by Zach Hughes
A sprig of living needles fell into his lap and, as he listened with his mind, he munched them.
"Now, now," the voice whispered.
He used his knife. The packed snow abraded his fingers, sent the freezing cold into his being, but he was true to the pictures in his mind and the packed snow blocks circled him and then, after he'd raised two tiers of them, he dug out the packed snow and a rain of living branches began to fall, some missing him narrowly. He laid the living branches with their soft needles in the circle of packed snow blocks and then began to cut more blocks, working by the flickering light of the fire. The dim light of dawn came, and aided him with the last tiers of packed snow blocks. Before him was a small dome of snow. Inside, the frozen ground was covered by fresh needles from the tall brothers. His fire was burning well, with no shortage of dead-wood, for, as needed, it fell from above, although, he saw, as the day went on and he closed in the dome of his ice house, he would have to walk farther and farther from the ice house to gather the wood, for the tall brothers nearby had begun to clear themselves of dead branches.
The storm still howled. A section of the overhead canopy gave way not too far from his ice house and a cascade of broken branches and snow thundered to the ground. Duwan rested. He ate of the living needles from the tall brothers, considered his situation. The cold was intense, so that he had, continuously, to go back to the fire to be warmed. He was weak, in spite of the new supply of food, food more nutritious than that he'd found on the northern side of the frozen lake.
In early darkness he crawled into the ice dome and closed the opening with packed snow. It was cold, but, gradually, his body heat filled the small space and, covered by all his clothing, he slept. He awoke and pushed aside the snow that blocked the opening. The hiss and sigh and roar of the storm told him that there would be no traveling that day. He felt much stronger, alert enough to remember the strange events of the previous night, the whisperings, the pictures that had formed in his head and had saved his life.
He stood beside his rekindled fire and looked around. There were only the tall brothers, and the solid covering overhead. Had it really happened, those whisperings, his name being called, "Duwan, Duwan, Duwan?" The legends said that in the Land of Many Brothers there was no death, until the coming of the Enemy. In the Land of Many Brothers Drinkers were of the earth and for the earth, there being no wasting disease, no hardening until an old one simply ceased to live. Could such things be believed?
"Brothers," he said, spreading his arms, "I thank you." A small sprig of fresh needles fell into one of his outstretched hands, and he looked up.
"Brothers, did you speak?"
There was a warmness in his mind, and then a picture of vast distances and howling winds and iron cold.
Duwan fell to his knees and raised his hands. "I salute you, brothers, Drinkers of old. I praise you, and I give you my thanks. You have helped me. Now I need further help. I need guidance, brothers. I have far to go. Will I go now?"
A softness in his mind, a picture of his little snow hut, the taste of the needles in his mouth and something else, not yet identified, and then a sense of the passing of many days and a picture of the land without snow.
"I am to remain here, then?" he asked, and the soft, reassuring feeling came over him.
There was no more. He was alone. He left the fireside and walked toward the south and was assaulted immediately by the cold, a cold that caused his breath to freeze and tinkle in little icy crystals, a cold that sent a burning upward from his feet. Ahead was only the vast, unchanging forest. He went back to the fire, warmed himself, crawled into the ice hut and saw that wiry tendrils had grown upward through the frozen ground, making small cracks in the surface. He lay so as not to crush the tendrils and, as he mused, and wished that he was back with his own in the valley in the far north, he saw an ooze of liquid from the end of a tendril, touched it with his finger, sampled it to find it tasty and nutritious. Another drop of the liquid welled up at the end of the tendril and he bent to suck it away with his mouth, to savor all of it, and the flow became continuous. There was no time. There was fire, and cold, and the endless storms. There were the fresh needles that fell as he hungered, and the constant supply, on his demand, of nutritious sap from the tendrils growing within his hut. He fattened, stored energy, exercised by taking brief walks. He discovered that the character of the tall brothers changed in all directions after a brisk, short walk, and became the same as those on the northern side of the frozen lake. His feelings changed, too, when he left the whispering grove. Within it, he felt safe and protected. Outside it he was alone.
Time. The days were growing longer. More and more often wet masses of snow fell, broken limbs mixed with it, to the forest floor. The iron cold abated until he could explore for a half day without ill effect. He was swollen with nutrition, eager to resume his journey, and yet there was the feeling that it was too soon. That feeling was borne out by one of the worst of the storms, a wind and snow that broke through the canopy itself and littered the ground with fallen limbs and piles of accumulated snow and sleet. He resigned himself, waited until the light of Du, penetrating through holes in the canopy, was bright, and made shining things of wonder of the drops of melt water that, as the days passed, made for an unceasing rain in the grove.
"Is it not time?" he asked, and a picture of distances came to him.
"My brothers," he said. "I believe. The tales of the old ones had foundation. I salute you, my ancestors, my brothers. Eternal life to you." He heard the whisperings. He had not heard them often during that long period of cold and darkness, but now he heard them and, instead of being disjointed, difficult to understand, the words were clear, simple words that caused him to thrill inside.
"All is one," the whisperers said. "We are all one."
"I hear," Duwan whispered. "All life is a oneness." He covered distance with difficulty, at first. He walked through a cold rain as the snows of the canopy melted and made the footing mushy. He crossed another frozen lake with melting snow cold around his feet and with Du overhead, giving him more energy now than the cold could steal. He drank the rays, blessed them, and moved ever southward until the snows became only remnants in shadowed places and new, fresh green things sprouted in the thawing earth. He ate well, always thanking the food source and never taking enough to deprive a brother of health and life. He had no means of keeping count of the days. He knew only that as his strong legs moved him ever southward Du rose higher and higher into the sky, and he remembered his grandmother's words. When Du was just below the zenith at midday he would have reached his destination.
He was constantly on the alert now, for the land had changed. There were several varieties of tall brothers now, some of them putting out new, tender, delicious life organs after a time of bareness. He saw signs of life, but only in the form of animal tracks. From the songs of the minstrels and the legends of the old ones he remembered tales of animals large enough to be dangerous. Once he'd doubted such tales, but now, having known the whispering brothers, he doubted less. If one aspect of the legends was true, who could say what else was true? Still, he spotted no large tracks, saw only small, shy creatures so eager to avoid something as large as he that he had no clear picture of them, except for one little animal, the size of his hand, that lived in the tall brothers and squeaked excitedly when Duwan came near.
He swam a wide river, making his way through floating masses of melting, fracturing ice, spent a day drying his clothing and warming himself, and then was off again with the morning light.
He rested when Du was at the zenith, but still too low in the southern sky, and as he nibbled tender, green shoots he heard a distant crash and felt, unaccountably, a moment of sadness that was actual pain. Not long after he resumed his southward trek, he discovered the cause of the crashing sound. He heard, first, the steady rhythm of two sharp sounds. They echoed and reechoed among the trunks of the tall brothers. He began to move cautiously, came nearer. He heard voices.
Drinkers!
He increased his pace, but moved from cover to cover, carefully, until he saw, in a clearing ahead, a structure built of the split trunks of tall brothers. His heart leaped. Tall brothers had died to build that hut. He moved around the edge of the clearing, following the steady, rhythmic sounds, and froze into immobility when he saw, through the tall brothers, two Drinkers using chopping instruments to attack a tall brother. Even as he watched, someone yelled a warning and, with a groan, the tall brother toppled, the fall accelerating until the dying brother struck the hard ground with a smashing of limbs and the knowledge, shared by Duwan, that he was dying.
Duwan almost shouted, but his eyes had shifted from the two Drinkers who had killed the brother to the source of a harsh voice. A Drinker struck out at one of the choppers with a whip and the lash fell across the worker's shoulder. The worker yelled out in pain and Duwan reached for his longsword, but restrained himself as other Drinkers with weapons and lashes moved into the clearing and herded Drinkers dressed in rags to begin trimming the branches off the fallen dead brother.
Never had he seen such a thing. The Drinkers with weapons were dressed in leather and fur garments. They had, Duwan realized with a flush of anger, actually taken animal life to keep their bodies warm. His every impulse was to rush forth to punish this, the greatest of crimes, for the taking of life was the ultimate wrong. He held himself back, however, telling himself that he had been given a mission. He was not thinking, at that moment, of his missing arm, and the hope—a hope that had been growing ever since he'd discovered that at least a part of the old tales was true—that he could be whole again. He thought only of the dead tall brother, of the dead animals whose skins and fur warmed the killers, of the odd situation wherein one set of Drinkers forced others to work and struck them with lashes.
While uttering a prayer to Du for the dead, he circled far, returned to his southerly direction. In the days that followed he passed another settlement, this one boasting three huts made from the split trunks of tall brothers. Fortunately, the area was thinly settled. To the west was a snowcapped mountain range. A great river ran in a southeasterly direction, then turned east. Rolling, forested hills grew taller with each ridge to the south, and little cold streams made each valley a thing of delight, but there were no more settlements; at least Duwan didn't encounter any. All was green, and Du seemed to rise right up in the middle of the sky at midday now.
The sun was so warm that Duwan was all but intoxicated with it. He found that he could almost live on sunlight alone. He drank it and drank it and praised Du and wished that all of the Drinkers of the valley were with him for a celebration, knew, too, a sense of loss, for this, long past, had been their country. Why had not the old ones ever spoken of this glory of heat and sun? But then, who, among those who knew only the dim and distant Du of the far north, would have believed them? Who would believe him when he returned to tell of this land of so many riches, of so many silent, fixed brothers, of whispering groves, of Drinkers who killed?
On a morning when the sky was cloudless and Du was climbing toward the zenith only slightly to the south of the middle of the blue, he found his place. It was a tiny clearing on the southern slope of a ridge. Rocks thrust up from the earth, leaving a pocket where no tall brothers grew, but with a space of rich, grassy earth in the center exposed to the full light of the sun. He knelt, facing the north, and sent a prayer there, greeting all those he loved by name, his father, his mother, his friends, and, lastly, Alning. Then, eyes closed, the warmth on his eyelids, he praised Du. He secreted his weapons away from possible rain in a cleft among the rocks, took one last look around, stood in the grassy spot and began to bore into the sun-heated earth with his horned toes. If there was to be a time—when legend proved to be truth, the time was now.
The earth cooled below the surface, but as tendrils began to grow from his feet he felt and tasted the goodness, the richness. It was loamy, enriched by season after season of growing grass. He wiggled, dug himself down until his knees were below the level of the earth, used his hand to tamp down the loose earth, leaned, looked up toward Du. He felt the somnolent peace of the goodness of the earth begin to seep into him, having that effect that is not unlike sleep, but more total, more possessing. He felt the tendrils extending downward and outward and he knew that he was committed. The earth was taking him, and it would hold him, in that state much like sleep, until it had done its work. In that time he would be helpless, as helpless as one of the fixed brothers who had not a brain to think nor sensitivity to feel anything beyond the sweet earth, the soft rains, or, perhaps, the sudden and searing pain of death. He could not let fear deter him, although it was not too late to jerk his feet free, ripping away the rooting tendrils.
Du would guard him. Du would restore.
Chapter Five
Soft rains came, and growling, fast-moving storms that flashed and crashed and sent torrents of wind-driven drops. Mostly, however, the sun burned the eastern hills golden red on rising and blessed all with warmth. Small animals darted among the rocks, sniffed at the tall, growing thing with twin trunks planted deeply into the fresh, sweet, grassy earth. A tawny-purple quadruped reared and braced short, padded front feet on one truck of the growing thing and nibbled with the large, blunt teeth of the grass eater at tattered clothing, spit out the substance from which all nutrition had been removed in processing it into weavable cloth, sniffed, looked around alertly, pointed ears twitching, and lay down in the growing thing's shade, almost hidden by the tall grass.
A pale blue bird alit on the fronds atop the growing thing, twittered, peered at the ruminant still resting peacefully in the shade, jeered, flew, the beat of its wings disturbing the fronds.
The frond-like hair had grown rapidly. Two sources of nourishment were at work, with the light of the sun being converted directly into energy and with the rooty tendrils seeking out the minerals and moisture from the loamy soil. As days passed, and the rains came and went and the sun reached its northernmost position, near the zenith, the hair covered the growing thing's face. It swayed with the summery breezes, bent with the soon-passed winds of the thunderstorms. And from the pointed stub of the severed arm there appeared small, thin protrusions that became perfectly formed, three fingers and two opposing thumbs, tiny, almost ludicrous, but growing, soaking up a good portion of the nutrition provided by sun and soil. Yellow-green skin darkened in the full heat of the sun to a sheeny, rich, forest green.
He dreamed. The dreams were disjointed and distant, as if being observed through the deepest winter haze of the valley. Alning was there, her black eyes the most visible aspect of her, a hint of her femaleness, long legs, coloring torso; and whispers, insensate, wordless whispers of peace and goodness—the song of the growing grass, the purely sensory reaction of the nearer tall brothers to rain and wind and sun. He dreamed, now and then, that he was not alone, but that dream, too, was vague, and that oneness with the earth, that somnolency, made him little more than the grass, the nameless small fixed brothers, the tall ones.
The arm grew, now as large as that of one of the fixed young on the verge of mobility. Of that he knew nothing, nor did he see, for his eyes were closed, and covered with the fronds of his hair, that he, truly, was not alone.
She came from a valley to the east, climbing a ridge wearily, a tall, tired, rag-dressed female with thin, undernourished arms and pinched, hollow-cheeked face. She came with scufflings of feet, the movements of one not accustomed to traveling in the wilderness, with mighty pantings as she achieved the top of the ridge, rested, and then, with a fearful look over her shoulder, moved more swiftly down the slope toward the grassy clearing. Blood spotted the ground where she stepped with her left foot, and she favored it, limping, halting, as she reached the rocks near the clearing to sit on the sun-warmed stone and examine the left foot with concerned, purple eyes. She had tried once before without success to remove the long splinter that had entered into a softer area between her toes, and s
he was no more successful now as she sat beside the clearing. With a sigh that was part sob she stood, gingerly put her weight on the foot, winced, and stepped onto the grass. The small ruminant that had been resting in Duwan's shade leaped, showing admirable ability to cover ground, and went flashing silently into the forest.
"Ahtol!" she gasped. Her eyes had been led to the growing thing in the center of the clearing. She turned to flee, ran a few steps with her left foot paining her, took a quick look backward, halted. Her initial panic gone, she realized that had he been a Devourer she could not have hoped to outdistance him on her painfully swollen foot.
Crouched and ready for flight, she crept back toward the clearing. He did not move, except to sway slightly in a gust of breeze. She came closer, closer, saw that his feet were buried in the earth to just above his knees.
"You," she said, "what are you doing?" A tinge of red had been burned into Duwan's hair by the sun. It was long, longer than that of the female, and it gleamed with health, moved in the light breeze. She could not see his eyes, for they were hidden. It came to her that this was some new form of torture invented by the Devourers. She twisted her mouth in sympathy and straightened to walk into the grass that came soothingly to the calves of her thin legs. Slowly, carefully, fearfully, she drew near. She saw that his chest was rising and falling, that he was breathing deeply, but oh, so slowly. He must be, she felt, near death. But she saw no blood, no great abrasions on his smooth, sheeny skin. Her eyes caught the growing arm, now only slightly smaller than the other, and they widened.
"What manner of thing are you?" she asked, and was rewarded only by the call of a bird from the nearby trees. She reached out a hand tentatively, drew it back with a gasp as the fronds of Duwan's hair moved in the breeze. Then, holding her breath, biting her lower lip, she lifted the hair to see a face in repose, in sweet sleep, a face of fullness and health and no little beauty, the face of a young du, so different from either pong or Devourer, and yet familiar, a pong face idealized, perhaps. She let the hair fall, examined him closely. His clothing was in tatters, had fallen away from his powerful chest.
