by J. Thorn
He passed young girls picking the last of the season’s flowers from the edge of the creek that fed the reservoir. Jonah waved at the several men heading into the woods in search of deer or rabbit.
The day goes on, as it did yesterday, he thought. The clan must carry on.
Jonah walked around the back of his father’s house while listening to Nera bark orders at the others, preparing the body for burial. Jonah ignored them and stepped into the shed where they kept the rusted barrels. He reached inside the first one and pulled out the bow and a quiver of arrows. Jonah swung both over his shoulder and marched off the path and into the woods, past the little boys playing hide and seek.
He trudged through the woods until the sounds of the village faded. The birds sang to him, although he could detect that some had already started their migratory flight south. He pushed on, following the creek. The water widened as it neared the reservoir, and the sound of crashing water soon drowned out the birdsong. Jonah turned north and climbed a hill, the morning sun warming the right side of his face. He walked faster, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out on his forehead. By the time he reached the summit, the sun threatened to burn his skin.
The valley spread out before Jonah, and he saw the line the creek cut through the ancient mountains. Years ago, one of the explorers found a book, one from the masses made before The Event, constructed with mechanical arms, now rotting and rusted. The book spoke of “erosion” over “four hundred and eighty million years,” neither of which meant anything to Jonah. He preferred to use his eyes to learn instead of passing them over a series of words. The sun had burnt off all but a thin haze that hung just above the rounded peaks. He inhaled, the smell of coppery water and falling leaves filling the air.
“Father would like this,” he said, shaking his head.
Jonah turned to face the southeast, his eye traveling over the imaginary path that would lead them to Eliz, their winter refuge. It was impossible for him to see the route but he felt it in his bones, as though the knowledge from the previous generations passed through his blood.
He ran down the gentle slope and sat upon a rock facing north. Jonah took the bow off his back and notched an arrow on it. He raised the bow and aimed the arrowhead at a tree twenty-five yards from where he sat. He pulled it back behind his right ear in a steady motion, as his father taught him. Jonah inhaled and then held his breath. He counted to two and released the arrow. It took flight and whistled through the air but did not strike the trunk of the tree with the usual wooden thwack. He took another arrow from the quiver, repeated the process, and again the arrow sailed wide of the tree. Jonah threw the bow to the ground and screamed at the midday sun. “I’m not a leader!”
The birds paused and then resumed their song.
Jonah bent down and picked up the bow. He placed a third arrow in the notch. He took his time, trying to remember all of the tips his father gave him as a boy.
Place the tip on the target.
Pull back slowly.
Release but don’t move.
The arrow sliced the air and Jonah saw a puff of bark burst into the air on the right edge of the trunk. He grabbed another arrow and repeated the process, and this one stuck in the tree about four inches from center.
Jonah smiled. He set the bow down on the rock and went to look for the arrows to refill his quiver.
Chapter 10
Seren placed the new arrow shaft on the pile at her feet, picked up another long branch of wood and slowly ran the blade of the knife along it. From the spot where she sat, at the edge of the small ledge of grass at the front of the run-down shack she called home, she could see most of the central area of the town. Even with the news of Judas’s death, life seemed to be going on as it always did, as it had to.
Hunters came and went. Clothes were washed in the stream, and fur was hung out to weather on lines along the edge of the road.
It was all the same as ever, though it crossed her mind that all this could change in the next few hours. She had never witnessed the changing of leadership. Judas had been head of the clan for her entire life.
Though, that nearly changed once, didn’t it? she thought. Way back when she was barely four summers old. It wasn’t so long ago, but it felt like an age. She was fifteen summers old now, and being that small seemed longer than ten years ago.
Her mind drifted back to the night her father had died.
She was hiding at the back of the house, in what her mother had said was a coal shed, though Seren didn’t know what one of those was. All she knew was that it was one of the places that she could hide when Brok, her father, was angry.
She would sit there, in the dark, sometimes next to her brother, and listen to him shout and curse, and sometimes worse.
That night the noise had been louder than usual and had ended with things being thrown, crashing and banging noises, and yelling. It was all too loud and Seren had put her hands over her ears.
Who was he shouting at? She had always wondered that. Her mother had died the winter after Seren had been born, taken by fever during the long journey to Eliz, and Brok had never taken another wife. There was only he, Seren and Roke in the house. And yet her father would find something to curse at every time he had been drinking too much of the shine, and out here in the forest, a quarter mile from the rest of the village, no one heard his curses other than the two children.
She tried not to think of what would happen if Brok found her or her brother. When that happened they would normally be punished, but for what? She had never known.
That night, Roke had not hidden in the coal shed with her. She hadn’t known where he had hidden, but she heard Brok finding him, heard the shouting.
Seren remembered every moment of that night, just as though it had been yesterday. She had put her hands over her ears, trying to block out the cries. But when she had taken them away from her ears all she heard was her brother crying for help.
Above all the fear in her heart, she had crept out from her hiding place and headed to the back of the house, where her brother was calling from.
Every step she took around the house, her heart thumped, expecting at any moment for her father to step out from the darkness and grab her, but he hadn’t. Instead she found her brother in the yard, lying in the dirt. He was holding his leg, and she ran over to him.
It was broken. They had found that much out when she tried to help him stand and the leg bent in the wrong place. He cried out in pain and fell to the ground. Roke was two years older than her and much bigger. She couldn’t help him.
She ran, ignoring her brother’s cries behind her. He thought she was leaving, she knew, but she wasn’t. He would know soon enough. So she ran and ran down the valley toward the village, toward where other people would be. The long path wound through the thickest area of woods, and once more she was terrified of everything that moved, every moment expecting Brok to grab her.
Seren shook her head. Remembering that night was depressing. She had seen first-hand how dangerous people were dealt with, how Judas’s justice could be swift and final.
She continued to cut the arrow shafts, slicing layer upon layer of bark and then the wood itself, straightening the arrow and turning it with each slice. She would make a hundred of these today, just the shafts, and then she would feather and tip them the next day, and that would teach her that bringing home a decent catch was important, and only the hunters that could do so would be the ones to hunt.
And that was the last verdict that Judas ever made for her before he died, believing her tale of not bringing much back that day. A lie, of course, to save the shame for the granddaughter of the man who punished her.
And now he was dead. The man who had killed her father had passed away in the night from sickness, and she found herself with strange, mixed feelings. That Judas had been a good leader was never in doubt, and that he had saved Seren and Roke a lot of pain in their childhood was also true. She knew that her father, Brok, had been a dangerous and m
oody man, and if he had been capable of breaking his own son’s leg then it would only have taken a little more before one of them was dead.
But she had watched from the bushes as Judas had cut his throat. Brok was pushed to the floor by other clansmen, and Nera held him by the shoulders as Judas grabbed his scruffy hair and pulled his head back. He was about to deal his punishment when the hidden knife stabbed out, a flash of steel in Brok’s hand barely missing the killing vein in Judas’s leg. Clubs held by clansmen beat Brok into near unconsciousness before they once more knelt him and waited for Judas.
No. Seren was not sure if she would miss Judas.
She sat there, feet dangling down the slope at the end of the rough patch of grass, looking away from the village along the main road that led south. In two weeks, maybe three, they would all be taking to that road with their rucksacks and their wheeled pulley carts dragging behind them. She had made one herself this year, with a trio of wheels recovered from some rusted and broken bicycles she found up on the hill. It was a lot smaller than most, built so she could pull it alone.
The road was beckoning her, calling her to take to foot and start walking, and she gazed along it, down the hill. And she noticed a figure walking in the opposite direction, toward the village, a figure that she thought she recognized but was not one of the clan. An outsider.
Seren dropped the arrow shaft and peered at the figure. No one else had seen the man approaching along the road, even though he was making no effort to hide. In fact, she thought, he wants us to see him. And even though he was a good hundred yards away, she could still recognize his stride, that casual way he walked, and the long leather coat that he wore. It was a talent of hers, remembering things, small details that others would forget.
This man had been there the year before, hadn’t he? And yet he had left, disappeared like so many strangers did. That had been before The Walk last year. And he hadn’t gone to Eliz with them, as he had wanted to. She remembered now. He had asked to go on The Walk with them, to join the clan even, but then he had gone, vanished just as the winter came.
The man should surely be dead, shouldn’t he?
She jumped to her feet and took off at a run, across the road, heading toward the chief’s hut.
I have to tell Judas…Jonah, she thought, as her feet pounded across the weathered blacktop.
Chapter 11
Gaston could have kept his presence hidden from the girl but realized it was pointless. The bastard who cut his throat was dead, and his son, Jonah, would be the new chief. Gaston assumed nobody knew what really happened out in the woods, or if they did, nobody would care. If Judas had banished someone, the village would collectively forget him as well.
Let her run to Jonah. Let him deal with his first task as clan leader, Gaston thought.
He tried to remember her name. It was Salwen or Syren, something like that. She was a scrawny kid with an accurate bow. Gaston didn’t have much interaction with her during his short stay last season, but he did remember the soft, sympathetic look on her face when he pleaded to join them on The Walk. The girl trusted him and wished him to journey with them. But Judas wouldn’t have it. The old man had never trusted Gaston, eventually leaving him for dead, bleeding out in the dark woods.
Gaston’s hand came up to the thin line running through his mangy neck beard. He pulled the collar of his black coat up to conceal the scar tissue. He kept walking, down the middle of the road, not feeling a need to dart behind trees or hide from the girl. She would herald his return. If the old man had told the clan he was a threat, Gaston would most likely die on the spot as the warriors of the village rushed him. It was a chance he would have to take. He needed the clan to survive the winter, and if Judas had not spoken ill of him, they would take him in as they had a year ago, even if they did wonder where he had gone.
He remembered Jonah; believed him to be a fundamentally good man but with little resolve. If the villagers did not kill Gaston on first sight, he would have a chance at joining them on The Walk, or better yet, maybe even persuading them to follow him to the place in the south.
And therein lies my problem, he thought. But you’re getting ahead of yourself. That is for another day. There is plenty of time.
Gaston watched the girl dashing from one tree to the next, glancing back every few paces, her eyes on him like a wily hunter. He suppressed a smile and kept his strides long and steady. The village would be busy, preparing for the ceremony, and so his arrival would be secondary in the women’s gossip. Just as he’d planned it.
This is too easy, he thought. So be careful and don’t get too confident.
The old man had succumbed faster than he thought, the mourning drums of passing being beaten a day sooner than he had expected, and far quicker than the poison normally worked, even though it had been a heavy dose. He had almost thought they must be beating for someone else, until the number of beats clearly indicated the passing of a leader, of someone of importance. Gaston believed Judas to be stronger than he was. It just meant his arrival would come sooner and that would be an additional day he’d have to begin manipulating the villagers, earning their trust, placing himself among them.
Maybe you should have waited until after the pyre, he thought. No. I need to be there and be a witness.
Birds fluttered through the trees as she surprised them. The girl ran fifty yards ahead and then shot deeper into the woods, where she would cut across the road and arrive in the village faster than if she stayed on it.
Convinced she was now running to alert the new chief of the stranger’s return, Gaston stopped walking. He took a pouch of tobacco from his coat and packed it into a ceramic pipe. He’d taken the stash from the traveler’s body after killing him, the pouch protecting the sweet herb from the elements, keeping it dry. He hadn’t intended for the stranger to die, but the roamer had threatened Gaston and he had been forced to dispatch him—the smoke was a pleasant surprise. Gaston reached into an inner pocket, drew out flint and tinder, and sparked at the end of the pipe until it lit. He closed his eyes and inhaled, savoring the woody taste of the rare tobacco. Some southern clans still cultivated the plant but it was rarely seen in the north unless carried by a traveler—like the man he had killed two days ago.
Had the man been heading toward this village? Gaston wondered. Maybe he was wanting to trade. One day I will grow my own plants, he thought. My own tobacco. But first he would have to deal with Jonah and their tradition of The Walk. He had not convinced the village last season, and it had almost cost him his life. With the old man gone, Gaston knew his chances this season would be much better. He would reach the place in the south, whether Jonah was leading them or not.
* * *
Seren smelled the burning herb. She didn’t quite know what it was, but she knew it was not a natural scent in these woods. She knew the forest better than most of the other villagers, and remembered each tree as if they were a person; each trunk had its own distinguishable pattern—if one knew where to look.
The man had seen her. She was sure of it. In fact, she believed he wanted to be seen. Judas never told the village what happened to Gaston. They both went into the forest, but only Judas returned. What happened would not have been a mystery of the universe. Like the rest of her clan, Seren trusted the chief and realized this was his crucible. If they were to survive, the chief would have to protect them—by any means necessary.
As soon as she heard the news, Seren had wondered whether Jonah would be able to do the same as his father. He loved his family and was a good-natured man, but those in the village had kept their doubts about him quiet, thinking it would be a long time from now before he would take the mantle from his father. But with the sudden death of Judas, that day was now. It had come sooner than any of them cared to admit.
She crossed the road, her feet softly slapping the ancient blacktop as she darted past the oak grove and through the copse of pines on the edge of the village. Seren looked over her shoulder twice, knowing Gasto
n would not be pursuing her but being cautious. Despite the insanity of the situation, she and her brother had their father to thank for that. Brok left them as skittish as spring fawns, and Seren believed that burned-in fear would keep them alive.
Gaston had returned the day after Judas had died. Seren had to believe the man knew the implications of such timing. It was hard for her to imagine him not having a hand in Judas’s death, but that would be for Jonah to decide. After all, stranger things had happened leading up to and during The Walk. Seren had heard stories of loved ones wandering off the road or chasing rabbits into a thicket and never returning. During the long, forty-day journey, some were bound to die. Every year they made the journey south, and then north again, for the survival of the village, of civilization. But there had always been a price to pay. Judas had taught them how to walk the road, how to keep their eyes on the horizon for movement and threats. She had learned a lot from him, as had the rest of the villagers. And now he was gone.
Seren spotted the roofs of the outlying houses and dashed toward the chief’s house. She ignored the stares of the villagers preparing to both mourn and celebrate on the same night. Keana and Gideon stood near the front door.
“Where is your father?” Seren asked Keana between gulps of air.
“Inside with my mother. He told us not to dis—”
“I need to speak with him right now,” Seren interrupted.
Keana put an arm out to stop Gideon from running inside to get their father. “He is becoming chief tonight, Seren. He did not want to be disturbed.”
Seren nodded at Keana. “Then can you please get your mother?” She asked.
