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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 35: Takano 95
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 11
She waited in her nest home until the frost was gone. For brunch, she chose the cranberries over the onion grass, atop some venison. One of the gatherers had dropped off a small handful of each the night before. Taking her mess kit, she went to the water pump and filled the small stainless steel pot with water. Crumbling a few cranberries into the water, she placed it over the campfire. As the berry soup cooked, she began to pray about her need for basic supplies like butter, salt, and pepper, and for fruits and vegetables. They had to go three miles at least from the camp to find anything not already picked. Also, what was she to do about the hundred-odd folk who looked to her for guidance?
When her nose told her the food was done, she began to scoop up a plate. It was less than she needed, but she reminded herself to hold back. She could eat the rest as a snack later. Then one of the children, about the age of seven, came into the clearing. His eyes were wide, and his hands dirty, but even though he did not say anything it was clear what he wanted. So she shared her meal with him–which brought out two of his friends, or relatives, also aged five or six, a girl and a small boy. By the time she had shared out her brunch she got two large tablespoons worth of food. Her stomach grumbled, but the happy, grateful smiles on the three children’s faces were not worth spoiling. So she smiled brightly and asked them what they were doing.
“Testing food,” the older boy said seriously. She raised a single eyebrow. “We go out and find stuff, and bite it. If it stings or numbs the tongue, we spit it out.”
Tommy frowned.
“Did you tell your mother you were doing this?”
Solemnly, all as one, they shook their heads no. She waited with a small smile trying not to spring out.
“Miss Tommy, my father is Group Leader Torin. He and several other adults set to doing this after the rest of the Council talked about how far the gathering crews were going. We thought we’d help.”
“I see, son of Torin, but it can be dangerous. Why not try to help in another way?”
“We tried,” chirruped the little girl. “But they said we scared off the fish.” She then made a fishy face with hands and a wide mouth which got Tommy giggling.
“You want to help? I told the Council we needed wood, so let’s gather wood.” This was less enthusiastically received, as they had reportedly already done some of this for the hot water heater, but with Tommy leading them, the quartet set out and began to gather fallen branches. A storm the previous night had thrown down quite a few. These they took to the bathroom as a good central storage spot. Along the way they attracted another several children. By the third trip back many of the children in the small community were helping, and Tommy wondered if this was how the Pied Piper of Hamlin had felt. After they had cleared three acres of light pieces of wood and noted a half dozen larger fallen branches, it was time for lunch.
This time, she made sure to give herself two fish, along with her onion grass. As it was finishing cooking, a clanking sound came from behind her. Spinning around on her log chair, she looked over. Hulion, one of the young men, had hit a tree with an arrow while firing at a small furred creature. He had missed the beast, which was chittering at him in annoyance. Looking over at him, she noted that his muscles were nice. And he seemed to be moving slower than he needed, with several glances over another way as he went to pull his arrow out of a tree. A girl was with him.
“Oh.” She gulped and her face reddened as realization kicked in. The two were ‘on a date’ or whatever you called it in this culture. And he was showing off his muscles for her.
Tommy finished her food, used the running water to splash her pot clean, along with the fork from the silverware kit. Putting them up in her nest, she drew back her long hair into a ponytail, and began to walk out into the surrounding woods. She came to a fallen branch, and considered whether she was strong enough to tote it back. Not sure, she sat down on it and recovered her energy. This seemed to be harder than before, in other worlds–and it was not like she had spent huge amounts of time sitting around doing nothing. She had no excuse of being lazy or couch-bound to explain her lack of energy. This left the bone chilling probability that she was not eating enough.
An occasional fish or two, along with scraps of venison which was getting harder to find as the deer were hiding in the deeper brush or just leaving the area entirely, and the smaller and smaller amounts of berries and fruits, was not really enough. It would get worse. With winter coming, the berries and fruits were going to go away entirely, she thought. Worse, the fish would go, too–already wading into the lake was a test of willpower reminiscent of tales of Polar Bear Clubs. They could starve. Trouble furrowed her face. She had already ‘died’ once in winter from exposure. Doing so from starvation and exposure sounded worse. Plus, her recent memories brought back the images of the ‘son of Torin’ and his two little siblings. Please God, spare them this. She begged in tears, and willingly offered her own life if that is what it took to save them.
“Ouch!” She cried, jumping up, the right side of her palm–the knifehand side had she been trained in traditional Karate–stinging and itching. She knocked something off, and saw an insect bite. Ow. For a second, she wanted to scream at God. Ask for help, and He laughs and sends an insect to bite you. But, no, she would not. She gritted her teeth. She was not going to go that way. Although it felt like rejection, she was not going to turn aside, as tempting as it seemed to return insult for insult.
Looking back to where she had sat, she saw the fallen log crawling with ants. Oh, it had an anthill inside the log. No wonder she had been bitten. Carefully, she checked and found herself otherwise clear. No other hitchhikers were hiding on her. That was lucky. She turned to walk back, and paused. An idea seemed to be trying to grow in her head. And with a bit of astonishment, she remembered hearing about how Africans would eat fried ants dipped in chocolate.
She had no chocolate, and she remembered bad jokes about insects landing in food. “More protein.” Reluctantly, she turned about and examined the ants. They were not bright red fire ants. Nor were they the super tiny ones. They were large and black, although not monstrously so. Her stomach convulsing in small twitches, she studied with horrified gaze the ants running about the log. They were retreating back into their home. Probably her sitting there had disturbed them.
Before the last could run away, she darted out a hand and flattened one. Dead, it fell off into the grass and was gone. O.K., she had to do this smarter. She chose one on top of the log, flattened it, and then slowly removed her hand to keep from knocking it away. Looking at it, she squelched her instincts–no, her instincts were suggesting that it was food, and food was good. She sat on her trained reflexes, and gently picked up the dead ant with her fingernails. In it went, and it was okay, with a tart lemony flavor.
She ate another one, and then another. She grabbed one falling to the ground, and squished it in one hand, before tossing it into her mouth. But inside her, she felt a strange and repulsive feeling. One of ants had not been dead, and was trying to escape her throat by crawling up it. The sensation of tiny feet going up, sliding down, and going up again made her want to scream. It was just so awful. Yet even as she did, a thought occurred to her. You didn’t eat fugu fish without properly preparing it. She had been an idiot.
Her gag reflex threatening to eject everything she had eaten, she raced to the water pipe and began guzzling water, trying to wash down what was trying to climb up. Once her moving meal lost its battle to climb the cliffs of her internal intake valve and plunged into her stomach acids, and she had recovered enough sang-froid that she was no longer crying, she returned to the log where she rather savagely smashed another ant with anger strengthening her arm. This time, she made sure to eat only from the bottom part as a headless ant had to be dead. In it went. No internal creepy crawly sensation accompanied the snack. The ant crunched and went down. After a second her stomach notified her that everything was fine. It would not object to more, even.
They faintly tasted of lemonade, and headless, well, they were just crunch. Her stomach was a bit uncertain now, so she decided to give it time to get used to this new thing. Walking back, she resolved to come back the next day with her mess kit, and fill it with as many ants as she could.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #502: Character Setbacks. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
