The Saplings

A nomadic tribe rebuilds and contemplates community and governance.

The clack clack of skull knocking against bone echoed across the crystal blue water. I knelt beside the river, cupped my hand and lowered it into the reflective surface, the cold current curling in rippling eddies around my flexed fingers. I drank deeply, the icy pinch of frigid water flowing down my parched throat. A hard-blue breeze brushed my cheek, carrying away the soft-red heat of the afternoon sun. My eyes closed, blotting out the remaining sheafs of light unscathed by the dark green scythes of the canopy above as my nose inhaled a pungent mélange of wet grass and rotting leaves intertwined with the sting of new cold that signaled the change of seasons.

Clack clack. A tree of a man emerged from the brush and came to a stop along the opposing bank. Planted on twin trunks he stood as high as wild corn stalks, with long ears like husks and a weathered face that looked well acquainted with rain, wind, snow and sun. Whorls of black ink radiated from sinewy shoulders to gnarled fingers, one arm punctuated by raised linear ridges of red that looked almost ritualistic, so perfectly aligned in a way that scars given by man or beast rarely are. A black leather belt hung loosely off his hip, the right side ornamented with a silver tinged dagger and the left embellished with a human skull and femur tied together with string, bouncing rhythmically with each step. A sharp voice carried over the narrow river.

“We need to pack up. We’re leaving in the morning.”

“Ok Sef. I’m heading back soon. The others?”

“Already back at camp.”

I knew I had tarried too long, but these hunting trips were some of the few opportunities to get out of camp and think. With attacks becoming more frequent it was a bad idea to spend more time alone than absolutely necessary. I slung my bow over my shoulder and collected the fruits of my labor, a black, brown, and white speckled quail and two black and white striped grouse. The meager fowl wouldn’t feed the 20-odd souls who made up our small band but would provide a welcome variation from the venison that had been the only meat we’d eaten during the 23 days this camp had been our home. Before accelerating into a jog I paused to enjoy this last period of solitude.

The closest river crossing was a mile upstream, with camp another five miles east. Sounds of rushing water harmonized with calls from blue jays and chickadees as dry grass and twigs snapped under foot. Gradually the calls and chirps fell away until only the river’s unrelenting babble interrupted the silence. The trees in this forest were so dense that any clearing qualified as a landmark. The contrast now was so abrupt I stopped dead in my tracks. Where once stood a vast expanse of ancient oaks now only charred stumps and ash remained. The nearby stream and river had formed a natural fire break that prevented the conflagration from destroying the entire forest, but the scale of the devastation was still jarring. For several miles the destruction had been complete and without mercy; not a single tree was left standing. The fire must have burned out weeks ago, yet a heavy coat of grey ash still blanketed the landscape. As I turned to leave my attention was drawn to the one item for miles that rebelled against the drab backdrop. A few steps away an ankle-high sapling grew happily in the leeward side of a fire-scarred oak stump. It’s vigorous bright green color gave the young tree an almost hopeful demeanor, its juvenile leaves lifted skyward with a cheerful obliviousness to the catastrophic destruction in which it now made its home. With a last look I turned and hopped over the large boulders that created a makeshift crossing over the river. The river rushed on unceasingly, unfazed by the destruction just beside it.

As snow began to lightly fall as I trundled into camp, my avian trio in tow. The spot itself was a small clearing at the top of a hill, perhaps 50 steps long and 75 steps wide. The hill overlooked one of the old towns, which like all the others had been abandoned since who knows how long. We never stayed in these old towns, always on the outskirts. Perhaps we feared them haunted or maybe we just preferred the open safety of the forest. Our little outpost was populated by two concentric rings of one to four-person nylon and leather shelters, tents of bright yellows, greens and reds next to those of beige and tan. Steel hand carts and small wooden wagons held food, clothing, tools, weapons and other supplies. Tree stumps served as makeshift chairs encircling a golden yellow-red fire burning brightly in the center of camp. A figure sat perched on one of the stumps, face illuminated by the dancing flames.

                “Hey Zluta.” I called.

The woman turned, the shadows cast by the fire shifting across her face and blending with her golden hair. Snow momentarily alighted on her brow before turning to single rivulets of water. Each individual prism exploding the firelight into almost imperceptible threads of red, yellow, green, indigo and violet. Small leaves with indecipherable symbols and pictograms lay scattered around her feet. Even in the fading light the vivid yellow of her flowing robe seemed to give off its own light, rather than reflecting that of the fire.

                “Hey back, good hunting?” Zluta asked cheerfully.

Zluta could always be relied on to be relentlessly cheery regardless of circumstance. She had a contagious enthusiasm that I appreciated, at least in small doses.

                “Not bad, got a few birds, quail and grouse.” I replied nonchalantly. In truth I was tremendously proud of myself. A year ago I couldn’t have hit the side of a bear if it was 10 steps away.

                “Yum! Can’t wait to grill ‘em! Good timing, we’re almost out of meat and I’m not sure how much longer I can stomach berries for breakfast lunch and dinner. Ya hear we’re leaving?” she asked.

                “Yeah. Sef’s idea?”

                “Who else?”

After several disagreements the group had talked about developing a system for choosing a course of action. Sometimes two proponents of opposing ideas had fist fights until one or the other gave up. Some had suggested each person choose an option and line up together and whichever side had more people would decide. Hazardni had suggested we put one stone for each option in a basket and pick one out blindly, figuring fate might be better at deciding than any of us. None of the systems had really stuck, so more often than not folk tended to follow Sef’s idea.

                “What are those?” I asked, gesturing at the egg-shell colored squares around her feet.

                “Oh these? Well, one thing they are is not much use, at least right now.” She sighed dejectedly before immediately regaining her characteristic cheer. “I found a bunch of them in that little town down there. Davny says they describe what people used to live like, back when people still inhabited those towns. Their successes, their failures, their problems, their ideas for solving them, what happened when they tried to fix stuff.”

“They must not have helped much.” I retorted.

“Well maybe not, but if we could understand them …” she trailed off. “well, maybe we could take what’s good about their ideas and fix what’s bad about them.”

                “Sure, yeah I guess so.” I replied.

                “Like that bow you made. You think you’re the first person ever to make something like that? How many pieces of wood did you go through before you carved one that didn’t snap?” she asked.

It had been more than 30.

                “I don’t know, five?”

                “Ok and what if you knew how to make it from the start? Not only that, what if someone had a better idea, like there’s some way to make a stronger bow that could shoot farther?”

                “Yea, that would have been helpful.” I admitted. I thought back to the dozen arrows I scattered 10 tree widths away from a plump pheasant because the grip curved ever so slightly in the wrong direction, an imperfection I hadn’t been able to smooth out no matter how many nights I worked on it.

                “I don’t know. Maybe there’s even an idea for how to deal with this Sef situation. I think we all know sometimes his ideas aren’t the best ones, what if he makes the wrong call?”

                “Then maybe Hlupak should make the decisions?” I responded.

                “Ok and what if Hlupak is wrong? My point is that maybe there’s a better way, that people have already thought about things like this and we’re just making the same mistakes that have been made thousands of times before.”

Other members of the band joined the circle as the sun set and the conversation shifted back to camp life. Rudy, a stout man of medium height with an impressive fire red beard and explosive personality to match was still visibly showing the effects of a wolf attack last week that had left him with a pronounced limp. Despite his run in with the pack he was still the most accomplished hunter of the group and made sure everyone in the party was aware of it. His hunting partner Modra joined him, who when not hunting could just as often be found fishing with her most prized possession, a spear wrapped in dazzling sapphire blue fabric. Modra personified humility and stability in equal measure to Rudy’s boastfulness and impulsiveness. Utterly unflappable, she shared Zluta’s positivity without the hyperactivity. Davny, the eldest, trod slowly to the nearest stump, grey spectacles covered by equally grey hair. He knew perhaps more than any of us about the world and how it used to be, but he spoke almost never. His eyes at times betrayed a profound trauma that Modra thought was responsible for his almost total silence. Nonetheless in quiet times like these you could almost perceive a smile, his whole being exuding a quiet peace.

Eventually Sef joined the circle and my eyes went back to the macabre accessory at his side. No one knew where exactly he picked it up. No one asked either. Some thought he killed a man with his own hands and took it as trophy. We crossed paths with so few people that this seemed unlikely, though not impossible. We had ranged for miles without seeing other people, though certainly others were out there. We knew the frigid northeast still had some small communities, subsisting mostly off shellfish. Travelers had also told us about the exotic southeast where vast orchards of citrus fruit grew wild, free for the taking. Though there were also disturbing stories about folk behaving bizarrely, perhaps driven mad by the geography itself. The other theory was that Sef picked it up off a corpse, maybe hoping it would give off the same impression as the first theory. I had never seen him kill a man, but I didn’t think him incapable of it.

                “We should get some sleep. We move at daybreak.” Sef said, or maybe commanded.

Steam rose from the fire as Modra doused the last of the embers and the stars glittered overhead beyond the leafy green gables.

I awoke to the sun shimmering through the thin fabric of my tent. A carpet of white blanketed the camp as light snowflakes fell through the tree branches. The rest were already awake and had begun packing our belongings into the wagons to get ready to set off. Rudy and Modra wanted to move south along the river, fishing along the way to stock up on food. Sef wanted to explore the village. Occasionally we found useful items in these towns, the guns for example, though we hadn’t had ammunition for any of them in months. Zluta thought she could find more scribblings, apparently believing that with more samples she could decipher their meaning. In contrast to his typical brashness, Rudy feared the towns were increasingly becoming the haunts of packs of animals that roamed the area. During the day the beasts mostly kept to themselves but would come out at dusk to feed. The decision was made to loot the town and get out before nightfall.

From the hill we went our way through the forest until finding the grey pathway that led to the village. I found these towns fascinating, geometric and organized in a way that was at once like and unlike our lives outside. The dwellings were uniform in their layout and construction, but the green of the forest had become intertwined with the villages in a way that struck me as unwelcome by the original builders. Next to the village entrance hung a large panel that bore the same kind of inscriptions as Zluta’s leaves, some long forgotten and now unreadable name for this place. The grey path gave way to black, the kind of path that in the summer becomes too hot to walk on until you feel compelled to run to the cool of the grass. We moved dwelling by dwelling, each looking for usable supplies or trinkets that caught our eye. I marveled over the variety of objects, tools, art, and other things that I couldn’t tell if were decorative or had some long-forgotten use. The white-grey walls were adorned with objects of every shape and color. Depictions of wild life or scenery were common, as were repeated streaks of color, often red and white. Many dwellings contained identical black monolithic sculptures, staring at you with a cold unfeeling that emotionlessly reflected your own image back at you.

The sun dipped low as I emerged from the last dwelling at the end of a pathway that diverged from the main path. I called out and heard Rudy reply from the adjacent structure. I entered to find him rifling through a wood frame.

                “Anything good?” I asked.

                “Nothing. This place is bare as a bone-dry carcass. We should get moving.”

I murmured my assent and turned toward the entrance way as a piercing scream rang out from somewhere in the village. Rudy and I bolted down the path towards the source of the noise. Another scream, from pain rather than fear this time. We turned the corner and saw Modra rushing towards one of the large structures at the end of the path, a grandiose building with a large grass field surrounding it and a mature oak growing straight through the center. Rudy and I rushed in behind Modra to a scene of pure chaos. Davny lay against the far wall, bleeding from his neck and torso. Sef stood beside him with a gash from wrist to forearm, staring intensely at a spot behind a wall 10 steps to my left. As I moved into the room I saw the objects of his attention. Two fully grown wolves, each my weight plus one half. Fangs bared, blood dripping from the larger wolf, hackles raised and growling menacingly. Rapid footfalls signaled Zluta entering from the rear of the building, the right most wolf whirling to meet her. She paused at the doorway, slowly pulling a dagger from her robe. The four of us formed a half circle around the two animals, encircling them in the far corner of the room. Four pairs of human eyes locked on those of the two animals, staring back with hateful malice. Rudy took a half step forward then stopped, frozen in place. My blood ran fearful cold as a howl rang out from outside the home, answered by another, then another. I turned to see three more wolves move towards the front entrance. Smaller, but no less menacing, their agile muscles flexed beneath fur matted down by the melted snowfall.

Two more wolves approached the rear entrance as a streak of yellow flashed across my vision. Zluta spun toward the far side of the room, plunging her dagger into the nearest wolf’s unprotected back. The wolf howled in agony as its pack mate leaped at Zluta’s neck, closing its vicelike jaws in an unforgiving grip. Modra hurtles across the room, cerulean spear whirling in one continuous motion, drawing blood from first one wolf then another. A blur of angry red streaks across the room, grey jaws snapping around it. A wet, heavy weight falls on my back as I strike the floor chest first. I struggle to my feet as my hands flail. I grasp at a streak of silver that passes my vision, then strike out, drawing blood, blood like mine. I catch Zluta’s gaze for a moment before she closes her eyes. Rudy grabs a knife off a nearby table and plunges it into the heart of the sole remaining wolf. The building falls silent, heavy breaths forming wisps of steam in the frozen air.

I pick up the black leather belt. The bones make a satisfying clack clack as I walk through the open door.