TWO HUNDRED THREE: Herdcreatures I

 

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<<Wake. Awaken, my soon-friend.>> “Alden, wake up.”

The whispered urgings were accompanied by a soft smell like toast and citrus fruit. Alden opened his eyes groggily to see that a lamp had been pulled out of the wall above where he lay. It was a glowing white box that made him squint and shade his face with an arm clad in the navy silk pajamas he’d bought during his shopping spree at Needle & Wheedle. The sight of the pajama sleeve reminded him that he was wearing them as auriad coverage, which reminded him more quickly than the surprise lamp could that he’d gone to bed in the cottage at the art’h siblinghold.

And the person whispering at him, using three different Artonan words for “Wake up,” was his host.

Alden rolled onto his side to see Stuart standing at the edge of the bed, holding a ceramic cup full of something steamy. Through the transparent wall behind him, the view was of a dark forest and a stream that flashed with zansees.

Alden checked the time. It was just before eight in the morning on Anesidora, but that was a couple of hours sooner than he had expected to be up. He’d gone to bed late and set his alarm to account for the time difference as well as he could.

“This is so early for you, isn’t it?” he asked.

They’d spent a few hours together last night, quietly taking care of their own separate work. That had been a comfortable change of pace from most of their previous visits. Companionable studying, without either of them needing to explain difficult personal matters or worrying about how they were conveying complex subjects to a person with an alien background. Stuart had been catching up on schoolwork he’d missed due to votary duties. Alden had reviewed the instruction manual for the lab car and made a tentative plan for one of his nightmare bokabv kills.

This one was the high-preparation scenario in which he would lure the demon into a trap. When he’d thought of questions about the mechanics of the plan, he’d kept them to himself out of a desire not to break the mood of their study session. He could wait. Stuart was willing to be used as a sounding board and source of information, but it was too easy to spend hours doing nothing but using the knowledge in his head and the resources he could provide.

He’d been busy practicing a spell that joined pieces of stone together, and he’d seemed to be enjoying it.

“It is early,” he said after Alden had climbed out of bed and accepted the cup of grain tea from him. “I’m sorry to wake you, but something I was trying to make available to you has been made available in a less convenient way than I wanted. So we have to go take care of it now.”

Stuart was wearing a tannish-brown turtleneck sweater and matching pants. He had two modes of dress that Alden thought of as normal for him—his black LeafSong student wizard uniform, plus or minus layers, and the tunics with embroidered belts. This was more casual than either.

“What are we doing?”

“Going to see a bokabv.”

Alden paused with the cup just shy of his mouth. “Really?”

“It will be good for you to be in the presence of one and experience it with your senses.”

“What should I wear?”

“Whatever you can comfortably dress yourself in quickly,” said Stuart. “If we leave now, I hope we will be able to spend time with the animal without encountering anyone else.”

Hope to see nobody, might see somebody,…petting zoo experience? That combo hadn’t been covered by Tuck and Yinuo.

“All right.” Alden took a sip of the tea. There was a piece of peel floating in it. “I’ll be quick. Thank you for taking the oranges to the house.”

He glanced toward the corner where the three large bags had been when he went to sleep last night. It was now empty.

Alden had brought the oranges as a gift to the siblinghold residents and a buffer for the fruit baskets he’d made for Stuart and Emban-art’h so that they wouldn’t have to share. Everyone gets an orange, Emban-art’h gets her own bananas, and nobody asks Stuart for a taste of his personal supply.

That was the plan anyway. Last night, though, Stuart had been in a punitive frame of mind toward his parents, so Alden and the oranges had come straight here.

I’m sure the art’hs were all utterly devastated not to be graced with my awkward human presence.

“You didn’t eat them all yourself, did you?”

“I put them on the gifts to the house table!”

“I hope they like them as much as you do,” said Alden. “Give me a moment to get ready.”

Only a few minutes later, they were headed toward the summonarium, the sound of their boots muffled by damp leaves. Alden wore the purple-brown shirt he’d arrived in yesterday. He’d opted to carry a pezyva in his messenger bag, in case they did run into someone who needed to see the commendation.

“Where are we going to meet the bokabv?”

“Rel had it delivered to the school,” Stuart said in a tone that would have been worthy of announcing that his brother had had the animal shipped to the heart of a swamp infested with leeches.

“The Rapport School?” Alden asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you not like it?”

“It’s a wonderful school that provides an unmatched education. I do like it.”

“Oh. Good.” But you definitely don’t like something about this, he thought.

“The Rapport I campus is near enough that I walked to it on a few occasions with others,” said Stuart. “We started at the en household and traveled a whole day’s light to reach Root.”

“Root?”

“That’s what the town is called. The school isn’t far from there.”

“Rapport I has towns?”

“Only one. This is the largest of the rapports but not the most populated.”

They’d reached the summonarium. On a whim, Alden held his breath. By the time he had to draw in another, they had arrived in a new location.

 

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“This is the best summonarium I’ve ever been in.”

“I thought you liked the Sky Chamber in Vethedya. I’ve been feeling <<sorrow at a small failing>> for not letting you enjoy it on the way to Healer Yenu’s. And then on the way back you were <<addled>>.”

“She said I was fine!” Alden protested before bending over to get a closer look at a description painted in dark pink on the floor. It was beside the circle of logograms and unrecognizable symbols the two of them had just arrived in, and his translation flash cards were helping him read it.

“This is for sending and receiving people of the Triplanets and people of the worlds that speak of our existence and hear us speak of theirs in reply,” it said.

He walked over to a more squarish patch of symbols, and he read the pink explanation nearby to see that this one was best suited for sending objects. The summonarium, which was large but still much smaller than the ones at the siblinghold and LeafSong, was full of many other informative delights—the names and origins of all the materials used to craft the room, a colorful map of the building they were in and the surrounding grounds, a sign hanging from the ceiling overhead that said, “Give proper greetings to Declared Stu-art’h and Avowed Alden of Earth.”

The sign faced a wall lined with windows and short, cushioned benches.

“That’s where young students sit to wait for their turn to leave, or to listen to instructors explaining how summonariums function,” said Stuart, tilting his head. “I haven’t personally seen others, but I think it’s normal for summonariums in first schools to look similar to this one.”

“We’re in a first school,” said Alden. Like Gwen-lor’s!

“The school here is for all ages. It provides a proper education until a student is ready to apply to a university. Classes for adults are held here as well, by request, but those are just as often conducted at someone’s home. It depends on what facilities are needed and what everyone is in the mood for.”

Despite his willingness to explain, Stuart seemed antsy, so Alden quit reading all the helpful descriptions and followed him out of one of the room’s two exits.

It led them outdoors to a large patio tiled with rough stone and enclosed on three sides. Behind them, the building rose three floors to a flat rooftop with a railing, and then a bit further back, it rose several stories more in two squat, domed towers that blotted out the stars. To their right, a wing of the school took the form of a similarly shaped tower, almost as wide as it was tall, with windows—most of them dark—looking down on the courtyard where the two of them stood.

“The student house for those who stay on campus,” Stuart murmured, taking in the direction of Alden’s gaze. “And those are the roots of an <<unyielding>> tree that grows farther up.”

He nodded toward the third wall of the courtyard, straight ahead, which looked like packed dirt that had been pierced and latticed with roots. A person could have climbed it easily and found themselves standing on sloping, forested ground.

The same trees that stood around the siblinghold towered here, their height made even more startling by the fact that Alden and Stuart seemed to be at the foot of a hill. Or so Alden assumed until Stuart led him out of the courtyard to a staircase set into the hillside, and he discovered that they were actually quite far uphill from the perspective of someone arriving on the other side of the building. The school had been built partway up a large slope.

As they walked down the stairs, each step lit itself for them when they approached, then dimmed when they left it behind. To their left, the smooth, dark wall of the building grew taller.

Before they reached the staircase’s end, they turned aside and passed in front of the school, crossing a leveled front lawn to reach a circular patch of bare soil. An animal stood in the middle of it making snuffling sounds as it walked around a twig that had been shoved into the ground.

Something that looked like a shiny coffee can was waiting at the edge of the bare area. While Stuart bent to pick it up, Alden stared at the bokabv.

That is one big, bioluminescent bison.

He had looked at pictures of bokabvs when they’d picked the animal as his probable demon. He knew it was supposed to be a simple creature that minded its own business and ate plants and grubs. So he felt ridiculous when the first thought that crossed his mind, after wondering why nobody had tethered it or fenced it in, was that it didn’t look very evil.

He wouldn’t go so far as to say it didn’t have an intimidating air about it; size alone gave it that. But it looked a little funny and friendly when it acknowledged their arrival by turning to face them. The bokabv’s head was more aardvarkish than bovine, with a mouth full of flat teeth and glowing blue drool that Alden got a good look at as it yawned then went back to sniffing around its twig.

Maybe that wasn’t a yawn. Could’ve been a threat or a hello. Who knows how bokabv do it?

The shine of the animal’s body was faint compared to the light show in its mouth, but it was definitely glowing. Freshly licked fur.

Over the past week, he had learned way too many fun facts about a relatively obscure alien animal.

A whoosh sound accompanied the opening of Stuart’s coffee can. Alden looked over to see him scooping out a fistful of something pale that flowed through his fingers like sand.

“Is that food for it?”

“No. It’s grass seed,” said Stuart. “I told Rel I was going to take you to a village full of <<ascetics>> to see their bokabv herd, and he said that sounded <<alarming>> for you and the ascetics. So I was going to have one the ascetics’ bokabvs teleported to the siblinghold, and he said that sounded alarming for the bokabv. Then he offered to take care of it for me because I told him you needed one for your pursuit of healing.”

Alden hoped Stuart had explained a little more than that. Hearing that the human needed to have a meeting with a bisonvark for his mental wellbeing wouldn’t convince Rel-art’h of Alden’s normalcy.

Stuart made an annoyed hiss-click sound. “This morning I was awakened by a message from him telling me he had obtained this pregnant bokabv and that he expected me to come by and plant grass for her and accelerate its growth. So that the students will be able to watch her birth her child in a setting that resembles her natural one.

“She’s an educational animal, so she’s used to strangers. You can go closer to her. But don’t touch her interesting stick.”

Alden had a lot of questions and comments. He started with the easiest. “You mean the stick in the ground beside her, don’t you?”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Yes. That’s hers. It should be enchanted to provide her with comfort and entertainment when she travels.”

Bokabv pacifier. Okay.

Alden took a few cautious steps toward his unexpected educational experience, then stopped. The bokabv might not have had fangs or an aura of corruption about her, but she was still big enough to head-butt him back to the siblinghold or stomp him into an early grave.

“Hello,” he said. “You’re a good bokabv. The best.”

“You have never seen another one,” Stuart said from behind him.

“Congratulations on the baby bokabv. Do you mind if I come a little closer?”

“She doesn’t. Look at her behavior. She is content with her interesting stick and whatever she just dug up with her snout.”

“Stuart, the bokabv and I are getting to know each other. Plant your seeds.”

Alden had taken just one more step when the sound of Stuart casting made him look back. The spell was unusually conversational, and he thought a couple of the words sounded familiar. The System was even translating it.

A spell chant containing lots of clear language wasn’t common in Alden’s limited experience. Symbolic sound, spell-only strings of noise…Porti-loth’s hooting while he was healing Zeridee-und’h must have had meaning, but it wasn’t words.

Yet, here Stuart was, telling the seeds in his hand about other seeds that had been carried by wind and various animals to find fertile ground in this land over the ages. Then he said, <<By my blood!>> and tossed them over the soil.

Alden sensed a presence around himself for a moment—not touching him, not about him, but definitely asserting something strongly in his vicinity. It was hard to tell in the dark, but he had the feeling that Stuart’s handful of seeds had been dispersed more evenly than the throw would have done on its own.

Stuart threw another fistful quickly, and this time, paying more attention, Alden noticed that some of the tiny seeds landed on him. He managed to catch one against his cheek, and he held it in his hand for a second as it slid for the gap between his index and middle fingers and then fell through, aiming itself for the dirt.

Stuart closed the canister.