Sentience, page 20
part #1 of Farm Land Series
“You should go now,” she said. “They’re all drunk and asleep, but they’ll be awake with the dawn.”
I went to rise and then stopped. “Wait,” I said. “I think I have a way to make sure you don’t get hit for this.”
I flowed into the stake, relaxed my fingers into its fibres and gently snapped them apart. The noise made Frances start, but nothing stirred inside the house.
With the stake broken, I hurried back into my body and pulled a long, hard fibre of wood from the post, poking it inside the open lock of the chains. However inconceivable it might be, it looked as though I had broken the stake and picked the lock with a bit of the wood.
“How did you do that?” she asked, staring at the stake.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just something I can do.” My eyes roamed the bank. My body was hungry for escape. “Replace the key where you found it,” I whispered. “And don’t tell anyone about this. That way I get to escape, and you get to live un-hit.”
She smiled. “You talk funny,” she said. “Thank you.”
“No,” I said. “Thank you. I owe you my life.”
Frances smiled, and then turned, tiptoeing back into her house.
I cast my eyes towards the river. The night was dark but I could see well enough. Soft rain fell on my head as I started to run for the banks of the river.
My feet flew from the house and its inhabitants. As I reached the edge of the forest, I turned, but the hovels were still and quiet in the darkness of night.
I entered the woods, the hunting grounds. I had to be fast and quiet to cover enough ground before they discovered I was gone in the morning. I needed a good head start.
I pushed into the forest and started to run upwards, upwards… for home.
Chapter Thirty
Into the Woods
At first, I tried to keep pace by the side of the river, knowing if I could follow its path faithfully, I could find home. But after only a few moments, I looked back to see a path, clear and true, behind me. In the light of the moon, even through the falling rain, I could see patches where my scrambling hands had disturbed soft moss and lichen on the rocks of the river. My feet had left impressions in the soft mud. I had laid a trail for those who would hunt me come daylight. If I continued this way, they would find me easily.
I hissed from between gritted teeth, frustrated. I could not leave them such heavy, obvious clues to use. I had to enter the woods, and despite the darkness, find a way to move without leaving a trail.
A thought came to me. Both sides of the river were dangerous. The side I was on now was the hunting grounds, the other led to the valley of the spiders. Each had its dangers… but what if I were to cross the river, but stick close to the woods? Perhaps the flesh-eaters would not dare follow me into the realm of the spiders, and, a little further up the river, I could cross again and re-enter the hunting grounds? It seemed a good idea to me, but first, I would make them think I was still on their side of the forest.
I scampered up river, and, with my bare foot, slid moss from a rock at the edge of a shallow pool, making an almost perfect foot mark. I ran to the woods, pushing a hand against a tree, bruising the lichen away. With any luck, they would think I had entered the forest on this side, and waste time looking for my trail on the wrong side of the river.
Carefully, in the dim light, I moved backwards, keeping my feet on solid, rather than wet, ground. My feet left no impressions. Taking a deep breath, I waded into the river. It was cold and sharp, fast-flowing and bulging with water, but it was gentler here than it had been at the village. My feet slipping on smooth stones, I wandered carefully across, emerging on the other side and carefully pulling myself out, washing water down the muddy bank to conceal my handprints.
I pushed into the forest.
I stopped at its edge, willing my eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. Perhaps for once, years spent in the blackness of the Factory would prove to be advantageous. I could feel my pupils stretching, widening as they took in every brief sliver of light that pervaded the dense forest. As my eyes adjusted, I found I could see fairly well. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least if I could see a little, I would not leave so obvious a trail.
I dropped down into the roots of the trees. The forest moved and creaked. Splinters of light from the pale moon and twinkling stars pierced the forest. Small droplets of water fell from the canopy and leaves rustled. I moved a few paces, taking care to step around broken wood. Small creatures, not a threat to me, scuttled away, racing on tiny legs to get clear of my feet. I could hear the river when I stopped; that sound would be my guide to find my way home. It would keep my path straight so I wouldn’t get turned around in the dark and end up walking back towards the town.
Onwards through the darkness I walked, trying to move fast but also with care. If I simply crashed through the forest, I would leave a trail as wide as the river, and on top of that, there were other things in these woods that would hunt me. It would not do to escape the flesh-eaters, only to run into the maw of a spider.
If I Reached, I could see what’s ahead, I thought. But I couldn’t Reach and move at the same time, so there was no way of finding what lay ahead, and no time to stop to find out. I took hold of a stiff branch, heavy enough to use as some sort of weapon. I wished I had had my pouch when I had fallen into the water. It had carried sharp stones and a knife, and I could have made myself a spear. But, I thought, the flesh-eaters would have taken it, in any case. A club would do, until I found a dead branch or sapling I could break and make a spear with.
My reassuring club in hand, I started to move swiftly, carefully, through the forest. I walked for hours; my body alive to every small noise, a feeling of total awareness and fear of every tiny movement within the vegetation pulsing through my blood. More times than I could count, I stopped and crouched, frozen by a noise. Sweaty palms, slippery with fear, gripped my club. And every time I stopped, I had to pull my courage in, pull myself up, and start moving again.
After some hours, my throat was so dry that I felt as though I could no longer draw breath. I stopped to drink at a puddle between the curve of two tree roots. A tiny lizard watched me, his green head cocked, as though wondering what I was up to. The water was bitter and muddy, but it washed down my throat like the smoothest nectar. I was growing weary. My fear of the forest was giving way to the exhaustion of my body, but I feared to stop. Where could I conceal myself to rest? They would find me if I stopped, but if I pushed on, I would surely collapse. I needed to find somewhere safe to rest.
As I was thinking on this, I walked into a small clearing. Trees grew in it, but they were sparser than in the dense wood. I looked up. Dawn was still a few hours away, but the dark black of night was turning cobalt blue.
In the muted light, I saw buildings in the clearing. Not like the round houses of the village, nor like the broken shacks of the flesh-eaters. These were outlandish constructions. Made of rusted metal and clear panels, they reached into the skies. They were broken, half-buried in the ground, trees and roots growing within and through them. Their huge sides were smashed and the breeze whistled through them, making an uncanny sound, like a moaning voice, in pain.
Gripping my club, I walked closer, curiosity overtaking fear. I put a hand to a gritty, clear wall and it promptly sliced my finger open. I pulled my hand back, seeing blood. The clear walls were sharp.
Binding my finger with a scrap of my torn shirt, I found an opening large enough to fit through, and stepped inside. The forest had claimed these dwellings, but I was sure, somehow, they had once been the domain of man.
Plants grew within the building and moss covered the wet floor. Spindly, abandoned webs fluttered from the roof. That sight made me nervous, but the webs were small, made by creatures not large enough to trap me. The large room I had walked into had mounds here and there, covered in plants and lichen. Dripping water fell from a metal ceiling. Pillars stood, moaning in the breeze, holding the roof in place.
To one side of the room was a series of metal platforms leading up to another level. I went to step on to it and heard it groan. I paused, but the platform held under my feet and slowly I walked up it, then up another level and another, until I came to the top, a roof of bare bones of rusty iron, rimmed by a fence. I picked my way carefully across the metal bars, reaching the fence, and looked out upon the world into which I was born.
The night had become dark blue as dawn approached, distant, on the horizon, but the stars still shone like fire, flanked by a half-moon, hanging in the skies. Everything was in shadows of grey and blue, a shifting, ethereal vision.
I could see the town. Glowing amber lights were being born in some of the houses, casting yellow light onto their streets. Seeing it, so distant and small, I knew I had come far in the night. I breathed a little sigh of relief. The guiding river had served me well.
I turned in the other direction, looking up the incline, towards home. The river stretched endlessly, a mass of black and tumbling white catching the pale light of the moon. I could not see the top where the village was. As I looked, thinking about my path, my shoulders, back and legs started protesting. My eyes were gritty. All I wanted to do was lie down, sleep, and perhaps never wake again.
I had a long way to go, and I couldn’t make it there without resting. I would not rest for long periods. I could make better progress than the flesh-eaters in the night, I was sure. My night-vision, honed by years residing in darkness, was surely better than theirs, but I didn’t know how fast or far they could travel in daylight.
My eyes were drawn back to the moonlit world. The forest seemed to stretch forever. Here and there, a moth would float from the canopy, fluttering into the air, only to drop again into shade. Behind me, away from the river, were more buildings like this one, half-buried in the earth, cut through by trees and plants. The wind drifted, wailing gently as it fluttered between buildings. Far away down the valley, I saw a spider creeping across the ground. I froze, but seeing its careful haste to get back to the darkness of the forest, I was reassured. The spiders did not like the open ground of the valley.
It was an uneasy landscape; vast swathes of dormant, destroyed dwellings, running down a long, steep gully. It was not somewhere I wanted to go. The valley of broken buildings made me shiver as though Leaf’s story had come to life and I had seen the shadow of Death. I turned my eyes away and peered at the forest. Through the dim light, I could see larger webs than those I had seen before, and I caught brief flashes of colour, muted by darkness, as bugs and lizards raced through the undergrowth. At the edge, close to the town, I could see a shimmering blue-green expanse. I thought it must be vast fields of flax, too far away for me to see the flowers.
If I looked the other way, I could see the planes where beans grew and the Farmers tended them, at the top of the ridge, near to where my village must be. The bean plants were gone, and all I could see was muddy brown earth, but Bracken had told me that in the wet season the beans went back to the earth, to be reborn with the coming of the sun. The Farmers would return too, but during the wet season, the aphids flew away and Farmers sealed themselves up in the ground, waiting out the hard season of rain in slumber.
If only we could do the same, I thought, and smiled. I would have a lot to talk about with Mother when this wet season retreated.
I moved back to the platforms and walked down into the structure. This would be as good a place as any to rest for a while. It would, however, be nice to find somewhere not entirely sodden with moisture, I thought. I walked into one of the floors at random, not wishing to take the ground floor in case of wandering spiders. I walked to one of the clear walls, and sat down against a moss-covered mound. As my back met the mound, I was surprised to find it was hard. I had been expecting it to be spongy, but it was solid.
I scraped moss from a section of the mound, only to jump back as a face stared out at me. But as I peered, I realized the startled face was my own, reflected as though I were looking into water. One side of my face was dark, bruised and bloody, my lip was torn and there was dried blood plugging my nose. My eyes looked as hollow as my cheeks. Not in great shape, I thought. But at least I had somehow avoided breaking bones during my second trip down the river.
I pulled back the moss and looked on a strange contraption; a reflective screen surrounded by an off-white cover. Under it was a board with little black knobs each holding a mark. I pushed one of the knobs down and it clacked, stiff under my finger.
Plastic, I thought. It was like the scraps people brought back to the village which we made into tools. The ancients must have thought a great deal of plastic, I thought. We found a lot of it. It was all that appeared to have survived from their world. Seeing as it was their only legacy, they must have wanted it remembered. It must have been precious.
I stared at it for a while, but couldn’t think of any use I could put it to. As I moved to a more comfortable position, I caught sight of a little glimmer of gold. I pulled a round thing from its bed of mud and moss and wiped it clean.
It was a coin, like the ones Leaf had thrown to us when she told her story of Death. I shivered, looking at the face of a woman embossed on the surface. There were worn markings around the edge, but I didn’t know what they meant.
The coin glimmered softly in the growing light. I had no use for it, and I certainly didn’t want Death to find me because of it. I put it back, and re-covered the mystifying implements of the old ones with moss and mud.
I settled my back against the wall and brought my club up to my chest. I closed my eyes and in exhaustion, fell fast asleep in an instant.
Chapter Thirty-One
Hunted
I don’t know how long I slept, but when I woke, the light in the skies told me it was long past dawn. My stomach ached with hunger, and my tongue was dry with thirst. Through falling rain, I could see the sun starting to crest over the skies. I cursed myself. I had slept longer than I had intended to.
I walked from the room and meant to simply walk down the stairs, resuming my path along the river, but something urged me to look out from the roof.
As I tiptoed carefully over the skeletal bones of the metal rooftop, I froze as I heard a shout from below; distant, yet close enough to make my heart falter. I crept to the edge of the platform and looked onto the woods below.
I could not see them, the forest was too dense, but I could hear them. I had to see what was in the woods. The only way was to Reach, to risk taking a moment to see if the noises were people in pursuit of me.
I tried to relax. It wasn’t easy, but I felt myself drift from my body, cascading over the top of the building, flying on the wind. My mind raced to the source of the noise.
I saw them, not far from my current position; a party of men carrying long shining blades and armed with long sticks, each with a metal barb at the end. Some carried strange, curved lengths of wood on their back, strung with string. Others had short daggers and swords of metal tucked into their waistbands. Half of them, perhaps ten men, were scanning one side of the river, some on their knees, examining rock and earth. The other half were searching the edge of the woods which led to the valley of the spiders.
They had found my trail.
“It went to ground,” one called from within the forest. “But it won’t be easy to follow.”
I looked around. A man stood apart from the others. His tall body was well-muscled, sinewy, but strong; hard with lithe, toned muscle. Unlike the others, he didn’t look as though he had ever been short of food. His chest was half-bare; the dirty shirt he wore hung open at the neck. His bare feet gripped the wet rocks with ease. His face was covered by a short black beard and a deep, angry scar lined his cheek. His eyes were bright blue, as sparkling and clear as the water at his feet. He was chewing a strip of dried meat, drinking water from a coarse clay cup. He looked entirely at ease, taking his breakfast by the water’s edge.
His eyes narrowed. “A lively little beast you found here, Peter,” the man said to someone, his jaws chewing rhythmically. My heart fluttered nervously as I saw my erstwhile captor, Peter, beside the man.
Peter nodded. His eyes were wild. “We can find it, though?” he asked, his voice harsh with desperation. I felt almost sorry for him.
“We’ll find it,” said the man, taking a long drink of water and wiping his greasy mouth with the back of his hand. “Cows are stupid, Peter. They always keep doing the same thing. They don’t rationalise, they just run. We’ll find it.”
Peter nodded. “It means a lot to my family, Luke,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
“As it will to the rest of us when we find it,” said Luke, tucking his cup into a small cloth backpack and washing his hands in the water. “Come then. Let’s not wait for the grass to grow. You men stay at the water’s edge as we take the woods. Between us it will not escape. Clearly it wants to follow the water. If you see it, kill it.”
I watched them as they started out, their pace frightening. I could inhabit one mind at a time, but not this throng.
