Gima The Beginning : Gima: Blathen's Logic by barkingdog |
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Dear Reader: This is actually Fantasy-Adventure-Horror, but there is no category for it on FanStory. Thank you for reading. Enjoy.:) barking dog Previously: Gima, captured by vermel bounty hunters and taken to Bellow City, has been beaten and violated by Jacknel and is now in Warik's Warrior Training facility in Upperton. Three months have passed since we were in the Valley. We return now after time has passed and all believe Gima is dead. Trell, grief stricken, has not spoken. CHAPTER 34 Leaves patter on the slanted bark roof of the valley cabin as gusts sweep the oaks across the sunrise. Trell’s silent days have run into silent weeks and months, and Fall's chill touches the Valley. Another day without her. Trell crosses the room, a ghost of what he used to be. He passes Zee, Blathan and Beh who sleep in the corner's shadows curled together like a litter of pups on a pile of various pelts. They've grown ... in size and friendship. Trell's shadow bends and changes on the walls and table unlike his somber disposition. Asmel and Hunter, settled into a daily routine, enjoy a game of checkers lit by the lantern sputtering overhead. Elbows on the split oak table, they ignore the aging blood stain deep in the wood of the once wolf strewn cabin floor. The once watching amber eyes sleep at Asmel’s feet. Her name is Shalu, a sleek, intelligent cougar. "Your move, my friend." Asmel, hair grown long and tied with deerhide, chuckles, sure of his win. Blathen wakes, meanders over to the far corner and plops down on a pallet of wolf and rabbit skins to sort his sharpened, polished collection of wolf bones that he'd salvaged during cabin clean-up. Being what he is, inquisitive, he’s tired of Trell’s moping, and out of sheer logic, knowing of bones, the small vermel asks, “Father, dead ones have bones. Am I correct?” Trell nods. Hunter leans back to listen. The smell of sweet applewood tobacco puffs from his calabash pipe. Asmel scratches the scar on the back of his head and, stretching his well healed shoulder, reaches to jump several of Hunter's black deer hoof checker pieces with his lighter horn colored ones. "Gotcha." Asmel, triumphant, listens to Hunter's distraction -- Blathen's question. “Then, Father …” Blathen pauses for emphasis much like his grandfather, Trolious, might do in order to gain attention or to prove a point. “Father... tell me ... where are Mother’s bones?” Trell grunts and turns back toward the doorway, persisting in his sullen mood. He leans forward, one hand on each side of its frame as if trapped by some unseen force controlling him from within. “Where are Mother’s bones, Father?” Vermel temper rising, Blathen stands and bangs two wolf bones together with a resounding clack, clack. “Bones.” “He’s right,” Asmel says under his breath, leaning across the narrow table toward Hunter. Determined to have an answer, here and now, Blathen stomps over to Trell who has stepped outside into the chill of morning. Aggravated, he tromps around to stand in front of his father. At only one third Trell’s height, he cranes his neck to look up, crosses his arms over his barrel chest and demands, "Where are they?" His uncontrollable, angry collector whips against Trell’s arm leaving a snaking red welt. Trell jolts. Blathen immediately realizes the disrespect that he’s shown and bows in apology. “Forgive me, Father.” Yet, he still persists, “Where are they, damn it?” just as Asmel might retort. Blathen's certainly heard Asmel’s profanity often enough to repeat it with perfect inflection. Asmel can’t help but smile. He kicks Hunter’s foot under the table and motions his head side-ways toward Blathen's pressing interrogation. Trell straightens his shoulders, stands tall and takes a deep breath. Blathen steps away. For the first time since finding Gima’s torn clothing and returning to Apple Valley, Trell is faced with another possibility. There were no bones, only tattered leather and her unlaced boots. No bones, no body, no death. Half smiling, half crying – looking more insane than sane, Trell bends down, snatches Blathen by his leather strapped leggings and throws him high in the air. Blathen squeals, waiting to be caught but falls, instead, into a pile of damp, red and gold maple leaves. Hunter jumps to his feet. His chair clatters to the floor as he rushes outside to rescue Blathen, positive that Trell’s finally gone mad after months of silence. He positions himself between Trell and Blathen who’s struggling to sit his roly-poly self up, waving his arms and legs in the air like a topsy-turvy turtle. “Telly. Stop." Hunter shoves Trell who's inches taller and pounds more muscular , hoping to move him toward the cabin door away from Blathen. "Asmel, help,” the normally quiet man yells inside to his friend while gripping Trell’s arm. Unsuccessful in his efforts—he may as well try to move an ancient oak—Hunter resorts to reason. “ Listen now, Telly, Blathen just misses his mother.” Blathen is up, brushing off leaves, and heads toward the cabin door, miffed that Trell didn't catch him. He throws a handful of leaves at Trell in minor retaliation. “No bones. No bones. No bones,” Trell laughs hysterically, “no bones … not dead … if no bones.” He moves Hunter aside with a touch of his finger and grabs Blathen to swing him around. “Gima lives.” Trell's smile gleams at Hunter and Asmel while he holds curious logic, kicking in mid-air. Sunrise lights the sky behind the small one's head. “Blathen’s question is the answer. I knew not what to do. My son … my son.” Trell spins, holding Blathen close for the first time in months. “You okay, man?” Azzy shouts. “Gima’s out there … somewhere.” A new color of hope replaces the paleness of grief in Trell’s face. "Oh my god, the little fella’s right.” Hunter throws his arms around them both. “Azzy, Gima’s alive.” “No bones.” In the midst of the hugging, Blathen affirms the truth with a very serious expression. Asmel lands a hearty slap on Trell’s deerskin clad back as he joins the celebration. Blathen wiggles, coughing and clearing his throat. Human sweat. I’ll never get used to it. Trell puts him down with a fatherly pat to his round yet immature hump. Blathen toddles inside to disassociate himself from all of this emotion and regain composure. He sits on his pile of wolf skins, picks up two femur bones and starts beating an innate Vermel rhythm on several wolf-skull drums. He weaves from side to side formulating a complex rhythm on the snarling skulls. He's in a world of his own. “Are you alright?” Asmel repeats Hunter’s question to Trell. As drum beats echo from the log house walls, Trell rushes about gathering and stuffing long forgotten gear into his worn leather pack. His pace is frantic, thinking of the time that he’s let pass with self-indulgent pity. “What are you doing?” Asmel follows Trell who packs deer jerky, knives, dried fruit, nuts, and herbs as well as jack-in-the-pulpit, daffodil bulbs, foxglove pollen and belladonna berries— poisons, quiet weapons. “I go to find Gima.” Trell opens the door. Beh wakes with the gust of cool, early autum air. His fat ripples when he shakes, and drool-strings fly, sticking to the wall. He roars readiness, standing beside Trell. Blathen pulls a wolf pelt over his head; its tail trails behind him. He peers out of an eye hole in the hood and waddles his well-rounded torso on its wide, flat feet over to the door to join them. The sharpened bones that hang in slits on a wolf-skin belt around his waist rattle with every step. “Ready.” “What the hell.” Asmel looks at Hunter then over at the deserted game of checkers and, without hesitation, reaches toward the equipment wall. “We can finish that game later.” Hunter smiles at Asmel who’s already grabbed his new bow and full quiver of arrows. “Aye my friend, we have a better one to play.” Hunter straps on his scabbard and reaches for his quiver of cattail torches. Shalu stretches, trots outside and jumps on the oak branch felled by lightning and, purring, sharpens her claws. Her eyes bright in the reflecting sunrise, she feels the excitement. Trell leads the unlikely band of steadfast cohorts. Blathen, red and fearless, wears the wolf cloak; Asmel, dark and powerful, the bear skin. Hunter, cautious and brave, belts a rabbit parka while Trell, masterful and cunning, ties his deerskin. They march out of the warm cabin into the chill of a red and gold fall morning. Shalu lopes along with Zee and his infant gear in saddlebags across her back. Beh brings up the rear–his large black rump swaying rhythmically from side to side as Trell leads them across the stream westward toward the far mountains. Hunter begins to whistle then sings a marching song and then another and another. Asmel adds his baritone to Hunter's tenor as they tromp along, frightening rabbit, squirrel and bird from den and tree with their human caterwaulering. Finally, after miles of this, Blathen covers his ears. “I think we hit an off note there, Azzy.” Hunter laughs and punches his friend's shoulder. Blathen attempts a polite smile but is secretly relieved to have a reprieve from the incessant human noise. He takes this venture very seriously. After half a day’s steady march, they reach the pile of Gima’s torn clothing, memorialized by Trell months ago. It remains undisturbed. Leaves have gathered for cover and protection, but it seems that even in Upper Earth, the Under Earth’s sacred symbols are respected by animals. Trell breaks the circle with an incantation, thus allowing Beh and Shalu freedom to nose about. As luck would have it—Gima’s scent remains snug inside her boots. The cougar remembers following that very scent in the footprints, long ago, as a cub with its mother. This is Shalu's range. She knows where the scent originated. She roars to Beh. Beh growls to Trell. Trell motions and clicks, “Follow Shalu.” Hunter and Asmel are speechless and fall in line, now, with Shalu in the lead. She gallops ahead. The line quickens through the stand of birch, past bayberry and under the towering shade of ash. Blathen coughs and complains,”Hey guys, I can't keep up. Slow down.” Beh mumbles a few low tones and Blathen pulls himself onto Beh’s back where he's seated like a king. Beh trots forward. It’s quite a sight: A wolf pelted vermel, riding a bear, brings up the rear of a small army that follows a cougar carrying a human child seated in a deerskin saddle bag. They couldn’t be happier, each one having their purpose, their individuality being part of a whole. At the site of the oak rising above the paw-paw patch, Beh climbs to the high fork and yowls that Gima had been there. He’s congratulated with much hard patting. Encouraged, Beh continues to search. His mouth opens to take in any scent that may be on low rocks. His keen nearsighted vision picks up Gima’s trail where she staggered blindly against a thorn bush and fell, leaving her flesh and hair on its brambles. At Mallard Lake, its shoreline scattered with Fall's brown and gold disintegration, Beh finds one of Gima's torn fingernails among the red ferns at the base of a russet ash, the clawed witness to Ruel’s assault. They find several other strange articles: Blathen finds a leather pouch with Jacknel’s arena insignia branded into it and a dark metal knife inscribed with ‘Ruel‘ in vermel symbols. Shalu uncovers several pointed, greenish-brown teeth. Trell, Hunter and Asmel exchange glances and simply agree in unison. “Vermel.” Blathen holds the dark knife in one hand and the Arena pouch in the other and asks, “What is ‘vermel?' ” They ignore his question. Asmel and Trell throw the teeth far into the lake where fish flee the sharp, arrow-like edges. The troop stays on the deer path with Trell in the lead. Certainly, it’s the most logical choice for strangers to Upper Earth to follow a ready made path rather than to cut through brush. And no brush had been trampled or cleared, according to Asmel who scouts ahead. Finally, they come to the cave and stand gaping at Ruel, its gruesome greeter, his eye picked out by crows. His body hangs, now, only dried sinew and bone with his green, sharp double-rows grinning broader than ever, and his clawed hand pointing its welcome toward the mountain's tunnel entrance of pitch darkness. Trell's stomach churns to meet the posted challenge. Beh hurries forward to enter the cave as do Shalu, Trell and Blathen. “Whoa, doggies,” shouts Hunter. “We need light.” The humans need light. Blathen sighs and waits, tapping his foot, while Hunter hands Asmel a cattail torch, finds his flint and lights it. Why can I see in the dark, and the Papa’s cannot? He continues to wonder.. Why am I the only one with a nose tube and a hump, the only one who can spew, the one with three fingers to their five, one eye to their two ... ? “Let’s go, son.” Trell motions to Blathen. Blathen’s train of thought is interrupted. But, out of the corner of his eye as they pass Ruel’s skeleton, he sees the three fingered hand with claws identical to his own and double rows that he has felt in his own mouth, and a single hole for only one eye. He knows in a flash that what they are hunting … is what he is. I’m a Vermel. He puffs up, angry that no one’s told him and wonders why, but then thinks back. No one’s told Beh that he’s a bear. I still don’t know what Shalu is. Father is Father, but what IS he; and Mother— what IS she? The humans … I know are human because Father's always saying ‘the human this and the human that’ … "Come on squirt, let’s go," Hunter touches Blathen’s fuzzy red hair, “time to find your Mama.”
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