New Chapter One

Ancestor’s Tales

                There were worn paths throughout our backyard marked by trees that were lifeless, and there was little grass or soft ground. There was, however, lots of dirt that, during the monsoon season would turn into sloppy mud. The land was open because of the scarce trees but secluded because it was so far away from the marketplace.

             It was my home.  It was Ambigu.

 The forest (if you could call it that) outside our backyard seemed to go on for lifetimes; yes, lifetimes. It was as if all the stories of my ancestors, and those even before them, came out at night to let their tales be told. I could hear the pain and sorrow, laughter and joy, birth and death of each and every one of them. Or at least that’s what I told myself when I heard the creeping animals and the sounds of the actual death from the One War.

I had come out to check on how close the War was to us.  As I heard the screams closer than I’d like, I had imagined I heard my Great Great Grandfather tell me about the time he had come across logors when he was just a few years older than me; maybe twenty at the oldest. Logors are like owls with fangs and wings like bats. They weren’t big but they were violent and known for their speed. When the Maker created them, I’m positive he used a portrait of the Destroyer.

Anyway, Grandfather Squared (as I called him in my head) had been wandering this same forest and there it was just waiting for him. He looked up in the tree and met the logor’s red eyes with mostly courage, but a fear of death and maybe a bit of pride. It was just an animal, after all. He drew his sword in case it decided to swoop in for an attack and kept walking. No use in making himself a target, he thought. The logor leapt from the tree down in front of Grandpa Squared. He took a step back and put himself in an offensive stance, like a dog ready to pounce on an intruder. He charged his sword at the creature and it flew above and around him. He turned quickly but not quickly enough because the logor flew in his face and bit him on the right cheek. He fell to the ground and dropped his sword.

 Grandpa Squared didn’t take kindly to that. He suppressed the pain of the bite, ignoring the fact that the dirty thing may have given him rabies or something like it, and reacted quickly while the logor thought it had a chance. With his sword out of reach, he took the nearest broken branch and swung it at the logor. The poor thing (and I use poor loosely) flew farther than Grandpa Squared imagined it could. With that kind of swing, he thought, he should have been a professional taddiwagon player.

He felt a kind of pride he had not felt in all his life. He came across danger – death even – and fought his way out. It was a story I’m sure he told a thousand times.

It was a story I hoped to never have.

I walked along the beaten trail of the forest mostly in my own head but being aware of what hid in the trees and what direction the sounds of the War were coming from.  As I started thinking of another ancestor I started to become aware of being followed. I turned back to look, but saw nothing. I decided to go a bit off the trail to see if my imagination had gotten the best of me. I walked off the path about ten footfalls and then sprinted for another ten behind a tree. I looked out from the tree and saw my follower.

“Tessie!” I yelled. She jumped as high as the logor must have flown. “Tessie, get over here!” I started walking towards her doing my best to look angry. She shouldn’t have been out here, she was only seven.

“I’m sorry, Caleb. I really am.” She knew she was in trouble when we got home so she used her best little innocent girl voice. “I just wanted to see what you do out here all the time. It’s like you’re looking for danger.” Actually, I wanted to tell her, I was doing the exact opposite. Mom and Dad always spoke of the One War one day coming all the way out to our part of the land. Out of my own self-concern I tracked the War, marking on a map the new developments.  “No, Tessie, I’m not,” was all I could give her. She was too young to understand the danger of the War. “I’m sorry to have made you follow me. Let’s get you home before we get in trouble.” She nodded at me and we started walking.

Then, we heard the boom.

It was unlike anything I had heard before. I couldn’t hear out of my ears but I could see Tessie crying presumably very loudly. What was it? That couldn’t be a gun, not one I’d ever seen anyway.

I got up and went to grab Tessie, who was up and walking towards the path and then I got knocked off my feet by another, much larger, boom. This one I didn’t hear but felt the vibrations below me. I saw Tessie get pushed into a tree by the shock.

I tried again to get up but it was hard to find the strength. I counted in my head to five to retry getting up:  One… My legs weren’t working... two…  My hearing was gone… three… my brain was not having complete thoughts… four… my body was just giving up, fading slowly to unconsciousness. I cursed at myself and tried to focus on keeping an eye on Tessie. Last I remember she was crying at the stump of the tree, and I could feel on the ground more footfalls.

Five.