Emergence - chapter 1

Shriveled leaves drifted from wilted branches, creating a brown carpet of detritus on the orchard ground. Another fruit tree dead from mysterious causes. Porl peeled away the flaking bark, but as with the others, he found no beetles or bugs. No blight marked the leaves or trunk. He was far from a plant expert, but hundreds of trees and crops around the town had died, and neither the fruiters nor croppers knew why.

What in the name of the Ancients was going on?

Despite the sun beating on his face through the thin canopy of leaves, he shivered. Hysteria grew among the townsfolk. Even the oldest grandparents shook their heads, exclaiming how they had never seen such a thing, but most worrying was that the town Elders offered no explanations or solutions. His senishan, Olbut, suspected a fault lay in the irry pipes that watered the orchard, and had sent Porl out here to investigate. At last, Porl could help, could show the Elders what he was capable of. Pride jostled with the foreboding in his heart.

Porl loved being a nishan. To him, it was the most important job in Plainstown. The Elders ran the world, and society needed fruiters and woodmakers and weavers, but only nishans knew how to repair things. Veshtar, his world, was broken. Or at least this small part of it. It was his job to fix it. Only he didn't know how yet.

He continued through the grove of fruit trees, leaves crunching underfoot, until he came to a sudden halt. With his foot, he nudged the corpse of a furry squil. Too many dead animals lately. Birds too, as if they'd died in flight and plummeted to the ground. What was happening? He looked at the sky, thankful to see its usual pastel green.

"What have we done to upset you, Ancients?"

The thump of another peachfruit hitting the ground was his only reply. The underripe fruit joined many others that lay moldering.

What if all the trees and animals died? Everyone would starve.

His breath rasped as he exhaled heavily. I won't solve anything by being afraid. He clutched his satchel of tools close, tucked his shoulders back and hurried forward.

A single vertical boulder, ten feet tall and the same in circumference, stood in a small clearing ahead. He stepped carefully amid the fallen, rotting peachfruit, and studied the rock. His index finger traced the script embossed on its surface in black. Though much of the boulder's surface had eroded over centuries, the script seemed like it'd been carved there yesterday.

He retrieved his journal from his satchel and flipped through the dog-eared pages until he came across the same unusual script. The black markings were a sequence of numbers and had to be very old, perhaps the original language of the Ancients. Since becoming a nishan at age eight, Porl had half filled his journal with language comparisons.

Has it been ten years already?

He copied the numbers into his journal next to the others. Every such boulder around the town bore similar marks, though each was numbered differently. If it was a code or a message, Porl was determined to decipher it.

He surveyed the nearby trees, finding their bark withered and brittle. With one foot, he scraped aside moss and detritus and then knelt to study the ground. What should have been soft soil nourished by moldering leaves, was cracked and dry. He stood, tapping his jaw thoughtfully. Perhaps his senishan was correct that the irry pipes had stopped working. Despite the dire circumstances, Porl smiled. Olbut had never been wrong.

He returned his attention to the boulder. The tight-fitting seam of the access hole was obvious if one knew where to look. He slipped the tips of his fingers under the lip and tugged free a smaller rock that sealed the hole, setting it on the grass. Sunlight streamed into the hole, and it was just large enough for him to stick his head and shoulders in.