I stared at T’r’bl for a long time. She didn’t move, other than the occasional blink in that curious way that birds blink. I broke her stare and scanned the other Vrr’a’kl. They too stared back at me, many of them fluttering their feathers. W’oo’woo was among them, quivering quietly beside me. K’eel had her head down, her beak resting upon the ground. She was the only one not looking at me.
I focused back on T’r’bl. “I-.” I didn’t know what to say. I needed to say something. “I don’t know what I can do to help.”
“You can help us,” whispered K’eel, her eyes still fixed on the ground before her nose.
“We think you can, Nate,” said T’r’bl. “We believe you can.”
“What can I do? I’m just an accountant.”
“Accountant,” echoed many members of the crowd.
“I mean, I work with numbers. I don’t deal with people very well.”
“The Keepers, and their flying machines,” said T’r’bl. “These are like what K’eel has seen in your home. You will understand them. They will understand you.”
“But, I mean. I’m just a guy. I’m not like Flash Gordon or anything.” Panic welled in me. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“Stay with us and watch,” whispered K’eel.
“But what about my home? My job? I can’t just leave.”
W’oo’woo was trembling. “Please,” he whispered. “Please try.”
“We will do our best to accomodate your needs,” said T’r’bl. “K’eel can take you home and you may gather supplies.” T’r’bl slumped and looked away. “Or you may go home to stay.”
“No one else has been able to help you?” I looked at K’eel. “What made you choose me? There are better trained men. There are others who might be able to help better than me.”
K’eel still looked down. “The path led to you. You are chosen.”
“But I’m nobody. Nothing special. I’ve never gone anywhere or done anything.”
K’eel shut her eyes. “Then I will take you home.”
I turned to W’oo’woo. He looked away. They all looked away.
“Terrbull,” I said, mispronouncing T’r’bl’s name. “I don’t mean to upset you. You’ve go to understand that this is all a little hard to believe.”
“It is our fate,” T’r’bl muttered, looking at the ground.
“Look, I don’t want to see you suffer. If what you tell me is true then, yeah, it’s not cool. But I feel powerless to help. I really don’t know what I would do.”
T’r’bl looked at me with one eye. “Please just stay a few days. Watch. Learn. Perhaps things that happen here will make sense to you. They do not make sense to us.”
Some of the Vrr’ak’l eyed me, fluttering.
“Maybe I can help you find someone who can help you. Better than me, I mean.”
“You are chosen,” muttered K’eel.
“But you don’t know how the caves in the white wall work. Maybe it’s just coincidence that I was at the other end.”
K’eel sighed. I sighed with her.
“But I can go back and get supplies?” I said. T’r’bl straightened. “I don’t know if my stomach can handle this food. I mean no offense.”
“Whatever can be carried, provided you can get there and back during daylight,” said T’r’bl.
“I could go home and spend the night in my own bed, and come back first thing in the morning. Maybe?”
T’r’bl nodded. The other Vrr’ak’l were fluttering and cooing.
“It’s the weekend. I guess I have a day or two,” I thought out loud. “Are days and nights the same here and there? At the same time?” I asked K’eel.
“No,” she replied, her beak still resting on the ground. “I could take you home one day and fetch you back the next.”
“As a stink bug?” I smiled. She had appeared as a stink bug. “Why a stink bug?”
K’eel looked up at me. “What is that? Stink bug?”
“You were a little tiny bug.”
“I summoned you as I have summoned others. I put myself in your field of view. Did you not see me?”
“I saw a bug. You weren’t you until we left the wall.”
T’r’bl raised her crest. “How strange.”
“So you didn’t know?”
K’eel shook her head.
“OK. Well. I guess I can hang around for a day or two, just to see what’s going on. But I’ll have to do back in a couple of days, if only to call in sick to work.”
K’eel fluffed her feathers. W’oo’woo trilled and fluttered. T’r’bl nodded. “Yes. Thank you,” T’r’bl said. “Yes, yes.”
I wondered what I had just gotten myself into.
Read Chapter 15.
Go back to the beginning.
Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist 