Eric Brown - Rites of Passage

He passed me the column and indicated that I should copy the action.

I tipped the column to my mouth, and liquid slid into my mouth — sweeter than water, and much thicker, which quenched my thirst immediately.

The three remaining creatures picked up the crab’s shell and vanished, reappearing at my side. They tipped the shell on to its side and worked it into the earth so that it effected an efficient shield between the sun and myself.

Next, one of the tiny black beings knelt and lifted my leg, while another reached out and, faster than I could discern, wrapped something around my gashed thigh. I stared, incredulous. I could still see my leg through the dressing, but the wound had closed and the pain had abated to no more than a dull throb.

Now all six stood before me, staring with their tiny eyes.

And then, instantly, they were gone — but not before piling before me the cooked flesh of the crab.

I called out, sobbing, “Thank you. Thank you, whoever you are!”

It was as if the liquid had revitalised me — though how a simple fluid had done this was a mystery. I touched the invisible dressing that bound my injured thigh; I could feel something there, a smooth substance that resisted my fingers. Through the dressing I could see the line of the gash, which already appeared to be healing.

I picked up a gobbet of succulent flesh and tore at it with my teeth, then took another drink of fluid, feeling its cool sweetness fill me with life and energy.

I laughed aloud at my luck and marvelled at the fact of my salvation. I tried to imagine the expression on Kenda’s face when I apprehended him, when I came back from the dead and exposed his lie to Nohma.

I ate and drank and rested, relatively cool in the shade of the crab shell. Experimentally I flexed my injured leg. I could feel no pain now, and even the ache was diminishing. Perhaps an hour later I felt sufficiently recovered to attempt to stand, and did so fully expecting my leg to collapse beneath my weight. To my astonishment it held firm, without a tremor or spasm of pain. I sat down again quickly, as the sun was burning my face.

I collected the straps that had bound and gagged me, and fashioned them into a harness which I affixed to the crab shell. As I worked I thought ahead, to the time when I would locate Kenda and exact my sweet revenge.

I filled my pack with crab meat and hung it around my neck, then stood and lifted the shell onto my back. It was heavier than my old shell, as it had not been scraped thin, but not so heavy that I was unable to bear its weight. I slipped the liquid column into the band of my loincloth and stared up at the sloping face before me.

Then, taking a deep breath, I began my ascent, using the same protuberances that Kenda had employed. It was a long climb and hard, but the thought of Kenda’s reaction to my resurrection spurred me on.

Once at the top I rested and took a swallow of sweet fluid. I flexed my injured leg, feeling nothing, and climbed through the horizontal slit and down the hanging chain.

There, I knelt and examined the ground. I made out the scuffed marks of footprints, ascending the slope to the escarpment. I looked down the slope, noting the tracks we had made on our ascent but seeing no evidence of footprints heading in the other direction. So Nohma and Kenda were still above me, on the escarpment.

Smiling to myself in anticipation, I stood and began the climb.

One hour later I reached the lip of the escarpment and scrambled over its sandy, crumbling lip. Panting, I climbed to my feet and stared out across the sun-blasted plane.

There was nothing but bare earth for twenty man-lengths ahead of me, but then…

Dwellings , Old Old Old Marla had called them — but I had never seen their like before. They were grouped together before me, similar in shape to the domes of a crab but transparent, each one as high and as broad as a cavern. I counted twenty of these vast dwellings, where our ancestors had lived long ago when the sun was small in the sky and water filled the valleys. Now these domes were cracked like bloodshot eyeballs and scoured opaque by centuries of wind-borne sand.

I wondered at what marvels might be found inside, and for a time all thoughts of revenge were forgotten.

Then I saw the double trail of footprints leading from the lip of the escarpment towards the closest dome, and I set off in eagerness to tell Nohma of my wellbeing and assure Kenda that his crime would not go unpunished.

I slowed as I approached the dome, not wanting Kenda to be aware of my arrival. Their footprints made for a triangular rent in the fabric of the dome. Cautiously, my heart beating fast, I approached the accidental entrance and peered inside.

Sand had drifted through the gap and formed a dune, hiding the interior from view. I ducked through the rent and approached the sliding sands, aware by the divots in the slope before me that Nohma and Kenda had passed this way.

I climbed the drift, wondering what I might find on the other side.

I neared the crest and fell on my belly, advancing cautiously and peering over.

The dome was empty, or almost so. Around the edge of the dome were strewn the blanched skeletons of human beings, some complete while others consisted of scattered, disconnected bones. I stared in wonder at the closest, not a man’s-length from where I lay.

And tears came to my eyes, then, as I felt a strange emotion. I was not mourning the passing of these wondrous ancestors who had created things beyond the dreams of puny beings like myself; no, I was mourning the people we had become — for the skeletons of these humans, identical to our own remains in every respect but one, were fully three times the height of those of my own people.

Truly, these people had been giants.

I wondered at the dramas played out in this dome, at the enactment of the tragedy that had ended in the extinction of these people.

And now, in the amphitheatre before me, another drama — on a smaller scale but no less imbued with heartfelt emotion — was being played out between two tiny, puny creatures.

Nohma faced Kenda and cried, her words echoing around the hollow dome, “But I want to go back, find his body and return with it to the valley. He deserves that much.”

I listened to her and wept.

Kenda said, “It’s too dangerous! It was all I could do to climb out of there myself. We’d never manage it with a body.”

“But… But I loved Par! I can’t go back without him!”

My heart swelled, and before Kenda could reply I climbed to my feet and stepped over the edge of the dune, sliding silently down the other side towards them.

Kenda, facing me, looked up and stared. His mouth hung open, and fear entered his eyes.

Alerted, Nohma spun around and saw me, her expression one of utter disbelief.

I moved slowly through the scattered bones of our long dead ancestors and halted a man’s-length from where Nohma stood, staring as if at a ghost.

“Par?” she whispered, tearful. “Par?”

I looked past Nohma at Kenda. “He lied, Nohma. I was not dead when he found me, but he left me for dead, and lied to you.”

Kenda appeared frozen in shock. “You,” was all he could manage. “But how…?”

I said, “I was saved, Kenda, saved by beings with more compassion and more… humanity … than you will ever possess.”

“Beings?”

“The creatures Old Old Old Marla met on her journey here.”

“No,” he screamed, and launched himself at me.

His attack took me by surprise; he knocked me off my feet. I fell onto my back and he dropped on me. We rolled, fighting like maniacs. I was filled with the fuel of the righteous, Kenda with the fear of the damned.