that whatever may have happened to her by the time you get to her, whatever may have changed in her, there are some things that hold true through it all.
“When the changing fevers came, eleven years ago, they took a lot of what Lizabel was, but they never took it all. You got to hold on to what you can, young sir. You hear me?”
~
There was a growth of podhuts ahead of them in the gloom. Flint had not expected that. He couldn’t remember if they had been there when he had come this way as a boy, on a family visit to Clarel and dry season work on the bladderpump farm.
The huts were empty, sealed against incursions from the wildlands, popping themselves open only when they sensed humans in the clearing.
This was a well-used road, Flint knew–that was, after all, one reason he had chosen this route. It made sense, then, to grow accommodation for travellers here, a day’s travel from Trecosann.
“How’s the travel suiting you?” asked an itinerant labourer called Alal. The group sat around a low fire, eating supplies of flatcake and fruit, and drinking sweetwater from a podhut bladder.
“It’s all bigger than I’d expected,” said Flint. He had been walking for most of the day, and still they were climbing Spinster’s Spine, the chain of hills separating the vales of Eels and Farsam. The name was appropriate, for the hills were like great vertebrae, locked together below a skin of soil and rock and tree. A sleeping giant.
“We’ve been walking all day,” he explained, “and yet we’ve travelled so little.” He had realised, during the course of the day, his own inadequate sense of geography. He knew the surrounding lands, he had some kind of grasp of the general directions and travel times to the main settlements of Farsamy, Beshusa, Coltar and Ritteney, and yet... so little idea of what lay beyond. Humankind interacted on a local scale, it seemed, each settlement the centre of its own world, of an interlocking network of settlements scattered across the wildlands.
To find one person in such vastness!
Alal, a man of much muscle and slow, careful thought, paused a long time in the golden half-light before saying, “I wouldn’t have it any smaller. The world. I’ve been in big towns, where people live crammed together. I worked in Farsamy once. People so close together ain’t the same kind of people.”
“Plenty of work for a dentist, mind,” said Jemmie, cackling.
Flint shared a hut with Alal, grateful for the big man’s human noises in the long hours of the night.
~
Not long into the morning’s trek, they parted company. The trail they had been following, a tight-packed mud road flanked by dense jungle, came to a crossing point where it cut straight across a wide road crafted from some dark stone that was flecked white and pitted with a tracery of fine cracks and clefts.
A wooden board lay flat at the side of the junction, its surface etched with arrows, words, directions. You had to stand right over it to read the words. The board indicated the directions and travel times to Farsamy, Greenwater, Trecosann and Berenwai. A fifth arrow pointed off into the heart of the jungle and was labelled, simply, hell, not far.
Flint eyed his travel companions. He had names for all fifteen, now, although many were still strangers; Alal, Jemmie and Lizabel, however, had become more than mere acquaintances in so short a time.
He realised that he had nothing with which to repay these people their kindnesses.
“Stick to the path, young sir,” Jemmie told him again. “Hide yourself from travellers unless you are certain of their nature.” He didn’t try again to persuade Flint not to travel to Greenwater alone, that argument already settled earlier this morning.
The dentist reached for his belt and released the long sheath which held his machete. He handed it to Flint. “Protect yourself,” he said. “May you have the Lord’s luck in finding your sister.”
Flint stood silently, knowing not to
“When the changing fevers came, eleven years ago, they took a lot of what Lizabel was, but they never took it all. You got to hold on to what you can, young sir. You hear me?”
~
There was a growth of podhuts ahead of them in the gloom. Flint had not expected that. He couldn’t remember if they had been there when he had come this way as a boy, on a family visit to Clarel and dry season work on the bladderpump farm.
The huts were empty, sealed against incursions from the wildlands, popping themselves open only when they sensed humans in the clearing.
This was a well-used road, Flint knew–that was, after all, one reason he had chosen this route. It made sense, then, to grow accommodation for travellers here, a day’s travel from Trecosann.
“How’s the travel suiting you?” asked an itinerant labourer called Alal. The group sat around a low fire, eating supplies of flatcake and fruit, and drinking sweetwater from a podhut bladder.
“It’s all bigger than I’d expected,” said Flint. He had been walking for most of the day, and still they were climbing Spinster’s Spine, the chain of hills separating the vales of Eels and Farsam. The name was appropriate, for the hills were like great vertebrae, locked together below a skin of soil and rock and tree. A sleeping giant.
“We’ve been walking all day,” he explained, “and yet we’ve travelled so little.” He had realised, during the course of the day, his own inadequate sense of geography. He knew the surrounding lands, he had some kind of grasp of the general directions and travel times to the main settlements of Farsamy, Beshusa, Coltar and Ritteney, and yet... so little idea of what lay beyond. Humankind interacted on a local scale, it seemed, each settlement the centre of its own world, of an interlocking network of settlements scattered across the wildlands.
To find one person in such vastness!
Alal, a man of much muscle and slow, careful thought, paused a long time in the golden half-light before saying, “I wouldn’t have it any smaller. The world. I’ve been in big towns, where people live crammed together. I worked in Farsamy once. People so close together ain’t the same kind of people.”
“Plenty of work for a dentist, mind,” said Jemmie, cackling.
Flint shared a hut with Alal, grateful for the big man’s human noises in the long hours of the night.
~
Not long into the morning’s trek, they parted company. The trail they had been following, a tight-packed mud road flanked by dense jungle, came to a crossing point where it cut straight across a wide road crafted from some dark stone that was flecked white and pitted with a tracery of fine cracks and clefts.
A wooden board lay flat at the side of the junction, its surface etched with arrows, words, directions. You had to stand right over it to read the words. The board indicated the directions and travel times to Farsamy, Greenwater, Trecosann and Berenwai. A fifth arrow pointed off into the heart of the jungle and was labelled, simply, hell, not far.
Flint eyed his travel companions. He had names for all fifteen, now, although many were still strangers; Alal, Jemmie and Lizabel, however, had become more than mere acquaintances in so short a time.
He realised that he had nothing with which to repay these people their kindnesses.
“Stick to the path, young sir,” Jemmie told him again. “Hide yourself from travellers unless you are certain of their nature.” He didn’t try again to persuade Flint not to travel to Greenwater alone, that argument already settled earlier this morning.
The dentist reached for his belt and released the long sheath which held his machete. He handed it to Flint. “Protect yourself,” he said. “May you have the Lord’s luck in finding your sister.”
Flint stood silently, knowing not to
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