Chapter 1 #3
And the fire burns as night falls and we finish eating our dinner.
I drift off to sleep thinking about the story the Sky told us.
I know the tale of the pied piper, everyone hears it when they’re a little kid, and I know we’re not supposed to take what the Sky told us literally, but I can’t help thinking, not about the children the god ate, though I’ll never forget how that looked, but about the boy who was left behind.
A boy with a prosthetic leg that didn’t slow him down or make his life worse.
In fact, it gave him a different and larger perspective on the world.
And I think that sounds an awful lot like Ben. My brother, not my granddad.
Does that mean I’ll get eaten and he’ll get left behind? Because I sure as heck don’t want to be eaten, but being left behind when he already thinks everyone’s doing that would be the worst thing of all for Ben.
But we’re not supposed to take the story literally, right?
Right?
I go to sleep worrying about my stupid brother.
A rine wakes me up, which is bad but then it gets even worse, because this one has two cubs with her. The catcher was a new mother, too. It’s foolish to go walking in the woods during birthing season, yet here we are.
A little rine cub puts its head in my tent and sniffs at my foot, tickling me.
Groggy, I think it’s a dream for a second–they’re really cute, rine cubs, little hairy snouts, spotted before their adult fur comes in, the ridges on their back like a kid pretending to be a soldier–but in all of about three seconds, I see the very bad danger we’re in.
“Pop,” I whisper. I can hear him snoring in his tent.
I’ve managed to get to a sitting position, and when I look out at the campfire, I can see momma rine sniffing through the crumbs of our dinner.
No way she doesn’t know we’re here, but she’s clearly hoping to steal some stuff and scarper off without a fight.
“Pop,” I say again, louder, and this time, the rine and both cubs turn to look at me.
Momma rine snarls.
“Hey!” I shout, rising to my feet, waving my hands.
No way I’m going to win in a fight, the rine outweighs me by about two hundred pounds, but the advice is always to be loud and look big and maybe, if you’re lucky, they’ll run off.
But this is a momma, and if she thinks I’m attacking her cubs, then well, goodbye, Max, nice knowing you, so I really have no idea what the right play here is.
“Hey!” I shout again, less convincingly this time.
Momma rine’s Noise rises in threat, full of all kinds of scenes of her ripping my throat right out, which, you know, isn’t good.
“To me!” I hear Pop shouting, and he’s coming out of his tent with his rifle, trying to cock it but something is catching. I think he’s shouting at me for a second, but he means the rine. She turns to him, her Noise getting louder.
“She’s got cubs, Pop!” I shout.
“I know! Get behind me!”
I take a step to do so, and the rine snarls at me again, racing forward a few steps, not attacking, just letting me know she’s coming any second. I stop moving.
“Goddammit!” I hear Pop say, struggling with the rifle.
“Don’t shoot her!”
“I’m trying to scare her off, but this goddamn gun–”
In the time it’s taken for me to look at Pop and for him to say this, the rine attacks.
I feel the full force of her slam into my chest, digging in most of her claws, but I barely feel the pain because she’s knocking me back so hard and fast, and we collapse into my tent and that maybe saves my life because the material wraps around us in a pile, and when I feel her jaws clamp on my neck, she’s also squeezing about five different folds of thick tent canvas which her teeth can’t get through, and I can’t see a thing, but I hear Pop call my name and there’s another thud as he throws all his weight onto the rine, trying to knock her off me, but she’s much heavier than even he is and all I feel is the weight of a massive struggle through the tent, and I can’t breathe, and one leg of the rine does a massive push down on my ribcage, and I feel a couple of them snap, and my god, you’d never know how much a thing could hurt, and I cry out but can’t really catch my breath, and there’s another crack down at my hip, and I don’t know what’s caused it but as bad as I thought my ribs could hurt, the hip hurts twice as bad, and the fighting’s still going on basically on top of me, and another rine foot goes into my stomach, another into my neck, and the pain from my ribs and hip is so bad I think I’ll die from it, then something hits my head and I don’t feel anything more at all.
When I come to, Granddad is there. Hey, kiddo, he says, smiling down at me.
I think I’ve died. You would, too.
“Granddad?” I whisper, and my mouth is almost too dry to speak. He sees this and nods at someone and then there’s liquid from a little saucer being put to my lips. Just sip, he says. Not too fast.
I think it’s water he’s offering me, but it’s not, and there’s a long fuzzy moment where now I’m sure I died because everything feels way too nice to be real, and I black right out again.
The second time I wake it’s a lot slower.
I hear things first. Not words exactly, but those as well, mixed in with a lot of other stuff, and of course it’s Noise and I tense up, thinking it’s the dream again, but then I realize this Noise isn’t trying to kill me or make me miserable or feel lower than dirt, and I open my eyes.
Pop is talking to Granddad, both of them seated next to a fire.
We’re no longer on the rock where the rine attacked, and I can’t see any of our stuff.
I’m wrapped in a Land blanket. It’s made of woven lichen and that makes it sound like it’s all scraggly and weak, but it’s actually tight and soft and warmer than wool.
It’s kind of hot, in fact, and I push it off, groaning a little at the pain in my ribcage.
Which actually is not nearly as bad as I would have expected.
Someone’s awake, Granddad says in his Noise. Pop looks over and gets up immediately.
“Slowly, slowly,” he says, kneeling down next to me. “The wounds were pretty deep.”
I blink at him, I’m still groggy, but I see deep scratches across the whole of his face. “Pop?” I say, worried.
“Yeah,” he says, stroking my hair. “Just a few more scars to add to the collection, no big deal. I’m just glad you’re okay. That’s all that matters.”
“Will I have scars, too?” I ask.
I hear Granddad laugh, but it’s not mean.
It’s as warm as I’ve always remembered him.
You were lucky, he says, getting up. Only about a hundred broken bones instead.
He’s dressed like the Land. The same tight woven lichen of the blanket made into trousers and a shirt.
Slightly more than the Land usually wear, true, but unmistakably not dressed as a human.
“Where did you come from?” I say.
Out of the woods, he says, where I always come from.
His Noise is a wondrous thing. Where Pop’s is always fractured and hot and spinning all over the place, Granddad’s is like a single swirling wave, part of a larger ocean. It’s so warm and inviting, you just want to jump in and swim.
“He saved us,” Pop says.
Not just me, Granddad says, and he looks up, his Noise opening up behind him.
I see a number of Land around our camp now, scaling fish, mending a tent that might even be mine, and talking to each other through their Noise in those easy, quick flashes that are impossible to interpret unless you’re in it.
One of the younger ones, probably no more than my age, is staring at me.
When I catch his eye, he quickly looks away.
I heard your father in the Conversation, Granddad says. He’s not the quietest blip on the map.
“You can say that again,” I say, and both Granddad and Pop chuckle.
“The rine got me down where she wanted me,” Pop says, “and she was about to take my throat out when your granddad and the others arrived.”
“Did you have to kill her?” I say, worried.
Pop and Granddad frown at each other, and I see the dead rine in their Noise. “’Fraid so, Max,” Pop says.
“But she had cubs–”
Already taken care of, Granddad says, his Noise showing me the two cubs being tended by the Land.
They’ll be released when they’re old enough to fend for themselves.
Then he opens his mouth and, for the first time, he uses his voice.
“But she tore your chest and broke your ribs and your hip, and your first thought is, did we kill her?”
“Well,” I say, “not my first thought, but she was just doing what she was supposed to do as a rine. It’s us who were in her space.”
Granddad smiles. You’re your father’s son, he says.
Pop blushes at that, so I change the subject. “My hip doesn’t feel broken anymore. Ribs, neither. I didn’t think we were carrying that much bone-fixer in the medipak.”
“We weren’t,” Pop says. “It was the Land. They’ve taken our bone-fixer and made it better, made it their own. They do that with all our medicines, you know. The antivirals, the neurological treatment your brother got, even the Noise cure, just to see if any of it will help them, too.”
“Oh,” I say, not really knowing what to do with that. I lift my head up a little and look out to the Land all around us. “Thank you.”
And now, Granddad says, looking at Pop, we really do have to talk.
I’ve been searching like you asked, he says to Pop, when we’re all around the fire, me and Pop and Granddad and all the Land with him. I see the younger Land who was looking at me before looking at me again, but then he looks away. The Sky asked me to search, too.
“He did?” Pop asks.
Granddad gives a smile. I’m uniquely qualified to find an anomaly in the Conversation.
“What did you find?” I ask. “Are we in danger?”
For the first time since I’ve seen him again, Granddad hesitates. His Noise goes a paler blue, a hesitant color, it turns out. “Yes,” he finally says out loud. “Yes, I think so.”
“You think so?” Pop asks.