Chapter 6: Dinner Guest

Convinced as he's been that some sort of civilization has existed in his strange new world, Skinner finally has proof when a stranger comes to call . . . and invite him elsewhere.

 

Chapter 6: Dinner Guest

Seasons passed. Skinner put himself on daily and weekly schedules to nurture mind and body. During the two moons of winter that the weather grew too foul to venture outside, he roamed the tunnels. Clearing the rockslide over the course of a single week, and wandered freely through the mountain. He hunted lizards and blind fish in the network of caverns that meandered throughout the mountain.

He collected skins continuously. At some point, getting frustrated with the loose sheaves of notes and drawings, taught himself to bind them into books. The books were ungainly at first, but he worked assiduously to trim the skins to uniform sizes. He had taken to sketching, and pushed himself painstakingly to patient practice of detailed illustration. Satisfactory progress remained slow in coming. But time seemed his most vast resource—a contrast he found ironically vexing after having spent his life in a hurry before waking in this wilderness.

It was late spring when Skinner first noticed a strange sensation, something like a draft but from inside himself. At first he ignored it. Used to so many kinds of discomfort at this point, he had ceased to mind anything not urgent. But the persistent buzz came every so often and hummed in the back of his head. Several times he thought he heard someone from a distance trying to call his attention. He shrugged it off as more of his own eccentricity, another oddball symptom of isolation-induced neurosis.

Over time, he found himself swatting at the insect buzz more and more often. More than ever before he got the impulse to leave his mountain and explore to the east. But he had grown so comfortable in his cave and had amassed so many things that he was hesitant to leave.

“This is home now,” he told Socrates any time the feeling grew overly poignant.

He roamed further out on forays, extending his knowledge of the mountain from both caves, routinely making his way from one cave to the other. It was exhausting to go from Solitude West, his first home here, to the one on the south, which he now knew as Kandor’s Locker. The opposite journey he found challenging, but enjoyable. He named them mostly for the sake of his conversations with Socrates—and because he wanted to keep them straight in his journals.

By midsummer, he stocked both caves to comfortable levels and spent his time studying and recording more and more extensively the fauna and flora, which was very rich and plentiful. He found that the wide-horned sheep tended to spend a great deal of their time on a plateau down the mountain. The plateau was vast and rich in grasses and flowers, a flat plain that rolled to the next mountain range.

A small, gorgeous kind of antelope also ranged the plateau in vast herds. Both grazer species were plagued by one common predator, a large feline shaped like a puma and colored like a Russian blue house cat with sleek silver fur and aqua eyes that were heavily lashed to provide shade in the highly contrasting changes of light across the plain. Skinner watched this from the heights, not wanting to travel another mile back and forth just to see a prairie. The thought of flat land made him homesick, so he turned his attention on the valley and its stream.

The stream grew into a river as the valley leveled out a mile down the mountain. He guessed, having nothing to measure against, that he was around 6,000 feet at this point. Solitude West must be around 11,000 and Kandor’s Locker one or two thousand feet higher, he thought.

The air was thin but pure. The valley, which opened first in a rocky canyon with a steep grade, leveled out and opened into a broad paradise of trees, flowers, bushes, fruits, cane-rich shallows and the one thing he was most eager to find: a tar pit.

He had searched through the caves, dug, chipped, and worn himself out numerous times in search of coal. Pitch was not as ideal, but it would suffice. Mostly he wanted it for fuel, but he also had in mind a way of making better pigment. He knew that coal tar was the preferred source for Navajo dies, but could not recall the constituent part used. His experiments with berries and pigments had proved more temporary than he wanted. He filled his hide bags with as much pitch as he could carry and started to collect it in a vat he made that night for exactly this purpose.

“Well, Sox,” he said after failing once more to produce a satisfactory pigment. “Looks like I’m groping in the dark.”

Socrates tossed his head and huffed, then lay down and napped.

Summer came and went. The first frost, Skinner figured, should be any night now. He grew more and more restless, sitting out the usual late summer storms. His restlessness had grown strong enough that he consciously, often vociferously, argued himself into staying put. It grew so annoying that he considered himself paranoid, thinking that some force outside his own mind was causing him to feel the longing emptiness.

One night close to the autumnal equinox, he and the wolf finished a huge meal of deer and vegetables. The nagging within his head grew unbearable. Unconscious of what he did, Skinner grabbed his spear and travel pack and headed outside. Socrates whined. He turned on the wolf.

“What?” he snapped. Then he looked about him. He threw his things by the entrance to the cave and went back to his fire.

“Thanks,” he nodded to the wolf. “Don’t know what that was about.”

Socrates barked the bark he used to warn against bear incursions. Skinner stared at him. He stared back, barking again a moment later. Skinner stared blankly. It was the first time he could recall the wolf barking at him. To him many times, but never at him with the challenge he now did.

“What?” he asked softly. “Something wrong with me?”

“Hey!” He talked at the ceiling now. “Whoever you are, leave me alone!”

The idea of anyone listening to him suddenly seemed plausible. He looked back up and in a more inviting tone said, “You want to talk to me, come by and see me.”

Socrates huffed, scratched his ear, and lay down to sleep.

W          W          W

A week later, Skinner set out hunting. He wanted another broadhorn. Its horn and skin figured largely in a project he had in mind. And, he admitted to himself, he was very fond of the meat. Two winters, or was it more, had passed since he had killed the one whose horn Skinner now used as a bow. That had been the third, each of the others only a winter apart. The greatest challenge was finding one with horns adequate to his needs. He had stalked over a dozen each other time before finding one he wanted. Each of those had been two to ten day hunts.

Socrates went out ahead. They had grown so close the wolf seemed to understand when to go along. Skinner wondered vaguely if he was hunter enough to bag one of the great rams without the wolf to help. He shrugged the question aside and loped after. Never much of a runner, he had learned to take great joy and pride in his mountaineering skills. It helped a great deal that his lungs took in the mountain air as though asthma were something unknown to this world. Despite perilous terrain, they sped down at a slant toward the southern plateau, which was smaller than the one on the western slope.

The constant buzzing and the sense of urgent restlessness had ceased. Skinner was unsure if it was simply gone, or whether he had finally gotten good at ignoring it. He missed it. Oddly, he felt as though he had been abandoned by an irritating friend. Every time he thought about it, he raced down silently to play tag with the wolf. It made the morning speed by.

By late afternoon they were following their fifth trail, Skinner having rejected their first four targets. Skinner bounced along more eagerly than usual, whispering to Socrates that this was going to be the prize of the mountain. Internally, he hoped urgently that they could bring it down quickly and return to the cave by moonrise.

They broke from a thick copse of trees into a small clearing and Skinner brought himself to a silent stop. There, in the clearing, less than twenty yards upwind, milled a small flock of the broadhorns. Huffing and pawing the ground in challenge, a great ram stood glaring at the wolf. He snorted, and the others stampeded away. The ram charged Socrates, who dodged suddenly around a bush and back to the trees.

Moments later, Skinner was gazing down at his proudest prize yet. He grinned at the wolf as Socrates loped out to help him clean the ram. He worked very carefully at first, but then both hunters looked up as a long deep growl sounded through the clearing.

“Mercurials,” Skinner shuddered. “We’ll leave the bulk of this one,” he said morosely. “But I’ll be hanged if I let any of the hide go—or the hooves or horns.”

Socrates tore the haunch Skinner had already skinned and carried it over to leave like an offering on the edge of the clearing nearest the growling, which grew closer. Skinner picked up his pace, but continued as carefully as he could. He had just gotten the last bit of hide cut free and begun liberating the skull when the feline cries sounded from throats on either side as well as from up the hill.

“Poot!” Skinner swore. “So much for the solitary hunter theory; have to revise that book on mercurials.”

Socrates tore more chunks of flesh free and delivered them to the treeline. Skinner rushed to pack up his goods. He could sense the wolf’s unease, and it set his own heart to racing wildly. A savage grin lit his face, a smile he was completely unconscious of but which anyone seeing might have compared to that of a berserker.

He dragged his prize to the treeline and sat panting with exertion as the mercurials slunk lazily into the clearing and over to the mutilated ram. Socrates loped over and sat beside him. They watched as the cats tore their kill to pieces, devouring it with unsettling efficiency. Skinner admired them, making mental notes as he studied their interactions over the 300-pound ram.

A chill wind alerted Skinner to the lateness of the hour. He got silently to his feet and began the long, cumbersome journey home. His prize was much heavier and unwieldy than he had thought. It was nearly three hours after moonrise before he was back in his cave, roasting the single haunch they had saved and scraping the ram’s hide clean.

“Good evening,” a voice echoed from the tunnel.

Skinner sprang to his feet, Kandor suddenly in his right hand. He stared vacuously at a tall, robed figure. A dozen luminorbs danced a halo around a head full of thick black hair. Grey eyes peered at him from a clean, angular face. Pointed ears stuck out from the long locks of hair, and a staff exactly the size of Kandor was gripped in a tanned, smooth hand.

“Hullo?” Skinner gaped, afraid to guess whether he was hallucinating. He shrugged and sat back down to face the fire.

“Care to join me?” he asked over his shoulder. “Broadhorn ram. Caught it down in the clearing.”

“Be delighted,” said a deep, cheery voice.

Decidedly masculine, Skinner thought. An elf? Imagine.

“Don’t eat much meat,” the man sat to his right. “My diet’s mostly nuts and herbs, vegetables and tubers.”

“Make a habit of sneaking up on folks, do you?” Skinner’s voice was gruff, but his tone was neutral.

“Make a habit of chasing folks off?” The elf replied.

“Not used to comp’ny,” Skinner mumbled, shrugging and cutting a hunk of roasted meat from the spit. He put it on a recently carved wooden platter and handed it to the stranger.

“Not used to a lot of things, I’ll bet,” beamed the elf.

“Back in the day,” Skinner mused, “folk used to offer their names as greeting.”

“Still a common courtesy,” replied the other, nodding.

“That’s Socrates,” Skinner pointed his wooden fork at the wolf, then cut another hunk of meat for himself.

“Good to meet you, Socrates,” the other greeted the wolf politely. Socrates huffed his own polite greeting. Skinner stared at him accusingly.

“What’s your business?” Skinner asked conversationally, pouring water from a simple stone pitcher into an ornately carved stone goblet and handing it to the stranger.

“I have wine if you prefer,” the stranger told him, accepting the water with a grateful nod.

“Wine?” Skinner demanded. “Haven’t gotten that one down yet. Can’t seem to ferment the grapes right—or much else to my liking for that matter.” His attempts to make wine had been abysmal failures. Last spring he had given up and decided there was nothing for it but to enjoy the juice in season. He had found only one palatable fruit from which he could harvest juice during the winter.

“Excellent wine, too,” the stranger held out a full hide wineskin.

“Thanks,” Skinner nodded gratefully, but hesitated to drink from the hand of a stranger.

“You can trust me,” the stranger’s eyes sparkled mirth. “Socrates seems quite content to do so.”

“Yeah,” Skinner mused, chewing a small marlbutton to ease the ache in his muscles from his day’s strenuous hunt. “But he trusts me, and that’s not the highest character reference . . .”

They ate in silence for a quarter of an hour. The stranger looked at him dubiously when Skinner offered him a plump marlbutton, and waved it off politely. He did accept the herbs and other fare offered, though. Socrates chomped gratefully on his hunk of ram and then rested his head on his paws to watch the two men.

“Sorry,” Skinner turned on the stranger as though he had said something. “What? I didn’t catch your name; what was it again?”

“I offered no name,” the stranger smiled warmly. “Perhaps the mushroom . . .”

“Oh,” Skinner laughed genially. “So you know about marlbuttons?”

“Is that what you call them?

“Yes. I know of the dampeners,” he watched Skinner carefully several minutes. “Strange. You don’t seem overly affected by them.”

“Eaten a mountain of ‘em,” Skinner grinned boyishly. “Long as you don’t mix them with gnarlroot, they’re mostly harmless.”

“My stomach rejects them,” the stranger shrugged, setting his plate down and draining his goblet of water. He poured it full of wine and drank deeply.

“Yeah,” Skinner nodded enthusiastically. “You have to eat blackroot,” he held a small length of it up for the stranger to see. “Good for stomach ailments.”

“Nogroot,” the stranger raised his eyebrows. “Never considered eating that . . .”

“Mmmhnnn,” Skinner mumbled. He spat the root into the fire, which flared a garish fuchsia immediately and consumed the root in one lick of flame. “You chew it. When the flavor starts to wane, you have to spit it out.”

“Fascinating,” the elf smiled. “I thought I knew all there was to know about medicinal plants.”

“Oh really?” Skinner jumped up, ran to a concave recess in the cave wall he used for a pantry, and returned a few seconds later with a misshapen stone goblet. He poured it full of wine, which he swirled for a moment. He inhaled the scent of the wine reverently, delighted by its crisp, fruity aroma.

“Mmmmm,” Skinner smiled pure delight. “This is wonderful. What do you call it?”

“Wine,” the stranger laughed.

“Just ‘wine’?” Skinner glared at him for a moment, then smiled warmly and took another deep, appreciative drink. “Hardly civilized,” he muttered. “Back home, we name our wines.”

“What do you name them?” The stranger was curious now.

“Well,” Skinner dropped into an academic cadence. “Some wine takes its name from the grape, and some from the region where it’s grown. Especially the European wines—like Chianti and Avignon, Bordeaux and so on. Then there’s the different variety of grape . . .”

Skinner told the stranger everything he could recall of wine. He had spent a season or two a few years back selling wine at in-home wine tastings. It had been a favorite subject, but he had not thought of wine for—since his failure to produce it.

“Fascinating,” said the stranger.

“So,” Skinner prodded the fire into life again. “Tell me about your world.”

“My world?” the stranger smiled mischievously. “Perhaps some other time. For now, let us discuss this world.”

“This world?” Skinner stared at him blankly. “You mean,” he gulped the rest of the wine from the goblet and pushed it forward for a refill. “You mean to tell me . . . that this world is not your home? That there are more worlds in which men . . . uh, humans . . . well, I mean . . .”

“Did you think there were no other worlds capable of fostering sentient life?”

“Well,” Skinner blushed. “It’s not that . . .”

“So be it,” the stranger shrugged. “There are myriad worlds. My native world is one you might find far stranger than this one.”

“Where am I, anyway?” Skinner began to feel the wine, but his curiosity intoxicated him far more, making him bold. “And how the fiery conflagration did I get here?”

“Welcome to Kumari Vale,” the stranger smiled. “As for how you got here . . .” He trailed off, opening his hands to show his loss for an answer.

“Well,” Skinner scratched his beard, which by this time had grown nearly to his belly. “Well. Fine. Okay. Now what? How did you get here?”

“Me?” the elf laughed. “I was summoned here. Most Outers are summoned here. To the best of my knowledge, you’re the only one to drift through.”

“Drift through what?” Skinner’s eyes held a fanatical gleam. His heart pounded. The roses in his cheeks were not altogether due to the wine and marlbuttons.

“The ether,” his dinner guest shrugged. “The strange miasma of spirit that holds everything separate—and together. The fabric of the universe. Who knows what it really is; the point is that it is navigable to some extent. Normally by summons and sorcerous spellcraft.”

“Sorcerous?” Skinner mulled this for a moment, something clicking in his mind. “As in sorcery,” he nodded sagely. “So I’m not a wizard . . .”

“Wizard?” the stranger spat. “No. We’re sorcerers.”

“We?” Skinner looked him in the eyes again. “There are more of you? Where do you live? Why haven’t I seen others? What—”

“Slow down,” the other laughed. “One answer at a time. Patience is always the first lesson a sorcerer must learn.”

“Figures,” Skinner grunted.

“We,” he waggled his index finger at Skinner and then himself. “We are sorcerers. Yes. There are many of us. Outers as well as native Valliants.”

“Wait,” Skinner was watching the stranger’s lips, which seemed out of sync with the words. “How is it that we speak the same language?”

“We don’t,” the other explained. “We have the same brain design to some degree; our language centers act in the same way. Sorcery brings understanding in ways we can’t explain scientifically—do your people use science or magic?”

“Science,” Skinner nodded. “No magic back home.”

“Of course there is,” the other laughed.

“No, really,” Skinner asserted.

“Yes,” the stranger nodded, “there is. Denial diminishes magic, but it cannot eradicate it entirely. Are there no miracles?”

“Well of course there are,” Skinner nodded. “But they’re credited to divine intervention.”

“That is another matter,” the other smiled knowingly.

They continued their conversation long into the night. Eventually, Skinner’s guest apologized and lay down to sleep. Skinner furnished him with several light furs and then retired to his own pallet of furs.