Greenways Read online

  ‘I’ve laid on a little feast for you to celebrate my latest discovery, which one day you will find of great use, no doubt.’ Mec sat himself down opposite Kel, and began passing the bowls of delicacies to him, Kel taking one each of those which took his fancy, but avoiding the ones he wasn’t familiar with out of sheer habit.

  ‘When you have had your fill of those you have chosen, I would like you to try one of these.’ said Mec, showing Kel a wizened black-coloured berry.

  ‘It may not look much, but it may save your life one day. I have lived the whole of one cycle of the lesser sun on one of these berries per day, together with a little water, and I feel well and full of energy, as usual. If you were thinking of making a long journey, and were not sure of what food to eat, then a few of these may well save you from losing your strength, or even starving.’

  Was this the surprise Mec said he had in store? Kel didn’t think much of it, and was a little disappointed. He was eager to get on with the story telling, as he had a lot of questions to ask, and each of them would need a story to provide the full answer he thought.

  ‘All right Mec, I’ll try your new black fruit now.’ said Kel, a little impatiently, having eaten his fill and eager to get it done with and on to more important things. After all, it was the wonderful stories he had come to hear, not mess about tasting some ugly black fruit-like thing which probably tasted foul anyway.

  ‘First, watch this.’ said Mec, picking up one of the black berries and dropping it into a small gourd of water. The black wrinkled sphere swelled up the instant it hit the water, and very soon filled the little gourd, all the water having been absorbed into the fruit which was now like a firm skinned deep purple ball.

  ‘Take it out and taste it,’ invited Mec, ‘it’s quite harmless and you’ll be surprised at what you find.’

  Kel did as he was bid, and took a tentative bite out of the purple sphere. His eyes opened wide as the sweet thick juice trickled down from the corners of his mouth and the flavours exploded on his palette. Flavours? Yes, there were many of them, running one into the other as the juice ran back down his throat, touching the different areas of his taste buds.

  ‘Well, that’s a pleasant surprise.’ said Kel, eagerly taking another bite out of the glistening sphere.

  ‘You will notice that you could carry quite a lot of them in a small bag hung from your waist belt, and yet they would provide you with many days worth of good nourishing food, that’s if you can find the water to go with them, and that’s usually possible.’ Mec sat back on his stool with a pleased smile on his face.

  ‘Now that’s only one of the surprises I have in store for you, the other one will take a little explaining. Do you remember the tale of the forest floor, and how dark it is?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kel, ‘that’s one of the stories I wanted you to tell me about again.’

  ‘Well, you don’t know why we need to go down there at the moment, so I’ll have to explain that, but down there we have to go, sometimes. We have to wait at the lowest level for some little while to get our eyes accustomed to the very faint light’. Mec paused to sample another of the black shiny fruits he was so pleased with.

  ‘During that time we are vulnerable to being attacked by whatever thinks we are good for a meal, so if we could see a little better we would stand a better chance of surviving.

  ‘I had noticed that some of the strange flying creatures sometimes give out a light to attract one another and some fungi also glow in the dark when the lesser sun is absent. I have been collecting some of these things which glow in the dark, and extracting the juices from them. It has taken a long time, but I have now found that by mixing certain juices together, they too will glow in the dark, and at the time of the lesser sun not giving us light, I found that I could see quite well to walk around safely once my eyes got used to the low light level.’

  Kel looked surprised at the idea of being able to make light, and asked to see it actually working.

  ‘Be patient, young man, and you shall see it, and one day may even use it to guide your way in dark places. I have reduced the juices to a dried powder, so all you have to do is add a little of each powder to some water, shake it up a little, and you have light!. Here, let me show you, I can see you are bursting with curiosity.’ Mec got up from his seat with an ill concealed chuckle and went into another of the little rooms which went around the wall of the main cave.

  ‘Here, you can do it yourself. Take a little of that powder and some of that one, and drop them into that insect body case. You can see that the case of the insect is transparent, so if we can make light inside it, the light will come through the casing. Good, now add a little water and shake it up.

  ‘There, you see, it glows. How well can you see in here if I stand in the opening blocking out the external light?’

  Kel let his eyes get used to the gloom, and was surprised to be able to see details of the little room slowly getting better and better.

  ‘This is wonderful,’ said Kel, ‘I can see quite well. We shall be able to see to go about the walkways when the lesser sun fails to shine now.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ said Mec, ‘this is to be kept for special purposes, when we really need to use the light, and anyway it is very difficult and time consuming to make the powders in the first place.’

  Kel looked a little disappointed at this rebuff, but saw the reasoning behind it, and then cheered up considerably when he was offered another of the sweet tasting shiny black spheres.

  ‘Oh, I meant to have told you earlier, on my way here I came across what I think might be one of the new creatures which has been proving troublesome to our neighbouring group. It was in the main branch and had made a hiding hole deep beneath the bark of the walkway.’

  Kel then went on to tell how he had tempted the creature to take his bait, and the marking of the danger spot afterwards.

  ‘You did well Kel, but you must take very great care when approaching such creatures, as they are very quick to act, and so far we don’t know very much about them, except that they are new to this area of the forest.

  ‘I’ve heard from several of the other groups dotted about the forest that they have been experiencing an influx of these new creatures for some time now, and lost quite a few group members, but this is the first time that one of them has come into our area of the forest. I don’t know if this is a new breed of animal or one that has migrated into this area, but it is a serious threat none the less, and we must find a way of combating it.’ Mec looked pensive as he left the little room and went out into the main cave.

  Kel followed, hoping that this wasn’t the end of the story telling as he had been looking forward to it for some time.

  ‘I have an idea, but it’s only an idea at this stage. You probably don’t know about it, but up in the higher layers of the forest there is a plant which produces a large round skin like bag of dust which is deadly to most creatures which inhale it. I have only been told about it as something to avoid at all costs. It would seem that the dust is something like the spores which come from some of the fungi we use, but of a totally different kind to ours, and for some reason it kills just about anything which it contacts.

  ‘We may be able to use it to our advantage if we can find a safe way to handle it and get the creature to take a bite. Anyway, I’ll let you know if I come up with some means of ridding us of the creature as I am sure you would want to be in on the kill, as it were.’

  Kel sensed that was the end of that particular subject, at least until Mec had worked out how to tackle the creature in more detail.

  Mec began to gather up the little pots which lay scattered about the floor of the main cave, and Kel joined him in the task, to delay his leaving by being useful.

  ‘Be careful not to get the contents on your hands.’ Mec called out as he arranged the pots he had collected on a shelf at the back of the cave.

  ‘They are not as deadly as the powder bag I was telling you about, but some could give you a
nasty skin burn.’

  When they had finished tidying up the pots, Kel wondered if he would be asked to leave for the day, and must have shown his thoughts on his face, for Mec said with a smile,

  ‘And now for your questions, young Kel. You deserve some reward for visiting me.’

  They both retired to the little room where they had eaten earlier, and after Mec produced some more refreshments, sat down on the gourd stools.

  ‘Well, what’s the first story you want to hear.’ asked Mec, settling his back against the wall of the room and crossing his outstretched legs.

  ‘The story of the greater and lesser knives, please.’ replied Kel politely.

  ‘All right. As you know, the greater knives are only given to those who reach a certain age, which you will soon attain, and there is a very good reason for this. The larger knives are not easy to come by, and are only given to those who will look after them and use them very carefully. The lesser knives are more numerous, and so we can afford to give them to anyone who we think is capable of using them sensibly.

  ‘Now, you are about to ask, how do the knives come about? Well, we make them. There is an area deep in the forest known as the killing sands, and it is from there that we get the material for the knives. A very long time ago, according to legend, it was discovered that a glassy black stone found in the killing sands, if hit with another hard stone, would shatter into long shards, and these pieces are the basis of our knives. There are a lot more of the little shards as some are made when we trim the larger ones to shape. The strange thing is that when the black stone breaks, it always does so leaving a very sharp edge’.

  Mec paused to bite into one of the large yellow berries he had brought in, spitting out the seeds with great accuracy into a large gourd pot at his feet while he munched the succulent fruit.

  ‘Sorry Kel, do please help yourself, don’t wait for me to ask you. Now where was I? Oh yes, the knives. The handles which protect your hands from the very sharp cutting edge are also made by us, and without them, the black cutting stones would be of little value to us.’

  ‘We use the juice from the stave plant mixed with fine wood dust scraped from a piece of dead wood. The handle end of the blade is dipped into the mixture and then given a quick dip into a bowl of urine when this has set a little, it is recoated with the juice and wood dust mix, dipped into the urine bowl again, and so on, slowly building up in thickness to form a protective handle.

  ‘So that’s how the knives are made. I’m sure you can see why we look after them so very carefully, for not only are they difficult to make, but the getting of the shiny black stones in the first place is not without its difficulties. As I said earlier, those who actually collect the stones from the killing sands die, and do so in a very unpleasant way. Also the sands are a very long way from here, and take several cycles of the greater sun to reach, and just as many for the return journey.

  ‘Usually, those who have been brave enough to recover the shiny stones have died before they can return home. Shortly after leaving the sands, they get very sick, and quite unable to hold any food down for more than a few moments, and then all their body hair loosens and comes out as soon as it is touched by anything. This is followed by black marks like bruises appearing, and shortly after that they die.

  ‘But that was a very, very long time ago. What happens now, and has done for some considerable time, is that when a member of the tribe gets to be very old and near to death, they are taken to the killing sands and there retrieve some of the shiny stones. As they are going to die soon, it is considered the last helpful act that they can do for the group.

  ‘There is no compulsion to do this, but very few refuse. As far as I know, none of the stone gatherers have ever survived long enough to get back to their group area, but as they were so near death anyway, it matters little’.

  Kel saw the sad look on Mec’s face, and didn’t really know what to say, although he felt he should say something.

  ‘The killing sands are linked to several other stories.’ Mec said, after a long pause.

  ‘There is one story, or I should say legend, about the giants who walked this world long, long before we were here. They were four or five times as tall as we are, if you can believe that, and lived in ‘Sitys’, whatever they might be.

  ‘They may be like my tree cave, but a lot larger, I don’t know, and I don’t know anyone who does. It is said that they had things in which a lot of them could travel, instead of walking as we do, but I can’t imagine what they would be like, and it’s only a story.’

  ‘Where have all the giants gone?’ asked Kel, eager to keep the stories going.

  ‘Nobody knows. It is said there was a time of the Great Lights, very bright lights, much brighter than the greater sun when seen from the top of the forest, and after that there were no more giants, or anything else much for that matter.

  ‘Some story tellers think that the killing sands are something to do with the disappearing giants, but no one knows for sure as it all happened so very long ago, and we have nothing much to go on except the stories themselves.’

  ‘What are the sands like?’ asked Kel, his appetite now well and truly whetted for more.

  ‘So it is said, there are several of them throughout the great forest. The one nearest here is like a vast circular area on which nothing will grow, and it would take several cycles of the greater sun to walk across it, although no one has ever done so to my knowledge. It’s just fine sand, the like of which you will sometimes find lodged in the base of some of the water gathering plants, blown there by the wind, I would suspect.’

  ‘Sometimes on the surface, and sometimes half buried in the sand, are the shiny black stones. They are very heavy, and like nothing else we have ever found, and not at all like the hard stones we collect from the forest floor.’

  Kel noticed that Mec’s voice had dropped a tone, and this was usually a signal that the meeting was coming to an end, and he still had a whole host of other questions he wanted to ask. So he didn’t take the hint.

  ‘I think it’s time you went back to your group, Kel. They will worry about you as the greater sun will soon be giving little light to guide you, and the lesser sun is not due with any brightness for several cycles yet.’ Mec clearly saw the look of disappointment on Kel’s face and added, ‘You can come again tomorrow, and we will discuss how to get rid of the new creature you found today.’

  With that, Kel reluctantly got up from his seat, thanked Mec for his time and the stories he had related, and left the tree cave. The light was already beginning to fail, and the weak lesser sun would not be up for a while, so he had to tread carefully along the trail in the middle of the branch, although the branch itself was ten times his height in width.

  There was one nasty little creature which made them keep to the well worn pathways, and that was a worm-like thing which would very quickly bore into your foot if you stood too long in any one place. It was very difficult to remove once having gained entry, usually leaving the head imbedded deep in the flesh, and this would then later erupt into a running sore which refused to heal.

  For some reason the worm creature didn’t like hiding underneath an area which was well trodden, and so Kel and his people kept to the tracks, and the worm stayed in the undisturbed area to the side of the pathways, to catch other unwary prey which didn’t know about its hiding place.

  Carefully skirting the red marked danger area of the creature he had baited earlier, Kel realized he needed a drink of water, and went up a side branch to where he knew some of the many types of water plants grew.

  Although one of the smaller members of the species, the green and yellow striped plant was twice as tall as he was, being composed of a series of sheath like leaves arranged in a circle, water having collected at the base from the frequent rains which dribbled down from the lofty forest canopy above.

  Breaking off a thin twig a little longer than his arm, Kel placed one foot on a new bud which was growing out from t
he base of the plant and reached up to dangle the twig over the lip of the lowest of the cup-shaped water reservoirs. He didn’t have long to wait. There was a violent commotion in the water and he withdrew the twig to find a Snapper had a firm grip on the other end of it.

  An over sized head equipped with a double row of pure white teeth had a firm grip on the twig and was furiously trying to free itself from what it suddenly realized wasn’t a meal after all, but the teeth had penetrated the wood and wouldn’t come loose.

  Kel deftly flicked the stick with the Snapper attached to it over the side of the cupped shaped leaf, and then tossed it out over the edge of the branch he was standing on. Some moments later it would reach the forest floor and no doubt provide a meal for some hungry denizen of the depths, although there wasn’t a lot of flesh on a Snapper as it was all head, and even that was mostly composed of chisel sharp teeth.

  Just about every water plant had a Snapper in each compartment, and unless one wanted to lose a large part of one’s nose, it was sensible to rid the pool of its occupant before drinking.

  He never could understand how the Snapper thing worked. You could rid a pool of its Snapper, and the next time you visited the same pool there would be another one in residence. Never two, just the one. Where did they come from? And always the same size, just big enough to do one a bit of serious damage, but not life threatening.

  The forest certainly didn’t make life easy for the group, and he supposed all the other creatures felt the same way about it, for everything was chased or eaten by something.

  Having freed the pool of its guardian, Kel broke off another twig, and repeated the procedure just in case there was another one present, which there never was, but it was better to be safe than sorry. As the twig didn’t try to wrench itself out of his hand, he assumed the pool was now empty of flying teeth, and it was now safe to take a drink.