17

(Billy Currington- People Are Crazy)

Tells

Nothing like waking up stiff as a board. And not the morning wood kinda way. Not anymore, at least. The walk wasn’t even bad, just long. Ugh, I’d love a wagon and one of those cute six legged things pulling it.

I woke up some time around dawn. The fire had burned down to embers that matched the distant sky out the window. I thought I was gonna sleep longer, but strangely, I wasn’t tired anymore. Nobody else was up and I was bored, so I got up and started nosing around. Politely, of course.

The quiet pops from within the glowing embers, the metronomic creaking of the aged cabin, and the soft breathing of my friends became like the countdown to an inevitable alarm. Like a reminder that the world would be waking soon. This fleeting moment between slumber and stirring was mine alone to cherish.

I tiptoed to the desk below the wall of shelves decorated by bone carvings. All the bone statues and figurines were insanely detailed.

This guy can carve better than I can draw. Fuck, I gotta practice. He probably has shitloads of time being a hermit out in the woods, though.

I had been to some craftsmen who had made really cool wooden carvings before, but even those didn’t have the kind of detail that these had. I leaned toward one on the workbench which had grown yellow with age. The carved creature looked like Geren, but it had more feathers, a heftier form, and a long, sharp beak. The nostrils on the beak were tiny perfect circles, and every feather was individually designed. Covering the creature’s torso was something like a toga, which looked soft and silky even though it was carved into smooth bone. Even for how foreign the creature looked to me, I could tell by its expression that it was pleasant. Its rigid beak was slightly open and its eyes seemed like they were glowing with joy.

For some reason it sparked a feeling of nostalgia in me, followed by a brief wave of melancholy. Whoever this statue was, was somebody he cared about. I went to pick it up and look further, but I noticed a piece of paper next to it and it dawned on me that I was definitely snooping on this guy’s personal creations. I cringed at myself and pulled my hand away, glancing over my shoulder. I hadn’t heard anything, but there Geren was in the door, rubbing his eye and peering at me. His eyes were heavy with sleep, but a slight smile had formed across his splitting chapped lips. Those cloudy marbles weren’t on me, though, they were on the figurine.

“You may hold if you like.” Geren’s voice creaked almost silently as he quietly knuckled his way to me.

I cautiously picked up the figurine and closely inspected the details in the feathers, the way they swirled and layered like waves on water. “Did you carve this?”

“Who else would?” He quietly chuckled. “People we love are… bound to mortality… but memory… makes one immortal.” He reached out for the figure and I obliged. Holding it close to his eyes, he silently reminisced, then lowered it to its shelf and turned back to me. “What would you do… for people you love? For kin? Fight? Kill? Die?” He waited for me to answer.

“I don’t know. Probably all of that.” I struggled to maintain eye contact with his piercing gaze.

“You want to travel. Capture fireblood. More?” He looked at me again and I nodded, a little confused at the question. “I see youth. Inexperienced. You say you will die… you will kill for them? Maybe. But do you love them? As kin? As comrades?”

I nodded again, unsure where this was going. His eyes turned toward the figure and a longing look filled his eyes.

“Could you hate them? What would cause your hate?”

“I- I don’t think there’s anything bad they would do that would make me…” I trailed off, getting lost in thought.

There’s no reason I wouldn’t support my friends. Nothing reasonable that I could conceive of would ever outweigh how much I care about them. They wouldn’t do bad things without a good reason, and even if they did, I’d be able to help them. I know it.

A strange conviction pervaded my thoughts and I found clarity. “I’d stand by them no matter what.”

Geren rested his hand on my shoulder blade as he reminisced over the figure. “Then you must love them… enough to let them… die for you. You cannot save all. They will try to save you. Someday you must… live for them. Make good their memory.”

His eyes turned to his hand, scanning up his arm. I hadn’t been close enough before to notice, but the old, withered flesh didn’t seem to be entirely the product of old age. Harsh burn scars littered his body and the bones in his right hand were horribly mangled, seeming to have been severely broken in his past.

He finally turned back to me and I just slowly nodded. I didn’t know what to say to that. It was random and emotionally charged, but wisdom I hadn’t considered. I stood there staring dumbly at him.

He smiled and chuckled lightly. “You’ll understand when… you meet wisdom.” We both noticed Desmond’s ear twitching and he began rolling over. “Please, I will wake them.”

Geren’s beak seemed to unhinge from the rest of his face, opening wide and releasing a shriek like tires skidding on pavement right next to my head. I covered my ears to muffle the sound and everyone else shot up, except Desmond, who screamed and held his ears. After a few moments, Geren’s miserable shriek ended and everyone was wide awake with panicked looks about them. He laughed in loud clucks and chirped something on the tail end of the screech. “That means good morning… in yeffen.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

* * * * *

We were presented a breakfast platter, this time with sugary sweet sky blue bread, purple berries tasting similar to bitter plums, and green tubular fruits. Geren showed us how to bite into the side of them and drink the milky nectar out of them, scrunching them up like juice pouches. While I was eating the bread, a strangely warm twinge rose in my stomach that had me questioning if it was alcohol, I’d been poisoned, I was allergic, or something, but nothing bad happened. Geren led everyone outside into the field of spiraling flowers. The grass was dewey and the refreshing morning breeze chilled the rapidly heating day. The fog dissipated, so we could see around the entire homestead. There was a four-stall wooden stable and field filled with trees, where those strange six-legged squirrel dogs were climbing up the trunks and chewing on branches.

“Have you seen fireblood?” Geren looked at all of us expectantly. I shook my head, and everyone else did the same.

Desmond took charge of answering for the group, like a new man with completely rejuvenated energy. “No sir, just heard from Mother Yeline that there’s one around here. We don’t know anything about them or what they are.”

Geren’s face wrinkled in confusion like he was trying to figure out how it was possible that we knew nothing. In his raspy, slow way, he told us that scouriad firebloods were creatures that lived underground near breaks in the rock where heat rose. He said they were largely indistinguishable from surface creatures. What set them apart was that their fur or feathers were typically stark black, gray, or the color of blood, their actions were erratic and unpredictable around people, and their flesh was often sickly pale or beet red. They had the physical attributes of their races, but often with poisons and other mutations.

“Feral ones are easy catch… but some are smart. Sevoan firebloods… blend in with people. Have intellect… but all need to feed. Cannot resist to kill. Your kinds cannot tell… but firebloods smell… to keen noses… reek like rotted egg.”

Desmond crossed his arms. “Are all the ones that blend in bad? Can’t they just eat animals or something?”

“Perhaps sevoan look… like jorlad. Like you. Sevoan eat animal… but still hungry. Ravage cattle. Sevoan fight farmer… lose arm… eat jorlad farmer… now feels full. Fireblood blends in. Grows arm back. Grows hungry. Hunts many jorlad. Always wants more jorlad. Loses control of self. Become scouriad… like an animal. Many such cases… of sevoan becoming… scouriad. In control, sevoan is… cruel, conniving… intelligent, sadistic… inhuman.”

Brenden stretched and asked, “Okay, so where do they come from them? Do they have a nest or something that we could take one from. Are there more than just the scouriad ones?”

Geren squinted at Brenden and shook his head. “Not so simple. Fireblood come from dead. Unburied bodies… who cannot rest. Rise again… twisted and evil. Crave heat and blood. Sevoan trick the living. Eat their former kind. Scouriad kill… mindlessly. Other types exist… but fringe cases.” Geren turned and dragged a whole wagon forward. His massive frame seemed to have no struggles lugging it. He lifted a rusting cage and set it in the back. “Defeat fireblood alive… put in cage. Cage imbued with sigil… fireblood cannot break free. Take corty to pull wagon.” He pointed a talon at the pen full of those creatures, corties. He raised his beak into the air and swiveled it around until it stilled, pointing toward the forest down the road. “Smell of rotted eggs… on wind up road… in forest. Be quick in fight. Adapt quick. I can speak for days… on fireblood hunting… but life of… speaking like jorlad… wears on throat.” He heaved one last time and passed us sturdy wooden rods with fraying rope loops at the end, like what animal control would use to catch dogs.

Geren opened the gated pen and dragged a tired, reluctant old corty toward us. He selected Brenden as the volunteer and without speaking, showed him how to strap the double-seated saddle onto the lazy beast. He showed us simply how to control the corty’s reins, which were clipped onto its droopy ears. Pulling stopped it, flicking made it move faster, and gently tugging only one ear turned it that direction. Brenden took to it pretty quickly and the corty responded well to him. Without anything else, Geren sent us off.

I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but it was a little more than what we got. With the wagon, a cage, and some poles, he said good luck and be safe. That’s it. I guess being good at something doesn’t make you a good instructor.

The day was cloudy and a bit gloomy, but it wasn’t hot and it wasn’t raining, so I wasn’t complaining. Adam was. He never really stopped complaining. Every minute I’d hear a frustrated sigh or a whisper about how much he was irritated about the wagon being bumpy, his boots having needles in them, or his back being stiff. All of us were in the same boat, the only difference being that Brenden, Desmond and I weren’t bitching about it, but they were certainly getting more irritated by him than I was.

Desmond directed us down the road confidently, knowing exactly where we were going without a doubt in mind. The wagon had thicker wheels, which made it easier to keep from getting stuck in the mud, but made it a lot harder to unstick them when they got stuck. Most of all, it was just nice to sit down and travel. We had done so much walking, it really made me thankful for having cars back on Earth. We spent a while planning and decided Desmond and I would use the rods with loops so Adam could wrestle its arms down and Brenden could tie it up.

“We’re getting the jump on it,” Desmond continued, “so as long as we stick to our plan, we should be able to do it without getting too hurt. Adam, you can probably use Tells’ shield to block its claws from hitting you while Brenden is tying it.”

“What if it’s stronger than me though?” Adam’s eyes turned down toward his stomach. “I don’t want to doubt my ability, but if that thing is like a roided up version of a person, I might not be able to hold its arms down. Maybe we should have waited for her.”

“Adam, have a little confidence,” Brenden looked back at Adam sympathetically. “I don’t think he would send us in if he didn’t think we could do it.”

Adam shook his head. “Brenden, we barely know the guy, we don’t know what he would do. What if he isn’t a good person?”

“You’re overthinking it. Even I thought Geren would be bad, but I dunno, he grew on me. New world or not, most people are still good people, or at least try to be decent people.” Brenden sighed when he realized he wasn’t getting through to Adam.

Desmond put a hand out. “Dude, what’s he got to gain from sending us to our deaths? He’d lose a corty and a wagon, plus we don’t have anything worth taking.” He punched Adam’s arm. “Don’t be a pussy. There’s four of us and one monster, how bad can it be?”

“You’re not supposed to say that, Desmond,” Adam complained, “now it’s definitely gonna be bad.”

I smirked at Adam. “Oh, yeah, but I’m the superstitious one.”

Brenden’s face lit up with an idea. “He said they’re like feral people, so it’s probably like catching a 7/11 crackhead. So if-”

Adam cut him off “-a crackhead with sharp teeth and claws and poison and may or may not be smart enough to seem like a human.”

Brenden tried to continue his thought. “Yeah, so if we-”

Desmond cut him off. “Hold on guys.” He stopped the wagon and looked around, raising his nose in the air and turning into the wind. “It’s nearby. In that direction. Come on. Get your stuff. What, Brenden?”

Dejectedly, he grabbed his backpack and hopped off the wagon. “Was just gonna say we jump him all at once.”

Desmond weighed the idea, nodding slowly. “Works for me.”