Since the night in the cave, Oli and his rescuer had travelled in rapid zig zags through terrain that neither of them knew. Watching his movements, Oli could not decide if Kastor belonged in Saltleaf forest or not. Sometimes he moved like a shadow, alert and sensitive to every sound. At other times he chattered and cracked branches while Oli winced and watched the darkness, replying in polite whispers. He seemed as able as any Sevener to see the paths, but often made alarming and sudden changes in direction. Oli did not ask again if they could search for Ingo. Since that first morning, when he’d seen the thing atop Kastor's sleeping body, he had been only slightly less afraid of the outsider than he was of being left alone.
Kastor assured him frequently that they would find his village, but his friendliness felt precarious and fragile, like the apparent warmth of an early spring day that could turn in a moment to storms and hail. The slightest setback to his pathfinding put a look of anger and loathing onto the young man’s face out of all proportion to his mistake. Once, when they were looking for a safe place to sleep, Oli asked Kastor about his parents. The man fell into a moody silence and kicked at the low branches in his path, snapping them away and making more noise than was sensible.
Elder Mildred told tales of careless travellers possessed by forest spirits, such as those who permitted a ghoul to speak with them and now laboured to satisfy the same insatiable hunger as the restless soul they had let in. Like the story of the hunter and the sleeper queen, few had happy endings. Best to keep him in a good mood and get home quickly, thought Oli, who followed Kastor closely, keeping one eye on the shadows around them and another upon the man in front of him. At night time, he breathed slowly as his mother had taught him and tried to fall asleep before Kastor did. If he heard snoring before he drifted off, he shut his eyes tight and prayed. During the third day of walking he tried, surreptitiously, to question Kastor.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked in a low voice.
“As well as ever,” Kass replied cheerfully. They had walked for miles the day before, only for Kastor to mutter a stream of expletives at midday and have them backtrack most of what they had covered.
“Do you think we’ll reach the river tomorrow? It can’t be far.”
“Not far, no. It wasn’t safe yesterday. That’s why we went south a bit.”
“That was south?”
“Of course.”
“Um, how do you know it wasn’t safe at the river?”
In lieu of a reply, Kastor stopped and turned to face Oli, then tapped his nose and winked. But Oli thought he saw the beginning of a tear in his eye. They resumed walking.
“Kass?”
“Yes, Oli?”
“How long have you been around these parts? The north of the forest, I mean.”
Kastor pushed a branch out of the way and held it, letting Oli pass. He released it with a whoosh.
“A couple of months,” he replied. “I left at the end of Winter.”
“Were you looking for the... ‘Beyobacks’ the whole time? The creatures you asked me about when I saw you at the river?”
Kastor laughed. “I’ve been looking for the beyobacks for longer than two months. The ‘Highhome Peaks.’ That’s where they live, or so I heard. I thought they were the mountains in this forest. I’m sorry I laughed at you for not knowing what they're called. Where I’m from, there are mountains on every side and each peak has a name of its own. I left to look for the beyobacks a long time ago, but I was... Delayed.”
“Delayed where?”
“Here in the forest. In the South. I got stuck there a while. When I escaped, I resumed my old quest... Probably too late.” Oli could sense his mood darkening. It was as though the light became dimmer, struggling to find its way through the canopy. What did he mean, he got stuck? What did he escape from? He wanted to ask more but resisted. He pursued instead the topic that seemed to spirit his mood.
“You’re not far away, you know. I’m sorry I didn’t answer you when we met. You scared me, that's all. I thought you appeared -”
“Close?” snapped Kastor, stopping in his tracks. “Close to the Highhomes?” He knelt in front of Oli and grabbed his shoulders with both hands. “Are you sure?”
Oli recoiled from the sudden intensity. Was this better or worse than the impending moodiness creeping over Kastor a moment earlier?
“I... I don’t know if they’re called the Highhomes... But it’s where the hoarders live. That’s what my parents said you meant.”
“Is it? You call them hoarders...”
He pulled out his book and rifled through the pages muttering to himself. He found what he was looking for and thrust it in Oli's face. On one side was a neat column of letters, but listed meaninglessly or arranged to make sounds that did not form words. On the other side of the page, in line with them as though mirrored, were neat patterns formed of straight lines. They looked a little like the glyphs on Sevenstones, but Oli had never seen these symbols before. Kass pointed.
“Have you ever seen markings like these? Perhaps around those mountains, or inside the caves there?”
Oli glanced into Kastor’s face before replying, afraid to disappoint him. His eyes lit up with an innocent eagerness, like a small child when a rumour went around that Oslef was baking honey parcels.
“I’ve never seen them, but I don’t enter the caves. It's not a good idea. The grown ups went a few nights ago, but only because they were looking for Ingo. Why? What’s it about?”
“Argh, it’s nothing. I hoped you'd know them, that's all.” Kass put the book away and they walked again in silence.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“The mountains aren’t far from my village,” said Oli, after a while. “You could visit them and see, if you're careful. Why do you want to find the hoarders, anyway? Why do you care if they draw those symbols?”
“Why do you call them that?” Kass shot back. He sounded offended on their behalf.
“They forage for scraps of what we throw away. They carry off whatever they can find and hoard it in their caves, even if they don’t really know what it’s for. Father says they seek out human things like crows collect jewellery. Once the mayor put glass windows in the town hall at Scursditch, but hoarders were so enthralled they risked their lives to enter the town, and picked them all away in the night. They like tools and scrolls especially, but they can’t read or build. Dad says they put scrolls on the floor to sleep on.”
“That’s interesting.” Kastor stopped walking and nodded as Oli spoke. “That fits.”
“Fits what?”
“My theory. Would you like to hear it?”
Oli nodded, and Kass pointed to a nearby rock. They sat and drank some water while Kastor collected his thoughts. When Kass spoke, he waved his hands with the same excitement as when he had explained the word ‘explorer.’
“You know how humans got the letters, don’t you?”
“Manafel gave them to us.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Kastor chuckled. “A short version. They were his gift to us; to record the gods’ commands. But we used them for so much more! We used them to study, to preserve memories and share learning. Of all the gods’ gifts, none changed us more than the letters. Not even Hurean’s secret of fire changed us like Manafels’ gift. Don’t you agree?”
Oli wasn’t sure that he did. After all, not many Seveners even knew how to write. When his father made him learn the markings, he’d been unable to see what use it could ever serve. He recalled being more interested in the parchment. How was it so thin and yet so strong? How had Aimar squashed leaves together, freezing them in a state of death that never advanced to decay? Something about the parchment had disturbed and obsessed him, to the exasperation of his father.
“What’s writing got to do with the hoarders?” he asked Kastor.
“Well, I think there are other letters than Manafel’s ones. New letters, not even used by humans at all.”
Oli thought for a moment. “You mean like the pictures we use on Sevenstones?”
Kastor cocked his head. “Sort of. But those are ideograms, not letters. Each one is a thing. Letters stand for sounds. But why must the letters look the way they do? Couldn’t other shapes be used for the same sounds? Or even different sounds altogether, like clicking your tongue or whistling?”
If Oli had not been alone in the forest, reliant on the goodwill of this eccentric stranger, he would have laughed. What was he talking about? What did this matter? Even his father, in love with reading and writing, would not have thought to leave home and wander the forest in search of new letters. He forced his face into a picture of seriousness and tried to play along.
“It’s possible. I suppose there’s nothing to stop a person making their own... But why would they? Why would they try to do what the gods have already done for us?”
"That's the point, isn't it."
Kastor stood and ran his hand through his hair. Then, in an almost meditative state of recollection, he continued:
“When I was a boy, a man from the Serpent Islands visited my home. Hastam. He was the first explorer I met. They love exploring, the Serpent Islanders. They love exploring as much as my people love stories. He stayed with my parents for a month, telling them his tales in exchange for our food. Before he left, he let me copy these notes.” Kastor waved his book. “He’d visited so many places. He came to us following rumours he’d heard about the glass garden. He wanted to watch a procession of the Prophet Emperor when she passes between the hosts.”
He touched his forehead when he mentioned 'the Prophet Emperor' and Oli frowned. Whoever that was, she was not the King.
“He showed me these signs. He told me a fabulous tale about creatures of the night that drew them in the ground. He said even Serpent Islanders avoid the Highhomes, despite the rumours of a mysterious treasure there, because they are surrounded by a vast and dangerous forest. But he ventured there as a young man to make a name for himself. He said these creatures were learning to write. Somehow he befriended one. It followed him around and scratched in the dirt, and grew excited and wild when he wrote letters in reply. But in the end he gave up. He said it was something more than an animal, but not clever enough to learn. He said these signs were its closest attempts at the letters, and they were far off indeed. I asked him to tell me the story again and again. Can't you see why?”
“The creature wasn't trying to learn our letters from Hastam.” Oli began to understand what Kastor believed. "You think it was teaching him how to write theirs." The idea was extraordinary; the implications almost too large to consider.
“Yes! Some ideas occur to children more easily than to adults. I thought about those letters and the life of an explorer. I thought about the stories I'd heard of that forest. Magical creatures and terrifying monsters. Beasts that are almost as clever as a person. I think the Beyobacks are... Growing. I think they’re watching humans, learning from them, and trying to build their own kind of knowledge.”
“Well,” mused Oli, “it's certainly a thought. The way they go after our stuff, you could almost think they were jealous of us. But they can't talk. Elder Joturn says they just grunt and hiss. And when they’re angry or scared, they growl and howl. But that’s it. Four sounds. How many letters do you have there?”
Oli craned over to look at the page of scribbling, more curious than he had been before, but Kastor pulled it back as though he were now embarrassed by it. He frowned and scratched his head.
“Maybe these beasts you call hoarders aren’t really the beyobacks. Maybe these aren’t the right caves. Are there treasures there?”
Oli thought about it. "I suppose the things they steal, if you count old scrolls and bits of metal and glass as treasure. And you can find Terlos' Soap around there if you're lucky."
"Terlos' Soap?" Kastor looked up.
"It's a kind of rock that crumbles up. You can use it to clean if you know how to mix it."
"Oh." Kastor sighed and stretched. Though disappointed, he looked happy, perhaps, that Oli had understood him. “Come on,” he said. “When I get you home, someone can show me there.”
He began walking in the direction from which they had come.
Hesitantly, Oli pointed the opposite way. “Um, weren’t we going that way?”
Kass stopped. He looked about and bit his lip.
“Yes, you’re right,” he said, then muttered under his breath as he returned: “Too fast... Worse every day... Always trying to trick me... Miserable old bastard.”
They resumed their journey and Oli committed the scenery to his memory, just as when his father helped him to learn a route. This wild quest to find new letters in the forest, the randomness of his wandering, the muttering under his breath and the sudden mood changes worried Oli. This man was not normal, in any way at all. Was he safer with a madman or in the forest alone? Should he strike out by himself at the next opportunity? He would have to avoid paths, which somehow always led him astray, but if he could reach the river, he could find his way.
That evening, when they bedded down behind a large rock, Oli checked the stars and scrawled an arrow in the ground that pointed East. He shut his eyes and thought of his parents. The talk of letters with Kastor brought up a memory that was at once painful and sweet to dwell upon. He thought again of those writing lessons with his father. How he had disappointed him! He had not applied himself at all. He had fumbled with the quill and mixed up one symbol with another until Luthold had given up and concentrated his efforts on Ingo and other children with a talent for it. And yet, he remembered the lessons now with a yearning for the familiar, simple problems of home.
He recalled the only part of those lessons that he had always enjoyed. Even after he gave up writing, he would sit in on the beginning of a new class. That’s when his father told the story of the gods’ arrival in their world. Seveners were not supposed to choose any one god over the others. But if his father were to choose a god, he would have chosen Manafel. Oli knew from the way he told the story of the gifts...