[https://i.imgur.com/IHtISQa.jpg]

And so Pamala-Rashe and I crossed the River Iz and advanced south. Despite what Zewe-Zdywe had told us, we still hadn’t seen any people. “You haven’t seen them, but they have seen you”—the man’s words rang in my mind, creating an unsettling feeling. I made a habit of constantly glancing backwards, staring at the vast expanse of the savanna, searching for any stir in the grass. Seeing my worry, Pamala-Rashe developed my habit as well. Thus we walked, glancing back like hunted animals. On one such occasion, Pamala-Rashe suddenly stopped and bent his knees. Before I could ask him what happened, he launched his spear and rushed to the place of his target, and I stood at the ready as well. He ran into a low shrub and quickly raised a long furry mongoose.

“That’s the one,” he said. “That’s who was following us!”

He joyfully inspected the half-sliced animal. I said nothing, as this poor creature wasn’t my concern. On the other hand, being near this quick-handed hunter inspired confidence. Pamala-Rashe fastened the mongoose on his belt and we continued.

We stayed the night on the edge of a narrow gorge with reddish walls and continued in the new day. Still, there were no people, only lots of ungulates grazing in the plains. Nothing seemed to follow us anymore. When the Sun passed its highest point in the sky, we entered a flat land filled with acacias and there we finally met people.

They were three Hu men squatting around a fire with two dogs ambling around them. We approached them from the hill slope; I spread my hands showing my palms, and Pamala-Rashe greeted them ‘the good River way’, with his spear raised up. I could not say what either of us did wrong, but the men started up, grabbed their spears, and with a “Hara!” rushed in our direction.

Pamala-Rashe pulled my elbow, “Run!” and we ran away.

We crossed the hilltop and sprinted down through a brush. Amidst the noise of breaking branches and screams of escaping birds, I could hear the barking of dogs. They approached us quickly—we couldn’t make it on foot without distracting or fighting them.

We cleared the brush and stepped into a dry riverbed. I fumbled in my pocket, searching for the yellow orb. This slowed me down—“What are you doing?!” Pamala-Rashe screamed and ran back to me. The closest of the dogs made its last leap and already jumped at me, almost reaching my thigh. I barely dodged it and was getting ready to feel the bite in my flesh, but then found the orb and threw it in front of me.

A leg appeared and hit the dog in the muzzle. As it rolled away whimpering, the rest of the faceless black man’s body materialized from the air and pointed his shiny stick at the other dog. The second dog ducked down and stormed back and forth, barking ferociously at the spirit who kept it at bay with his shiny stick.

Shortly, the Hu men arrived at the riverbed.

“Wha’s tha?” one of them exclaimed. The three separated and approached the spirit from different directions. The dog tried to snap the spirit’s leg, but he drove it away with his stick. One man jerked a spear at him, “Hara!” Another tried to outflank him, but the spirit backed up, keeping all four attackers in front of him. The third noticed me sitting on the ground and tried to charge in my direction, but the spirit changed position again and obstructed him.

“Tough one, eh?” the third man said.

“You think you’re scary, fish face?” said the first one and pushed his spear again, but the spirit man batted it aside. Then he froze, and his attacker froze as well. The spirit grabbed a short hammer-like thing from his belt and pointed it upwards. A blast followed, loud as thunder and short like a clap. The Hus ducked, one of them dropped his spear, “Screw my hair!” The three ran away, back through the brush, up the slope, and disappeared behind the crest, their dogs following.

When all shouts and barking ceased, I got up and tried to touch the mysterious man, but he immediately evaporated. I stood alone in the middle of the dry riverbed. Pamala-Rashe was nowhere to be seen, as well as the hunters, as well as anybody. Grigs chirred on the slopes and two vultures floated above me. A little away, Hu’s spear lay in the sand. How foolish of them, I thought at first, but then noticed that I too had dropped my weapon. I chuckled; How foolish of me. I picked up my orb and the Hu’s spear and went searching for Pamala-Rashe.

Soon enough, I spotted his small hunched figure at the bottom of a dry valley, treading away at a fast pace along a shallow stream. I called out to him—he turned, but didn’t stop and even quickened his pace. I followed and eventually caught up with him where the valley narrowed and ran into a gorge between two rock walls.

“Pamala-Rashe!” I cried; he swung and faced me with his spear at the ready.

“Hara!” his spear almost hit me in the stomach.

“Pamala-Rashe, what is the meaning of this?”

He jolted his spear several more times and moved back. I tried to advance, but he threatened me again, “Hara!”

“Pamala-Rashe, it’s me, Dyovi! I’m not an enemy.”

“Aren’t you?” he cried, and I heard a disheartened note in his voice. “You’re a black shaman!”

“I am not.”

“You are! I knew something was up with you. I knew it back there at the Rivers, when you kept bringing up weird food from nowhere. How you throw that orb and suddenly speak other’s dialects so easily. It’s all shamanry. You’re a shaman, there is no doubt about it. I was okay with it, though, at first. What I didn’t expect was that you’d team up with a nightwalker!”

“Nightwalker?”

“Stay away from me!” Pamala-Rashe fiercely charged at me. I backed off but stumbled and fell to the ground, and Pamala-Rashe turned and hastened away.

Thus, in a rather ironic twist, we switched roles. Now I was following Pamala-Rashe as he hurriedly moved north.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I would be lying if I said that the reason for my chase was fondness, though it was part of it. Overall, my motivation was complicated. For starters, he had the gifts. Secondly, I was offended. Thirdly, I was simply interested. He mentioned a ‘nightwalker’—maybe he would finally tell me something?

We went on for the rest of the day. For the night, he stopped on a sparsely forested flat plain; I made my camp atop a rocky hill to the west of him. I watched his little fire in the dark, eating a pheasant that the green orb provided. At some point, this whole situation reminded me of that story about Big-Eye, when he left the get-together and went roaming the savanna and his step-brother followed him. It got me thinking about the nature of our relationship. We couldn’t be called sworn brothers yet, but we definitely were close. Too close, I felt, to just split like this.

Early in the morning, before daybreak, I woke up from a feeling that somebody was near me. In the blue dusk, I saw our gifts on the other side of my fire. Disturbed, I jumped up but saw nobody around. I rushed to the edge of the hilltop and saw Pamala-Rashe descending the slope amidst the rocks. He did not look back. I wanted to call out to him, but something stopped me—a keen feeling that this time it might be it.

We split. I was truly alone this time. It was a bitter feeling, but it was a truth to be reconciled with. I gnawed on the remnants of my meal, gathered my things, and went down the slope.

The bundle on my back was hefty. Being unaccustomed to walking long distances with heavy loads, I grew tired quickly and made a brief stop. It was at that moment that I saw from a distance something looking like a man’s figure.

“You son of a cat,” I exclaimed. That silhouette was unmistakable—it was my ever-present companion. The only thing that didn’t look right was his strangely slow movements. I had to know what was wrong and went to him.

Pamala-Rashe stood waist-deep in a quicksand, panting, leaning on his back. His spear lay to the left of him, across the wet sand. When he heard my steps, he turned his head, and when he saw me, he clutched to his spear’s end and swung it at me.

“Get away from me!”

“Don’t do this,” I told him. “You will sink deeper if you keep swinging it.”

But he kept swinging it, sinking deeper, becoming more distressed.

“Go away!” he screamed.

“I will not.” I dropped my bundle and checked the ground to find the closest part of the hard earth near him. He swung his spear one more time—I caught on it and snatched it from his hands. He was already up to his breast.

“Grab it,” I said, extending the stick to him. He didn’t touch it, dropped his head back, and spread his arms.

“Grab it!” I insisted. He didn’t move. “Listen. Hate me all you want. Distrust me if you must. But for the life of me, I do not see how dying in that thing will solve anything. I don’t know what your people tell about quicksands, but we say that they are the traps of fids. Remember, I told you about fids? They are the spirits of death who eat the living when they are foolish enough to fall into their traps. This is one of them. Bet you already feel how they lick your shins, don’t you? You feel that cool itching? That’s them. They will gnaw on you, eat you alive, they won’t listen to your screams or begging. Now tell me, is this better than being saved by a shaman, even if he’s a black one? Grab the end!”

I stretched the spear out to him again. He remained motionless, his head lying in the wet sand with closed eyes. “Grab it, you!” He opened his eyes and looked at me with an expressive mixture of anger and fear. Then, finally, he grabbed the end of the stick and pulled. I almost fell into the sand, but took a firm position and pulled back. I had to heave him several times before his waist emerged and then kept pulling until his knees surged on the surface.

“Move your feet,” I urged him and grabbed him by his armpits. In one last effort, I dragged him out of the sand, and together we crawled away.

“You never told me about fids,” he said, spitting away mud and sweat.

There was a shallow pond nearby. Pamala-Rashe bathed there and rinsed the mud off his loincloth, his cloak. I waited for him on the shore, sitting on a hot rock, watching a pack of wild dogs scurried in the grass near a herd of antelopes in the distance. He finished bathing and went ashore, taking a seat on a fallen tree there, far from me. It certainly didn’t feel right to leave without a single last word, but what that last word could be, I didn’t know.

The Sun was high. The antelopes dashed to the southeast, and the pack of wild dogs trotted after them. I figured that his things should have dried already, so if he wanted to go, he would’ve left already. But he remained on the dead trunk. It was then that I realized—I’d never told him about the strange man and the four orbs. This was the source of the misunderstanding, I figured. No wonder he thought I was a shaman. My distrust led to misunderstanding, which in turn almost led to his untimely death.

With a sigh, I got up and carefully walked up to him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, squatting nearby. He jerked his head but didn’t look at me. “It seems I haven’t really told you who I am or where I’m going. My name is Dyovi. I come from the valleys of the River Ma, from a tribe named Tisishile*. My tribe perished in a flood. I was among the few survivors. For several years, I prowled the valleys. Telling stories was my shtick, so I got my name—Teller. Then one day, a strange man visited me when I sat near the Maragor Sea and urged me to go around the world, gather stories. He gave me these four stones as helpers. I took them and went out on my journey.

“I’m not a shaman; never have been, black, white, or otherwise. I wasn’t initiated as a shaman, I wasn’t taught any of the practices. I don’t know if that man was one, but I can assure you that these orbs are just that—helpers.”

“Nightwalker is your helper,” Pamala-Rashe quietly rebuked without turning.

“Well, maybe. And maybe not. How do we know if it’s a nightwalker? I don’t. Maybe if you told me about them...”

I waited for some time for his reaction. He was not eager to tell me anything.

“Well,” I said, “I’m sorry for not telling you earlier and causing this misunderstanding.”

With a sad smile, I got up and hauled the bundle of gifts on my shoulder.

“I guess it’s a goodbye?”

He didn’t answer, which I took for ‘yes’.

“Are you going back to the River? Well, if you do, pass my hellos to Hilla-Tupa and everybody else.”

He loudly sniffed with his stuffed nose several times, which I assumed meant ‘okay’.

“Well. Watch where you step.”

He was still sitting on the trunk when I went around the pond and threw one last glance at him. I raised my spear to say farewell ‘the good River way’, and went off south.

***

I walked alone. Nobody walks alone in the savanna. Well, I did, but that’s only because I had the four helpers. I made a long trip across the sparsely wooded savanna, passed a shallow stream, and went along the edge of the riverbed where the standoff with the Hu occurred. I made a camp nearby, enjoyed the food that the green orb provided, and lay down to watch the Holy Antelope run across the sky.

After leaving that Surian settlement on the side of the Three-Heads, I had taken my vow to be cautious around people, to not trust them. I broke that vow with Hilla-Tupa because he was a genuine friend. I didn’t break it with Pamala-Rashe because I thought he was not a friend. My persistence in the matter led to the dire conclusion.

I’d made a long way, but my trip was still only beginning. I decided that to handle it, I must get cleverer. I should be more attentive to the people I meet. Dismissing everybody is easy, but studying the nuances is ultimately more helpful. This was what Hilla-Tupa tried to tell me—the River People understood it well. We all need each other one way or another.

So when the next morning I saw a small hunched figure of a man follow me in the distance, I wasn’t surprised and wasn’t worried. I needed him and was glad to see him there. It was hard to say why he chose to still follow me, but something told me that he might have needed me as well. He probably was interested. He likely was worried about me. Who knows, maybe he even wanted to tell me the story of that ‘nightwalker’.

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Footnote:

* - /tisiˈʃilə/