Greenways Read online

  GREENWAYS

  D. B. REYNOLDS-MORETON

  Greenways

  This edition Copyright © 2011 by sci-fi-cafe.com.

  www.sci-fi-cafe.com

  Story Copyright © 1998 by D. B. Reynolds-Moreton

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  ISBN 978-1-908387-32-5 (ePUB)

  ISBN 978-1-908387-33-2 (MOBI)

  eBook production by Oxford eBooks

  www.oxford-ebooks.com

  The Invitation.

  Kel was trotting nimbly along the well worn pathway in the middle of one of the main branches, occasionally glancing upwards to look for whip tendrils when he saw something move on the path ahead. He stopped dead in mid stride.

  This sudden halt was almost automatic through years of training and realizing the possible consequences of not doing so when confronted by the unexpected.

  Just ahead of him, the pathway was brightly illuminated by a shaft of light from the Greater Sun, which had somehow filtered down through the dense green canopy overhead and the path looked normal enough, but something had moved on the surface of the track, and that didn’t usually happen.

  He had only caught a glimpse of movement, a mere twitch of the surface, but that was enough to tell him that all was not as it appeared to be.

  Kel moved a little closer to the suspect portion of the pathway but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, except perhaps a tiny crack in the worn surface of the bark which covered the mighty branch.

  He should have been carrying his stave with him as they all did when away from the group, but as it was only a short journey to the Story Teller’s cave, so he hadn’t bothered this time.

  Kel broke a small twig off a nearby bough to act as a marker on the pathway, and then went back up the track to where he knew there was a stave plant growing in the crotch of a side branch.

  The stave plant had to be treated with a fair amount of caution, as the juice from its severed end was deadly if left in contact with the skin for any length of time, so a little ritual had been devised to protect the stave gatherers from the deadly liquid.

  From the outer edge of the main clump Kel selected a stave of the right length for what he had in mind, and withdrew his lesser cutting knife from its pouch on his belt. Very carefully he made a deep incision around the base of the bamboo like stave, making sure that his feet were as far away from the plant as possible while still maintaining his balance in a crouching position.

  Having completed the encircling cut, he gathered up several handfuls of assorted leaves which had accumulated at the bottom of the plant, and pressed them around the now oozing cut on the stave, making very sure he didn’t allow any of the corrosive juice to get on his hands. Reaching up into the clump, he then pulled off two of the long ribbon like leaves from the stave plant and bound the leaves into a loose pad encompassing the cut at the base of the stem.

  Taking a firm grip on the stave at shoulder height, Kel now rocked the stem back and forth and from side to side, the milky white juice spurting harmlessly out into the pad of leaves and trickling down the remainder of the stem, eventually no doubt to be reabsorbed by the plant, for nothing went to waste in the forest.

  When it looked as though all the deadly sap had been drained from the stem, he repositioned his grip and bent it down towards the surface of the main branch on which he stood, throwing all his weight behind the last thrust as the stave came level.

  There was a sharp crack, and the stave was now free, but the end was still covered in the sticky thick milk-like fluid and so was not safe for him to use as yet.

  Positioning the base of the new stave between his feet and turning it slowly, Kel allowed a small trickle of his urine to run down to the cut end, which he held just above the surface of the pathway.

  Someone, a long time ago, had discovered quite accidentally no doubt, that the uric acid in urine reacted with the plant juice, converting it into a hard and harmless resinous substance and so the ritual of stave manufacture had been passed on down through the generations to the present day, although the actual chemistry of the process would have been well beyond their understanding.

  Slowly the milky-white fluid on the end of the stave began to thicken, turning a pale honey brown colour, and while the hardening process continued, Kel got to thinking of the day when he would be presented with the Greater Cutting Knife, a sure sign of manhood and a place of respect within the group.

  As far as he could make out, there were only a few more cycles of the lesser sun to bring him up to the age of manhood, and then he would have a proper long-bladed cutting knife, a truly fearful weapon.

  The cutting knives were the group’s most treasured possessions, and responsibility for their safe keeping was drummed in at an early age and then reinforced again later when the coming of age ceremony was held.

  Kel had been on his way to the Story Teller, hoping to learn about one of the lesser stories, the one about the cutting knives, when the journey had been interrupted by the bark moving on the pathway.

  The blob of resinous compound on the end of the stave had now turned a dark brown colour and hardened, and it was at this point that Kel knew it was safe to use the stave as the juice within it had been rendered harmless.

  He needed some bait to put on the stave to tempt whatever it was underneath the pathway to show itself, and to this end he looked around for a large fruiting body or seed pod to adorn the end of the stave with.

  As Kel made his way back to the marker twig he had left on the main branch, he noticed a large purple globe, about the size of his head, hanging down from a vine over one of the side branches. It wasn’t one of the normal food fruits, and he couldn’t recall having seen one like it before, so this too must be treated with a degree of caution.

  Leaving the main branch, he went along the side spur and then climbed up a lesser bough so that he was level with his target. Wrapping both legs tightly around the branch, he leaned out and gave the purple pod a poke with his stave. It just swung back and forth on its long thin stem, slowly coming to rest again after a short while. It hadn’t emitted a swarm of angry insects, which some pods did, nor did it squirt out any noxious fluid to warn off anything wishing to use it for a meal.

  Increasing his grip on the branch, Kel lined the stave up with the pod and stabbed at it firmly, aiming for the point where it joined the vine from which it hung. The first attempt was unsuccessful, causing the pod to swing wildly to and fro, narrowly missing his head.

  As the pod swung back out of his reach, he noticed a strange smell, almost like that of an animal which had died many days ago.

  Maybe this was the defence which the pod used to prevent it from being eaten he thought, but then some of the strange creatures of the forest seemed to prefer old carcasses to a fresh kill.

  As this was a new discovery, there would be much to learn from it, and he would report any details he could gather to his group upon returning.

  A second stab at the pod produced better results, and as the pod swung away from him, now captive on the end of the stave, he was nearly pulled off the branch.

  Gently Kel pulled the stave towards him, and as the pod drew nearer, the smell increased to the point where he wrinkled his nose in disgust at the aroma of rotting meat.

  There was no way he would touch the purple pod with his hands until he knew a little more about it, so he drew it as near to him as the hangin
g vine would allow, and then jammed the stave between the branch on which he sat and his body.

  Carefully reaching out with the lesser knife in his hand, Kel severed the pod from its supporting stem, and was nearly catapulted from his perch as the full weight of the pod came onto the end of the stave as it bent down under the unexpected load.

  He could feel the roughness of the bark cutting into his legs as he increased his grip still further to prevent himself from being spun round underneath the bough, and grimaced at the searing pain.

  After he had regained his balance, Kel slowly drew the stave toward him, sliding it beneath his body bit by bit, the noxious odour of the pod getting stronger as it came ever nearer to his twitching nostrils.

  By the time he had the pod within hands reach, he realized that he had been holding his breath, and let it out with a great whoosh, only to refill his lungs with the overpowering stench of something long since dead.

  Regaining his feet, Kel drove the stave a little deeper into the smelly pod to make sure it didn’t slip off, and then began the journey back to the marker twig to see what lay beneath the suspect area of pathway.

  There had been various rumours for some time now of a new creature in the area, something which lived under the surface of the branches and grabbed its prey as it passed by overhead.

  Two people of the neighbouring group had been lost this way, disappearing down a hole which had opened up in a branch and then seemed to cover itself up again, leaving no trace of what had happened. Things were forever changing in the forest, and not always for the better.

  Kel wondered if the twitching bark on the pathway was the home of one such creature, although none had been spoken of it in their area of the forest.

  With great care he approached the suspect part of the branch, and then pushed the pod on the end of his stave towards the area of the bark which had twitched earlier. With the purple fruit positioned directly over the faint line in the surface, Kel stood waiting for some sort of reaction, ready to leap backwards if it should happen too near him.

  Perhaps he had been mistaken and there wasn’t anything under the bark after all. He was about to give up the idea of tempting whatever it was under the pathway to show itself, for nothing untoward had happened for several minutes, and then it did, and with a suddenness which took him completely by surprise.

  The bark of the huge branch had burst open with a soft ripping sound, the two halves of a trapdoor springing inwards while a grey shiny tentacle whipped out wrapping itself around the purple pod and stripping it off the end of the stave so quickly that Kel hardly felt the jerk. The two halves of the door to the creature’s hiding place snapped shut in the same instant that the pod disappeared, and all was still again.

  It had all happened so quickly that Kel didn’t even have a chance to step back, so it was just as well that he was outside the range of the creature when it struck the pod. He still had his stave, and as it was about four times as long as he was high, he thought it would probably be safe enough to tap the trapdoor to see if the creature would appear again.

  Kel tapped and banged on the trapdoor for all he was worth, but got no response from the creature within. Maybe it was still eating the pod, or the pod had poisoned it.

  There was only one thing left to do before reporting the event to the rest of the group, and so he took the marker pod from his belt and rubbed it in a large circle around the area of the trapdoor, a warning to all to be on guard against possible danger.

  The marker pods were a recent find for the group, and although they had only been in use for a relatively short period of time, had proved their worth many times over.

  They grew in an area which was shared by Kel’s group and the next nearest one in the forest, and when it was found that they were no use as a food source, someone had discovered that if they were rubbed hard on a rough surface, the juice which exuded from them dried a deep red colour and was ideal as a warning mark for anything dangerous.

  Everyone now carried one of the new marker pods, and little red marks were appearing on rotten branches, dangerous fruits and plants, and now suspect areas of bark on the main trackways would also be marked.

  Life was getting a little safer now, but then new hazards were springing up out of nowhere every now and again, so all in all, some sort of balance was maintained by nature.

  Kel continued his journey to the Story Teller’s cave in one of the mighty tree trunks which reared up from the forest floor to the dizzying heights above, wondering if the wise old man would be able to shed any light on the new threat to the group.

  He looked up as something above him screamed. Very few people had ever gone all the way up to the top of the forest, as it took such a long time to climb up to the sky, and there were all sorts of new hazards along the way.

  They had quite enough trouble dodging the perils of their own level without getting used to new ones at other layers in the great forest complex. Also, the light from the greater sun was far too bright for most of those who had made the effort and reached the top of the forest as it hurt their eyes, so it wasn’t a popular place to go.

  The forest floor was a very long way down, and almost as dark during the day, as the night was at the level in which the group lived when the lesser sun failed to rise, which it did at regular intervals. Also the lower one went, the wetter it got, and at ground level there were large pools of water which, according to the Story Teller, contained huge creatures that were always hungry for anything which wandered or fell their way.

  Kel spent as much time as he could at the Story Teller’s cave, fascinated by the tales of the past and the strange monsters which lived at the different levels in the forest.

  There were the greater tales, telling of the group’s major events through time, the stories of the greater and lesser sun, the litany of foods which were safe to eat, creatures to avoid and the general laws of the group.

  The lesser tales were more specific, dealing with a single item, and it was the tale of the greater and lesser cutting knives which Kel wanted to hear again.

  As he neared the cave of the Story Teller, Kel took extra care as this was an area well known for its propensity of whip tendrils, and although many of them had been cut down to make it safe for those travelling along the great branch highway, more could well have grown since the last cutting.

  Kel remembered the story told of the time before they had the cutting knives, and how their movements were very restricted as the tendrils somehow seemed to sense that moving food was around and grew in huge numbers.

  Before the time of the knives, if anyone was caught by a tendril that was the end of them. But now, if you acted quickly enough, the first tendril to wrap around you could be cut, and if you were lucky and didn’t fall to the forest floor, you lived to tell the tale, although many in their enthusiasm to rid themselves of the dreaded creepers cut themselves at the same time, and then suffered a slow death from the fungus which seemed to grow very rapidly in open wounds.

  No one knew for sure if the whip tendrils were animal or vegetable, but it was thought they were some type of animal as they moved so quickly, whereas most plant creatures were slower in their movements, but made up for their lack of rapid response in the cunning way they set their traps.

  The Story Teller lived apart from the main group, but no one knew why and few had ever thought to ask him. He was held in some reverence as his knowledge of medicinal plants and what could be eaten was paramount to the group’s survival, and without this they would not continue as a race for very long.

  The story telling was just entertaining for most, but held a strange fascination for the ever curious Kel, and he never tired of listening to the old legends of the past and how things had come about.

  The cave in the main trunk of the giant tree was part natural, it was thought, and part made by previous Story Tellers. It had a main room and several smaller side rooms in which food and the tools of his trade were stored.

  Although th
e Story Teller didn’t look all that old, the oldest member of the group maintained that he had looked just the same when he had been a youth, so the Story Teller’s age was something of an enigma to those few who ever bothered to think about it.

  Kel often wondered what would happen to the group if a misfortune befell the Story Teller, as there was no one else to take his place and his knowledge would die with him. He didn’t like to mention this to him in case it somehow brought about the feared disaster, and he had a sneaky feeling that he would be offered the job if he did, and that wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life.

  The branch on which Kel now stood had broadened out where it joined the vast main trunk as it soared ever upwards to the sky above.

  It was here that the Story Teller grew his little garden of special plants which were used to treat the ills of the group, not that they were taken ill very often, but when they did, it was usually fatal unless treated quickly.

  He remembered once as a child being brought here by an elder, and being made to drink some foul concoction to cure a fever, not that he could remember the fever itself, but the memory of the medicine remained.

  Stepping carefully on the narrow clearway between the plants, Kel made his way to the entrance of the cave and called Mec by name, being one of very few in his group who had that honour.

  ‘Come in young man,’ the Story Teller replied, ‘I thought you might be along soon, so I’ve made some food ready, and I have a little surprise for you as well.’

  Kel stepped into the gloom of the tree cave, careful not to tread on a series of little pots which littered the floor and made his way over to Mec, the Story Teller, who was bent over a bench against the far wall of the cave.

  ‘What’s the surprise you have for me?’ asked Kel, always eager to learn of anything new.

  ‘That, you will have to wait for. We will eat first while I tell you what I’ve been doing, and why.’

  Mec lead the way into one of the smaller side caves, and motioned Kel to sit down on a stool made from a large gourd. Before him was an array of fruits which he knew well, some of which were quite rare and considered a great delicacy among the group, and here they were in plenty, together with some he had never seen before.