Eric Brown - Rites of Passage

I saw that the figure was Kenda and I felt a surge of relief, and then a quick shame that I had assaulted him the other night. I watched him climb down slowly; he was still wearing his crab shell to protect him from the heat of the sun, and this impeded his progress.

At one point he paused and peered down at me, then resumed his slow descent.

With Kenda’s help, I told myself, I would be able to climb out of this prison. He would bind my leg, bring water from my backpack. Within minutes I would be on my way out of here.

He paused a man’s-length above me, then jumped the rest of the way and landed in the narrow strip of shade.

“What happened?” he said, leaning against the wall of the V so as to be out of the direct glare of the sun.

“The crab,” I said, my throat parched. “It attacked me.” I pointed to the crab, its ichor bubbling now. “I fought with it, but we both ended up…”

He stared down at my leg, a look of distaste on his face. “That’s nasty.”

“Why… why did you take so long?”

“Crabs attacked us. Three of them–”

“Nohma!” I cried.

“We managed to beat them off. But it was unsafe on the slope. We climbed to the escarpment, hoping to find shelter where Nohma might hide while I came back for you.”

I stared at him. “What did you find?”

He looked away, fixing his gaze on my backpack as its material scorched in the sun. “Not much.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Things.”

“Dwelling places, like this one.”

“Not like this. Smaller.”

“But dwelling places?”

He shrugged. “Anyway, I left Nohma up there. She’s safe, in… in some kind of shelter.”

Elation swelled in my chest. “Wait until we get back to the Valley!” I said. “Wait until we tell our people!”

Kenda towered over me, staring down. His face was expressionless.

I said, indicating my backpack, “Do you think you could…? I have a little water, and some cactus. I’m thirsty.”

He looked from my face to the gash on my thigh, and remained standing there.

I said, “Get my backpack, will you? We can tear it into strips, bind my leg.”

Without a word he nodded and stared across at my backpack. It had been in the sunlight for so long that a small thread of smoke was rising from the material.

Kenda adjusted his crab shell and scuttled across to where my pack lay, reached out and grabbed it and returned to the scant margin of shade.

He looked from the backpack to me, then knelt and tore the shoulder straps from the pack. He hesitated, then said, “Lean forward.”

I obeyed, wondering at the reason for his command when he should have been attending to my leg.

He reached out with the strip of material and swiftly, before I could move to stop him, slipped the strap between my teeth and knotted it behind my head — effectively gagging me. Next, with the second strap, he bound my wrists together. I moaned and put up a feeble struggle, but succeeded only in aggravating the pain in my leg.

Then I was lying back against the sloping wall, staring at him as he opened my backpack and took out my gourd of water, the strips of cactus and three small chunks of crabmeat. These he stowed in his own pack and stared down at me.

I cursed him past the choking gag, but all that came out was a muffled sob.

I expected him to sneer, to gloat, but his face was expressionless as he said, “Nohma will grieve when I tell her that you’re dead — but only for a while. She’ll get over it.” Then he did smile. “I’ll make sure of that.”

I tried to speak again, begging him not to leave me.

“If I were you,” he said in parting, “I’d roll over into the sunlight now, and get it over with.”

Then he turned, glanced up at the sloping wall above him, and commenced his ascent, lodging his feet on the protuberances and hauling himself little by little up the slope.

I watched him go, hatred in my heart; I prayed that he would slip and fall to his death, but his ascent was slow and assured. More than anything I wanted to curse him, but all I could do was gag and sob. Rather than give him the satisfaction of hearing my pitiful protests, I fell silent as he reached the top and disappeared from sight without a backward glance.

I felt a stab of pain and looked down at my leg. The blade of sunlight had reached my thigh and was burning the flesh. I gasped and dragged my injured leg into the narrowing margin of shade. I was pressed up against the wall now. In minutes the sun would reach me again, and there would be nowhere to hide. I leaned over, into the glare, and reached out for my empty pack. The sun stung my exposed arm, a foretaste of the exquisite pain to come, as I dragged the material towards me and draped it over my left leg.

I wept. I had granted myself a reprieve of minutes only. I might as well have taken Kenda’s advice and rolled into the sunlight to hasten my inevitable death.

I watched the material of my pack turn brown and smoulder as the sun burned down. I could feel the flesh of my leg grow hot beneath the material. Soon the sun would reach the exposed flesh of my torso and burn me to a crisp. In an hour, perhaps less, I would be dead — and a day from now the sun would have cremated me, roasted my flesh and boiled my innards. I had once stumbled across a goat that had strayed from the caverns, fallen down a ravine and broken a leg. After one day in direct sunlight it was no more than a pile of bleached bones in a mess of charcoaled meat.

Something moved on the periphery of my vision. I looked up, sure that I had seen a black flash high up the wall of the V. I turned my head quickly. Something had moved to my right, on the facing wall.

I stared and moaned aloud as I made out fleet shapes swarming down the incline on both sides and crossing the sunlit ground towards me, nebulous shadows when in motion and only substantial when they halted.

I stared, incredulous. If crabs were not enough, now these… At least crabs were a known and familiar enemy.

Half a dozen small, stick-like beings faced me. They were half my height, and thin, with limbs like charcoal sticks and disproportionately bulbous heads. Their skin was black, as if burned, and as I stared I overcame my fear enough to wonder at how they could stand as they did in the full glare of the sun.

So Old Old Old Marla had been right — she had come upon small black creatures no longer human.

When they moved, they were a blur. Three of the six vanished in a smudge of motion, and reappeared beside the cooking corpse of the crab.

The remaining three regarded me with tiny black eyes. I pushed myself away from them, pressing up against the wall at my back.

One of the creatures reached out. Its fingers flickered towards my bound wrists and the knotted strap fell away. I reached up and tugged the gag from my mouth. “Who are you?” I asked. “What do you want?”

They were silent, regarding me with their heads tipped to one side.

Then a second figure reached out and passed me something — a tubular black column as thick as my arm and half as long. I took the object and stared at it.

Across from us, the other three beings were dismembering the crab. In seconds they had sliced its shell in two and scooped the meat from its innards. They piled the flesh on the ground, where it cooked in the sunlight with an aroma that set me salivating.

I stared from the black column to the being that had passed it to me. “But what is it?” I asked.

The creatures looked at me, and then stared at each other. One being reached out, took the column from me, and tipped it up while holding it to his mouth. I saw a droplet of liquid form upon the column’s rim and slip into the being’s slit of a mouth.