Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Fiction
vr 3.00
2008-02-16
"Aguila" by Abraxas | 2005-03-02
Chapter Two
It was sunup; the morning fog was lifting and the wilderness, too, was rising from a spring-like slumber to a vibrant stir. Above thick, leafy branches interlocked and formed the impression of a roof, tall and domed, covering the world. While below tender, green moss sparkled and glittered with a light, airy dew, spotting the topography: the rises and falls of the ground and the stony, marshy banks of the stream whose color was a virginal, reflective onyx.
By the creek, by the wet, glossy pebbles, Jackalman stooped. Sipping the water through his hands he looked up to see a pair of Quetzalcoatl birds hovering, circling above a tree that stood amid a lonely, grassy clearing. If he were armed he could have shot them – but it had been so long since he had touched meat that the very thought of it, raw and bloody, was abhorrent. And, of course, he fled Castle Plundarr weaponless.
So what, he rationalized, within the backwoods a spear was just as good, if not better, than a blast gun.
Ambling about the undergrowth, he found a bush with yellow, green fruit growing through its sharp and brittle foliage. He encountered the very like once before and was weary as he explored it with his fingers for it was adorned with thorns. He learned by watching the birds what was edible and what was to be avoided. Inspecting the vegetation, he was dismayed at the sight of the food – it was not ripe enough to eat.
Sighing a yelp of disappointment, the canine stood, shaking his head. He looked about the scene: to his left the stream, to his right the singular, lonesome tree and before him a pile of flattened rocks stacked as if it were pylon and an orchard of well-spaced trees extended so deep into the woodlands that the world beyond its first, few rows seemed a smoky, inky void.
Jackalman sniffed the air: the smell of smoke was getting sharper and keener by the day. It was not the smoke of a forest fire, rather, it was the smoke of a village – a settlement – nearby. Traveling incognito across the country, he learned to spot the signs of civilization. So far the territory was largely known but soon he would be venturing into the vast, unexplored regions of Third Earth and it was imperative to be prepared at every turn, at every contingency.
One day the ordeal would be ended; one day it would be alright to settle –
A sound – it was the pair of Quetzalcoatl. The iridescent green birds no longer circled the tree and he could not see them only hear them, their piercing, frantic cries.
Another sound, just as sudden and unexpected and it was he who shrieked as he fell to his knees as he saw that shape – something, something up above was coming down on him.
“Argh! Argh!” the Plunderian shouted, trying to get up, but something was holding onto him by the neck, something small, light weight.
It let go and tumbled from his back to the ground – he spun around, still shocked, still scared, a habit that too true proved hard to break.
He scanned the creature from bottom to top. The feet were bare, arched with short, pointed claws. The legs were thin, strong as were the arms. And the hands, too, were clawed, dexterous and agile. The body was clothed by tattered liniments that one time served as a sort of jacket. But the head, the mane of tawny, brown fur, the ears pointed and erect, the eyes of yellow scattered, marbleized ebony, the nose short, the lips thin with two, small canines poking through.
It was a picture of an earlier, more innocent Jackalman. But it was not just a reflection, transfigured and distorted across time, it was Koha’, his son. His image, so complete, it seemed little trace of Aguila showed in the mixture – except at the base of the fur where the roots were growing streaked, parallel lines.
Looking at the boy, the Mutant could not help but recall the events that surrounded its birth. Those little, clawed fingers now twiddling before him were once poking through the crust of that egg. What emerged was form, uncoordinated and blind, furless and featherless as much as birds were upon hatching. When he saw the infant he took it, dried it – he held it firmly unto his breast to warm him with the fur of his body. He worried – without knowledge of Aguila’s genetic nature and compatibility, he did not know if a cross of avian and Mutant would live or die past its first, few breaths – but in a matter of days it opened its eyes and a thin coat of fur emerged that soon thickened.
Although in appearance Koha’ was like his father’s twin, in temperament he was utterly opposite. It was a matter of quiet pride – almost envy – to Jackalman that his son was truly unafraid. And it was in the boy’s instincts that caused him to wonder, to contemplate the child’s avian heritage: for even at that young age, it had been only four years since that night, the boy exploited the instincts not of a scavenger but of an unadulterated, rapturous predator.
“Koha’,” Jackalman groaned as he sat back on the ground. “Don’t do that.”
The boy, approaching the reclining figure, sat by him identically.
“Look what I got, daddy,” he said, presenting what he held in his hands.
“Kohaku! What did I tell you about climbing trees?” The canine growled, shaking his head. He feared for his son and for his safety. Even though in all of those years Koha’ never injured himself going up and down trees – a feat he could not easily reproduce – he did not like the idea of him doing it while he was not watching. Just incase –
“You’re such a scaredy-cat, daddy,” the boy chimed, his voice light and airy and in its own way pleasant. “You want one?”
Jackalman looked at the eggs – the two, round eggs – recalling the vibrant green birds and recalling another set of eggs. The fertilized offspring Aguila separated and concealed from the ravenous Slythe. And watching Koha’ crack them with his front teeth – catching a glimpse of what looked like water and blood – he was filled, almost overcome, by the terror of a thought, a realization that whatever power designed every fiber of those Quetzalcoatl’s beauty designed the instrument of its destruction, the teeth and claws that tore the divine secrets asunder.
He shook his head ‘no’ and turned his eyes to the river.
“You’re a good boy,” he said, at last, rubbing his son’s head.
The boy left the other egg by a pile of rocks then fell onto his father’s lap, laughing as he played with the elder canine’s fingers.
“I love you, Koha’.” He looked at his young hatchling, tracing the outline of his ear through his mane, wild and unkempt. Little by little, its resemblance to his mother’s mane was sinking in on him.
The two sat idly, not really speaking, not really brooding and then Koha’ sat up and tugged down Jackalman’s ear and whispered.
* * * * * * * * * *
The trail uncoiled about the jagged crest of the gentle upslope. To the south was the forest that surrounded a settlement – whose inhabitants resembled a mixture of Lunatac and Amazonian – to the north were the ruins that overlooked a cliff. Beyond the zigzag crown of the precipice was a large, deep basin and the tall, snowcapped mountains of the Tharsis Thulus.
Around the path, untravelled by the town’s denizens, were the broken stonework and other elements of a long-ago extinct era shrouded by the undergrowth, reclaimed by its shrubs, its brushes.
“What’s the matter, daddy?” Koha’ asked, tugging his father’s arm. “It doesn’t scare you, does it?” The boy was young but his instincts were those of one much, much older, experienced and aged. He knew, for example, that his father was easily scared by mundane things. Stupid things.
“No, no, it’s just –” Jackalman stuttered, rubbing his chin. Along their travels throughout the vast wilderness they stumbled upon all sorts of ruins here and there: of towers, of bridges and of other things incomprehensible. Each time, every time, they all looked the same, as if built by the same civilization. It did not make sense unless Third Earth was a planet much, much older than they imagined. But then, the Mutants did not erect Castle Plundarr and who knew who built MummRa’s Pyramid. “It’s just like a place I knew –”
“You lived in a castle?” the boy asked, approaching the cyclopean walls, the arched gates.
To be sure it was more like a temple than a castle, but aspects of its architecture – the masonry, the details – was utterly, totally nameable.
“That was a long, long time ago, boy,” he said, rubbing his hands against a window – rather – the wooden frame of a window. It rested half-on and half-off the wall several feet beneath the yawning, murky aperture it once adorned now abandoned. “It wasn’t like this, it was bigger.”
“Bigger? Bigger than this?” He looked on in wonder – the building was the largest thing he ever saw.
The trail snaked into the body of the temple – into a courtyard, square-shaped and encircled by old, gray walls. Within, the vegetation was wild and thick, rich with nuts and berries, bountiful with birds and animals, feeding upon one another like a microcosm of the world-at-large. At the end of the garden stood the remainder of the ruins – rising low as if built into the ground – a soft, flat dome roofed the vast, interior room visible outside through tall, arched doorways.
Inside the air was stale and damp, awash by shadow and darkness broken only by the daylight washing through wide, open windows at the rear of the chamber. At the very top the dome of the vault was unbroken and through the void there seemed to be revealed a series of structures, long and thin, dangling from the ceiling.
“Vultureman would have known,” Jackalman uttered, looking at the weird, metallic structures that more and more were coming into view. “They almost look like light bulbs.”
“What are light bulbs?” Koha’ asked, his ears picking up even the softest of whispers.
The canine Plunderian smiled – there was so much to be said, so much to be explained.
The boy, growing bolder by the moment, explored the chamber while his father followed at a slower, leisurely pace. Around the outer perimeter the floor was littered with broken statues and shattered carvings. About the walls were doors most of which led to smaller, cramped rooms. One led to a room, very large and bright, full of shelves and furniture. It seemed to be made of two floors, one partly atop the other. Another led to a hallway with windows smaller and closer to the floor – still, they were too high for him to see through – and walls not of rock but of plaster, decorated with pictures.
“Look, daddy,” he said, pointing to the strange, eerie paintings.
“Kohaku, don’t wander too far!” Jackalman growled.
“I’m safe,” he said, walking up and down the length of the passage, looking at everything – his father walked in and he sauntered out.
Ordinarily, the Mutant did not care for art – that weak, frail handiwork – and he failed to appreciate the value of a lot of man-made things. But ever since Koha’ entered his life he was beginning to see the world in a different light.
The images along the coarse, brittle wall had been scorched by the sun, disfigured by the elements. Their beauty destroyed by time. Yet there was a fragment that caught his eye – a bird-like figure of white, snowy feathers.
If only the quality was not degraded – he stroked the face of the image – if only there could be a connection.
“Daddy, daddy!” the boy shouted – and with those words Jackalman fled the antechamber.
“Kohaku!” he shouted, his voice echoing through the vast, rotund chamber. “Kohaku!” He followed the boy’s cry through another set of doors – doors slowly, creakily shutting – into stairs of gravel and clay winding into the substance of the earth. It got darker and darker with every spiral as there were no windows and only the thinnest, flimsiest slants of light made it through the depths.
At last he arrived at the entrance of a vast, underground chamber.
The vault below was as monstrous and cavernous as the room above. It, too, was domed by a concrete roof supported by a ring of twelve, convex pillars eroded at both ends to reveal slivers of metallic endoskeletons. The cyclopean masonry of the walls was formed of an organic mixture of rocks bleached by sunlight. The floor was flat – smooth and featureless – with moments of shiny luster here and there and littered by debris accumulated through centuries. There were windows: some like slits, wide and thin, close to the roof, some like eyes, narrow and long, close to the floor – it was there that the sunlight was brightest and it was there that Koha’ stood.
Looking out into the world with his son, he was struck by the view straight along the side of the cliff. The canine sighed, clutching the boy tightly, almost drawing him away from the window.
“Last time I saw a view like that, you fit right into that jacket – I used to wear it – you almost tumbled out of it. And I carried you over my belly.” He was taken back to the morning when he and the boy – then a baby – fled that cavern. “Last time that cavern was dark, this time it’s bright.”
“I remember seeing this – something like this –” Koha’ said, stroking the bottom edge of the window.
“You do?” he asked, still holding his son’s shoulders. “Weren’t you afraid?”
“No,” he said, smiling, looking up at his father – and his father looking down at him.
The canine was reminded of something else – someone else – he once held in his arms like that.
“Dad!” he protested as his father’s clutch tightened –
“What?” He looked – fighting back a feeling, sudden and unexpected, that his son was slipping, falling through his arms. “It’s nothing, nothing,” he said, letting go, remembering.
What was it about Koha’s eyes? Once it was just the ears – cloaked and buried by their mane -- but now it seemed even the eyes – the way they stared – were familiar.
Jackalman inspected the window: all along its edges, up and down, were scars and gashes carved into the stone as if by claws. Turning aside, he explored the chamber, noting and inspecting it with his eyes. The debris that littered the floor were not scattered but collected into piles. If – as the villagers stated – people did not venture into the ruins, could it be that animals lived there? But the rooms above were spotless and the garden outside was untouched – if animals were living there, it did not make sense that they would leave one part tidy and another part littered. Unless there was another door, another passage –as of yet hidden from view – that led directly into and out of the underground chamber. Unless – it was not a den but an aviary. Turning back, running his hands through the impressions along the rock, placing his fingers into the dents – were they claws or were they talons?
“You like this place?” he asked, walking by the pillars clockwise.
The boy shrugged his shoulders – he was pacing by the columns counterclockwise.
“Are you thinking – about what they said?” Koha’ asked, always, it seemed, knowing what was going on inside his father’s head though not always knowing what it meant.
Yes, the Plunderian’s thoughts lingered about the stories – the weird, local legends – the villagers told of what was heard through the ruins at night. Sometimes they were just the cries of animals. Sometimes they were the muffled and indistinct yet perceptible voices of people.
Birds – albeit very large birds – taking their prey, eating them.
“It’s good enough play to hide – for a while,” he said. “You like this room?” The boy nodded. “Hmmm.”
“What is it, daddy?”
“Nothing.”
“Do me a favor,” he said, getting on his knees before his son.
“What sort of favor,” Koha’ asked, tilting his head.
“Don’t ever be down here alone, ok?”
“I’m never alone, daddy.”
* * * * * * * * * *
Midnight – Jackalman walked about the upper chamber, his footsteps muffled and dull. Moonlight seeped through the windows: the heavenly orb large and electric. An icy zephyr – howling sporadically through tight, narrow cracks – agitated the atmosphere, mixing together the acrid smells of rain and dust. And as he paced the scents called him back to the start of one of the many, little moments etched into memory. It was curious how something so simple, something so ordinary held the power to transport him co completely.
He recalled a night – could it be six years ago? – when he sulked into Castle Plundarr, tired and sore. He was in a foul mood and not in a frame of mind to be with friends as he just escaped an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Tygra and the Thunder Twins. He was a Captain-of-Attacks but as soon as Slythe learned about his latest calamity that rank would be demoted soon enough.
He was not in the mood for pleasantries – but – he did not know how, maybe it was Vultureman, maybe it was Monkian but someway, somehow, he was lured into the mess hall to share at least the latter-half of that night’s dinner among friends. The dining hall of that fortress was justly named: large, grand and utterly, fulsomely noisy. Even at that hour the torch-lit, red-draped room was only half-empty and drunk, boisterous Mutants were constantly coming in and out, goading and badgering themselves into fights for this and that.
Monkian annoyed him – the simian was want to join in on those mindless ‘games.’ Vultureman, however, was his best friend and great company; he was used to failure and could not careless about the ‘normal,’ Plunderian customs. And he was always quiet – except for that night –
What was he talking about? Jackalman was drunk, opting to drown out his sorrows in the bottle. He could not decipher Vultureman – entirely – but every so often he heard ‘Amazonian’, ‘Warrior Maiden’ and he seemed to connect it with the prisoners of war he used to possess. But he only caught a world here and there and could not tell where the birdman was going with it –
So the vulture followed the canine out of the mess hall into the dungeons of Castle Plundarr. It was quieter – the air echoed with the disembodied wails of a society’s carnal decadence – and he remembered his friend was asking about what happened to his trophies, his prisoners, if he sold or freed them. Prisoners, among the rank and file, were the standard currency of trade.
It seemed Vultureman wanted Jackalman to buy something – but what? And what, he asked – his friend opted instead to show rather than to describe.
Into the fortress keep the two approached the base of a tower – one of many not too tall, not too short – where a pair of Slythe’s elite reptilian guard stood watch by a small, round door. It was a part of Castle Plundarr he was very much familiar with but he could not remember there ever being guards by that tower.
“Slythe must be hiding something important,” he said, turning to the avian Mutant.
“It’s something, alright, like you’ve got no idea. Are you sure you don’t have prisoners? What about that woman, what’s her name, that Willa’s sister?”
The rest of the conversation was a blur and what followed of the scene were fragmented, formless impressions – the only coherent images were that of the vulture paying the reptiles with gold coins and the guards looking at him funny as he entered into the tower.
Steps of stone – or metal? – running up – or down? – it was difficult to remember but despite the confusion he continued. On and on he walked until at the end of the journey he was met by a single, wooden door. He did not know how – and he certainly did not know why – but, if just out of instinct he reached for the knob. It groaned and the shock of it jolted him – he turned but where was Vultureman?
Alone, he opened the door and entered the room. The chamber was tall and wide, deceptively large for a tower room. At the far side its windows were open, letting in the chilly night air and the view of the eerie starry skies. At the near side, under a domed roof, were a series of pillars and at the center, where the light seemed to be the brightest, was a nest.
And then, there, right before him leaning against a pillar was a figure looking at him with the deepest, most onyx eyes that ever adorned a living creature. Could it see with such eyes? He blinked: the sight of it was almost angelic. Could it truly, really exist? White, feathery plumage with streaks of thin, black lines here and there coated the figure that was, nevertheless, clothed by the outfit of a Plunderian prisoner, complete with a tight, form-fitting chain wrapped about its neck that tethered it to the nest. Could it live so savagely, so monstrously caged?
The figure – that studied him just as he studied it – without a word approached as far as the chain allowed. And it was then that he noticed the way it moved, so alien and yet so subtly erotic, just its very, slightest motion took his breath away. But when it brushed his face with the back of its hand at once the grogginess of that liquefied stupor lifted – he felt so awake, so alive –
It was her, it was Aguila.
Jackalman gasped – the warm feel of her hand on his face was as real now as it was then. If touch could reach across time it did so at that moment. And the illusion – total and convincing – was so perfect even her scent came to him anew. As he looked he could not help but wonder if he were caught amid a time warp but little by little reality returned.
It was not the tower, it was not Castle Plundarr and Vultureman was not there. He was in the ruins of the temple, in the lower chamber that his son took as his own nest. There, at the center of the ring of pillars, were two beds of straw, side by side, one large, one small. The boy nestled into the smaller, his arm, his hand, resting along the edge of the larger.
“Those instincts,” he whispered, amazed at the incomprehensible symmetry.
Aguila was not a subject he discussed with Koha’ – at least not often – how could he? How could he tell his son about that first time he met his mother without explaining that place Slythe imprisoned her? What that reptile forced her –
And, yet, as if by genetic memory, the boy transformed that chamber into something familiar. It was true that his memories were deep if murky but how much might one remember through the pores of an egg?
A bolt of lightning and a pang of thunder – but he did not react with a start, he was too lost in the realm of memory to notice.
“If only you were here,” he sighed, trying to relive that encounter. But so much of what was said between them was blurred by time. Just how their relationship evolved he could not tell, even fathom, but at the end he was sneaking into that tower, spending long, forbidden nights there with her, living the life of disjointed lovers.
He looked at his hands – he shut his eyes – that collar.
Aguila slipped through his grasp and for the first time since that dreadful night he felt the sting of that collar tear through the fur of his arms – and that look on her face, in her eyes, black and lifeless, that stare that did not fade even as Slythe –
He looked at his hands – shaking, clutching – the thought made his heart skip a beat.
“Why – it would’ve worked -- if we could’ve shared just another moment, it would’ve worked!”
But could it be, he wondered, that such beauty just was not meant for this world?
He looked at Koha’ and whispered into the boy’s ear – then fell back asleep.
END OF CHAPTER
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