Blood Across The Ages
I.ii
The rain awoke N-ta.
Her overhang of leaves and mud holding them together held for most of the night. As the first rays of sun poked through, she wiped the droplets that made it through the ceiling and sat up. One benefit of her newfound abilities made itself known to her in the days following her leaving. She didn’t feel hungry anymore.
The sick feeling to the stomach of going days without eating no longer spoke to her. Nor did she experience the sour misery of having eaten something foul. Chills and heatwaves also had their intensities diminished.
In contrast, her senses had been heightened. She could see insects crawling on leaves hundreds of arm lengths away. Her nose could differentiate between two flowers that looked identical, while foul stenches seemed unaffected. She could hear the cries of birds from a third of a day’s walk away. Finally, her sense of balance had been greatly enhanced. Whereas before, she marveled at her father’s ability to creep, now she could scale a tree with the ease of a monkey or dexterously angle her body in awkward positions while doing leaps through the branches.
It had been a full week since she’d left her home. In that time, she’d opened the first of the animal hide sacks her parents had given her. The dried meat had provided a delicious snack to distract her from the emotional stones weighing down on her. Not feeling hungry, she made it last the entire week.
The plains and the jungle had given way to open grasslands. The great beasts wandered, chewing the day away, and the occasional big cat preyed upon them. She didn’t interrupt them, as her needs seemed distant.
A curious thing happened on the fourth sunrise. For the first time, she pondered the far future. For all her seventeen seasons, life had been a perilous thing. Several occasions had seen tribesmen die from broken or diseased teeth. Some of her tribesmen had died from disease brought upon by wriggling creatures burrowing into the feet. Even when forced out with sharp sticks, the holes left behind rarely healed properly.
The hide wrapped around her feet and tied provided a softer impact against the hard ground. She thought of her life to come. Almost never did she wonder what her life would be. It hadn’t seemed a relevant thought before. The next meal, the next drink of water not dirty enough to sicken her, these were the thoughts that dominated her. Her parents and tribesmen all had the same thoughts. Each important issue came up next and they had to be dealt with and anticipated. With this newfound safety came an exercise in confusion.
It occurred to her she’d never spent this much time merely thinking before.
After stopping by a river to fill up her drinking bladder, she tied the end shut, affixed it to the rope around her waist, and walked on. She made camp by the time the sun had drifted close to the horizon. A pile of leaves and grass would make a halfway decent bed. Sitting in the evening sun, having walked farther in a week than most of her tribesmen had ever wandered, she thought of the uneventfulness of the day. Stripped of risk of death from wound, exhaustion or illness, stripped of the pain of hunger, almost every event that made up the days of her tribesmen’s lives disappeared. It became a matter of curiosity as well as worry.
She wouldn’t know for sure if she was getting older or not for quite a while. Still, members of her tribe that had survived after brushing right up against death were never the same. They seemed to age many seasons in the span of a few days. Even if she grew older, the lack of fear would be sure to extend her life. The future stretched out before her like an endless plain. How long could she wander the world?
Thoughts of this nature plagued her for day after day. With nothing really to do except walk, she made her way forward until she found herself staring in disbelief. The dirt gave way to sand and the sand to water. It couldn’t be a lake, because the water extended outward seemingly without limit. Looking to her left and right, she saw the sandy surface extend towards each horizon. Her mother had spoken of the edge of the land, where beyond was only water. Never did N-ta expect to actually see it.
A finger dipped down and brought the cold liquid to her lips.
Her eyes scrunched shut as she spat violently.
The water was salty.
So, clearly, drinking it was out of the question. If she had to get water, she’d have to get it from rivers or streams. The big expanse of water intrigued her. What lay beyond it? Was there such a thing? Was there any other land beyond the land she stood on? Still, this sandy surface before the water could prove useful. She had moved forward from where her tribe’s cave pointed. Now she had another direction to move in. She backtracked a bit, and walked, keeping the water in sight.
Days passed. The sun came up and went down over and over again. Armfuls of sun-downs came and went. Before she knew it, she came across a different set of terrain. In the distance, she could see a large expanse of sand. Before it, lay plains and some forest, and…
People!
The sun had been going down and she saw a large wall made of wood. Such a structure could not have grown from the ground. In front of a gate stood two people, their skin not quite as dark as hers, and somewhat shorter. Their hides were more intricate than her own, and they carried spears tipped with stone spear tips.
She thought of the best way to get their attention as she stepped out of the forest.
The first guard’s eyes went wide and he immediately hit his partner on the shoulder to wake him from his daydream. “Monster!” cried the second person. She stopped when she saw him raise his spear and take aim. A pair of women up in trees above the wall gave a shout.
She ran before the man could loose his spear at her.
In the safety of the thick forest, she leaned against a tree to catch her breath. Why had the man let out such a cry? Surely they could imagine a person with darker skin?
Her train of thought interrupted as she happened to take notice of her hand.
Her once short fingers were impossibly long and thin.
A river ran nearby, and after a scramble, she got to it and stared into the water at her reflection.
She almost screamed at the sight back at her.
I’m…gaunt!
Her ancestors had told of “Ghouls,” and other such creatures. Unlike the short Goblins that took vital essence from blood to empower their magic, Ghouls were tall and gaunt creatures with skin pale as wood ash and possessing long, spindly limbs and deep sunken eyes. They towered over even the tallest people and had the strength, despite their malnourished appearance, to rip a man to pieces in their wide gaping mouths.
Malnourished, she realized.
“That’s it!” she thought out loud.
If the goblin’s blood she’d tasted was drawing upon the vital essence in her blood and pouring out magical energy by the armful, it was not only making her stronger and heal faster, as well as have better senses, it also was making her bigger and stronger. But if she wasn’t eating, it was making her gaunt like a Ghoul. Only by eating food could someone reasonably get bigger without growing into a skinny creature. All she’d been eating was the dried meat her parents had given her. That had run out days ago, and without a feeling of hunger, she hadn’t thought to hunt.
It had been well over a hundred sun rises since she left home. She hadn’t eaten in four or five days. She pulled open a bladder and pulled out a stone knife and ripped a sturdy branch from a nearby tree. A handful of time later, she had a spear with a pointy end. She’d have preferred to have a stone spear tip, but the sharp wood would have to make do.
With the sun going down, she had to track down a herd of grass-eating horned beasts by smell and the dim light of evening. A throw of her spear nearly split the beast’s head in two. She grabbed the corpse by the leg and dragged it into the forest.
With the sharper of the two stone knives in her pouch, she began cutting meat loose from the hide and organs of the beast. She then piled whatever loose wood she could find from nearby, and made a burn pile. She speared a bunch of meat on one large stick and held out her hand. A memory recalled, she brought to the front the image of the goblin summoning a ball of fire.
Burn, she commanded.
After a moment of nothing, she put image to mind and a ball of fire shot from her hand and set the pile of loose wood ablaze.
That night, she ate. Her abdomen stuck out like a round boulder, but she downed almost every piece of meat she’d pulled off the animal. With a large full belly, she wandered until she found a relatively flat piece of ground, piled leaves and brush until she had a bed to sleep on. A couple times animals came by to either bother her or treat her as a free meal. A quick fireball later and she returned to sleep.
The morning sun punched through the canopy of the forest and she awoke to the sounds of scavengers and the loose predator snacking on the remains of the beast she’d killed. Once she stood up, stretched, and let out a yawn, she saw immediately what she’d been missing out on while she focused on walking.
I’m taller, she thought. How did I miss it?
Bringing her hand into view, she saw her appearance much improved. Her fingers, before gaunt, had a strong thickness to them without being fat.
The water’s surface revealed a very human-looking N-ta. Her cheeks were no longer sunken in, her rib cage no longer visible, and her arms had thick wires of muscle on them. Her abdomen had a thin layer of soft fat over it, instead of the sunken in decay of malnourishment.
No more missing out on eating, she decided. If things had progressed much farther, she might have turned into a Ghoul.
Hiding out in the forest before the encampment’s wall, she pondered. They had skin of lighter brown rather than the dark muddy color of her tribe. Their cheekbones were less pronounced. She sat down and imagined herself as one of them, with their rounder cheeks and shallower cheekbones. She imagined herself as short as she once was, closer to their height, and not her newfound gigantic self. The image of their clothing appeared on her mental self.
Change shape, she thought.
A burning feeling came over her, and a magenta flame covered her from head to toe. When it dissipated, she found herself looking like her mental image.
“Who goes there?” the guard said, pointing the spear at her as she exited the tree line.
She raised her hands to indicate no weapons. “I come from that way,” she said, pointing behind her. “My tribe was abandoned.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “The scouting party said everyone had died,” he explained.
“They died so I could get away,” she lied. “We never got to where we were going.”
The second guard cursed under his breath. “Curse it.” He made a decision. “We have to inform the chief.”
N-ta had no idea if her lie was believable. Honestly, she’d never met another tribe of people before. Usually, it was her parents or the other elders of the tribe who ventured out of their hunting range. As she passed by the wood and leaf huts, she couldn’t help but feel as though this tribe was much better prepared than her own. Their living space was surrounded by walls made of logs stacked next to one another. It made sense—her tribe had the luxury of the cave. They had a wall behind them, so it became easy to control for attack. If one had no wall behind them, it made sense to make a wall all around them.
She followed them to a large hut, twice the size of all the others. Two guards motioned them in, and when they glanced at her, the others vouched for her.
Inside, a tall, grizzled man with wives on each side sat on a stump covered in animal hide and regarded N-ta with an examining glance.
“Never seen you before,” the chief declared, flatly.
“I was found along the way,” she lied. “They fought and died against the big cats. I got away.”
The chief regarded this. “What about other tribes?”
His question carried with it a certain weight. She understood what he was asking. “If there were,” she said, “I never found out if they encountered them.”
The chief gave a nasal exhalation. “So, we’re not in danger from tribes to the south,” he said. “Good.” He got handed a wooden bowl which he drank from. “What’s your name?”
She bowed. “N-ta,” she declared.
“Un-tah?” he said, phrasing it as a question.
She dared not correct his unusual dialect butchering her name. “Yes,” she replied. In truth the “en” sound was sharp and quick with no preceding sound. The fact that he’d put an “uh” sound before the “en” bothered her, but she could live with it.
“Can you fight, Un-tah?” he asked.
“I killed beasts for food on my way here,” she said. “If you want me to hunt, I can hunt. If you want me to fight, I can fight.”
He grinned. “That’s what I want to hear,” he said. “Because our tribe is moving north. After the dry season in winter, we’re moving north in the wet spring.”
“I will provide the tribe with much food,” she said.
Staying with the tribe over the winter’s dry season, she hunted with them, being sure to carefully craft her power usage. By staying close to their strongest men, she came across as a skilled huntress without being perceived as a goddess. Each time they dragged a horned grass-eater’s corpse back to the cleaning area, she made sure to carefully use her powers.
She’d learned how to use fireballs, how to change shape, and how to heal. Of these, the last had been vital in the days that came. These people didn’t have half the expertise with treating wounds that her mother and the other women of her tribe did. So, in addition to teaching them how to dress wounds to minimize disease, she occasionally would heal them when no one was paying close attention. Some people still died, but she dramatically reduced their losses. Also, she could shape spears much easier with her powers than with a stone knife. As if an invisible blade extended, she could whittle parts of a branch off just by focusing on it.
After months of drying meat for storage, salting it, and storing water in bladders, they had prepared enough materials as well as weapons, and they set out with their stone knives and spears tied to their backs.
They left the safety of their walled village and began the long march north.
N-ta had to give these people credit; to take the risk of moving the entire tribe in search of the unknown was much riskier than her native tribe was willing to be.
The blistering sun of the desert turned their dark skin even darker, and many of them sweat until they died. Their extra preparedness kept many of them from dying. N-ta had gone to great length to prepare as many bladders as she could before they set out, and when no one was looking, used her magic to create more. They came in handy as many survived the first week who would certainly have died. She made sure to use magic to keep her animal hide bladder full, and kept taking smaller sips so no one thought it weird. Day upon day, the morning sun brought the swelter, and they ate at their dried meats and drank from their hide bladders.
A few weeks into their journey, she ventured a use of magic. Rain, she thought. In her mind, she pictured the roiling clouds overhead the color of river stone. She pictured the droplets falling, first in drips, then in sheets. In her body, a burning flame jostled and turned, and she guessed it was the magic building inside her from the goblin’s blood she’d tasted, pulling vital essence out of her body and pouring out magic in response.
Thunder rumbled overhead.
A gasp sounded as the men and women looked around. Finally, someone shouted and pointed.
The dark gray clouds filled the blue sky. Impossibly, they saw, rain began to drip down from the sky. “Fill the bladders!” shouted N-ta.
One by one, the men and women opened their animal hide bladders that had run dry and held them up to the heavens. As they filled, they were tied shut and replaced. The cool water felt sublime to the tribe as it ventured ever north.
Hunting in the desert meant taking smaller kills and adding them together. With her enhanced senses, N-ta made the easiest go of providing food. After many weeks, most of the dried meat had been used up.
The worst threat from the desert wasn’t the oppressive heat, it was the radical shift from one extreme to another. At night, the temperature plummeted, and many had to bundle up to avoid frostbite. With their diet reduced and their march seemingly endless, many men who had thick fat over their abdomen now had visible lines on their arms, and flat bellies. She did her best to instruct the men on how to sneak up on the small desert creatures that scurried about the sand.
A bushelful of weeks later, a wondrous sight appeared, causing most of the men to give a cry of exaltation. They had made their way to a river.
A scouting party warned of an encampment that had set up a quarter of a day’s walk along the river’s edge. Dialog with the encampment turned out to be fruitful, however, as N-ta had accompanied the men and, thanks to her efforts, calm had prevailed over the conversation. More importantly, from the encampment, she could see a larger community far off in the distance.
After getting situated, hunting larger animals that drank from the river, and filling their bellies, the tribe rested and the next morning, set out for the larger village.
The front entrance to the village impressed the tribe.
“A stone entrance,” one tribesman said, looking up.
Two gigantic stone piles, consisting of stones smoothed flat on all sides, to form a perfect rectangle, stood firm, holding up a long rectangular stone that served as an overhang.
All the citizens sat within stone walls erected out of smoothed, piled stones. Each family had a dwelling more durable than wood. The source of all this wealth proved obvious when the tribe noticed four working men dragging a large square stone on layered animal hide. Smoothing tools hung over their shoulders. N-ta could see their use at once. By putting sand between them and moving back and forth, the object could cut away at the stone using the grittiness of the sand.
The tribe’s chief went with several of his men, as well as N-ta, and met with the chief of this tribe.
“Where did you come from?” the middle-aged man asked, his long gray hair wafting in the gentle breeze.
“We came from the south,” the chief said. “Across the great desert.”
“Why?”
The chief thought about the man’s question. “Because we’re growing too large for the territory we live in,” he explained.
The man in charge of the river community pondered this question. “So,” he finally said, “you seek land to spread out in?”
“Correct,” the chief replied.
The leader turned to a man at his side and whispered something in his ear. The man gave a moment’s pause, then a swift reply. The leader then turned to the tribe’s chief. “If you can provide me with strong men to quarry and move stone,” he explained, “and to farm, we will provide you with all you need to continue your journey.”
That afternoon, while the men learned how to saw stone free from rock walls using sand and stone saws, N-ta tended to crop at the fertile land near the river, listening to the men and women there teach her the techniques of farming. It was like witchcraft to her. The idea that someone could predict and even control what plants would grow in the ground amazed her.
A large feast was held in the town square. Meat was roasted over fires in stone pits. Vegetables were provided. N-ta bit into her slice and for the first time tasted something amazing.
The meat had been seasoned.
She enjoyed the meal and that night, slept like a log.
Having barely made it across the desert, the tribe gathered twice as many resources as last time. They made more bladders, filled them at the river, and prepared much more dried meat. N-ta prepared spare sets of clothes for people as needed and over the course of a month, they quarried stone and prepared tools by day, and filled their bellies by night.
They set off one morning, just as the sun rose. They followed the river until they got to the coast. With the additional resources provided by being near water, they spent a week or so stocking up and then moved on. After what seemed like forever, the plains and forest came back into view.
The tribe had grown older by this point. Their chief had died one evening in his sleep. The tribe elected a new chief, and they continued. A lot of the men who had been strong at the start had visibly aged. They settled in a clearing, where the grass and vegetation were even, and the large trees provided plenty of resources. They spent many a day building their town. The forest provided plenty of game that was killed for food, and a good section of the land they set aside for growing crops.
With the stability of the forest, also brought new dangers and amazements.
The winters here were not dry or wet; they were cold.
Cold powder the color of bleached bones fell from the blank sky and piled up. Even when the sun hung above, it never got warm enough during the winter for a substantial amount of the snow to melt. After more than one death to frost, the tribe quickly learned to build fires and to bundle up. It was then that an important discovery was made.
Unlike the animal hides, fabric had several advantages.
Despite its primitive nature, fabric woven from vegetable fibers proved to be much warmer when layered, because it was easy to do so. The weight was much lighter, and still, it provided much more comfort. With the newfound freedom of thick layered clothing, the tribe conquered the winter.
With the cold season conquered, the tribe expanded, and more land was dedicated to farming. As time progressed, more creative tools were developed, some by N-ta herself, and trees began to be cut down and used for resources. These thick trees were very much unlike the ones they were used to and provided much more wood.
One day, the inevitable happened.
N-ta had finished her work for the day, having plowed new land and sewn seed. Meat provided by wild hogs hunted in the forest she ate with pleasure.
“Don’t you think it’s strange,” she heard one of her tribesmen say, under their breath, when they clearly thought she couldn’t hear.
“That she isn’t getting older?” his friend said, finishing the thought.
“Exactly.”
The second one gave a mild chuckle. “You’re imagining things,” he replied.
She packed up her belongings and left her domicile that night.
“So,” she said to no one, just saying it to make it real. “My parents were right.”
Saying it both drove the point home, as well as opened up a world of implications.
“I heal from aging.”