Taking off

Starting on a sequel. Here's the first few from the first book. 

Scribing the Circle

Introduction

               June 23. Landing Day. Even in the frontier town of Fisher’s Reach, there was celebration. Hewn from a sparse, jungle woodlot, all the empty space used for housing and streets, all the wood going to construction, Reach was a homey place. People only had 37 days before Big Rain, not much time, but they still told their stories in festival. Which of the Sons this family were descendants of, or how it was that this group had hiked across the first continent. Didn’t matter if the stories were true. What mattered is that they were all there then to celebrate the lie. It was Landing Day.

               At a particular street stall, where a family sold teas, a man appeared. There was no way he could have walked up, stood waiting for a short time, cleared his throat to alert the distracted people. As the story would be told later, he appeared. When the family became aware of him, the mother and her eldest daughter, the youngest son and his doting father, and the two siblings in between, all froze. They froze because they could see the visitor’s face and the markings present there. The mother knew the stories because she was almost a woman when the Ash Road was nearing completion, had been given the story of the disaster of Bloomfield firsthand by a survivor.

               They all knew about the deep, gruesome scar across the bridge of his nose, and the large, solid circle marked in the center of his forehead, and what they meant. Someone with such tattoos could not be unknown, not on the new world of man, yet none of the family of tea makers knew this man. Only his ilk, only his name, only his deeds. This was the Seer named the Scribe.

               The mother, as she would tell and retell later, immediately jumped into subservient action, while her husband deftly hid the children away. Her eldest daughter did stay though, because she was almost a woman. Together, the two women stood shoulder to shoulder, and carefully, very carefully, inquired as to the stranger’s presence.

               He wanted to buy tea, a large bundle that could be prepared later, like a guest might buy if he were making a house call to an old friend. The stranger even had the requisite energy cells to pay, as well, handed them over in a smallish sack and did not bother with the other formalities of transaction. The tea maker carried out her half of the barter with efficiency.

               Then, the Scribe left. Vanished, the story tellers would say later, not like he turned this way or that and simply walked away. There was a puff of smoke, or a cascade of light, depending on the time of day and mood of the audience. He was there, and then he was no longer there.

               It was the kind of thing that makes a woman reconsider advice she was given by her husband. The tea maker closed her shop.

               Although officially out of work, the tea maker and her family did not join the festivities of Landing Day immediately. The mother, the father, even the eldest daughter, had friends that all needed to hear a story that they had to tell. And at the end of each of those epics, not a single teller told about where they thought the Scribe was then, nor did a single listener ask.

***

Later and elsewhere, in a place beyond man’s Reach, a knock on a rough, wooden door followed a short time of indecision.

               A short time after that, the thin slat of wood was opened following a brief period of preparation.

               On one side of the doorway was a man, and on the other side was a boy.

               “So, you did it,” the man said, looking down on the young head. In a previous time, in a previous body, the Heron bore the same Open Eye on his forehead, the same Wolf across his nose as the Scribe, but he also had a Crook curving around his right eye, extending down his cheek, because he had also been a teacher. The vertical segment of the staff had five horizontal slashes accounting for his acknowledged pupils. But the boy bore none of those; the face was nubile and smooth.

               “You say that as if you only imagined the First capable of the feat,” the boy, the Heron, said. His voice was small and high, but there was a distinct power behind it. “It was I who taught it to her. I would’ve taught it to you, but,”

               “I require no more lessons,” and for a moment the air crackled with memories of previous confrontations.

The Heron nodded and stepped out of the doorway. “So have you come to finish it, finish me?”

The Scribe walked past the boy, into the crude hovel. It was only a home because it had been a home, and for no other reason. The man knew what the rough ground felt like beneath naked feet, and resting backs. “I haven’t come for that, either.”

The Heron turned, and stared at his former pupil for a moment, turning his head to the side and raising an eyebrow.  “That’s a shame. After you left, sometimes I went across. The softness of dependency, I guess. But I heard news on occasion, of the changing times. And you.  I wanted to see how much stronger,”

               “I’ve come to forgive you,” the Scribe turned, though still possessed the leaves in a clutching hand. “For all the violence and struggle and riddle and nightmare. You tormented us with your lessons and your trials. Many died.”

The Heron shrugged. “An even greater amount perished trying to make the trek here. It was by design, to separate out the chaff.”

 “And recently I have come to understand how difficult it was for you, as well.” He offered the leaves. He could not relinquish the destructive grip, but he could lift his arm easily enough in offering.

               “Oh?” The Heron accepted the leaves and stared at them as if they might explain things themselves.

               “On my travels, some years ago, I found a boy in the wilderness. His family had been slain, and he was about to be. I intervened. I can’t say if I knew he was one of us before, or if I only realized it after,” the Scribe’s eyes drifted a moment. He could remember his sibling disciples with their backs to the rough floor, crying themselves to sleep at different volumes. “He was very young, a babe. I selfishly took the opportunity to try to prove that I could do better by him than you did by us.”

               “You taught him? You took a pupil?” The boy forgot the leaves then.

The Scribe did not deny the assertion.

“And well, did he die?”

               “He did not.”

               “So, where is he now?” the boy turned his head to look and used his eyes to search.

               “I have no idea,” the Scribe looked away before answering. Both of them had left the door open like maybe they were expecting someone else.

The Heron’s eyes widened and his mouth smiled. “You abandoned him? You gave up!” 

               “I did not,” and the Scribe paused. After a span, the air ceased to whine, and the wooden walls stopped creaking. “I realized, while educating him, that he was learning things I did not intend to teach. I wanted him to be his own person, and instead he was turning,”

               “Into you,” and the boy smiled, smiled like a very old, knowing man. 

“So, I taught him what he would need to know to survive. I completed with him some lessons, and hid within him others. I did leave, but encouraged him to become a thing of his own creation before I departed.”

The boy turned his attention back to the leaves, and turned his back to his former pupil.  “You are not the teacher I was.” He spread the leaves in his small hands like a green fan. “That much is true.”

               The Scribe was somewhat surprised to remember the location of the brewing pot, its little home on a peg on a wall nearest the fire pit.

               “Do you expect him to survive?”

               “He was strong enough, but still very young,” the rain barrel was in the same place, too.

The Heron made a gesture out of habit, touching a hand to his chin in thought. He frowned when his fingers found smooth skin, then he began working the leaves like the old diviners in the legends.

               “How old was he when you left him?”

               “Still far, far too young.” The man placed the pot.  

At the mention of the exact number, the boy closed his eyes and sighed like that much older man. “We used to pray at times like this,” he put his hands on his knees as he observed the placement of the pot on its stand. “But I suppose that wouldn’t do. We’ll hope, then.” Fire in the pit came alive, small at first, and then growing to a size and temperature that would heat the water to boiling, but not too quickly. “Will you stay awhile?”

               “I have nowhere else to go,” the Scribe was already seated.

Once the leaves were ready, the ceremony commenced properly. For a while they drank, across the fire from one another, each filling the cup of the other. Sometime later they rested, but their parley lasted for weeks.

More than once, the conversations turned toward the Scribe’s student, where the boy walked, and what he might be venturing.

Chapter  1

               He decided it was time to stop pretending to flee, and dropped. Gravity caught him and tugged, the light greens and dark reds of the forest floor rushing up to meet him. The land and roll was smooth, down a steep incline and up over the natural looping of thick roots, with soft foliage against his knees and shoulder. Flecks of green moss and a spray of dry leaves sprayed the air, giving everything a sudden, earthy smell. Pushing his tutelage in forestry to the side, he bought to mind the lessons of power and focus. Back turned to approaching danger, he harmonized with the environs around him, beneath him, above him. A serpent camouflaged to match the branch it observed from decided to slither away. Blooms in the opposite direction were adjusting their pigments to the moisture in the air. A group of the fanged scavenger rodents crouched in anticipation of what would happen next. The boy’s breathing synchronized with the air gently pushing through the woodlot, his posture becoming rigid and still, and his mind emptying of fear and hostility. To every thing there, he was nothing. He was not out of place. Invisible.

               A moment later, the beast came crashing down beside him. It might have flown once, but where some of its ancestors chose to keep to the sky, its predecessors chose strength over agility, to grow larger and stronger, with forelimbs able enough to grab onto branches, and tear up and down stalks. Its feathers needled out in all directions to make it appear even larger than it was, earthen colors with subdued reds mixed in to match the clay between blades of grass and beneath patches of moss. Its huge eyes scanned left and right, while its beak and talons waited to pounce on the danger that it had perceived just moments before. It smelled of hostility, but the fear was growing. The boy wondered, standing adjacent to the creature, what thoughts would be its last, if any. If the raptor could wonder at all about how its quarry could be there one second, and then gone the next.

               He focused on its beak, a solid object unlikely to bend or flex much. How it might feel in his own hands, how he might grab the upper and lower jaws in his hands and twist, reversing their orientation. His hands wouldn’t do, of course, his hips, his back, none of his muscles could accomplish such a feat, and certainly not with enough force to break the neck. The raptor raised its head with spasmodic quickness, and turned to look the boy directly in the face. It knew, in a grasping sort of way, like cloying hands in darkness.

               The boy levered his focus and applied his power. The creature’s entire body jerked in reaction to its head being sharply twisted around. Torque was applied down its entire spine, and the creature ended up on its back, dead, glassy eyes contemplating the narrow spaces of sky between the trees’ leaves. The sound of the large body falling to the jungle floor preceded a hush that extended deep into the shadows in all directions. The pack of rodents thought it better to find food elsewhere, and in a nearby pond, waters rippled to signal the exit of several other onlookers.

               The boy took a deep breath, smelling nearby blooms and sweet fruits, and oriented himself for a moment, while reaching for a small canister clipped to his belt. Twisting open the top, and yanking at the material inside, he unfurled a flexible, orange tarp, normally used for sleeping, and draped it over his kill. He rolled the mass over carefully, gently. No more harm could come to it now; it was a valuable commodity. The boy grabbed two corners of the fabric and wrapped them around his forearms, then began walking, leaned forward, with his precious cargo behind. He was headed in a direction he knew, but had scarcely traveled before, and never alone.

The trail was a desperate furrow, rent through the woods around trees and rock formations in jagged spurts. The machine was called a lifter, he had been taught, originally designed to carry heavy goods short distances, retrofit to carry people and limited cargo over stretches too far to walk. It was a poor trailblazer, but the path it made was easy enough to follow, and having signs made travel with a burden less complicated.

               The city was visible after breaking the tree line. Up on its perch, looking down, it was the center of a hollow bursting out of the natural flow. All of the familiar things he smelled and heard were choked down by the buzzing mass on the top of the hill. This was not a town or a village. This was a large organization of humans, a major city. He put his head down and doubled his grip on the tethers. He leaned forward almost far enough to teeter, then began pushing uphill, one step at a time. He felt his body begin to strain as sweat squeezed out of the pores of his forehead. His breath labored like someone was standing on his chest. He was hot everywhere. Still, up he went.

               Some minutes later, he heard voices, but they were not in salutation. They weren’t in warning, either. If he stopped, he risked never moving the burden forward again. And this was the best, most non-aggressive way to get his kill to town. He didn’t need the meat for food. He needed the meat for bartering. He did not have currency in the way most considered valuable, the little silver discs and cylinders that went into all the humans’ machines.

He heard the gates opening and picked up his head only long enough to make sure an assemblage of peace keepers weren’t coming out to force him away. People had arrived, but more to watch than anything else, it seemed. He imagined that they did not receive many travelers on foot, and hardly any from the direction he had come.

               Finally, he got up onto level ground, and could proceed more easily. He was still sweating, and his entire body still heaved at getting air in and out of his lungs, but his legs had stopped burning. To his left and right, the gathered people stared. Because he had been taught, he knew what some of their thoughts were, but some of the things he overheard were new.

               “It’s just a boy,” some of them said.

               “Did he drag that up here by himself?” others asked.

               “Why is one of them here?”

               “Ahoy,” someone said to him directly, a tall woman in different colored layers, silver mixed in with her brown hair. “Welcome to Gabriel, traveler.”

               “Thank you,” the boy said, remembering a dusty lesson. “I have come to trade.” He said it loudly to answer at least some of the other questions. He didn’t mean to stay, so those fears were addressed.

               “I see,” and the woman stepped around as she spoke. “This is a fine kill, a healthy adult.”

               “Who am I to barter with… in Gabriel?”

               “Uh, that would be me,” the woman said, standing up straight and stiff. “I am a member of the Conservatory.”

               The boy stared, trying to remember the significance of titles. The keepers of history were at the pinnacle of human society because they had engineered the flight across the stars. She didn’t seem to be a butcher of any sort, which was more pertinent to what was being traded.

               “I don’t believe I can remember anyone bringing in a raptor of such pristine condition,” the member of the conservatory was talking to herself, “I guess there’s the meat, along with the feathers as well as the bones. That is a lot of cells,” then she looked at the boy.

               “I do not need energy cells,” he added volume for that, too. “I seek information.”

               “Oh, well then,” and suddenly the official looked much more comfortable, “that I’m sure I can help you with. Gabriel is one of the three great cities after all. If you’ll follow me, we can have some refreshment and discourse.” She gestured with her hands at various onlookers, who nodded and scurried off in various directions.

               The boy nodded at the official. Shortly after, he was following her deeper into the city. Unlike the clumsy, unsure game trail, the lanes of Gabriel were smooth stone slabs laid perpendicular to one another. Where things were not flat to the builders’ liking, mud-colored bricks were used to level things off. In some places they ran up to the front doors of buildings, none of which were on stilts, which was likely because of the city’s placement on the top of a high hill. They were made from the same red clay bricks, also, even the roofs were covered in thin, round stones, like fingernails. Shutters opened out, people visible within the various places moving and talking. Unfamiliar scents kept his head turning, but nothing he saw connected with anything he smelled.  

Eventually, they ended up in the center of everything, and climbed steps to a building that seemed to sit directly on top of the enormous engine that provided power to the entirety of Gabriel. He knew, because he had been taught, that energy is what drove things, and in such large places the power was provided by a machine that pushed giant boats between distant stars. There was not just the one set of stairs, and none of them were short. The boy imagined that the thrumming beneath his feet was what made the city of Gabriel feel like such a foreign hive.   

Conversations between individuals walking side by side were interrupted by gasps and others came to the thresholds of rooms off of the hallway to stare. But the boy had been informed of this beforehand. They could see the Half Moon dominating his forehead. They all knew what he was.

The official opened a doorway that had two doors.

“My name is Marie. What may I call you?”

It was a strange way to ask for someone’s name. “John.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, John,” Marie said. “You can have a seat in here, and I’ll return shortly with some water, then we can discuss the information you seek.” The door closing rescinded the opportunity to reply.

John was alone in a large, circular room with a matching table and chairs all around it. Everything was wood, the seats, walls, floor, and ceiling, but it wasn’t the common angularity found in other places. The room had rounded edges, and every surface had a sheen to indicate smoothness. The space even had a window. John walked slowly up to the rectangular hole in the side of the building stoppered with glass. It was perfectly clear and warm to the touch. Looking out, and down, he could see reflective panels on the tops of roofs.

He heard the member of the conservatory return, up the hallway, whispering in conversation, then opening the door and coming inside.

“I’m back,” Marie announced. After her greeting, she walked across the room. She sat something down on the table, presumably the water she promised. There was a pause of silence, then, “may I ask, what is that object on your back?”

A round, metal shield made from interlocking pieces, it was a puzzle used for training. The parts had to all be articulated simultaneously, otherwise they would never fit together properly. The bundle came with a series of straps for the owner to accommodate the weight. So equipped, it resembled the protective shell of coastline lizards John had seen. The master called it his burden of ignorance. “A keepsake.”

“How interesting.” She walked over to stand next to John at the window. “With the symbol on it, your keepsake reminds me of a coat of arms. Are you familiar with the idea?”

John frowned at anything made exclusively from arms.

“Arms meaning weapons in this case, a metaphor I suppose for able-bodied-ness. A coat meaning an insignia or mark bore by one’s exterior,” and she flexed and pointed to her shoulder. “Members of a group would all wear them to signify their conjoined commitment. The kinds of things that people used to separate themselves, eh?”

“What?” John caught the glance at his forehead.

 “I apologize, it is the philosopher in me.” She walked back to the round table. “Would you like to sit?” as she moved over and took a chair for herself.

John examined the table as he approached, and chose a seat close to Marie, but with a chair separating them. He unclipped the bulky, middle clasp that kept the shield on his back, and caught the burden with one hand. He carefully rested it against the floor.

Marie filled two wooden cups, and slid one over to John. “So, what information is it that you seek?”

“I am looking for the Scribe.”

There was a noise in Marie’s throat, but she didn’t choke on her water. She looked at John, for a long moment, and then her eyes dropped sadly. “I do not believe we can exchange, then. There is no one I can think of here in Gabriel that would know of such a being’s whereabouts.”

It was John’s turn to look down. It was a direct plan, and he had approached it with diligence and care, but he could not say it was very well thought out. “I see.”

“Why not try Red Garden?” Marie asked. “This kind of information of course is not worth the resource you brought today, but, I feel bad, not being of any assistance at all.”

The name of the place brought a memory to mind. John had asked if there were others like him, and the master had told him he belonged to the second generation of the new world, of which the only others the Scribe knew of lived on top of a mountain, looking down on humanity. John did not think the Scribe would not be in Red Garden, at least not for an extended period of time. He looked up again to find Marie staring at him with the piercing expression from earlier.

“But if you were from the Seer city, that would have occurred to you,” she said, almost to herself. “Why are you looking for the Scribe, may I ask?”

Something felt wrong, suddenly. This felt beyond the simple exchange, but John did not know how or why. The master had told him that he lacked a great deal, in regards to focus and power. He could not peer into another’s mind. Telling the truth right then, felt like betrayal for reasons he could only scarcely intuit.

“Actually, that was a bit invasive, wasn’t it?” Marie leaned backwards. The conservatory official drank deeply. “I apologize. As I said I am a learner, and might be more open than most when I say I am fascinated by your people.” She took care refilling his cup.

Your people, she said. John remembered what he had been taught.

“And of course, the consensus is, for one as young as yourself,  your being out and about, alone, is unheard of, and the first course of assumption is that you are from,” and she paused, “where your people are most known to gather. How old are you?”

“I don’t know.” He had memories, hazy recollections of articulating his age with tiny fingers to much, much taller people who asked. He could not remember their faces. But those were among the earliest, and since then there had been no one to account accurately for the passage of time in an annual sense.  The silence in the room stretched. 

Marie cleared her throat, and began speaking. “This table,” and she wiped a hand across the wooden surface, “is the second most interesting thing in this room. It’s large isn’t it? Bulky, no doubt heavy,” and she paused and eyed John’s shield. “But did you know it was made in much smaller pieces? Carried in through that door by a group of people, and assembled as you see it now. I like to think the crafter who designed it was thinking of the table’s purpose. This is where the leadership of Gabriel meets, to decide things, for the overall benefit of the city. You’re actually sitting in my chair.”

John glanced down at the cushion between his thighs.

“We work together, is what I mean to say. We help each other, and that is how we survived, and continue to, in this new world. I want to help you, John, but I have few tools to apply to the task. The Scribe is extremely enigmatic,” and she paused to stare again, “as you may well know. He and the others, blazing the Ash Road, teaching us forest craft, giving humanity the miracles of Gabriel and Fisher’s Walk, saving Shepherd’s Rock.”

John knew, but did not know, of the things being mentioned. What he knew best was the back of the man, while he was seated or walking, the height and broadness, like a wall that could not be overcome.

“There are still many who blame him for the misery at Bloomfield, but I think he was trying to save people,” Marie seemed lost in her own thoughts.

“Bloomfield,” John repeated. That was a name he’d heard before.

“Yes, some call it the city of masks, I hear told. Have you ever been?”

“No.”

Marie smiled a sad smile. “We still expand to this day, albeit very, very slowly, and it doesn’t always go to form. Bloomfield is the memory every mind harkens back to when they think of what disaster might befall us.”

“It is a place,”

“Yes, a small settlement near here.” Marie made a gesture as if trying to smell something, wafting scents up into her nostrils. “There were small things, organisms, that were harmful to us if breathed. We didn’t know. We couldn’t know, and people were there in large quantities before what seemed like a harmless allergy was revealed to be a deadly reaction. I understand that it was awful. Many died.”

“You mentioned my,” John tripped in his speech, “the Scribe.”

Marie’s expression became complex and difficult to read. “Yes, I did. He saved some people,” then she squinted as if straining for words. “I couldn’t explain it, really. He saved some people. Not all. No one knows how. I guess he would, but that’s the trouble really, when you can do the unexplainable. People want to know why some had to die, and why others lived.” Marie put her hand on the pitcher, and then removed it.

John soaked in the ideas for a while, sticking things he knew and fit them to things he had just learned. Like Marie’s round table. The master was very capable. Trying to imagine what that was like from a perspective of someone without the Sight was like trying to look in two directions at once.

The master had told him to go and see, that if there was something he wanted to know, to go and find it.

“Which direction is Bloomfield?”

Marie did not seem surprised by the question. “Follow the sun come afternoon,”

John did not have to look out of the rare window. The clouds were not so frequent yet. He rose from his chair, finishing the water as he stood. “Thank you.”

“You’re going?” She took a moment to rise himself. “I don’t know where that leaves our exchange.”

“You have a butcher?” He lifted the shield and clipped it to himself. It was very loud in that space. Standing without it made him feel lighter, but also naked.

Marie nodded. “Of course.”

“Cut me off enough meat for three days, I gift you with the rest.” He started to walk toward the door.

“Of course. Yes, yes of course. John?”

John turned to see that the member of the conservatory still had many questions, and perhaps other things to say.

It looked as if the woman had a plan in mind, an idea she was chasing, but then her face changed. “The library tells us that different kinds of places in a society become necessary as that culture becomes more advanced. That does not mean those places are good places. I believe the city, Bloomfield, is a place a lot of people want to forget, so it attracts people who want to be forgotten.”

Right then, John noticed a familiarity between Marie and the master, a seeming purposefulness in complicating information. John had no recollection of Bloomfield, and he certainly wasn’t going in an effort to be forgotten. More the opposite. “Thank you for the water,” he said. “I will go to the butcher now, that is where you sent the kill?”

Marie straightened her back as if stunned. “Why yes, but how,” and she paused.

John knew, because he had been taught, that the thing people feared most was having their inner thoughts seen. That was why they feared Seers. “It was a guess.” He wasn’t sure why it was important to put her at ease.

The woman did look relieved. “Ah, yes, very clever.” And exhausted. “I will send word immediately.”

John left then because Marie seemed finished, spent in a way. Walking back down the long stairs, he realized he neglected to ask how far Bloomfield was. It was likely a branch of Gabriel, built by people who wanted to forge out into the wilds, a frontier town. That meant it was relatively close, but John also realized the distance did not much matter. There were things he wished to know, so he would go and know them. Bloomfield was spoken of by the master in a different voice than almost all the other things he said. John wanted to know why he left, so perhaps he would find some clue to the master’s whereabouts in Bloomfield.

Something felt different about the first steps he took from Gabriel, but John didn’t peer too deeply into the reasons.