Fresh From The Oven

 

Sisseku showed no recognition of Fallon as she handed him a large flat pan. The smell of the freshly made food wafted into his nostrils and his stomach ached. “Lunch rations for the miners,” she said in a bored tone and turned back to the oven fire. He needed to know what to do with the pan of rations, but an instinct prompted him to duck out of the smoky beehive kitchen.

Approaching the beehives was another elephant. One of the cooks walked out from the first beehive carrying a tray of the miner’s medicine. He glanced at Fallon, then set his tray down on the sled behind the elephant and signaled to Fallon to set his tray on top. The sled was covered with a white apron and Fallon began to fold the cloth over the rations. “No,” the cook said, “pay attention. One more tray.” He motioned Fallon back to Sisseku’s beehive oven.

As Fallon came to the opening of the beehive, a male carrying another tray of rations almost bumped into him. Fallon took the tray, turned around and set it down on the sled, then folded the cloth over the food. Bent over the sled, he glanced behind him to make sure the others had gone back into their beehives, then palmed three rations into his apron. On an impulse, he reached to the bottom level and took a cut piece of miner’s medicine, then tied up the cloth and signaled to the Fae warrior atop the elephant to go.

“Hey, more firewood here!” A cook from another beehive motioned to Fallon. Where was firewood? Fallon started toward him and got halfway down the path along the beehive ovens when the cook yelled impatiently, “Firewood!” and pointed up the hill behind Fallon.

“Sorry. Couldn’t hear you,” Fallon called back. All these people spoke Dallesa, the language of Sisseku’s tribe. Did she know that Mellen was a miner? Why were there no guards here? Why didn’t they all run away?

Fallon turned toward the hill, the one he had come down earlier. He hadn’t noticed any firewood but set off to find it. He found it stacked along a long one-story building at the bottom of the hill. He climbed up on the stacked wood to look inside a window opening.  He saw a row of makeshift wooden cots and bedding, just like a warriors’ barracks.

He shrugged off his white coat, took out the rations and miner’s medicine, and tucked the white coat behind a rock away from the barracks. Crouching low he followed the tree line back up the hill to Alithea and Erthen. His heart sank when he saw they weren’t there. Captured? He instinctively pursed his lips to make the call of a tik-tik bird but stopped. He had not seen any birds since they got here. Would the sound raise an alert?

Seeing a little calf mooing for its mother, he thought he could imitate that sound but would Alithea know that was him? He tried the caw of a tik-tik bird, and it was answered almost immediately. He scanned the tree line on the other side of the clearing. The sound came again from the same approximate location. Alithea could see him but he couldn’t see her. Then he heard a higher pitched caw to signal a warning.

He crawled through the high grass in the field until he came to a large cow. Fallon’s tunic blended with the beige mottling of the cow’s hide. He looked again toward the area where he thought Alithea was and spotted her but dared not signal. The cow beside him watched him with a baleful eye but did not seem concerned by his presence. Until that early morning encounter with one of these creatures, Fallon had not been around a domesticated animal. Working his way from cow to cow, he crossed the field, then ducked inside the cover of the trees.

Alithea shushed Erthen when Fallon rejoined them, then gave him an earnest hug. Fallon drew out the rations. “You move back with into the trees with Erthen. I’ll keep watch.”

Alithea took the ration and bit into it greedily. “We had to,” she stopped as she saw the white square in his hand. “Where did you get that? That looks like what they give the miners.”

“It is. They make it down there. They called it the miner’s medicine.”

“Don’t touch it. You’ll absorb the medicine through your skin.”

Fallon looked down at the white square in his hand. “It’s been wrapped in my tunic most of the time.”

“Good, bury it,” Alithea said, then paused. “No, the animals might dig it up. It might harm them.”

Fallon wrapped his tunic around the white square. “Go. Eat. I’ll watch.”

“There are herders up here. I had to move. They went up the hill. I think they were looking for strays.”

 “Go, eat,” he urged again, and she took Erthen with her. He was a good boy, staying quiet when she asked him to. Not speaking was the first lesson a Jade child had to learn as soon as they could speak.

Fallon turned toward the clearing, tearing a piece of ration with his teeth. He heard shouts from further up the hill and huddled down, alert to danger. He saw only a dancing cloak of shadow on the ground, then a large dark brown bird swept down and sank its talons into a young calf. The young body dangled still from the grip of the talons as the bird tried to regain flight. Wings beating furiously, the large bird carried and dragged the calf partway down the hill and out of Fallon’s sight. As the shouts of herders crashed through the mid-morning air, he turned away from the clearing, creeping toward Alithea and Erthen.