HEART OF GREEN (58) Mirk Is Unconvinced

“BEACH PAAAAARTY!” screamed Jeeka. Ben and Tolla jerked awake with a start.

Jeeka was already out of bed, and was running back and forth down the hall, naked. Ben noted that on one pass, she was headed in the direction of the living room, carrying the disassembled magic doorframe; he was a little pleased to see that it was the right one. Before he’d swung his legs out of bed, she’d run back to the storeroom, and then charged back into the living room carrying an armload of cloth bags and several of Ben’s hats.

Tolla rubbed her eyes, rolled over onto all fours, and crawled out of the other side of the bed from Ben. “All right,” she said, sleepily. “I am beginning to get some serious expectations for this beach place, whatever it is.”

Abruptly, Jeeka stood in the doorway, wearing only a gleeful smile and one of Ben’s widebrimmed hats. “You’re going to love this,” she enthused. “Don’t bother getting dressed, beach is better naked. Don’t bother washing, the ocean will do it for you. Tolla, breakfast is on the table, go eat it. Ben, there’s hot black tea in the kettle for you, go drink it. I’ve got the tools, the foldbox, the bags, the doorframe, the wood, the ponchos, everything, all lined up in the living room. Tolla, this is the saltiest place ever. It’s almost MADE of salt there. Except the fruits, which are not salty at all. Whatever salt Ben doesn’t need for the town people, I want to take to the village and trade out, if there’s any left. And even if there isn’t, I can’t wait to see the look on your face!” Suddenly, Jeeka stopped and hugged herself and quivered out of sheer excitement.

Ben stood at the foot of the bed and watched naked Jeeka quiver; this caused him to forget what he was doing.

Tolla stood up. “I have to pee,” she said. “If you could clear the hallway?”

Laughing, Jeeka pelted down the hall to the living room. Ben watched her round green behind as she went.

“Go get your tea, Ben,” said Tolla, patting him on the shoulder in passing. “I’ll be in there in a minute. Try not to stare at her too much; she makes me forget what I was doing, too, sometimes.”

Ben blinked. Tea. Yes, tea.

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“I saw. It was a human,” said Tchim.

A number of gathered goblins, in the morning light, watched Morr look over the charred remnants of what had once been someone’s home. He glanced over at Mirk, who stood nearby. “What can you tell me?”

Mirk sighed. “Dornuk is badly burned. He probably won’t last until nightfall. They’re trying to make him as comfortable as they can. He’d be dead if Hamki hadn’t got him out from under the burning hides, and she burned her arm and shoulder pretty good, doing that.” Mirk stopped, took a deep breath. “I hate that she got hurt for probably nothing.”

“We need to discuss what to do about the humans,” said Tchim.

Morr’s face was stern. “Any idea how the fire got started?”

“What’s to discuss? The humans did it!” said Marhag. “Didn’t you hear Tchim?”

“I heard,” said Morr. “But I was not talking to Tchim, or to you. Mirk?”

“It didn’t start inside the tent,” said Mirk. “Something on the outside of the tent, something that soaked into the hides. I’m thinking black pitch; there are still traces of it on the outside edges. And it burned fast; the whole tent was afire before anyone noticed it. Except Tchim, who says he saw a human light up the tent and run away.”

Everyone looked at Tchim, who nodded sagely. “He even left a human tool, in his hurry to escape.”

“Why would a human do this? A single human?” said Morr.

“Who knows why humans do anything?” said Marhag. “They know we are here and they have attacked. We should move the village.”

“You are premature,” said Morr. “I want to know exactly what happened before—”

“We have all the answers we need!” growled Marhag. “Do you expose the tribe to further dangers when the time to act is now? Prum would not hesitate to act, if he were here!”

Morr looked up sharply at Marhag. “Prum is not here. He is a castout, and a coward.”

“And yet, if he were here, he would be doing more than you have,” said Tchim.

“Prum is decisive,” said Rho.

“Prum is strong,” said Kee.

“And Prum would not stand for humans crossing into our territory and raping and murdering,” said Dorr.

“Prum could make the tribe great again,” mused Fahks.

Morr looked around as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Mirk,” he said, “scout around. Find this human’s tracks, and trail him if you can. I will know more before I make a decision.”

Meanwhile, the rest of the tribe milled around and talked and worried.

And Tchim smiled his ancient wizened smile.

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Ben sat naked in a chair and sipped his tea and ate his eggs, and Tolla did likewise, while Jeeka frantically checked and rechecked all their supplies. To her credit, she seemed to have thought of pretty much everything, although Ben had had to stop her from trying to assemble the doorframe herself. “Come ON, you two!” Jeeka said impatiently. “The day is getting away from us!”

Ben said the words that sealed the front door, and Tolla collected the dishes. “Let me rinse these,” she said. “Wherever we’re going, I don’t want to find them sitting here staring at me when we get back.”

Jeeka writhed in irritation. Ben watched her writhe, naked, and promptly forgot what he was doing.

“Put the doorframe together!” hissed Jeeka. Ben remembered what he’d been doing, and began to assemble the doorframe. Once assembled, he began the chant-and-song to activate it, and it clouded inside the frame and became grayly opaque. Tolla glanced up to see what was happening, as she dried the last dish and put it on the counter.

And Ben snapped his fingers, and the doorway exploded with daylight.

Tolla gasped. Jeeka laughed, and grabbed the big bag of cut wood, and dragged it into the light, and out of sight. Tolla gasped again, when Jeeka did not emerge from the other side of the doorway. She could hear a faraway roaring sound, and the sound of Jeeka laughing maniacally at what sounded like a distance.

Ben donned a hat, and picked up the foldbox. “Coming, Beautiful Flame?” he said with a grin, and stepped into the light, and disappeared from view.

Tolla stalked around the kitchen counter and looked into the doorway. So bright! Daylight! And she could see Ben walking across a white field, and Jeeka, still naked except for her hat, in the distance headed for a bright expanse of blue…

Tolla walked through the doorway.

And a moment later, said breathily, in a voice filled with astonishment, “Where the fuck ARE we?”

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The more Mirk saw, the more confused he was.

The footprints were human, definitely; he’d seen enough human prints. Their shoes had hard leather soles that cut the ground in a way bare feet or moccasins didn’t. And they were big enough.

The trail had been easy enough to follow, but it got confusing fast. As far as he could tell, the human had come in from the south, lit the tent on fire, and then turned around, ran away, and fell down. And then he’d fallen down several more times in the making of his escape. If anyone had thought to go looking right away, they’d have caught him easily. It sort of made sense. Everyone knew humans had poor night vision. The part that didn’t make sense was why one lone human would come out in the middle of the night, light one tent on fire, and then flee headlong into the dark. Humans weren’t that crazy, were they?

And something bothered Mirk about the tracks. They weren’t right, somehow. They were different from others he’d seen in a way he couldn’t put his finger on.

Mirk found a good clear print, and stared at it. He began to put together a mental picture of what had made it, the way his father had taught him. And something wasn’t right… and then it clicked. The print wasn’t very deep. Mirk prodded the ground. Soft. At least, soft enough. After a little mental calculation, Mirk realized that the human who had made these tracks had weighed less than a hundred pounds, less than Mirk himself. And yet the shoe that had made the tracks was large, larger than his own foot, and Mirk was big for a goblin.

Mirk thought for a moment, and then unwound a thong from around his waist, and measured the distance between two tracks, and then two more. Then he got up and ran alongside the trail for a dozen paces, and compared the human tracks to his own.

Whoever this human was, he was tiny for a human; his running pace was shorter than Mirk’s own! Short legs… had a child done this? Wearing the shoes of his father, or something? Miles from any human dwellings? That made no sense at all.

Mirk continued the tracking; whoever had made the trail had made no effort to conceal his path. Mirk glanced here and there at plants, bushes, trees along the way; occasionally, he noted broken plant stalks or branches where the human had passed, but it seemed to Mirk that either this person had taken special care, or that he was just smaller than a human ought to be; only in tight spaces was there much trace that anyone had passed, except for the great clunky footprints…

Mirk expected the human tracks to vanish at the stream, where a smart person would cut left or right to evade a tracker. Not at all. The human had ploughed right through the stream and kept going, with clearly delineated tracks visible even on the far side of the stream! Had this human WANTED to be followed? Mirk thought about it, and slowed down; no sense walking into a trap or ambush…

Later, at the trail’s end, Mirk was full blown confused. The human had come to the river’s edge, and instead of following the river down to the human farm territory, the human had sat down on a surprisingly narrow ass and, as far as Mirk could tell, simply thrashed around randomly for a while, and then stood up, walked to the river, and jumped in. Had he decided to swim home? Especially wearing those great clunky shoes? Fully dressed? Mirk looked around, but he saw no cast off clothing or possessions of any kind.

Had this particular human been insane? None of this made any sense at all.

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Jeeka, Tolla, and Ben sat in the shade of Tolla’s tattered tent, wearing their hats and ponchos and sampling fruits while they waited for supper to cook. Around them were bags of salt, bags of sand, a bag of husked coconuts, a bag of bladefruit, and a great many nana peels.

“Told you,” said Jeeka. “So many wonderful things to eat that look like dicks.”

“I see why you didn’t bring me any of these,” said Tolla. “These AND the sausages might have been a little much, all in one sitting.”

“I’m glad I didn’t,” said Jeeka. “Now you get to try even more surprises. The look on your face when you found out about the salty water!”

Ben laughed. “You should have seen Jeeka, when she first found out. Knocked on her backside by a wave! Rolling around on the shore laughing!”

Tolla held up a seashell. “What are these?”

“The shells of various animals, like clams and so forth,” said Ben. “After the animals die, the shells remain on the beach. Eventually, tidal action grinds them up, and they become more sand.”

“Can we collect these, and take them home in a bag or something?” asked Tolla. “They might be pretty as thong weights or decorations on a skirt, or something. The little ones could make fun beads.”

“Can do!” laughed Jeeka. “I never even thought of that. Surely we have time to gather seashells before dinner!”

“And can we take some nanas, too?” asked Tolla. “I like them. Seems like you could make a sauce or dessert or something out of them.”

“Sure,” said Ben. “I can deny nothing to our Beautiful Flame. We’ll go back and cut some of the greener ones down; they last longer, and they can ripen even after they’re off the tree. I hear you can make bread out of them, even after they start to go bad.”

Jeeka stretched back and reclined against a bag of sand, and sipped fresh squeezed fruit juice from half a coconut shell. “Best day ever,” she said.

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It was late afternoon before Mirk returned to camp, and a cold wind had begun to blow. The first person he saw was Kag, who didn’t look happy. “Dornuk is dead,” said Kag, before Mirk could ask. “And Morr wants to know what you know.”

“How’s Hamki?”

“About the same. Burns are bad. She’s going to have scarring all up and down that arm, and that’s assuming infection doesn’t set in.”

“I’m going to talk to Morr,” Mirk said, and Kag nodded, and they passed in silence.

Mirk found Morr arguing in the long hut with Marhag, Tchim, Drok and Kseem about what to do. The argument seemed to be about whether or not to move the village, with Tchim and Marhag demanding a yes, Kseem a firm no, and Drok undecided, along with a motion to reinstate Prum to the tribe now that they were down a hunter, and under attack by outside enemies. Everyone fell silent when Mirk entered the room.

“Report,” said Morr.

“Tchim,” said Mirk, “you said you saw the human who set the fire?”

“I did,” said Tchim.

“What did he look like?”

“He looked like a human,” said Tchim. “They all look alike.”

“What did this human look like?” said Mirk. “Tall? Short? Male? Female? Fat? Thin?”

“Why do you question your council?” growled Marhag. “You were asked for a report. Give it, and get out. We are discussing important tribal business.”

“Male,” said Tchim. “Tall and lanky, like all humans, easily two heads taller than you are. Great long legs. I could see his head over the top of the tent. Does this satisfy your curiosity? Now give your report.”

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It was nightfall before Pog staggered back into camp.

Exhausted, hungry, and wounded (he'd twisted an ankle running in the damned human shoes, had stopped at the river and failed to escape from the tightly knotted shoestrings, and had finally just jumped into the river wearing the wretched things; he’d finally kicked them off a mile downstream, and had climbed out of the river to find himself quite lost), Pog looked around, and was horrified to see the blackened remains of someone’s tent. It was only supposed to burn a little, we just wanted to frighten people…

“Dornuk is dead,” said Kag, who remained on watch. “Where have you been?”

“Out fishing,” said Pog. “Dead? What happened?”

“They say a human attacked us, torched the tent and ran away,” said Kag. “Dornuk didn’t wake up until the tent collapsed on him. He suffered all day, and died a few hours ago. He’d have burned alive if Hamki hadn’t half fried herself, getting him out of there. She might as well have left him; it’d have been over quicker.”

Pog stared at Kag unbelievingly.

“Were you close?” asked Kag. “I’m sorry.”

Pog turned and staggered in the direction of his own tent. Why hadn’t he just set fire to his OWN tent, instead? There was nothing in it he couldn’t replace, and perhaps a female might have taken pity on him and let him sleep with her tonight, and Dornuk would not now be dead.

“What are you complaining about?” came Prum’s voice in his head. “It isn’t you that suffered.”

Pog considered getting his stick and line and hook and worms. He was hungry, and he could fish at night if he had to. Sometimes, you’d get a bite. And sometimes you didn’t, and even if he did, he’d have to clean the fish and build a fire and cook it, and somehow, Pog didn’t think he’d ever be able to build a fire again without thinking of Dornuk and Hamki and their suffering.

It isn’t you that suffered. Nothing happened to you. You’re on the Winning Team.

Pog crawled into his tent and onto his sleeping fur and lay there for a time. He was very tired, but sleep was long in coming.