Into the Raging Mountains Page 7

  Old and wise at the tender age of thirteen, Laylada had already figured out the way to get more dessert was to make it well and share. Her reputation was quickly spreading. She divulged her secret ingredients to no one except Sansha, who laughed upon hearing them. Practical Sansha was teaching her niece Laylada everything she knew about birthing and healing with animals and people. Laylada was a bright girl and eager to learn.

  The little group of remaining children, dirty and mussed from playing in the all-encompassing forest, surged around the side of Sansha and Pod’s main house. In the lead was tiny Azure, whose tightly-clasped hands were held by bubbly Brigget and bright Yelton. Lorayn followed after, slowly, awkwardly carrying a tall pitcher of well water.

  Smiles bloomed across eager faces as they hugged Laylada, still sitting on her stool. Having finished her simple repair of the torn breeches, she moved with an almost-woman’s grace toward the cooling rack of her kitchen. Dancing, eager eyes followed her.

  “I knew if I baked a few treats for devouring, I could lure you terrible beasties out of the dark and wild forest lairs.” Laylada said with a laugh.

  In moments, she had divvied up several large, gooey chunks of warm, sloppy, apple-filled crust. In even less time, the succulent treats were gone, and contentment washed over her little friends’ faces. Everyone got a full mug of water, and sat lethargic in the wallshade, beaming contented grins and feeling slightly loopy with fullbelly happiness. Even Cethel’s disgruntlement was temporarily extinguished.

  They lay in the soft, fading sun’s long shadows, and burped. And they giggled and dreamed, until the quiet of dusk was broken with the clanging of familiar, distant cow bells, and sharp whistles beckoned each to their mothers’ waiting arms and hot dinner. Another growing day uneventfully passed. The cold hard season was closing in.

  Except for the minor scratches and bug bites, no significant danger ever really seemed to touch these little ones or their protected village. The mountains watched over them all.

  *

  All awareness was funneled into laying her eggs. She sat rock-like at the base of the promontory. She was vaguely aware of the arrival of more possible prey and the departure of all the young humans together. The ties that had bound her beyond reason had been severed when the spellbinding was broken by the four other lurkers. Sitting motionless, conserving her last energy, the mother laid her remaining egg. Moving her claws in reverse, she began to cover her nest.

  In her home domain, she would have entered this phase with a full belly, able to withstand hunger and other predators as the guardian of her clutch. Now, severely depleted, the skinny and pack-abandoned mother began to regain some awareness of her surroundings and her predicament. All the others have gone. She reached out to join the grouphunt and was met with emptiness.

  Her options were few. Reserving the last of her strength and will to live, she stayed stone still, perched above her treasure, hoping any available prey would graciously walk into her tired, hungry mouth.

  *

  Every day Azure changed. The darling toddler of four cycles had become the precocious girl of five. And soon, that too would pass. Harvest had brought the celebration of her fifth Day of Birthing.

  Occasionally a solemn and serious child, Azure’s personality was usually as vibrant as her hair. Every chance she had, she walked the village center, questioning everything and talking incessantly to all. At this tender age, Azure considered all she knew to be her truest, dearest friends, and she loved food, people, and new things recklessly. Like many children, she was innocently oblivious to almost all of the finer social niceties.

  Not that Tatanya ever despaired. After Azure’s startling birthing, her mother had conceived twins just a few cycles later. Currently immersed in the antics of two-cycles-old towheaded boys who shared their older sister’s fondness for mischief and great guffaws of laughter, Tatanya had little time available to teach Azure sly and subtle behaviors beyond loving instruction and simple timeouts.

  To say she ran wild would be untrue. Full of love and eager to learn, grateful for kindnesses, Azure lived in a world of adventures and imagination. The nearby forest remained her favorite haunt, where all sorts of imagined brigands and princesses lived, waiting to be rescued. When she was not thrashing merrily through the underbrush, sticks decorating her fine, blue hair, a different kind of instruction was begun at the village: school.

  Oh, how exciting! To learn forever and never, ever stop! Each sunrise of fiveday, she gathered with Yelton, Brigget, Lorayn, and other children from outlying houses at the townhall. Taught the basics of adding, subtracting and writing, Azure’s world began to have known order and boundaries. Patterns emerged everywhere, in the changing of the colors of leaves and the number of animals needed to pull a heavy harvest load to Trillen, the nearest large city. Harvests had been short for cycles because snowfalls on the surrounding mountain range during the cold hard season were not deep enough.

  The wonderful thing about school for Azure was the thousands of questions she could ask and which were always patiently answered. For every query, their teacher kindly gave her a simple, complete answer. So when Azure learned that the mountains around them were called The Great Grief of Bira Tre, she immediately asked, “Why?” And the entire class was treated to a tale of deity.

  Robes of simple cotton gathered around the teacher’s scrawny frame, almost enclosing the man within a large pillowcase of tan, interrupted only by the cinched rope belt at his waist. Hair in small countable numbers clumped raggedly together on the sides of his head. His eyes seemed to grow into saucers whenever he talked excitedly about their lessons. With raised eyebrows, and a throat-clearing hrupmph!, the dear old teacher instructed them to sit in a close circle to hear the short tale.

  Catching his funny goatee with his hands, fingers absentmindedly circling his chin, he told the story:

  “In the time of ages past, the Gods arose out of Chaos. Each claimed powerful traits and emotions as well as the right to reward or punish their worshippers. Mankind was searching for light to mark the pathway but that was not to be given easily. The deities arose to fill that need, to divide the Great Darkness.

  “Bira Tre was one family of three divine sisters: Bira, Mari and Kira. Bira claimed offensive strategy, loyalty and truth as her own. Mari claimed birthing, learning and growing. Kira claimed discipline, defensive strategy and courage. Bira was the eldest of the Tre, and loved her sisters passionately. There was no discord among the family of Tre.

  “In every tale it seems, peace begins and war ends the family bond. Into the idyllically harmonic lives of the three Goddesses walked dissension, betrayal and pain. One of Bira’s most favored necklaces, selections of evensky hung on bits of swirled moonbeams, broke into pieces, falling on the earth in a shower of little lights. She resolved to go immediately down and search for her treasure. Her sisters, concerned in their own realms, did nothing to aid her.

  “This was the beginning of the end. As she came to earth to collect her fallen jewels, two other precious necklaces of Bira’s went missing. So, as Bira returned home with fragments of her broken necklace, she found more of her precious gems gone.

  “At first, she politely asked, then begged, and ultimately demanded her adornments returned. The other two sisters met her requests with confusion, denial, and heated argument. Bira felt she was betrayed by her trusted loved ones for a few measly gems. This hurt her more than the loss of the necklaces. Her sense of betrayal ripped the powerful family into fragments.

  “She returned to earth, searching for her jewels, vowing never to speak to her betrayers again.

  “Convinced by an oracle of the stones’ whereabouts, Bira set out digging. She dug deep. She dug far. She dug wide, overturning earth, moving lands, forming mountains. Grumbling as she went, her hisses and cursings drifted to the surface of her mining. Over the eons, her labors have formed the Grief of Bira Tre.”

  The teacher concluded the story, “The mountains still grow, split
by a schism of anger and resentment, fuming and spewing righteous indignation. That is our land now. That is our legacy.”

  Looking over the rows of eager faces, the wise eyes scanned the group, accentuated by owl-like eyebrows, “What lesson can we learn from this legend, class?” finished the instructor.

  Such a tale of anger and theft caused a commotion among his students. Yelton’s raised hand was picked first. “Sir, we should never trust our families with anything important?”

  The teacher began to write down their answers on the blackenboard. He gestured to Brigget. She spoke up with, “Um … Jewelry shouldn’t be more important than friends and family?”

  Lorayn offered, “Don’t borrow your sister’s stuff without permission?” Her question included a sidelong, pointed glance at Brigget.

  Cethel chimed in with, “Use your anger to create something better?”

  After everyone had given a possible answer, the instructor shook his head sadly. “All of you fail to see why this story affects us today. This is your assignment for evenwork. Think on it. Bring me a better explanation of this tale nextday. Class dismissed.”

  Azure left the townhall class still puzzling the reasons behind her teacher’s story. Why did it matter? After all, it was just a legend and an old one at that. Why was there passion and anger in the creation of mountains? Was that it? Azure mostly felt sad for poor Bira, alone in the big, wide world. She had her little brothers to laugh with and play together, and couldn’t, or wouldn’t want to imagine having to live her life without them. So much of joy in living was sharing experiences and laughter with loved ones.

  Of all of her family, Azure treasured her mother most of all. Azure still thought her mother was almost divine, snuggling close to her as Mother sang lullabies at night. The smell of the crook of her arm wrapped around Azure’s shoulders; it was the lingering scent of vanilla on her chest. There was no woman more beautiful to Azure. Mother was a rock that Azure built her life on with security and confidence. Mother was as close to perfection as Azure would probably ever know.

  Azure’s thoughts meandered as her feet did. The day’s end was still a while distant. The little girl’s feet trod along, subconsciously directing her on familiar paths, until she found herself again at the edge of the forest near Lookout Rock. That was as good a place as any to think, an old, quiet place.

  *

  Hunger.

  Beyond pain. Mind-numbing, strength-destroying, sanity-crushing need.

  Despair.

  Three mooncycles had passed. Three mooncycles of her guardianship gone. Two were left still to complete. The imposed hunt had left her with almost no physical reserves.

  Seriously depleted, in the normal course of events she would have fed on the targeted prey. With its disappearance and the breaking of the grouphunt connection, she was left to struggle on alone. Now, unfortunately, there was not enough energy and will left to hold herself together. Then who would protect the young? Or guide them home?

  She had waited and guarded so long in this unknown place, that now she was too weak to do anything other than welcome death. The effort needed to eat was almost beyond her. The lurker had already started to detach from the call of life. Her sharp senses crystallized even more, becoming a symphony.

  It seemed she could hear, taste, and smell every bit of life around her. Quickly, she was moving into a transition beyond caring or saving. Speaking to her young, still in their safe and buried nest, was a small comfort. If she died, so would they. Their little minds were just starting to solidify thoughts, just beginning to answer her weak mental intrusion.

  Love. That was all she had to move forward, her only remaining motivation. Channeling her last bits of energy and consciousness, the pale, exhausted, and shaking lurker called out as strongly as she could to her faraway group. To anything near that could hear her plea, she begged: Save me. Save my children! Save me.

  I offer anything, everything! Save my children.

  Her last energy spent, the nearly destroyed lurker prepared for death and silence to take her and the young. With the simpleness of a beast, she waited for the end, accepting whatever would come. Beyond any hope, the lurker waited. She would not last the nightfall.

  *

  On her way down the familiar forest path, Azure was singing brightly to herself and to all the local birds. Most hid as she skipped by their resting places, sort of thinking about Bira and sort of thinking about cookies, living her life inside her own vivid imagination. The path ahead was clear and easy until just before the rock promontory. As she turned the narrower walk around the base, one hand dragging behind her on the wall of rock, Azure found herself stepping on the curled limp rearclaw of a large, sinuous, scaly monster.

  Azure stood tiny next to the huge beast. It was easily as wide as a grown man. She saw the dry scales sloughing off, cracked skin around the shrunken eyes. Startled, her initial reaction was to jump backwards, smacking her head into Lookout Rock. She froze.

  The fallen lurker did not move. One glazed eye watched her, and the tongue flickered weakly out of the toothy mouth. Wide-eyed, Azure’s mouth parted with a small exhalation of air.

  “Ohhhhh!” was the smallest sound to emerge from her lips.

  Shock, fear, and then hesitant curiosity fleetingly followed on Azure’s face.

  *

  As if appearing from an opening in the sky, there in front of the lurker’s bleary eyes was a small prey, enough meat to last her the rest of the nestwatch. Recognition passed through her, it was the once-targeted one. Beyond exhaustion, she could not even open her mouth wide enough to swallow the readily available meal.

  With filmy, red eyes, she lifted her head slightly and observed the young object of divine hunt who stood, also transfixed at their unexpected meeting, watching her.

  *

  Chapter Four

  The Truth Cannot Be Hidden

  Upon waking to the newborn sunrise, Alizarin beamed. Grabbing her short list of chores still to accomplish, she looked around her tiny cottage, remembering. Once this place held everything dear to me. Now, as she was packing for her journey, it seemed barely a shelter, never a home.

  It contained a few things of hers: her mother’s dying gifts and the rickety chair that sat by the firesplace, protesting with every repetitious rock of the feet. The functional wooden table and two sturdy chairs, the well-used and scarred breadboard, assorted kitchen utensils, along with the stuffed straw bed all added up to nothing much to cling onto or to hold her. There were still good memories, lingering as ghosts, but they were also slowly fading away. They would not be enough to keep her warm in the loneliness of snowfall and the silence of her hope.

  Alizarin packed her two spare dresses and aprons, her old and worn but comfortable shoes, and a few toiletries. Laying the largest dress on the bed, she piled all her clothing and combs in the midst, and then tied them all into a pack. The large sapphire went into her small purse, belted against her body, and the few sabals she had went into her spending purse, clipped to her belt. Wrapping the cloak her mother had left around the clothespack, she tied her new yellow cloak over her working dress and walked to the dooropening.

  Looking back to the simple two-room cottage she was leaving for a mooncycle or more, Alizarin was overcome with a wave of emotion. Something like nostalgia held hands with a hopeful expectancy that Gretsel’s birthing would bring some pleasant changes into a static life. I leave as my mother did.

  Checking both the rooms minutely, Alizarin still hadn’t managed to find the silver dragon comb. Truly, that is an unexplained oddity. She had hoped to wear that comb as a daily reminder of lost closeness. She would have to spend some time looking for it when she returned. But not now. Instead, she gently closed the door, ladened with her pack, and dressed for the small traveling days.

  Setting out along the familiar path to town, she scooped two buckets of water from the well, filling her pouch and sprinkling the remains on her row of already spent bulbs, ready for snowfal
l hibernation. Shrugging her shoulders to readjust her load, Alizarin waved to her neighbor Connac’s wife Testa, and walked quickly to the store for a busy day. Testa was going to watch over her little cottage and water the bulbs for the new mooncycle. It was one less worry.

  Approaching Sunbaked’s dooropening right before sunrise, Alizarin was startled to find the door ajar, leaning slightly outward, unhinged from the top. Wary, she looked inside the shop, scanning her goods. Letting out a sharp cry of distress, her hands flew to her mouth. Inside her bakery, all the carefully arranged goods, the decorated cookies, cupcakes, fertility wreaths, and braided breads were tossed randomly on the floor.

  Flour dust covered the breadtable and ordercounter, as if a small child had randomly, carelessly rummaged the entire bakery. The major equipment had not been touched, but all the products of her work were ruined. Although she was distressed by the vandalism, Alizarin quickly assessed the damage, and noting what was beyond saving, went about salvaging her goods, bagging them for quick sale. She checked and fed the starter in its proofing box above the ovens, and gathered and packed away for travel her most valuable spices and a few necessary tools.

  She swept, cleaned the shop, and finally examined the door to see if she could secure it. The hinge was badly damaged, but she thought that a chain and lock could seal the door until she returned. She would have to get one before Rethendrel arrived. Meanwhile, she needed to stoke the ovens and get something baking.

  As she checked the ovens, she found the fertility wreath of laurel with five apples she had finished last nightfall. She had left it to dry in the upper oven. When she went to remove it, she was pleased to see that the wreath at least hadn’t been discovered. She could not have prepared another by this daysend.