by Jack Castle
Mac caught up to the four remaining members of her crew. “We’ll make camp on the beach tonight and then head toward the wall in the morning,” she said.
By nightfall, they had made a respectable camp; the cargo containers made excellent tents. Mac assigned Stein to take the first watch.
Everyone was tired, everyone but Mac who was convinced the chaos of her thoughts would never let her sleep. Instead of crawling into her container, she curled up next to the fire with Harry’s journal. She told herself that the journal would distract her mind from the circling thoughts of death and that it might offer a clue as to how to get off the planet safely — if, indeed, the captain had been on the same planet they were on now. She did her best to ignore the bloodstains and picked up where she had left off.
Chapter 11
The Stray Dog
WRITTEN IN MESSY SCRIPT:
Day 7
In my last entry (four days ago), I wrote that I was about to meet the natives of this planet for the first time. As I am now writing with my left hand (my captors cut off my right one); it goes without saying that my first encounter with the aliens didn’t go well.
Despite this, one of my woolly samurai captors has not only tended my wounds but has now also become my unofficial teacher (perhaps at the request of the princess?); she attempts to teach me their alien language. Although there are three distinct species in the caravan — the Mooks, the Awumpai, and the princess — they share a common guttural language, and this is the language I’ve been trying to learn. I’ve also learned a great deal about the caravan and its members over the last week, and I’ll jot down some of my observations.
First there are the Mooks …
…
Mooks
The Mooks are the little purplish servants that I spotted first in the camp. They have onion-shaped heads and goldfish-like eyes. They are gentle by nature and, despite their resilient-looking bodies, are not physically threatening in any way. In fact, the Mooks are particularly adept at prostrating themselves before the princess. In less than the blink of an eye, they can go from fully functional to prostrate, almost as if they were designed to assume the latter position. When the princess walks through camp, I hear light thumps as the Mooks fall before her.
The Mooks do all the work — from striking the camp to pitching the tents, and everything in between. They also feed me morning and night. I suspect that the princess instructed them to do so.
…
Awumpai
Next are what the Princess refers to as the Awumpai (pronounced a-womp-hay), which resemble oversized mountain gorillas but have the head, mane, and muzzle of a lion. The smallest of this species is over ten feet tall and three times the width of a normal man. Their bodies are covered in thick, shaggy fur, and they wear leather body armor akin to that of a samurai.
They have large black eyes and a mouth full of triangular-shaped teeth.
The Awumpai are extremely protective of the princess. In fact, protecting her seems to be their main purpose. I rarely see the Awumpai do anything in the way of manual labor.
#
Day 10
After spending the last several days with the caravan, I learned that the three Awumpai are not as similar as I first thought. Each Awumpai has a unique name and a unique role within the caravan.
…
Fu-Mar
Fu-Mar, the battle-scarred Awumpai, is the one who severed my hand from my arm. Physically, he’s the shortest and stockiest of the three, but he also appears to be the toughest and most skilled. I don’t know whether Fu-Mar is naturally bald or whether he plucks his hair, but I get the sense that he is older than the other two Awumpai.
Fu-Mar seems to be the natural leader of the group. He’s very serious and always scans the horizon, scouts the trail ahead, and checks the rear for unseen enemies. Fu-Mar is always awake when I go to sleep and awake when everyone rises in the morning, and I’ve never seen him eat! I know that the other two Awumpai do eat and sleep because I’ve seen them do both. In particular, the fat, red-haired Awumpai named Hu-Nan seems to eat enough for all three, and his snoring would put a grizzly bear to shame.
…
Hu-Nan
Hu-Nan, whom I previously dubbed “Big Red,” is the largest and strongest of the group. I once saw him uproot a small tree and use it to scratch his back. He is as tireless as he is powerful, but he has no leadership qualities whatsoever. He doesn’t carry a weapon and doesn’t need to; he could simply pull his enemies apart.
I think that, in addition to being the princess’s protector, Hu-Nan also serves as her playmate. He has the mind of a child and makes her laugh at every opportunity. Yesterday, he threw her high into the air, and she landed in a tree, much to her delight. She jumped back down, and he caught her. This went on several times until Fu-Mar arrived and cuffed the oafish Hu-Nan heavily, presumably for endangering the princess.
…
Ba-Tu
Ba-Tu, who has black fur, is the tallest and slenderest of the three and, I suspect, female. She serves as a mother, mentor, and doctor to the princess, on whom Ba-Tu dotes. Ba-Tu doesn’t seem to carry a weapon but rather a large leather pouch containing medicinal herbs. Nonetheless, as Ba-Tu is always close to the princess, I suspect she serves as the last line of defense. Ba-Tu is the one who first tended my wounds and who teaches me their language.
That brings us to Dan-Sai Asha.
…
Asha
Dan-Sai Asha reminds me of a fairy wood nymph. I believe “Dan-Sai” means “Princess” because of the reverence with which the servants say the word. Asha is roughly five feet tall and weighs about 80 pounds. She has short purple hair, elfin ears, and luminous green eyes.
For a time, I believed that Asha painted her face or perhaps tattooed it the way desert women back on Earth do, but now I believe otherwise. I’ve never actually seen her paint her face, yet the patterns and colors on it change daily, sometimes more often. At first I thought I was imagining these changes, but I sketched the patterns over the last few days and documented how they differed. I suppose that Asha could still be applying some sort of paint to her face each day or having the Mooks do it for her, but it’s my belief that she’s capable of controlling her skin’s pigmentation. I’ll continue to observe this further.
The princess and I haven’t spoken since our initial encounter. She spends most of her time in her tent, schooling with Ba-Tu, learning to fight with Fu-Mar, or playing with Hu-Nan.
Ba-Tu seems reluctant to understand my questions pertaining to Asha and continues to mutter the word “Joppa-Cal” over and over, which may be another name though it bears a unique weight. The one thing I could piece together seems to be that the caravan is tasked with protecting the princess and getting her somewhere. Perhaps delivering her to this Joppa-Cal.
#
Captain Reed stopped writing and set the journal down on the log beside him, the simple action taking extra steps without a second hand to do half the work.
It was a morning like any other on the floating island: the sun was rising, the three moons were vanishing with the night sky, and the Mooks were striking camp. Harry had long ago stopped trying to help or talk to the little servants; they had little interest in anything that wasn’t an assigned duty.
Harry still had no idea where the caravan was headed, but he had grown accustomed to the daily routine. After the Mooks packed up camp in the morning, the caravan traveled all afternoon until the Mooks made camp for the night.
As he reached for the last can of coffee in his rucksack, Harry heard light thumps from the Mook servants hitting the ground, which indicated that the princess was heading his way. Harry also heard Fu-Mar’s heavy feet.
As soon as the princess passed within earshot and Fu-Mar passed out of striking distance, Harry mustered his courage and said, “Comp-pai.” He believed tha
t this was the morning greeting he had heard her use with several of the Mooks and two of the Awumpai.
Harry had incorrectly estimated Fu-Mar’s range. Before he even saw Fu-Mar’s hand, it landed a blow that knocked Harry across the campsite. His ears rang and his vision blurred. He staggered to his feet, stumbled around like a drunk, and fell to the ground behind a nearby ore cart.
The princess appeared over him. She knelt down and gently touched his forehead. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Harry noticed the delicateness of her slender neck and wrists. And her eyes were not one color but many swirling shades of light blue. He felt as if he could get lost in them; they were almost hypnotic.
Harry blinked stupidly in surprise when he realized that she was actually speaking to him in perfect English. He nodded. “How is it that you are speaking my language?”
“I’m not,” she responded. Harry realized that her mouth wasn’t moving with her words.
He rose to his feet and dusted himself off. “Thank you,” he said.
“You are welcome, Harry,” she responded tentatively, aloud this time and definitely in English. She turned to leave.
“Wait,” he said, grabbing her tiny arm.
He heard Fu-Mar’s blade unsheathe, and he quickly put his head down in submission, raising his one remaining hand to show that it didn’t contain any concealed weapons. He heard the princess say “ray-nock” to her big bald protector.
“You should be more careful,” she told Harry.
“What do you mean?”
“They do not like it when anyone touches me.” She gestured behind him.
When Harry turned around, he saw that all three Awumpai had gathered behind him. Fu-Mar stood closest, well within striking distance, and had his blade unsheathed. Harry had no doubt that the Awumpai could have easily lopped off his head with a flick of its thick wrist. Hu-Nan stood behind Fu-Mar and appeared ready to pounce, while Ba-Tu crouched by a nearby tree and aimed some type of projectile weapon at him.
The Dan-Sai said something loud to them in Awumpai, and Hu-Nan and Ba-Tu backed down and moved off. She had to yell at Fu-Mar a second time before the bald Awumpai finally sheathed his sword and thudded away, complaining loudly to himself as he did so.
The princess watched her Awumpai go and then turned back to Harry. “Yes, Harry,” she said. He could tell she liked saying his name.
“I have so many questions.”
She turned her head to the side, as though listening to a distant voice, and then turned her attention back to him. “Joppa-Cal,” she said.
“What?”
“You want to know where it is we are going,” she said. “Joppa-Cal.”
Harry shook his head in surprise. “You can read my thoughts?”
“Yes,” she said impishly, easily transitioning between a noble princess and a little girl. “But I am not good at it.”
“Can I ask you more questions?”
Asha thought this over before answering. “I am already late for practice with Fu-Mar, so maybe we could talk for a little while.”
A little while turned into the better part of the day. Asha had the ability to speak telepathically, but to make him feel more comfortable she used her mouth and spoke in English. She explained that the Awumpai and Mooks were lower life forms, whose crude languages needed to be spoken aloud. By contrast, her language was sung.
She told him that her father, who was king of their land, had sent her to the city of Joppa-Cal to pay homage to the coming gods and that the Awumpai, who had been with her since birth, served as her protectors on this journey.
When Harry asked where the Awumpai came from, she placed her hand on his temple. In his mind’s eye, he saw their city, Valhalla, which lay in a dormant volcano. Only Awumpai had permission to enter this forbidden city. In exchange for peace with neighboring lands, the Awumpai served as bodyguards for kings and royalty.
As the caravan’s oxcarts moseyed down a rugged trail for the remainder of the day, Harry and Asha continued to converse in English and occasionally in Awumpai. Asha was curious about Earth. Harry told her about Earth’s skyscrapers and different cultures, and she inquired about its animals, again revealing her youthfulness.
The Dan-Sai learned English quickly, and she was not only a patient learner but also a patient teacher. Whenever Harry got frustrated with the Awumpai language, she laid her delicate hand on his in encouragement. Her hand felt as light as a feather. Harry remembered that his Uncle Tony once had said, “A good martini should feel like a cloud in your mouth,” and this was exactly how her hand felt on his — like a cloud.
That evening, as the Mooks finished setting up camp, Harry and the princess sat by the fire together. After a loud commotion among the servants, whose language still sounded like rubber bands being strummed to the captain’s ears, one of them approached the princess. The servant, who was dressed slightly better than the other servants, dropped a pile of Mook clothing at the princess’s feet and then prostrated himself before her.
“Rise, Ode,” she said harmonically, despite her use of the crude Awumpai language.
The creature rose but kept his gaze on the forest floor.
“What troubles you, Servant Master?” she asked.
The creature, whose name Harry realized was Ode, spoke his rubber band like language at a fever pitch. Harry saw several anxious Mooks peek out from behind a nearby tent flap to watch the event unfold.
When Ode was done, the princess thanked him and said words in an assuring tone as if to promise that the matter would be addressed. Once he was gone, she nodded to Ba-Tu.
Ba-Tu must have anticipated the princess’s request, for she walked over to a nearby ore-cart, reached behind it, and pulled out a sheepish-looking Hu-Nan. Ba-Tu brought the enormous Awumpai to the princess, and the princess gave him a sound verbal thrashing. She pointed her finger angrily at the Mook clothes on the ground and then at Hu-Nan. Harry saw a side of the princess he didn’t expect, and he found it slightly humorous to see the formidable beast, which could have easily bitten the princess’s thin body in half in one bite, stand before her with slumped shoulders and downturned eyes, looking like a scolded child.
Harry’s Awumpai was still hazy at best, but he believed that Hu-Nan was getting his butt chewed out for dining on a Mook servant.
When Asha asked Hu-Nan what he had to say for himself, he belched and shamefully handed her a soggy leather wrist bracelet that he had just burped up. This further infuriated the princess and led to another verbal thrashing.
Following Ba-Tu’s lead, Harry slipped away to his hammock. Sore from the day’s journey, he climbed into it slowly where it hung between its customary floating rocks. He took out his journal, propping it open with the stump of his right hand, and began writing down everything he had learned that day about the princess, the Mooks, the Awumpai, and their trip to Joppa-Cal. He even started an Awumpai-English dictionary at the back of his book.
#
Awumpai Dictionary
Ah-stew-bleef – Please
Asha – I’m not sure of the literal translation, but I believe the word means something to the effect that her voice is a gift to the gods.
Comp-pai – Good morning
Dan-Sai – Princess (I think)
Dewy – Bye
Muck-locks – Four-legged, buck-toothed beasts of burden with flat, table-like backs and feet that turn in. They chew cud constantly.
Ray-nock – Stop
…
In closing, I’m eager to meet these “gods” of whom Princess Asha speaks, she seems to think they are real enough. Perhaps they can offer me some assistance in locating the rest of my crew and returning home.
Furthermore, I no longer feel like a captive in the nomad caravan I stumbled across. Now I feel more like a stray dog that they have accepted into their fold.
Chapter 12
The Wall
The wall was massive.
Putting her hands on her hips, Mac arched her head back as far as it would go and stared at the structure. The colossal wall they had seen from the river was higher than most skyscrapers back home and extended as far as the eye could see in either direction. A rampart ran the length of the wall, and there were sentry towers placed on top at quarter-mile intervals. It reminded Mac of the Great Wall of China but was much higher.
Three quarters of the way up the wall, Mac saw what she guessed to be birds. They looked like a cross between vultures and giant bats. The birds flew in and out of the clouds that were burning off in the morning sun, and some of them nested on the wall’s jutting sandstone blocks.
It hadn’t been an easy trek through the dense forest to the wall, but looking at the towering wall above her, which had no obvious point of entry, Mac knew that getting inside was going to be even tougher.
Earlier that morning at base camp, Tae had wanted to reconfigure the soil-mover with wheels, but the big mover couldn’t penetrate the dense forest, and they had left it behind. They had talked about leaving someone behind to guard the camp, but no one had wanted to stay. Mac also preferred to keep everyone together. They had left everything they weren’t taking in the cargo containers and locked them. They also had left a note at the campsite in case a rescue party had received the signal from their emergency locator transponder and came looking for them. That done, they had set out for the wall. It had taken them less than three hours to reach the enormous wall’s base.
Standing on a quarter-mile wide slab of stone that served as the wall’s base, Mac and the others took their first break of the day.
“Looks like there’s some sort of sentry tower over there, near the top,” Brett said. He stood next to Mac and peered at the wall through his binoculars. “Looks like some sort of an elevator up there, too.” He passed the binoculars to Mac.
