Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Fiction
vr 3.00
2008-02-16
"Aguila" by Abraxas | 2005-03-02
Chapter One
Midnight – the skies were dull, lifeless. Hazy vapors obscured the ethereal stars and in that dying, fading light it was almost impossible to see the sharp downgrade of the tree-covered hillside. So it was by the quick and random footholds, the sudden turns, the unexpected slides and the churning, knotting at the pit of Jackalman’s stomach that revealed the slopes of the Zephyia, those ancient, smoky peaks that surrounded Castle Plundarr. Descending, succumbing – faster and faster – filled the canine’s spirit with an ominous doom, a threatening fear for it was that it seemed destruction lay waiting at every false turn: from the cantankerous, leaf-trodden ‘trail’, carved more by the forces of Nature than Mutant ingenuity to the gnarled, knotted roots, woven across the dirt like web-work and between them one mistake, one slip would be enough to send him tumbling down the whole slanted slope, breaking his neck.
A shock arrested his motion when he became aware of the unexpected, the sudden feel of the egg braced against his chest. It was disturbing, even disquieting – the onset of weight and dimension as if it grew out of nothing into his arms – and then, as one stun faded another alarmed: its fragility. He shuddered as the thought, the image, formed in his mind across oblivion and he squeezed the large, melon-shaped egg, kissed its smooth, milky crust. Recalling the ghastly fate of its twin, he promised it would not be destroyed, not by Slythe and not by his own, inbred foolishness. Now there was reason to live, escape and be free, for here there was one, last thing remaining, connecting him with Aguila.
Jackalman looked back: if he could have turned into a pillar of rock he would have. At the uppermost vista the mountain crest shimmered with the eerie, dreamy red aura of Castle Plundarr – the battlement awoken by a rabid Slythe determined to hunt him and destroy him for what he dared to do. Only the very tips of the towers could be discerned through the interplay of shadow and darkness – gray, foggy clouds prevailed causing that jagged, crown-like silhouette to waver like a mirage. Beneath it evolved the façade of trees that carpeted the steep landscape. River-like channels of rock and dirt carved amid the forestry snaked from the upper peaks to the lower portions of the hill where the wilderness thickened and the paths melted into obscurity – and it was then and there that a new fear materialized: the sight of Mutant guards crawling, clamoring through the trails as if ants, small and distant, with tiny, red lamps to guide them.
Out of breath but not out of determination, the Plunderian turned back to face the void ahead. If only there might be light at the end of the path but it was all dark. All dark. Again he tightened the hold of the egg wanting to force the fear away. All of his life he had been overcome by unwholesome paranoia, but now he had to act, he had to put it aside and act for it was not just himself he needed to save.
Fighting against every instinct in his being, he switched from the trails to the wilderness. The land thereabout was flatter and easier to tread through, although thoughts of tripping, falling did not waver. The tight, cramped panorama before him was the absolute black of space, almost like a wall of onyx silk perpetually ahead of him. He felt more than he saw the rocky soil and fallen leaves at his feet and the branches and tree bark, dry and brittle, at his shoulders.
What else lurked within? Often, in his dreams, in his earlier, unhunted days, he obsessed about those red-eyed demons that populated the night. Creatures that, unlike the doe-eyed denizens of the day, were not helpless against Mutant hordes. Creatures he himself battled hand-to-hand and now that he was in danger, what would they do? What might they do?
If there had been as much as a single star out in the sky its light would have been obliterated by the vast forestry that now enveloped him at the midpoint of his frantic journey. But all of the trees of Third Earth would not have been enough to blot his steps which way they went. If only he were faster, he cursed, envious of a certain Thundercat but now not even speed was enough. Now the only way to survive was through ingenuity. And if he could survive, there might be hope....
Suddenly the ground beneath his feet resumed its natural, steep downgrade and just as unexpectedly he struck a patch of mud. He slipped and skidded – someway, somehow he maneuvered his body about extending his head up forward and pressing his arms down deep against his abdomen to protect the oval, leathery case. After an eternity of desperate, breathless moments, he came to rest along the reedy, marshy banks of a creek. Standing and without thinking, he ran along with the currents of the stream – the water never rising above his ankles – but the stillness of the night was strong and oppressive and a silence never before heard shrouded the land. And that aural void caused the splashing of his feet to echo with a resounding furry sharper, crisper than any voice he could have uttered, any shriek that could have passed his lips.
After a series of sharp right, left turns the brook ceased at the rocky, craggy edge of a cliff – more of a water spray than a waterfall – the wall of stone was several hundred feet high from precipice to foot.
Panting for air, he eased from running to scrambling, inspecting the stonework of the mountainside’s ominous edge. It was rough but the jetting slate masses seemed as if it might afford stable footholds here and there. But he knew if he scaled it, it would be one-handed. Kneeling, the water passing between his legs, he held the egg by its length and looked into it as though it were a mirror – a mirror whose only reflection was a smooth, milk-white face. A face he had seen before, many, many times before. Should it slip he would fall: if it was their destiny to die, they died together. Loosening his jacket, he tucked the egg into it, letting it rub against his fur and holding it there with the slight, gentle pressure of his hand, his arm.
Jackalman dug his claws into the rock. He dangled his body as his feet read the unknown features of the waterfall. When his toes met a ledge wide enough and sturdy enough to let him stand, he switched arms, one to clutch to the egg, one to cling to the wall and lowered himself onto the next level. And so he descended one treacherous, aching step at a time, scaling the face of the cliff slowly, cautiously. It must have been hours before he summoned the courage to peer up and gauge how far he went – he dared not look down and face the abyss – it appeared to be only twenty feet and he wondered, almost aloud, how many hundred more awaited....
The Mutant inched from the outskirts closer and closer to the water spray itself – the trickle once steady was no a mist – the rocks were slick and the dirt was muddy and he feared doom at every moment. But it was amid all of that danger that he discovered the niche cut through slabs of spate. The vertical crack was wide enough to admit him with the egg. It opened into a round, inner chamber carved by the elements out of the body of the mountainside. Damp and cold, it was built like that kind of aerie used by large birds of prey to rear their young – and how appropriate, he thought, as he let his mind returned to thoughts of Aguila. The shelter, for all of its wants and imperfections, provided a welcomed and needed chance to rest.
He sat at the center of the room. He nested – the floor concave, collapsed as it were – laying the egg in his lap, enveloping it with his jacket. Settled and collected, he took a deep, deep breath and sighed low and long, letting the world outside clamor itself into oblivion.
“They’ll never find us here,” he whispered lovingly, almost mischievously, to the smooth, silky container. “Slythe – if he can’t find me on the mountainside, he’s got too many other problems – he’s got – he won’t find me. Oh,” he stopped, closing his eyes, “if only –”
It was Aguila, her face soft and warm pressed against his as they hugged. The only light in that tower keep, bright and white, evolved like smoke from the fabric of the bed at their knees. The bird-like woman, neither human nor Plunderian, turned as if to kiss him – but a loud crack snapped and only her dying breath passed out of her lungs into his lips and without a cry, without a whimper, she slipped through his arms, her white feathers ruffling his brown fur.
He awoke with a start – a scream – stifled as soon as he remembered where he was and what he was doing. And when his eyes adjusted to the light he stared aghast for through the egg, vague and fleeting, he thought there lingered the image of those eyes – Aguila’s eyes – lifeless and black, staring back into his....
At dawn sunlight filtered into the chamber but the omnipresent silence of the night did not relent. The crack overlooked a vast portion of Third Earth’s untamed jungle; even from where he sat, on the inverted dome of the floor, he saw to the forest canopy that waited, languished in all sides, in all direction. But it was too early and too dangerous to leave. Indeed, the cliff side alcove was not a place to be left anytime soon. He was stuck: forced to keep low until the Mutants left and the egg hatched. Only then, with the way clear and the baby cradled, might he escape.
Time lagged, inching, crawling one second to the next in a kind of long, drawn-out wail. All the while he kept his mind busy and alert by thinking up plans. A plan to escape and ask the Thundercats for help? No, they would be too suspicious to help. The Amazonians? No, they would be too eager to revenge. Better: a plan to trek eastward, to lands where neither Thunderian nor Plunderian yet set foot on. A place where he would be a stranger but untainted with the stigma of his past.
He did not want to think of the things Slythe promised to do if he were to be captured. Let alone what he intended to do to the egg. In the name of all the gods at once, he wretched at the memory, raw and intrusive, of that lizard’s tongue tasting the air about the pillar upon which he shattered Aguila’s other egg. He was thankful for the darkness of the tower’s keep that it prevented him from seeing fully what was squirming alive amid the unnamable, unimaginable. At last he understood why the reptilian did not sell Aguila to him: he wanted her not for other, base reasons but for her eggs, her children. Did he crave the taste of it so much that he wanted nothing more of her than to devour her offspring? He shuddered – the terror and horror fresh anew – but he saved one egg, his egg.
In the evening he poked his head out of the crack and caught a glimpse of his environmental bearings, details obscured and hidden by the night’s veil of shadow and darkness. He saw that he misgauged the situation: the Zephyia were just much taller than he imagined them to be, so while the precipice of the cliff was further up than he realized at the same time it was still a long, long way to go to reach the foot of the mountainside.
Several feet to either side of the opening were pockets of soil and groupings of plants. Now with the sun setting he ventured into those regions, above and below, filling his jacket with leaves both fresh and dead. He brought the mixture back into the chamber and at the center, where he left the egg upright, he formed a mound with the litter. He placed the jacket over it and snuggled against it.
Jackalman neither saw nor heard the presence of other Mutants. Perhaps they had quit their searching and combing of the area; perhaps not. Never before on their stay on Third Earth was one of their own so expelled as he was expelled – there was no precedent for it, there was no way to know how far Slythe wanted to take it. He would have to be careful, even more so than usual.
Vultureman. Was it possible that the avian might cover for him? The bird-man had no love for the reptilian but then he had no love for Mutant-kind in general. No, no, he shook his head with a loud sigh, a deep sigh, crossing out that and Monkian’s name from his list of friends. From the beginning it was always every Mutant for himself and that ancient, Plunderian custom was both a strength and a curse. A curse for it meant he lacked friends and their cooperation; a strength for it meant Slythe lacked loyalty. If he was not easily found, there was no reason for the other Mutants – self-centered and lazy – to persist looking for him. Yes, he smiled and kissed the egg: if he could wait he could survive the predicament.
For the next few days the canine alternated between fetching for soil and leaf litter and scavenging for water and food. Water was aplenty but he needed to climb several feet to get a decent-sized spray from the creek. Food, at that wintry time of the year, was the real problem. But being a jackal his sense of opportunism was sharp and acute and it led him to the dens of dozens of creatures.
After a month the cavern took on an air of homeliness he thought he never would feel for it – it became so permanent, so final that he feared he never would escape. His plans, once so closely constructed, now seemed so remotely ambiguous. And his misadventure in Castle Plundarr was like another world, another lifetime ago.
Was he ever a Mutant general, commanding troops into battle? Capturing enemy lands, looting spoils of war? Or was he really an incompetent leader, succumbing to and retreating from defeats at the hands of the Thundercats? The tide of triumph was always against him. Victories were scarce as their opponents – aided by the obnoxious, meddling Thunderian do-gooders – got better and better at defending themselves. Worse were the incursions into their hard-earned territory that threatened to chip away what foothold they held on Third Earth.
One loss after another, compounded by his squandering a fortune, reduced his rank and standing. It came to be that the only people who spoke to him were Vultureman and Monkian – Slythe uttered a word here and there from time to time but as he took more and more wealth and power he kept looking at his friends through those steely, reptile eyes of his.
And Aguila was the tool – the source of all of that influence – for the reptilian used her to hoard the plunder of his troops. Such was the price to pay for a touch, for a moment with the avian goddess. But there were rules and he broke them; now it was over and he would never be forgiven....
All the better – it was another lifetime.
Though he could erase the memories of that past existence, he could not forget her. From the first to the last, every fragment, every detail was etched into his soul. In all of the universe never did he see anything as beautiful as Aguila. Her head was not too large, not too small, it was just the right size to fit snuggly against his shoulder – and he still felt her mane brush against the sides of his face. The feathers were thick enough to run his hands through. It – like the rest of her coat – was well-kept, fine and shiny. Their texture was that of fluid silk, warm and inviting, their color was that of snowy white, streaked and lined with traces of onyx. Her ears were buried in that hair that tapered to a point at the back of her head – he smiled as he recalled finding them that first time, teasing them, kissing them. Her eyes, almond-shaped, stared wetly as they looked into his, their ebony gaze communicated in that softest, most silent of ways an enigma of autumnal loneliness that all, truly beautiful things invoked. Her nose, her lips, thin and delicate – too fragile to kiss without permission. Her slim, almost massless body, so easy to lift and carry. Her arms that always wrapped about him, tenderly, lovingly, as they spent the night in the bed, in the nest she only shared with him.
It was against the law – Slythe’s law – to lie in her bed, in the day, in the night, indeed she was scarcely to be touched, but she let him, every time, every night he snuck into the tower through the window.
He did not care what she was forced to do – she was a prisoner, a prisoner that could be freed. But the reptile would not let her go and that last night she would not go. Why? Why was she so afraid? Why?
Jackalman cried thinking about it – and as he clutched the egg, feeling its leathery texture playing with his fur, he was taken aback to that fatal, dreadful image.
That breath, that last, hot breath, passing from her lips to his lungs. That face brushing against his chest and that stare stabbing into his eyes as she fell through his arms on the bed in the tower-top chamber.
How that round, inner sanctum so resembled what became of Aguila’s world – even the bed was replaced by a different sort of nest.
“Aguila!” he shouted, unable to hold back. “You’re free – you’re not dead – you watch from yonder heights, living through all of time.”
Leaning into the egg he whispered and with that he felt it: for the first time he felt movement within.
His heart skipped a beat as the egg moved, shook, as it was ready to hatch.
END OF CHAPTER
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