The Ghost Of A Chance Read online

that some big nasty orcs found her roaming that night and had their selves a hearty feast (though I half suspect the grizzly old cow would have no doubt stuck in their fangs).

 

  Every night, again and again, a babbler would posses our child and speak its incoherent ravings that none of us knew. And after each night our daughter picked up and learnt more of the words from the crazy babbling people that possessed her. After all, how was I to know that the strange creatures inside my child uttering nonsensical nonsense to my ears were in fact the very words that would help me and my kind establish a foothold that would see us become the main predator of the land? How was I to know?

 

  When we realized our daughter had no control over the babblers inside her, we of course stopped scolding her and instead listened to what she told us. She began teaching us the new strange words that the babblers had imprinted within her. As this went on the words grew, until slowly a language that the babblers called English began to form.

 

  This also meant that as each night went by and our child became possessed, we too could began to understand the speech of the babblers. At first we could only understand small snippets of language, but as the nights went by and our daughter taught us more English through the day, the babbling began to make sense and we realized that the voice inside her talked of many different things, all connected with the survival of our kind.

 

  The babblers first taught us how to defend ourselves against the orcs and wargs. How to make weapons to fight them, and armour and shields to defend ourselves from both claw and fang. They encouraged us to seek out more of our own kind and to form groups and teach others these new methods. Of course as I have stated before, group forming attracts the attention of both large hordes of orcs and wargs. The difference now was we could fight back against them, our armour countering there tooth and claw, and our weapons piercing there thick hides and spilling there life juice from there dirty scabby flesh.

 

  And as we joined with others, forming ourselves into a larger and larger tribe, we learnt that sometimes other children of a similar age to my daughter spawned from these new people and had also been given the gift to home a babbler within them at night. This I remember at the time was actually a great relief as it meant our daughter was not unique as we had first suspected. It also meant that more advice was being given at night, in fact at it’s height our tribe had seventeen chosen-ones that the babblers would use to preach there methods to us.

 

  Within two years since the first babbler possessed my daughter, I now understood English and through her and the other chosen-ones teachings I was even becoming competent at reading and writing. I was also beginning to form a successful tribe, becoming a wise chief and leading a large group of people. Through my daughter and the other chosen-ones the babblers taught us how to fight as an army, build houses surrounded by walls to keep out the unwanted, turn the earth and plant seeds to grow great fields of crops, fish the rivers and farm the land, and a hundred other different useful things and ideas.

  We learnt how to hunt and trap, to capture animals such as cows, sheep, pigs, ducks and geese. They even taught us how to breed and farm them as well, using not only the meat, but the skins as clothes, and the bones as tools. In fact, the amount of things we were taught by the babblers in those first few years was truly astounding.

  Everything from essential skills such as cooking, medicine and hygiene, to pastimes to amuse and entertain such as music, song, dance and story-telling.

 

  Also, when our tribe grew too big to support all the people, it began to split up and new settlements were formed in other parts of the land. We could even communicate with one another using a remarkable animal called a pigeon (good eating as well) to send messages to other tribes.

 

  Hopefully you who are reading this, know something of this last part. So I shall leave out the finer points of how the newer tribes came to be. One thing I will say is that I pray we carry on progressing and our people and ways continue growing stronger year in and year out.

 

  The babblers have told us though that soon there visitations will become less, but to continue growing and seeking out even more new people. They have hinted that this land that we find ourselves living in was once ruled by some of their kind and bears pretty much the same name as the very English that we now speak to each other in. This place we now know to have once been called England should be explored (I have recently found that the tribe I formed inhabits a northern corner of England and according to a babbler was once the very same place that one of their villages stood. And so we too have named this place Tremwell like our saviours before us) they tell us for we are not the only ones that the babblers have helped.

 

  This is but a small part of mine and my people’s story, and although there are many gaps and things we still do not understand I write down the information what I know and believe to be true. Perhaps someone else someday may discover this writing, perhaps even myself in years to come will add to it and give better explanations to some of the strange and baffling scenarios I have hinted at.

  ……………..

  From the notes of Julie, daughter of Collin of the North East Tribe:

  Where to start. Hmmm…

  I have just read an account I found while rummaging through some of my fathers belongings that he must have wrote some twenty years ago detailing what he remembered at that time. It does not surprise me that he had the foresight to document what he knew by writing down what he could remember for the purpose of telling the future generations something of how our civilisation all started. He always thought first for the future of our race, after all it was he alone that brought together the people of the “North-East Tribe” and fought off the orcs and wargs.

  I can’t help but wonder if he knew that I would be the one to find this piece of writing if anything happened to him. I know that he always wanted me to be as proud as he was for what the two of us did in those early years.

  I remember very little of my childhood, and as a teenager when my father reminisced of those times, recalling with much pride how he (with the help from the information gained from my many possessions) brought together a group of people to form one of the first great tribes, I would make my excuses and leave. When he began to realise I had a problem with the past he of course never talked of that time to me again.

  I suppose in a way it was a happy time, a time when we as a people grew and became what we are today.

  It’s just the thought of all those possessions, and the way the babblers would take me over in my sleep. I still have nightmares some fifteen years after my last possession, and I know it’s silly as we owe everything to the babblers but…well…it’s hard to explain. I suppose it’s the thought that someday they may return and perhaps take me over completely. And that is perhaps why he hid it between the pages of my favourite book, knowing that when I was older I would be able to deal with my inner demons and instead look back on the past and the part I played and be proud of what I and he did back then.

  Of course, at the time there was no way he could know the disease affecting him would prevent his adding to the account in later years…damn amnesia. It has affected many of the people of a similar age to dad. He never complains, and he reminds me that actually he is fortunate to have lived so long and we all have to die of something now that the wargs and the orcs are nearly all gone. Still, it is not nice to witness this great man slowly becoming less and less, his memory, personality and intelligence fading by the day. Even the babblers apparently had found no cure for it. No doubt when he wrote his account of those years of struggle, he did plan on returning to it in years to come and adding greater detail, but it’s the fact that he hid it within the pages of “The Lord Of The Rings” that makes me think he knew that if anything was to happen to him that I would find it.

  As a child you see,
the Ring Trilogy had always been a favourite of mine, in fact it was through these books that I got the names for the orcs and the wargs from which we have now nearly wiped from our land. It turns out I’m not the only one to use this method, many other people from different parts of the land used a similar technique when naming those creatures. One example for instance that I can think of off hand is a tribe down south called the Eloi who did exactly the same thing using a book they had found to name the orcs. They however called them Morlocks, this name coming from a different book which at present I have not read.

  Now of course since we have learnt more and advanced technically in many scientific areas, we have discovered ways in which to analyse the very D.N.A structure of all things, and through the more specialised scientific books and the teachings of the babblers we know now that these creatures are actually genetically mutated by what we believe was some kind of disaster, war, or experimentation that had virtually wiped the babblers out.

  Through our discoveries we believe the orcs to be a genetic mutation of ourselves, and the wargs a similar mutation from the many dogs that the babblers would have owned at the time.

  Anyway I’m getting ahead of myself. The reason I