Path of the Crushed Heart: Book Four of the Serpent Catch Series (20 page)

She sat on the swaying hill, and felt more than saw the Land of Shapes. She could sense Tull, in the distance, drawing away.

She sent a single tendril from the lightning of her soul out to him, grasped a single tendril of his lightning and drew it to her.

“Now you shall Spirit Walk
my
life,” she whispered, and she forced the lightning of his soul to dance across the small black pit at her core.

Tull was not a full-blooded Pwi. He could not feel as deeply as she could. He could never love as completely as Fava did. He could not understand how alone she would be without him. He could not understand how much she needed him. There is more to life than he knew.

She considered her wedding day, the lust she had felt in bed with him, the love that had carried her across a continent into the land of Slave Lords, and her spirit whispered to him, “This was meant to be only the beginning of my love for you.…”

***

Chapter 36: Looking to Heaven

The following summer, Mahkawn felt nervous taking his trip down to Smilodon Bay alone. The serpents had become thick in the sea, and some in the north were larger than serpents of the past and did not willingly let men sail the oceans.

Pirazha had warned him against traveling by ship. The white snakes had died off and the blood eaters had nearly all been disposed of, so she wanted him to go by land. She thought it was the safer course. But Mahkawn argued for a trip by water.

“I’m not so afraid of the serpents,” Mahkawn said. “I am more afraid that the people in Smilodon Bay will not accept me.”

Pirazha had smiled and clasped her arms around Mahkawn’s thick neck. “We are all Pwi, are we not? You are family. Of course they will accept you!”

Mahkawn nodded, but in his heart he did not feel right.

He had ordered the deaths of so many people in Smilodon Bay, and he could not imagine that the townsfolk would forgive him.

For others, some things seemed so easy: They could touch the peace at the center of themselves and cradle there. Yet it was not so for Mahkawn. Even having learned the Path of the Crushed Heart, he could not always reach that destination.

Like many of the former Blade Kin, he now thought of himself as a Pwi, but he did not feel he deserved to be called that by others.

Still, he sailed his small boat down to Smilodon Bay, and as he turned inland at Widow’s Rock, in the screams of gulls and the crashing waves of the breakers Mahkawn could still hear the tumult of voices as they had sounded that night, after a whole world took its Spirit Walk and then tried to cope with the pain and rage and passion and peace that had all been coiled in one man.

Mahkawn sailed up the fjord through an avenue of redwoods that stood tall on each side of the water and he felt small and insignificant among them.

When he neared town, it seemed minuscule in comparison to Bashevgo. In the past year some people had built a few rough houses. Others lived in tents. The large dock was intact, and a cooking fire rose from the inn that was still under construction on the side of the hill.

When his boat sailed into the harbor, dozens of people came down to meet him. The thin Neanderthal Vo-olai came with her husband Anorath and her three children. Chaa and Zhopila brought their daughters. The innkeeper Theron Scandal came down himself and tried to hawk a dinner and a night’s lodging.

Mahkawn thanked him, willing to pay well.

Last of all, Phylomon the Starfarer came down from the human part of town, pale and seemingly young, with a long full beard and cascading hair. He walked with Darrissea, whose belly had swollen with child.

Mahkawn had not seen them in months—not since they had returned to Bashevgo after leveling the island of the Creators. Even then, Mahkawn had not met them formally, for he had just been one spectator in the cheering throng.

It was an odd, uncomfortable meeting. They all knew each other through Tull’s eyes, all recalled what they had been before.

In some ways Mahkawn believed he had not changed enough, and he felt that he deserved others’ scorn. Yet they treated him as a brother, hugging him, welcoming him, but it was Chaa who said, “You did not come to see us, did you?”

Mahkawn looked away to the hillside where Tull’s lonely house stood, apart from all others. Smoke rose from its chimney.

“No, I came to make what peace I could,” he said. He got back into the boat and pulled out two bundles.

They held some clothes, some tools, an old bottle of vanilla-water perfume, a brass globe, a sword made of Benbow glass—most of the things that Mahkawn had taken from that house more than a year before.

“Go on up,” Chaa said. “You will be welcome.”

Mahkawn carried the bundle up to the house.

He thought,
I imagined when I took Tull captive that someday I might give him back his life, but now I will never get free from my debt to him.

He carried the gifts up the old dirt road, alongside plots covered with weeds and ashes where houses had once been. Yet most of the gardens along the way had already been planted early in the spring. The corn and sunflowers were surprisingly tall and thriving.

Mahkawn called at the door, in the manner of the Pwi, “I am here. Is anyone in?”

Fava answered the door, and her eyes shone to see him as if he were a lost brother.

“Come, friend, come!” She spoke in Pwi, and Mahkawn blushed to see her. He recalled what it had been like with her as Tull, sleeping between her legs, the hot passion of nights together, and he felt as if he were a voyeur.

He could not help but look upon her and think of her as a sweet, capable, enchanting woman, a woman he would want to spend his life with. She was modestly dressed in buckskins and a green tunic.

“I brought you a few things,” Mahkawn said.

Fava glanced at the bundles and grew misty-eyed. “Come in,” She urged, and Mahkawn entered, feeling clumsy and out of place.

“Scandal invited me to stay at the inn tonight,” Mahkawn said. “I look—”

He spotted a baby on the floor in the corner, a boy with red hair and fierce eyes. The child was bouncing on its stomach. “Yours and Tull’s?”

“Yes …” Fava said.

Mahkawn tried to fill the silence. “I look forward to dinner at Scandal’s. The kwea is good there. I suppose I should get over there soon.”

“Aren’t you going to wait for Tull?” Fava asked. “He took Wayan hunting. They should be back soon.”

“I … I would like to speak to him,” Mahkawn answered. “If he is well.…”

“Please. You must stay, then. He’s quite well.”

Mahkawn sat and smiled nervously, and they chatted casually about the weather and the crops. Long after nightfall, Tull brought Wayan home. They had bagged only a pair of large grouse for their day of hunting.

Tull seemed genuinely pleased to see Mahkawn.

The symbiote that Chaa had taken from the worm had grown and now it covered Tull completely. He stood hairless and blue, not even a thin eyebrow. He was the pale blue of a robin’s egg, as Phylomon had once been.

This is the man I hoped to civilize,
Mahkawn thought.
And now he has civilized me.

Tull treated him cordially, even kindly. After an hour talking of inconsequential things, Tull said, “I thank you for bringing our things yet … Why are you really here?”

Mahkawn hung his head in embarrassment. “I am getting married to an old friend. Zhofwa, the goddess of love, has blown her kisses on us, and I hoped that you would … stand as witness—where my father would have stood if he were still alive.”

For a long moment Tull did not speak, and Mahkawn worried. He suspected that Tull would not understand how important this was to him. He suspected that Tull would not know that even now it was hard for Mahkawn, a past Blade Kin, to give himself to a woman without some sense of embarrassment.

If Tull had never taught him better, Mahkawn would have died without ever telling Pirazha that he loved her.

“I would be proud to come to your wedding.” Tull said, his voice choked with emotion, and Fava leapt up and hugged Mahkawn in giddy excitement.

“Please,” Mahkawn said, “I would not make you come so far. I will bring the wedding here. And if you people don’t mind, my wife and children and I would like to stay and settle.”

Tull nodded, and smiled. “You will be welcome neighbors.”

They talked long into the night until both Wayan and the baby passed out asleep on the floor, and Thor rose in the autumn sky wearing its autumn colors of cinnamon and mauve.

Mahkawn climbed to his feet, preparing to leave, but found himself hesitant, and realized that he dawdled because he felt a deep sadness.

Something had changed. Something was lost.

Indeed, a whole way of life had been lost. The Slave Lords were gone, and the Blade Kin disbanded. The earthquakes of the previous spring had touched off dozens of volcanoes all along the White Mountains, and many buildings in Bashevgo and Greenstone had fallen.

It had taken most of the year for Mahkawn’s men to track down the last of the blood eaters out in the wilderness. But all in all, his people were coping. People could rebuild. Mahkawn looked at Fava, realized just how much they had lost.

“What will you two do, when Fava grows old?” he asked. He dared not add the words,
What will you do when she dies?

Fava shrugged shyly. “I do not begrudge Tull his symbiote. It is all that let him come back to me in the end. Without it …”

Tull wrapped his arm around Fava playfully. “I am not worried,” he said, and he flipped up Fava’s tunic exposing her belly. A swath of crimson flashed in the firelight.

Fava pushed his hand away. “A gift from a friend,” she said, obviously shy. Mahkawn felt only happiness for them, no jealousy.

He hugged them both, said his goodbyes.

Tull and Fava escorted Mahkawn to the door, and as they stepped out under the stars, they all raised their heads as one.

It is odd,
Mahkawn thought,
how much Tull’s mannerisms have become part of us all.
So often now Mahkawn found that even in crowds he would watch people do that, mimic Tull’s movements.

Yet they could not resist the impulse to look up into the night sky, at the endless stars and the empty paths where the red drones had once barred their way to the heavens.

Okanjara
, Mahkawn thought,
I am free!

***

About Path of the Crushed Heart

At the end of book one in this series, I told how I decided to write a fantasy with science fiction elements. It’s a tough task. So many science fiction readers want only “pure” science fiction, without supernatural trappings.

I understand their qualms. You see, when you mix science fiction and fantasy, you risk breaking a cardinal rule of “wonder” writing. You try to introduce too many wonders, so that the readers feel that the book lacks credibility.

So you walk a tight line, and depending upon the reader, they may feel that you’ve strayed too far toward the science fiction element, or too far toward the fantasy.

This series began as a meditation on some things. In the opening two books, I drew upon a number of things for my inspiration: my childhood love of dinosaurs and cavemen, my own abuse at the hands of my father along with the abuse that I witnessed of other children in our neighborhood, my dissatisfaction with the world we live in, the poetry of Theodore Roethke and myself.

I have to say that there was much more than that. Very often I look at brutality in the world, as shown by ruthless regimes, by terrorists, by dictators living in small countries around the world, and by the little thugs that reign even in just about every little town’s city council, and sometimes I feel overwhelmed.

In the second half of the series, I drew my inspiration from a number of artists, primarily from illustrations by the Russian painter Sergey Poyarkov. His works, which speak of the brutal bosses in the pre-1991 Soviet Union, echoed my own sentiments in a haunting way, and so I have to thank him for the inspiration that led to the Cage of Bones, and the Death’s Head Train, along with some images that loomed large in my mind but never made it to paper.

So this tale was a meditation on change. Can a person change? Can one person really change the world? Should we destroy our society and start over again?

The answer to all of these questions, I believe, is yes.

In a sense, this book was a meditation on the power of art—not only to affect an artist, but to infect the world through the artist.

In the end, I think that we become our best only as we allow ourselves to be open, to be touched deeply by others—whether through songs, or stories, or paintings. All art is merely an attempt at heightened communication, the desire to express the ineffable.

Sometimes, if we are lucky, we create art that can move others, too. And as we do, we become better people, and begin to build better societies.

I have a great deal of hope for the world. You’ve glimpsed a bit of the future I imagine—a world where people have heightened intelligence, endless lives, and greater chances for happiness.

That’s a shadow of the society that I hope someday comes, even if it arises long after I’m gone.

***

Glossary

Anee—
A mineral-poor moon 11,000 miles in diameter that circles a gas giant named
Thor
near a type I star 1950 lightyears from Earth. In the year 2681, the Alliance of Nations began terraforming Anee in order to create a terrestrial zoo—a place where genetic paleontologists could store specimens of animals recreated from the Jurassic, Miocene, and Pliocene Eras. Each of three continents stores representatives from one of the Eras.

Creators
—A race of highly intelligent beings, part machine and part biological organism, designed by genetic paleontologists to maintain the ecosystems of Anee. The Creators are living DNA synthesizers. To control animal populations, they frequently design and give birth to predators and parasites. The Creators are strictly programmed to perform their specific jobs. After the death of the Creator named Forester 1, the Creators designed
Dryads
to protect the forests.

Dire Wolves
—
Canis Dirus
—A heavy-bodied dark gray wolf common during the Pleistocene, short on cunning but long on tenacity and viciousness.

Dragons
—Warm-blooded flying carnivores that were created by the Starfarers to be an eco-barrier. Each continent has several varieties of dragon in various sizes—from the giant great-horned dragons to the tiny hawk dragon. Each dragon is born with a genetically transmitted memory that encourages it to destroy species that it recognizes as foreign to the environment.

Dryads
—A being made by the Creators to maintain forests in Pliocene areas after the Creator Forester 1 was killed in an earthquake. Dryads are humanoid females with long life spans and strange abilities. The abilities, size, and coloration of the Dryad depends upon the type of forest it was created to maintain.

Eco-barriers
—Certain animals have the ability to migrate across oceans. For example, many types of semi-aquatic carnivorous dinosaur could easily make such journeys, and the introduction of such animals into an area populated by Pleistocene sabertooths could be disastrous, since the sabertooths could not compete with the larger predators. The paleontologists who terraformed Anee recognized the danger such transoceanic migrations could cause. Therefore, they erected a series of “eco-barriers” to prevent migrations. These barriers consist of artificially engineered predators: primarily, the deep-ocean “sea serpent” to patrol the waterways; and various species of “dragon” to patrol the sky. Both the sea serpent and the dragon are ruthless predators without equal in nature.

Eridani
—An alien race that went to war with humans in the year 2902. Using small faster-than-light drone warships, the Eridani successfully stopped all extraplanetary travel between human settlements within a matter of four years.

Hukm
—
Homo-gigantis
. A race of large apelike humanoids with long brownish-red or white fur. The Hukm, one of several races of giant hominids once native to Earth, were originally restricted to a small region of Northeast Asia, and the species thrived only for a few thousand years. Fossil evidence indicates that the race probably died out about 396,000 BC. Extinction appeared to occur due to climactic changes between glacial periods, and may have come about as a result of inter-species warfare accompanied by starvation. When reintroduced into the wild on Anee, the Hukm showed themselves to be highly social vegetarians who quickly domesticated the woolly mammoths.

Kwea
—Emotional resonance. Often passionate feelings aroused by memories. Neanderthals have specific words that can refer to hundreds of different kinds of kwea, based upon the types and degrees of emotionality, but these are ignored in translation for simplicity’s sake.

For a Neanderthal, every object, every experience, every memory carries an emotional weight, a value of kwea. While some things, like the tale of Adjonai, are so universally known that nearly all Neanderthals feel a similar type of fear of him, in most cases the weight of kwea is based upon personal experience.

For example, a common knife may be considered sacred or of great value to one individual because of his associated kwea, while for another the same object would seem plain and unimportant.

Mastodon
—On Anee, any of eleven species of pachyderm that inhabit woodlands and grasslands in every climatic region.

Mastodon Men
—
Homo rex
. A race of carnivorous humanoids of low intelligence, averaging some 8.5 feet in height and weighing 500-800 pounds. Mastodon Man originally inhabited mountainous areas in Asia from 250,000-75,000 BC. On Earth, the Mastodon Man apparently did not compete well with smaller humanoids, but on the fecund world of Anee they quickly gained a strong foothold.

Neanderthal
—
Homo neanderthalensis
(see also
Pwi
,
Okanjara,
and
Thrall
). The Neanderthals are a distinct species, similar to modern humans in size and build, but differing from humans in their DNA by .285%. Neanderthals tend to be larger and stronger than humans, and have slightly shorter arms and a muscular build. The Neanderthal spine has less curvature, so Neanderthals stand straighter than humans do, and their large toe is curved inward, allowing them to run faster. The Neanderthal’s chest cavity is larger than that of a human, and their arms rotate at a greater angle. Their skulls are thicker, hips slightly wider.

Neanderthals have sandy yellow to red hair and green, blue, or yellow-brown eyes. They have heavy supraorbital ridges that give their eyes a deep-set appearance. Their teeth and palate tend to protrude more than that of a human, yet they completely lack a chin.

The hands of a Neanderthal differ in structure from that of a human. The hands of a Neanderthal are larger and stronger than those of a human, with large robust knuckles. The human thumb is tilted at a forty-five degree angle to the fingers so that tip of the thumb can touch the tip of each individual finger; however, a Neanderthal’s thumb is not tilted at an angle to the fingers, and the Neanderthal is therefore far less dexterous than a human.

Differences in the Neanderthal palate, larynx, and sinus cavities do not allow them to vocalize most long vowels or semivowels used by humans. Instead, the Neanderthals shorten long vowels and tend to speak through their noses.

The cerebral cortex of the Neanderthal brain is slightly larger than that of a modern human, and they are fully the intellectual equals of humans. However, the Neanderthal hypothalamus, the area of the brain responsible for processing emotions, is three times as large as that of a human. For this reason, Neanderthals tend to lead a very complex emotional life. Because of the way that the Neanderthal brain processes information, memories frequently carry very strong, emotionally-charged ties.

Because Neanderthals feel their emotions more powerfully than humans do, they feel a consuming need to express these emotions. Neanderthal dialects vary by region, but their languages have some similarities. Any noun or verb can be modified by various suffixes to express the Neanderthal’s feelings about an object or action. The order of the suffixes always goes:

noun or verb + emotional indicator + person + emotional degree indicator.

For example instead of saying “the sky is gray,” the Neanderthal might express his feelings about the subject:
szerzhoaFava ah femma
. This sentence literally reads “Sky-love-I-generously is gray,” and would be translated “The gray sky which I love completely.” The first word in the sentence,
szerzhoaFava
, is translated below:

Emotional

Noun Base + Indicator + Person + Degree Indicator

szer (sky) zho (love) a (I) Fava (completely)

The degree indicator is often a noun itself. For example, the word
Fava
means “pear tree.” On Anee, several varieties of wild pear bear fruit in late autumn. Neanderthal legends often embellish this, telling of heroes starving in the wilderness who are saved by pear trees that magically blossom and ripen in mid-winter when the tree “sees” the hero coming. Because of this reputation for generosity,
Fava
then becomes synonymous with
generous
. When used as an emotional indicator,
Fava
means “given with all the heart.”

Okanjara
—The Free Ones. (Literally, “I am free!”) Any Neanderthal who has escaped slavery after a long period of time is an Okanjara.

Phylomon
—The last living human who was not born on Anee. The last of the Starfarers. A man who, because he still benefits from the technology of the Starfarers, has survived for over one thousand years.

Pirate Lords
—When an interstellar war between mankind and the Eridani first stranded the genetic paleontologists on Anee, a political argument soon developed over how mankind should treat their creations—specifically the Neanderthals. Certain technicians believed that by conscripting Neanderthals for use as laborers, humans could be left free to build the plasma missiles they hoped could destroy the Eridani warships circling Anee. Others correctly believed the effort would be wasted. Those who favored enslaving the Neanderthal formed an independent colony upon the island of Bashevgo. After two centuries of building, the Lords finally attacked the Eridani drones. The Slave Lords and their colony were nearly decimated in a counterattack, yet the offspring of the Slave Lords of Bashevgo still survive both upon Bashevgo and in the nation of Craal, and the Slave Lords prey upon both the Neanderthal and their human cousins.

Pwi
—Neanderthals who have never been enslaved by the Pirate Lords call themselves
Pwi,
the family. By the time that the first humans were forced to move to Anee, the original colony of Neanderthals had covered most of the Eastern half of the continent they called “Homeland,” and Neanderthals numbered about two million. Pwi dialects and customs were diverging, and they were on the verge of splintering into several large tribes. But as the Neanderthals found themselves battling a common enemy, they regained a sense of common identity and called themselves only “family.”

Red drones
—Orbital warships piloted by artificial intelligences sent by the Eridani to patrol the skies above Anee. Their neutron cannons destroy any mechanical vessel or organic being that climbs over four kilometers into the air. Originally, four warship were stationed over Anee, but two were destroyed by the Pirate Lords.

Sabertooth lion
—
Smilodon fatalis
—a large tawny lion with very long, serrated canines. The sabertooth lions live in prides in grassy and low, wet areas. Because of poor eyesight and teeth that are not adapted for small prey, the sabertooth primarily hunts large herd animals. Some of its favorite victims are the bison, giant sloth, the giant beaver (a semiaquatic water rat weighing up to 500 pounds), the mastodon, the hippo-like toxodonts, and the giant capybara. On Earth, the sabertooth was such a successful predator, that when it overpopulated in 8000 BC, over-predation coupled with climatic instability caused the extinction of over a hundred other species. With its food base destroyed, the sabertooth soon became extinct.

Scimitar cat
—
homotherium
. A solitary but powerful lion with yellow and brown stripes. Because of its elongated front legs, it runs with a bouncing gait, much like a jackal. The scimitar cat inhabits mountainous areas and hunts large prey by pouncing from a tree or rock. A female scimitar cat will often kill a young mastodon weighing 600 pounds and then drag it two miles so she can feed her cubs.

Sea serpents
—Giant eel-like carnivores created by the Starfarers to keep animals from migrating across the ocean from one continent to another. Sea serpents can vary their color to conform to background, can grow to a length of 380 feet, and can attack prey in two ways: by swallowing the prey whole, or by strangulation. Thorn-like protrusions on the serpent’s armored scales tend to slice prey open when the serpent attacks by strangulation.

Young serpents are less than a meter in length when they hatch in the spring. They feed on fish for the first several months, and in their feeding frenzy drive great schools of fish up the rivers. Within six weeks the serpents grow to a length of sixteen feet and head for open waters and larger prey. At the end of their first year, serpents often measure over a hundred feet in length.

Slave Lords
—Humans who enslave Neanderthals and other humans. Shortly after the red drones forced the human Starfarers into exile on Anee, some of the paleontologists began enslaving Neanderthals for use as miners, field hands, and domestic servants. The human Starfarers believed that if they could concentrate on developing weaponry to fight the red drones, they could escape Anee within a few centuries. But when their efforts failed, most of the Starfarers were killed, and much of their technology died with them. The few degenerate descendants of these Starfarers set up the nation of Craal, based upon a slave economy, and became known as the Slave Lords.

Starfarers
—The genetic paleontologists and their crew who first began the work of terraforming Anee. By 2816, mankind had been engaged in genetically and mechanically upgrading himself for so long, that the Starfarers were, in a sense, no longer human. The Starfarers had hairless bodies of various colors, depending upon the shade of the symbiote they chose for their skin; had total recall of all they saw and heard; with mechanical aid could achieve virtual immortality; and the Starfarers had a genetically transmitted “dictionary” that gave all members of their race a knowledge of English and mathematics. When the Eridani destroyed the Starfarer’s space station above Anee, the Starfarers lost the technology that would allow them to pass their extended life-span on to their descendants, but some of their genetic upgrades remained.

Tantos
—A powerful Slave Lord who rules the island of Bashevgo.

Terrazin Dragontamer
—A Neanderthal psychic who used his powers to overthrow the island of Bashevgo.

Thrall
—Any Neanderthal or human who is held as a slave. Generally, it refers to anyone who has spent years in slavery. Over generations, the Thralls developed a moral code and a society far different from that of the Pwi. In general, the Pwi consider the Thralls to be untrustworthy and brutal. Many tales tell of Thralls who practice cannibalism or who have become so accustomed to slavery that they themselves engage in it. Thralls who eventually escape their captors call themselves
Okanjara
, the Free Ones.