Dante scrambled up the bluff, grinning up at Friend staring down at him. A wondering Blueberry, head up to Friend's waist, peeked from behind its mother. Dante reached the top and grabbed the hita in a bear bug. Welcome flowed back. All around him, hita embraced each other, trunks winding, snouts crying. The members of the Long House clan who had arrived earlier on foot, passed the two surviving chicks from one to another for examination and cuddles. Several hita, one the Long House healer, surrounded a surviving mother who clutched a dingy white soccer ball it had found in one of the boat bins. Hormones and emotions unable to cope with the loss of its chick, the mother had clung to the ball for weeks, as if carrying the most precious egg. The helping hita hugged it in to the cave for healing.
"No Shaman?"
Friend and the Cave Clan peered down the rocks to the forest edge. Dante showed them the death and a wave of horror, grief and regret swirled through him as they hugged and cried.
"Shaman lives with El and his own Sacred Tree clan," imaged Friend to comfort them. The others agreed. "Come, eat, drink and rest."
The hita flooded into the cave entrance and down a sloped passage to the great hall where large bowls of fruit, nuts, vegetables, stew, poi, grubs, and bits of meat waited. They sat down in random groups on the floor in front of the food. The bowls and platters passed from creature to creature, each taking a little until its trunk had filled with a preferred combination of food. The hita then closed the ends of their snouts and squeezed and blew until just the right mixture of textures and taste was ready to spray into their mouths.
Dante dropped his back pack by the entrance to the hall, opened it and pulled out a small bowl. Friend waved away the curious hita who wished to empty, explore and carry away his things with the explanation that each object in the bag had a story about Shaman that needed telling before the human gave to the collective.
"Thank you for giving me time to lose my attachment to my things," he imaged.
"Is it like my love of Blueberry?" asked the hita.
"No." Dante left it at that, Friend couldn't ever understand, even if he could produce pictures that made sense. They sat down among the others.
With his fingers, Dante gathered and mixed his food into his bowl, ignoring the curiosity and discussion of Blueberry, the other new children of the Cave Clan, and the Long House hita who had not traveled with him. Hopefully his side show status would disappear within a few weeks and he could return his position as Friend's beloved pet.
"Better than despised zombie," he thought, full of self-pity.
Friend imaged Blueberry and itself, then a small Dante beside a large Dante. "Your mother?"
"No mother, no clan." Dante showed it Yvonne sitting beside Dedalus who dangled the spider net. "Shaman thought each human, each group of humans like a separate species. Hita are more my clan than humans." He showed the good past in the farmhouse kitchen with Martha, Reba and William, flashed to this nurturing meal with Friend and Blueberry, then showed a future image of himself sitting alone, cross-legged and head bowed, in a corner of a crowded royal hall full of his feasting, happy relatives. No more than a piece of ignored machinery. He sighed.
Friend showed memories of the hita and Shaman examining one of the lights that glowed throughout the cave. Something seemed wrong with the lamp, it flickered and blinked. Shaman held it in its hands and the light grew bright and steady. Dante frowned, not understanding. Friend tried another set of images. Dante working with William as they tended to the cows. Dante bringing the shower of guns. It showed the humans prodding itself into the van, then forcing a broken Dante in beside it.
"Oh, I see," thought Dante. "You don't understand why Yevgeny, why some humans must hurt me, must force me to do things, when I'm willing to help, don't even have to be asked. Like when I worked with William or help the hita. I wouldn't kill hita or innocent people for them, maybe that's it." He stared down at his bowl. "I've thought of a thousand reasons – they want my magic, they think I'm too young or stupid or irresponsible. As if they use their powers like a shaman should. Like Shaman did. In the end, I don't know why. None of them knows me. Or even cares to."
Friend wound a trunk around him and he gave a wan smile as his emotions mingled with the mixture of joy and sorrow in the cave. Dante ate a bit of food and realized that the blended tastes of spicy and sweet, gritty and smooth, sour and salt symbolized the feelings around this homecoming meal, much as a feast of Gaia symbolized the joys and trials of humans. He put his arm around Friend and Blueberry crawled between them.
His mind filled with the lives of the hita dead, with the many memories keeping the departed alive. The Cave hita shared reminiscences of Shaman, occasionally sending expectations towards him, asking him to share his walkabout with their adopted wizard.
Dante straightened, and with a touch of his bite scars, started at the beginning of his memories of his Sensei, his teacher. If tears and grief flowed along with the remembrances, well who minded among the hita?
The crystal spluttered in the cup of Dante's hand. He passed his magic hand over the stone then stared down into the rough facets searching for the problem fissure or crack, a ghost memory of Shaman telling him what to look for. The stone combined its magic with his and using a seeming will of its own, showed him the break then erased it. The light steadied into its normal cool glow. Dante handed the crystal to the hita sitting beside him and picked up a second from the floor. Friend entered the hall with a stranger, a green and grey mottled hita who stared at him with curiosity and wonder.
"These crystals are full of energy," imaged Dante to Friend. "No pollution." He envisioned the haze over Botany. "Too bad I can't make them work with the boat batteries. Would save fetching more. Dedalus invents with magic. He could make it work." He shrugged as he gave off mild regret. "All I know about this planet. Their loss."
Friend introduced the hita stranger who had traveled from an area close to human settlements. Its clan had obtained a few guns from other hita and stolen a few more. The stranger showed humans and earth moving machines carving a road into the forest. The hita had shot and dismembered the foremen and the slaves then engaged a patrol of soldiers with some success.
The visitor asked for more guns and some bazookas to destroy the machines and airplane that had fired down the length of the road.
A few more strangers from various clans and locations drifted into the hall and sat down around Dante. Friend and the first visitor lowered themselves to the floor.
"In our memories of the war against the humans, the soldiers wore armor that stopped our shaman's magic. These weapons can cut through the metal and kill from far away. But it seems that as fast as we kill the humans, more appear with their own guns," imaged the stranger. Two or three of the other hita sent agreement, others felt the guns drove the humans away. The stranger showed a wave of gnats, a storm of rain drops, an endless field of grass, then a crowd of humans with belching, destroying machines and, weapons. "Shine Child. You grew up as one of them, you look like them. How can we stop this plague that destroys the land and us?"
In the usual manner, a discussion began among the hita as to various solutions, their pros and cons. One hita wondered if Dante could speak to the humans and make them understand.
Dante sent a bitter negative. Friend showed a picture of the injured shine child chained in the van. "They hurt and destroy their own species," it explained. This hate struck the visitors as more horrible than anything they else they had managed to learn about the humans.
"We must kill them all. They're vermin." imaged a member of the Cave Clan. "Use their weapons to destroy their villages."
"All things have a purpose and belong to El," chided one of the strangers.
"They are not of this world," answered a visiting hita.
"They would still come from the sky," imaged another.
"Hiding works."
"For how long?"
"One day they'll cover the planet. We'll be driven into the deserts and thunder lizard territory, like they drove us from our homes on the coast."
"Shine Child, what do you think?" asked Friend.
"Are the hunters being stopped?" asked Dante.
"Yes. Not many going into our territory now," said the mottled stranger.
"Settlements?"
In front of a burning cabin, hita used the weapons he had given them to murder not only a man but a young woman and child. Dante flinched. Images of destroyed long houses and murdered chicks immediately stomped through his mind.
"I know, I know," he whispered at the floor then sent them the painful image of Martha and Sophia lying dead in the burning hallway. "Not all humans are vermin. It's more complicated than that."
Friend touched his shoulder with a snout. "You belonged to a clan. When Shaman lost its family, it found us. Your mother didn't work out. But you had a clan when you first came to this planet. There's humans who accept you. If you found a new clan of a human species like you, they could live in peace with us. Lots of the land is empty of hita, you know that from your travels." Friend sent him warm sympathy.
His species of humans. His clan. Dante thought about it. Nanny, Martha, William. Slaves had loved him.
"You've found a species?" asked Friend.
"They're dead. Only one other slave was ever kind to me, not forced but from his own heart, and he's surely dead by now. Sold to Star Mines. They work them to death there." The hita images and emotions quieted as they absorbed his memories.
Wordless lay coughing on the concrete floor of an empty animal pen. He stared straight ahead at the sheet metal of the market shed, tormented by thirst. Droplets gleamed in the grey light of the beginning dawn. Condensation from the humid night dripped down the wall. He crawled across to the metal and touched it to his tongue. Water. Metallic and filthy, but water. He licked up one of the corrugated ridges, stretching as far as his body could reach, then down the next to the floor. Up and down. An occasional cool trickle rolled down his sore parched throat. Licking, licking the precious drops until he heard the shed door scrape open. The trader entered with the agony of food and drink for the others, not him. Before Wordless bowed his head and saw no more but the floor and his crossed legs, he noticed one of the men in the slave enclosure watching him.
The trader and his assistant fed the slaves. Slurping of gruel, chewing of stale bread, and the worst, liquid pouring. Wordless struggled against coughing, against fainting. The meal ended. Bowls scraped as the assistant gathered them up. The gate to his cage rattled and opened.
"You not dead yet?" shouted the trader. "Damn you." A cuff to the head sent him sprawling. "Get up. In with the rest. Let's try again to sell you off as part of a lot."
Wordless braced himself against the floor, wavered to a stand and dragged himself over to the enclosure. The trader snapped the clasp of his leg iron to the end of the chain attaching the slaves together then pushed him into the center of the packed pen. He stumbled over legs and bodies then crouched into a ball, thin arms protecting his head as the disturbed slaves tossed curses and blows his way. The trader locked the pen and left for his own more substantial breakfast. An unbearable smell of patties frying drifted in from an outside food stall. Wordless pushed his face against the floor and heaved with his racking cough.
"Shadd up," snarled someone with an elbow to his ribs.
"Leave him." A hand touched his face and turned it until he looked at the gaunt black features of the slave who had stared at him. "Here," he whispered. The man pressed an almost empty water bladder into his hands. Wordless downed the drink in seconds. The man handed him a heel of bread, something no one gave up. Wordless tore into it.
"You shouldn't give him anything. You're only making his agony last longer," remarked a voice from the side.
"He doesn't seem to think so," said the man. "We're all dead men. A truck from Star Mines was parked by the shed when he brought us in. How long do you think slaves last in the depths of a mine?"
"How you know that?"
"I can read. And they bought me." The slave's voice turned bitter. "I was a free miner, an explosives master, until I killed a man in a brawl. You all know I'm a transpo." He placed a hand on Wordless's head. "Don't despair, lad. Very soon Lord Adonis will take you to his heart and you'll be free."
Several of the hita cried. The rest filled with questions.
"You were a juvenile? They hurt a juvenile."
"How could they stand your pain?"
"Why were the humans chained together?"
"So they wouldn't run away." Friend showed the scars on the ends of its snouts with a memory of its own chains.
"Humans don't feel the emotions or see the images of others," explained Dante. "They have to speak to each other or read the body language. It's easy to ignore or not understand. We have to be taught to care."
Hita sadness and horror drifted in Dante's mind.
"Each human suffers all alone? Each lives all alone?" sorrowed one. "Like an endless bad walkabout?"
"No. The one human comforted him with touch and sounds," answered another.
"I suffered all alone. They look away my sounds and gestures with a net in my head," imaged Dante.
"Such evil. Monsters. Like the piranha, ripping apart their own kind," imaged one of the Long House Clan.
"And would our rivers be drinkable without them?" asked the healer.
"Bitebugs then."
"They feed the fish."
The cave member sent it a wave of irritation.
The green and gray stranger struggled for understanding.
"Human's feel emotions? Love and care like us?" it asked. "You do, but you're the Shine Child. In each human, they are like hita?"
"They're like hita. Humans think hita don't have feelings or communicate because you don't talk or use much gestures." Several hita sent bewilderment.
"Watch. The face twitches." Friend sent him a wave of amusement. Dante obliged by narrowing his eyes and twisting his mouth into a sarcastic grimace, breaking the tension.
The mottled stranger remained unconvinced. "Humans may have love and kindness but Shine Child's memories show great evil." It imaged members of its clan dying, a few juveniles kidnaped then a plane strafing the forest around their burnt village. " We need bazookas."
Dante rose and paced the hall, torn between his memories of the burning farm and the pain of the hita. What did Gaia say? What you do to the least of my creatures, so you do to me. There existed monks and nuns who wore their faces shrouded, lest a fly end up hurt by flying in an eye or mouth. Many people interpreted the pronouncement to mean not hurting anything unless necessary, which included the eating of meat and the paddling of naughty children. Others, especially nobles like Yevgeny, ignored the teachings all together, believing their magic made them above all other creatures. He knelt in front of the statue of El.
"O Gaia, help me," prayed Dante. "How can the hita survive without killing their enemies? They're right, humans are evil. But what of the innocent babies, the women and children torn apart by the hita? What of the helpless slaves forced to carry the hunters' packs? You say we hurt you when another is hurt, but the thunderlizard killed Shaman because it was its nature. The piranha ate the lizard and attack their own at a sign of weakness. Human against human, creature against creature. Humans aren't alone in evil. You tell us not to do what is our nature. We would have to be like the plants and eat the sun to do your will." He filled with anger, guilt and despair, and bowed his head down on the feet of the statue. "Tell me what's right. Not a bunch of proverbs and sayings." Dante placed his hand flat beside the right stone foot, his stump on the other side, forming a kowtow. " I'm your servant, your transpo. Tell me what to do. Don't leave me stumbling like this."
He gave himself over to God. How easy it was. No more responsibility, no thinking. Luck and good things when he did well and Gaia smiled on him. All decisions, good and evil, belonged to her. Such a relief. Why had he fought so long against his training?
He waited for a sign. No moving statue, no burning bush, no voice of God appeared to him, just silence. The hita quieted their constant thoughts and feelings in the flood of his emotions. The lamps gave off their steady glow, water dripped. The statue's stone smelt of red dust and the perfume of the fruit and flower offerings. After awhile he looked up at El. For the first time he noticed that its lower body swelled slightly as if with egg, the look about it far away and broody, preoccupied with the construction of life not its pain and death. The hita's manifestation of Gaia. Create life then set it free.
"All right," said Dante. "I understand. I'm not a golem. I'm free. I listen and learn then decide what I should do with the power, the good and evil, you built into me. In the end I have to live with myself."
He meditated for awhile, mulling things over, then walked back down to the waiting circle of hita.
"I'll come with you and fetch you what you need," he imaged to the strangers. "But I ask that you not kill the chicks, juveniles and mothers of the humans."
"They are precious," The shaman agreed.
"But all are mothers," imaged the stranger.
"In humans, some are born caretakers and some are born mothers, they aren't one like hita." Dante showed them a woman. " I'm a caretaker, I'll never be a mother."
"Never have a chick? Oh, so sad," felt a number of the circle.
"I like chicks and I would have loved my child, but I'm not interested in having a baby," imaged Dante with amusement. "Caretaking, walkabouts are enough for me. I like dancing with women, too." He let the longing float, it was impossible to keep anything from them.
"You're in heat. You need a clan," imaged the Long House shaman with sympathy. "Strange you're like that without any humans around."
"Humans are always in heat. That snout on his body gets stiff and he puts it inside the woman when they dance," imaged Friend to the amazement of the others who immediately stared up at his groin. Dante stepped back out of range, as trunks reached out to touch him.
"He doesn't eat or drink with it?"
"He pees with it! " imaged a cave hita, thrilled to impart the knowledge. "And sometimes the pee is all different colors."
Dante rolled his eyes. A few in the circle became amused at his grimace. He began to image before they got entirely carried away and off topic.
"I want to free slaves," he communicated. "A few of you come with me, then when they know that hita have freed them, perhaps I can convince them to leave you alone. It's a start.
I want to go to Star Mines. Return a favor, in a way. It's an iron mine. Iron is used to stop magic and in weapons and planes when it's changed to steel. We'll blow the mine up, that'll slow down the humans. I won't be able to use my magic in there so we have to think of a plan."
He sat down and listened as the hita began to discuss alternatives.