Dijaq's cow, a stalwart, three-horned beauty with five-inch tendrils of butternut curls, plodded steadfastly on through the Opposite Plain. She stood seven hands tall and did not seem to mind the weights on her back: a stiff, burnished pole with sacs of water and dried fish on either end; three precious bags of bartering shells-- just in case they would need an effective bribe to remain at their destination-- and Dijaq himself, who found the seemingly endless hours on top of Bora's back increasingly uncomfortable.
"She is strong, yes?" One of the mountain-men whom Dijaq had paid to take him on this jaunt slowed his own bull until the two animals travelled side-by-side.
Dijaq looked down and stroked Bora's head gently, taking care to avoid the horns that were twice as thick around as his fore-arm. "She's very strong," he agreed, "but I'll have to admit, this is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. Evening folk cattle can travel much quicker, even with loads on their backs."
"Bora is not Evening cow," said the mountain main, obviously nettled and with a thick accent. "Bora is mountain cow. She is sisters with mountain goats who must step carefully, very carefully, to keep from sliding, falling down cliff. You want to get there quick, or you want to get there safe?"
Dijaq opened his mouth to respond, then shut it quickly. There were five mountain men on the journey with him toward the patch of distant copse where the Disc of Secrets was said to be half-buried, and he'd found that it was best not to find himself on any of their bad sides. The mountain men (for they went by no name that Dijaq knew of) were a hardy breed that rarely allowed themselves to be seen and kept to their sparse homes, which were often built into caves in the lower half of the Ice-Capped mountains where the chill was less biting. They were secretive, resourceful, and something of a mystery; the Evening folk avoided them, and the Mountain Folk in turn eluded their cousins on plain ground.
"Dee-jak!" The mountain man waved a hand in front of his face. "So now you are deaf, as well as ignorant?"
"I'm so sorry!" Dijaq said hurriedly. "I must have been lost in my own-- I mean day-dreaming, that's all."
"'Day-dream'?" The other man cocked an eye-brow suspiciously.
"It was nothing," Dee mumbled. "Now what were you saying?"
"In the mountains, men listen closely. Do not repeat themselves, just in case dragons are listening."
"Then there is nothing I can pay you for your services," Dijaq sniped, a bit too severely than he'd intended.
"Ha!" the other man brought his cow to an abrupt halt. "You don't pay, you go alone. A better plan for you, yes?" he asked snidely, jerking his head toward the horizon. Dijaq followed the man's eyes and froze: in the distance, he could see the beginnings of a smattering of dark forestry (the Twin Moons were not visible, having taken their places behind them), and poking out from the leafy tips of the groves was a colossal, disc-shaped form that must have easily exceeded thirty feet-- and that was only the part of it he could see.
Pacing back and forth in front of the woodland, Dijaq could see the timber-wolves and ice-cats (each species carefully avoiding the other) as they lifted their snouts to the wind, drank in the scents of the newcomers, and howled ravenously.
"No, of course I wouldn't go alone!" Dijaq drew up Bora's reigns until the animal snorted and paused, pawing the ground in front of her with worn, cracked hooves. "I was just uncertain for a moment...nothing more. Each of you will receive your just payment, exactly as I promised, but I will never reach the copse or the Disc without your help. You have weapons, don't you?"
The man shrugged with nonchalance and swiftly withdrew a handsome crossbow from beneath the cloak that surrounded him, lovingly stroking the polished wood that had gone worn from use. "Weapons, yes. One well-aimed bolt can take down even an angry mother ice-cat. Takes two bolts to bring down the big wolves. ...I trust you can pay us for the depletion of our weapons?"
"Yes, yes." Dijaq tried to mask his impatience. "Now what must I do?"
"You wait," said the guide tersely, taking off at a fast trot toward the wood and the waiting predators with his four mountain-men.
And Dijaq waited. Bora's knobby back was beginning to grow increasingly uncomfortable, but he sat as still as he was told while the animal ruminated complacently. Drunk off of the pleasant scents of ice, coolness, the winter chill, and faint traces of mint, Dijaq thought back to all of the events he'd witnessed within the past seventy four hours or so: the gentle washing of Waru's corpse, watching her pyre erupt in flames as greasy-smelling smoke consumed both mother and child; and Pomoq's odd chalk drawings in which he'd etched images of the Disc of Secrets, both as a complete oblong and in cross-section.
Dijaq had gone home and repeated the drawings in the dirt outside of the threshold before his lodge, wondering when, how, and if he would ever have a chance to see this Disc with his own eyes-- and hadn't Pomoq said he must first ensure that Ziuta took her rightful place as Queen of the Dragons? Yet he hardly knew where Ziuta even was; rumor had spread swiftly throughout Looks Thrice that she had been denied admittance to her own adoptive home, and Dijaq's heart felt it would cleave in two just for her. He could not bear to think of her upset, sad, or sullen-- but rejected by the man she had so come to look up to? Ziuta had charged off and out of the palisade in tears, and no one-- not even the few volunteers that Kind Heart had rounded up for the purpose, had been successful in even catching a glimpse of her.
In the new hollows left by Warumachek and Ziuta, young Zee had timidly taken the chance to approach him and had crouched at the stoop after the evening supper, watching with wide eyes as he etched with one finger. Dijaq remembered glancing at her; he knew her from the school-house. While she was not a homely girl by any means, her eyes were a bit too large and watered all the time. Zee managed almost always to look as though she were on the verge of tears.
"So you want to know the Disc of Secrets?" she'd asked him at last, looking into his eyes with something akin to exultation when he paused in his etching and gaped at her.
"You know about that?"
"Oh, come, Dee. Everyone knows about the Disc of Secrets!"
"But few People speak of it. It isn't good luck!"
"Then why are you drawing it in the dirt?" she'd asked, cocking her pretty head at him. "Wouldn't it be even worse than bad luck to render the image of a dangerous talisman into the ground, like you're doing?"
Dijaq had sighed, using the stub end of a twig to scratch out his etchings. "The truth is, I need to go there...to visit the Disc in person."
"But why?" Zee blinked at him with those huge, watering orbs.
"Because I need to find out if what everyone whispers about the great Disc is true: if the people who sleep in its shadow wake up with burns, if the peak of the Disc rises higher than any tree-top, and if the windows can be cleared so we can see inside and--"
"--and see the bodies of our Ancestors?"
Dijaq was taken aback. "Who told you all of these things about the Disc?" he'd asked Zee suspiciously. "Such knowledge is not for girls to muddy their thinking when they should be preparing for marriage to their husbands."
Zee had only snorted lightly. "Since when did you become as old-fashioned as the Matron?" she'd asked playfully. "I know about the Disc because my father took me there when I was a little girl."
"He did? He took you? How old where you? What did you see?" Dijaq could hardly keep the questions from tumbling out of his mouth.
Relishing the attention, Zee (who had an immense crush on the older boy) drew up her knees and encircled them with her arms. "I don't remember much of it," she said, "but the few pieces that do come back to me are that I was sitting on my father's shoulders, and there was a soft humming sound in everyone's ears. Father didn't want me to get too close, lest something were to happen to me."
"Who else went with you?"
Zee shrugged. "Friends of the family, mostly. Back then, people weren't as afraid of the Earth dragons as they are today, and they ventured freely out of Looks Thrice on various excursions. I was lucky to be able to go with my Father." She'd paused then, smoothing a wayward strand of hair back into her demure bun and glancing left and right, as though to make sure that no-one heard them. "...You would like to visit this place on your own, yes?" she asked, in a coy whisper.
"Would I?" Dijaq was practically hopping out of his sandals. "Just tell me what to do, and I will reward you handsomely! It is highly important that I be able to visit the Disc of Secrets and make my own-- er, observations for myself. Whom do you know who could lead me?"
"I require no payment," Zee had said nobly, "but the mountain men who make their homes in the lower halves of the Ice-Capped mountains know how to navigate the terrain. Their men and women kill ice-animals and use the furs to make clothing and dwellings, instead of using silks like us. They are ruddier, sturdier, and have no villages...only a superficial settlement consisting of small caverns whose openings they seal with pelts, to block out the chill and snow."
"How do I come into contact with these Ice-People?" Dijaq had asked, peering into her eyes with deep intensity until Zee blushed and turned away.
"One of my uncles, Zijai, was born among the Ice-People. He disgraced his family by forcing himself upon a woman, and so my mother, Zeechek, was forced to flee the mountains and seek asylum in Looks Thrice, to prevent the family of the aggrieved woman from taking their anger out on her."
No wonder Zeechek had had so much trouble assimilating, Dijaq thought silently, but wisely kept the comment to himself.
"You need only travel into the mountains until you reach the first smatterings of ice among the conifers. You'll likely be stopped there by those who don't want their homes to be infiltrated; all you need to do is tell them that you know of Zijai. They'll be so terrified of Looks Thrice men coming to exact their own revenge-- even after all these years-- that they'll likely back off and tell you everything you need to know."
Dijaq gulped. "It all sounds very adventurous-- but supposing they don't?"
Zee only shrugged demurely, rose beautifully from her cross-legged position beside him, and marched back into the direction of her lodge without saying good-bye. The girl was quite good at hiding her true feelings-- but Dijaq was what they called a young man of special 'sensibilities'. He could tell that Zee had eyes for him. While she was a pretty girl, he could not bear to think of starting a life with any other woman, even Zee. Not when Ziuta was all alone in Hallow's Wood someplace.
And, hence, these plains ridden with permafrost, where he sat with increasing disquiet on Bora's back while the five ice mountain men efficaciously aimed their cross-bows at the timber-wolves, who threw themselves into the foray first. When the first bolt pierced its target's eye and drove the shaft home into the wolf's brain, the other shaggy animals slunk back, giving a few parting licks to their fallen comrade before melting back into the forest. The ice-cats, with their golden eyes shining on the carnage, decided against launching their own attacks and similarly vanished into the tree-line.
Triumphantly, the mountain men wheeled their steers around and galloped back to where Dijaq stood, their ruddy cheeks and dirty-white hair blazing beneath the light of the Twin Moons behind them.
"Now we ask our payment," the first demanded, thrusting out a hand.
Dijaq reached into his basket and reached for the smooth bartering pieces, removing twenty five of the precious stones and dropping them into the leader's hand (five shells for each man).
"There. I've done as I promised and paid you what the trip was worth," said Dijaq. "Now which of you will assume the lead and take me to the Disc of Secrets?"
"Bah! You ask for help like a scared little boy?" the leader threw his head back and laughed lustily, while his subordinates chittered and whispered behind their hands-- like women! "We have slain the wolf, chased away the ice-cat, and led you to the coppice where, even here, you can see the tip of the Disc of Secrets where we stand. The rest of the way can be navigated by yourself-- and yourself alone."
Dijaq thought wildly of the foreign animals. If they caught him alone-- "But--"
"We go no farther," said the leader tersely, nicking the reigns and beginning the trek back to the Ice-Capped Mountains. The pounding of hooves against the thick permafrost nonetheless kicked up tiny mushroom clouds of ice and dirt, until Dijaq's guides had disappeared and he stood alone at the edge of the Plain-- with Bora.
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Why haven't they come for me?
Ziuta hugged her stomach, weeping, ignoring the last vestiges of pain that emanated from her slowly-healing ribs. She sat with her back to a twisted bolberry root whose top had been blown away in a thunderstorm, with her cheek cradled in one hand to catch the tears that trickled from the corners of her eyes. Ziuta hated to cry, but even drawing down her second set of lids did not help.
Ziuta was bereft.
Duscha, Deema, and Disha had been powerless to support her. Disha crept forward on her forelegs and the tips of her great toes, like an anxious puppy, and carefully laid her colossal head in Ziuta's lap, but the girl only pushed her away and flung herself onto the grass, like a lifeless reed-doll tossed onto the ground by a careless toddler. Deema, forever the 'little Mother' who was sterner than the rest, tried a more austere approach.
"Get up," she snapped-- in as much as she could snap, having a voice with more fragrant charm than bolberry blooms in late spring. "You're much too old to lie there sniveling like a little child. You have much to learn if you are to become One with us. Now get up!"
"Leeme 'lone." Zeema mumbled into the grass.
"What was that?" asked Duscha sharply.
"I said, leave me alone!" Ziuta suddenly kicked out with one foot and collided with Duscha's tender nostril, causing the great beast to roar with sudden pain and rage. Duscha's sisters trembled with horror and crept backwards, trying to melt into the security of the shrubbery, and even Ziuta (expecting the worst) curled up into a protective ball.
But in the end, Duscha could do nothing.
"...Duscha?" Deema approached the Elder dragon and prostrated herself, as she would when showing the proper respect to a superior.
'What?" A blast of searing air assaulted Deema's face and scorched the backs of Ziuta's shapely legs, tuning them rosy-red with their powerful heat. Ziuta never moved.
"Sister, the girl kicked you. Kicked! She cannot be permitted to display such behavior to an Elder. It is not seemly--"
"She is grieving." Duscha turned her head away and averted her eyes, as she did when dismissing a subordinate.
"She is impertinent."
"She is a Star-Child...the Star-Child. As such, she can be neither harmed nor chastised, and I have no desire to."
"But--"
Duscha's lips peeled back into a formidable expression of derision as she bellowed her disapproval. Deema had had enough; with her tail between her legs, she backed off clumsily and skittered away into the brush.
"What shall we do for her?" asked Disha, as though the testy exchange had never occurred (while, at the same time, keeping a safe distance). "Ever since Duscha came back to the clearing with the flaxen-haired girl's blood on her claws, Ziuta has been inconsolable. She hasn't eaten. She hasn't drunk a thing...and her skin! Did you ever see one so pale, even among the Evening folk?"
Duscha inclined her head thoughtfully. "I hear your sentiments, and I think they are correct," she mused, "but we must handle the situation very delicately. All we can do is properly serve as the girl's protectors and be there during her periods of wretchedness. She misses her father, whom I'm told was left with little choice but to deny her before the People of Looks Thrice, and for a very long time before that, two young men who loved her very much rescued her when she might have been crushed to death. The boy, Dee-jak, bandaged her wounds. The young man Luka acted as her defender. All of that is gone now. Can you understand the fragility of the ordeal Ziuta is in?"
"But she was coping so well!" said Disha helplessly. "She had learned to swim like a small fish, spear them on little more than a pointed stick for food, and could even call that tasty, green-winged morsel with two fingers. Now she is despondent! What can we do to bring her out of this? If she starves herself, we will have failed in our most important mission of all!"
Duscha replied through clenched jaws. "Fail we shan't," she said grimly, "but without enough blood in her body, she will grow to weak to even stand." With a swooosh great enough to rattle the nests in their tree-tops, Duscha re-settled her wings. "Do you remember when Mother was pregnant with her last Offspring-- the one she passed that never hatched because of her frailty?"
"Yes..."
"She was severely anemic-- or that's the word she used. It is a condition in the Evening folk body that occurs when blood is lost or bone marrow does not make enough blood cells...or the blood cells that they do churn out are too thin and weak to function well."
"Bone marrow makes blood cells?" Disha looked intensely interested.
"Exactly," said Duscha, "and I believe that Ziuta is suffering from the same affliction. What she needs is good, fresh, red meat, to be smoked over a fire and fed to her over strong broth to help her red blood cells grow stronger." She turned to Disha. "Do you think you can do that?"
Disha was salivating before she'd even unsheathed her claws. "I know exactly where I can find a fresh cow," she said eagerly. "The flesh would sustain both Ziuta and us for a full week before we'd have to worry about finding any more food."
"Well, be off, then!" said Duscha impatiently. Disha obligingly took a short running start, spread her wings, canted them downward, and was swept upward with the wind currents in moments.
"And as for you, little one," Duscha added tenderly, trotting over to where Ziuta lay sprawled, sobbing, upon the grass, "we can't just leave you out to the elements, exposed so the nearest draft, timber-wolf, or Earth dragon can get to you. You need a place to live, Zai-oo-tah-- and with my dead sister Daara's help, I shall provide it for you."
Duscha delicately picked up the piece of Daara's hide that they had initially used to keep Ziuta warm and padded over to where Ziuta lay, dropping it clumsily over her arms and head. Ziuta did not bother to adjust it; instead she lay still and continued to mewl, like a lost little kitten.
Humming a thousand-decade old tune that even the near-extinct Earth dragon mothers knew how to use to placate their young, Duscha sniffed the ground in a broad circle, unsheathed her own claws, and began to excavate.
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A low, barely perceptible drone crooned in Dee's ear as he stood, ungraceful, in front of the coppice that led to the Disc of Secrets.
This would finally be it...Dee would at last have his chance to view the craft of legend that had brought his ancestors to this star-forsaken place of predators, dragons, and Sorceresses in Fortresses. Most of the only People who had claimed to see the Disc had been old timers, or those who confessed that their fathers had taken them on the dangerous excursion to the Disc's location. It was a revered object at the same time dismissed as a sort of fantasy, much as Noah's Ark had been for thousands of years on another world.
But to Dee, it was something even more special; it was the vessel which he would need to try to bring back to life again, in order to swift Zita off to the Jeweled Planet which was her destiny,
Leaving Bora tied loosely to one of the outlying saplings, Dijaq approached the copse-line and stepped into the forest. Within moments, he seemed transported into an eerie world that was quiet-- too quiet-- and as still before his eyes as paintings on blocked wood. Birds did not trill, and wood rats did not crackle through the brush. The silence was uncanny; the trees and shrubs grew so close together, in fact, that twisted brown roots coiled together like feuding serpents beneath a moist bed of leaves, and the lattice-like shadow of the leaves on the ground was hardly enough to let in the light of the Twin Moons. This was perfect territory for timber wolves, ice-cats...or Earth dragons.
How am I going to do this? These conditions are ripe for some animal to ambush me...what if I become hopelessly lost? What if I run out of food or drink? Supposing I reach the Disc and find it too dangerous to approach? I cold catch a horrible burn or disease-- and then what? Poor Ziuta will be stuck here, and there will be no telling what Dragura will do to her!
Questions nagged at him like pecking hens as Dee carefully side-stepped roots, gripping his blade where it was sheathed in the belt at his side and wishing he had worn a warmer tunic and leggings: the air was cool here, and reminded one of the Ice-Capped mountains. He was cold, he was frightened, and he was strung too high. Supposing there was nothing he could do for a ship that was allegedly more than five hundred years old? Pomoq's predictions and instructions had never been wrong and were always followed dutifully. What would he have to tell the Great Healer if he trudged home without success?
All the while, the dull hum in his head grew stronger. It was not quite like a sound he could hear, but a prickly *crackle* that plucked at his skin and made the hairs on the nape of his neck stand on end. To Dee, this was not a pleasant feeling-- not by a long shot.
He rounded a bend in the coppice, came at once upon a large clearing that was perhaps twice the size of Looks Thrice, and there he saw it: an aging, rusted, ancient husk of a craft that he could tell had once sported a majestic silver sheen. The part of it that stuck out of the ground jutted thirty feet into the air or more (Dee did a quick calculation and figured that the vessel might be at least sixty feet long if another thirty feet had been plunged into the soil), and the object was perfectly oblong-shaped, with a bit of concavity on the underside.
Gaping, Dee approached this venerable wonder with the proper respect and reverence, noting with discomfort that the hum (was it coming from the craft, even after all this time?) grew louder and began to irritate his ears. What looked like tiny, square windows lined the outside edge of the vessel from the point where it jutted from the ground all the way until the peak touched the sky, and Dijaq wondered if he approached one of these windows, if the surface would be too dusty for him to see inside. That was the most likely scenario, but if he could see-- what sorts of horrors would await him? The dead bodies of his ancestors? Or perhaps nothing at all?
"This is all insane," Dee muttered to himself, ignoring the sudden cries of alarm that came from Bora's sapling. Most likely she had been spooked by a wood rat; most cows, including mountain cows, were unusually frightened of them.
The hum grew so sonorous that Dijaq felt reflexively like covering his ears, but he continued to approach the ruined ship until only a mere ten feet separated the vessel from the young man. The surfaces looked rusty and worn, and while the windows seemed in pristine shape-- none had cracked upon impact-- they did seem dusty.
Dijaq held his breath and approached one of the windows, which was nearly level with his head at five feet above the ground. He ran a finger against the centuries' old coasting of dust and found with delight that most of it came off on his finger-tip, leaving a clear streak. So he would be able to see inside! What wonders would he be able to bring home and tell to Pomoq!
Using the long end of his tunic, he brushed aside the rest of the dust until the window was clear, held his breath, and peeked inside.
The interior was dark and musty-looking, with rows upon rows of seats lined up beside each other-- presumably where the passengers had buckled themselves for the terrifying crash to Weema. Dijaq looked at the seat closest to him and nearly turned green with what he saw; what looked as though it had once been a woman had been thrown out of her own seat and against the one in front of her. Her head had gone right through the back of the chair, and every bone in her body appeared broken, canted at odd angles. Her clothing and bits of hair remained in the hole in the seat, but it seemed as though, with such injuries, she mercifully had died quickly. On the floor in the aisle between the seats lay the mummified remains of a baby. Lying on the floor next to it, her emaciated arms clutching at the baby's night clothes, was the child's mother, eyes missing from her sockets and mouth puckered, as though her teeth had crumbled away to nothingness. Thick, cob-webbed tendrils of greenish hair (green!) covered the woman's back and the other half of her horrifying face.
Dijaq, who was close to vomiting, did not think that he could see anymore. He back away from the window.
So that is what my Ancestors looked like, he thought sadly. Pitiful vestiges of mummified bone and dessicated flesh covering the interior of the ship that crashed so many hundreds of years ago. But why did only some of us leave the ship and begin lives for ourselves? Why didn't those who survive leave the ship and come with us?
Bora bellowed again-- a sound that was more than mere annoyance at the antics of a wood rat-- and Dijaq's heart pounced in his chest. Tearing back the way he had come, he ignored the branches that tore scratch-marks in his arms and tripped at least twice on the twisted, torturous roots that had grown together over the millenia. Reaching the edge of the coppice at last, he could see what had terrified Bora so: there, hovering over her, balanced a magnificent specimen of Draca, with broad, parchment wings the loveliest shade of drake he had ever seen. She hovered there with her wings pounding the air and claws poised to strike, braying her intent to kill and levelling her snout at poor Bora, who had backed away from her as far as the rope would allow and was bawling in horror.
My cow! But what can I do with only a dagger?
Dijaq could only look on in helpless bafflement as the Draca dove, sunk her huge talons into Bora's back, and promptly made off with her, using her great wings to sweep her away into the night. The only thing that remained of Diaq's only companion was the cow's wide-eyed head, which had caught on the rope and torn free from the body when the Draca had absconded with her prize.
Dee sank down to the ground in front of the head, looked from it to the macabre vessel behind him, and felt a despair he never knew could have existed. The craft was full of the macabre, broken bodies of his ancestors, he was no closer to solving the mystery of how to get it to run in the first place...and now the only thing left of the cow that could have carried him out of this place was gone.
Was he doomed to failure for the whole of his life?
Dijaq hung his head and wept.
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