Piercing the Bleak Chapter Six

Ragmon teaches sickness to one who has never felt it, along with the idea of not being socially accepted.

“I’m going to teach you a little more,” Ragmon told me as we stood within a clearing in the foresty mountains.  “Okay?”

“Do as you must,” I told the boy.

It nodded.  “So remember the names I called you when we first met?  Tree-suckler?  Nuzwierc?”

I mulled the words over in my mind, nodded as recognition struck my memory.  The moment by the tree where Ragmon found me!  Of course; how could I forget?  “I remember.”

“Alright then.  So you know why I called you a tree-suckler, right?  Your diet consisted mainly of the juice of the feeder trees, which gave you everything you needed to survive!  Sustenance…medicine… And in your case, even company…  All of it, the trees gave you.”

“The Cray,” I whispered under my breath.

“Yeah, the Cray,” said the boy.  “But you should know this: Trees aren’t alive.  Not like us.  If you tell anyone that the tree was your companion, or that you talked to it even, then you may be cast from the tribe.  They’ll think you came down with the looney disease, which is pretty much untreatable in this day and age.  Only causes trouble, my tribe-brothers say.  So if you feel the need to speak to the Cray… Zip your lips.”  It made a motion across its mouth, a motion that was followed by the closing of its lips.  “That means, shhhh.  Got it?”

            I hesitated, ran my fingers along the portion of the Cray that I carried within my pocket.  Xacquan… it whispered.  “The Cray,” I murmured again.

            “Please just listen to me,” Ragmon said, and my attention was again drawn to the putrid fur at its side.  Perhaps it wasn’t the most reliable person to talk to.  Perhaps the Cray was more trustworthy.  But then, right then, it spoke.  Listen to Ragmon, it said.

            “I will obey,” I said, but the expression on the boy’s face brought me no satisfaction.  “I promise,” I added, utilizing the word given to me just earlier in the day. 

To my relief, this made the boy’s face sag, and a relieved sigh escaped from its lips.  “Good Xacquan,” it said.  “Now back to the lesson.  You were a tree-suckler, okay?  But here in the mountains, you can’t be one anymore.  There’re no feeder trees here.  If you try to feed at this altitude, you’ll feel sick.  And real sickness, I mean!  Not hunger and exhaustion, which you felt on your trip.  But sickness.  Bad, puking sickness.  Understand?”

I nodded.

“You’re no longer a tree-suckler, Zee.  Don’t worry though; you will soon know what it is like to eat real food.  The kind with a thousand tastes.  And you’ll look back at your tree-suckling days like a grown-up probably looks at a baby feeder.  Like, ‘Gross!  Why would I ever wanna put my mouth on that?’  ‘Course, we Scouts’ll have to bring bark up once in a moon for sickness antidote.  And you’ll have to taste it again.”

“Zee?” I asked incredulously.  “Are you referring to me?”

 “Yeah,” said Ragmon, its cheeks turning red.  “Zee.  It is another name, meaning…  Uh…  Uhm… Well it is just something familiar people call you.  A nickname.  But remember!  You’re still a Nuzwierc!  A stranger to the majority of my clan.  And that means you’ll be under intense watch, all day, all night.  Ceaseless, this watch will be, ‘till you prove to my people that you are worthy to wear the mountain emblem.”