Greenways

by D. B. Reynolds-Moreton

  ‘As you know, you are limited to making simple things, like gourd cups and bowls, and the staves. Perhaps the taboo against making things comes from the time of the giants. If we make powerful things, maybe we would go the way of the giants.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’ retorted Kel, suspecting that Mec was going to turn out to be just like the others in the group, no interest in anything new.

  ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t make anything which will help us to survive better. There’s always something new threatening us. This new creature under the trackway bark is a good example. If we don’t find a way of getting rid of it, we will be confined to little areas of the forest where it doesn’t want to go, and if enough of them turn up, that’ll leave us no room at all.’ Kel was getting a little cross, and didn’t bother to hide it.

  ‘But what about the taboo which discourages us from making things?’ asked Mec.

  ‘To my way of thinking, that’s a load of old superstition, and not really worthy of real consideration.’ replied Kel, really warming up to the argument.

  ‘It isn’t the things we make which could cause so much trouble, but the people who use them. A stave is just a piece of wood, and a Cutting Knife is just a piece of special stone with a sharp edge, it’s what we do with them that really counts. Perhaps the giants had something like the Wobbly fruit, or something which gave the same effect, and things got out of control.’

  Mec was very pleased that Kel took up the argument, and gave as good as he got. He hadn’t been wrong in his estimation of the young lad. Mec decided that now was the right time to tell Kel what he really had in mind all along, and then proceeded to do so.

  ‘As you may know, we Story Tellers keep in touch with each other, exchanging ideas and knowledge. We are the keepers of the Stories, making sure that they are passed on down through the generations, and kept as pure as possible.

  ‘As well as dispensing medical herbs to the sick, setting broken bones and trying to enlighten the groups for which we are responsible, it is our duty, or so we feel, to pick out bright young people like yourself, and try to get them to expand the frontiers of our knowledge by exploring the forest and what ever may lie beyond.

  ‘I have chosen you to be my explorer, to go forth and see what is really out there which we don’t know about, and hopefully bring back that knowledge for the good of all.

  ‘There is another group like ours, not too far from here, and it has a bright young lad like you who doesn’t like his life as it is. I have arranged for him to visit us after the midday food break, so he should be here soon. I would like you to be friends with him, and see if you think he would make a good companion for you in the future. I can’t see you staying with the group much longer, and the only other thing to do is explore the forest, and for that you will need someone to help you and share in the discoveries you may come across.’

  Kel looked surprised, things were moving along a lot faster than he had expected, and the concept of leaving the group for an extended period of time had not occurred to him before. The idea of a companion was a good one, and he felt the better for it.

  ‘There is one more tale I would like to tell you a little more about. It is to do with the time of the Great Lights. We don’t know what they were or who brought them about, but we think it was something to do with the things which the giants had made, and probably got out of their control.’

  ‘The stories are very old, and most likely have been altered as they have come down through the ages, but the main thing is, we think they are connected with the Death Sands.

  ‘We know of several of these areas of sand throughout the forest, and you must keep well away from them. It is all right to view them from the trees, but not from the trees which have changed around the edges of the sands and are unlike the trees we have around us now.

  ‘Any area you come across in which nothing is growing must be avoided at all costs, as it may have the same properties as the Death Sands. We don’t know this for sure, but it is better to be safe than sorry afterwards, and the ‘afterwards’ is not very long according to the tales I have heard. No doubt you will come across many strange plants and creatures, and you must, at all costs, treat them as if they are deadly to you, until you can be sure they aren’t, by whatever means you have at your disposal.’

  Suddenly the Story Teller raised his head, listening intently, but Kel hadn’t heard a thing.

  ‘I think our visitor is approaching,’ said Mec, tilting his head ‘I can hear faint footsteps outside on the main branch.’

  A few moments later a young sounding voice called out,

  ‘Mec, are you there?’

  ‘Yes, come in Moss and meet my friend Kel.’

  A tall well muscled youth of about the same age as Kel strode purposefully into the main cave and over to the entrance of the little den in which Mec and Kel were sitting on their gourd stools.

  ‘I’d like you to meet Moss, he’s from a nearby group, and like you, he is not too happy with his lot in life. He thinks there must be more to it than just existing and plodding on from day to day, and so I have brought you both together to see if you would like to go on an adventure.’

  Kel stood up and took a few steps over towards the youth as he entered the room, and touched palms, as was the traditional form of greeting between strangers. He was a little taller than Kel, with broader shoulders and a deeper bronze coloured body hair, but apart from that, they could have been brothers.

  ‘I understand you are as bored with life here in the forest as I am.’ said Kel, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘I didn’t used to be,’ replied the youth ‘until Mec here began telling me the stories, and then I wanted to go out and see for myself what truth there was in them.’

  Mec had brought out another bowl of fruits and pods, and they both tucked in to a good feed, almost as if they were subconsciously trying to put off the next stage of events which would irrevocably join them together in the adventure Mec intended them to go on.

  At last appetites were fully satiated, and the three of them sat back with bloated stomachs, looking at one another, wondering who would start the conversation of no return.

  ‘You are both coming up to the age when you will be presented with the Greater Cutting Knives, but I have something here which will make that seem a small event.’ and so saying, Mec went into another of the little rooms, returning with two of the biggest knives they had ever seen, complete with two scabbards and the holding belts.

  ‘These are rather special knives, and were made a long time ago by a friend of mine. I somehow knew this day would come, and I wanted my adventurers to be equipped with the best I could find, and these are the best.’

  Each of the shimmering black knives were nearly as long as Kel’s fully extended arm, and had a slight curve to the blades which made them look even more deadly than the normal straight type.

  The handle was moulded so that it fitted the three fingers and prehensile thumb of the holder and was adorned with a bright red stone on the extreme end, and a strap through which the holder’s hand could be passed so that the knife wouldn’t be dropped if it was let go for any reason. Mec next produced the scabbards to hold the knives, which had a series of little pockets on one side, each containing a smaller knife than the one before, the final one being only as long as Kel’s little finger.

  ‘These represent a complete workshop, as it were. There is a knife for every purpose, and they are made out of the hardest of the Shiny Black Stones we have ever found, and if looked after, should last you a full lifetime.’

  The pair were overwhelmed at the sight of the knives, having never seen any so large and magnificently made. Mec slid the gleaming black blade back into its scabbard, almost with an air of reverence, and handed each of them a belted scabbard with its complete set of knives.

  ‘There is one more thing about these knives. You will notice there is a bright red stone set in the handle.

  ‘These stones were found
together a long time ago, and are set in the end of a hard silver coloured tube. We had no idea what they are for or who made them, but we think it must be a leftover from the time of the giants.

  ‘They have been passed down through generations of Story Tellers, and recently we found out by accident that if you pressed the stone hard enough, the other stone emitted a ‘pinging’ sound. It’s almost as if they talk to each other, and distance seems to make little difference.

  ‘Up until recently we didn’t have a use for these stones, but now it was thought a good idea to set them into the end of the Knife handles, so that if one of you ever needed help, he could summon the other.’

  ‘Let me show you how it works.’ and Mec handed Kel one of the scabbards, giving the other one to Moss.

  ‘Go into the other room, no, go outside onto the main branch and walk along it some way, when you hear the ‘ping’, press the stone on your scabbard, and then return.’

  Moss disappeared out of the cave entrance, and after a few moments Mec indicated to Kel it was time to press the stone, which he did. Almost instantly there was a loud ‘ping’ from Kel’s scabbard, and he nearly dropped it in surprise, and was still looking in amazement at the device when Moss returned to the room with a grin on his face.

  ‘That’s the nearest thing to magic I’ve ever experienced.’ said Moss, hanging on to the scabbard as if his life depended upon it.

  ‘Is it now,’ Mec rejoined with a grin, ‘wait until you see the next item I have for you.’ He hurried away to return with a small gourd bowl containing a little water and a small black stick with a white mark on one end.

  ‘If anything is magic, then this is.’ said Mec as he place the bowl on the floor of the room. Rummaging about on a shelf, he produced a small piece of bark and placed it on the water in the bowl, and then put the black stick on top of the floating piece of bark.

  Before their eyes, the piece of bark together with the black stick, slowly rotated on the water, eventually coming to rest pointing towards the doorway.

  ‘Now that’s what I call magic.’ said Mec, sitting back on his stool and waiting to see what reaction it produced from the two youths.

  ‘What makes it turn?’ asked Kel, giving it a poke with his finger and watching in fascination as the little black stick on it’s piece of bark gyrated round, to slowly come to rest pointing in the same position as before.

  ‘We don’t know,’ replied Mec, ‘but wherever you take it, and how ever much you spin it around, it always points in the same direction, and that’s towards the Greater Sun at about the time of the midday meal.’

  It was Moss’s turn to twirl the black stick around, which he did several times.

  ‘This is another piece of equipment I think you should take with you on your expedition, the reason being if you just wander about in the forest, you could well go around in circles, and not know it. With this device, you can check that you are going in a chosen direction, and more or less in a straight line. Let me show you.’

  Mec arose from his seat and picked up the little bowl.

  ‘If I wanted to go towards that room over there, all I have to do is make a little mark on the side of the bowl,’ which he did, ‘And then make sure that the stick points towards it. If I go off to one side, the stick will no longer point in the direction of the mark, so I just turn until it does line up, and walk on, and here I am in the other room.’ said Mec, his voice fading as he disappeared into the small room opposite.

  ‘This is the only piece of the black pointing stick we have ever found, so look after it very carefully.

  Kel wondered what other magical things Mec might have hidden away in his caves, but didn’t like to ask. And then a bright idea formed in his mind which he hesitated to mention for a moment, but then the excitement of it overcame his reluctance and he blurted it out.

  ‘You know that clear body shell you used for the light maker? ‘Well, if we could get another one, and cut it to fit the top of the pointing bowl and then seal it together with juice from the stave plant, the water would not run out if it got tipped over.’

  ‘And we wouldn’t have to worry about carrying water to keep filling the bowl up, and we could still see the pointing stick.’ It all came out in one long burst, and Kel was a little out of breath as he finished.

  ‘Now that’s good thinking,’ said Mec, ‘I’ve got some old insect cases somewhere, and you can have a go tomorrow and see what you come up with. Now, before you two can go off on your exploration, there’s one job I’d like you to do, and that’s get rid of the new creature which you found hiding under the bark on the main branch not far from here.

  ‘It will be good experience for you both, working out how you will do it, and then you must try to get others of your respective groups skilled in the matter, or at least interested in the method of disposing of the creatures.’

  ‘You said you knew of a ‘Dust Ball’ or something like that, which was poisonous to just about everything, where can we find it?’ asked Kel.

  ‘I know where to find them, but it isn’t easy and will involve a journey up into the next level of the forest.

  ‘The bag-like structure is easily broken when they are ripe, and they would have to be ripe to be effective, so you will have to work out some means of transferring them down here without endangering yourselves.’ Mec wasn’t going to make it easy for the two.

  ‘May we come here tomorrow and discuss it with you’ asked Kel, a little worried that his taller and slightly larger companion might take the initiative and come up with an answer to the problem before he could.

  ‘Yes, you may, but make it as early as possible in the morning as there will be a lot to do if we are going to go up to the next level, and I would like each of you to bring one other from your group so that they may learn from what we are about to do.’

  ‘Make sure it is the brightest member of your group, for they will have to learn how to rid the area of these new creatures after you leave.’ said Mec, nodding and lowering his head, the customary sign that the meeting was coming to an end.

  Kel and Moss got up to leave, clutching the newly acquired knife scabbards tightly to them, but Mec held out his hands with a smile and said, ‘You have to earn these first, and they certainly can’t be shown to the groups, it would cause too many enquiries as to where they came from.’

  When the two were outside the cave again and about to go their separate ways, Moss turned back towards Kel and said,

  ‘I can see his point, but those knives are ours, one way or another. See you in the morning, Kel. Oh, and I’m very pleased to have met you. Between us, we should be able to sort out that creature, whatever it is.’ and with that he was gone, a fleeting shadow among the other shadows, dancing along a main branch and then flickering out of sight.

  Kel returned to his group, carefully going around the marked area on the main branch homewards where the creature lay hidden, and wondering just how they were going to deal with this new threat to their survival.

  The man who had lost some of his chest hair in the stave collecting escapade was still wittering on about his misfortune and looking generally miserable. Kel examined the wound which was already beginning to heal over, and told him to keep the moss damp.

  There was no sign of the dreaded fungus infection and Kel tried to cheer him up by saying a full recovery was most likely, but it made little difference to his general demeanour, and Kel began to lose patience, telling him he was lucky to be alive. All he got for his trouble was a long face and a parting scowl as he left.

  They all settled down for the night, Kel setting up his ring of ‘Tinkle stones’ as usual, and wondering why no one else had ever asked him why he did it, or even what they were for. Yes, he would be glad to leave this dumb bunch of idiots. The more he thought about it, the more he warmed towards his new companion, Moss. He at least had a spark of life in him, and could no doubt be relied upon in a crisis, and there were likely to be quite a few of them.

  It
had rained hard in the night, and they were all wet and looking fed up next morning, except Kel who had the foresight to curl up under an overhanging branch and was warm and dry when he went out to look for his first meal of the new day.

  The Greater Sun had only just broken through the higher levels and spilled a little dim light onto Kel’s group when he set about selecting one of their number to join him on the creature clearing exercise. No one seemed very interested in the project, although he had explained it in detail and told them what would most likely happen if they did nothing. In the end, one of the older members said he would join Kel, but if this was for the greater good of the group or just to appease Kel, he had no idea.

  The pair set off armed with their staves, and Kel pointed out the danger area as they approached it. The older man didn’t seem to be the least perturbed at the possibility of being devoured by the hidden creature, and Kel wondered if he was just wasting his time.

  When they finally reached Mec’s tree cave, Moss and his chosen companion were already there, and while they exchanged greetings between them in the traditional manner, Kel couldn’t help but notice that Moss was certainly a lot more lively and brighter than the member of his group he had chosen to bring along.

  Mec came out to greet them all and explained in great detail the possible dangers of the expedition, and the need to clear the forest in their area of the new threat. Five new staves were produced from the tree cave, and Mec explained that these were a little different in that they had a small Lesser Cutting Knife set in the end, and great care would be needed if no one was to be cut while they climbed up into the higher levels.

  ‘There is a thong attached on the butt end of each stave so that it can be attached to your carrying belt, and the sharp end will then dangle well below you as you climb, but the climber below will have to be aware of getting his head cut open if he isn’t careful and doesn’t keep his distance from the one above.’