Read The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man Online

Authors: Joe Darris

Tags: #adventure, #action, #teen, #ecology, #predator, #lion, #comingofage, #sasquatch, #elk

The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man (46 page)

BOOK: The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man
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His sister had suggested using one of the
Stones same as she did. If she failed to understand anything, she
shared a look with one of the pilots and understood.
Chiming,
they had explained to him. Speaking mind to mind,
same as the pilots and the animals. Kao could never do it. He had
tasted another mind in his and it was far worse than the hermit's
foul potion, but that was the way of things here. He had wanted to
leave the stones where they lay but his sister would have none of
it.

“They're important Kao, more important than
your prongblades.”

Wyla, how did you grow up so fast?
Wyla had organized a scavenging party with Elia's help to gather as
many of the stones as they could. They had found more than a
hundred (numbers still hurt Kao's brain but Wyla seemed to have no
issue with them) and some of the few howlers that had stayed in the
Garden knew how to implant them in person and animal alike.
Those howlers will be
trouble.
The ones that left took
another ten hands of the Stones with them.
But what can be
done? His sister has the truth of things, she is very wise and Kao
is confident she will think her way through any problem the village
might face. He still remembers his little sister with her grass
braids, but that might as well be another person.
That girl was
not called Wyla, the sister I remember had no name... but neither
did I.

Kao sighs at the way of things. It is time.
The prongelk and their pilots plow the earth together and rut as
one, pilots mounted on the backs of the prongelk.

Jacob is a strong leader of the prongelk.
Skup and his tribe defend the Garden from above. Wyla is wiser than
me. Urea and Shadow are better hunters. They do not need me.

Lost in self pity, Kao almost fails to notice
two orange slits materialize just past the clearing. The Garden has
grown in thick in spots, thick enough to hide a panthera.

Foolish!
Kao reaches for his
prongblade but hesitates.
I will fight this battle with my
hands
.

“Come on,” he growls. The panthera lunges.
Her silence frightens Kao, but he has learned cat's movements. He
sidesteps her and punches her hard in the ribs. She yowls and
hisses. Kao spits and snarls.

She lunges again and Kao dodges easily
enough. She is ready for him though, and kicks him viciously with
her hind legs.

Kao tumbles to the ground, the air knocked
from his lungs. The panthera stalks closer. She relishes the agony
of her wounded prey. Kao manages to push himself to his feet in
time to see her lick her lips before she swats him to the ground
with one of her huge paws. She stands over him, snarling, her teeth
dripping slaver, her breath reeking of blood.

 

***

 

<
Shadow, leave him!>

With an annoyed flick of her tail, the huge
black panthera took her paws of off Kao's chest. Urea pulled him to
her feet.

Kao scratched the panthera in her thick main,
behind her ears. She licked his face appreciatively.

“You've taught us a lot.”

Kao shrugged.

The panthera purred. Sometimes Urea was
certain she could understand Kao better than she could. When Shadow
caught sight of something in the Fruit Forest, and vanished silent
as her name, Urea wondered if Kao wanted to go as quickly and as
silently as the predator.

“We never would have survived without
you.”

Kao nodded.
Does he mean I'm right? Or
that we would have?
Even after all this time with him, he could
be so mysterious. He really was the
Wild Man
, whether he'd
admit it or not.

“You don't have to leave. There's plenty of
food here, plenty to do.”

“I am hunter.”

“And what exactly do you think I am?”

“Hunter,” he said, grabbed her shoulder and
squeezed her arm in the same place the three stubs of prongs were
still lodged in his.

Urea smiled and was happy to see Kao smile
too, if only for a moment.

“And your sister? Are you sure you're
comfortable leaving her with the Hidden?”

He looked into her purple eyes with his big
round ones, dark as the Scourge. He could say so much more with
those eyes, more than he ever had with words. He shook his head
no
. This time Urea is certain he means,
you are not the
Hidden.
He smiled for another instant, then it was gone
again.

He didn't belong here. He was no farmer. And
today he would leave, his big mournful eyes practically screamed it
at her.

“I know you have to leave, I was just hoping
it wouldn't be so soon. I'm really going to miss you Kao,” Urea
choked back a tear but it escaped and she wiped it away. Kao smiled
again at that.

South>

Urea and Kao walked on for a while in
silence, making a slow loop around the Spire. The stump of the
thing still towered above the village, a hundred feet tall and
wider than that at the base. The top had started to grow its own
set of anarchic spikes, “crystalline tree branch fractals” Zetis
would call them with a laugh. He was supposed to come to, but Urea
doubted he'd make it. He had become the ghost of the Spire. He
spent all of his time where the casino they had all lived in for so
long had fallen, at the foot of Father Mountain.

almost dead, and the waterfalls are just going to speed up the
process. Databanks that lasted a century up there have worn out
after just a few moons on the surface.>

she'd
chimed, the only way to communicate with Zetis at all.

he'd replied.
She'd laughed at that, but for once Zetis hadn't. have this data for a little while longer, I need to salvage as much
as I can onto the VRCs.>

Urea had protested that they had everything
the needed right here in the Garden, and that there were more
important uses of the VRCs, but Wyla had agreed with him, and began
delivering her scavenged VRCs, or Stones as she called them,
directly to him.

Urea and Kao crested a hill and walked down
to the banks of the South, it ran fat with water from Father
Mountain's snow melt.
How many of their words will we use?
Urea wondered. They had already taken to calling the
howluchins
howlers, the
biselk
prongelk, the
vultus
kingcrows, only the Spire's word for Shadow,
panthera
, had stuck.

“Where will you go?” She asked the
hunter.

He shrugged, then looked to Father
Mountain.

Urea nodded. She knew of the cave that held
generations of paintings, the stories of Kao's people all the way
back to beginning. She supposed he had more in common with Zetis
than herself, leaving the present for the past and the future.

“You'll always be welcome here Kao,” Jacob's
voice rung out from the back of his prongbuck.

Jacob dismounted and another, younger pilot
climbed down off of the prongbuck too. He carried a folded black
bundle beneath a rack of prongs in his hands.
The sly devil
actually got one
.

Wyla and Phoebe crested the hill behind them
with a gaggle of young children behind her, the oldest among them
only five or six summers. Phoebe had a way with the youngest, thank
Nature. Without her...

The thought evaporated when Urea saw Zetis
come up behind them, holding his own little bundle.
What's
this?
Urea had arranged the surprise farewell, but she hadn't
asked anyone but Jacob to bring a gift, and she hadn't even
expected that to happen.

“Kao are you really leaving?” Phoebe
asked.

“He must, someone must keep our people's
ways,” Wyla said.

Kao nodded. Urea could see he was thankful
Wyla was so gifted with words. “We made gifts,” Wyla said, “Where
them?”

Kao nodded indulgently as the horde of
children climbed all over him and tied grass braids into his thick
hair. He bowed in front of Wyla and she crowned him with a wreath
of flowers. Urea wondered if he blushed under all that hair.

“Visit?”

Kao nodded again but Urea couldn't tell if
his tears meant he was telling the truth or a lie.

“I got something for you too big guy.” Zetis
stepped sheepishly forward, all his confidence and bluster gone in
the presence of what they had once called a god. He placed a VRC in
Kao's hand, but it glowed blue instead of red.

“I made some modifications. If you ever need
us, just put this thing in a fire. It'll turn red and we'll know,
OK? There's some other stuff too, but remember, its up here right?”
Zetis tapped on his own head and Kao nodded. Urea couldn't be sure
what he thought of the gift.

A shadow blocked the sun and Urea shrieked in
excitement.

“Skup!” she ran towards the kingcrow but
stopped short when Elia got off.

“He couldn't come... One-eye and Kao...

Kao laughed at that.
Still scared?
Urea could almost hear him say.

“He could've rode with you.” Urea said too
angrily. She hadn't seen Skup in a month, but this wasn't about
him. If Kao didn't care then why should she?

responsibilities> Jacob chimed her before he pushed the boy who
rode in with him forward.

“Kao, this is Abraham, he has something for
you... go ahead Abraham.”

Abraham was thin and and as pale as Urea,
with a big black shock of curly hair on his head. He approached Kao
with the big black bundle in his arms, a small set of prongs
protruded from the pile, but they were still almost as tall as the
boy.

“My elk got sick, and... we had to... Jacob
said... here!” He shoved the bundle into Kao's hands.

It unfurled and Kao saw it for what it was,
the skull helm and leather of prongbuck. This was one was much
finer than the tattered shroud that had brought down the Spire. Two
spiral horns framed the skull face and the prongs rose flawlessly
above and behind them without a knob or broken point in the set.
The leather sparkled iridescent shades of black like everything
from the Garden. Kao donned the skull helmet and was pleased to
feel the prongbuck's furry shoulders settle upon his own, the rest
of the leather fell around him and cloaked him in the ghost of the
beast.

He smiled at the boy.

“We couldn't let it go to waste.”

Kao nodded his thanks to Jacob, then turned
to the gathering of loved ones before him. He took a deep breathe,
and cleared his throat.
The hunter is going to make a
speech?

He caught Urea's look and laughed with his
eyes. He said no words, instead, he smiled at them all with love in
his eyes and too many sharp teeth. He smiled at the only family he
had in the world, then turned his back on them, and went into the
wilderness.

###

 

Thanks for reading! If your belly is full and
you liked the meal please write a review at your favorite
publisher’s website! If you hunger for more check out
www.joedarris.com
for the
lastest news on the
Wild Lands
saga.Thanks again, and happy
hunting.

Joe Darris

Acknowledgements

I never could have done this without the
support of my friends and family. I especially must thank Srijan,
my first reader and editor. That day at Barton Springs changed my
life. Thanks to Tam, Mitch and Organ, you guys gave me the
confidence to write another one. Thanks Robyn for telling me to go
for it. Thanks to my mom for reading the first chapters too many
times and to my dad for tirelessly editing the final draft.
Heather, the cover you designed is better than anything I ever
could have hoped for. Thanks for reading in the wilderness. Most of
all I have to thank my darling wife Raquel. I never could have done
this without you. Thanks for letting me write while you cooked
dinner, thanks for letting me read over your shoulder while you
read countless rough drafts. I love you babe.

 

About the
Author

Joe Darris
lives in Austin, Texas with his darling wife, two cats, a dog,
eight chickens, a snake and a couple of hermit crabs. He loves
Sasquatch, tromping through the wild, running in the city, fresh
eggs and roast chickens. You might see him pilfering book stores or
competing in beard contests.

He is currently revising the sequel to Legend
of the Wild Man, writing a collection of short stories, and working
on Twine games. You can read his work or contact him online at:

 

www.joedarris.com

twitter.com/joedarris

facebook.com/wildmannovel

 

BOOK: The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man
6.84Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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