At the Unevolved’s words, all the hidden villagers emerge from the bushes and trees where they have been hiding. They circle him, each demanding a question. Yells-a-curse tries to answer them all at once and ends up answering none. The clicks and grunts of the group members create a cacophonous din; the flashing of spikes is enough to blind one even in the dim light.
“Quiet, everyone!” River tries to say, but his clicks are lost in the din. “Let him speak!”
With frustration he tries to pull at the Bonds, but he can only tug on those of the Warriors and Pathwalker. They look at him and he wonders what their response will be – help, or hinder.
“Yells-a-curse, take a hold of yourself,” Joy snaps out, her teeth chattering together cutting through the rest of the noise. “The rest of you, clear a path.” Accustomed to obeying the Pathwalker, they do just that, revealing the small scout in their midst. Help, it seems is their decision, to River’s private relief.
Joy, Lee, and River step closer. Yells-a-curse looks pale, like his blood has fled his body. His eyes are still wide, his body juddering with nerves.
“Now, Yells-a-curse, start from the beginning. What did you see?” Joy asks briskly. Everyone focuses on the small adult.
“I got back into the village fine – the Warriors on guard didn’t seem to realise I wasn’t meant to be there. It was quiet, almost deserted despite being the time for villagers to return for food. One of the Warriors remarked that I was almost late for the ceremony. I didn’t dare ask which ceremony for fear of betraying my ignorance. There, I saw…” he gulps and takes a breath.
“Go on,” River encourages him softly when it looks like he might not.
“I saw…the Honoured Shaman…she…she…k-killed the hatchlings.” The last is said in a rush, as if he has to force it out, and once started, it comes out like a stream that was blocked suddenly becoming undammed.
“What?” is asked by several voices, everyone’s crests flashing in confusion and concern.
“She killed the hatchlings? Shaman?” Joy asks as if she can’t believe it. River, too, is finding it hard to conceive of it. He may have come to understand that Shaman’s plans with Lathani would have led to nothing but destruction for their village, but he never doubted that she was trying to protect it. But this…killing hatchlings?
Yells-a-curse’s spikes flash with damning confirmation.
“I saw it. They had ingested some sort of concoction, I’m almost sure: their eyes were glassy and their movements unnatural. It was like when we must say goodbye to another villager and release their spirits, yet here the hatchlings were alive. The adults all chewed the macanna root. I did not – I pretended to, and then kept in the shadows cast by the Spirit’s Eye. I watched as they danced around the hatchlings, like they were already dead. Yet they were not. Not until…until…”
He gulps again, then closes his eyes, as if reliving the moment. “She danced between them, then drew a claw across the throat of the closest. The hatchling’s blood pumped out; it fell. She moved to the next. By the end, they were all gone. Their bodies lay on the blood-soaked ground.
“The adults all collapsed to the ground too, their Energy spent. But not me: I stayed hidden in the shadows.”
“And then? What did you see?” asks River sharply, horror rising within him at the description. What, by the ancestors, is Shaman doing?
“The Pathwalkers were the only ones still standing; even the Warriors who took part in the ceremony had collapsed. But even they seemed drained. Most of the Pathwalkers chose to move off a little way and then sit down together, sitting in silence. Shaman was the only one who seemed energised.
“She walked away from the bloody mess, accompanied by one other Pathwalker.” Here Yells-a-curse opens his eyes again, looking at River with a mixture of hostility and sympathy in his expression. “Herbalist.”
The knowledge hits River like a spear blow to his chest. His previous master was involved in this travesty? How much?
“And what did they do?” he asks, barely able to click his teeth together correctly or force out the grunts to ask the question.
“They moved towards Shaman’s hut, which brought them closer to where I was hiding. Herbalist asked ‘is it enough?’. Shaman replied: ‘not yet’. There was a pause and then Herbalist asked ‘then what can we do?’ and Shaman replied ‘we need more sacrifices. Five adults next Egg-rise.’”
River hears the sound of teeth chattering around him, everyone paying close attention to what Yells-a-curse has to say. He sees red and orange in everyone’s crests, the rest of the group as horror-filled as he is at the story.
“And did Herbalist agree to it?” River can barely ask, noting as he does so how easily the honorific falls away from his previous master’s title. Yells-a-curse, too, hasn’t used it since starting his story. River doesn’t blame him.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“She was uneasy. Asked whether it was truly necessary, especially since recent reports had been that a life-devourer had come through to consume all of the Forest of Death. Shaman scoffed at the idea that a life-devourer might have come through yet only ate at their enemy. She insisted that this meant the ‘weapon’ was even more necessary – that it would protect against anything which threatens the village. Life-devourer, Forest of Death, or other unknown threat. She insisted that the ‘weapon’ was almost ready, but that it needed more power. According to her ‘the lifeforce of the hatchlings, unprepared, isn’t enough.’.” Yells-a-curse’s jaw hangs open for a moment in disgust, then clicks shut again. “Herbalist gave in.”
The Unevolved adult looks at River, the same mixture of sympathy and anger in his gaze and spikes. “I do not think that she was happy with the answer, but she accepted it nonetheless. They then separated, Shaman to her hut, Herbalist to hers. I waited until they had disappeared before slipping out of the village by the side gate. And then I came here.” He stops and looks at River expectantly.
Glancing around himself, River realises that everyone else is doing the same. Instead of looking to Joy, or to Lee for answers, they’re looking towards him. For a moment he can’t help but ask why, but that moment of thought reveals the answer.
The old systems have failed them. Shaman is the leader of the village, the main protector, the one who stands between them and the evil spirits who would otherwise destroy them. Yet she has gone mad, has turned on her own. From the sounds of it, she has decided that creating whatever this ‘weapon’ is requires the lives of some of those under her protection; and that this is somehow justifiable.
For a moment, River is taken back to a day long ago when he stood next to the cooling carcass of an adult he had hunted with, had tried to save, only to fail. Then, the Honoured Herbalist had told him that it was everyone’s duty to serve the village. That those who were weak would die, and that this was good because if the weak survived, the village would be weakened in its turn. What was this but taking that philosophy a little bit further – to where if the deaths of villagers could benefit the village directly, should they not give it?
Yet even if River could agree with that philosophy – which he could not now, not having experienced life with Markus – how could he permit it to happen when he knew that the threat of the Forest of Death was no more? That Shaman was being willfully blind?
He could not. He would not permit this to happen.
“Egg-rise, you said?” he asks, looking at Yells-a-curse. His kin’s spikes flash in confirmation. “Then we don’t have much time. Come, let us make a plan.”
“You intend on interfering?” asks Joy, an odd note in her voice.
“I do,” River says firmly. “Not only do I disagree strongly with the whole idea of willfully killing some of our kin to save the rest, but if they are trying to create something which defends against the Forest of Death, they are working in vain. The Forest of Death is already conquered – we’ve seen it.”
“Are we sure that the whole forest is conquered, though?” asks Lee, his rumbling grunts breaking into the conversation for the first time in a while. “We saw the furthest section of it burn, but we do not know if the whole of it has.” River gives the burly Warrior a level look, clicking his teeth together sharply to underscore the solid belief clearly flashing through his spikes.
“I’m sure. We have seen nothing but ash of the trees all day.” Even the stretches of trees which had almost encircled the village had been destroyed to the last one. River wonders how the village reacted when they saw the flames and smoke so close, even if there’s still a stretch of normal forest around the village itself which remained untouched.
“What if your master was only able to destroy a small section of the forest?” asks Lee, his spikes intentionally muted to disguise his emotions. He was unable to keep them from the Bond, though, and River feels the tumultuous emotions rumbling under the surface.
“He conquered the Forest of Death, I’m sure of it,” River says, his voice completely confident. “By this point, I expect that the Forest is nothing but ash. Or perhaps master has forced it to bow to his might and accept his Bond, much as he did with both of us,” he says firmly, staring at the other villager until Lee looks away. “Our kin are making decisions based on fear – horrible, awful decisions. We must stop them.”
“I agree with Runs-with-the-river,” Peace says, speaking for the first time. He’s the other Warrior, a lithe scout-build. He is a quiet villager, only talking when he has something to say. As a result, when he does speak, his words hold weight.
“So do I,” pipes up one of the other Unevolved adults – Stumbles-over-a-bone. He looks defiant, like he feels like he probably shouldn’t be saying anything in this discussion between leaders, but he’s going to anyway. River flashes approval in his spikes – he’s glad to see that change is happening.
“And me,” agrees another Unevolved adult, looking like Stumbles-over-a-bone’s daring has given him the confidence to speak. At that, it’s like a dam has broken – the other Unevolved all chime in with their agreement.
Suddenly, instead of it being River making the decision with Joy and Lee hesitantly agreeing, it’s eleven adults all exclaiming their strong agreement that something must be done. Lee, Joy, and Peace all seem surprised at the vehemence of the Unevolved. Or perhaps surprised that they would dare try to be part of the decision-making.
River, as one of those Unevolved, put in a position of power only because his master had decreed it, and had the power to enforce his decree, can’t help but feel a visceral sense of satisfaction.
“So, it’s decided: we will interfere, we will save our kin from the leaders who should be protecting them, and we will deal with Shaman…and Herbalist.” His grunts feel hard to force out as he says the last. Herbalist, after all, still has a special place in his heart – without her, he would have been just one of the other Unevolved, struggling every day to gather enough resources to eat.
River regrets that they will not be able to wait for his master to join them – if Shaman intends to sacrifice five adults at Egg-rise, they will need to interrupt within the next few hours.
Closing his eyes for a moment, he attempts to send a message through the Bond that he has with Markus, a message of urgency and needing him to come quickly.
Unsure whether it has got through or not, he opens his eyes and faces his kin. Ultimately, they will need to make a plan based on only the people they have here. Which means….
“So, since the fifteen of us are not going to be able to overcome all the others in the village, does anyone have any idea of how to convince everyone else to join our side?”