The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1) (24 page)

He remembered he was in a shanty in the Mercher encampment, something a little more than a tent, but not a full cabin, either. A cobbled-together shack was probably even a rich description. It belonged to Gallun and Gellen, and had no fire or candles lit inside, which is why it was in total darkness.

Next to him, the almost silent breathing of his two hosts reached his ears. He remained still for a moment until he could locate them, and then slowly crept out of their home, the echoes of the dream that had woken him still repeating through his head.

He managed to get outside without disturbing the two brothers, and he needed the space to clear the emotions stirred up by his vivid dream. The air had cooled a little, but it was still the darkest of the middle of the night, with no light from Vasahle coming from the sky. Even the sparkflies had gone to bed at this lonely hour, and were it not for the dying fires interspersed throughout the Mercher camp, it would be just as dark outside as inside the shack.

He walked over towards the closest fire pit and began to think through the dream that had felt like a memory. Or, more accurately, it was a memory that felt like it had to be a dream. It was not unfamiliar to him as he had dreamt it many times, but it had always been a memory before he had started to dream it. In his figuring, it had to be more firmly rooted in his head as a memory than a fiction created by his sleeping mind, except for the one puzzling and impossible aspect of it.

It was a very early memory of his, and in it, he was of but five or six years. He had decided that he was big enough to help his father with chores, and so he had taken the wooden water bucket and made his way, by himself, to retrieve some water from the stream closest to their cabin. He had been told not to go anywhere that he could not see the cabin door, but he had reached a point where he wanted to be of more use, and more independent. Looking back, he could understand his father’s panic, because there were a number of very treacherous soft bogs between the cabin and the clear-water brook. To his young mind, though, he gave no thought to those and merely wanted to help by fetching some water. He had no sooner made it to the stream successfully, and very luckily, when he heard soft feet thrumming up behind him at a full run. He remembered turning back in the direction he had come, from the cabin, to see the fox, Pe’taro, racing after him. He remembered smiling and laughing at the fox as games of chase were not unusual between them at all.

Suddenly behind him, he heard his father’s voice cry, “Oh, Di’taro!” He turned to see his father standing there naked, wearing only a horror-stricken face. It was certainly not unusual for him to see his father undressed on occasion, but it was the upset and fear in his father’s face that, in turn, upset him. His father scooped him up in his arms and held him close as he told him, “You must not venture alone! It is too dangerous without me or Pe’taro with you, little one! Too dangerous!”

“I am big enough, father! I want to help!” he remembered telling his father as he wrapped his small arms around the man’s neck.

His father set him down and knelt in front of him. He took his son’s hand and said, “Yes, I know you do. And perhaps it is time; you will not always be a boy and you are growing up. You must learn to live here without me by your side every moment. I promise to teach you how to live the ways of the woods, but you must promise me not to attempt things like this until I have taught you. Will you solemnly promise me that, Di’taro?”

“Yes, father, I want to learn.”

The memory would be a perfect one except for the one detail that did not fit.

In his memory, his father had appeared behind him, from the direction opposite of the cabin, where his father had been when he had snuck away, and yet he had managed to pass around Gully unnoticed. It should not have been possible. That was the part that sometimes made it feel more like a dream than a real memory. Gully supposed that, somewhere when he wasn’t paying attention, the dream and the real memory merged into one thing. But Gully felt so absolutely sure that it all had happened as he remembered, for the very next day was when his father began in earnest to teach him everything he knew about living among the bogs, marshes and woods.

The distraught worry and fear on his father’s face when he had turned to see him still burned into Gully; he had never wanted to upset his father, but not out of fear of suffering the man’s anger. Even when he had been a bad child and had disobeyed his father, Ollon never scolded him unnecessarily, and he never did it out of anger.

Gully stared through the darkness around him, not a soul that he could see stirring in the entire encampment. How could he have gone his entire life with his father before he disappeared without ever learning the truth about him and whom he was? Why had his father never said anything to him, never taught him about balmors and the empire of Balmorea? Part of him wanted to feel that the conclusions the patriarch had arrived at had been the product of a few unfortunate coincidences, that his father was not Balmorean and was not a balmor. That the scar on his palm was an early childhood accident and not this “blood seal” he spoke of. That the man Gully thought of as his father really was his father. But he felt inside that it must be the truth. It fit too well and explained things too precisely.

And so, Gully tried to feel angry, even betrayed, that his father had kept these things from him. That in the short time they had together, he had kept the most important part of himself from his son. He tried to think that his father didn’t care for him the way he thought he had and that was why he never trusted Gully with these secrets.

He tried to stir up anger inside himself, but he could not do it. Every memory of his father, every moment they were together, reminded Gully that he had never once felt like he was anything less than the most important person in the world to him. The patriarch had spoken almost those very words out loud to Gully, and he felt how true it was reverberate in every memory he had of his father, Ollon. Almost every moment, from the day he tried to help by fetching a bucket of water forward, his father spent teaching Gully — plants to eat and avoid and which ones had useful properties, tracking and hunting, navigating the forest and spotting trustworthy ground from a concealed and deadly bog by sight alone, the letters of the alphabet and reading words, and basic maintenance of the cabin where they lived.

Gully wondered if that was why they did not spend time on the history of an empire long since crumbled away and his father’s dual-bodied nature; his father concentrated so deeply on teaching him skills necessary to his survival that other topics waited. And then perhaps waited too long before their time together was interrupted.

Gully sighed and wished he had had more time with him. He could think of nothing he would not give or do to know his father was still alive and to get to see him again.

As he mulled over these wistful thoughts, a slight motion in the black shadows caught his attention. It was something large, but moving low to the ground. A moment later, he saw the gleam of two amber eyes as they flashed the reflected light of the fire’s embers. He began to back up a step, unsure of what it was, and then the light caught it enough so that Gully recognized it as a massive panther cat, as black as the night around it, stalking around the periphery of the fire.

He would have instantly panicked at the sight of such a dangerous creature so close by, except that, now, he assumed that any animals in the Mercher camp were, in fact, people.

As if to confirm this, the panther nodded its head at him briefly in greeting. It was a strangely human gesture to see on a cat large enough to take down a Belder horse as it acknowledged him and then continued on its patrol of the camp.

So caught up was Gully in watching the panther silently make its rounds that he jumped in surprise at the hand that touched his shoulder. He wheeled around to find, he assumed, Gallun standing behind him, as naked as usual.

Gallun, forgetting he had no tongue, tried to speak to calm Gully, but all that came out was a series of unintelligible mutters. Gallun frowned in frustration and his shoulders drooped as he remembered he could no longer speak. Even in the dark, Gully could see the look of miserable chagrin on his face.

Gully said, “I am fine, uh... Gallun? Yes?”

Gallun nodded and Gully added, “You startled me, nothing more. I... I began thinking back about my father and came outside to clear my head.”

Gallun nodded, then stretched and yawned widely. An almost animal growl escaped from his chest as he did so. He slapped Gully on the shoulder a few times, then nodded back towards the shanty for him to go back to bed.

“Yes, you’re right. I think it is time to go back to sleep,” said Gully, following him inside.

In the dark, as Gully felt his way back to his mat, he briefly felt the fur of a sleeping wolf next to him. He assumed that Gellen must have shifted in his sleep.

As he fell back asleep, he wondered what he would say to Roald without his brother thinking him hopelessly addled. And since he would not be able to bring the two brothers back to Lohrdanwuld as evidence against the guards and veBasstrolle without publicly exposing the Mercher clan, he wondered how he would be able to put a stop to the evil those men were doing.

He had seen and learned so much, so many unbelievable things, so many things that changed how he saw his own life, but felt no closer to any resolution than he had when he had started out.

~~~~~

Gully awoke again to the first early gray of morning light as it began to creep into the shanty. With the faint light slipping in through the cracks, he found that he was now alone and that Gallun and Gellen had slipped out while he had slept.

He stretched and yawned and shook the last of his sleep off, then stepped outside to see if he could find either of the two brothers.

Many in the camp were starting to stir as well and beginning their chores for the day. No one seemed to live in any semblance of luxury or comfort at all, but neither did they seem to want for very much. Most had fixed up their living quarters a little bit better than the truly meager one that served as Gallun’s and Gellen’s, who Gully guessed lived the most meagerly of all in the camp.

The more people he saw in the early morning light, the more it confirmed for him how his father must have been Balmorean. They all had thick, black hair and their skin had a faint olive tone to it, just as he remembered in his father. There were all ages represented, from mothers carrying newborns up to a few as old as even the patriarch. Some, like he remembered seeing on Exoutur and Encender, had graying hair. Some of the men kept beards like his father had had, and others kept themselves shaved clean.

It was remarkable to see the animals present among the people, with no one giving it a thought. He saw a large black panther, he assumed the same one he had seen during the night, whose size was still daunting to Gully. There was a black bear trundling along with an arm around a fellow a little older than Gully, as if the two of them were best friends. An elderly lady smiled an almost toothless grin at him as she nodded a greeting, all while an owl with a black face and brown-and-black stippled body flapped to remain balanced on her head. It was the kind of owl that Gully knew of as a pilcher owl. Gully wondered how the owl’s talons did not tear into the woman’s head, until he noticed she wore a coif hat made of a thick, stiff leather to prevent such injury.

A couple of foxes, a lynx cat, and a young girl of probably fourteen years went racing past him in what looked like a game of chase. One of the foxes was a red one and the other a black one. The two foxes were similarly sized to how he remembered Pe’taro, but neither of them had the distinctive color that his pet had. Or, perhaps more properly, that his
father
had. Gully realized it was going to take some time to get used to thinking of Pe’taro as being his father. The foxes, the lynx, and the girl crashed together in a happy, giggling ball almost knocking over a man carrying a goose that had been slaughtered and plucked.

A moment later, Gully almost shouted in panic when he saw a baby, barely of age to toddle, wander unsteadily over to an unaware wolf nearby and then grabbing into its fur for balance. Gully’s fear took over and expected the wolf to turn on the child viciously. Instead, the wolf turned and licked the child’s face affectionately a couple of times. Then it was suddenly a grown man to whom the child was clinging, who swept up the delighted child into his broad arms.

Most everyone was friendly enough towards him, waving and wishing him a good morning, so Gully assumed most everyone was aware of his “capture.” It wasn’t until he heard his name called from behind him that he recognized a voice, though.

He turned to see Encender approaching him, carrying the bag that Gully had lost when he had fainted at the sight of Raybb the bear the day before.

Encender did not wish him a good morning, but he did not seem to want to continue trying to kill Gully for the safety of the clan, either.

Encender handed Gully’s bag to him and said, “My father insisted that I return this to you. And this as well.” He pulled Gully’s throwing knife from his belt, flipped it skillfully in his hand, and handed it back to its owner by the handle.

Gully accepted the return of his belongings, replacing the knife to its spot in his boot. He had been feeling its absence and felt whole again once the handle pressed reassuringly against his ankle. “Thank you, Encender,” said Gully. “Er... I want to assure you that I mean no harm to the clan.”

Encender shrugged and said gruffly, “Of course you don’t. But even if you did, you’d say that very same thing, now wouldn’t you? So your words have no value to me. And I also hear that you are a thief, by your own admission. It baffles me whom my father accepts among us, but you can rest easy that I will honor his decision.”

A girl, perhaps only a couple of years younger than Gully, approached behind Encender without a word. She was striking, with piercing dark eyes and hair kept shorter than most of the other women Gully had seen. She had a long and elegant nose that highlighted her face extremely well. The girl placed her hand on Encender’s shoulder. She didn’t say a word, but made a few motions with her hand that Encender seemed to understand without difficulty.