Tribes of Venara Read online

  The collective voice of the crowd flared up once again, but the village head held up a hand to preserve the silence. “The second bit of news that I would like to mention is a matter that concerns more than just the Northern Plains region.”

  Hearing that, many people put on thoughtful expressions. Nolan wouldn’t be surprised if most of them had never left the lands around their village, so matters concerning areas outside of the Northern Plains region must have hardly ever reached their ears.

  Faced with the crowd’s bubbling anticipation, the village head cleared his throat. “After almost a millennia, it seems that another Interspatial Migration has occurred.”

  A few gasps and cries of disbelief swept throughout the crowd, though most people responded with confused grumbles and unsure voices. Nearly everyone’s mouth had opened.

  “An Interspatial Migration, in our era!”

  “Am I hearing him right?”

  “An Interspatial Migration? What’s he talking about?”

  The chief raised his hand once again. This time it took a full minute for the assembly to quiet down.

  That got a bigger reaction from some people than the doomsday announcement? Nolan couldn’t believe it.

  “You did not mishear me,” the village head continued. “Rumours have been circulating for some time about dozens of strange encounters happening all around the plains regions. In the past weeks there have been many accounts of people stumbling upon aimless wanderers wearing strange clothing and speaking unrecognizable languages, always lost and unarmed and hopelessly confused.”

  Nolan forgot how to breathe. In contrast, Nyla’s eyes lit up with wonder and a tiny smile replaced the terse frown from before. Had similar thoughts visited her mind during the past month?

  “Forgive me, Village Head!” a youth near the back called up while giving a quick bow of respect. “What is an Interspatial Migration?”

  Seeing that many of the younger people looked eager to know what had worked up their seniors to such an extent, the village head didn’t seem too surprised. “An Interspatial Migration is a strange phenomenon where all of a world’s inhabitants are transported to a different realm in a single instant. Nobody knows how or why this happens, not even the people being transported, but it is said to have occurred five times during the last ten millennia, and is described as a catastrophic event for the affected.” The old man glanced toward Nolan, his face unreadable.

  Apparently the village head had grown up in the lands beyond the plains region, and was evidently the most knowledgeable person within the village.

  “The people of the migrating world can only be pitied. While not much is known about the homes they leave behind, one thing is absolutely certain. When a world gets caught up in an Interspatial Migration, it can be seen as an extinction event for its inhabitants. All of them are dropped into Venara at random, so there’s no telling if one will first appear in the middle of a vast ocean, atop the peak of the highest mountain, or even within the den of the deadliest beast. Most are known to die within minutes of their first appearance.”

  My God—Thomas! Steph!

  The village head’s words cut into Nolan’s mind like a dull blade. If his words were actually true then wouldn’t it mean that all of Nolan’s loved ones had been transported to this terrible place, same as him? To think that the absolute worst-case scenario he dreaded most had actually come to pass. He was pretty sure that the old man had said that they could wind up anywhere, even in the middle of an ocean.

  When even an ant around here was the size of a cat, just what type of monsters would be in the ocean? Just how big was an ocean in this world? Even if it was empty and the weather was calm, a person would exhaust themselves and drown before they could starve to death or die of thirst. Everyone on Earth had been sent to their deaths in the time it took to suck in a breath, for no rhyme or reason. After all he’d been through since coming here, how could it turn out that he was actually one of the lucky ones?

  Nolan’s mind blanked out for the remainder of the gathering. Even though his shock capacity had increased tremendously ever since he’d “migrated,” he was still having a hard time digesting everything he’d been able to understand.

  Soon Nyla was ushering him and Jason back to their shack, with Quin following silently behind. She ran a simplified version of the village head’s words by Jason and then drifted off into a contemplative silence as she watched him and Nolan work through their recent realizations. She didn’t dawdle, merely stated that she would come by with some soup in the morning. She showed no trace of her earlier intrigue, only the same open sympathy that she had shown them since their initial meeting.

  The siblings lingered for a moment before heading off into the gloaming with complicated expressions. Nolan and Jason lay awake for hours in the stifling heat of their rickety little shack, though neither of them loosed so much as a whisper.

  Chapter Six: Hopeless Situation

  Nolan couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so empty. He’d been up for most of the night agonizing over the unknown fates of his family members, haunted by the fact that they could have been eaten or drowned or killed in any number of ways while he was just lying there in the questionable safety of his little shack.

  Even once he’d finally managed to drift off into sleep, he’d been forced to relive his first day in the forest through a series of lucid night terrors that reanimated the grim situation with a darker undertone. The vivid recap would last up until the point of Takeshi’s death, after which the traumatizing scene would revert back to the moment when he had first laid eyes on that giant centipede that had interrupted his confused conversation with that American man from Chicago. Then it would play out again and again in a torturous loop.

  By the time Nolan awoke it was already mid-morning. Fingers of sunlight poked through the dozens of holes that riddled the feeble walls and ceiling, filling it with dust-speckled pillars of light that crisscrossed in all directions. Jason was awake, lying on his back as he stared upward without paying any attention to the scream that Nolan had let out when he’d startled himself into consciousness. His eyes were heavily sunken and his face pale, his roughly spun robe covered in bits of hay.

  Nolan sat up. “How long have you been awake?”

  “Half-hour or so.”

  “How’re you feeling?”

  Jason tilted his head. “A bit better than you from the looks of it.”

  Nolan clenched a fist. “Do you believe what they’re saying about that migration thing?”

  “You mean about everyone on Earth being sent here?” Jason sat up to face him, and as he did so Nolan realized that the pudgy, wide-eyed boy he’d recently come to know had lost quite a bit of weight in the past few weeks. “I don’t know what to think. Wouldn’t there be a lot more people wandering around if almost eight billion of us all came here together? On the other hand, both of us are here and you’ve run into other people from Earth. I don’t know what I’m supposed to think right now.”

  “I know how you feel, man. We’re in the same boat.” Nolan ducked outside and then dusted himself off. He tried to enjoy the nice weather until his apprehensive friend stepped out to face the day some ten minutes later.

  “Has Nyla been by yet?”

  Nolan found it a bit strange that she was running so late. Something must have held her up. “I haven’t seen her.”

  “Damn it. What’re we going to do about breakfast?”

  “You still have an appetite?”

  “No, but I know I’ll regret it later if I don’t eat.”

  Jason was right. An average day in this village was so exhausting that they couldn’t afford to skip out on a meal. Nyla had always taken care of their food, but without her they would have to go to the cook fires in the central area if they wanted to have breakfast. Knowing this, they could only hope to discreetly snatch a bit of food from an unmanned roast and then hurry off into the wide clutter of homes with their hard-earned sustenance.
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  The two of them received a lot of odd looks along the way, and the majority of people contained wary and uncertain glints in their eyes. Before long they arrived at an outer area nearby the section of the village that housed the cook fires. There weren’t many people here at the moment since most had already eaten and gone off to begin a long day’s work, but there were still around eighty villagers mingling about, most sharing meals with friends or family.

  As they began to draw more attention, Jason had slipped into a panic. His forehead was beaded with a light sheen of sweat and he kept balling up the coarse fabric of his peasant-like tunic. He clearly didn’t know which fire to go to, since there wasn’t a spot without people nearby.

  “Hold your shit together man, looking scared only makes it worse.”

  Nolan took the helm and strode over to the nearest fire where the stout haunch of some unknown animal was quietly roasting on a spit. Fats and juices bubbled on the surface, which gave the meat a tender and delicious look that stirred Nolan into action without a moment’s hesitation. He grabbed a carving knife that someone had left leaning against the circle of rocks that enclosed the flaming embers and then carved out two neutrally-sized chunks of meat. These portions were large enough to keep them full for a few hours but small enough to avoid making them appear greedy, lest they risk offending someone.

  Nolan passed one of the pieces of meat to Jason. Once they’d secured their precious food, the two wasted no time in slipping through the wide gap between a pair of nearby cabins and emerging out onto a random path on the opposite side. After scarfing down their meals as quickly as possible, they reported to the olive orchard where their work group usually met up at the beginning of each day.

  To their dismay Nyla was nowhere to be found, despite this being the day of a planned excursion. They were forced to accompany the rest of their group out into the forest in order to forage for a few specific plants, under the loose protection of the disgruntled warriors. It was by far the worst trip that Nolan had made into the forest since finding refuge in Redfox Village. The others often sent them away from the group without protection, far enough that they might as well be alone in the dangerous woodland.

  It happened about an hour after they lost sight of the rest of the group. They had spotted foragers from another band of hunters and gatherers from the village and had decided to change directions in order to avoid any unnecessary conflicts, and were now somewhat lost. He and Jason were in the midst of retracing their steps when the silence was broken by a heavy snapping sound, evidently from the splitting of a sizeable branch. The two boys froze on the spot and immediately fell to the ground to anxiously hug the earth.

  What is that? Jason mouthed, brow moist with sweat and eyes wide with tension.

  How should I know? Nolan mouthed back.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds around him; the chirps of unseen birds, the droning and buzzing of hidden bugs. Nearly a minute passed before an oncoming breeze carried with it a single word of the local language. That word, he thought, is an affirmation. It means okay, or yes.

  “I heard a voice,” he whispered.

  “You think it’s someone from our group?”

  “Could be.”

  “If it is then they can lead us back to town.” Jason frowned as he stood back up and lightly dusted off his clothes. “I really don’t want to, but should we go check?”

  Nolan held up a finger for Jason to keep quiet and follow after him. He carefully led them in the direction where he’d heard the nearly inaudible voice, which he didn’t hear again until they were nearing a particularly dense thicket that sat at the heart of an otherwise barren patch of forest. With nothing but soft dirt beneath their feet, they proceeded onwards with quiet steps.

  The voice grew much louder as they drew nearer to its source, a woman who kept on repeating that same word with impassioned vigour.

  “Dude, there’re people fucking in there.”

  He waved down Jason’s whisper and gave him a hard glare. Focusing on a gap within the wilted foliage, he caught sight of a woman’s bare breasts in between bouts of fondling from two large hands, her body jolting from heavy and consistent impact.

  Jason gulped from beside him, his eyes glued to the hole in the thicket. Nolan waved to get his attention and then urgently motioned for them to leave. The other boy glanced around him and nodded without hesitation, and the two began a quiet retreat. Twenty steps into their withdrawal, the woman’s body dipped downward amid a loud chorus of skin-to-skin clap-like contact, affording Nolan a glimpse of her face.

  His heart nearly leapt from his throat as he recognized her as the woman that had been clinging to Vade’s side back in the village. Her head dipped out of sight and then the man’s face came into view, though surprisingly enough it wasn’t her hard-eyed husband but rather the man that had initially started trouble for Nyla at the cook fires, his older brother Bron.

  Nolan was too anxious not to notice that the moans and grunts that had so indiscreetly filled the area had abruptly ceased.

  “Look, it’s our group!”

  Jason’s words brought attention to the nine or so individuals that were currently making their way through the undergrowth not far ahead of them. They quickly rejoined with the others, who weren’t the least bit relieved at the sight of them, and then continued on with their foraging until their leader spoke up and then began leading them back toward the village.

  They didn’t see Nyla that night, which stimulated Nolan’s sense of unease. They had obviously seen something that they shouldn’t have, and he couldn’t turn a blind eye from the growing worry that they might have been detected by Bron and that woman.

  He and Jason went to bed hungry.

  Once again, Nyla failed to make an appearance the following morning.

  Having abstained from dinner the night before, Nolan and his nervous roommate had to brave the central cook fires once again in order to quell their rising hunger. After nicking a couple more slabs of the same meat from the previous day, they hurriedly fled the scene and stopped at a discreet path a couple hundred metres to the west.

  They gobbled up the unknown meat like a couple of dogs that had secured some scraps, wary that somebody might try to take away their food like that brutish asshole had done to Nyla the other day.

  Nolan licked the grease off his fingers with a nasally sigh. What a piece of shit that guy was.

  A big hand suddenly clapped down on his shoulder and nearly caused his knees to buckle. He turned his head to see none other than Bron and a few other bulky warriors standing behind him, as well as a handful of aloof-looking women that held foraging baskets with relaxed grips. They were all wearing the same bear pelts as Bron, which meant that they were probably his relatives, as most families in Redfox Village wore clothes fashioned out of the same materials.

  The brute had a big grin on his scraggly face as his hand kept Nolan locked in place like an iron shackle.

  Does he know we saw them smashing in the forest yesterday?

  When Jason saw who had unknowingly grabbed onto him, the expression of relief that the meal had brought upon his face instantly twisted into one of alarm and despair.

  “What a coincidence,” Bron smiled. “I was just looking for you.”

  Nolan tried his best to remain calm. “For what reason?”

  “I heard from your work group that you didn’t show up for today’s trip into the forest.”

  “They left without us,” Nolan lied. “They were gone when we got to the square.”

  “It’s no matter. Our group wasn’t going out into the forest until later, so we agreed to lend your people a couple of our members so that they wouldn’t have to wait around for you. Since you’re here, come along with us and fill in the missing spots. It’s your fault anyhow.”

  “What good timing, we were just on our way out!” A lean figure emerged from amongst the group of women, apparently a late arrival. The woman that had given off the impression o
f being Vade’s lover stepped forward and parted long strands of dark hair with a calloused hand so that she could stare needles into his nervous gaze.

  It was clear that Bron had an ulterior motive for trying to get them to go out into the forest. With the looming destruction of the village on everyone’s minds, he’d probably stopped caring that Nolan and Jason were friends with Nyla and chosen to act upon his evident dislike of them. If they were attacked by the Netherwolf Tribe then the village would need every able hand to defend it. There was no way that a powerful warrior like Bron would be punished or scrutinized for killing them, the weak nuisances that nobody seemed to like.

  Nolan tried his best to feign sincerity. “Thank you for the kind offer, but we will go to the orchards to pick fruit.” The hand on his shoulder clenched tightly enough to make him cry out in pain, and he nearly fell to the ground. The dozen or so people in the immediate area retreated into their dwellings, their actions making it clear that they didn’t plan to get involved.

  “I’m afraid that’s not for you to decide.”

  “N—no baskets,” Jason said.

  “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

  Under the supervision of Bron and his group, Nolan and Jason were marched out of the village through one of the lesser gaps in the palisade wall. Not many people saw them on their way out due to the obscure sequence of pathways that Bron directed them down.

  Soon enough the group was strung out in single file as they followed a slim, grown-over trail that led to an area of the forest that was entirely different than the spots that Nyla’s group frequented. They eventually broke off from the small trail and cut their way through the dense underbrush, heading into unknown wilderness with nothing but the sounds of snapping twigs and ruffling shrubs to accompany the choruses of hidden bugs and birds that pervaded the vicinity.

  Nolan’s shoulder throbbed with a residual ache from the ridiculous strength of Bron’s grip. The entire walk had been extremely solemn, with not one person speaking up a single time. He could tell that Jason was just as frightened as he was, neither of them willing to speak up and risk moving their premeditated murder ahead of schedule.