruit in his hands. His fingers punctured the skin of the large berries, a soft squishing sound heralding the release of the strong, sweet scent into the air. The juices ran from his
hands onto the damp floor below, large sticky droplets landing upon his feet.
The darkeel froze in mid step, its clamp-like mouth raising to the air as it caught the scent on the wind. Val began to slowly crouch, ready to place the berries on the ground once the creature turned toward him.
Sky and Sea willing, he could then run away while the eel focused on the food.
Another small spark ran down the eel’s back as its head moved back and forth, as if it were surveying its possibilities. Hope began to grow inside Val as he heard his friend’s muffled conversation and footfalls move farther away.
Leaning to his left, he was ready to run as soon as he saw eel turn towards the fruit. His pulse pounded in his eyes as he stared, his breath trapped inside his chest.
Finally, the eel began to move. Val’s heart sank as the beast moved away, picking up its slow pursuit of Zel and Yanare, apparently forsaking the berries in favor of fresh prey.
His mind raced as he continued to try to follow the creature, stepping lightly as he pushed through the vines and roots of the berry bushes, the path growing denser as his options dwindled. His attempt to appease had failed, yet still he could not accept.
The old ways, the lessons of the Elders, they had provided nothing. He could not allow his friends to die, yet what was there besides what he had been taught?
What would Adda do?
Like the tide coming in upon dry sand, a plan suddenly presented itself in his mind. His hand moved to the knife at his belt. There was another way to appease, another cost he could accept. He couldn’t fight the creature, but he could give it something more enticing than the two Caenolans who walked along unaware.
Wounded prey and the scent of fresh blood.
He brought the knife to his forearm, his hands trembling as he placed the point against his skin, the faint scales compressing around its sharp surface. He tried not to think about what the pain would be like, or how he had never been cut before.
