Paths in a Wood

Forest sun sparkled on Little Deer’s face as he worked his way through the forest. He picked his strides with an easy familiarity as he listened to the earth around him. He circled a tree, noticing it for only a second. The big one with the lightning scar down the north east side, that would be Sha Saena's (Fierce Lion’s) hunting territory. She would likely be stalking elk from it today, scanning the ground below with spear at the ready.

The cubs, Taema (Sun) and Teala (Moon), giggled as Little Deer passed, peeking out at him with green berries smeared around their mouths. Little Deer ignored them and hopped the river as it burbled around stones and logs, keeping an eye out for Katwah, River stars, and  keeping his distance from the animals’ burrows.

Ah Natu (Gentle Breeze) had lost the rights to his fishing hole today, to Te Tama (old Mother Bear). She looked down on him from high in one of the trees, letting down a vine rope baited with the berries her children should have been gathering, instead of eating.

All around Little Deer, he knew his People of the Trees, the Nialli, were hunting, or fishing or collecting herbs, or eggs, or mosses up in the trees, far from the ground he so loved, looking down on him as he stalked the forest floor, but he cared not. The earth, the ground, was his domain. The other Nialli thought little of Little Deer, walking along the ground. Even his name, Ah Nahwe in his peoples tongue, given to him on becoming a man, meant Little, and implied that he was childish for never taking to the trees. Still, Little Deer knew the land from this view better than any of the other Nialli, and in the deep of the night it had called out to him in a dream. The spirits of the land hurt, and he was going to see his ancestors to find out why. His short spear hung at the small of his back, at the ready as the woods opened up a path for him to the grove where the tribe had long laid their dead.

Thomas Polk stepped out of his cabin, and drank in the morning sun. His fields were fresh-plowed, thanks to hard work the day before, and the ache in his bones from a hard days work was just as much a joy to him as the smell of the turned earth. So different from a life at sea. So much more wholesome, Polk thought.

As he made the rounds on the small farm, he noticed his oxen tramping their feet nervously. Likely there had been more of those faceless scaly things down by the river terrorizing them. They looked all the world like starfish to the old sailor, three orangy arms beneath the lumpy orange disk of their dog sized bodies, but they ran on land, harrying his cows like cats looking for a drink of milk. Yesterday he’d shot one, but still lost a calf. It had been dragging it off to the river, perhaps to a den of cubs of it’s own. He checked his musket in the barn, making sure it was loaded and the powder dry.

He checked the brace of pistols nearby, for chasing the little beasts or the natives in the woods off, to make sure his son, Will, hadn’t ferreted one away again to play with. He trusted the boy on the farm, but not with a pistol, not with the orange things about and certainly not off the farm. Here at least he could keep an eye out, keep him safe. He’d seen the boy playing over by the hedgerow that despite his neighbor’s attempts, still seperated his small farm from his neighbor, Reginald Derby’s.

A shout rang out across the clearing, just from the other side of the hedgerow, and Polk frowned. He knew that Derby didn't treat his servants the best, but he didn't want that sort of thing so close to the property line, especially when his son was about. He’d do his best to protect the boy from the evils of the world, and that included priggard neighbors who didn't have the decency to treat their servants like people. He headed for the hedgerow, absentmindedly tucking a pistol into his belt.

Illya Kasac cowered, despite her large size. She had been good this morning. She had worked the fields as her master expected. While the little man across the way had worked all day to plow under the old canes, she had heaved the plow onto her shoulders and done it all, the entire front and back fields in only a morning, and her master’s fields were much larger. She'd done the fields before eating, as her master required, and come back to the simple longhouse while others went behind her planting her newly turned soil. She came home to rest, and the simple wheat bran her old friend Prama had prepared.

Prama was a Dakahni, one of the races whose home she had only heard of from her master, in derisive terms. He called them plants, too slow to be any use doing real work, but good in a kitchen. Prama did the best with what he could, she knew. The master only gave them small supplies of the winterwheat, and tiny Prama, dark skin wrinkled like treebark, stretched it as far as he could. Often at night, he went down to the woods, and found grubs, or eggs or berries to add to the pot, always careful of the savages and strange animals Master said lived in the trees. While Illya ate this morning, her grey stomach painful with hunger, Master had come in to yell at Prama.

“Stupid child! Look at this sack! It’s half gone and the back fields arent even planted yet! Why is this going so fast? I only have so much food I can give you layabouts!”

“Sah We’don eat too much, jus aint ‘nough to feed everysah. Hard work make sahs hungry, and gotta work ‘fore eatin. Everysah comes back from the fields powerful hungry, but I only feed what Sah says to.”

His belly jiggled as he barked a sharp laugh.“Lies! I can't abide a lying child, even if it looks more like a tree stump than a person! You tell me you only cook what I say? You're too fat for that!”

Illya knew Prama was far from fat, and had lost weight considerably after master had purchased him from the Markets; his skin had turned from a rich green-brown to the color of old soil and ash, and the green in his hair had faded to a dead brown.

“Until these stocks are back up to normal, half rations for everyone. And none for you. You're s’posed to be part plant, you stupid Dakahns? Go out in the day and help the others, soak up your food that way instead of costing me.”

“But Sah!”

“No Buts!” He raised his hand and to strike Pama, but Illya’s hand caught it, and the master whirled on her.

“You! You dare to touch me? I PAID for you, you stupid animal! I don't care how big you are!”

Illya cowered as the Master brought his cane to bear, breaking it over the big woman’s stoney flank. She was bigger than him to be sure, 7 feet to his 5, but she was hungry, and knew if she fought back she would be weak, and possibly be starved further for her disobedience.

He hit her again,with his broken cane, backing her out of the longhouse towards the hedgerow.

“Stupid Animal! Oxen are more useful! At least with an Ox you can eat the old cow after she's stopped listening!”

Anger welled up inside Illya as the fat man talked about food, about eating her when she had barely eaten in the last week. She clenched her fists, and dropped to her knees, trying not to retaliate as the slave-master hit her again, swiping his broken cane through her golden hair like a scythe through wheat, and slashing her across the eye.

Illya Novotor Kasac let out a horrible roar as her anger broke her.

Little Deer gazed through the broken tree line at what used to be a sacred site, now  plowed over, trees taken, mounds laid flat. Stardogs, normally river creatures, vicious though they may be, danced around the edges of the clearing, orange legs twirling as they hissed to each other, daring one another to venture into this opening that to their simple senses looked like river but felt like ground.

Two houses stood, square and wooden, no skins or leaves, only cut, dead, wood. One house was large, painted white, with pillars that held open a huge door like a mouth, and a stone chimney on one end that belched smoke and heat wastefully into the field. The other was smaller. It stood low to the ground like one of his people's dwellings, but rather than a dugout laid over with skins, it was a short box, laid out longways, made of raw wood. Trees grew behind the long low house, laid out in an orderly way trees never made on their own.

At the row of trees, a man, a pale eyed, short haired man of the type his tribe had warned him of, stood over a mountain of a woman. He was fat, and sneered at the mountain with a curl of his mustache. The man held a broken stick, yelling at the mountain in their strange tongue. The woman, Little Deer knew it was a woman because of her size, and because she wore a loose top that barely covered her huge shoulders and chest, kneeled to the man as he yelled. Her skin was pale grey, like stones or spirits, and her hair, as long as his, was the color of goldenrods or the sun setting on a lake. He could feel her barely contained fierceness, and knew that the small man would probably not survive if the giantess became angry.

Little Deer worked his way closer, pulling out his spear in case there was trouble. Other Nialli would have needed trees to creep, but not Little Deer, childish Deer who never took to trees, who loved earth more than bough. He moved silently closer, ready to help the mountain/spirit. She looked like earth, and so he loved her. And she called out, Little Deer rushing into the glade.

Polk pushed through the hedgerow to see Derby gasping for breath, his huge grey slave holding him between both hands and simply squeezing. As much as he despised the man he was tempted to let it happen. But he couldn't. He would be on trial for assisting a slave revolt if he did. His son would be alone. That was something he could not allow. He was tempted, to stand before dusty representatives of the crown and tell them why he let the slave kill the master while he watched, or to shelter the girl, or even just to shoot the priggard who had kept trying to push him off his land, but he couldn’t.He would know what he did. His son would know, and  that would all but kill the boy. The girl turned to glare at him, eyes ice blue, and cold. He raised his pistol. If he had to shoot, he would, but he didn't want to. He would fire only to save a life, not take one.

Illiyana Novotor Kasac turned to glare at the other Utland man, daring him to stop her from taking her justice. This fat useless man dared to talk of eating her while he starved her and her friend? The newcomer was smaller than her former master, who struggled in her hands not to be crushed like a small stone. The newcomer was lean looking, like Prama, or her, or any of the other workers for Master. Why was he holding a pistol then? Was he here to stop her? He, who had starved like them? There was a screech and Illya’s hearing exploded with a gunshot. She screamed and felt the Master’s chest collapse between her fingers.

Little Deer had sized up the outsiders, one with one of the guns that made them so dangerous. They had their own quarrels, but here they were hurting the spirit of the land before him. This would not stand. He aimed his spear at the pale eyed man that had the gun and burst into a sprint. A kahtwah, the orange beast having seen the mountain’s turn as an opportunity, leaped at her with a screech, the poisonous bite on its underside aimed at the giantess’ grey shoulder. The man’s gun fired, smoke filling the glade, and pain shooting through Little Deer’s gut. He gasped, as his red blood hit the soil he loved. His spear had left his hands, now buried up to the hilt in kahtwah. He fell, on the sacred graveyard of his ancestors.

Thomas Polk hung his head, having shot a native, the tree-living men that called themselves Nialli. He had been ready to shoot Derby, to face the consequences thereof, and to tell his son why good men sometimes had to take to life of others, to protect those that were lesser in the eyes of the courts, when he saw not one but two things rush towards the giantess, a native and one of the starfish-dogs. His choice had been split second, the natives were more dangerous. He dropped to his knees, full of the burden of what he had done.

Illiya gasped, dropping her master’s dead body next to the orange monster of the wood, now sporting a carved short spear through its back. She had killed him, her master. Her life was over. The courts would give no mercy. She collapsed, crying that Prama and his fellows would likely die beside her, with no master.

William Polk, a small boy, Thomas Polk’s only child, gasped, through his hiding place in the hedgerow, as he saw life and death play out before him on a small farm in the New Cambrian wilderness.