Coming Home

thethemeis: Reunions

theauthoris: Ben Hayes

At last, the city came into sight through the ash, the shimmering glow of the dome visible as a diffuse light in the clouded distance. Kilam smiled beneath his mask, and shifted the weight of his pack, hastening his pace.

He reached the ashlocks, and rang the great steel gong that hung beside them. There was a brief pause, and the outer door swung open. He stepped through, into the cramped space on the outside of the dome’s arc. The door closed behind him with a sullen clunk, and a fine spray of water filed the air, dripping off the heavy waxed canvas of his poncho. As Kilam watched, the ash that had entered with him fell as a thin grey fluid, draining away through the floor grates. The water stopped, and a tooth-edge whining sound bit his ears. The dome vanished, and he stepped into the other half of the room. With another high whine, the dome flashed back into coherence behind him, and the interior door opened.

Stepping out into the courtyard, he tugged his mask off, feeling his skin tingle at the fresh air. The light of the city was brilliant after so many days in the ash of the gahl, and he blinked as his eyes teared. Hooking the mask onto his belt, he shifted his pack again and began to walk.

He could have found his way from the ashlocks to his home almost blind by now, but each time he returned the walk still felt fresh. He reached old Osur’s cart, and bought a roast yam filled with fried brightwing grubs.

“Back from the gahl again, Kilam?” the old man asked, smiling. “Tell me, what treasures did you find in the ruins today?”

Kilam took a bit of his yam. The grubs crackled slightly between his teeth, salty and pleasantly sour. “Ah, nothing too marvellous. A couple of knives. Some books. Toys for my daughters.”

Osur raised his bushy eyebrows. “Knives, you say? I could use a new paring knife, if you’ve got one that’d suit. Some choked bastard stole the last Auld blade I had.”

“Keh,” spat Kilam. “You go to the watch about it?”

 “You know what they’re like; it’s not worth the paperwork,” Osur scowled. “Probably some skulking squidsucker who took it. If their own folk don’t want them up there, we don’t want them down here. Thieving little wasters.”

Kilam finished his yam, and licked his fingers. Setting his pack down on the bench beside him, he opened it and pulled out the three knives he had found. They glimmered in the bars of orange light cast by the gills of the suncaps around the square, and Osur leaned in to peer at them. One was a small thing, with a folding blade and a glossy green handle capped with golden metal. One was long and broad, with a handle that grew directly from the metal of the blade. The third was about a hand-span in length, with a slight curve to the edge and a handle of dark wood. All the blades had the faint purplish glint of Auld steel.

“That one,” said Osur, gesturing at the wooden-handled knife. “How much?”

Kilam rocked his hand judiciously. “Forty taeli. And only because I like your yams; anyone else would pay fifty.” He was lying; he’d probably have offered forty to anyone who didn’t look like a total fool, but Osur didn’t need to know that.

The old man winced. “Still hard. How about thirty-five and a case of sirequ?”

Kilam licked his lips. “You know me too well, Osur. Fine, done!” He pressed his hand to lips and heart, and held it out to shake. Osur did likewise. “Mind if I pick the wine up later? It’d be Rokun’s blood to carry it with my pack.”

Osur counted out coins onto his counter, the chitin discs clicking sharply. “Any time, Kilam. Don’t take too long though, or I’m liable to forget I traded it to you.”

With a laugh, Kilam swept the money into his purse, and waved goodbye.

A few brief streets later, he came into sight of his home. A flicker of movement flashed across the window upstairs, and he grinned. A moment later the door burst open, and two small girls struck him forcefully in the midriff as they flung their arms around him.

“Dad! We missed you!”

“Did you bring us presents? Was it scary in the gahl?”

He hugged the girls close, going down on one knee to kiss their heads. “I missed you too Milu! Yes, Soshi, I did bring you presents, and it’s always scary in the gahl.”

His youngest daughter pulled back and looked up at him. “Did you see any cutstipe mushrooms? Is it true they grow twice as tall as a man and have stalks covered in spines?”

Kilam smiled at her. “I did, they do, and they have! I’ll tell you all about it after dinner. “Now where is–” he broke off, as his wife appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands with a cloth. “Akae!”

“Kilam! Welcome back!” Tossing the rag aside, she trotted out and pulled him into a hug, careful to avoid crushing their daughters between them. Kilam rested his chin on her shoulder, breathing in the scent of her hair. He felt a knot in his chest unwind, and his shoulders dropped slightly as some of the tension went out of him.

“Mm, I missed you most of all,” he murmured in her ear.

She wiped at the grey smudges of ash and spores that had marked his cheeks where his mask met the skin. “You look every inch the yellowback hero. Find any beautiful ashland princesses out there?”

“I can’t understand how you can bear to read those trashy novels,” said Kilam, shaking his head. “But even if there were mysterious tribes of savages living in harmony with the insects and the mushrooms, not a one would be as beautiful as you.”

Akae smiled. “Dinner won’t be ready for an hour or two yet. Go have a bath, you shameless flatterer.”

Kilam disentangled himself from the family embrace, and nodded. “That sounds like heaven.” He tousled his daughters’ hair. Dropping his pack in the hall, he headed to the bathroom.

As the tub filled, he dropped his ash-caked clothes in the big stipewood bin by the door. Carved whole from the stem of a great bronzecap mushroom, it had taken him and Akae four days to make. Something caught his eye, and he peered more closely. Marked on the side in intricate pokerwork was a carefully detailed figure of a man in a broad hat and a heavy poncho, with a mask over his face. Underneath was written, painstakingly: “Dad’s Clothes.” Kilam smiled; Milu’s artwork was getting really good these days; he didn’t have to exaggerate his praise any more.

He slipped into the steaming water, and sighed contentedly as his aching muscles loosened, and the ash began to seep out of his pores.

An indeterminate time later, Akae’s voice woke him. “Kilam? Hey, sleepyhead…”

“Mm…”

The door slid open, quietly. “It’s time for dinner.”

Kilam sat up. The water was a cloudy grey, and his fingers had wrinkled. “I’ll be right down. Thank you, love.” He climbed out of the tub, and towelled himself off. Akae had thoughtfully left one of his robes hanging outside the bathroom, and he slipped it on. The silk was cool and liquid-smooth against his skin, wonderful after his grimy, ash-caked gahl clothes.

He followed the delicious scents down the stairs to the living room. The girls were already sitting at the table, and as he entered Akae emerged from the kitchen, carrying a broad platter piled with food. “Mum bought fresh ejanuk tentacles!” exclaimed Soshi, bouncing in her chair.

Akae smiled. “The Ejamei came to trade yesterday. I gave them eight of those Auld steel bearings you found a couple of months ago. I got some starberries too.”

“And people laugh when I say I married you for your mind,” said Kilam. “Nobody can drive a bargain like you, Akae.” He skewered four of the fleshy rings, and dropped them on his plate. Nobody could cook like Akae, either.

Milu cocked her head, inquisitively. “Is that a really good deal, then?”

Akae nodded. “Oh yes. The Ejamei don’t sell much meat to us. Most of the ones they hunt are part of a young person’s adulthood ceremony, and only blood relatives of the hunter can eat them.”

“Ish ‘t true th’t-“ began Soshi. Kilam glowered at her, and she stopped and swallowed. “Is it true that they fly on wings, and throw harpoons at the ejanuk?”

“Yes, it is.” Kilam paused, and took a bite of the meat. It was tender, and had a subtle smoky flavour. “Well, partially. They have these things called vhuae, which are shaped like the scales of a snakefly; sort of flat and oval, with a half-dome at the front to cut the air. They stand on them, and steer by shifting their weight. When they fly in close to an ejanuk, they fire harpoons into it using gas-bows, and hold on until it dies.”

Akae nodded. “It’s very difficult to get it right. They have to be careful where they harpoon it; if they hit the ink sac it will ruin the meat, and if they hit the gas bladders then the ejanuk will fall out of the sky, and be lost in the gahl.”

“And all the while they’re holding on, it’s trying to crush them in its tentacles, or blind them with ink, or pull them into its beak,” said Kilam, taking a crackhopper leg from the platter.

“It sounds really dangerous!” said Milu, her eyes wide.

“It is,” Kilam said, quietly. “I’ve found quite a few dead hunters lying in the gahl.”

“Oh, oh!” Soshi exclaimed. “You promised you’d tell me about the cutstipe mushrooms!”

Kilam nodded. “I did at that! So, you know I went to the Auld city far north of here, yes? Well, the journey is long, but by now I know the route well. However, this time, a pass I usually take through the hills was blocked by a fallen bronzecap; and it had brought part of the hill down with it!”

The girls gasped. Kilam smiled; Milu was growing up, but she wasn’t too old yet to be enthralled by his stories.

“So, I had to find another path. Now, I knew from my second trip out there that the east of the hills is a terrible marsh, filled with jaurili that drone like horns when they fly, and have probosci as long as my forearm. They can drain a quart of blood in a handful of seconds, and I didn’t want to go that way. So, I headed around to the west, which I had seen only from the peak of the hill on past journeys. I knew it was covered in dense spore-growth, and I expected it to be hard going, but I hoped that it would be too thick for any large insects to live there. The descent was awkward, but I made it down in one piece, and pushed on into the forest. The mushrooms were thin-stemmed, greenish things with pale gills, and their spores fell in fine clouds whenever I brushed against them; I had to change the filters in my mask after I got through. Eventually, I reached a place where the growth was less dense, and I could see the city ahead through the ash. As I headed that way, the fungi around me changed, and I noticed almost too late that the stalks had spines! It’s very fortunate that I had been trying to avoid the mushrooms already, or I might have blundered into them. You see, the spines on a cutstipe are not as obvious as you might imagine; they’re quite fine, and translucent like the wings of a jauril or a snakefly. If you walk into them obliquely, they’ll probably break, but if you happen to step into one head-on…”

Kilam stopped, and took a mouthful of his dinner, building the suspense.

“If you step into one head-on, it’ll go clean through you!” he said, making a sudden poking gesture with his skewer. “Now, I had no choice but to make my way through the cutstipes, for that was the only way to reach the city. But what was I to do? I could try and press forward slowly, and trust my skills to keep me safe, but if I should trip… So, I took my khopesh, and I went back and cut down one of the thin-stemmed mushrooms from the forest. Then, holding it by the stem, I pushed the cap ahead of me through the spines! When I came out the other side, it was brisling like a pincushion. In fact…”

He rose from the table, and fetched his pack from the hallway, setting it down beside his chair. Reaching into one of the side pockets, he withdrew a tightly bound bundle. “I brought back some of the spines.”

The girls oohed as he laid the spines out on the table. Each of them was around a foot long; they grew longer, but he’d only taken the tips. “Be careful; the points are as sharp as a needle.”

Akae reached out and picked one up, peering at it. “Hm. These look like they could be quite useful, actually. Would they be good as needles, perhaps? Eating skewers?

 “Maybe.” Kilam shrugged. “There are a dozen there, so you can experiment. I don’t know if you could manage to put a hole in them for thread though, I think they might split. They seem to be sort of fibrous.”

“Thank you, Dad!” Soshi said, hopping down from her chair and running over to hug him. “None of the other girls get to learn about the gahl like this.”

He smiled. “You’re welcome, Soshi. Hey, maybe you’ll become a prospector too, when you’re older.” Certainly, she had the curiosity for it. “And I brought you two a couple of other things, as well.”

He reached into his pack again, and pulled out a small grey box. “This is for you, Milu.”

She opened it, and a faint glow lit her face. “A trapglass? I’ve only ever read about them!” She lifted a six-inch square of shiny black glass out of the box. “Is this the input–”

Soshi interrupted her with a sudden laugh. “Turn it over, Milu!”

The older girl did, and laughed as well. “I can see you tested it when you found it, Dad.”

The other side of the glass bore a slightly blurred picture of Kilam, smiling and holding two fingers up in a V. He chuckled. “Well, I didn’t want to bring home a dud. That image is about ten days old, so it’ll hold them clear for about a week. You clear it by drawing a cross on the picture side with your finger, and then you can see through it again. Hold the dark side facing what you want to capture, and run your finger down the right-hand edge to store a new image.”

Milu held the trapglass up, admiringly. “Thanks so much, dad! This is amazing!”

“You’re welcome, Milu.”

Soshi looked up at him. “What did you bring me, Dad?” she said, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

“Something that will help answer some of your questions, Soshi,” said Kilam, reaching into his pack again. This time, he produced a dense, matte black tube.

Soshi took it. “Huh, it’s heavy!” She turned it over in her hand.

“It’s an Auld microscope, Soshi,” Kilam said, pointing to the lens set into the end. “Like your magnifying glass, but it can show much smaller things. You see how it twists in the middle?”

“Oh, I get it!” exclaimed the girl, peering into the tube. “It adjusts the focal distance, right?”

Kilam laughed. “Right at once! You’re so quick you scare me sometimes, Soshi.”

His daughter looked up at him, grinning widely. “Thanks Dad. You’re the best.”

Kilam caught Akae’s eyes, and smiled. He knew that sometimes, they all wished he wasn’t gone so often – and that as much as they loved his gifts, what mattered most to the girls was that he had been thinking of them while he was away. But he was back now, and for a few weeks at least, he could spend time with his family, and they could enjoy themselves.

And then, he’d leave again, back into the gahl and the Auld ruins.

The hardship would be easy, knowing that another homecoming waited for him.