Chapter One - The Great Golden Machine
Varmsni waited in the branches, for to be aground was suicide. At least until the Call. The treeline’s shadows swam like silt in a disturbed riverbed.
Varmsni eyed the movement with great leeriness. A young Sninkletob like him shouldn’t be here. In the first place, he had been expressly forbidden. He had duties, his destiny known and written. He had only to read it from the fatescribing on his clan’s storywall. In fact, Varmsni was supposed to read it. Supposed to know each month in advance, “Or at least the week!” his muther had pleaded with him. He had read it, all right. Scanned years ahead, quivering with a rage which swelled as surveyed the ruinous hum-drum. Here it said Varmsni was to argue with his brother on the day after tomorrow about midday meal. There it said he would bondmate with a girl who would treat him poorly and vex him all his life.
“You will understand,” the elders wheezed, nodding to themselves. “It is written, even the day of understanding.”
In their defence, Varmsni knew he had much to learn. He had not even grown his third tail yet. He accepted that unknowable perspective lay on the far side of wisdom and experience.
He disagreed anyway. So he had done the unthinkable. He had read what he was supposed to do and chosen something else. Today, he had chosen something very else.
Varmsni’s jaw flexed as he went over his plan of escape. The timing would be tight but if he was quick – and Varmsni was – then he could tie his tail to someone else’s breeze, as the saying went.
A rustle sounded in the leaves below. Varmsni’s breath caught and he stilled instantly, though he didn’t truly consider himself in real danger. He clung easily to the branch, long since accustomed to trusting his sharp extremities. They always seemed to find the right nooks and lodge themselves there, even on stone. Once he’d done it on a thick fog.
The air began to hum. Varmsni shifted his shoulders, staring – like everyone below would be, he knew – into the vast clearing ahead.
The air contorted once in the clearing, bending sight so sharply that Varmsni had to look away, blinking.
"The time has come again," intoned the deep rumble they all had come to know so well.
Corpulents and Nonabees gathered in the giant glade, seeping from the treeline without a shred of hostility. That in itself proved the weight of the matters being attended to, if one knew either race at all. Only a surpassingly rare or holy happening would negate the ‘Kill On Sight’ mindset these two confluxes held toward one another. And everyone else, for that matter. Now, though, Varmsni spilled lightly off his high perch, letting his skittering claws control his descent, and landed confidently among them. No one, not even a Corpulent, would violate the amnesty of the Call. He twitched his nose, whiskers flapping, adjusted the collar of his jerkin and strode forward with the crowd.
Look at them, he thought to himself. Every one of them paying homage to their god, not seeing that ‘god’ was truly gaoler.
Breeds of all kinds and tribe representatives who were brave enough to attend all joined the congregation. There was nowhere one could travel where the Call could not be heard and all bore witness to it wherever they were, whatever they were doing. For those assembled, the forward march was short, only a hundred meters or so from the trees and then they waited. A thick hush filled the clearing as an amalgamation of each visitor’s smaller hush. Beyond the treeline and deep into the Tangle even the insects heard the silence and followed suit. Indeed, everywhere that yet remained in all of the Without stood stock-still and the air in the clearing trembled.
At the centre of the meadow was a flat stone, inset into the earth. No one dared step closer to it, though there was most certainly room to do so. Their position was justified as the trembling air first rippled above the stone, then was rent entirely. A sudden wind tore into the void, pulling all the assembly tumbling toward it. No one knew if the other side of the Gash was less pressurised or if the air here was simply desperate to investigate. Or perhaps escape. The pull abated as bluntly as it had begun, leaving a cotton stuffed silence as the floating rip expelled the gargantuan whale-like husk known only as the Wollusk. Varmsni just barely managed to stop himself from spitting.
It was said a thousand kingdoms lived in the bright kelpy forest coating the Wollusk’s shell. Power rose from his head in great steamy drafts, the not-yet of a thousand worlds. The bulk of the Wollusk sinuously curled under itself, depressing the flat stone with a thunderous click, as if a cliff had broken in half.
Varmsni stood on his toes, though he was at the front of the line. The ground receded from the stone to make room for the great golden machine which hummed in satisfaction to see its master again, golden tentacles sprouting eagerly up to the Wollusk’s pectoral fins. More extensions grew near the base, waving happily, almost invitingly, as if interested in meeting other playmates. The silence relaxed into sacred suspense. The waiting began.
Varmsni had heard of the device, of course. He held his eyes apart from the greedy gazes glittering in the throng. All desired the machine but not for its gold. Gold was just the housing. The machine was a squarish contraption of many cogs, levers, antennae, looping wires, and dials. It did not meet anyone’s firm definition of ‘beautiful,’ so the greed was not based in aesthetics. No one knew what it did, precisely, or how it worked, and part of its value was tied to these two facts. The scruff of the matter, as far as Varmsni could tell, seemed to be that the Wollusk owned it, maybe needed it, and this simple truth made the machine’s value incalculable. The Wollusk would determine who, where, and presumably why. The machine was the what, and Varmsni suspected it was also the how.
“Those appointed: speak,” puffed the Wollusk.
Countless voices filled the air for a cacophonous instant, and quieted. Varmsni made no sound; he would beg no scraps from this… this thing.
“Grafmees,” the Wollusk declared. “Thunder forward and I will tell a tale of you.”
The Wollusk uttered a deep vibrating trumpet, and light blazed along the tentacles and wires. Golden light shot from the antenna tips, meeting at a single point near the Wollusk’s great girth, and a void-coloured oval yawned wide.
Excited hooting sounded from the back of the crowd, off to the Forming side of the meadow. A jostling group galloped forward, creating the illusion of a giant invisible worm in the assembly, and burst out of the frontlines. Gray and fuzzy, hands and feet but no arms or legs, large black eyes and long tails. They rolled forward in a self-made avalanche, bouncing off of one another and bouncing each other along. They piled into the unnatural oval as a semi-congealed horde of mouldy-looking grapes.
Envious stares watched them go Beyond. Varmsni hadn’t seen what the Wollusk had done, but he hadn’t been looking at the Wollusk. Varmsni’s eyes had studied the machine.
He chewed on his lip, mulling over what he’d seen. A tentacle bush near the gold machine’s base had twitched immediately before the Wollusk spoke, and flowered up a softly glowing orb, now being juggled among the bush’s tendrils. When Varmsni had looked at the dials next, every one was pointing Formingway.
Interesting, he thought.
A firm claw closed around Varmsni’s wrist. He spun, startled, half expecting to find an optimistic Corpulent laying early claim to an after-Calling snack.
It was worse than that. It was his future.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed.
Varmsni didn’t know her name yet. They wouldn’t formally meet for another three ellipses and he had wanted to keep at least a few surprises waiting for himself, so he had never read about her in depth.
“What are you doing here?” he countered. “How did you even find me?”
“I’m supposed to be here today,” she sniffed. “I suppose at least now I know why. Gonsa help me, if this is what you’re going to be like as a bondmate then I’m going to have to keep a close eye.”
Varmsni relaxed slightly. “So… it’s just you, then?” She was a smidge bigger – all females were – but he was quick and in a crowd this size, quick was king. Escape was still on the table.
Her glare flattened. “Obviously not.”
One by one they arrived. First his parents, glowering. Then the elders and her parents, the former wheezing but otherwise unflapped, and the latter crinkling their noses as one does at a stench. Soon the village entire had arrived, enveloping Varmsni as if he were a single droplet being absorbed into a puddle. His father clamped a claw around Varmsni’s free arm while his muther firmly held his shoulders.
“Swallow your pride, kitling,” Muther growled in his ear.
Varmsni’s heart withered, and his features sank. They would chain him to a fatescribe for this. Chain him until he no longer felt the chain. The scribe would leave when Varmsni stopped seeing them. The chain would be removed when Varmsni enjoyed wearing it. Escape, and all its hopeful promises, fizzled in the back of his eyes. He flicked mournful eyes up at the Wollusk as one looks at the ashes of a dream.
The Wollusk was staring directly at him. Varmsni started, blinking. Was he? No. Was he?
The moment passed and Varmsni’s head filled with a single, curious thought. Swallow his pride, indeed. The Wollusk opened its mouth.
"Please, Mr. Wollusk sir," Varmsni shouted. By Gonsa’s Toes, his voice felt small in this great multitude. "Is it our turn yet, sir?"
Every eye swung to Varmsni. His muther gasped and adjusted her hold on him, one arm flung round his chest and her free hand clapped around his muzzle. His clan gaped, horrified. Sninkletobs were not a shouting type, by common agreement if not necessarily by nature. Certainly not the kind to call attention or have presumption.
A resonating gurgle-groan echoed from deep inside the Wollusk's throat. From another creature, it would've sounded like his stomach was talking. From the Wollusk, slowly blinking and rolling one huge eye to focus on Varmsni, it was more commonly believed to be an expression of curiosity. That said, there had been a time long ago when the gargle had directly preceded the Wollusk belching out a small army of what you and I would have described as self-propelled flying kooshballs.
Varmsni’s muther quailed at the Wollusk’s groan, her hand fluttering down from her son’s snout.
"Please sir," Varmsni said, his voice a squeak in his own ears. "Only we've waited so awfully long, you see, and I do so want to...well, you know. See."
The Wollusk eyed the cute 'Tob and gurgled again. Those on the nearest perimeter of onlookers shuffled nervously.
"Very well," boomed the Wollusk. "Sninkletobs! Gather you your families before me. My next story will call you into what the humans call Being."
A great voice booms.
“A fork in the path of destiny appears, and only you can see it.”
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