Chapter 78: Day 77

Day 77,

Island just pivoted again.  I’m guessing this is going to hold to the pattern of docking again tomorrow.  At the easternmost point of the circuit I suspect.

 

Spent the day trying to board up the broken windows in the mansion.  This turned out to be quite the project seeing as while we had the tools for it, none of us really knew how to… well, use them.  Okay, sure, hammering in nails and cutting things with a saw are conceptually straightforward, but actually doing those things well and without hurting oneself is a matter of experience that we were all lacking in.  (Or maybe I’m just making excuses for being bad at it and shy around objects that might get my fingers cut off or smashed.)

And then there was the matter of finding the material for it.  Still wary of annoying any sort of nature spirits that may or may not have taken up residence but heretofore remained unseen, our first thought was to salvage what we could from the remains of the chicken coop.  This turned out to not be much as most of it was thoroughly rotted.  Enough for a couple of windows, but there were still several left over.

I wound up asking if angering spirits is such a concern with cutting trees down, how does the Village get its wood?  Lin and Cass explained that what logging the Village does is always from the same area and, presumably, those uncounted years of tradition have gotten that designated as an acceptable place to harvest from.  Also, the villagers make a point of either coppicing or replanting what’s been chopped down and don’t go through much to begin with since the Village almost never expands.  So, rarely any resource-intensive new construction, just repairs.

I suppose that goes a way towards explaining why the finishing of a new boat a couple months back was such a big event.

In the end we picked out the smallest tree at the edge of the clearing around the mansion that would suffice, said a lot of thanks and apologies to a territorial spirit that may or may not exist (but better safe than sorry), and cut it down.  I’d rather not relive the ensuing debate over how best to go about converting a fallen tree into boards quite so soon, so I’ll spare the details of that verbal kerfuffle.  Suffice to say, we eventually got something over all the broken windows, even if it was ugly, uneven, and with more gaps for rainwater than we would have liked.  It should keep out the chickens at least.  I’ll confess though, I feel a little bad about depriving them of that shelter with the rainy season coming.

 

Not long after I finished that last entry Maiko asked us if we still wanted to hear one of the stories her mother told her.  We did, she told it, and I’ll try to transcribe a version of it here.  Notably, all the animal names in the story were things none of the rest of us had heard of, so here I’ll be referring to them by the familiar analogs she compared them to by way of explanation.

In another world, there is a great city atop a mountain.  And before there was a city, there was a town.  And before there was a town, there was a village.  Being so high up it was always cold, as the people there liked it.  So cold that rain fell not as drops but as tiny white flakes that piled up instead of flowing away.  “Snow,” Maiko’s mother called it.  (Here, Maiko made an aside that her mother would try to explain the cold to her by comparing it to diving deep into a spring to where the water is freshest and the sun’s light no longer warms, but after what we experienced two days ago with the island’s altitude that may be the more apt comparison.)

The seasons in this place were not “wet” and “dry” but “warmer,” “cold,” and “deadly cold.”  One year was even colder than usual and to help better feed the village, three hunters were sent to the hollow below the mountain.  The Mighty Hunter, with horns hard and broad, who was the strongest in the village.  The Skillful Hunter, with horns wicked sharp, who lived and breathed for the chasing of prey.  And the Old Hunter, with horns chipped and broken, who had lived through lean times before.

As they prepared to leave, the Mighty Hunter proclaimed that he would take only his trusty spear, for with his strength behind its bite he would fell the largest and greatest of beasts to bring back.  In response, the Skillful Hunter boasted that he would take only a knife, for it was a useful tool and he would need little more than his hands and teeth to bring down any prey he wished.  As all those that had gathered then looked to see if he would match their pride, Old Hunter merely said that he would bring his granddaughter, for he was old and would need help carrying his catch back.

And so the three of them – the four of them really, but no one counted the Old Hunter’s granddaughter – climbed down into the hollow, going from black and white to green and brown.  It was far warmer down there, but still far cooler than these islands we know, and muddy and humid as a wet season year round from when the mountain snow turned into proper water during the warm season, flowed down, and became trapped with nowhere to go but to slowly seep into the earth.

At the foot of the mountain, where the ground was still solid, they made a camp, from where they would venture each day and return to each night.  And every night the Skillful Hunter would mock the Mighty Hunter for not having caught anything yet.  And the Mighty Hunter would describe the signs showing he was one step closer to tracking down a great dragon whose meat would feed them all and whose scales and bones would make homes and tools.  And who was the so-called Skillful Hunter to criticize when all his kills were mangled and chewed on as if he expected the villagers to eat his leftovers?  They had plenty of time, the Skillful Hunter claimed, and once he’d had his fun and fill he’d catch enough for everyone in a day.

But if the two of them were in agreement on one thing, it was ridiculing the Old Hunter.  While they looked to dragons, and boars, and deer, he added chickens and lizards and berries to a pile that never seemed to get any bigger.  And while they had brought useful things, his granddaughter did nothing but sleep all day.  To all of this, the Old Hunter said nothing.

After many days, the Skillful Hunter said that he had found the lair of the dragon the Mighty Hunter had been tracking, and mockingly offered to help him find it if only he acknowledged the Skillful Hunter as the better hunter.  When the Mighty Hunter refused, the Skillful Hunter disappeared laughing into the swamp, saying that he’d better hurry then if he wanted to claim his prize.

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Afraid that the Skillful Hunter might slay the dragon first and put all his work to waste, the Mighty Hunter turned to the Old Hunter he had scorned for so many nights and asked how he might beat his rival to his prey.  Speaking for the first time since leaving the village, the Old Hunter told him that if he followed the Skillful Hunter, he would find a true beast.

Heartened by such a simple solution, the Mighty Hunter sprinted from the camp on the trail of the Skillful Hunter, heedless of the fast-setting sun.

In the dark, the Mighty Hunter lost the Skillful Hunter’s trail, but soon after caught wind of the acrid stench of dragon.  The stench came from a cave formed of felled trees, the bark at the entrance worn away by the scraping of scales.

The Mighty Hunter entered the cave, spear aloft and ready to strike down his quarry who slept in the moonlight beneath the cave’s upper opening.  But, strength does not bring silence, and the dragon awoke and lashed out at the intruder.  The spear did not strike true.  The creature was gouged, not pierced.

And so, for minutes that felt like hours, hunter and dragon fought.  Wrestling one another between moonlight and darkness, poison spraying across walls, horns butting into throat, claws on skin, spear on scales.  At last, the Mighty Hunter let out a great yell, proof that he still drew breath while his prey did not.

As the last of that yell’s echoes faded from the walls of that wooden cave, the Skillful Hunter stepped from the shadows and joined the Mighty Hunter in the shaft of moonlight.  His sharp horns glinting in the light, the Skillful Hunter congratulated the Mighty Hunter on his kill and admitted he had been a fool.  A fool for thinking the dragon to be the greatest prey in the hollow.  For if the Mighty Hunter could best the dragon alone, then surely he would make a more challenging hunt.

The Mighty Hunter laughed at this jest.  The Skillful Hunter smiled but did not laugh with him.  Their eyes met, and the Mighty Hunter saw a beastly hunger in his fellow hunter.  

The Beastly Hunter offered the Mighty Hunter a head start, to make up for being tired after fighting the dragon.  The Mighty Hunter charged his new foe instead.  But strength without skill avails one little against aught other than animals.  The spear met only air and mud and wood.  The knife met leg and chest and hand.  Small cuts.  Cuts that did not kill.  Cuts slowed.  Cuts that marked.  Cuts that played.

Abandoning his spear, the Fearful Hunter fled the cave, the laughs of the Beastly Hunter descending into howls.  Through the dark of night he scrambled, having forgotten the way to the camp in his fear.  At any moment he stopped to catch his breath or attempt to hide, he would feel another cut from the dark, or a foot to the back of his knee, or a hand on a horn guiding his face to a tree.  And when he turned to strike back, he’d see nothing but the moonlit glint of horn or eye or teeth and hear nothing but that howling laugh.

At last, he saw that wonderful glow of the campfire through the trees.  Nearly there, the Fearful Hunter heard a whistle in the air and fell, the knife now stuck deep in his leg.  Those last lengths he crawled on his belly to the light’s edge, calling out to the Old Hunter for aid.

Looking up from his fire to the fallen one, the Old Hunter called to the Beastly Hunter, congratulating him on finally knowing what it meant to truly embrace the hunt.  The Beastly Hunter stepped into the light and dragged the Fearful Hunter, too weak to move on his own, the rest of the way to the fire.

The Old Hunter said it’d been a generation since he’d last seen another who reveled in the chase as he had, and offered the Beastly Hunter a drink, brewed from the berries he’d been gathering as celebration before their feast.  With a howling laugh, the Beastly Hunter accepted, apologizing for insulting and underestimating his elder before.

And with that drink, the Beastly Hunter’s eyes closed, never to wake again.

Just before dawn, the granddaughter returned from her nightly trip of carrying the Wily Hunter’s daily catch up the mountain to the village.  This time she brought back bandages that her grandfather used to bind the Humbled Hunter’s wounds.

During the day as she rested, the Wily Hunter took the Humbled Hunter back to the dragon’s lair and the two of them brought the prize back to the camp together.  

When the three of them returned to the village, dragon in tow, the Humbled Hunter was applauded, for it truly was an impressive feat, even if it did feed fewer villagers than the Wily Hunter’s daily meals delivered by the Little Hunter.

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