Post by wordweaver3 on Mar 8, 2019 6:34:19 GMT
(I got 3 parts done so far, here's the first for now)
Prologue
The boy crouched low, hiding himself in the long grass that swayed lazily in the summer breeze. Overhead a raven eyed him from the top of a tree, occasionally making his annoyance at the young boy clear by shouting down irritated cackles at him. The boy paid it no mind. It wasn't ravens he was interested in.
The boy's skin was deeply bronzed by the sun, in contrast his unkempt hair was bleached a light brown by it. He was naked aside from a strip of leather tied around his waist that hung down the front. He inched forward carefully on bare feet. In his cocked hand the boy held an atlatl, a dart thrower, with a dart nocked and pinched between his fingers, ready to deploy. Not a full size dart with stone tips like the warriors had, a smaller one better fitting his shorter stature with a simple sharpened end. House Man Taca had presented it to him just this morning with the hesitant blessing of his mother, a thrower with two feather fletched darts, each longer than he was tall. He was determined to bring something home and make his mother proud.
Some distance in front of the boy a rabbit suddenly stood up on its hind legs. The boy halted in place, standing as still as possible while the rabbit took in the surrounding field with swiveling ears. A throwing stick would be a superior choice to use against a rabbit as it would damage less meat, but it would be good practice with a dart. If he can hit a rabbit, then hitting a stag or a bison would be simple by comparison. The rabbit dropped back down on all fours to graze on the clover and the boy continued his stalk. Another few steps and he would be confident in the distance.
"Ro!" A voice called from behind him.
The rabbit stood up in alarm, its ears trained in the boy's direction. It was about to bolt. It was a bit farther than he thought he could hit, but he swept his cocked arm forward anyway, sending the dart through the air. It landed with a dull thud, piercing the ground just shy of his target. The rabbit turned and fled into the safety of the thicket at the edge of the field.
Annoyed that his hunt had been disturbed, the boy stood up and looked around for the source of the voice. A young girl nearby waved before running up to him. She was just as darkened by the sun as he, and just as naked, with only a small strip of leather to protect her loins. In her long hair there were beads and other small trinkets woven in.
"Ro!" She called. "I've been looking all over for you!"
"You scared away my hopper, Lel!" Ro admonished.
"I'm sorry." She said sincerely.
Ro sighed and turned to retrieve his dart and Lel followed closely behind. She was shorter and several winters younger. "Why are you out here alone?" He asked her. "It's dangerous and you could have gotten lost."
"Mother is looking for you." She answered. "You're not supposed to be out here either. You're supposed to be pulling weeds in the field."
"I'm a hunter now, and I have this," Ro told her as he pulled the dart from the ground, "I can go anywhere I want since I can protect myself." Which ignored the fact that he was evading his duties.
His sister looked at the sharpened wooden dart dubiously. "You can kill a long tooth with that?"
The boy frowned. The warriors haven't seen a long tooth for quite a while. The last one anyone had seen was killed two summers ago. "I could kill a howler." He asserted, and she seemed impressed with that. Ro gathered his atlatl and darts in one hand and took her hand in his other.
"Come on, let's go home." He said, leading the way.
The sun was getting low and the boy realized how much he had lost track of time on his fruitless hunt. This was a well traveled aria with established trails, but the trail home wound around the swamp. Ro started to worry that it would take until dark to walk all the way back. The summer had been dry and the swamp should be easier to cross than it normally is.
"This way." He said, leading the girl off the trail.
Lel hesitated. "That's where the witch lives." She said.
Ro laughed. "There's no witch!" He told her. "That's just something they tell the children so they don't go in the swamp."
"If there's no witch, why don't they want us to go into the swamp?"
"Because there are a lot of blood-biters there." The boy said as he pulled her along. "Come on, if we hurry we can stay ahead of them." There was also a higher chance of happening across some game on the way through the swamp, and the boy hadn't quite given up on taking something home to prove himself.
Lel was still not convinced. "But... the witch?"
Ro sighed. "Let me show you something." He held up his hand and made a sign. Holding the tip of his middle finger to the tip of his thumb he made a circle. "If you make the sign for the Eye of Su witches hate it. They'll stay away from you."
Lel struggled with the sign for a minute but finally managed to get it. Holding out the ward in front of her she took her brother's hand and they started into the swamp.
"It's your job to keep the witches away." Ro told her as he broke into a jog, dragging Lel along with him. The girl did her best to keep up but the swamp started to get muddier and muddier, with exposed roots that kept trying to trip them. The mud had a foul stink to it and the two soon found their legs were covered with it. All around the hum of mosquitoes gathered as the biting insect sense their presence. The naked children an enticing meal they couldn't pass up. For a while they managed to stay ahead of them, but soon the two were slapping at their skin. The ward may have worked on witches, but mosquitoes were unimpressed by it.
"Ro," the girl gasped, "let's go back."
"We're already mostly through." Ro said. "We have to keep going. The river is just on the other side. When we get there we can jump in and the blood-biters won't follow."
Suddenly Lel's hand slipped from Ro's grasp and the girl cried out. Her foot had stubbed on a root and she fell face first into the muck.
"Lel!" The boy turned to help his sister, dropping his atlatl. She wailed and clutched her foot as Ro hauled her up to a dry spot.
"Are you okay?" Ro asked as he wiped off his sister's face.
"I hurt my foot." She whined while spitting mud out of her mouth.
"Let me see."
Ro took her foot in his hands, wiping away the fetid mud to get a better look. Lel winced when he did so. She was bleeding a little and he thought maybe it was starting to swell. He peeled some moss off a nearby tree to clean the wound.
"Is it broken?" Lel asked.
"I don't know," her brother said, "maybe." Around the children a swarm of mosquitoes gathered to feast. Ro slapped at them, but there were too many. Lel couldn't run anymore, and he couldn't leave her.
"We have to get out of here." He said. "Climb on my back and I'll carry you."
The going was tough. Lel wasn't heavy, but her added weight made Ro sink that much deeper into the swamp with every step. He could no longer move fast enough to outpace the mosquitoes and they tormented the two endlessly. Lel had started to cry, complaining that the pain in her foot was getting worse.
"Are you keeping the witch away?" Ro asked, panting heavily from the exsertion. He wanted to give her something else to think about. Lel adjusted her grasp around his neck to make the Eye of Su ward.
"Good. I don't want that nasty old hag to sneak up on us."
"You said there was no witch." Lel pointed out with a sniffle.
"Maybe there is." He told her. Then he stopped for a moment. "Can you smell that? That's the river! We're almost through!" The boy picked up his pace as the canopy above started to thin. He was tired, thirsty, and so focused on getting to the river that he didn't even see the wolf.
Luckily Lel did.
"Howler!" His sister warned with a terror choked voice, gripping onto her brother tightly. Ro halted in place and his heart seemed to stop for several beats when he heard the growling. His eyes darted around and picked up the animal not ten paces away. Far too close. It was a large gray female with blood around her mouth. She was looking right at him in a defensive stance, her ears flattened and the fur standing up on her back. Her lips were curled to display the sharp set of teeth. House Man Taca had told him once that a lone howler was often more dangerous than a pack of them, and she was alone.
"Kill it, Ro!" Lel begged.
The boy fumbled with his atlatl and one of the darts fell to the ground, making a clatter against a tree trunk. This provoked the wolf to false-lunge at them before hunkering down to growl even louder. Ro's fingers seemed to have lost all their dexterity and he had difficulty setting the other dart into the spur. When he did finally get it set he raised it up to cock his arm only to have the dart slip from the spur and have to struggle with it again.
The wolf's vicious expression changed when she saw him raise the weapon. She appeared to know what it was and that it was a danger. She backed away several steps and could be seen to have a limp, favoring one of her front legs over the other. With a final worried look at Ro the wolf turned and bounded off.
Lel had been holding her breath throughout the entire ordeal and let out a huge gasp directly into Ro's ear. Ro tugged at her arm to make her loosen her grip around his throat so he could breathe too.
"Why didn't you kill it?" Lel asked.
"How could I? You were throwing off my balance and nearly strangling me." Ro complained. It was easier to blame his sister than to admit that he had been too terrified to function. Even with the threat gone his legs were wobbling uncontrollably.
"I've never seen a live howler before." Lel said in astonishment, her only experience with them were the furs that the warriors would bring back from a hunt. "They're huge!"
Ro looked around nervously. The wolf had been feeding and that meant there was a fresh kill nearby. It was unusual for there to be predator activity this close to the village, but if there was one howler there could be another. Or even worse, a long tooth.
"Let's get to the river." He said. His legs felt weak now. It was like the strength had been drained from his muscles and he wondered if howlers had a magic that could do that to him. Luckily the river was very close. He carefully navigated down the bank only to find that he had approached at one of the deep bends of the river. The water was lower than normal so there was a bit of a drop from the shore to the surface. Before he could decide whether to go up or downstream to find an easier point to access, the soil under his feet crumbled and dumped the two children into the river.
Lel sputtered and splashed as she came to the surface. "Ro! Why did you do that?"
Ro bobbed next to her. "Sorry, I slipped." Lel glared sternly at him for a moment but could only hold it so long. They were safe. Away from the blood-biters. Away from the howler. Away from the witch. She burst into laughter and Ro laughed with her.
The slow river soon carried them to a shallow place where they could stand. The children spent a few moments getting washed up, cleaning away the mud and the stink of the swamp off of them. Lel had to stand on one leg, but the cool water was making her other one feel better. Ro was still going to have to carry her, but on the other side of the river was a barley field so the village was not far beyond.
"We probably shouldn't tell mother about any of this." Ro said. "If she finds out we were in the swamp she'll whip us."
"What about my foot?" Lel asked.
"Just tell her you tripped on the trail." He said. Although that wouldn't explain why they had gotten so many welts from the blood-biters. He hoped their mother wouldn't notice.
"Ro..." Lel started to say something but didn't finish.
"It's okay, as long as we keep our story straight." He told her.
"Ro..." Lel repeated.
This time the boy managed to pick up the fright in the young girl's voice. He looked over to see his sister staring in stark horror back toward the swamp, her shaking hand held aloft with the Eye of Su ward. Ro spun around to witness a horror far beyond the howler.
A naked woman was high in the trees with her arms outstretched. She wasn't up there because she had climbed, she was flying between them. She had no eyes and no mouth. Her skin was paler than any woman they had ever seen and her hair was the color of blood. Her belly was split open from groin to chin, with all of her entrails dangling to the ground below. She hovered silently, regarding the children in the river with an awful, eyeless face that was streaked in blood.
The witch had found them.
The boy crouched low, hiding himself in the long grass that swayed lazily in the summer breeze. Overhead a raven eyed him from the top of a tree, occasionally making his annoyance at the young boy clear by shouting down irritated cackles at him. The boy paid it no mind. It wasn't ravens he was interested in.
The boy's skin was deeply bronzed by the sun, in contrast his unkempt hair was bleached a light brown by it. He was naked aside from a strip of leather tied around his waist that hung down the front. He inched forward carefully on bare feet. In his cocked hand the boy held an atlatl, a dart thrower, with a dart nocked and pinched between his fingers, ready to deploy. Not a full size dart with stone tips like the warriors had, a smaller one better fitting his shorter stature with a simple sharpened end. House Man Taca had presented it to him just this morning with the hesitant blessing of his mother, a thrower with two feather fletched darts, each longer than he was tall. He was determined to bring something home and make his mother proud.
Some distance in front of the boy a rabbit suddenly stood up on its hind legs. The boy halted in place, standing as still as possible while the rabbit took in the surrounding field with swiveling ears. A throwing stick would be a superior choice to use against a rabbit as it would damage less meat, but it would be good practice with a dart. If he can hit a rabbit, then hitting a stag or a bison would be simple by comparison. The rabbit dropped back down on all fours to graze on the clover and the boy continued his stalk. Another few steps and he would be confident in the distance.
"Ro!" A voice called from behind him.
The rabbit stood up in alarm, its ears trained in the boy's direction. It was about to bolt. It was a bit farther than he thought he could hit, but he swept his cocked arm forward anyway, sending the dart through the air. It landed with a dull thud, piercing the ground just shy of his target. The rabbit turned and fled into the safety of the thicket at the edge of the field.
Annoyed that his hunt had been disturbed, the boy stood up and looked around for the source of the voice. A young girl nearby waved before running up to him. She was just as darkened by the sun as he, and just as naked, with only a small strip of leather to protect her loins. In her long hair there were beads and other small trinkets woven in.
"Ro!" She called. "I've been looking all over for you!"
"You scared away my hopper, Lel!" Ro admonished.
"I'm sorry." She said sincerely.
Ro sighed and turned to retrieve his dart and Lel followed closely behind. She was shorter and several winters younger. "Why are you out here alone?" He asked her. "It's dangerous and you could have gotten lost."
"Mother is looking for you." She answered. "You're not supposed to be out here either. You're supposed to be pulling weeds in the field."
"I'm a hunter now, and I have this," Ro told her as he pulled the dart from the ground, "I can go anywhere I want since I can protect myself." Which ignored the fact that he was evading his duties.
His sister looked at the sharpened wooden dart dubiously. "You can kill a long tooth with that?"
The boy frowned. The warriors haven't seen a long tooth for quite a while. The last one anyone had seen was killed two summers ago. "I could kill a howler." He asserted, and she seemed impressed with that. Ro gathered his atlatl and darts in one hand and took her hand in his other.
"Come on, let's go home." He said, leading the way.
The sun was getting low and the boy realized how much he had lost track of time on his fruitless hunt. This was a well traveled aria with established trails, but the trail home wound around the swamp. Ro started to worry that it would take until dark to walk all the way back. The summer had been dry and the swamp should be easier to cross than it normally is.
"This way." He said, leading the girl off the trail.
Lel hesitated. "That's where the witch lives." She said.
Ro laughed. "There's no witch!" He told her. "That's just something they tell the children so they don't go in the swamp."
"If there's no witch, why don't they want us to go into the swamp?"
"Because there are a lot of blood-biters there." The boy said as he pulled her along. "Come on, if we hurry we can stay ahead of them." There was also a higher chance of happening across some game on the way through the swamp, and the boy hadn't quite given up on taking something home to prove himself.
Lel was still not convinced. "But... the witch?"
Ro sighed. "Let me show you something." He held up his hand and made a sign. Holding the tip of his middle finger to the tip of his thumb he made a circle. "If you make the sign for the Eye of Su witches hate it. They'll stay away from you."
Lel struggled with the sign for a minute but finally managed to get it. Holding out the ward in front of her she took her brother's hand and they started into the swamp.
"It's your job to keep the witches away." Ro told her as he broke into a jog, dragging Lel along with him. The girl did her best to keep up but the swamp started to get muddier and muddier, with exposed roots that kept trying to trip them. The mud had a foul stink to it and the two soon found their legs were covered with it. All around the hum of mosquitoes gathered as the biting insect sense their presence. The naked children an enticing meal they couldn't pass up. For a while they managed to stay ahead of them, but soon the two were slapping at their skin. The ward may have worked on witches, but mosquitoes were unimpressed by it.
"Ro," the girl gasped, "let's go back."
"We're already mostly through." Ro said. "We have to keep going. The river is just on the other side. When we get there we can jump in and the blood-biters won't follow."
Suddenly Lel's hand slipped from Ro's grasp and the girl cried out. Her foot had stubbed on a root and she fell face first into the muck.
"Lel!" The boy turned to help his sister, dropping his atlatl. She wailed and clutched her foot as Ro hauled her up to a dry spot.
"Are you okay?" Ro asked as he wiped off his sister's face.
"I hurt my foot." She whined while spitting mud out of her mouth.
"Let me see."
Ro took her foot in his hands, wiping away the fetid mud to get a better look. Lel winced when he did so. She was bleeding a little and he thought maybe it was starting to swell. He peeled some moss off a nearby tree to clean the wound.
"Is it broken?" Lel asked.
"I don't know," her brother said, "maybe." Around the children a swarm of mosquitoes gathered to feast. Ro slapped at them, but there were too many. Lel couldn't run anymore, and he couldn't leave her.
"We have to get out of here." He said. "Climb on my back and I'll carry you."
The going was tough. Lel wasn't heavy, but her added weight made Ro sink that much deeper into the swamp with every step. He could no longer move fast enough to outpace the mosquitoes and they tormented the two endlessly. Lel had started to cry, complaining that the pain in her foot was getting worse.
"Are you keeping the witch away?" Ro asked, panting heavily from the exsertion. He wanted to give her something else to think about. Lel adjusted her grasp around his neck to make the Eye of Su ward.
"Good. I don't want that nasty old hag to sneak up on us."
"You said there was no witch." Lel pointed out with a sniffle.
"Maybe there is." He told her. Then he stopped for a moment. "Can you smell that? That's the river! We're almost through!" The boy picked up his pace as the canopy above started to thin. He was tired, thirsty, and so focused on getting to the river that he didn't even see the wolf.
Luckily Lel did.
"Howler!" His sister warned with a terror choked voice, gripping onto her brother tightly. Ro halted in place and his heart seemed to stop for several beats when he heard the growling. His eyes darted around and picked up the animal not ten paces away. Far too close. It was a large gray female with blood around her mouth. She was looking right at him in a defensive stance, her ears flattened and the fur standing up on her back. Her lips were curled to display the sharp set of teeth. House Man Taca had told him once that a lone howler was often more dangerous than a pack of them, and she was alone.
"Kill it, Ro!" Lel begged.
The boy fumbled with his atlatl and one of the darts fell to the ground, making a clatter against a tree trunk. This provoked the wolf to false-lunge at them before hunkering down to growl even louder. Ro's fingers seemed to have lost all their dexterity and he had difficulty setting the other dart into the spur. When he did finally get it set he raised it up to cock his arm only to have the dart slip from the spur and have to struggle with it again.
The wolf's vicious expression changed when she saw him raise the weapon. She appeared to know what it was and that it was a danger. She backed away several steps and could be seen to have a limp, favoring one of her front legs over the other. With a final worried look at Ro the wolf turned and bounded off.
Lel had been holding her breath throughout the entire ordeal and let out a huge gasp directly into Ro's ear. Ro tugged at her arm to make her loosen her grip around his throat so he could breathe too.
"Why didn't you kill it?" Lel asked.
"How could I? You were throwing off my balance and nearly strangling me." Ro complained. It was easier to blame his sister than to admit that he had been too terrified to function. Even with the threat gone his legs were wobbling uncontrollably.
"I've never seen a live howler before." Lel said in astonishment, her only experience with them were the furs that the warriors would bring back from a hunt. "They're huge!"
Ro looked around nervously. The wolf had been feeding and that meant there was a fresh kill nearby. It was unusual for there to be predator activity this close to the village, but if there was one howler there could be another. Or even worse, a long tooth.
"Let's get to the river." He said. His legs felt weak now. It was like the strength had been drained from his muscles and he wondered if howlers had a magic that could do that to him. Luckily the river was very close. He carefully navigated down the bank only to find that he had approached at one of the deep bends of the river. The water was lower than normal so there was a bit of a drop from the shore to the surface. Before he could decide whether to go up or downstream to find an easier point to access, the soil under his feet crumbled and dumped the two children into the river.
Lel sputtered and splashed as she came to the surface. "Ro! Why did you do that?"
Ro bobbed next to her. "Sorry, I slipped." Lel glared sternly at him for a moment but could only hold it so long. They were safe. Away from the blood-biters. Away from the howler. Away from the witch. She burst into laughter and Ro laughed with her.
The slow river soon carried them to a shallow place where they could stand. The children spent a few moments getting washed up, cleaning away the mud and the stink of the swamp off of them. Lel had to stand on one leg, but the cool water was making her other one feel better. Ro was still going to have to carry her, but on the other side of the river was a barley field so the village was not far beyond.
"We probably shouldn't tell mother about any of this." Ro said. "If she finds out we were in the swamp she'll whip us."
"What about my foot?" Lel asked.
"Just tell her you tripped on the trail." He said. Although that wouldn't explain why they had gotten so many welts from the blood-biters. He hoped their mother wouldn't notice.
"Ro..." Lel started to say something but didn't finish.
"It's okay, as long as we keep our story straight." He told her.
"Ro..." Lel repeated.
This time the boy managed to pick up the fright in the young girl's voice. He looked over to see his sister staring in stark horror back toward the swamp, her shaking hand held aloft with the Eye of Su ward. Ro spun around to witness a horror far beyond the howler.
A naked woman was high in the trees with her arms outstretched. She wasn't up there because she had climbed, she was flying between them. She had no eyes and no mouth. Her skin was paler than any woman they had ever seen and her hair was the color of blood. Her belly was split open from groin to chin, with all of her entrails dangling to the ground below. She hovered silently, regarding the children in the river with an awful, eyeless face that was streaked in blood.
The witch had found them.