PULL ME UNDER - Leaf And Stream - Eight

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Eight

Ddun had a warm belly full of meat and mead and still the sights of the camp irritated him. Tanner didn’t let them keep the gun without first taking all the ammunition from it, which everyone agreed was fair. He knew how to wield it and they didn’t and he convinced them they’d just wind up killing each other. It was now a sacred object, not just a curiosity of value.

The Grandmothers were sisters and as such they argued incessantly over the thing, their shrill insults at each other like a veil of noise over the camp. Ignoring it, every man wanted to hold the gun and smell it and run their hands over the metal as if it were a woman.

Tanner and Lauren were still exiled from the camp, and there was an itch in Ddun to see them, to leave the bickering and perversion behind, and he sought out their little fire.

“What is that book?” he asked, her head still not rising to him as he sat loose-limbed next to her.

“My sketchbook.”

“What is it you’re doing?”

“Drawing.”

“Seems wasteful.” Books were precious, hard to come by. Why not use canvas—

She huffed. Did that offend her? He felt very stupid at the realization, but there was no time to rectify it. “Well, where we come from it’s not. I just needed to draw.”

Her silhouette glowed in a haze of orange from the fire, her scent carried on the breeze. She hadn’t been bathed and the thick clothes held in her sweat. He leaned in close to see the book, trying to ignore the curves of her collarbone poking out from above the strange shirt, or her breasts or cheeks or pout. The page was full of lines and smears of black and grey that shone in the firelight, the shapes looking just like an animal, but he couldn’t name it. The light she imagined there played off the muscles of the creature and it looked like a powerful beast, and he thought it might leap from the page. “What is it?”

“A horse.”

“That’s not a horse.”

“It is where we’re from. Horses are beautiful.” She slapped the pages shut and stuffed the book into her bag. “Please go away.”

Tanner perked up, having nodded off nearby. “What’s wrong?”

Crestfallen at her coldness, Ddun distanced himself in his seat. He flexed his wrist, his thumbnail flicking at his fingers trying to think of something to say. Lauren spoke instead. “We need to go home. I can’t be here anymore.”

Tanner went up onto an elbow. “We can’t. We don’t know how we got here.”

“Well, others have found their way! Maybe they went back, too. I want to go home.”

“Home?” Tanner’s face darkened. “Home is bullshit and you know it. Life is hard here, yeah, sure, but don’t fucking act like our lives haven’t been immensely improved. I’m healthier—I never thought I’d ever see you without a dart in your mouth, we can breathe out here, we can run and leap and sing, there’s nothing in our past to drag us down and our future—it’s unknown and scary but wasn’t it scary at home?

“Did you really think I don’t know about Duke? You promised me you’d take me as far away from mom and dad as possible, and we’re here. Everything you could have asked for, we have right here. There’s nothing for me at home, nothing. I was going nowhere, except maybe prison. Two of my friends ohdeed last year, two! We had nothing. We lived in a shit town with no jobs, no prospects. All of our friends were miserable and we were all sitting around waiting to die.” He paused to breathe. “You’re being a stupid bitch, Lauren.”

“Don’t fucking talk to me. Neither of you fucking talk to me.” Ddun saw the glint of metal in her bag. The knife from the chest—she had stolen it. She closed it up before he could speak, and stood, tossing her hair from her shoulders and walking off into the dark. She stopped at a fallen tree and sat with her back to them.

“Yeah fuck you too, go home if you want. Good luck to you.” Tanner rolled over on his blanket with his hands tucked up under his arms.

Ddun had no idea what to do, feeling the coldness between the siblings, and knew he was an idiot to stay, so he left.

***

A hit to the shoulder startled Ddun awake, Antoll stood over him. “The girl is gone.”

He tensed to process the words through sleep. “What do you mean, gone?”

Antoll tossed Ddun his belt as he spoke. “What does it sound like? Tanner is searching the wood. He tried stealing a horse and just about killed Otun to get to them.”

“The gun?”

“He stole it.”

Ddun’s mead-blurred head boiled in his urgency to dress. “How?” The thing was surrounded by warriors. Were they all dead drunk? Borga was closest to the thing—he probably was half-dead in drink. Ddun wanted nothing more than to finish Borga and Otun off just for the release.

Antoll shrugged. “Good thief.”

“He didn’t use it on Otun, did he?” Out of the tent, dawn-stabbed eyes had him squint.

“No. But he has it all the same.”

In the wood, Tanner was hollering her name, Lauren Lauren bouncing tree to tree, desperation cracking his voice. Ddun’s limbs tingled, his fingers twitching as he avoided the branches to find Tanner.

Ddun called out as he spied him. “What’s happened?”

“She’s gone.” Frantic pacing. “Left her bag. She left her bag!”

“Everything in it?”

“Everything. Including the knife she stole—who cares that she did it. It’s still in there. It’s like she just—like she vanished, man, into thin air!”

Ddun grit his teeth, it stunk of dark magic. If she intended to run away, she wouldn’t have left the weapon. Perhaps she had intended to, but something else snatched her away. “You wanted to go hunting, now we hunt. Antoll and I will round up the best trackers. Keep the gun close.”

“If anyone took her, I’ll kill them.”

Ddun nodded, seeing in Tanner’s harrowed eyes the truth in his words. “Good.”

He felt the same way.

***

“No signs of her in the wood. We checked near the water and left an offering for the river spirits just to be sure. And under the sacred trees.” Rudda was a keen hunter and very superstitious in his methods. Sinewy and limber, flat-faced like a platter and not an easy man to make smile, but he could sniff out a berrybird from a mile away. “There were footprints around where you said she was last seen, but they don’t go far before they just… end.”

“Footprints? Her own?” Ddun was sweating in the late summer heat, yet a shiver at the thought she truly vanished.

“Just hers. The last was long, dragged, but it ends.”

“Who strung up those Dvarri we saw a ways back?” Tanner asked.

“There’s a Stenya village not far from here,” Rudda said. “Sometimes troublemakers come out to pick fights with us while we camp here. I’m grateful you lot were able to bury them, they were supposed to be scouting.” Rudda, Antoll and Ddun all stood crossed-arms and silent while Tanner paced.

“I’m going to check the village. Dressed like this I just look like a stranger, not a Dvarri.”

“You don’t speak their language,” Antoll said.

“I’ll figure it out.”

“They’ll kill you.”

“Give me a balaik.”

They all exchanged glances, not thinking of any better idea that would keep them safe—he had the gun, too. They would keep to the outskirts and stay hidden in wait for Tanner to return with any word.

All this was passed by the Grandmothers and they blessed the men.

***

Tanner’s boots crunched the dirt road as he swaggered, whistling and giving a wave to a shepherd boy who had paused his game of whacking flowerheads off with a stick. The boy had short cropped hair and breathed out his mouth. Beyond the shepherd lay a village of stone walls and thatched roofs, stalls of hanging meat and produce at the centre and a blacksmith hammer ringing the air in steady rhythm. The sense of permanence in the stone architecture and manicured fields of grain seemed foreign to him now.

A group of women around a grindstone paused their work to stare at him, and he returned their look with a wink and grin. They all dressed in loose robes held in place with bronze pinnings at the shoulders and leather belts at their hips, leather shoes with decorative punched holes, and they looked absolutely nothing like Dvarri. One of them posed a question to him, and he only shrugged while the other women giggled. He invented an accent for himself to camouflage the Dvarri that came out of his mouth. “No speak Stenya, musica musica!” He pulled the balaik off his back and drummed the body with his fingers, always a smile. The woman all looked at each other and giggled more. He mimed for them that he was walking through and needed a place to rest his head, earn some money, get something to drink. They furrowed their brows at him and he repeated his exaggerated sign language with a laugh.

“Play for us, wanderer,” one of the women spoke in stilted Dvarri. He didn’t fool them, but he stayed smiling—a sort of prideful smile, they think I’m Dvarri. He obliged, keeping an air of flirtatiousness as he sang, fingers plucking the three strings. “This is what I could do to you,” his fingers said, if they only imagined it. The youngest of them blushed as he propped up his leg on a fencepost and gave hazy bedroom eyes at her.

The door to the house behind them opened with a hard clap, a big hairy-shouldered man covered in soot hollered from the doorway—gesticulating violently that Tanner get the hell away from the women, who joyously teased the gruff bastard—a racket of bickering and laughter in Tanner’s wake, onward into the village.

All eyes were on him, briefly and not, as he found a spot in the shade after gesturing his questions, not getting any answers. He laid his jacket on the ground and tossed a coin on top to indicate to them what to do, and began playing. He sang songs Lauren would know, stuffing her name sideways into the lyrics to see if he might get a response. Nothing. He’d have to try and look around after dark. In the meantime, while he kept up his act, a few trinkets were tossed on his jacket and he was given a beer for his thirst, and some smoked meat and tangy sauce stuffed in flatbread. Hospitality to wanderers was sacred in any language here, it seemed.

While he paused to drink, a man approached and gestured to the odd thing on Tanner’s back. Tanner shook his head, no, he couldn’t touch the gun. The man gestured again and took out a purse from his sleeve. No, again. For the first time Tanner felt uncomfortable with a villager. A narrow chin jut out in frustration at this strange-looking wanderer having the nerve to refuse a haggle. Soon the man gave up with shrug and toss of hands, and Tanner relaxed. They had no idea what he had, they had no reason to fear it, it was a curiosity and nothing more.

As the day waned, he strutted about the village, looking in the windows in the hopes Lauren was going to appear, creeping through to storehouses to peer inside, trying to work out how to get to any root cellars in case she was in one of them tied up and gagged. The few who barked choppy Dvarri at him hadn’t seen her and they were beginning to think he looked like a thief. He was a thief, but not at the moment, and that was beside the point.

One of the women from the grindstone sat next to him while he plucked tunelessly, lost in thought. Whoever took Lauren would have practically stepped over him. If she struggled, he slept through it and deserved to be shot. Maybe they didn’t see him. Maybe she didn’t struggle. The woman cleared her throat. “Sleep here, welcome welcome,” she said, pointing behind her. She was a handsome woman, kind and tough. He nodded in thanks, smiling and accepting the spiced milk she held out. He asked her of any other strangers, a woman who looked like him, but he was the only one.

He needed to be casual, keep up his act, as long as needed. Ddun and the others figured he might be there for the night. With no sign of her, and no tall towers with hidden rooms and dangerous moats... It was just a village. So what else should he do? Make talk, he supposed.

Though their hospitality and conversation was fair enough—what could be understood—he couldn’t resist the eyes their daughter gave him over their meal of tough bread and braised greens and meat. She had a deep blush and bit lip any time he glanced at her.

So he took her out to the woodshed after the parents fell asleep. She had a plain face but was great with her tongue. Hushed moans and soft laughs and whispers to each other neither of them could understand. It was a fantastic distraction in an attempt to shake the dread from his head, before heading out while it was still dark to find the others waiting to hear word.

Antoll almost looked disappointed they didn’t have to storm through the village and slaughter anybody, but his mood flipped to see the few treasures Tanner walked away with for his stint busking. “You keeping this?” Antoll asked, holding up an earring.

“Nah, have it.”

Ddun wasn’t amused. “So she was taken by someone else, and what, they stepped over you, avoided being seen by anyone, and they all just disappeared?”

Tanner felt low enough he could crawl in a hole and die. He wanted an oxy. He really wanted an oxy. “Yeah.”

“Let’s get back to camp, we’ve wasted enough time.” Ddun was the first to his horse and stayed a distance ahead of them, and Tanner could feel the ice like he rode in the tail of a comet.