Under a Starless Sky novel Chapter 11

Outside life wasn’t as hard as Shen expected. If he came to the orchard, he was allowed to eat his fill of anything on the earth, as long as he filled a basket with good fruit first. If he ate something from the tree, the man or woman in charge ran him off. If he went to the circle just outside the entrance to West Midelay with precious stones, crystals, or bundles of feather, they would trade or offer him food. Fresh, warm bread was particularly nice. He usually chose trade to ground food. It was often cold, almost freezing, and so he wanted blankets and clothing over food. The guard sometimes tolerated him sitting close to the night watch fire, referring to him disparagingly as ‘fire hugger.’ The guards in the ‘dark’ made fun of him for being a ‘clicker.’ Unlike the others, he had not mastered seeing with his heart. He could, however, make a noise with his mouth, and that noise provided a detailed map of the world. Human echolocation. He had learned that skill in another world, another life, so long ago now it seemed forever away from him, but the skill had return to him pretty quick the first night alone in the dark.

His map was extremely limited, crude, and nowhere near to scale. He was not Lewis and Clark, though sometimes he imagined he was walking the wilderness with Sacagawea. He was trapped between West Midelay and a body of water. There was forest and orchard to the North and South, and the further in he went, the fewer the food bearing trees and the more Sleeping Trees he found, until eventually he was at the thick of Sleeping Forest. So, North and South led to sleeping forests. There was a small province by the lake, and small boats went across to somewhere, and maybe North and South along the shore. He was not allowed passage.

Going deep into the Sleeping Forest led to a darkness as pronounced as nighttime. From time to time he wondered if he had penetrated further than anyone, only to come upon signs that others had been there. Sides of the tree were painted. Following the painted sides led out of the forest. Once he had found a series of trees, six in all, tied with string. Either the person traveling inwards ran out of string and turned back or… He didn’t like thinking of the ‘or.’ He didn’t know how much was myth and how much was true. He had yet to see a walking bear, but he had seen flightless birds bigger than ostriches. Their feathers were almost as good as gold, and reasonably easy to collect if you followed the trail of scat. The male feathers were as colorful as peacocks. The males were as deadly as velociraptors, but not as deadly as the females. The females hunted in groups. It was sophisticated hunting; they would catch fire snakes, drop them in a known rabbit hole, and wait for rabbits to come running out.

They would eat humans. Had he not been able to climb a tree, he might have died the day he discovered a nest. They were persistent, lingering, hitting the tree with backwards kicks that shook the tree. The whole tree shook, and it was wonder to him they didn’t bring the tree down just to eat him. They lingered around his tree, going off a little ways, as if pretending to leave, but one would invariably run back to spy on him, and they did this until almost dark before departing for their nest.

These particular birds were aliens. Or, more precisely, something he had never heard or seen on earth. That didn’t mean they hadn’t existed on earth, it just meant he wasn’t aware of them. They resembled the Elephant birds of Madagascar, and were certainly large enough to be. A human might even ride one, or several humans with the right harness, if they weren’t so damn unfriendly. They spit a nasty, tar like something which would turn a puddle of clean water black. He had found evidence of this by the lake, but until he had seen a bird wretch it up, he hadn’t known what it was. The tar made a nice pitch that could flame a torch for a good moment. They would chase a torch at night, even stamp out a camp fire, and then sit there and squawk until morning. If the others in the distance responded, they would slowly make their way back to a nest. They had zero ability to see in the dark. One male resided at the nest and watched the eggs. Competing males would fight, and the weaker usually ran away. Sometimes the fight was to the death, but rarely. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he would have doubted it; a competing nest of females convinced its male to leave the nest to challenge a rival, and while they fought, the females broke the eggs in the rival’s nest. They didn’t even bother to eat them. That was the incident in which he witnessed the male killed the other male, and on making quick work of the others, it managed to kill a female before chasing the rest away. When the hunting females returned to find their eggs destroyed, they killed their own male.

The feathers made good writing pens. One bird would feed all of Easterly for two days. One egg would provide an omelet for at least ten. Egg shells were valuable. Its poop was clearly good plant food. Its bones could be used for tools, or ground for bone meal.

One other thing about them that he learned was they were immune to the Sleeper Tree effect. If a rabbit strayed too close to a Sleeper Tree, an Irk would back kick a tree with loud resounding thump, and the rabbit would pass out. One of them would eat a rabbit that day. One; because the rabbit would be swallowed whole by the first to get it.

Shen lingered near the broken nest until next morning; the females ate the remains of the other birds, ate the contents of the broken eggs, and then departed. He assumed they went to look for a new nest, because he would never see them again at this place. When they departed, he went into scavenge. In the process of collecting feathers and egg shells, he discovered an unbroken egg. He made this his priority and took it back to his campsite, a cave he had claimed for his own. He considered trading the egg, but instead half buried it near his fire pit, hoping it would be warm enough to remain viable. He returned for the pile of feathers and shells. It took three trips to really get all the good pieces. There was even enough meat remaining on the carcasses that he managed to get several day’s worth of food. He did have to cut through some viscous tar, and of course, you can never get it all, and on cooking it, those parts burned extra well, but he was certainly satisfied that night.

‘The cave’ was hardly a hovel, but had the promise of being more. The back wall of the cave was a lovely swirling of orange and pink colored salt. From taste alone, he suspected it was comparable the Himalayan Salt found in Pakistan, and initial probing with Remote Viewing suggested it was an anomalous vein that extended to the far side of the mountain range. After his initial view, though, he was overcome by flights of fancy of making fortune selling salt whole at the same time carving a temple into the mountain, a temple to rival the home of Midelay. After seeing images of salt bricks illuminated from underneath paving the inner sanctuary of his temple fortress, he was never able to better gauge the depth, height, or distance of this salt mass.

On his next trip to Midelay, he brought all the feathers, some of the better egg shells to trade, and 25 pounds of salt rock. It took almost all day to get there, because of all the breaks he took. West Midelay’s Light House was far grander than East Midelay’s and Easterly’s. It was prominent on the mountain, above the entrance to the mountain. Outside and below was large fire pit that he had never seen extinguished. It was not wood driven, but gas rising up through the sand and rocks. A prominent circle of rocks lay just on the far side of the fire. All visitors checked in here to have their presence acknowledged in the light. The guard knew him well enough she didn’t insist on ceremony, and he went first to a one armed man, Bento, who tarried every day by the fire. He was disparagingly referred to as ‘fire hugger;’ that was anyone one who stole warmth without contributing.

Shen sat by him, gave him some dried Irk he had brought, and peeled some fruit for him, as his good hand only had a thumb and a partial finger. Shen had never heard Bento speak. He was sitting a little closer to the fire today. He also smelled worse than he normally did. A bizarre fact about the people of Tamor, they don’t usually have bad body odor. They might go a whole month before bathing, and still they don’t smell bad. Bento smell was that noticeably different. Here in Tamor, bad smells and tastes were usually associated with health problems. They suffered him, but were not likely going to address his illness. From Shen’s perspective, his underlying illness was likely poverty. His loss of arm and finger was due to fighting in the games.

“You alright?” Shen asked.

Bento accepted the food eagerly. Shen left him to this and approached the guard. Her name was Soella.

“Why do you always bring him food?” Soella said.

“I believe he needs help,” Shen said.

“All he has to do is go get it,” Soella said. “He can make it to the toilet, he can go collect.”

Shen didn’t want to argue with her. He knelt down and unpacked some of his trade. Her eyes were wide. He had the egg shells; each egg was filled with shell shards, and or crystals, and then there were the feathers.