Penumbra (11)

But it seemed I had little choice in the matter. Every time I got up to run my hip refused to hold me up, and I stumbled to the ground. A dozen times I must have tried to run from him, and each time I flailed pathetically to the floor of the wood. I was scared, very cold, and in pain, and before long I was weeping openly on the floor, hiding my face from this strange apparition that stood above me, speaking in soothing tones, but in his strange language these noises were nonsensical. I suppose I must have entered some sort of delirium state that lasted for several moons at least, because my memory of these times is extremely fractured, but I shall attempt to recall what I can.

Eventually I became aware that he had picked me up and was carrying me somewhere. I think I may have thought he was carrying me back to the fire to be burned alive, and I tried to scratch his eyes out, but in my weakened state I don't think I posed much of a threat to him. I was so cold and exhausted that it was easier simply to close my eyes, and take what body heat I could from him while he held me. After some time, I do not know how long, I dimly perceived that we had entered a cave, and again I was afraid because although my own people occasionally take shelter in caves, on the whole we are a claustrophobic race and do not trust them- certainly I had never walked more than a dozen feet into one myself, and without the sun to illuminate it the interior was pitch black. Not for long, however, as Kerron started a fire and lay me down beside it.

Warmth! It was all I could do not to roll myself directly onto the fire in an attempt to thaw my frozen bones. Kerron had disappeared, but I did not move, did not even consider moving one inch away from that fire. I luxuriated in its glow and felt life and sanity flooding back into me. I lay there for some time before Kerron returned with some food and an enormous fur cloak, which he draped about me, and I wrapped it about every inch of me, only my face showing through its layered hood. I regarded him carefully, and as alien as his face, his giant eyes, was to me, his expression seemed clear- he was concerned for me. He offered me some strips of dried meat and fruits and I devoured them immediately, watching him all the while. His expression softened and he appeared to be pleased that I was conscious and eating. Again he spoke to me, and again I did not understand. This was a pattern that would persist for quite some time, I am afraid, although it was always clear from his intonation what he was trying to say. I never understood the specifics of his communication during these times, but I almost always understood the intent, and the body language of the nightsiders seemed no different to my own people's. It took me a very long time to truly believe that he did not somehow mean me harm, but initially, at least, I was so exhausted and wounded that my distrust of him did not factor very much into the equation.

Over the next few turns Kerron came and went, bringing food, water and other supplies. He dressed and redressed the puncture through my left hand, taking care to keep it clean and occasionally dressing it with a soft spongy moss that dulled the throbbing pain that evinced itself after I had warmed up and the pain of being frozen had passed me by. He kept the fire burning almost continuously, and as the cave was quite small it trapped the heat and eventually became more than bearable, sometimes so warm that I could come out from the bundle of my fur cloak. Kerron constructed a door, a large sheet of wood that covered the entrance to the cave, kept the warmth inside. I wondered briefly if I was trapped, but there seemed to be no lock, or indeed any hinges, that would prevent me from leaving if I should attempt it.

And, many turns later, I did. I had been healing for some time, had passed through a terrible fever and slept many times through the terrible pain in my hip, but one day I felt as if I could walk, and I waited for my chance to escape. Though I never saw him sleeping in the cave, Kerron went out quite frequently for supplies, sometimes he clearly returned with items he had foraged himself, water and animals and plants and the like, yet other times, when he had been gone even longer, he came back with things that had clearly been manufactured by people other than himself- cutlery, cups, cooking implements, a strange little board game, so presumably he was visiting with passing tribes and trading with them in some fashion or another.

I waited until he left on one of these trips, then made my move. It felt strange to try and stand after lying prone for so long, but although my hip was still in pain, I did seem to be able to take small, cautious steps on it, and felt that it was support my weight. I flung my cloak around me, gathered as many supplies as I was able to carry, also took a small bread knife, and steeled myself for a long trek through the night. To be honest I had no idea what my actual objective was- the sun must have been so far from me now that I could never catch up with it, even if I knew what direction it lay, but I was not thinking of an objective, simply that I had to get out of the cave and away from the strange guardian who kept me.

I pushed the door aside, and was greeted by a strange ground of white. This was snow, although I had never seen it before. I stumbled through it for a few feet, utterly confused by it, reached out to touch it and then withdrawing my hand rapidly when I realized it was freezing to touch. yet is also crumbled, and seemed magical. The way it lay about all things, trees and hills and rocks, was very striking, and although my mind felt fear, I knew that my heart recognized its beauty. It seemed to be falling from the sky in small flakes, and my eyes followed their dance in the dark.

Then I looked up.

Words fail me. Words cannot express the awe I felt as I saw the entire universe spread out above me. A million points of light, more than I could ever count, dancing above me. A mighty white streak of light arced through them, larger than anything I had ever seen, larger than my world. I had never seen anything like it, and my mind refused to take it in. It was just so much bigger, and more beautiful, than I could ever have known. My world had always stopped at the blue sky, and the sun, which I had believed to be Helios' palace, looking down on me as though from a high mountain. But this! This mighty palette made me feel utterly insignificant, shrunk to almost nothing, a mere speck amongst an ocean of light. A gasp was wrenched from me and I stumbled onto my knees in the snow, tears raining down my face as I struggled to comprehend this place I was in.

"Where am I?" I shouted. "What is this place, what are these things?" I cried out over and over, weeping and hurling my face into the snow, my mind overloaded, my small notion of the great circle torn apart. "How can this be!" I shouted to the trees, the rocks, the cave, the snow, the night. I doubt I would have made sense even to one of my own people, I probably spoke gibberish, and hope of making sense or reason from all this dashed. "Where am I? Where am I? Helios save me! Take me from this hell! Help me!"

And suddenly Kerron was beside me, his arms around me, holding me and rocking me. My mind wanted to beat him away but out of instinct I grabbed onto him and clung tightly to him, weeping onto his shoulder, weeping for my lost world, my small corner, weeping for the beauty of the night I had never known.

"What are these things?" I sobbed into his shoulder, gesturing at them vaguely. "What are they? How can they be?"

"Stars." he said. I still remember the first word of his language he ever shared with me, the first word we both understood, together.

Stars.

It is difficult now to describe the events of the next five months in any particular detail. It was a difficult time, certainly a difficult trial for me, as we tried to learn each other's language. As I've mentioned, Kerron had a remarkable mind and once he knew the word for something in my language, he never had to be told again and used it as fluently as his own. He was extremely patient with me, and every turn we would discuss a new object, each of us teaching the other our own word for it. But language is hardly a list of the names of things, and general conversation was virtually impossible for quite some time. However neither of us had anyone else to talk to, and we found that we were both very adept at expressing ourselves to each other without speaking at all, so getting meaning across was not difficult. Kerron had mastered the basics of my language after about two months, and once he was able to speak to me directly, he was then able much better to teach me the basics of his. We would take turns speaking each other's language, a turn in my tongue so that I could speak freely, and a turn in his so that I could attempt to catch up with his mastery of my own. In truth, separated from our own people as we each were, I suspect that we slowly began to speak a melange of our two languages, a little of his and a lot of my own, a special shared bond that only we could ever speak to one another. I took pleasure in each new word of his that I learned, and he smiled when I used them with pride. But even when we could speak, we would often not have to say anything at all in order to make ourselves heard, I could look at Kerron and sometimes see exactly what he was thinking, without any words passing between us, such was our close proximity.

We stayed in that cave all through the long winter of night, and the frozen wastes that Kerron had travelled through in order to see the sun set now passed over him in turn. Sometimes the wind howled with the fury of the ages, trying to break into our enclave, but Kerron kept busy sealing every crack where the wind could get in, and braved the cold every day to keep our cave supplied with food and wood for the fire. My world, exploded by the stars, had now shrunk to the size of a tiny cave, yet I found I did not mind this too much, happy in my little frozen prison, shared with my odd fellow prisoner.

By the time the winter had passed over us, we could both speak as well to each other as I could to any of my fellow lightsiders- better, really, since Kerron had an intelligence and wit that I'd never encountered amongst my own people, and I realized that while I had never really been aware of a lack of it in my life, now that I had it I knew that it had been missing.

Once my hip had healed and the worst of the ice storms had passed over us, Kerron and I had started to take walks in the night, exploring the area around the cave, and I found that now that I had adjusted to the cold, the night was not the scary place I had always been told it would be. In many ways it was peaceful and beautiful in a way that the day could not be, and I treasured our little explorations, Kerron answering quietly any of the queries I might have about his world and his place in it. I discovered that the cave in which we sheltered was not even that far from the battlefield I had fallen on. We returned there, and it was very different, scoured clean by the passing of winter, with new trees just beginning to burst through the permafrost, ready for the coming twilight.

Looking about, Kerron gestured towards the east, and I saw a dim glow on the horizon. The sun had made a circuit around the great circle, and was coming back. A day had almost passed.

I was coming home.