Under a Starless Sky novel Chapter 13

There was no tracking time. There were no stars. There was no moon. Seasons snuck up on a person. Being near the mountains was almost always cool, but sometimes damn cold. Summer had one obvious sign, glow beetles were more prominent, and the sound of glow cicadas was sometimes so loud, and so steady, he imagined it to be the life support of a spaceship. Shen couldn’t go more than a yard in any direction without finding the empty shells of cicada like creatures. Their eyes were like diamonds. He was reminded of the animae movie, ‘Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind,’ and watched it in his head. When it was damn cold, the lake misted over, but never froze. He had two new, empty books, compliments of N’Ma.

“Don’t tear pages out,” she had said. She provided him a satchel with writing supplies, loose papers, and wax. It was a letter making kit. “It weakens the binding and the life of the book. If you make a mistake, leave it. Don’t scratch it out. Write mistake on the mistake. Learn from it. Let others see it, and allow them to make their own assumptions. Sometimes what you think is a mistake isn’t.”

Shen knew this, but hearing it from her made it stick. Partly because it felt like an elder giving instructions, and it was something he missed. The women told him to do things every time they saw him, as they were particular bossy and expect boys to comply, but N’Ma’s instructions were recommendations. She wanted more philosophy. She wanted him to write a map of his other life’s language. He gave her the alphabet, but he had no intentions of giving her a dictionary. That could take forever and he had better things to do. He asked her why she wanted this and she seemed confused, but after questioning him if he was ridiculing her, she relaxed and pointed out he had written things in two languages. Whenever there was a concept he couldn’t explain, he inadvertently wrote a thing in English. He was irritated by the fact he hadn’t realized what he was doing. He inquired about the letter making kit and was invited to write his sister Tama; it was evident that N’Ma would be reading everything first, maybe even by others. How evident wasn’t abundantly clear until he had returned to his cave and examined the content of his new satchel, and the letter box.

Hidden inside were four letters, sealed with wax. Unlike most letters, it was unaddressed. He assumed for him, opened, and indeed found letters clearly intended for him, without salutations. N’Ma had written one of them.

“The quality and quantity of the gifts you have brought have surprised the best of us. We wish to continue this arrangement, but you have peaked our curiosity. We want to understand things. Please respond to the letters, seal them, and when you trade at West Midelay, you will leave the courier bag we have enclosed, and retrieve one that will be waiting for you. Thank you for your gifts. With love and gratitude, N’Ma.”

Two of the letters were kindly, almost respectful, but it was the sort of kindness one would find in a letter that assumed others might one day read it. It was professional. When he questioned it in his mind, he had an image of a copy of the letter written in a book, and the next page would be his response. One of the letters was more neutral, borderline rude. The other was flat out disparaging. The latter dealt with math. He had written down all the formulas he could remember. He was not great at math. He couldn’t do calculus. His physics were limited to theory, which he knew and could visualize, but if you asked him to the math or the proof, he’d be considered a fool at best, at worst a parrot. The other kindly letter bad been written by a person who loved bugs. She had extremely appreciated the detail of the glow cicada he had rendered, capturing its entire lifespan. She had questions about this. She didn’t believe a grub would become a cicada, but the life cycle so mirrored the silk worm, she instantly saw the truth of it. She wanted samples. She collected bugs and her home was full of displays of bugs she had caught and was trying to classify. She had bugs in glass. She had bugs in amber. She had scary unknowable things in jars of formaldehyde. She had aquariums with insects where she maintained the whole life cycle of colonies. She specialized in making bee hives and colonies. She bred fighting beetles, which was her most sought after commodity. She particularly wanted Shen to bring her a live glow beetle and a female, and offered to negotiate a price.

The other kindly one was someone who had seen his blue prints for making a toilet and crude plumbing. They were amused, and said his work was ‘primitive,’ and ‘just like a man to piece meal a thing together.’ It sounded worse than he interpreted, as he could almost imagine her laughing. “I don’t expect you to understand this. Homes, plumbing, gas lines, methane traps, must be elaborately plotted out, not on paper, but in the mind. When the material is brought together, the intent is transferred to the material through our esoteric training; it shaped by heart and love and song. The home isn’t a machine one constructs; it is a living thing, and solidifies into our desires the same way a turtle shell becomes a home for its host. The health of the home is dependent upon the people who live in it, the land around it. It not just a hole in the ground and a pipe bringing water. It becomes one with the earth, with the trees, with the other surrounding buildings. It breathes air, it drinks rain. It communes with its environment.”

He also learned, while watching this, that this food hunting activity of fire snakes attracted young Irks. Unlike adults, the wild chicks didn’t linger, trying to get him, and they would forage through the leaves of the forest, fish on the banks of the shore, and the groups were male and female. He found a nest where chicks were hatching. He climbed a tree to watch. They were mobile within minutes of hatching, and immediately went to fighting each other. This brought some relief that he hadn’t caused the bird to suffer by not being there to feed it. Not being there may have saved his life. He was not prepared for their level of aggressiveness. The male tending the nest would break up the fights, and inevitably by night fall, all the chicks had departed the nest. In all, 8 chicks fled out into the wild. Three stragglers remained in the nest. When the females of the nest returned, these chicks were eaten- whole, as easily as rabbits. The male attempted to defend them, and, he too, was killed. They feasted on him, destroyed the nest, stayed there for the night. On the morning, one of the females that had been badly injured in a fight was dead. They fought over her carcass. Then they split up and went their own way. He collected what he could. He returned several times over the next few days to find no evidence that this nest would be used again.

Again, there was enough meat remaining that he ate well for the next couple of days. Irks were gamy, like wild turkey. Many of the bones were useful, for other things than making soup broth. It was much too hard to get at the bone marrow, and he didn’t like bones. Turning it to bone meal was too much work. He was still Americanized. He wanted boneless wings. He didn’t like eating fish because of the bones, but he could kill and cook a fish, but he would not kill a rabbit or eat a rabbit, and he would not kill an Irk now that he assumed a greater degree of intelligence. He would eat an Irk, if there was meat remaining after they were killed by another Irk. Only an Irk could kill another Irk. Or a human. One day he was caught unawares by an older, male Irk. It gave chase and Shen fled, aiming for a tree. He knew he wasn’t going to make it. He knew he was dead. The head tap of the male hitting his upper back knocked him on his ass, and sent him rolling. The beast stopped, it reared its head in a predictable way, and started coughing. It turned away, it was gagging, retching, and sounded like an old man who had smoked three packs a day, and then laid down and died. He did not eat this one.

Before returning with trade, he responded to the letters and sealed them with the wax provided. He did not have a ‘seal.” He used the small end of his pestle to push it tight, making a faceless impression. The names of the recipient was on the other side, put them in the courier bag. Male or female could be couriers. Even Bento had been offered a chance to be a courier, as he could still walk, and going the distance to province and back wasn’t an unreasonable request. The journey could be made in a day, two if you were particularly slow and camped for the night. And if he carried a token from N’Ma, almost any canoe owner would consent to ferrying a courier with coin across the great lake. And if you were a man who could row, you were given an honored seat at a paddle position. The canoes were dugouts, made from trees, similar to the Pesse canoe found in the Netherlands; it was likely one of the first boats. The canoes ranged in size, the smallest holding one person, the average size could hold three, but there were some that required a crew of at least six rowers. All boats were owned and captained by females. Though he was interested in the craftsmanship and the lives of these nomadic females, he found the construction quaint. If he tried to duplicate it, he would likely injure himself, or make something so particularly unseaworthy even the wood itself would sink. He attempted to make a raft, thinking he could ‘Huckleberry’ it across the water. He had found some nice wood, he didn’t cut anything, tied it together, and managed to even launch the thing. He got on it and pushed away from shore with a pole, and it sunk. He swam back to shore. The contraption did re-emerge, but it was too much of a bother to go get it and for most of the day he hated Mark Twain and being so modernized he couldn’t make simple damn raft. Had he done this near enough a village, he would have been ridiculed.