The Northward Way

The following piece was an experiment in world building. I have an enormous story that I have been slowly and rather irresponsibly been working on. In that world there is a desert expanse north of a massive mountain range and, at the time I had no idea what that desert was like. So I decided to come up with a rough character, whom I imagined to be a twelve or thirteen year old boy with dark skin, and make him find out for me what was to be found in the desert wastes.

This piece was fairly free form and written in only a few sittings. Enjoy.

                                                ~)o(~




I stood on the Mudmah plateau, not far from base camp at the end of the main road that wound down from the Sainjeem Mountain pass, which led high into the watchman hills and eventually branched out to the various villages and cities southward along the cliffs and cosps that were the homes of my people. Around me sparse reeds in tight twisting bundles bristled up from the stony graveled earth.

The wind was strong today. The banner on my javeline stood sideways as I took in the view around me in this last moment of civilisation for what could turn into a month or more. The long support ropes that held down the main village tent in the center of camp flew banners of the king and emblems of rock and water and crystals and wind, emblazoned with brilliant colors, though fraying at the ends in the gale.

Up high in the atmosphere, higher than the highest clouds, a winding and thin band of soft orange snaked its way through the cobalt of the noonday sky, and every once and again, tiny streaks of piercing gold streamed through it and dissapeared into the blue surroundings.


Four women had just arrived from the West, I had seen their quivering sillouettes peak above the horizon just north of the Bandehm Mountain Root early this morning. They had heaped a mound of skins on top of a large beast and strapped ladders to its sides, and now they were tying it's snout to the ground with tethers pierced in it's ears preparing to unpack their load. The women were dark and wrinkled like spring mud, and they pointed and shouted vigorously at the young sherpa boy that had come out to meet them. I could catch bits of their screams on the wind, but at my place just out of camp boundaries, and about to head northeast to the Mudmah cliffs, the fiery tradeswomen wouldn't bother me today. Or any day soon, for that matter.


I had a small beaten leather vest onto which a skin sack had been sewn, and which I could remove with two ropes that dangled at my right side. I wore light leather boots that covered my knees and overlapped in layers down to my feet and a pair of shorts "to keep me modest," mother had said. My weapons were my javeline and a square sharp bit of flat hammered iron with a stone handle lashed to it with leather thongs, and a summer axe, also iron, that I wore bound above my bottom. I had rope wound around the skin sack on my back, of which was filled with various supplies and a bit of water, and a length of reed paper rolled and sealed with the Kings emblem and fastened with metal caps on either end, not to be read by me or anyone else till I got there."


Messenger Day Three: Concerning a Desert Storm, The Last Cliffs, and the Eastern Road

I swallowed, and the last of my water dripped down my chin. I dragged my finger under it and licked as I stared out East and North seeing nothing but windblown wild sand, Gehban trees and shafts of bedrock jutting toward the sky.

I had been following an old riverbed for miles hoping for a pool or spring, the slow slope of the terrain suggested that the water table should be very shallow here, but nothing upon nothing is all that I’d found.

My thirst wouldn't wait for me, I had to find water, my strength wasn't going to hold out for even another two hours. And without a place to rest in shade, I'd bake for certain without water.

Still I followed the riverbed down hill and the banks grew steeper. The water course weaved to and fro, the steep banks hiding the view down river. Though not a half hour’s worth of trudging on brought me out to an open place, like a wide dry pool, seep banked with rivulets and tributaries cutting down into it that I could use to climb up on top of the banks and see where I was. The riverbed stretched not more than a quarter mile down a sort of slot in the rock before it ended in a U shaped gouge in a cliff-side. Standing in the gouge, just this side of the edge and leaning against the wall, I could see straight down to the valley floor stretching off to the horizon. The Lom Plain, finally. And sure as I’d thought, there was a thin dim strand of shimmering silver just beneath the horizon, the Eastern Road stretching northwest.

Tossing my spear in the air I whooped twice and, turning to run back to the wide dry pool, I caught my spear by the thongs and twirled it as my feet slipped in the loose desert sand.
Hoping for a better look around, I clambered my way up the nearest rivulet, placing my pack beneath an outcrop just beneath the top, and I mounted the ledge where I took in the scene.

“I had been following what seemed to be a drainage basin, and from upon the top of it, it looked like a small canyon as most of the rest of the terrain was flat and waste, save far off ribbons of shadow, presumably other slot canyons of the same drainage type. All emptied, one like another, out over a cliff that extended as far as I could see southeast and north west, winding like a broken spine. And there was the road. Winding to the north and clear like a silver ribbon sparkling in the glaring sun, and I could see a brume and a smattering of green growing around it. I was so close, there I could see the desert giving way to grassland, and somewhere in that direction, just over the horizon, I could see it in my mind from the old stories, the fabled Living Temples and sunken water mazes of the King of Hohnm, the High plains Lord.

I smiled and wrung my fist tight against the javelin, My skin making a squeaking sound, and I turned to look upland, directly south. I could see distant mountains - even still - so far off. West I could see rolling hills as well, and between the two, a long flat expanse of desert, broken with fingers of rock and Gebahn trees, sponge lichen spattered the ground in odd shapes here and there, some with little dunes forming against them on the windward sides. The sand was mixed with coarse black rocks like paint splotches across the tan dust, and my eye was drawn up and far off to the south west, where I was met with a puzzling sight..

The horizon that way was a fuzzy dark streak, hard to make out. The sky was clean and blue till it met the earth, and then wavered into a thin haze. “Wait, what is that... could it be?

I had heard stories. But I had never seen it myself. It was said that sometimes the South Ocean wind, punching hard and fast against the mountains, pushed air high up over the peaks, and the wind would grow cold and sink down the northern slopes. Mostly the air would settle in the valleys of the mountains, but there was a glacier field far off, just south, that sometimes would collect air and send it barreling down west into the desert. Air sinking from the northern hills would sometimes chute the system of sinking air northeast causing fantastic and violent storms that would scour the desert. I had heard of people caught in these storms that had died or disappeared in the torrent, and stranger things than that. I had heard, once, of living things that awaken in the desert when it rains, and wander about looking for people or animals that had lost their way, to devour them.

Strangely enough, one of the deadliest perils of this desert, though certainly it’s least frequent, was not thirst, or madness, but water.

"Rain,” I whispered. I needed a drink, and any water that was to be found surely would have been found by now, so close to the cliffs, and not a puddle or spring presented itself, even in the low places. The only way down to the valley floor from the desert plateau was a dangerous slow climb down from the chute that I had first looked out of. Just beneath the riverbed stood what looked like a dump for stones, a large fall of washed rubble built up from flash floods carving out the dry stream-bed above. If that was a storm, and if it was coming my way, it would be upon me before the day was out(before noon, before mid afternoon?), and the decent down the rock falls was a slow one. If it rained up here, all that water would end up pouring down on top of me, and I would be washed down the rocks.

This fall of talus would, of course, be my way down to the plains floor and North eventually, just not yet. Not till I knew what the weather would do.

So I sat under the outcrop of rock, I leaned my javelin against the wall inside the small space and smeared a fresh layer of fat mixed with powdered gypsum on the top and sides of my pack, working it into the leather for waterproofing.

After finishing, I peaked out from my hiding place in the shade of the outcrop and, sure enough, it took only an hour to see the weather system grow exponentially. The clouds were massive. They grew, towering like the surrounding hills, broad with a deep shadow, and reflecting brilliant white, billowing peaks, as though they were covered in snow. Here and there they bespeckled themselves with reams of lightening.

But would it rain? There had been many clouds in the mountains, even through drought, without rain, and even thunder wasn't a sure sign of water. But as these clouds rose higher and nearer, I could see something riding the feet of the storm front like fog.

"Oh, crap. Here it comes.” My throat formed a lump.

There, obscuring the ground, shot through with muted flashes of light and distant peals of thunder, and moving like billows of smoke, fell a great and mighty wall. It was like I had never seen rain before, it came as though a mountain cliff were on the move. It blocked the light, it hid the desert sands and the horizon beyond, the blue brilliance of the sky was blotted out completely as it edged forward. I could see it from here, moving faster than the swiftest “horse,” barreling down at me. It would be on top of me within an hour. Such fantastic speed. For a moment, I was truly terrified with what I was seeing. I could see how someone could easily die in such an onslaught.

And sure enough, not much longer than an hour and the whole storm front had continually risen and swelled to almost upon me. Half the sky was gone, and still the storm threatened, shaping and reshaping itself as the clouds bashed against the rising hot air from the desert earth. I could see the cold air of the storm raking against the heat of the day, scraping the clouds into odd twisted spectacles of themselves.

I could hardly contain myself, though I feared for my life. The temperature had dropped thirty degrees, at least, over the last half hour, and still the rain poured and poured, blotting out the world. The ground trembled with the sound of the approaching rain, and I could now see it moving along the desert sands, not a mile away from me.

It took only minutes for the water to overtake that mile between us. I stood my ground to see what it would be like, and a great wind pushed sand into the air before it. The water, like a curtain closing, hit me hard and cold, the shock knocking me from my feet. Without a moment to think, I was soaked through, my breath stolen from me, and mud rose from the ground around my body in an instant.
My drenched hair stuck to the folds of my eyelids, the rain ran pouring down my shoulders tickled my arm hair.

The old eroded and dried riverbed that I had been following for the last few days now carried fresh muddied water along its swollen banks and belched a new waterfall, sending thick brine cascading through the clefts marred down the cliff wall, and erupting into the air above the floor of the Lohm Plain below.

My pack was still sitting beneath the outcrop of stone, and a large bulb of fingered lichen that had been dried by the sun now swelled twice in size and shuddered as it drank water from the sand. Just above the outcrop, near the rivulet, a swirling pool had formed in a wide hollow that I had not noticed, and now drained slowly into a small, slivered mouth where the dry dirt had been clogging a skinny shaft in the rock. The pool spun and roiled as I ducked back under the rock eve to grab my water bag.

I climbed back on top in the torrent and bent down, lying in the soaked sand under the liken bulb. Squeezing at the base of one of its arms, I drained a mouthful of water, thick with an herby tang, and then filled my water vessel with all the rest that I could strain. The pool had grown double in size already, and was deep enough to swim in, though it seemed to be draining swiftly. I dropped the bag back down under the rock and jumped into the swirling pool.

The water was hot, my breath shot out and I swallowed water. I didn’t touch bottom, the water was murky, and I swam back upward as fast as I could, coughing and gasping as my face burst into a cold breeze. My eyes were filled with stinging water, though my voice laughed and my mouth smiled between wet coughs. I swam to the banks of the pool and fell on my back, face to the rain where I lay till my lungs were cleared of water, and my laughing was spent.

Ihmahm flowers began sprouting around my head as I lay watching the clouds boil and sag above me, white and pale with pallid peals of light and thrashing thunder. The cold wind that the storm had brought blew freely across the landscape, pricking my skin to look like a plucked birds’. The stagnant heat that had hung all about me for days now had been pushed to the north and I rejoiced in the unexpected water that fell from the sky, and I wondered about how strange a thing the rain really is, though I wondered with my eyes closed and my hands and heels buried in the soft, grainy mud that the water washed all around me.

But almost as fast as it came, the rain lessened to a smattering over the next hour, till it stopped completely. The clouds, that had first felt crushingly close to the ground, pitched higher into the air, and formed fingers and whisps in the upper atmosphere. The sun cast rays of broken light across the wet sand, and shadows moved freely here and there across the world.

Yet I just lay there. Figuring I should wait for the water to run off, I let my head sink into the mud. I could hear the river coarsing in it’s banks, and glancing down the rivulet, I could see the wide pool still filling with water and soil.

...

I packed the water in the bottom of my pack and then stacked the rest of things on top, careful with the paper scroll, and then lashed the top closed, throwing the whole thing back on over my shoulders.


And, with his freshly waterproofed leather pack beading and shedding water like a bird, he trekked with new heart off north eastward into the thinning rain, disappearing into the rivulet as the thunder pounded hard, shaking the swollen desert earth.(?)