Olan Thorensen - Cast Under an Alien Sun

By now, they’d made almost a complete circuit of the fair and stopped, as they considered what to do next. A stocky woman walked by, nodded to the two Caedelli, and bestowed a longer smile and look at Yozef. He found his gaze lingering as she walked away. Did her hips swing a little more than necessary or was it his imagination? And she wasn’t so much stocky as sturdy, with well-shaped calves and arms. She looked about thirty, with brownish hair somewhat bleached looking, he assumed from the sun, since her face showed weathering with only the beginnings of lines that would deepen with age.

Filtin elbowed Yozef back to attention. “Well, I see you’re not totally oblivious to women. Actually, that one might be a good candidate for you.”

Cadwulf frowned reproachfully at the other man but grudgingly agreed.

“She looks familiar,” said Yozef. “Who is she, and why would she be a candidate, if I was so interested?”

“Her name is Bronwyn Linton,” said Cadwulf. “She sat on the opposite end of our pew during the justice proceedings last week. I mentioned her to you. She owns a good-sized farm north of Abersford.”

“And she’s a widow,” Filtin piped up.

“Her husband died about two years ago in an accident on their farm.”

“And she’s a widow,” repeated Filtin, “who hasn’t bedded a man in those two years, if the rumors are true.”

“She’s attractive enough, and if she owns a good farm, I’d expect there’d be many men interested in her,” said Yozef.

“Remember our talking about the shortage of men,” countered Cadwulf. “She’s a strong woman with good common sense, and there aren’t that many possibilities for her once you rule out married men. I’m not surprised she gave you a good look. The one exception to a woman’s property transferring to a new husband is if they register that agreement. She almost certainly knows who you are, the mysterious stranger who is becoming wealthy and is unmarried. Therefore, she knows there’s more chance she could keep ownership of the farm if you married.”

At that moment, Filtin’s wife with two children in tow interrupted the lesson in Caedellium mating customs. With his free time expired, the family went off to find a midday meal at the food shops. Cadwulf also excused himself as having something he needed do, and Yozef found himself alone again and thinking.

Yozef walked back to his house as the sun set. It had been a good day.

Maybe it was time he admitted this was home. Here and now. Not Berkeley, the United States, or even Earth. Here. Anyar. Caedellium. Abersford. It wasn’t the life he would have chosen, and he’d always miss what he’d lost, but here he made a difference. He had friends better than any he’d ever had on Earth. He was changing the trajectory of Anyar’s future by the knowledge he introduced, even if no one here realized it now or perhaps ever would in his lifetime.

He could see the lights from his house. Elian would have evening meal ready. She had relaxed around him enough to mother him, and even Brak was almost jovial—at times. He would sleep solidly this night, then rise in the morning to fill his day with interesting projects. It was a good life.

Yozef accepted himself as introspective. Not that he didn’t enjoy fellowship, but there were always times he needed solitude to settle his mind and emotions. His time on Anyar had focused on the abbey complex, then expanded to Abersford and its immediate surroundings, including his cottage. When he felt the urge for more isolation, he walked the coast and country west of Abersford.

The territory was unpopulated, he assumed due to the rough terrain and lack of roads. At first, he would hike a few miles or more along the coast and inland. During his initial wanderings, he found a cove with a picturesque beach a hundred yards wide. At lower tides, the rocks at the opening of the cove absorbed most of the waves’ power, but during high tides, major surf broke onshore. The combination of gentle low and the more vigorous high tides resulted in the sand being kept within the cove, but every day the beach had at different contour. Rising from the shore, a gentle grassy slope ended two hundred yards at a tree line of mixed Anyar and Earth species.

The first time he stood at the high-tide mark, Yozef decided it was perfect . He guessed the distance at about three miles from Abersford and the abbey; otherwise, he’d have wanted a house right there up against the trees, close enough to hear the surf, but not too close to the sound or spray. While hiking back to Abersford, he decided to investigate how to purchase the land and build a small retreat house.

He frequently returned to the same cove, though as he explored more, he rode a horse. His horse. Carnigan had selected a small gray gelding, assured Yozef a child could ride it, and gave him rudimentary riding lessons—enough to keep Yozef on the horse’s back most of the time.

“Why did you name the horse Seabiscuit?” Carnigan asked the first time Yozef cursed the unoffending animal after falling off.

“It’s the name of a famous horse back where I came from,” Yozef groused.

Even Yozef had to admit Carnigan was right. Seabiscuit was probably the mellowest horse on the island, making him just within Yozef’s ability to ride. The first few trips from the house to and from the abbey or village were major adventures, and only later did he ride Seabiscuit to venture farther afield during his wanderings west of Abersford.

Inland, he discovered the charm and mystery of a multitude of small valleys, dales, ravines with widely varying terrain, rock formations, and flora. It was farther along the coast where he stumbled on the resources for his next enterprise.

Two sixdays after the Harvest Festival, Yozef extended his wanderings along the beaches and cliffs beyond his cove and came upon what he ended up calling Birdshit Bay. In retrospect, it wasn’t a bay at all, maybe an inlet or a fiord, except the enclosing hills were lower than his vision of a real fiord. Whatever it was called, a mile-long finger of water intruded from the coast inland. Rocky cliffs framed the quarter-mile-wide and deep central channel, and at the mouth of the inlet and out to sea sat rock formations up to a hundred yards across. At first glance, the flat surfaces of the cliff tops and offshore formations appeared chalk-like. Only after closer examination did he realize the whitish rock was guano. A cursory survey suggested that twenty- to forty-foot-deep solidified guano covered the offshore formations, while those on the cliff tops were up to eight feet thick.

The source of the guano was no mystery; the rocks and the skies teemed with a menagerie of flying creatures, birds from Earth and Anyarian murvors. The murvors appeared to be birds from a distance, but up close, they had more reptilian-like heads and longer, thinner feathers. Both features indicated a separate evolutionary history to the same niches as Earth’s birds.

Wherever they evolved, the flying creatures seem to get along with one another. Obviously, they all contributed to the guano, but most of the deposits must be from the murvors, assuming he was right that birds and humans had arrived on Anyar about the same time, only a few thousand years ago.

Yozef walked the length of the inlet along the cliff tops until he reached the end, swarms of flying creatures swirling around him the whole length, while he thought of fertilizer. Guano contained all of the major nutrients for plants—nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium. Christ! There must be enough guano in this one spot to supply most of the entire island’s fertilizer needs for decades, if not longer. He wondered whether the islanders already used it for their crops. He’d have to check when he got back. If they didn’t, maybe this was his next project.