Oontab [Episode 28]

Li’ved

“Master!” Qwindri bowed excitedly. “When I bent to human form, I felt extraordinary!”
Li’ved growled. “How extraordinary exactly?”

“I felt like… like I knew… things I didn’t know I knew! I looked into the King’s eyes and I knew -”
“Everything. Yes?” Li’ved cut in, completing the sentence for Qwindri, even though he had asked as though he did not know the answer.

Qwindri was astonished, slapped in the face with a sudden realization. It stopped for a thought and said, “But I do not understand. Why can we not all come into human form and do as we please, since it was possible for I to sojourn as such?”

“He-he-he… Can you recall the war which brought Mogg to be King?”

“Yes Master.”

“King Fanoba knew me, and he gave me possession of himself once. I only summoned the drops of his blood which I had taken from him, combined with the blood of the child, and brought him back to life to be used again. So because of the blood of the child, we could only pass to the other side, but not survive long enough. But because of the blood of King Fanoba, we can stay alive on the other side. And now that you, my faithful servant have done so well to enter Existence, the gateway has been opened to all of us; in any form we please – human, or as we are – we will enter Existence.”

“Ah! I ssseee! King Fanoba’s seed was only partially surrendered to you, so its blood could not sustain the covenant you had with its father.”

“Precisely, Qwindri.” Qwindri smiled and parts of the tree bark on its face were shaken off and they fell to the ground. It was only a few times Li’ved mentioned Qwindri’s name without a hint of strain in its voice.

“Humanity is ignorant.” Qwindri said, looking at the ground.

“And we will take their place… beginning with what is ours.” Li’ved added.

“The child?” Asked Qwindri.

“Yes; The King.” The hideous master gurgled.

Kanaka

Kanaka’s fury overflowed when he followed the trail of blood to the grave that had been freshly dug, to Fonjam’s body. His emotions let themselves loose at the sight and on bended knee, he stayed next to the body and wept silently with only a few tears, unable to understand what could have happened there and who could have been the murderer. Realizing that the ground was very recently dug and by a man’s hand, he stood up sharply; Fonjam’s body had not even started to decay. He looked around if he could find anything that could lead him to a possible killer, since he could not be far. He traced more blood and found a pit with a mixture of blood and water. When he saw that he was only at the beginning of the killer’s trail and began to come out of the pit, he heard the clatter of shrubs nearby, then quick footsteps. Someone was running away! Kanaka knew it had to be the Killer or at least someone who saw the murder! He picked up his feet, ignoring the continuous painful thump in his arm and bolted after the person, fighting against the slope of the pit’s edges. When he had come out, he saw the shadow of a robed man run and disappear down the first hill and he ran after the shadow. The shadow was about two stones’ throw from him. When he began descending the hill, the man had entered the village. How did he do that so quickly? He seemed used to the descent. Kanaka made way down the hill and finally into the village, then he began to shout, “Murderer! Go after him!”
A few men jumped out of their houses, red-eyed from having almost drifted to sleep and began chasing the shadow, not knowing why. The only information they had was, ‘murderer’. Another handful came out holding sticks and stones. Kanaka, ran around to reach close enough to the palace for his shout to be heard at the servants’ quarters so that the guards could come out, marking where the shadow had gone through. It was headed towards the forest.

Samthanasmuths

Samnas took the staff and came out of the shrine when he heard running. When he had shut the door behind him, he looked and saw the shadow of a man, running in the direction of the cliff beyond the forest at the edge of the slope; then he heard a very distant shout from the main village. If he had heard correctly, the shadow-man could not be left to go free, so he followed it.

The man stopped dead in his tracks at the edge of the cliff and nabbed his waist to remove something he had fastened to it. Samnas slowed down and moved closer to the man, hearing more footsteps behind him. It seemed like even though the man could hear those footsteps, he was not looking back to see who it was after him. He was in a hurry to jump unto the path. Samnas walked closer and called out, knowing and slowly coming to the realization that only one person had the same access to the hidden path; King Greda. Why was he being chased?

“My King…” but before he knew it, the King has poured red dust in the air and began to speak incantations. At that moment, a dozen men slid to their stop behind Samnas and watched as the portal appeared in front of them, and as King Greda was about to jump into it, Kanaka ran over and jumped, catching King Greda by the ankle and pulling him down to his face.

“Let go of me, servant!” The King growled, squirming and banging a fist into Kanaka’s arms which were now tied around him.

“Hold him! He killed Fonjam! Guards, help!” Kanaka barked as he struggled with King Greda.

It seemed to make sense to the guards, because some of them raised their eyebrows and ran to overpower the fallen King Greda. They threw glances at the screen that had appeared as they bound him and set him on the ground. Samnas was still astonished at everything, as he had been staring wide-eyed since the realization that it was the King Kanaka had called Fonjam’s murderer. His grip on the rod tightened.

Then there was an echo.

A dark echo.

A gurgle.

Growls.

A building mist.

A gruesome noise and putrid smells emerging from the portal made the men step back repulsively. Huge brave men shrank to childish horror as they rubbed against their skins to reduce the stings they were beginning to feel on their skins. The mist was so thick and brown it became lethal not just to their eye sight or their skins or their nostrils alone, but to the very hairs on their head as they back away from the portal.

The portal began to close, and just as it was about to vanish into the emptiness of the dark bottomless pit, a tree’s root grew through from the other side, and then a stout trunk followed expanding the size of the hole the portal had made in thin air. A bigger tree trunk barged in, and its branches moved like the hands of a human, using a sharp tip – finger – to hold the edges of the portal for a moment and then tearing it open till it stretched along the whole length and width of the cliff. The portal spread open like fire burning the walls of a house as what lay behind it began to look more real than the ground the people present to watch were standing even though it was a large arena full of darkness, rot, thick rivers of black phlegm and of fire. The otherworldly presence sent the men running helter-skelter as the portal was opened to a multitude of tree creatures snarling and spitting rage, with hunger in their eyes, waiting to pounce on anything alive.

King Greda unbound himself and took to his heels behind the others. Samnas was the last to run following behind Kanaka who had been destabilized by King Greda’s take off, but still had taken off faster. There was a loud screech let out into the air, loud enough to deafen a man, and it seemed like a signal, because the creatures began to move towards the village, everything in the dark world seeming to move behind them as though swallowing Gardutkar village. It was a contorted version of the reality that was known. And the smells…!

Edongo

Edongo woke up to a loud high-pitch scrape in the atmosphere that sounded like many stones being rubbed continuously together. He rushed out of his house and just when he began to wonder why anyone could be doing that, he discovered that everyone else living close to his hut was wide awake, some still stepping out of their huts to determined the source of the noises. They all stood amazed, putting their hands on their hips, some in their ears to shield the disturbing sounds from entering.

Dakumet

Queen Dakumet sat up in her bed, wide awake and completely shattered by the happenings of the night. Her eyes bulged, perhaps full of the tears she had held back, amidst the ones she let out. Greda was not back from where he had rushed to. Had he done something to Fonjam? She felt ashamed thinking of the way she betrayed Greda and put Fonjam into the whole mess. She felt like a stranger in her own home, and her son had taken that identity as well, since Greda had rejected them both. It was all her fault. Maybe she should not have been caught off guard the first day she met Fonjam. It had happened and she loved him. But if she had not met Fonjam, she would have had a fruitful marriage with Greda – and she knew, to her utter shame and hurt – that she would have grown to love Greda back the way he had loved her, if only she had given him the chance to. Now it was only a matter of time before she would be banished from the palace, which means she would be sent to wander the village as cursed, and maybe from the village, which meant she would have to live in the forbidden parts of Gardutkar. Living would be impossible.

The honor she had lost was not her problem now. After all, she had come from a lowly home, adopted and bred by her poor parents. Their skin tone was enough to tell that she was not a member of the family. When her father and mother were alive, they worked day and night trying to survive and sustain the family, blackened by the heat of the merciless sun and scarred by misfortune and sickness; they were an oddity to everything that Gardutkar stood to represent. Gardutkar represented unhindered reaping of harvest, but they represented toil without yield. For some reason, people distanced themselves from them because they believed that the gods had marked them with curses, and this is the family Dakumet grew in. But she had the quality love of her loving guardians who had stood in everything to be parents to a child that was not theirs by birth. Because they saw promise in Dakumet’s eyes the very first day she was given to them by fate, they called her “Stranger”; “Dakumet”. It was supposed to mean good, that she was a stranger to pain, hardships and suffering but over the years as she grew, she was pushed to the background in everything she did. Second place was too excellent for her and she was hated by her peers because she had not been useful to anyone around her. But as she grew, it was as if the gods had mercy on her and gave her a beauty nobody expected she would ever have. It was an inside out beauty and that inner beauty was treasured by only a few. The outer beauty was only a mask that pleased everyone to look at. Fonjam had seen beyond it. She did not give Greda the chance to.

As she thought further about her parents and the disgrace she had brought upon the people, the women to whom she was to be an example and her parents who were with the ancestors watching, she broke into tears again. She heard her son crying and she gently went into the room to cuddle him and play with him till he was silent again. When she entered and sat down to keep him calm, she heard screams from people at a distance and footsteps of their running. Then there was a deep loud moan all over her ears as she fought to keep her son’s shut. It sent cold shivers down her spine and it frightened her so much that she began shaking. Fear seeped in through her lungs and drank the little hope she had in anything good coming out of the night. She felt invisible hands reach behind her but when she turned but it was only her imagination, because no one else was really there except her small child. An otherworldly presence was there, and she couldn’t tell what, but she knew that she was sensing an evil that she had never imagined would be anywhere near Gardutkar. She swallowed and started thinking of where to hide if the worst happened.

Samthanasmuths

A fast moving creature grabbed hold of Samnas foot and flung him down on his side. His memory quickly shot back to the incident with his dog, then as he was trying to set the rod in a position to place some weight on one side and hit the tree creature on its stump, the rod brushed over the creature, barely touching it, yet the rod sent it flinging in the opposite direction with an invisible force. Three other plants landed on his foot and one on his head, pressing his eyelids to force his eyeballs out, but he flexed and spun the rod round, repelling all of them. He felt the liquid from one the creatures’ mouth burn his cheek and he reached for it with his hands but the burn only spread there. His face started to pull itself apart, but to his relief, the sore feeling died down instantly. As he got up to keep running to where he was no longer sure – no one was sure – he caught sight of a young child who had tried fighting one of the creature with his feather bag, awakened from sleep by its attack, and after an unsuccessful struggle was now lying wasted and bruised on the floor. Samthanasmuths slid beneath the platforms of the market set to display goods and rolled up at the pathway in the direction of the palace.

Greda

Nobody knew how, but King Greda had dug a shallow hole and buried himself, escaping notice from the creatures. It was all too much. The events of the night were on completely opposite extremes of meaning and human logic. At one point he was enraged and murdered someone, at the next he became comforted by the appearance of the mysterious man and now he was running for his life and his village was under attack by creatures he had never seen. It was as if the red dust released the creatures from the portal that he opened. But he was to enter and be safe, said the mysterious man, and change his fate by manipulating his past. It just occurred to him that he did not know if that was even possible, but then, the divine presence was enough to assure him that it was. It was all becoming confusing, but he fought to understand, taking in very gentle breaths of what was left of the clean air of Gardutkar as he hid in the ground, leaving small spaces for his nostrils. Kanaka! Ah! The fool had stopped him!

He thought of Dakumet and began to feel sorry for her…

To be continued...

- Telsum Bini