A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 20

He sank to a squat and thought. He had a strong hope that the strange woman would live. They could do as they wished, he thought. He had no need or want of either of them, he told himself, and it was better for them that he was gone. If he was with them, whatever misfortune it was which dogged his footsteps would only find them as well if it hadn't already, and he'd had enough of it all now.

Seeing that leather ring had been like a lance through his heart. Touching it had taken the last of the wind from his soul.

He looked at his right hand, so much larger and more cruel–looking in this natural form. The insides surfaces of his fingers tingled, as did the meaty part of his upper palm only because he'd curled his hand around that leather before he'd known what it was.

He fought back the urge to weep. He wondered why it was that he hadn't killed the witch. Surely she deserved that for how she must have gotten the article.

He wanted no one, he told himself.

He wanted this, to be alone now. He didn't think that his thoughts were worth sharing with anyone. He was hungry, but he didn't want to hunt. Billy didn't want anything at all but one thing, and he was too far away from it for it to even be a thought to him yet. But it would come to him. He knew that it would, and he didn't mind.

A carbine like the CAR-15 was short to begin with. With his longer arms when he was like this, it would be no problem when he was ready.

He didn't move for hours until it had gone full dark around him. Then he walked back inside and tossed a little wood onto the fire before he wrapped a deerskin hide around himself and closed his unlucky eyes. Sleep was a long time in coming to him.

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He started when he awoke, feeling as though he'd been pulled from his sleep by a forceful blow. He looked around himself and it made no sense. He wasn't lying in the dark in an old adobe ruin.

He wasn't even lying down.

He was walking outside on a cold and blustery day. There was a sense of familiarity to the area, but there were important things missing, signposts that he would know if they were there. But they weren't so this made no sense to him. He walked over the rim of a huge and familiar valley but – he didn't know it, and yet he knew that he should know it well.

He looked across it and saw a small range of distant mountains which were all wrong. He realized that he knew them, but from where he stood, he shouldn't be able to see them at all. From here, his view of them should be blocked ... by a ... mountain.

Which wasn't there.

He looked down, and saw that the floor of the valley wasn't as deep as it should have been. This had always been a bowl-shaped valley. What he was looking at was a platter with a lot of snow-covered lumps on it. He stared, but he couldn't see the sort of detail that he wanted to see. The middle was fogged on a clear sunny winter day by a snow-squall. It hung in just the perfect place to obscure his sight.

He knew what he was missing. From here, he should be feeling the warmth and familiarity of the Quarn where he'd been spawned. But he didn't feel that. It wasn't there. He saw no others, living the lives of their kind in the collection of simple buildings clustered together. No young ones chasing each other or tussling in the snow. No buildings, nothing.

All that he felt was death there.

He walked on toward the low cloud which dumped the furious snow out of its belly. As he got closer and the edges of the squall began to whip around him, he saw the glitter of the flakes as they shone in reflected sunlight where it was still sunny behind him. And then the glitter was gone, replaced with a blizzard which poured its guts out on everything below it.

As he walked, he saw a small shape there up ahead, a Ch'arnn female. She wasn't wandering as he was. She was walking slowly toward him and he knew the minute details of her way of moving. As they approached each other, he saw the markings of his clan with certainty on her body – until he was close enough to make out her face through the snow. Her body bore the tribal camouflage which marked her as a Ch'arnn, but her face showed the markings that she'd been born with. She'd been born a Rohn. He stopped then as she came nearer and he felt his heart tearing open.

He was looking at the beauty of his mother.

She didn't stop. She only smiled as she began to weep in a mixture of joy and profound sadness. She walked until they were close enough to converse as two members of the same family. She stood against him – as was their custom in the cold world where they lived. Her arms slid under his and she hugged herself to him tightly as his arms and his wings encircled the one who had given him life. She pressed her head against his chest, over his heart and she began to speak – and she didn't call him Billy.

He recognized his true name.

He listened as his tears began again. When she'd told him everything, she pulled her head back and looked at his face.

"A true Ch'arnn king you look to be now," she smiled, "You have grown larger than even Laish, as you were destined to. But this is not the place for you any longer."

He drank in the features of that beautiful face, but after a moment, he noticed something. "Your band is, ... gone."

She nodded, "Yes. It is held by another now. Beyllix, my beyllix holds it."

He didn't understand.

"You were far from me," she said, "and we thought you dead."

"Hank," he began, trying to find the words to tell her, but she already knew.

"We have seen Laish. He is with us often. He did as the older must always do for the one. That is the purpose of the protector. It tears open the heart of the mother, but it must be so for the people."

He sighed, his breath shuddering in his chest, "I see no people, Mother. There is nothing here but death."

"Here, no," she said, "but there are where you live, not even a handful yet, but it is where you must be. Make your own Quarn there," she said, "open it along with your heart, and the people will be again."

He didn't know what she was talking about, but she smiled as she sniffled, "I have been without you for so long, but I saw one chance and the beyllix was willing. I am with you."

"Where is the Quarn of the clan?" he asked her.

"Under the mountain," she said simply.

He looked up, seeing nothing through the whipping wind and snow. "I saw no mountain. Our mountain is gone."

"It lies on the Quarn," she said, "and we stand on it.

I lie beneath it all."

Her tears began again and after a moment, she reached up to hold his face, and he lowered his head for her soft mother's kisses.

A minute later and he was alone with no one inside the protection of his muscled arms and his strong wings. The wind began to scream and moan, and the snow on the ground looked like a fast moving mist as it blew past his legs. The squall gave up then and was blown away.

He was standing alone looking at the shattered chunks and pieces of his clan's sacred mountain. There was nothing else to be seen, and he understood what his mother had said to him.

In the cold gray light of the early Colorado morning, a pack of wolves moved through the valley, seeking sign of something to eat. Several of them looked to the sandstone ledge, feeling the presence of someone there. But none turned to approach. None wished to investigate the being which squatted there motionless as it sat with its long arms around its knees, and its mane covering the wings which wrapped it.

The being's short snout rested on one forearm and looked out without seeing, without blinking. It would have been difficult to tell if it lived, since its breaths were so slow and shallow, the barest hint of the warm breath from within escaping though the pair of nostrils. If one was close enough to notice and knew what to look for, they'd see no light reflected from the irises there.

All that might be seen were the two slow streams of its tears.