Orcling

Orcling
Far away in the hill country of Roont stood an ancient oak
tree. It loomed with branches bare over a small and lonely hillock. Beaten by the elements for a time unremembered, this brazen tower of what was once moist bark and wood had turned all but petrified stone.
Dead.
It was the only sign of green east of the dark forest (save the wild thatches of witchgrass and devil-weed that stained the hillsides in patches of yellow and grey, and of course the occasional deadpan jack which can find drink in even the hardest earth)and west of the rocky cliffs that fall perilously into the sea. The hills of Roont were otherwise desolate; rocky, hard, and void of activity. But late one hot August night something happened deep under the stony surface of that small and lonely hillock, under the stiff dead branches of Old Father Oakenstone.



1
It was a dark and humid cave in which the new mother studied and carefully inspected the surface of her Birthing Wall. It was her first time being a mother and she was excited for the Summer Fallow. The corridor of mud and clay was lit by torches who's far spread light melted orange and red over the wall before her.
She ran her hands across the cold sticky wall. Her hardened calloused hands dug up to her wrists into the soft earth and found one of the four warm spots within. She felt a small shudder and then tiny fingers wrapped around her left thumb. She could feel the life pulse through this one and feeling it caused a smile to jump across her lips. She kissed the mud between her wrists and moved a few feet to her right toward where she knew the next one would be, her grey-green lips now stained crimson-brown from her affectionate kiss. Number two was "bottoms up" or as the Old Mothers say "a stoney breacher" and kicked playfully when he felt his mother's groping hands. The third bit down on the fleshy fold of skin between her right forefinger and her thumb, which caused her to erupt with an alarmed, yet quite amused, howl of pain. The fourth, and last, was another kicker. All were alive, all were moving, and all were high in spirit.
She had heard the shuffling footfalls approaching from the tunnel behind her while she busied herself with the little ones, and now she heard the weathered and tremulous voice that belonged to them.
"A mother's work is never done, deary. This is something you will learn soon enough." The young Orcen maid knew the identity of her visitor even before she turned to see the creature shuffling down the corridor. The newcomer's pale grey skin was cracked with age and painted a dirty pink by the torchlight spilling from a nearby sconce. Her left tusk was broken halfway down its length leaving a jagged brown stump protruding from her lips. Milk white hair hung in long, lonely strands down passed her shoulders, empty like wisps of spider silk. The tunic she wore was made of black leather cut from the flesh of a sact'ruk, a cave mole, and furs from the same beast were draped around her old legs. The new mother bent at the hips in a bow of respect; low, with hands held palm out toward the Orc matron.
"My birth wall is honored by your presence, Mær Ungrott." Mær Ungrott was the oldest and most revered mother in all the hill-lands. She was "Bærta Maige" or "Mother Superior".
"The time comes when your younglings will tear forth from the earth. Are you prepared for your duties, mother deliverer?"
"I am scared, mother superior, but I know what I must do.”
The Orc matron smiled and leaned close to the new mother. She placed a clawed hand lightly on her arm and whispered in her ear, "I was scared my first time too." A wonder-struck grin slipped across the young mother's still mud stained lips. "Now, Tek'lia," she said as she straightened up. "Let me see your brood."
Mud from the wall slurped and stuck in protest to the scrapping of the old Orc's claw. In turn she passed from one unborn orcling to the next, pressing her ear against the wall and listening to the movements within. Then with one finger she drew out four symbols on the surface, one in front of each of the new mother's wards. "Your younglings shall be named thusly," she pointed to one symbol after the other. "Brock will be the first on the left, he is strength and power. Unglaat is second, he is rooted, immovable, set in stone. Krea'lok is third, he is a fighter with both fist and tooth. Lastly comes Sed'Mok who is swift of foot."
She stepped back and turned toward Tek'lia. "Mother deliverer, set your fires of life's forth-bringing alight, for the issue of blood commingled in mud cometh and the charges of your care require you." Tek'lia gazed into the eyes of the ancient Orc matron, who spoke now as if deep within a trance, and the red hot torchlight burned back at her through them. "Earth breaks, Bærta Mær."
Tek'lia trembled as the wall before her quaked. The magic that had grown the beings within its dark enclosing had begun to recede. It shook twice more and was still. Seasons had passed its surface smooth and moist but now four large bubbles began to protrude where Mær Ungrott had scratched the names of the beasts within.
"Fire, stupid girl! Fire!" The old voice gained strength and roused Tek'lia from her shocked state. She blinked her eyes, shrieked in excitement, and snatched up the torch from its sconce on the wall beside her. The bubbles grew bigger as she rushed past them to the far left of the wall where she bent to grab a brush of hair from a bucket containing a foul smelling liquid accelerant. She drew the brush in an arc over each protruding swell, rewetting once before passing over the third and forth bulge, and finally tossing it back into its bucket with a splash. Then she touched each arc with the flame from her torch as she said their given names.
"Brock...Unglaat...Krea'Lok...Sed'Mok." The symbols faded
away and the surface on which they had been writ became thin and translucent. The crown of flame above them cast shadowy images of the orclings within on the ground below.
Mær Ungrott chanted in a low voice behind her. Repeating this verse again and again.

"Fight through clay
And mud and mire.
Pass beneath
Your mother's fire
T'brand you
With your earthen mark.
Young ones come
From deep and dark."

The third sack from the left split and Tek'lia rushed to it calling,"Krea'lok, Mær Sav'rok âkt va'hroon!" Mother deliverer is here! She pulled the newborn from the mud which smothered him after the collapse of his magic encasement. She held him in her arms while she scratched a shallow hole in the ground with her clawed feet. As soon as she laid him down within it, Brock's bubble cracked. She quickly put a finger in her firstborn's mouth and pulled out a large glob of mud. The youngling croaked and roared a throaty cry. 'Sounds good and strong,' Tek'lia thought as she rushed to free her second. She dug another hole and placed Brock inside. Then she removed the lump of mud from his mouth. His cry was long and loud. She delivered the other two in the same fashion, first Unglaat, whom she pulled free by one leg which had protruded from the wall when his encasement broke, and lastly Sed'mok.
When it was all finished she stood back with Mær Ungrott, who had ended her chant, and waited. One by one they opened their eyes, rolled, rubbed their faces and stood up. They gazed about themselves in wonder of how big and bright the world was. Mær Ungrott cackled and spoke softly, "Silly things to think this the world, and that it is so large and luminous." At this they first saw their mother and the old creature that spoke next to her. "Just wait till you see the hill country, younglings, for the world is larger than these dark caves. I, myself, have been to the very edge of the dark forest," she stared at each one of them with big milky eyes. "Yes, and have seen the sea cliffs that break in the west. But not even one so old and wise as I have been beyond them." She began to talk in a quieter voice, as if she were talking to her self; her old mind wandering. "Yet the world exists even there. And even beyond that, I reckon." The newborns stood just staring at her. "Well come on over and let me have a look at you." They looked to their mother and she nodded her approval. They plodded over, using their legs for the first time. Wobbly at the start, until the pins and needles faded and their muscles learned their movements with new blood rushing through them. Then they straightened without stumbling and stood before their mother and the old crone.
Each newborn was an average height, coming up to their mother's middle torso or chest. Mær Ungrott grasped Brock's shoulders and begun feeling and massaging the muscles in his arms. She pulled his arms across his front and patted his sides and chest and then his stomach. She ran her hands down the length of his legs and back up again. Next she checked his eyes by pulling the lids apart with two clawed fingers while she bobbed back and forth, letting her shifting shadow change their shape. Lastly, she pulled his lips apart and checked his teeth. She tapped each of them with the tip of her middle claw, then she cupped his head in both her hands, placed a thumb each on the tiny round stumps of tusks protruding from the top corners of his mouth and pushed hard. She repeated this process with each orcling before turning to Tek'lia.
"Your wards are strong, young mother. They each are molded with the physique of Bær'Tek rè maige Ungrâck, the Unconquered Warrior, except for Sed'mok. He is the leanest, but will be as strong as the rest in quickness rather than girth. You should be proud."
"I thank you Bærta Maige." Tek'lia bowed once again, palms out, to the matriarch of her order. "I AM proud. You honor me with your graces."
The mother superior gave Tek'lia a nod of her head and turned to leave down the tunnel the way she had come. The new mother smiled and turned to look at her new orclings. It was now her responsibility to train them up to be assets to the clan. To be strong. To be hunters and warriors; orcs of respect. She had to...
There was a loud crack followed by a low groan. The young mother started and moved herself in front of her orclings. The sound emanated from the birthing wall. More specifically, from the old dry root rimming the right-hand edge of the wall, which before was seen, but lay unobtrusively out of mind. Its twisted pale bulk passing in and out of the contrastingly dark mud was now so obvious and the haunting groan leaking out of it drew the attention of the surprised onlookers as if nothing else existed. They waited in suspense, not knowing what was about to happen. The young mother barely noticed the shuffling of old feet descending back down the tunnel behind her as she watched the withered root bloat before her eyes. Its dry exterior grew moist and swelled. The low woody moan rose in tone to a high squeal like the stretching of wood and then ended with a pop. There was a wet sounding rip and Tek'lia saw the surface of the root split, in a jagged line, from the bottom of the swell to the top. White milky sap spanned the newly made recess in the root. It dripped to the earthen floor staining its dark surface with messy splotches of white. Tek’lia stood transfixed. As far as she knew, something like this had never taken place in all the history of her people. She did not know what to do, that is, until she saw an arm break the surface of the milky white flow of the wound. Then her instincts as a member of the Bærta Sek'Tâk drove her toward the unusual birth. She yelled as she lunged forward to catch the falling creature dropping from its strange and secret encasement. Kneeling there she reached her finger into its mouth, but found no mud. Instead the thing lurched and spasmed and purged, from its stomach, a stream of the same white fluid which it had been encased in. He breathed but he made no birth roar. She rose with the pale thing in her arms, which were now coated with sticky white sap, and turned to face the crowd behind her. The old mother stood, surrounded by the newborns, gazing at her with intense eyes.
"A fifth," She said. "Bærta Maige, there was an unknown fifth."
"Bring him here, so I can look at him." The old mother replied. With both orcen mær forgetting, or overlooking, the ritualistic first steps, Tek'lia carried the fifth youngling the short distance to where the others waited. She set him down on his feet before Ungrott and he wobbled, not wanting to stand. She reinforced his position and posture as Ungrott watched with a disgusted look. The strange youngling looked around for the first time and saw the old Orc in front of him, and being frightened, he grasped for his mother behind him. At this, Ungrott let out a displeased sort of sigh. She stared at him with squinty eyes. His mother shushed him and straightened him once again. The old Orc grabbed him by the shoulders and leaned in close.
"He is smaller than the others, and much thinner. Look how stringy his arms are. His color is wrong. At first I thought he was just covered in that sappy muck, but underneath it he is even paler." The small thing shook as the old crone studied him, and his mother looked on with care. "Hmmm...see how afeared he is, Tek'lia. See how he shakes. He is no warrior." She moved her focus upwards. "And look, no tusks." She pulled his lips apart and his eyes widened with new fright. "Not even any swells for late budders. Don't believe he will ever have any. And look at his hair, Tek'lia. Never before have I seen locks of such a color. Like the devil-weed up yonder. Golden like dead grass, I say." His mother put a tender hand on his head. "He's of no orcen seed, mother deliverer. I would not welcome him to the clan."
The orc maiden stuck out her chin and swallowed. "He came forth from MY birth wall, mother superior, and he is MY orcling." She had no idea what she was doing, but she felt the same toward this latecomer as she did toward the rest, and perhaps even more. "He is different, I see, but he is mine all the same."
"He is more than different I tell you, young girl, he is not Orc." She stared at the new mother, squinting. "But if you say he is yours, then yours he will be, and your burden, and your mark in the clan…” She twisted her face into a grimace of unease and reached a hand down to scoop a claw full of mud. She traced a dirty symbol on the strange pale creature's brow. “…and your mark, young repugnance," she said to him. "Ta'mook."
So she named him, and he was named 'Ugly'.

2
The seasons shifted and changed with the passing years and
the orclings grew in size as well as in mind and skill. Ta'mook
watched as his brothers trained with butchers, tanners, warriors, and smithies. Their tusks grew long. Their talons became sharp and hard. Each of them imbued with the mark of pure orcish perfection. Each at least half Ta’mook’s size over again, with Brock, being the largest, who was twice his size. The Oakenstone clan rejected the small orcling just as Ungrott predicted.
When the time had come for the orclings to find his place within the clan they each went out to the different trade-smiths to attain apprenticeships. His brothers had found their places with the first or second master propositioned. Brock, being the most ideal example of orcenhood, tried his luck with the Bær’Tek Maige, leader of the orcen warriors, and was initiated almost at once, but since wartimes had been few of late he also attained apprenticeship with the iron smith. Unglaat was favored highly by the butcher, who was Unglaat’s first choice for apprenticeship in hopes that he could satisfy his monstrous appetite by helping himself to free sact’ruk meat. Krea’lok also found his place within the ranks under Bær’Tek Maige, and obtained second training with the tanner. Ta’mook’s youngest brother Sed’mok, the swiftest, was trained in the art of the hunt. All of mother Tek’lia’s orclings with purpose, all except Ta’mook.



3
There was no smith, nor master, nor trades-orc that would take poor Tamook. He was much too small to be a warrior and the orcs in ranks laughed at his mere presence. “Begone, little thing,” They would say through rough chuckles. “Our armor is to heavy and our weapons to big. It would be impossible for you to use them. Even carrying them would be a great feat.”
Ta’mook left them as they laughed and went to the tanner. The tanner he could stomach; the butcher he could not. Both trades-orcs dealt primarily in the preparation and usage of the sact’ruk, be it flesh for the feast as is the butchers business, or the skinwork of the tanner who molds and shapes the hide for tools, and weapons, and clothing.
Some seasons earlier Ta’mook observed the butcher as he worked. The large and greasy Orc was covered from splattered bare shoulders to his sopping half apron with the crimson flow of the cave mole on his table. The large hatchet with which he hacked and severed smaller bits from larger bits was clumsy and inaccurate; a quick way to chop and separate. He had asked the butcher why his work was done with such carelessness and waste. The butcher turned toward him, hatchet in hand, nearly kicking over the small bucket which still held the entrails of the animal above, and said, “What you mean, ugly-thing?” His tone was harsh. Ta’mook told the butcher that the animal had given its life so that the clan could eat and live another day. Should not the creature be thanked by being prepared in a more respectful manner?
“Gave his life?” Croaked the butcher, “young-one, I took it…” He looked Ta’mook straight in the eyes and softly spoke, “…and if you don't get out of here now, I'll take yours too.”
Ta'mook turned and ran as fast as he could out the door. The doorpost cracked as he flew out; hatchet angrily protruding and butcher laughing loudly behind. Ta’mook wept as he raced the tunnels home.
Today he would not ask the butcher for apprenticeship.
He approached the tanner who was an elderly Orc, scarred and dry much like the product of his handy work. He was hunched over his workbench scraping bits of flesh from a large patch of skin. He moved his knife slowly over the mole-hide, more out of tiredness than artistry.
“Keesh’va Maige, âkt va’hroon kræ Tu’vulkeese t’ak." (Skin Master, I have come to seek apprenticeship) Ta’mook bowed as his mother had taught him; head low, palms out.
“I teach only those who are of the clan.” The old Orc did not bother to raise his head nor to stop his constant scrapping.
Still showing respect with bent hips and outstretched hands Ta’mook spoke through the gold curtain that draped past his bowed face. “Keesh’va Maige, T’ak âkt..."
“How you feign orc!”
“Feign, Master?” The young gold-headed orcling looked up, surprised by the interruption, then straightened up from his bow. “I have feigned nothing. I…”
“You have feigned everything! You come into my hut with all the stupid pride of an orcling.”
“Master, I am an…”
“You curtsy and make your manners like any member of an honorable Orcen clan should, and you speak respectable words not meant for your lips.” The tanner raised his eyes from his work for the first time, and looked at the creature standing before him. “How dare you use our sacred tongue.”
“These words are my own, master.” The abashed youngling quickly explained. “I had learned them while I lay hidden in my earthen womb. I listen for many seasons to the voice of my mother as she spoke to me. These are the words of my mother's face and the face of my mother is Orc.”
“Yet your face is not Orc, ugly. I know not what you are, but your mother's words were meant for your brothers only, not for you.”
Ta’mook stuck out if smooth pale chin. “I am of my mother's wall, and she loves me no less than any of my brothers.”
Wrinkled eyelids squinted close over the foggy old eyes that stared intently at Ta’mook. A strained smile slowly crept onto the cracked lips of the Tanner, reveling a sparse scattering of teeth between the two long tusks which he had managed to keep well into his old age. “You are no Orc.” He looked back down to his work. “As for the love of Tek’lia, I have heard different. This blatant thievery of my race bears no respect for me. Your falsehood and pretenses are mud in my eyes. I have said I teach only those of the clan. Now get out of my sight.”
“Master, I…”
The tanner jabbed his knife toward the youngling who was now shaking with emotion. “Some old orcen hag will be carrying her nicknacks in a purse made of your belly if you don’t leave! Now!”
Both the butcher and the tanner had chased him from their shops. From them both he had run with tears in his eyes. But before he ventured to ask them, before getting chased out and rejected, he had stopped by the metalsmith’s shop.

4
The metalsmith was Ta’mook’s first choice, for he himself was keen to mold the red hot iron into whatever shape his mind put forth. He would spend hours at a time at his own little forge while his brothers played at being warriors. He had no training, but he tried and failed, and tried and failed, and learned from every mistake he made, until, rather quickly, he could make fine little knives in no time at all. He had quite a collection. He even begun to engrave scrollwork along the blades; giving them names and stories of victory. For the hilts, he fashioned leather grips that twisted and rippled so that they fit perfectly in the palm of his hand. It was very fine work, and he knew it. Ta’mook believed that if he showed the metalsmith (or even the tanner, for the hilts themselves were of impressive workmanship) he would see his skill and perhaps excuse his appearance.
When the day that Ta’mook would tour the clan, asking the trade-orcs for apprenticeship, dawned he gathered up some of his best knives and headed straight for the metalsmith.
The clay hut which housed the forge of the metalsmith burned with a red hot glow that seemed to pulse and ripple in the vast, dark cavern which was the center of the Oakenstone clan. The cavern was very spacious indeed, with trade-shops and goods stores scattered all around its outmost edge. All around the curved wall the orange glow of torchlight shone from many windows of many different shapes and sizes, but the wide door of the metal shop poured out red. The low flame-light all around cast eery crescent shadows down the many dark tunnels that dug outward from the cavern wall. In the center of the large hollow stood a great pillar which reached all the way to the domed ceiling, about fifty feet high. All around the pillar’s surface was carved letters in the orcen tongue. The letters spelled out the history of the clan. From top to bottom, spiraling through the seasons, wound records carved by the workers as the clan grew and the cave delved deeper.
Ta’mook stopped outside the glow from the metalsmith’s shop. He took his knives out from his pack and looked them over once again before entering. He turned them over in his hands; examining them in the semi-dark. They looked immaculate, as they shown brightly, even in the low light. The grips were tight and the leather thongs which bound them would not slip, even when he pulled at them. He tested their sharpness and slipped his thumb the wrong way over one. He took a sharp breath as a spot of blood bubbled from the pad of his thumb. Then after briefly polishing one of the blades on his tunic he stepped into the light and walked through the wide door and into the heat.
His clawless bare feet tracked through the layer of soil which covered the shop’s floor. The shop consisted of a single circular room which was mostly bare, apart from a workbench and a rack of tools (chisels, punches, and grips) to one side, a grinding stone to the other, and the clan forge glowing in the center. The smith cast a large shadow on the back wall of his shop as he pumped the bellows with his foot and held a shaft of iron deep into the belly of the fire. He wore neither gloves nor tunic for protection. His hands were like leather and could withstand the torment imparted by the close heat and his chest bore the marks of many flames and many sparks. His face was a picture of agony. Where on the right side of his face grew a very large and spiraling tusk, the left only bore a jagged and blackened scar that ran from his lips to his ear in a manic grin. The shattered edges of his upper jaw were visible through the thick, healed over, tissue. Ta’mook stood and watched. The light within the furnace shifted from red to orange, but the smith kept pumping the bellows. The orange metal burned and seemed to scream as the light within it began to change again. Orange light shifted toward yellow but before it completed its transition the iron was brought out from the flames. The smith turned, bringing the hot metal around and reached for his hammer with his other hand. He brought the orange-yellow iron blank down to rest atop the anvil at his side. He caught sight of the youngling at his door, but gave no expression of alarm or care. He only dropped his eyes to the work before him. The iron blank was long and square. Ta’mook already knew what it would become; one of the many large, flat, straight edged swords of the oaken-clan warriors, devoid of character, uniqueness, and craftsmanship. He quickly threw the idea from his head, for it was not his place to judge the work of a trade-smith. The hammer came down as if to mark this thought.
“KLANG”
“What do you want of me, ugly?” the metalsmith growled between hammer strokes.
Ta’mook, remembering himself, bowed low and extended his hands. The blades in his upturned palms glinted red in the forge-light.
“KLANG”
The small flash caught the smith’s eye and he looked up to see the pale creature, who in this light appeared very pink, bowing before him. “Træ’Vorrt Maige, âkt va’hroon kræ Tu’vulkeese T’ak.” The smith squinted at him while he held his hammer over his head in mid stroke. The muscles in his raised arm bulged and the veins in his neck stood out. Ta’mook remained bowed through the silence. If he could have seen the fire that had begun in the eyes of the large Orc before him as he spied the knives in his hands, he would have known that anger was sure to follow.
“Where did you steal those from!” He roared at him.
“KLANG”
Startled, Ta’mook jumped back and fell to the floor. He stared wide eyed at the smith, who was once again raising his hammer and looking intently from him, to the blades in his hands, and then back at him. The poor little orcling struggled to his feet. He was frightened so bad that he struggled to speak. “Iron Master, I... I did not steal these.”
“Liar!” His accusation was accompanied by another swing of his hammer.
“KLANG”
Ta’mook flinched at the sound. “Master, I speak the truth. I made these knives myself.” He held them forward and took one step toward the forge. “Look, Træ’Vorrt Maige. Honor me, please, with your appraisal.” He said, keeping his manners straight.
The blacksmith dropped his hammer to the ground. Dirt puffed up with a dull and heavy smack. He grunted a low snorting chuckle and began walking around his anvil, the iron still in his hand. It scrapped as it slid across the anvil surface, turning like a clock. It pinged as it left the anvil and swung in an arc right in front of Tamook’s face. He could feel the heat of its bright red glow waft past on his cheek. The smith finished his swing by jabbing the hot iron into a trough of oil obtained from the fat of cave-moles. Steam hissed and sputtered as the unfinished blade was quenched. Heavy footfalls brought Tamook’s eyes back from the billowing oil to the large Orc stepping toward him. His face was grim and Ta’mook did not like the way his mouth seemed to resemble something of a smile, while his eyes blazed with a fire that was fanned by hatred. He stood, looming over poor Ta’mook (with his little knives extended), glaring down at the bits of metal and hide that defiantly glared back. Ta’mook’s head stayed bowed. The smith reached down and snatched the blades from his outstretched hands. He brought them close to his face and squinted his eyes.
“You spent many hours on these.” He said.
“Months, Træ’Vorrt Maige.”
He traced the scrollwork with a soot caked claw. “Intricate details.”
“I learned from the clan pillar. The ancient orcs writ their words of history within its stone. I thought that my knives could have carvings as well.”
“Hmmmph…” Grunted the smith. He rubbed the little blades together. Then, grabbing Tamook’s wrist, drug one ever so lightly over his thumb. Ta’mook flinched as the skin split and a new bubble of blood emerged alongside the already dried scab. “Sharp.”
“I’ve practiced long hours to find the proper technique.”
The smith stared at the little orcling. “A lot of time. Hmmm.” He nodded. Then turned and walked back to his place behind the anvil. “A lot of time wasted, I think.” He bent and picked up his hammer from its crater in the dirt. “What good is ornamentation on the battlefield?” He asked. Not waiting for an answer, he continued as he rose. “When your enemy closes in on you, and your only comfort is the cold iron you hold in your hands, what good are tiny carvings?” Ta’mook stood watching the smith, not knowing what to say or what to do. The blacksmith raised his hammer (his tool of creation and of destruction), “Sharpness is a necessity, true. But better than sharpness,” he looked up to meet Tamook’s, now tear filled, eyes. “is hardness. The thorn of the devil-weed plant will pierce the skin, but with my fingers I would crush the pricker without a single worry. A single blade of witchgrass could cut through the skin of a careless passerby, but with my bare hands I could grind the plant to steep in water for tea.” He looked back down at the little knives, which he held on the surface of his anvil. “Without hardness, sharpness is nothing but a nuisance.” And before Ta’mook could scream out, “NO!” The blacksmith brought down his hammer and rang the shattered bits of Ta’mook’s hard work across the dirt floor.
The little orcling fell to his knees, sobbing. “Why?”
“Your work reflects your person. You are not Orc. You are not hard. You are a clever little annoyance.” He pulled the iron ,which he had been working, out from its oil bath and examined it. “Get out from my shop.”
Ta’mook shuffled over to the blacksmith’s anvil, snuffling through his nose and snatching up what remained of his blades.
“I said, get out!” The Orc above him roared. “Or do you need a lesson in hardness like the one my master imparted onto me.” He had dropped down to be face to face with the frightened orcling. Ta’mook could feel his breath, hot and humid, on his ear. The metalsmith’s scar, all black and red, seemed to pulse and quiver. “He took his hammer, the one I wield now, and put it to my face.”
Ta’mook felt the ground tremble as the heavy iron hammer came crashing into the anvil’s side. He screamed and tore out of the shop’s doorway as quickly as he could, dropping beautiful metal shards as he went.

5
“Mother!”
The squat door thrummed with the pounding of his fist. It was stone, as was most things in the caves, and the unmarked leather covering which draped it was the only adornment it bore.
“T’ak yi mær!” His voice was wet, and hitched as he sobbed. The leather formed a hollow and darkened where his knuckles struck over and over again. “Answer me,” he screamed, “why have you forsaken me?” He laid his head against the door and wept, listening to the deafening silence in the long dark, broken only by the constant ‘drip drip’ of the cave rain. His ears burned hot with confusion, anger, sadness, and betrayal, and deep within them beat the staggered ‘thump thump’ of his broken heart.
“I tried my best.”
The voice came softly, dry and direct, muted by the solid stone. The, almost accusing, quality of it was the pointed sword that pierced harshest through the silence.
“I taught you everything it was to be orc. I even took time away from my true-born sons, who took to the orcen way as easy as breath and needed little to no learning, just to nurture you, to help you … to try to mold you into something that you obviously, I see now, are not. I was warned of this. When I refused to heed, I was striped of my right to be in the Bærta sect, and shunned for my efforts to include you. To me, it would have been all worth it if in the end you were accepted as Orc.” She paused and Ta’mook thought he could hear the faint scraping of clawed fingers from the other side of the door. He raised his head. “Instead, I am as much an outcast as the deformed creature I allowed to enter this world. I still appear as an Orc and can earn my place. They will never allow me another birthing wall. They see me as just a wasted female, a wasted rarity, but I can find a different purpose.”
The tears, that had ceased to fill Ta’mook’s eyes when he heard his mother’s voice, began once again.
“I was foolish to think I could change you,” she said. “I do not know what you are, but there is no home for you here, now.” Ta’mook’s head began to throb again and anger rose up within him. “Go ‘way.” This last word she said as almost a breath, and it dissolved into the frantic clamor of Ta’mook’s rage as he thrust his fists with full force into the leather-draped rock.
“Blow” after “crack” after “smash” let loose streams of blood from his pale knuckles. His voice, strained and raw like his broken flesh, grew into a long cry of, “MÆR YI!” until his final swing shattered the bones in his left hand (his confused mind jumped to his beautiful knives between the heavy hammer and hard anvil of the metalsmith) and his cry was pinched off in a shriek of pain. He collapsed, caressing his maimed hand, beneath the fringe of the once unmarked leather swathe. It now bore twin tattered holes fanned with webs of crimson. He sobbed, quietly trembling in the aftermath of his outburst, as his mind raced, thinking ‘where will I go?’ and all he could manage to say was, “Why?”
Not meaning it as an answer, for she had not heard the one word question which Ta’mook had in fact not been asking anyone in particular, Tek’lia said, “An Orcen fist would have broken the stone and not the other way around.”
With those words in his head and (the creature who he thought loved him above all else) his mother’s cruel indifference in his heart, Ta’mook struggled to his feet; clawless feet that lay flat on the earth, unlike the creatures all around him on their toes. He gazed up the tunnel and felt dizzy. He would not look back. He would go to the surface. He would raise his eyes up to Old Father Oakenstone and pray for a sign. He would pray for a path to follow, for a needle to guide him. He would…
“I wish you never came to me.” The sound of the voice crept like an oily spill through the crack between door and frame.
He would not look back.
“I wish…” she paused.
‘What?’ he thought, exhausted. ‘What more can this creature say to hurt me?’
“I wish you were dead.”
Something more than just his heart, something else, something that had held like a frayed rope since his visit to the tanner, finally let go and broke. Almost at once his eyes dried, for a broken heart brings many tears, but a broken soul may empty them, and he took his first step toward the light.
And he did not look back, not once.

6
The warmth that sank into his skin, the yellow light that blinded him, and the smell (the air, the wind, the smell), it all felt like nothing less than natural.

The torches had been doused a long way down from the mouth of the cave, even before the entrance could be seen as a pinprick of light in the distance. Ta’mook had walked for about thirty minutes in utter darkness. The soft red of his short past diminished behind him, and the unknown and unseen lay undeterminably distant before him. He had not been taught of the outside, but he had known it was there by the occasional mentioning of it from one or another orcen elder. When he asked about it they would usually ignore him, as they generally did, but one time an old mær grabbed him and pulled him close so that he could look nowhere but straight into one empty socket and one eye as white as bone, and screeched at him, “Outlands be a burning desert what would melt the flesh from yer bones and burn yer eyes from yer head holes, ya ugly trak’pon!” She cackled and kicked him. Then as an afterthought, “Might actually do ya some good.”
He had felt that she was wrong, and was just tormenting him the way everyone did. He had felt like this even before he had begun to see the tiny speck of blue in front of him. When he did see it he wasn’t even sure he was seeing it. He stopped. He closed his eyes. He opened them.
He had done this several times before he decided that when he would close his eyes the dot would be gone and when he would opened them it would reappear. Having decided this speck was not in his head he further decided to move forward again, toward it. He stumbled and tripped often and had amassed quite a number of scrapes and bruises, but he always kept the dot in front of him. The color of the dot was foreign to him. It wasn’t red, it wasn’t orange, it wasn’t yellow, or brown. It wasn’t grey and it definitely wasn’t black. It wasn’t the color that he knew of as green, like the skin of a healthy orc. The closest thing he could think it to be was white. But it wasn’t white. There was something else in it, something like a breath. A breath that is clean, and soft, and calm. Something like a whisper of color. This somehow eased his mind and he trudged onward.
The light grew and he found himself looking at a sharp embankment. The mouth of the tunnel opened up some distance ahead and above. He now realized that the light he had seen, so far off, hadn’t even been direct light, and as he came closer and looked up to the hole that led out into to the world he was blinded. For a brief moment terror struck him and he thought, ‘She was right! My eyes! They are MELTING! My eyes! My…’ then the glare subsided (just a bit) and he could see his hands (fuzzy, blurred masses) clutching at his face. He lowered them slowly. He could see his feet and the upward slant of the rock below them. He bent forward and on all threes, since he kept his broken left hand tucked close to his body, began to climb.
The warmth that sank into his skin, the yellow light that blinded him, and the smell (the air, the wind, the smell), it all felt like nothing less than natural. He broke the surface and hoisted himself up on the stony earth. The path through the tunnels had been a weary little journey. He had tromped and climbed, blindly feeling his way, for what felt like ages and he was exhausted. He laid back and rested his head on a rock. His legs, bent at the knees, dangled freely over the edge of the hole. His arms lay spread out, and his long hair clung to his sweaty brow. He did not know how badly his hand had been injured, but it was swollen and he could not grip with his fingers. It throbbed and the pain was sickening, but out here his senses were distracted and for a while he forgot all about it. His eyes were closed and the light from the yellow blaze above him shown red like the cave torches within his closed lids. ‘Behind closed eyes,’ he thought, ‘all good things appear blood red.’ He sat up. “My eyes have been closed for too long,” He said. “It is time I should see what it is I must see.”

7
Ta’mook got to his feet and gazed out at the hillside. Never before had he ever imagined so much space. It was suffocating, but not in the usual way. He felt like the space all around him was stealing his breath rather than stifling it. For a while he simply stared at everything, eyes turning this way and that. He was holding his hands down at his sides with the fingers of his right splayed when he realized that he had forgotten how to breathe. Tears began to well up in his eyes. He staggered and turned in circles, nearly tumbling back into the hole from which he had clambered. Catching himself, he finally took in a large rasping breath. He wanted to look out at the vastness again, but he dared not do it just yet. He would focus on something a little closer. He raised his eyes slowly, tracing the stones, and trails of dirt between them. He focused on the patches of witchgrass here, the tufts of devil-weed there. Up and up until, at the top of the hill, he saw a great rocky pillar. ‘No, not rock,’ he thought. His mouth moved in a soft whisper and the water that had danced in his eyes spilled down his cheeks, “Old Father Oakenstone.”

8
He climbed the jagged hillside and stood beneath the ancient branches. The tree was nowhere near the height of the pillar that stood in the center of oakenstone cavern, but Ta’mook had never seen another living thing so tall. He stared up into its cracked and broken branches. Some were still whole while others had been reduced to jagged stumps.
After some time passed he bent low at the hips and extended out his hands palms up. Both were filthy and covered in dirt, with his left a purple half-closed mass. “Greetings, Old Father, I am called Ta’mook.” He remained this way for a few minutes. When nothing happened, he straightened up. He looked at his hands, and then quickly and abashedly wiped his right (wishing he could do the same with his left) on the fur coverings on his legs. He did not know why he had done this. Cleanliness had never been a thing of concern in the caves and was never taught, but being out here in the light made him feel like it was wrong to be dirty. Ta’mook walked up to the old tree and tentatively placed his hand on the bark. It was cold, smooth and hard as stone. It wasn’t anything like what he had expected. What he had expected was a life sign; some warmth and comfort.
“Dead,” he whispered, and let his hand slide down the petrified skin of the giant before him.
A breeze blew passed him. The wind was beginning to pick up and the air became colder. He looked toward the wind. He looked and saw vast rocky hill lands, black and lifeless, splotched here and there with the hardy grey and yellow grasses that endure this rough terrain. As far as he could see it was the same. He did not know it, but the direction in which he looked was called east. He did not know it, but far enough to the east the rocky hill lands turned into cliffs, and these cliffs were smashed and battered endlessly by the relentless surge of the tides. He did not know it, but the smell that rode the wind and rushed briskly through him was the smell of the sea. He thought of tears.
He saw his shadow rush down the hill in front of him. ‘The light is moving,’ he thought. He turned his gaze up to the sky. That foreign color seemed to spill out of it and cover everything. The unnamed blue of it was uniform and all encompassing apart from several puffs of white that looked like smoke. Only smoke isn’t as clean, for this was as white as the milk of a cave mole. The distance was something he could not comprehend. He had never looked beyond the close walls of his caves. The sky, the land; everything was so expansive.
The stretch of blue was pierced by the blazing yellow torch, which slowly slid back away from the wind. Its burn was so bright that Ta’mook had to look around it, and never into it. It was now shining through the branches of Old Father Oakenstone. He walked back to the tree and cried out to it.
“Father Oak, tell me, please, what I must do!” He fell on his knees at its roots. “I was born a deformed monstrosity into the clan which sleeps below your feet. I was given the name that would best suit my form. Ugly I am called!” Trembling, he reached with his good hand to touch the stony bark once again and cradled his maimed against his chest. “I have been cast out from my clan, from my family, and from my home. Like refuse I have been removed and discarded. They kicked me and spit at me. They called me trak’pon!” He punctuated this word with a closed fist against the old wood. “They said I was not orc.” He looked up into the stiff branches. “Well, Old Father,” he cried, “what is it that I am? WHAT AM I?” He waited, but the only answer he received was the harsh and salty wind at his back. He lowered his head and (quietly now) he spoke, “My own mother wishes me dead.” He rubbed his wounded fist. “If I had known that you already were, perhaps I would have granted her wish…right then…Myself.”
He rose to his feet. He had never known the concepts of night and day, by the movements of the sun, but he could tell, that in a short time, all the light from this world would be gone. The blazing torch would move behind the earth and it would sizzle, and with it would it take its warmth. He could already feel it getting colder. ‘I will have to find shelter,’ he thought.
“All I wanted was a sign,” he whispered. “All I wanted was a direction. The rest I could do myself.” He let his closed hand fall lightly onto the trunk, and the low hollow ‘thunk’ resonated throughout its core. The wind seemed to stop and Ta’mook looked upward, following the thrumming sound, vibrating up the base and into the scarce branches. He heard a tiny crack, like a log popping in a fire, and saw a little twig tumble through the air from the top of the tree. It spun round and around dancing on the soft breeze. It finally came to a stop on the ground behind the substantial girth of Old Father Oakenstone. He ran around the tree to see what this thing was. The twig lay on a circular stone. Its fat end toward the oak and the sea, and the tip pointed toward�"Ta’mook looked up and out to were the twig pointed�"an immense sea of deep green.
Trees, Ta’mook thought. A forest. “Am I to go in there?” he asked the oak at his back. He didn’t expect an answer, for he thought the question was a stupid one, because he already had his answer. He turned and hugged the ancient tree. Then all at once he felt something like being shaken from the inside out and a sharp (but not so bad) pain in his skin where he touched the bark. An image flashed in his head of many trees all around him and rays of sunlight beaming through their leaves. He had a sense of happiness, and he heard a small voice say, “A needle to guide you.”


9
Ta’mook stared out into the dark sea of green, so far away, and watched as the sun drew closer and closer to the treetops on the horizon. The year was passing into its twilight months and the days (and even more so, the nights) would become colder. And very soon it would be dark. He was headed for the dark forest and he would have to start soon, right away even, so that he could find shelter before the light was put out. He left the old oak tree with a bow and made his way down the hill and into the rocky wastelands below. His shadow stretched up the hill behind him, and he was ready to see something new.

10
Ta’mook huddled close to his little fire (if he could he would have snuggled with it) and relished every warm breath that scampered across his icy skin, chasing away the frost. His fire was fueled by witchgrass. It was green and burned, thankfully, quite hot. It was the only thing he had dared to burn out here, for, what little he knew of this outer world, he had known this:

Witchgrass you burn in dire need
If no other fuel at hand is seen,
But burn with great care,
If in its flames you stare,
Your soul may reside there
evermore.

This was a song that was taught to all little orclings by their mothers. Another stanza of the same song went thusly:

Devil-weed, Never-weed, ne’er do burn.
This must be one thing that all Orcen-child learn.
For better to freeze
With frostbitten knees
Then to play with that
Ol’ devil-fire.

He did not know what would happen if he did burn the devil-weed. He only knew of the rumors and the night-stories told to the young orclings with attempts to frighten; stories that were usually about careless and unruly orclings or the hopeless traveler who would use the weed for tinder or, God forbid, eat it for sustenance. The victim of these stories would ultimately endure all forms of terrible things as a consequence for his foolish disregard of his mother’s lessons. Ta’mook doubted if all that was in those stories were true, but he believed them to hold a little validity. He was sure though that the devil-weed was a poison, and he steered his path away from it. Witchgrass, on the other hand, had only one rule and warning; do not look into the heart of its green flames. Being as how there was only one word of caution about it, Ta’mook felt it to hold more truth. So he took the warning to heart and kept his eyes from drifting too close to the fire.

11
The night had been far colder than he had anticipated. He did not know how long the dark would last (this whole world was unfamiliar to him), and even though his eyes saw very well in the dark, he thought it would be best to make camp and start out toward the forest in the morning. He had found his shelter under a large red rock at the foot of the hill. He passed under its shadow and found it to be floored by a patch of dry dirt, wide enough for him to lay down. He let a slight smile slid across his lips as a thought slipped into his mind, ‘maybe this won’t be so hard.’
The sun had passed behind the distant forest by that time and had left an orange-red smear in its wake. He looked back up the hill and could just barely see the topmost branches of the old oak stiffly jutting out above the rocks, almost lost against the growing black in the east.
He begun his search for tinder. This was a very depressing task, for the only things to burn were the small grasses of the hill country and those would burn quick. He knew he would never be able to keep the fire all night, let alone a few hours. He would collect as much as he could and would enjoy all he could get from it. He did discover a rough lichen that grew here and there in sporadic patches and along the base of many of the rocks. He had his haversack, in which was kept many of his most useful possessions. He had not been able to pack for his journey, in fact he hadn’t even thought to, and as far as food was concerned he only had three strips of dried mole meat in his sack. He would have to find something to supplement his home-made jerky for food, and he figured the moss would have to do in this wasteland. He had known not to eat the devil-stuff and would not chance the witchgrass. He plucked several handfuls of the bright green fuzz from the surface of a rock and stuffed them into his bag. After he had gathered a substantial pile of grass he sat down under the lee of his red rock and built his fire.
The burn was hot and comforting. He sucked at the palm of his right hand which had suffered a cut from a blade of grass. He looked at the shallow slit and then at the dried red line on his thumb and remembered the words of the metalsmith.
Clever little nuisance, he had said. Sharp but frail. Ta’mook looked to his swollen left hand. He had wrapped tightly with a leather thong to restrict movement. He was frail, that was for sure, especially when measured up against a stone. Thinking of the smith got him wondering about some of the other words which he had spoken. He had said, he could grind it up for tea, or something like that. Maybe the witchgrass could be good to eat. Maybe it could have herbal powers. Ta’mook wouldn’t dare go as far as to eat it, but maybe he could create some form of a salve to ease his pain. Ta’mook found a flat rock nearby, thought, ‘what have I got to lose’, and grabbed a handful of the grass. Using a roughly fashioned mortar and pestle he crushed the grass into course flakes. He hunched over his work in the dim green light and realized he had no water, which was something he would have to remedy soon. He mustered up as much saliva as he could and spit into the grey shavings. Then he unwrapped his hand, wincing as he did, and mixed the stuff on his flat stone with the long finger of his right hand. What was produced was a strong smelling musty and earthy dark grey paste. He raised his finger, sniffed inquisitively at the stuff on the tip (it definitely had the smell of an herbal remedy), and rubbed the small dab between his gums and lips. He felt the effects almost instantly. His teeth and lips had become numb as well as his tongue after he had used it to remove the paste to spit it out. He felt as if his whole face was beginning to swell up, and he panicked.
‘What have I done?’ He thought as his vision began to blur. He noticed a numbing tingle in his right middle finger and toppled over. Everything went dark and Ta’mook lay still.
The green light of the fire burned, then flickered, then finally melted away to green embers slowly darkening in the ashes.

12
Ta’mook awoke to see his own breath billowing in the cold morning air. When he moved to rise, his bones ached and his muscles groaned. His fire was burnt out, but this had not surprised him. His surprise came at finding himself alive. He thought that he had poisoned himself and that if the poison hadn’t killed him the exposure certainly should have. His pile of witchgrass, set aside for the fire, still sat were it had lain for use throughout the night. He shivered as he sat looking out into the wasteland; the wasteland that, over night, had turned to crystal. The soft pink light of dawn glinted off every surface; every rock, every stone, every dirty brown puddle seemed to shine with a glorious sheen. Every blade of grass was either sharpened polished steel(witchgrass), or finely cut amber (devil-weed) set within the brazen landscape. And the moss that rimmed the blackened boulders shone brightest of all in the early morning light, as if cut from emeralds. Everything was coated with ice. He stood with difficulty, his fur coverings crunching as he did, and beat his arms. His exposed body and furs were covered in frost and he brushed himself vigorously to do away with it. He noticed that the swelling in his broken hand had gone down, but still it screamed with pain. He stooped to pick up the leather wrap for it and found it to be stiff with the cold. He placed it under his arm and went for his bag. He would eat some of the dried meat and attempt to start another fire. Inside his bag his effects were mostly safe from the frost and the grass he had stuffed in there was drier than any outside. He dug down in the ashes of his last nights fire and found dry dirt and ash that was still quite warm. He lay the grass from his bag inside his old fire, said a little fire-starting prayer, and struck his spark-stone. It didn’t light at once, but after a few goes the flames began to rise. Ta'mook ate and warmed up and prepared for his journey. He begun to wrap his injured hand when he spotted the grey paste sitting on the flat rock near the fire.
‘Only when I placed it in my mouth did I succumb to its effects.’ He thought. He considered this and at length decided he would try again. He took a knife from his bag and scrapped the paste from the rock. Using the knife he spread a thin layer on his left fingers. When they finally numbed and no other issue presented itself, he felt sure that he would not fade and coated the rest of his swollen hand. He wrapped it tightly with the leather strap again. Then hoisted his haversack, stomped out his fire and headed off.

13
Four days passed while Ta’mook trudged his way across the rocky wastes. He marched unceasingly while the sun shone, foraging as he went, only taking time to rest and eat (mostly moss) when he could not force himself to go any further. Every day before sundown, he searched for places that would provide sufficient protection from the ever increasingly cold winter night. He would also collect a large pile of witchgrass for his fire. As the sun’s light would fade would he set his green flames alight. He would dig a shallow trench in the dirt near his fire and drop a layer of ashes on the bottom. He would sprinkle dirt over them and there would he sleep, but sleep usually danced just out of his reach. Every two hours or so his fire needed feeding, and when sleep did come to him it was short and restless. He did not want another morning like his first and, even though the world outside his little shelters may have gotten colder, the frost had been kept out.
Every morning he rose and ate a couple mouthfuls of dried meat from his haversack. After breaking fast he would stomp out his little fire and pack up. He would take his water skin and commence the tedious job of filling it with the freshly made ice that had sprinkled the ground through the night. On the third day he came to see a scattering of small trees that spread out from the larger trees at the edge of the forest, spotting the land between him and it with shades of red and orange. He did not know the names of these trees, but when he looked at them the word “Blossie” blew into his mind. It wasn’t until his forth day that he finally reached them, and it was on that day that he encountered the first living creatures since leaving his home.


14
The morning snows had melted away and tufts of green now as well as gold rose from their icy slumber and basked in the midday sun (gone were the grays of the devil-weed). Ta’mook advanced toward the sporadic grove of alien wood with a tentative curiosity. He had rushed the day before, stopping to rest only a time or two, with hopeful expectations of reaching the out branching blossie-grove before dark. He was nearly shaking with exhaustion as well as excitement. Despite his eagerness, he was already very far from home and very much out of his element, and with this out-of-place feeling arose caution. Caution to battle curiosity.
He stepped into the grass and was surprised, at once, with its softness. It was nothing like the brittle and sharp grasses he had known before; not deterring, but rather welcoming, and pleasant between his calloused toes. He reached the first of the trees, feet mushing through a skirt of fallen leaves mashing them into a orange-red paste, and reached a hand up to touch the soft white bark. The feel of it was very different than that of the old oak. It was smooth but not stoney. It was cool but not cold, and he could, so he thought, feel the flow of life within it. He could sense it just below the surface, and thought that if he scarred it, it would bleed. He looked up into its mostly bare branches at the fiery ornaments that still hung there. He wondered why these trees were called ‘blossies’. Ta'mook did not know how he knew that they were, but the word asserted itself in his mind as the truth.
As his hand pressed against the smooth bark, an image came into his mind, or rather filled his mind. It was the tree before him only it was green and full; so full that the white branches were almost completely hidden within. The sun shown brightly behind it and the air, he knew, was warm. The green halo which enveloped the small tree was itself covered by a multitude of blossoms. The words and concepts came to him along with the vision. ‘Blossie’ for blossoms, and blossoms for flower, and flower is renewal. He had never seen blossoms, nor anything that flowered. The weeds and grasses he had known went to seed, but never anything so beautiful as a flower. The blossoms were of a color like red, only softer. ‘Pink,’ his vision whispered. The image didn’t so much as fade, but speed up, as if time was turning days into seconds. The blossoms disappeared one by one while the leaves changed from green to red. Then it was the leaves’ turn to wink away until time seemed to catch up and he removed his hand from its trunk.
The power of what had just happened nearly knocked him to the ground. He staggered then lowered himself down on his haunches. He rubbed at his eyes with his un-bandaged hand. The other was beginning to hurt again. He had unwrapped it every morning and applied more of the witchgrass paste, but he thought it was getting worse. He was treating the pain but the injury wasn’t healing properly. It was swollen and of a dark color. He did not think there was an infection and he had no idea what to do if he should get one. Wearily he looked at the white trunk before him. There were scrapes and scratches down at this level. In some places narrow bands of bark had been stripped away, revealing the brown pulp underneath. He wondered what had done this and ran a finger down one of the grooves. He looked around and noticed that many of the trees in the blossie-grove had suffered the same scarring. After a few minutes he noticed movement; something small behind a tree about fifty feet away. He got up slowly and begun to cut around the trees in an arc to see if he could get a better look. In many places the grasses had grown tall and bushy and in one of these he had hidden himself. He peered out and saw a creature about half his size with large hind legs and short forelegs. It moved toward a tree with a hopping kind of four-legged gait. It’s body seemed to be completely covered with a flawless white fur. When it reached the tree it rose up on its hind legs and examined the trunk with its paws. It scratched around a bit with its claws. The creature sniffed a spot, which seemed to please it, with a little black nose. It took a little step back and raised its paws to rub the set of forked horns that grew between its long ears. It dropped down on all fours and began to scrape away at the bark. Ta’mook’s stomach growled and the creature started, raising its head to look in his direction. It’s eyes were wide. Ta’mook could see them clearly; little rings of red within a field of white. The thing's ears moved this way and that searching for the source of the noise. When it was satisfied that there was no danger it turned back to the tree, pulled the ribbon of bark it had curled from its trunk, ate it, and returned to its work.
Ta’mook thought that the creature was wonderful. He had never imagined anything like it. So clean and pure looking. He was filled with a sort of confused disappointment at being drawn to such a strong feeling of hunger as he watched it. He knew that the supplies in his bag had run very low and he would need to eat soon. After eating so much sact’ruk, which looked as unclean as death compared to what he saw now, this beautiful creature must taste unimaginably delicious. He was sorry that the first creature he encountered would have to lose its life to sustain him. He would give it thanks and a clean end for its sacrifice. He took one of his knives silently from his belt and assessed the creatures defenses. He judged the horns wouldn’t be much of a problem. He focused on its strong back legs and the sharp looking claws protruding from the toes at their ends. If it managed to get a kick at him, he thought, it would do some damage. And if the kick was placed just right he could be in a lot of trouble. He considered if it was worth the risk, and his stomach growled again as if to say, ‘what are you waiting for?’
I’ll have to be quick and quiet, he thought, and just as he started forward, with his knife in hand, a voice spoke up behind him.

15
“Little thing looks lost.”
Ta’mook reeled around to see the owner of the voice. His prey, alerted to his presence, darted off into the denser wood behind him. Ta’mook scanned the thinning grove stretching back to the wastes before him, but saw nothing but grass and blossie-trees.
“Little thing looks hungry too.” Said a voice which seemed to come from the same throat. Ta’mook thrust his gaze upward, raising his knife protectively above him. Sparks of fire dazzled his vision as he attempted to block out the sun. When the fireworks ceased he could see his knife clenched tightly within his whitening knuckles. Behind this, he saw a large silhouette perched in the naked branches of the blossie-tree before him. Another shape was softly lowering itself on large wings to sit beside its twin. Ta’mook squinted, trying to make out their features, but all the sun would allow was a black shade. He was upset that in his hunger he had not seen their shadows pass over as they lit, but that could not be helped now. He could not see them, but within those dark shades he could feel their eyes, black as night, watching him. The shapes shuddered and cocked their heads slightly as the peered at him. He did not like the way they stared up there in that tree. He thought he could feel them looking behind his eyes, as if they could see right past them and into his thoughts.
“What are you?” Ta’mook called up at the two black things.
“Little thing so far from home?” One of the shades said to the other. Its voice warbled as it spoke, almost as if it was underwater. It was rounded and woody, and Ta’mook found it, despite its eerie source, to be rather beautiful. The feel of its words were as far from the harsh orcish tones he was used to.
“Little thing left all alone?” Responded the second. It ruffled its wings and shifted its weight between two clawed talons. Ta’mook began to circle around the creatures so he could get a look at them. The black shapes turned as he moved, following him with their invisible gaze. The sun slipped out from behind them and, for a split second, terror gripped his heart with an icy suddenness, but then he saw their beauty. The inky blackness of shadow seemed to slide from their bodies like oil from a blade. The withdrawing dark revealed layers of massive feathers like ribbons of blue and silver silk. Ta’mook thought of a twilit sky reflected on polished steel. The colors seemed to shimmer and change as the creatures shifted on their perch. Rainbows of light bounced playfully on their surfaces. He had seen two rainbows on his journey to the blossie-grove, the sight of which were a marvel inconceivable, and the sight of them recreated now on the wings of these creatures was coequally marvelous. They glinted in the sun, here one moment then gone the next. They sat upon columns of gold, talons sharp as daggers and terrible in beauty. The dark eyes he had felt before came into view, set within the pale features of two creatures that were twins, but the eyes were not dark. No, the eyes of one twin were red, bright and as red as blood, and the other of blue, a faded blue like the sky before a summer rain.
‘They are dark!’ his mind screamed at him.
‘Look how bright and beautiful they are,’ something inside him asserted back.
“Maybe the little thing will come with us?” One twin said
“Maybe food we will give it and water…CRE’A!” Answered the other as it hopped and shuffled. Its last word, which Ta’mook was not even sure it was a word, sounded excited. He thought it sounded a bit more like a shriek. Neither was he sure if it was just ruffling its feathers, or if it’s twin had actually nudged it, like a mother correcting a child who has lost his focus.
‘Look, how beautiful.’ That thing inside him reasserted.
‘They are the most beautiful things I have ever seen,’ he thought to himself. “Who are you?” He asked. “Where are you from?” He slowly lowered his knife. ‘No! Don't let your guard down!’ His mind screamed again. ‘What are you doing? You saw them! You saw them! You know what they are! Run!’
He tried to take his eyes away from theirs, but no sooner had they reached the branch on which the creatures roosted, had he found them returning back. He could feel the red and blue eyes looking through him again. ‘They are beautiful,’ said the thing inside him. ‘I was wrong. Just a trick of the light, that’s all.’ The terror that had taken ahold of him once again, making him tremble and quake like the earth was falling apart beneath his feet, had also once again, subsided to calm, relaxed, congeniality.
“Maybe little thing knows not who he is.”
“Maybe we know where the others are like him…”
“Maybe little thing knows not what he is.”
“...and acceptance and love it is there he can find them.”
The creatures’ faces were soft and fair. They were very feminine and Ta’mook was overcome with feelings for his mother. Not his Orcen mother in particular, but the idea of ‘MOTHER’. He felt that more than anything in the world, more than food, he wanted to kiss the perfectly flawless faces above him over and over, and in turn let them kiss away all his tears and worries. He saw their lips were full, red, and welcoming. He noticed, as well, that those tantalizing lips never moved while they spoke. No, they wouldn’t speak the language of orcs, would they. They spoke into his mind. Although he did think that he heard, softly, almost as if from far away, the humming of music.
“You have seen others like me?” Ta’mook asked the creatures, excited by the idea. “Tell me where they are, please, for I would very much like to see them.”
At this, the creatures shook their feathers and spread their wings. Ta’mook could feel the wind from the beat of them and all the while heard the distant humming and vocalizing(such a pleasing melody) grow louder.
“Little thing, it now will follow.”
“Come now, no more time to wallow.”
“No more tears. Come, late is the hour.”
“For fear will make the meat taste sour.”
The music was now overwhelming in its beauty. It filled Ta’mook’s thought and he wavered where he stood. The creatures above him were singing beautiful music to him, enticing him to follow them. And he would. He would go with them anywhere. ‘Stop, you fool!’ Cried his mind. ‘You have been tricked. They are harpies. They are demons and they have you now.’
‘They are taking me home,’ the thing inside him answered. ‘A home with a real mother, and a real family, and a real clan.’ He took a step toward the harpies, who kept singing the sweet songs, kept baiting the same hook, and floating softly in the air before him, beckoning with their wings.
Ta’mook stumbled forward in a haze, completely unaware of the world around him. Beauty and light and color and music sweetly enveloped him urging him forward. He knew that if he went where he was pulled, the beauty that seemed to have swallowed the world would linger, and if he did not, it would recede, never to come again. He could not bear to let that happen. He would not. Lucky for him, he did not get much of a chance.
With a ripping sound like thunder, the mask of music and bright colors tore away from the face of reality before Ta’mook’s eyes. The power of it thrust him back into the overgrown grass, and he lay there, half in a daze, under a sea of green.
In a moment, the world seemed to have gone berserk in the sky above him. He did not see the slender shaft of wood or its barbed silver tip tear through the breast of the nearest harpy. Though it blasted through the fantasy world in which he was ensnared like a bolt of lightning. The harpy, which he saw in its true form for the few seconds before he was buried in grass, was foul; gnarled tangles of feather-like hair draped, in strands, down past the jagged features of a disease-ridden hag. It screeched in the peals of its foreign tongue and whirled in the air, coming to the ground in a heavy, lifeless thud. Its twin pierced the air with its own shriek, flapping frantically in attempts to escape the unexpected slaughter. A second arrow whizzed through the blurry sky above Ta’mook, and a moment later was followed by a second thud. His head was clearing and he noticed a gurgling sound like rocks grinding down the sides of a muddy tunnel and the delirious slapping of feathers through grass coming from where the monsters had been shot down. He sat in the tall grass with his arms wrapped tightly around his knees, trembling with fear. The wounded sounds from the harpy seemed to go on for hours and hours. After a short time he heard more sounds approaching him from behind. It was like a hundred pounding fists rushing toward him. Still crouching, he turned toward the unknown terror that seemed intent on running him down. Suddenly the wall of green and gold grass burst apart revealing the snarling head of a giant beast. Ta’mook stared with wide eyes, and his mouth hung open in a silent scream of horror. The beast had stopped with his prodigious snout inches from Ta’mook’s face. Fangs the size of pick-heads and jaws that could crush his skull in a single swift snap, dripped with foaming saliva. Wiry brown fur covered its entire head. Its jowls billowed with heavy breath which blew directly into Ta’mook’s lungs. The beast took in several large sniffs through its big leathery nose, and Ta’mook's golden hair waved back and forth at the will of the creature’s hurricane breathing.
‘This is it,’ Ta’mook thought. ‘The end. It seems that I have been destined to keep jumping from one frying pan into another. It comes to reason that, amongst all those many jumps, one would lend me no purchase to pot or pan, but would, betrayingly, drop me helpless into the fire. That ever-consuming flame has licked at my heels all along the tiresome race that is my short life.’ He closed his eyes, too tired for defiance, too exhausted to endure any more torture, and said, “Eat me, foul monster. End my misery and make it quick.”
The creature’s hot breath moved away, and Ta’mook opened his eyes; the first one with caution, then the second with surprise. He saw the thing’s massive head laying gently on the ground before him. It had stretched a set of mean looking paws into the little clearing, one on either side of him. Ta’mook was confused by what he was seeing. He thought of how he was taught to greet those who were more important than him. The thing was bowing.
It stayed bowed for a few seconds, then in one quick motion, raised its head and ran its huge tongue up the entire length of Ta’mook’s chest and face. For a brief instant Ta’mook thought he had been fooled and let out a shriek of panic.
‘Dire Wolf,’ his mind whispered to him as the tongue slid across his hairline and off his face. It gave him another quick look, then bounded over him and into the sea of grass toward the guttural cries of the harpy. He heard the pounding rustle of the wolf as he made his way. The sound of a low growl over took the flapping, singing, gargling. There was a soft “Crack” followed by silence. A few seconds later the dire wolf leapt back over him with the feathered hag’s neck in its jaws; its beautiful glamour washed away in its death. The first wolf was followed by a second that Ta’mook hadn’t even noticed was there. This one carried the other demon bird through the grass to his side. They brought their trophies, proudly, back to their masters who had shot them down.

16
Ta’mook cut through the grass silently and cautiously. The hunters who had mastered the wolves may have shot down his enemies, but he wasn’t sure if they had seen him. And if they did see him, mayhap they would shoot him, without warning, as they had shot the harpies. The orc warriors had a saying; ‘The enemy of my friend is my enemy,’ but Ta’mook had never heard anyone say, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ Maybe these creatures had thoughts like that, but Ta’mook felt like that was a completely backward way of thinking and didn’t want to risk being seen. He crept from one tall patch of grass to another, following the sounds of cheering and cries of victory, which had arisen with the return of the wolves dragging along their quarry. The voices diminished quickly into the woods, and Ta’mook quickened his pace.
He was alarmed and almost fell over backward when one of the wolves appeared, about thirty feet in front of him, holding something large and white within his jaws. He looked questioningly at Ta’mook, and Ta’mook took a hesitant step forward.
“Hello.” Ta’mook said in his Orcen language. The beast cocked his head in a manner that seemed, to Ta’mook, as if the creature was startled and a little confused. The wolf stretched his head forward, the white fluff still dangling from its snout, and took three quick sniffs. He gently laid the white thing down in the short grass before him, and made another one of those well mannered bows. He rose and looked at Ta’mook, then back at the white thing, and back to Ta’mook.
“Is that for me?” Ta’mook asked. The wolf did another one of those head-c***s (Ta’mook almost laughed) and bolted back through the blossies into the woods and after his company. The tired, hungry, and altogether worn-out little orcling walked up and looked down at the gift the dire wolf had left him. He could see a pair of forked horns protruding from under the mass of white fur. ‘Winter Jack’, his mind said as he bent and touched the animal.

17
A dark shadow fell over him as he stepped into the forest. Whatever warmth the sun had spilled onto the earth this late in the year seemed lost under the thick branches of the trees that formed the forest canopy. It was early in the afternoon but twilight seemed to have already fallen. Ta’mook looked back at the blossie trees. He could see his little camp in the distance, amidst the scattering of white trunks and gold green grass. The winter jack had fed him wonderfully and his stomach weighed heavy and full not unlike his haversack slung over his shoulder, stuffed with the leftovers. He spent maybe an hour, two at the most, cooking, eating and making himself ready to enter the forest. He would have followed the hunters in straight-away, if it hadn’t been for that stroke of luck, with the wolf and the winter jack. Such a sight as that flesh before him, all but prepared for the eating, was just to unbearable for his growling, aching belly not to stop and sooth itself. So he relented, and was glad. Now he looked ahead, and being no tracker (especially in this strange world) lost all sign of the hunters, the wolves, and their trail. He had found what he thought looked like a well defined path at the edge of the forest, but after a few minutes found that it turned into everything else, all overgrown and featureless.
Ta’mook felt lost and frighted once again. The hazy thickness of the forest seemed to close in around him. The dank dark green that sank in from the heights above made him feel woozy and likely to faint. He almost broke and ran for the blossie-grove, but before he did he closed his eyes. He listened. And in the darkness of his tightly shut eyes he felt at peace. He heard soft songs, voices, from the trees.
It was the trees.
He heard their words, and they were saying,

"Beach, Oak, chestnut, ash."
"Pine, birch, buckthorn, fir.”

Ta’mook listen, and something in the soft whispers of those many voices soothed him. It was almost like a chant. Maybe it was a chant.
When he opened his eyes the forest appeared brighter somehow. The dark drab grey of it all lifted away, and little sprites of light seemed to seep out of every crack and hollow, allowing color to creep back into his world. The closeness that had seemed so stifling and had threatened to squeeze the breath right out of him began to recede, and he took in a large lungful of air. It was the freshest, most clean air he had ever tasted. He may not have known his way but his fear, for the moment, had dissipated, and he felt like he was among friends here in the growing twilight, surrounded by the green life of the trees.

18
Days rolled by as Ta’mook wound his way through the dark forest. On his first day the wood was fairly spacious, consisting of a scattering of great trees with some smaller young trees filling in the blanks, and the shrubs and undergrowth filling in the further, smaller blanks in between. Being the most trees he had ever seen, Ta’mook had thought it was a pretty large and crowded collection, but he soon learned differently. As the day drew on he scrambled and trudged deeper into the green. The trees grew taller, his path grew more tangled, and with every passing day the light grew less and less bright. On his third day he ran out of water. On his fourth day his pack was void of winter jack. As he cut through the brambles of some hardly seen poke-bush with one of his larger knives (he had managed to find one or two berries amidst the needle like thorns, but the darkness was so overwhelming that searching for them provided more punctured fingers than sustenance), he had succumbed to despair. In an exasperated and quite exhausted fit of rage he lashed out with his knife, thrusting it, then lobbing it through the thicket and into the darkness ahead.
A ragged cry of anger and pain ripped from his lungs toward the sky, getting caught somewhere in the dark canopy in the unknown distances above him. He fell to his knees and dropped his haversack from his shoulder. He rummaged through it. How could he be out of meat already? How did it go so fast? He dug around and found a handful of moss (the darkness was almost like being back home). He rushed it up to his mouth and sucked what little water was left in its blackened leaves out. He began to sob, dry heaving sobs. The voices from the trees that had calmed him so easily at the start of his forest trek, were faded echoes. The words were friendly but lacked direction. If it were light enough, he could name every tree he saw in the forest, but he did not know where he was. The last day or two he could have been walking around in circles and he would not have known it, nor had he truly known how long it had been since his day in the clearing of the blossie-grove. His eyes were just as good in the dark as any other orcling’s, but the green blur that made up his current world was confusing and twisted. It was tricky and folded over on itself.
He lower his hands, clumps of moss dangled between the fingers of his good, right one. His lips were caked with the moist blackish-green leavings. A smell, different from the strong greenness of the stuff he had just sucked through his dry lips, and different than the old dank greenness of the forest, swept up his nostrils. He grasped his left hand, wrapped tightly within its leather casing, with his right and winced. His guts spasmed and he retched dryly as he crumpled to his elbows. It had been days since he paid his injury any mind. It hadn’t bothered him so he forgot it. He wouldn’t be able to forget it now. Now he could feel heat baking off it, through the little gaps in the leather strapping, and after smelling it, that smell would always be in his mind.
Infection.
It was something he had feared, but had hoped he wouldn’t get. Maybe it was his recent neglect, maybe it was inevitable. He knew it would spread and soon reach his heart, but before then, a fire would alight in his head and drive his mind toward delirium.
He rummaged in his bag and found the small sack he was looking for. Within it was packed a handful supply of the witchgrass paste. He untied it, scooped two fingers into its mass, opened his mouth, and the dark forest faded into obscurity.
Strange creatures, little things, came upon his prone body. One by one they investigated his warmth in the cold night, listened to his shallow breathing, and finally moved on down whatever path their way took them. Ta’mook was oblivious to the small furry things in the world outside of his sleep, but his dreams, in his herbal stupor, were vivid and unnerving.
When his eyes cracked open he hadn’t a clue as to how long he had been gone. When he took the oversized lump of witchgrass he had no idea what would happen to him, and frankly he did not care. The only thing he knew was that the forest around him was a bit brighter. It was thick with a dense fog, but the mist seemed to capture a little bit of the light that managed to slip through the trees above and released it in a ghostly haze on the forest floor. The air was damp and cold. Its chill clung to his face and bare chest like the greedy hands of the dead.
He had dreamed of them; the dead elders of his clan. They came to him from cracks in the rocks. They came with anger. They came with hate. They came with loose flesh, tattered and torn with rot, bound to bone; living skeletons, freakishly clothed in the remnants of their dead skin and thews. They snatched him up with their talon-like claws and he was so stricken with terror that, even though his mind screamed at him to flee, to fight, to save himself, he could not. They would drag him down, down, down into the ground, pulling him back through the cracks from which they had come (and could he see the evil glow of a fire, hot beyond imagination within those cracks, and could he smell the acrid putrescence of brimstone and decay rising from that glow) all smiling dead smiles, and all screaming hate filled cries of glee.
The forest was quiet, the voices were gone. It was late in the morning or early in the afternoon. That was what he thought, at least, but did it matter? He thought not. His body ached from feverish brow to calloused feet. The infection was spreading. He could smell his hand with his waking breaths and knew that soon it would fade into the back of his mind; still there, just not so pungent. Almost his entire left arm was an angry red and lines of black webbing peeked out from the edge of his leather hand-wrap. He began to laugh. His breath seemed as hot as his little forge in which he had, once upon a time, made so many wonderful knives.
“Looks like you might get your wish, mother,” he said aloud in a raspy low voice. It was one of which he had never heard before, leastwise of out of his own throat. “I probably won’t see tomorrow.” He was on his knees. He looked up from the ground, through the brambles directly in front of him, and tried to see what lie ahead. The fog was to thick and the light to low to see much, but looking seemed to unlock other senses. He stared into the haze and thought he heard the tiniest trickle. Water! Could it be water?
He thought of the night before (or whenever it was that he nearly let the witchgrass put him out for good). Had he heard his knife rustle through the thorny vines? After that, what? He had been screaming, but had he heard something else? Yes! He knew he had. Why didn't he realize it then? About forty feet on the other side of the thicket there had been a ‘CRACK’ and then the very clear sound of a splash. Probably a small stream. From the sound of it, a very small stream, then again water is health and rejuvenation. He would probably still die before dawn, but at least he would do it with a cold drink in his belly and not that jagged band that wrapped so tightly about it.
He slung the strap of his haversack over his head so that it crossed his bare chest and lowered himself back down to the forest floor. There was room enough under the poke-berry bush for him to scrape his way through. He shuffled forward, scrabbling along among the dead needles and rotting leaves. His head felt full of fluff and fire, and his vision was blurry. The prickers from the bush above him drug along the side of his head, and one actually pierced clean through the flat of his pointed right ear. He could feel the hot trickle of his feverish blood dribble across the chilly curve of his high set cheek and off the tip of his nose. He pushed on and the thorn broke off from the stem. The pain was there, only everything seemed to be two steps behind of him, while his senses were two steps ahead. He’d feel…react… ‘nothing’…react… ‘nothing’…. His body would move, but by that time his mind had gone and forgotten the pain that had caused the reaction in the first place, and was busy trying not to focus on the fire that had been built up around it, melting its wiring. When he had finally drug his limp form out from the barbed tangle, he had amassed quite a number of scrapes and punctures. He managed to drunkenly rise to his feet. His front was completely covered in mud and mulch. He stumbled forward and half-walked half-crawled the rest of the way toward the tinkling sound of water.
It wasn’t the fact that when the water touched his skin his head seemed to get a little clearer. Nor was it the fact that when he had drunk his fill, not only was his massive thirst slaked, but his hunger and exhaustion were temporarily abated as well. Not even the finding and regaining of his cast off knife did the trick. The thing that had risen his spirits and had given him a little bit of hope was the glow of sunlight just up the stream’s back trail; a beautiful splash of yellow and blue pulsing through the dark, green-grey, brume of stifling undergrowth.

19
The little cottage was a ramshackle earthen dwelling that reflected, in every twig and every grizzled splotch of moss, the shabby appearance of the old man who dwelt within it. It sat alongside the cool blue stream. A water-screw protruded from its dirt wall and the stream babbled and churned as it pushed the contraption around on its axis. A massive tree grew all about the hut so that its roots embraced its entirety within a mighty grip. Smoke leaked in wispy trails from a conical chimney set between two large roots on the top of the mound. It had a few windows and a doorway, all open holes with not a shutter nor a door to cover them. Through one of these windows a pair of foggy blue eyes watched as Ta’mook broke into the clearing.
The old man saw him stagger up the rocky wood path. The young thing looked more haggard and disheveled than himself, which he would admit was saying a lot. The poor thing was spattered here and there with, what he guessed was, his own blood. His body was vary pale and very lean. His ribs were hills between which sunk the valleys of his hunger. His long golden hair draped in ruddy locks framing his tired face and hung down past his slumping shoulders; matted and thick, clogged with dirt, sap, sweat, and weather. His left hand looked bad; swollen and bound with leather. A violent web of black infection spread from underneath it. As he watched the young thing clamber up toward his hut he could see the red fever creep across his shoulder.
“It is simply up to him.” The old man said in response to the snake’s eagerly questioning tongue waggling in his ear. “If the child can stave off death till the time that he puts himself before me, and asks of me, ‘help’, then I shall."
“You’ll save him?” The slithering serpent hissed.
“If, like I said, he comes to me and requests it.” The old man was a warlock, or a wizard as some might call him. His appearance, as was briefly mentioned before, was quite haphazard; bits of a garment here, part of a cloak there. His beard was long and greying black as was his hair. It fashioned an assortment of tangles, and rat’s nests, as well as some twigs and leaves. His face behind the complication of hair growth, albeit worn to sternness by age and deep-set knowledge (knowledge of the good and evil), was in someway kind. And the faded blue eyes that hung beneath his intense and reproaching eyebrows, also of a greying black, were in a way soft and caring. In short, the man was very complicated, and very difficult to decipher, as Ta’mook (if he would not die on the wizard’s doorstep) would soon find out.
He was called by many names, but the one of which he was known the most was Gælan.

20
The afternoon sun glinted in golden sparks which danced across the jade colored water of the little stream to the song of the water-screw’s turn. Its bubbling churn led Ta’mook’s feverish mind back to the Oakenstone spring.
Apart from his place in front of his little forge, the spring was his favorite place under oakenstone. In the deep recesses of the caves and tunnels dug by the Orcen folk of Oakenstone was a great cavern in which pooled the clan’s main supply of water. This was a natural opening, not as grand as the clan center, but still quite large. On days when he was treated especially cruel Ta’mook would sneak off to the spring. He would strip down and swim in its cool waters. The orcs used water for drink, when blood could not be found, and for stews when meat was scarce, but not for much else. They rarely washed and never bathed (as I believe was mentioned somewhere before). None could swim, nor even the thought of such an act ever had crossed the mind of any Oakenstone orc, but Ta’mook had taught himself, and kept it secret. He returned to those times as he crawled along the bank of the forest stream. He felt the cool water rush past his fingers as he reached down into it, and nearly collapsed bodily into the flow. If he had, then our tale would most likely have ended here, at the doorway of Gælan the wizard, with Ta’mook being rid of whatever torments he had endured, entering into the clearing behind the shrouded veil...
Vail...
Vale...
He came back to reality. He would not submit. He would not say farewell. He struggled to his feet and hobbled the rest of the way up the stoney path. His hand stretched out to grasp the doorframe, and missing, he collapsed through the opening of the earthen hut.

21
Gælan watched Ta’mook’s trek up his path. He peered with curiosity as he stopped along the stream bank, seeming to be in a trance. He thought the lad would topple over the edge and thus out of his world. This thought neither worried, nor intrigued him. His only concern was with what could be enticing the child into such a state of unawareness. You see, wizards are very different than you and me, which is something you will learn more about in a short while. When Ta’mook did not fall in, but instead resumed the short walk to his hut, the snake hissed in Gælan’s ear.
“Seems like you’ll be working miracles after all, tis a shame.” The wizard only gave the snake a nonplussed sort of look in return. The snake simply shook his head at the wizard’s simplicity and slithered from his shoulder to the table before them, and from the table he slid to the floor. But before his forked tongue had tickled the dirt, the child fell, sprawling into the hut, and landed with a thump. For the first time, since the newcomer arrived in their clearing, was there sound and movement from the other side of the hut. Next to where the water-screw pierced the wall, a great creature, head angled and bent at the waist so as to fit within the small accommodations, shuffled and came forward into the light which stabbed through the window. The creature’s skin was of the color and texture of bark. Growths like twigs and branches stuck out from him in all directions. His head bore a crown of broken sprigs. His eyes were calm and pleading, one as gold as honey, the other as green as spring, and he held the wizard’s gaze for a whole minute within them. He was a wood færy; a spriggan.
Gælan walked up to the lad laying in his entryway and bent over him. He rolled the child over. The little thing’s golden locks obscured most of his face, stuck with blood and sweat (and the maker knows what else). Gælan gently brushed back the hair and said, “Aiya, Teler. Mana nwalmë etusinidë?”
Ta’mook opened his eyes. Red lines spread from their corners, scratching their way toward the centers. His lips parted. They were cracked and dry. He searched, through half-shut lids, the blurry shapes above him. A breath, raspy and hot, leached a single word from his throat. “Qah’et.”
The wizard, the snake, and the spriggan all looked at each other, perplexed. Ta’mook faded away and passed into a deathlike sleep. After a few short seconds of dumbfounded silence, the snake cawed a laugh that seemed to resonate all along his chilly backbone. “Gælan, it’s Orcen-speak.” He hissed and chuckled. “The pitiful thing must think itself an orcling.” He slithered off to a dark corner, snickering, “How delicious.”



22
Ta’mook’s sleep was plagued with twisted dreams that seamed to last for ages. When he did wake, it was only for mere seconds at a time, and was like waking to a muffled hazy sort of world, bobbing on the edge of darkness. He remembered falling into the little tree dwelling, face to the floor and unable to move. He heard footsteps, coming through the fog that buried his mind, scuffling in the dirt. He felt hands grab him. Half of his mind swore that a horde of evil beings had come upon him with thoughts of feasting behind their ravenous groping claws. The other half knew that there was only one pair of hands grabbing him and that they happened to be gentle, and were simply turning him to his back. Ta’mook believed both were right. He struggled but his body, being so week, remained completely compliant to the disembodied hands. A blurred grey shape hovered above him and something moved the mass of hair that lay across his burning face. Strange words, garbled and foreign, melted through the hot jelly that filled his head. “Help.” He said with as much effort as he could muster. “Help, me.” And then all went black.
The time that followed was broken time for Ta’mook, time that wasn’t really time at all. What he remembered was only a series of images, movements, and words spoken in languages that he didn’t recognize. Shapeless figures flashed by and light turned to night and to light once more. Things continued this way for days? Weeks? Seasons? Ta’mook had no way of knowing, and reality swam in the same murky waters as his dreams until things began to AWAKEN.
Strange mutterings slipped into his wakening ears. Something was nearby. Ta’mook opened his eyes but the light was so dim and his vision was so fogged that only dark shapes managed to make it through. He could see a large creature crouched by his feet. It had Ta’mook’s bag open on the ground before it, and had clearly rummaged through its contents. The creature was holding, what Ta’mook could make out, even with his poor sight, as his little pouch of witchgrass paste. Ta’mook began to feel sleep taking ahold of him again, and as the thing sniffed the pouch’s contents the sound of his strange mutterings grew a little louder with surprise, and Ta’mook felt his eyes grow
AWAKEN
heavy rain pattered on the mud walls and roof as Ta’mook awakened from a dream. He had been trapped within some stone chamber. All about him lay the bones and tattered clothes of creatures that he knew to be himself. Dozens of little skeletons, here one leaning against a pillar clutching the empty pockets of a worn-out haversack, there one grasping the iron bars of the chamber’s only window, all dead, alone, and scared. He searched and searched for a way to escape, and whenever he began to feel like he was going to lose his mind, someone he knew from his home would appear, lending help and salvation. He would let hope sink back into his heart, and reaching out for help he would watch as their looks of compassion would turn into sneers of mockery. They would laugh, and their laughter would grow so vibrant and loud that it would blend into one long shrieking note that threatened Ta’mook’s sanity. Right before it would become to much to bear, it would stop. Abruptly. The play would begin again, and he would fall for their false promises of salvation each time, even though he knew better. It was, after all, a dream, and our dream selves rarely listen to our wake selves’ sound reason. One by one they came, and lastly came Tek’lia.
Her shrieking laughter still rang in his feverish ears. Orange light quivered and thrummed all across the muddy dirt walls. As the screaming in his ears faded, the nearby pop and crackle of a hearty fire became clear.
“Where am I?” He said aloud.
There was a soft rustle of paper and a crunch of dirt. A deep voice spoke out at his side. “In the realm of the living.” Ta’mook managed to turn his head enough to see an older looking creature. He wore ragged robes; a mixed assortment of browns, grays and greens. His face and head was covered in long grey-black hair, and he had no tusks. His eyes studied Ta’mook intently.
“What are you?” Ta’mook asked. “Are you like me?”
The old creature in the robes looked across the room, at what Ta’mook guessed was probably another being in the treehut which he could not see.
“Not like you, no. I am called Gælan, and this is my home.”
The flickering light, the earthen abode, the shabby old man; everything began to fade, dropping Ta’mook back into that dark nothing world where he waited until he heard the soft pop and hiss of
AWAKEN
a fire crackled and a cold autumn breeze was blowing. Voices were speaking in hushed words near the fire behind him. The tinking of cookery rose in the air and something began to smell


AWAKEN
wonderful yellow rays of sunlight poured into the little hut through the open hole above him. Golden specks of dust flitted merrily in and out of the sunlit shafts, diving in air currents and dancing across every surface. Ta’mook felt warm, not hot, not feverish. He still felt weak and strained to move his head, which still ached like it would split, but a smile grew on his face because the feeling that he felt inside him felt like healing. He was still basking in the thought when he heard a low groaning sound. He strained his head to move, so he could see. He heard several quick pops followed by another groan that ended in a quiet squeal. Above him loomed a giant creature. Ta’mook started and his eyes grew wide with fear. It wasn’t a creature! It was a tree! A moving tree with a face. A tree with eyes that stared at him. Ta’mook tried to scream, but couldn’t. The green and gold eyes watched him as he slipped back into
AWAKEN
the darkness crept through the window above Ta’mook once again. This time Gælan was crouched before him with a wooden bowl in his hands. Steam billowed from its inner curve carrying that same beautiful aroma he had smelled (how long ago was that? A day? Two? Ten?) before. The old man was talking to him.
“…will not without it. If better is what you want to be, then you will need to eat.” Gælan seemed to notice that he had roused from his unreachable state. He came a little closer. “There you are. I … … healing was what you were after, … you did ask me for help. Didn’t you?” Ta’mook pinched his eyes shut in vain attempts to clear his head. “A … sips of water … … of days will not be … … get you well. You must eat.” Ta’mook realized that it wasn’t just the grogginess of his head and the muffled state of his ears that caused the old man’s speech to cut in and out of his understanding. Gælan was speaking orcish, but it wasn’t quiet right. Some of the words were the same, most of them were close, but there were a few that sounded like complete nonsense. Despite the slight disruption of language he understood enough of what the old man was trying to tell him.
Ta’mook reached out and grabbed the bowl of stew. It’s contents sloshed and released another wave of aroma. He tried to sit up but collapsed, almost spilling the stew. The old man helped him by holding his head up, saying, “…lay back. You are to weak to rise. Eat and build strength.” Ta’mook tipped the bowl to his mouth. It was mostly herbs and hot water, but the little meat that it contained was the best he had ever tasted. It was soft and tender and seemed to melt within his mouth. He finished all of it greedily, went slack once again, and Gælan let his head down softly. He saw the old man pick up the empty bowl and turn to take it away. He grabbed the hem of the old man’s robes. His grip wasn’t strong enough to hold him but he stopped and turned back all the same.
“Thank you.” He managed to scratch out a whisper. “Thank you, I have never known such kindness.” Gælan simply stared down at him with a stern and somewhat confused sort of look. Ta’mook began to fade away again, maybe from the sickness maybe from the stew.
In the growing haze, the old man spoke to him as one that has no clear opinion of the mater. “I simply answered a … . Kindness is not in the … my abilities.” With bowl in hand, he turned back toward the fire to stow it, and Ta’mook drifted out of consciousness. “Mostly I am curious … how and why one … as you has endured
AWAKEN
the torment of his dreams had lessened and when he awoke he found he was feeling much better, in his head if not the rest of his body. The old man sat at a table at the other side of the room. It was still dark and the fire still crackled. Ta’mook could not tell if it was the same night or if a thousand nights had passed between then and his last waking. The old man had not noticed his resurfacing and was busying himself with sheets and sheets of what looked, to Ta’mook, like very thin skins. So thin in fact that he could see the glow of the night fire pierce them. All of them contained line after line of characters writ in a foreign scrawl. Ta’mook still felt like he had been buried alive even if his head didn’t swim in the heat of a raging fire anymore. Despite his aching body, he felt a dead weight slide up from his gut. He raised his head, as he lay, dropping his chin to his chest. What he saw was a bright green tube-like creature gliding up the the thin covering that blanketed him. Ta’mook froze in fear and fascination. The thing raised its arrow shaped head from Ta’mook’s chest and stared deep into his eyes. It had eyes like an orc. Ta’mook had only ever seen his own eyes, reflected in polished steel by torchlight, and he knew they were different than his brothers’ and his mother’s, but here was a creature unlike anything he had ever seen, even more unlike an orc then himself, yet it bore their eyes. He saw within those cold slit stones the same malice and mischief he had seen in those of his orcen family. But he saw something else. He saw cleverness.
“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey.” The thing grinned as it bobbed above his chest. It weaved back and forth, its black forked tongue darting in and out of its smiling mouth. Ta’mook had known that one of the hunters in his clan had a forked tongue, but he suspected this creature’s was natural and not just an augment of beautification.
“What are you?” Ta’mook asked not daring to move.
The thing hissed and it’s smile turned into a grin. Its mouth was lined with hundreds of little teeth and when he broadened his smile two large fangs dropped partway down to join the row of pearly whites. “I, little one, am what you might call a spirit. I am Gælan’s familiar, an animal guide. The creatures from which my form has been taken are called serpents.” The thing’s head tilted to the side and he grew his smile even bigger, if that could be thought possible. “I am called, Ërmond. I help advise him when hard decisions are to be made. And with Gælan every decision is a hard decision”
Saying that Ta’mook was puzzled would be a weak description of the current state of his mind. “And the old man, Gælan, what exactly is he?”
“He, my child,” they both stole a glance at the old man, still huddled over the rustic table, still pouring over his scattered sheafs of parchment, “is something I am not permitted to reveal to you in full. But what I can tell you is that he is called a wizard or warlock.”
“And what does a wizard do?”
“Precisely nothing on his own, except for the extensive study of everything and anything he can gain information about.”
Now the serpent was more subtle than any creature, more cunning than many men, and more deceptive than any palterer. He drew close to Ta’mook’s ear and hissed, “In fact, the old wise one watched you struggling up the road, sick with fever, and wouldn’t have lifted his finger to intervene. Wouldn’t have saved you. He would have just watched you die right there on his path, and after you were dead and beginning to return to the earth would he have shunted you to the side, into the trees, to finish your decay. By the following week he would have forgotten all about you and your existence in this world. It is a good thing he has those around him to advise what is wrong and what is right.” The snake pulled back and looked solemnly at Ta’mook. The little orcling stared wide eyed across the room at the wizard sitting hunched in the firelight, muttering to himself and scanning the thinly scrawled parchments frantically.
Still watching the old man, Ta'mook said, “He must be very powerful, though, to heal me from something that should have most assuredly taken my life.” He looked at his left hand, which he had completely forgotten about, and saw that it was bare. His crude leather wrappings had been removed. The bones that had been jagged and broken were mended. The skin that had split and scarred in thick black tears was healed without any sign of injury. The only indication of anything having been wrong was a faint trailing of dark veins spreading from where the wound used to be, and these seemed to fade even as he watched in the dim firelight.
“Yes,” said Ërmond. “He is very powerful.” He slithered down and caressed Ta’mook’s healing hand, regaining eye contact. “But what good is power if you never wield it?”
“Ërmond, why can I not understand everything Gælan says to me in my tongue, but you seem to speak it so clearly.”
“The orcen speech comes easily to my kind.” The serpent looked at him intently now. “Which brings forth a question that has been burning on the tips of my tongue. Why is it, child, that you speak an Orcen dialect?”
Ta’mook shook his head in a way that seemed to say, ‘what else should I speak’, and said, “Because that is what I am. Ta’mook, an ugly orcling.”
Ërmond had to use all of his might just to keep from laughing. In his head he danced and jigged, and cried out, ‘how delicious! How wonderfully, terribly, awfully delicious!’. His serious snake composure was almost lost when he finally said, “You should rest, Ta’mook. Winter is coming. Sleep and regain your strength.”
Ta’mook did feel sleepy again already, so he nodded his head and turned to his side, and closed his eyes. Ërmond slithered away nearly bursting with pleasure and excitement.

23
Ta’mook slept and woke more normally as the days passed on, and he lingered in Gælan’s hut for three weeks. During those weeks he learned some things from the wizard on the subjects of the stars and forces and of energy and many things which he called science. From Ërmond, he learned only of a steadily, more obvious, growing feeling of contempt and mockery. The worm was deviously malicious. From Moot he did not learn much, except (maybe if he was not blinded by the serpent’s cruelty) subtlety in compassion and growth.

24
The wizard had been sitting at his table with his parchments strewn about. Birds were singing outside. They sounded wonderful. It was like music in the healing orcling’s ears, and waking to such beautiful sounds seemed to pound whatever ailment still lingering within his body out into the early morning chill. Which is to say, that morning Ta’mook had felt better than he ever had.
The sun had been shining, up for an hour or two, Ta’mook had thought as he peered out the window, and the air was especially chilly. The sky above the little clearing was cloudless and during the clear night the heat of the earth had leaked into the unshielded ether and left the world to frost. Crystal glass slowly melted on every unshaded surface and the shadows were thoroughly white with it.
“Ah, you are awake.” The voice of Gælan surmised from behind him. The tone suggested something more akin to a question than an actual statement. “And I dare say you seem to be more or less complete once again.”
Ta’mook turned and saw the old wizard rising from his work. Ta’mook bowed and said, “Thank you, great wizard. I shall be eternally grateful for the service you have done me. I have nothing of value, but for a few trinkets and knives, however if anything within my possession would you like for your own, it shall be yours.”
“Who told you I was a wizard?” The old man replied
Ta’mook rose. “Your serpent, Ërmond.”
“Ah, indeed.” Gælan approached Ta’mook. His brow was furrowed and the tufts of hair shading his eyes leered at him, almost sensing the air for him, reminding Ta’mook of the feelers that protrude from the snouts of the blind Sact’ruk. “I trust he told you naught else of me, nor acted in any way other than that of a friend.”
“I spoke with him only once, but he was kind. I have never known friendship, Gælan, only cruelty.” Ta’mook let his gaze move from the old man’s piercing stare. “He wasn’t cruel.” He muttered thoughtfully.
Since Ta’mook had awakened he had heard the crackle and pop of what he had believed to be fire. What he saw now revealed that assumption to be a half truth. A small fire was indeed flickering with a low flame within the hearth, but against the wall beside it stood a metal ball atop a metal post. The ball was about as big as Ta’mook’s head and all about it flashed and spat needles of blue light. It buzzed and cracked. Ta’mook’s eyes grew wide with wonder. “What is it?” he asked the wizard.
“It is current, energy…” Gælan reached forward and grabbed Ta’mook’s arm before he wandered to close. “It is something that would cause my fixing you to be a trivial thing were you to venture to close, young one.” Ta’mook managed a short glance back at the wizard before returning, transfixed to the beautiful sight. Gælan continued, “Hear me well. Many things that provide help and a great service are entwined with danger and hindrance.” He had regained Ta’mook’s eyes. “If you were to feel, even on just a fingertip, the prick of one of those blue needles, it could be enough to steal your heart.”
“What is it for?” Ta’mook asked.
“When the sun is gone behind the leaves I will show you.”
Ta’mook squinted at Gælan as he realized something. Maybe it was because the memory had been contaminated by the fever. The hallucinations and strange thoughts that had plagued his waking dreams were already rapidly decaying. “I can understand you.”
The wizard looked a little taken aback.
“What I mean to say is…” Ta’mook continued. “Before, I could recognize most your words, but now I hear everything you say clearly. Ërmond had told me that you did not know the orcen dialect of which I speak.”
“Well,” said the wizard, mildly annoyed. “One thing in which I do, and which Ërmond resists as often as possible, is study.” He motioned over to the piles of parchment. “There lie texts of all the known black tongues. While you slept, I have increased my understanding.”
The two of them stared at each other for a moment. The hum and crack of the machine, the singing of the birds outside, the bubble and churn of the stream, these things filled the small hut with a chatter that drowned their silence. At last Ta’mook spoke. “Gælan,” he looked at the wizard with a longing abashedness. “Do you know what I am?”
The wizard’s eyes scanned Ta’mook, seeming to peer into his heart of hearts, his innermost self, his soul. He drew his gaze back a bit and a ghost of a smile twitched at the corners of his bearded mouth. “Who in the world am I? Ah, that is the great puzzle.” He grew solemn once again. “Is this the journey that you are on, then, young-one?” He jerked his head in a nod as he continued, “To find yourself?”
Ta’mook, all of a sudden, felt a chilling fear grip him. It was like a claw of ice trailing a bumpy path down the ridges of his pale spine. And almost as quickly as it had sprung up on him, had it abated back into the shadows of his mind. “Yes.” He straightened up the slouch that had formed on his shoulders, “Yes it is.”
“Then in answer to your question,” he paused in thought. “I know what it is that you should be.” The young creature before him battled with excitement and confusion. “But you don't know yourself, so how is it that I can be sure.”
Ta’mook became agitated. “What do you mean? Do you know what I am or don't you?”
“Do you see that chest in yon corner?” Gælan pointed behind the table where Ta’mook could see a large wood box bound tight with leather straps. “Where you come from, do they have any…” he looked Ta’mook up and down. “What creature gave you those furs?”
Ta’mook was Puzzled. “Sact'ruk,” he said. “But what has that got to do with…?”
“Imagine I told you,” the wizard interrupted. “That inside that chest was a sact'ruk.”
“Well it would have to be a small one.”
“That is beside the point.” Gælan waved his hand impatiently. “Inside is your sact'ruk,” he began again. “But also,” he added. “is an insect, a bug, do you ken?”
“Like a creeper?” Ta’mook nodded.
“Well, this creeper is just fine with the sact'ruk being there. Unless, that is, the sact'ruk eats him or steps on him. If that should happen the creeper would release a toxin that would kill the sact'ruk.” Ta’mook stared at the box. “So, with what I told you, is your creature alive or dead?”
Ta’mook didn't need to think about it long. “I cant know unless I look inside.”
“Hmmm.” Gælan nodded. “Half correct. The sact'ruk is, in fact, both alive and dead as far as the universe is concerned. Until, as you said, you look into the box. The only one who knows the truth before that happens is the creature itself.” He looked deep into Ta’mook’s eyes again. “As I said, I know what it is that you should be, but until you open your box, I cannot be sure.”
“Then can you tell me what it is I should be?” Ta’mook asked pleadingly.
“That, young-one would be like yelling through the box ‘YOU’RE DEAD!’. What would that prove?”
Tears began to well up within Ta’mook’s eyes.
“Young-one, look to me.” Ta’mook raised his moistened face to the old man. “I do not call you by your given name for these same reasons.” He placed a hand upon Ta’mook’s head. “Knowing oneself is the beginning of all wisdom and at the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are.”
“But how do I know? Where do I start?”
“You listen. Listen to the stars. Listen to the wind and to the whisperings of your blood. Listen to the life that flows all around you. You seek to find your truth and this is the way of the seeker. You must walk your course to find the answers you are looking for. You nearly lost your life to the first length of your journey, so I understand that to venture further brings anxiety.” Gælan stood back and gazed sternly at Ta’mook. “But not to venture is to lose oneself.”
“Then I shall go,” said Ta’mook.
Gælan allowed that subtle ghost of a smile to creep back onto his lips once again. “And when shall you begin this long journey into yourself?”
“Soon.”
Sunlight shifted as the shadow of a giant fell on the doorway and a great shape crawled through the narrow entry.

25
Ta’mook started, remembering the creature, and was stunned into silence. He thought it had been a dream, a fever vision, but here it was before him as real as the wizard’s soft breathing behind him.
It was like he had seen it before; a tree. Only it wasn't a tree, but a great woody figure walking about on two legs. Ta’mook guessed it stood at least twice the height of Gælan. Its head bore a tangled crown of knobby branches. It had a face but no features apart from a sporadic sprouting of twigs and shoots and two bright eyes. One was gold, the other green. Something long hung from the branches on its head. The creature looked at Ta’mook and the deep calm of its gaze flowed into his heart, fracturing the initial fear that ensued the sight of this monstrosity. After a moment, it shuffled over to a large squat seat which sat near the hearth. The creature, when sat, looked almost comical with its knees pulled up to the height of its shoulders and its head angled to the side so as not to scrape against the earthen ceiling.
“Well look who’s up and struttin’ about the castle.” A voice from the tree-creature spoke. Ta’mook knew the voice and realized what it was that had been dangling from the creature’s topmost branches.
Ërmond, the serpent, stuck his body out and hovered in front of the tree-creature’s face. “Menacing isn't he?” Ërmond had observed the way Ta’mook reacted when he had seen Moot for the first time; screaming about monsters. He had also seen the hurt that struck across the big fellow’s face like a slap from a loved one. Ërmond knew what Ta’mook was and he knew what it meant to Moot.
Ta’mook thought for a moment. “No,” he said. “I think not anymore. Not now that I see him in a new light and not that within the dark and fearful haze of fever.” Moot shook his head and lightly batted at the snake obscuring his sight. Ërmond took the hint and coiled himself within Moot’s crown and rested his head between a fork in one of the branches. Ta’mook bowed and said, “What might your name be, tree-thing, and what is it that one might call one such as you, for I have never encountered a being of your like.” There was only silence. Ta’mook raised his head, but the giant just stared at him with that same sad and curious look.
Ërmond yawned and smiled. “Are you so blind as to not see he has no mouth?” The serpent gleamed at him.
Ta’mook frowned. “Can he not hear me either than?”
“Oh, he can hear you, dear one, and he can hear me. He can also hear the birds singing, the stream babbling, and the leaves in the trees whispering, but the only difference is, child,” he gave another one of those prize-winning grins, “he can understand them a whole lot better than us right now.”
“He doesn't know orcen?”
“Not even a bit. In fact, I don't think he could even if he tried. Not many folks west of the forest rim, which you crossed to get here, are familiar with it, you know.”
Ta’mook thought about this for a minute. “I have been able to hear the thoughts of some animals or glean, through visions, the essence of particular green-life.” He checked the serpent’s face for signs of doubt or derision. Nothing but that ever to often grin was stamped there. “The trees of the forest told me their names.” He looked back down into the eyes of the giant. “Maybe he could too if he knew what I was asking.”
Ërmond’s smile faded into a serious look of exasperation. He lifted his head from his resting spot. “Gælan!” he hissed. Ta’mook, realizing the wizard had not been heard from since his familiars had entered, turned and saw the old man hunched at the table once again, this time pouring over large stacks of parchment bound in leather. He raised his head slowly, almost as if he were coming out from a trance, and shared a short but intense eye locking with the bright green snake across the hut. With a vacant stare of disinterest he slid his gaze from snake to spriggan. “I just told Gælan to relay your message to this small minded beast beneath me.”
“Do you always speak that way? With your minds?”
“Not minds, foolish youth. Do you not know that the eyes are doorways?” He paused to look at Ta’mook. “Doorways into the soul.” Ta’mook felt an intense desire to run and hide at that look and the thought of Ërmond peering into his soul. The snake smiled again. “Only when the wizard is around,” he continued. “It’s easier.” He lied.
The truth was, Ërmond and Moot would never understand one another, and could not converse together with mouth, ears, or eyes because they were Light and Dark. Calm and Chaos. Tranquility and Turbulence. They were twins with an eternity of difference between them and Gælan was their connection. In fact, one might even say that both snake and spriggan were the wizard, or maybe more clearly, the severed halves of his bias conscience. The fact of the matter was that Ërmond, both deliberately and calculatingly, left Ta’mook in the dark concerning this information.
“Moooooot…”
Ta’mook heard the low rumbling tones of the spriggan’s thought, just as he had with the trees. And disappointingly, just like the trees, only one word was repeated in a slow chant.
Moot…
Moot…
Moot…
Ta’mook realized now that it wasn't thoughts he was hearing, but the conveying of a particular creature’s self. It was the voice of blood; the voice of sap; the soft whisper of essentia.

26
Several more days passed as he stayed amongst the wizard and his companions. Little happened and after that first talk with Gælan, the wizard wasn’t one for much conversation. He spent most of his time with his nose deep within his histories and studies and in the scrolls of a type of magic which he called ‘science’. He did, however, as he had promised, show Ta’mook his use for the energy made by the stream outside his hut.
The sun had set behind the forest trees and Gælan, for an added effect, doused the fire and the hut was deep in darkness. “We will kindle it again before the night air becomes too cold to handle.” He said to Ta’mook. “But for now…” he stuck his hand into one of the pockets of his tattered robe and withdrew a transparent globe. “This is called glass. Within is a type of stuff that cannot be seen unless energy agitates it.” He spun around and flicked at a switch on his machine, which had been silent. The whole thing sputtered and burst out with the blue sparks Ta’mook had seen before. The room was instantly filled with light. The orb in the wizard’s hand shone with a steady unwavering glare that was more like daylight than firelight. And it was blue.
Out of all the wonders Ta’mook had witnessed since leaving his hole, this was the most spectacular. He was left gawking. Gælan stood in front of him, hands outstretched, head held back and laughing with a manic caw as if his mind had wandered a little off the well beaten path of sanity. Perhaps it had.



27
After that night the wizard was distant and absorbed nearly completely with his ‘seeking’, as he phrased it. Ta’mook had asked Gælan if he could teach him some of the things which he had learned. He had asked if he would share some of the vast knowledge, the result of many lifetimes’ worth of seeking, with him. He asked, but to no avail. Hadn’t Ërmond said something of the selfishness of wizards? So Ta’mook found himself spending most his days in the presence of the spriggan and the serpent, and with Moot being all but mute, it was with Ërmond whom he conversed. Ërmond whom he befriended. Ërmond whom he let seep venom back into a healing heart.
The serpent began by causing a rift between the child and the wizard. Even though Gælan was withdrawn, he had given Ta’mook everything he needed to find health and happiness, but Ërmond blinded Ta’mook of this. He weaved a tangled web indeed.
“The wizard had been cruel to you, not letting you know who you truly are.” he had said to Ta’mook. “He is laughing at you and relishing in his own cleverness.” And even though Ta’mook had viewed the great warlock with admiration and renown, he grew to loathe and resent him.
You see, the serpent relished in his own cleverness, and he knew many clever things. He knew that a creature, having never been shown a single act of kindness, would not understand such a thing as ‘being cloying’. With his words, rife with half-lies and prevalent in partial truths (this was another thing Ërmond was privy to, a lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies), he made the works of others appear less paramount. Gælan was easy enough for the snake to misstate within Ta’mook’s thoughts, but Moot was just a game for him.
Ta’mook knew he would leave, although he had assumed he would stay at least through the winter months, and definitely not as soon as he did, but on the day when wizard, tree and snake all seemed to be against him, he had to run.
Ërmond had told Ta’mook that he could speak to Moot but that it was more difficult than letting the wizard pass it on for him. The truth was neither he, nor spriggan could communicate one with the other.
On Ta’mook’s last day, he, Ërmond and Moot had been sitting out by the stream. It was a nice day and if there was to be snow then it hadn't fallen yet.
“Moot…” the low rumbling of the spriggan’s essence breathed into Ta’mook mind. He looked over at Moot with Ërmond hanging in his crown, and the tree-thing was pointing into the woods. Ërmond caught Ta’mook’s eye and grinned deep within his mind.
The serpent hung down in front of Moot’s face and peered into his eyes. Moot furrowed his bark-like brow and waved a hand at the snake. Ërmond looked back at Ta’mook, “He says that he loves the trees.”
Ta’mook smiled, “Tell him I enjoy them too. Tell him they sing to me.”
Ërmond looked back into the spriggan’s eyes, all the while laughing inside. Moot turned to Ta’mook and pointed a branch-like finger at him. All the while Ta’mook heard the low “Moot…” in his head. Ërmond realized what the dumb thing was trying to do. ‘Uh…Uh…Uh, you know the rules, big boy,’ he thought to himself. ‘What Gælan decides goes, and Gælan decided that the child must find out on his own.’ He could not believe the spriggan would attempt to defy the wizard. He lifted his head to Ta’mook carrying a false look of uncomfortable contrition. “He says that what you say is a lie.” The serpent gave him a sad questioning look.
Moot stabbed a finger at the trees again, and gazed at Ta’mook with big eyes.
“No. What? Why would he say that?”
Ërmond feigned translator once more. “He says they would scream cries of pain at you. Horrible howls of terror and hate.”
“What have I done to them to be the cause of such abhorrence?” asked Ta’mook, startled.
Moot pointed back at Ta’mook. “Moot…”
Ërmond gasped and turned to the little orcling. “You and your kind chopped down the old forest.” The snake hissed in a disapproving and all around ashamed tone of voice.
Moot looked from one creature to the other completely confused by the expressions on display. What he was trying to convey should not be causing these emotions.
“Oh, Ta’mook,” whispered the serpent. “How could you?”
Moot pointed at Ta’mook and then motioned all around them.
Ta’mook began to cry.
“You do not belong in the forest. Orc do not belong anywhere.” The serpent relished in his victory. He slid down his companion’s head and wrapped tightly around his neck. “Ta’mook, you worthless thing, you foul creature, you are not wanted here. I think now maybe I should not have asked the wizard to save you.” The spriggan struggled in his squeezing grip and began to flail about. “Get him Moot!” the serpent cried. Ta’mook leaped up and ran, terrified that the tree-monster would snatch him up. “Get Him!”
Moot finally grabbed the snake and pulled him free, plopping him, croaking laughter all the way down, to the ground. He looked about for the youngling, but did not see where he had fled. He sighed and sat back down at the river bank to look at the trees. Ërmond slithered his way back into the hut and next to the fire. He hated the cold.

28
Ta’mook, frail and broken in mind, body, and spirit, wept as he made his way through the dark forest. He followed the little stream, leaving the wizard’s hut behind, in hopes that it would lead him to a larger river.
Unwanted. Confused. Downtrodden. Despised.
For days he walked in a stupor. He was healthy now, the wizard had seen to that, but the world turned underneath him and he barely recognized it. The air grew fragrant, sweet with the smell of eucalyptus. A breath of freshness, that was so unnatural to him, blew all around and he noticed it not. Snowflakes drifted down through the canopy; tiny little specks of heaven, chillingly delicate, drifting, lifting, and pirouetting in a ballet of descension. They fell to the forest floor mimicking the ever degrading state of Ta’mook’s mind. He saw them not. The cold bit at his cheeks. He felt it not. The air added to itself the moist aroma of water. He smelled it not. The trees spoke continuously, calling their names. They bled into the back of his thoughts, only mocking echoes of a child’s lost hope. They could not help him, just as the wizard and all of his power could not help him (apart from the maintaining of this facade of a life), just as the spriggan could not help him. Maybe they were just as deceitful and false as the serpent himself. He with his forked tongue that dripped of malice and contempt. He that beguiled him with charm and compassion, as if it were milk and honey, only to be taken from him, a starving traveler, the moment before it were to touch his tongue. ‘Ërmond the worm’, he thought as he passed beneath the darkened eaves of the world. ‘Curse him and curse the ground he slides upon, the hateful wretch. I should have known better, him with those eyes, eyes like those who had trod on me ever since the day I was pulled from my mother's earth.’
With all these thoughts of his mistreatment, all the hate, all the anger, all the deceit, he failed to consider the good. It rarely happened, to be sure, but happen it had; kindness in disguise, and clues to his quest lying just beneath a thin layer of dust. ‘Must I always be spat upon?’ He asked himself. ‘Is that all my destiny has to offer? If so, then the why and wherefore of my quest for who I am seems utterly pointless. My goal eludes me. My quarry is gone from my sight.’
The sound of a powerful water overtook the babbling stream, but Ta’mook did not hear it. He followed the little forest stream to the river’s bank and gazed widely at the flowing blueness. It was the most water he had ever seen. It came rushing around the twists and turns of the great forested hills, turning small stones and rocks, setting them to roll toward the sea. Before him spun an eddy in the rivers run and a small pool of still water lapped against the pebbles of its shore. The snow could gather here under the open sky and his unshod feet crunched through its fluffy layers. He walked down to the water’s edge and let the icy water wash over his toes. He did not feel the freezing nip of the water’s coldness.
‘If I were to keep walking, even farther, till the waters rise over my head and I am swept away by the overwhelming power of this torrent, I would surely drown. If I should drown then what bad would come from that? If I should perish and cease to be, no one would miss me. If I were to die here, this instant, what would the world care? For the world is much bigger than I had ever imagined, and it is still bigger than what I have witnessed. So what would my existence as an insignificant bearer of misery be worth?’ He peered down into the surface of the calm waters and, if the reflection that stared back at him recognized the creature looking down, he had no recollection of the face looking up. He did not even see it.
The thought of drowning oneself bounced in his head for several minutes as he stared out into the rushing flow. The white churning rapids bubbling up, touching the falling flakes of snow, melting them, then passing on into the blue, caused the thought to turn over and over. He, at long last, had decided that he was unsure if he could bring himself to try it when the sound of voices singing seemed to finally break through the wreath of unawareness that had clouded his mind since leaving the wizard’s hut. He turned his head to look upstream. He could see, just before the river turned around a wooded peninsula, beings dancing. A rope was pulled taut over the river and the creatures were gayly trotting across it. They sang and laughed as they went. Back and forth they raced. Ta’mook was overcome, and he wept to see them. For they were the most pleasant things he had ever beheld. Beauty seemed to radiate from them. Their faces were fair and from their heads grew locks of the purest gold. Their raiment cried out with regal splendor; clothes fit only for a forest king.
Ta’mook thought to himself as he looked on, ‘Oh, how beautiful they truly are. If they were to see me, being so ugly as I am, they would surely kill me. So I will go to them. I will end my long suffering and, finally, for once, be at peace.’
So Ta’mook walked through the trees along the edge of the river bank, only taking his eyes from the enchanting creatures but once or twice, till he reached the place where the rope had been tied to a large tree at the edge of the wood. The beautiful creatures, who had heard his approaching stood on the far bank and watched as he came closer. As he cleared the tree line and passed onto the pebbly shore they rushed forward across the tightly strung rope, one after the other, with arms flung wide.
Ta’mook stood his ground at the river’s edge, crying out, “Kill me!” As he did, he lowered his head and awaited death.
But what did he see within the water’s glassy surface? Who’s face looked up at him?
The creatures came upon him, but instead of swords and knives, embracement and laughter surrounded him. The beautiful creatures sang and rejoiced in a language unknown to Ta'mook. But what they said went something like this. “Oh, little brother,” they cried. "Wherefore have you come and from whose hands have you endured such cruelty?”
“What am I?” Ta'mook asked, realizing that his face in the water, despite the pain and filth, was akin to these wonderful beings.
The newcomers asked in return, “Why does a child of light speak with the tongue of darkness?” But both parties were not understood to the other. So the beings who called themselves ‘quendë’ lifted Ta’mook and two of them carried him between themselves across the rope over the river. Ta’mook went with them willingly.
He was brought to a place in the woods where the trees grew to great heights. Lanterns wound around every massive trunk, lighting the path of stairs carved within the giants, that spun their way from forest floor to great rooms and halls perched within the boughs. He could see fire light and hear boisterous singing slipping down through the branches from the gleaming windows above. Large flat stones paved a walk throughout the undergrowth and Ta’mook marveled at their smoothness. The sun was setting on the horizon, but its light had long left here and the lanterns had been lit for hours. The quendë led him up the stair of the largest tree, which stood in the center of the village. The steps ran round and round until the forest floor faded into the dark green distance. Just below the structure’s floor the stair peeled out from the trunk in wider arcs till coming level with a balcony set outside the hall’s entire circumference. The hall at the stair’s end was impressively large. It was a wonder how it could stay aloft. Ta’mook guessed magic might have some influence in its perdurability. Light poured from the windows. People danced and sang. In the center of the hall the thinning trunk of the great tree protruded, and here and there branches sprouted from the wooden floor. The whole place was alive and growing. Two great tables ran in large semicircles around the outer wall and quendë sat and ate and laughed. They were so beautiful and Ta’mook knew that somehow they were his kin. Another door that led to the balcony sat on the far end of the circular room directly opposite him. His escorts led him inside. They cried out in joyous voices, the melodious tones of their foreign tongue. If Ta’mook could have understand their words, he would have heard something like this.
“Behold, quendë, our elven kin,
We have brought you a brother.”
There was a collective hush that fell upon all of those who were there. The sounds of merry making became murmurs of surprise, as every elf looked his way. To the right, in the middle of the table that ran on that same side of the room, sat a she-elf with a look that not only cried royalty, but screamed divinity. With her eyes she called the ones who had brought him to come forward. They moved, leading him before them, to the center of the room where the pillar of tree trunk stretched to the ceiling of the grand hall. He passed by staring faces. He felt considerably self conscious as they peered at him in his furs and coat of dried mud commingled with blood; his hair still sticky with sap and sweat, twigs and stickers ornamenting his golden locks. A thorn still pierced the point of his right ear. They turned at the trunk and walked to the she-elf that had beckoned them.
She gazed at Ta'mook and after a short while said, “Aiya, Teler (Hail, little elf).”
“Milady, if I may,” said one of the elves at his side. “The youngling speaks not our tongue.” He made an apologetic bow. “His dress and speech appear to be that of the orc-man.”
The elf queen squinted at Ta’mook. He could tell she saw something within him; something small and well hidden. He had not a clue as to what it might be and he thought that she was as far from knowing as he was. Not many of the elven kind know the dark speech of the orc-man but the queen was one of those few who were old enough to remember some things that have been lost. Her flawless lips parted and spilled forth the ragged, guttural hackings of a harsh tongue, and Ta’mook heard in his own words, “Welcome, little elf. I am Lady Lideon, Queen of the Woodland Realm.” Ta’mook was amazed as well as a little ashamed, for the contrast of hearing his dark language spoken by one so fair caused the tongue to become even more distasteful, and the words, thereafter, never tasted proper within his own mouth. “You are most welcome here in our peaceful land of song and dreams, Gil’Danith.” She smiled warmly, and asked, “Tell me, what do they call you?”
Ta’mook bowed in his fashion with arms held out and palms skyward. “Forgive me, Milady, for causing you to stain your lips, lips that compare to none, with a tongue so foul. My name is Ta’mook. And I thank you a thousand times for your generosity.” His head remained bowed.
Lady Lideon rose from her seat and reached over the table. She placed a soft hand under his chin and lifted it so that his eyes met hers. “Ugly? Why would a name such as this be given to one so enchantingly pleasing to behold.”
Ta’mook wept.
Lady Lideon asked Ta’mook if he could tell her his tale. He did.
“Milady, I was birthed in the hill lands beyond this forest. It is a land called Roont; a land of orcen folk. My clan, from the moment of my birth, spat on me, cursed me, bloodied me, and even eventually turned my own mother from me. They called me ‘Ta’mook’ and I believed them.
I fled from my home with my mother's words of hate and death still in my ears, and came into this world of light. I was set upon by a twain of harpies at the edge of this forest, whom I would have followed to my death. Before I was led away, the demon birds were shot down by a party of, what the wizard described to me as, men hunting in the blossie-grove. The wolves they hunted with fed me. This was the first kindness acted on me since my mother spared me from the rest of my clan who had opted to drown me directly following my birth.
I entered these woods and soon became lost and sick. I had injured myself in a fit of rage and my wound had become infected. On the brink of death I stumbled into the hut of a wizard, him of the name Gælan. I was healed, but the warlock’s serpent goaded me every moment after waking from my fever, though I didn’t see it till the end. His forked tongue spraying the poison I had just rid myself of back into my heart. I left that place with hate for Ërmond, for that was his name, clouding my realization that others were attempting to help me.
I was lost within self-pity when I came upon the river that borders your land. I had made the decision to end my life, and was considering whether or not to throw myself into the rushing waters, when I spied your kin singing and dancing upstream. Upon seeing their beauty I thought to myself, ‘These creatures, which are so fair, must surely kill one so ugly as I’. So I went to them expecting death. And they came to me as brothers who have regained another of there own, which had been lost.”
Ta’mook bowed again before Lady Lideon. “I ask now, Milady, with you as witness, forgiveness. For I had cursed the name of the one who had sent me on my path to you. I cursed Old Father Oakenstone. I understand it most likely means little to you, but it is the sigil and sage spirit of my clan and I pray that…”
“Sha!” The elf queen interrupted. She raised his head once more. “Is Old Father Oakenstone a tree, dear one?” She gazed deeply into his eyes.
Ta’mook was taken aback. “Ye...yes, Milady.”
“An hoary old oak tree?” she asked. “Tall and grand?”
“Yes, Milady. What is…”
“The tree you speak of, youngling, is known to me by another name. You see,” she looked at him more intently than ever. The whole hall was silent; eyes fixed on their queen. “The forest did not always end at the blossie-grove as it does now. In a time unremembered, the whole land from here to the sea cliffs used to be part of the forest. Tree and plant thrived all throughout the hill country. And the land flourished. Within the heart of this wood grew a great oak. It stood with branches bounding with life upon a lush and grassy hillock.” Ta’mook’s eyes were wide with wonder and disbelief. “This oak was one of the first trees of the forest, an ancient pillar of life. The quendë called him Ëorn Yi Rundin, which means, Strong Truth.” Lady Lideon held Ta’mook’s hands within her own. “You see, little elf, orc-kind are born of earth and mud. Elf-kind are born from trees and green. You, Ta’mook, were birthed from a root of Ëorn. You are elf-kind. And further still,” Lideon lowered her head and bowed. The whole room in a hushed gasp of wonder, did the same. “You,” the elf queen breathed. “Are born of an ancient. These trees only make an elf once in an age, and sometimes longer still.” She rose and the rest of them followed. She looked back into his eyes. “I knew I saw something within your eyes, Beauty. You are a prince among our people.”
Ta’mook’s cheeks ran with tears. A smile brimming with joy and elation broke on his face. He had conquered pain and cruelty, fear and suffering, and had come through with the greatest prize he could ever imagine. He looked around the room at all the people that looked like him. Everyone was laughing and singing and cheering his name. Only it wasn’t his old name, it was his new elvish name.
“Vanëdu! Vanëdu!
Fair Prince! Fair Prince!”
With tears in his eyes and his heart nearly bursting with joy, Ta’mook cried out to his new family in a loud voice, “Never before had I dreamed of happiness such as this, not while I was an ugly orcling."