Cloudrock

by Garry Kilworth

Genres: Horror; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

On Cloudrock the penalty for imperfection is death: death by the long fall into the void, through the poisonous mists and gases that rise from the deadlands far, far below. The two tribes who survive on the Rock, the tribes of Day and Night, keep their families tight, their bloodlines pure and true, by incest, by cannibalism and by murder. Parcelling out their tiny world in measures of light and time, they wrap themselves in ritual and taboo, each family denying the presence of the other. Then came the Shadow. Born to the matriarch Catrunner, the Shadow is deformed - a neuter dwarf - a natural candidate for instant death. But for this mutant, fate intervenes. The Shadow may live - on the condition that none acknowledge its presence: one word, one glance, and the Shadow will join its luckless kin in the long death-flight. Surviving on the outskirts of the family, the Shadow's very existence creates an unspoken question that challenges the ties that bind. This is the Shadow's tale...

Release date: November 30, 2012

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 256

Sample

All this was a long time ago, when I was a shadow – the shadow of my elder brother, Clay.

Being one of the unwanted I was never given a name. It was obvious from my deformities that I was asexual and could never bear or produce children, so they indulged my brother’s whim and allowed me to live amongst them, though I am sure my unique position – an unwanted among the Family – was considered to be temporary. It was never intended that I should reach adulthood. If the nuisance in me had ever outweighed my usefulness to Clay, then Catrunner, our mother, would have had no hesitation in tossing me from the sacrificial rock to my death. It was only because my mother was a strong personality amongst the Family, and Clay was her favourite, that I had escaped thus far.

I lived from day to day, a touch, a look, away from death. Shadows, though visible, are disregarded. They are unacknowledged. They are the insubstantial phantoms of a physical presence that drift behind their hosts like thin, black ghosts. Shadows are cold, do not have feelings, and melt away in the darkness. I was a shadow in all aspects but one: I did have feelings. Sometimes they were so strong they were painful and when I could not be with Clay, I would curl up in my nest in the rocks and nurse my hurt until I fell asleep.

Our village was situated between the forest and the lake. We lived in yurts – or at least, Family members did – made of animal skins: tents, with pliable pole frames. In the caves on the far side of the forest lived the second Family. We met only occasionally, during twilights, for they hunted at night, while we hunted by day.

It was around my eleventh birthday that Flower became pregnant. She was the sister-wife of Reedscar and just eighteen years old. I watched her belly grow larger as she moved around the village, singing to herself in a quiet voice. When she was carrying for five months she had to stay at home, rather than go hunting with her brother-husband and she cried because she wanted to be with him all the time. They had not been married for very long.

Flower was a pretty girl, with long, black hair that reached her waist and she had a soft look to her eyes that endeared her to me. I felt sure that, had I been one of the Family, we would have been good friends. Of course, she never spoke to me or acknowledged my presence, even though she often caught me raking through the ashes of the main fire for scraps of food in the early hours.

Sometimes I would sit and watch her in the sunset, as she stroked the taut skin beneath which was new life, letting the last rays of the sun warm the big, brown swelling. Then her brother-husband would come outside their yurt and place his cheek against her belly and they would both giggle like small children. They seemed happy. Of course, they fought the way all Family did, but the fights were short-lived and not serious.

I watched her all the way into her ninth month.

Just before dawn one morning, she gave birth. I heard the wail reach up into the starless night and then the baby’s cry followed closely behind. The two sounds came almost together and I felt my heart quicken as I realized what must happen. The baby was to exchange one darkness for another. From the darkness of the womb it would go immediately to the darkness of the grave.

A group of matrons, attendant at the birth, came out of the yurt followed by a distraught-looking Reedscar. The light of the morning was just seeping through the clouds overhead. The father called a lament in a loud tone, to wake the rest of the Family, and they came sleepily from their yurts to join the procession, which made its way around the lake and across country, towards the edge of the plateau. At the head of the procession was the Great-grandmother, carrying the newly born babe of Flower and Reedscar. I scurried beside my brother Clay, who looked neither to the right nor left, but kept his eyes fixed on the back of our mother, Catrunner.

We passed the dark shapes of the forest trees in complete silence. There was no need for any talk. One of the Night Family paused in the act of trussing a monkey he had killed. He was standing on the edge of the forest, in which he had been hunting, and watched us pass by. He gave no sign of greeting, nor was any expected. The death of the small creature he held in his hands was strong in my nostrils. The spidery, hairy arms of the monkey dangled loosely and pathetically from the hunter’s strong sinewy body as he draped it over his shoulder.

The hunter stared too long at my crooked form and since he was not of our Family I began to get concerned and ran amongst some ferns, to re-join the group later on the path.

We found a dark stream, sluggish through recent lack of rain, and followed it along until we reached the perimeter. The group stopped. Reedscar stepped forward and took the crying baby from the Great-grandmother’s arms. He walked to the edge of the precipice.

Without further ceremony he grasped the child by one leg and tossed it over the edge of the world.

Small limbs stretched outwards from the tiny body, forming a star in the void. I watched the little white shape plummet down, into the mists of the Deadlands below. It was over. One more unwanted had gone to its death. I had seen what had caused it to be treated in such a way. It had been born with misshapen legs.

After the others had left, I stayed on, near the edge and watched the sun rise. Below me I could see the shape of my world in the shadow cast upon the Deadplace below: a mushroom with a thick base to its stem. We lived on the top of this mushroom, which we called Cloudrock, which was forested grasslands forming a huge thick ring around a central lake. It was a place of solid-foam white coral, like cloud gone hard, and when the lake became too full of rainwater it sent out streams of watery legs towards the edge of the plateau. There they formed thin waterfalls that dropped to the Deadlands below.

Because of the overhang, we could not see directly below Cloudrock, but out onto the Deadplace beyond, which was a flat area stretching as far as the eye could see, covered in white sparkling dust that hurt the eyes when the sun’s glare struck its crystals. There were always mists down there too: drifting, confused and confusing, rippling their way over the surface of the land of dead spirits. Ghouls and ghosts of the unwanted lived down there. Crooked creatures, like me, but without real bodily forms. They were disparate pieces of spiritual flotsam, washed on the winds, wafted by the breezes, to remote corners. They lived in the constant misery of knowing that they could never become one with Redgod, the bloodspirit that streaks the sky at dawn and dusk. Only Family could become part of that ancestral bloodstreak: only the pure-blooded men and women, perfect in body and mind, could die in the knowledge that they would live again as part of the sunrise and sunset. The clustering of the bloodsouls of my ancestors during these times was an awe-inspiring sight but one I would never be part of. They watched over the Family with jealous eyes, ensuring that only the pure would be eaten at death and remain within the circle.

I stared down again. There was nothing below me to mark the fact that the baby had ever existed. There was no hole in the mist, nor was anything disturbed beyond my emotions. The little deformed creature was now amongst its own kind. I turned away and began running back to the village to join my brother in the day’s hunting. I passed tall rocks that stood high above the lush vegetation. I loved my home for its rocks. They whispered to me, and though their language was strange we came to understand one another as I grew older, in the way that a man and his dog do. Somehow I knew I was closer to them than anyone else on Cloudrock (Clay excepted) and that made me special. They had energy and power, were dark and mysterious. They were mystics, saturated by time and ancient memories, which filled their every vein and pore. They had souls.

I skirted the freshwater lake. My feet made padding sounds on the shore and I could smell the earth awakening beneath the sun. It was a good smell: fresh and clean. The scent of drying grasses and damp leaves filled my nostrils and I breathed deeply as I ran. I was alive. The warm sun felt good on my small, naked body: burned gently into my brown skin. I could hear the stirrings of the forest creatures as they began their day and the plopping of the fish on the surface of the lake. All around me was life. Parrots were screeching obscenities at one another, the way family members did, and monkeys gossiped at rapid pace like hunters around a fire. A wildcat vacated the path in front of me as it saw me bearing down on it, slinking away into the undergrowth with an air of annoyance at being disturbed. The brightening sun was bringing out the colours and markings of the live world around me and I thrilled to my own existence. I was alive.

My brother Clay was washing in the lake when I arrived at the village, splashing water over his crouched lean form. My brother was very good to me. He never acknowledged my presence and I lived to anticipate his needs. If he had, just once, called, ‘Hey, you!’ I would have been thrown the way of my two younger sisters, the way of the child I had seen falling like a stone into the mists that very morning.

He stood up, the water shining on his skin, like a young god. As I approached him he stared vacantly over the top of my head. Clay loved me, I was sure, otherwise he would have spoken to me. He would have acknowledged my presence with knowing eyes. Instead, he ignored me. He must have loved me very much, though perhaps he loved Tilana more. I was with him on that day he met her. He was almost eighteen. She was two months away from the same birthday.

Twilight, and overhead the sky was blood-streaked, with flecks of black weaving turbulently through the rushing clouds. According to the calendar it was a Good Day. A storm was gathering fast above Cloudrock. I liked to see our ancestors, the bloodspirits in the sky, so angry. It seemed to justify the rage within myself.

Clay was standing on an outcrop of rock, a dark silhouette against the dawn, stroking his bow in thought. I sat, hunched behind some ferns, some few yards away. I was wondering whether we were going to turn back to the village because of the impending storm, or continue the hunt. We could both smell wild pig to the south but I awaited my brother’s move.

Finally, he descended from the rock and began a slow jog towards the source of the odour. We were going to hunt.

It was exciting to see Clay run. His dark, lean body moved with such suppleness I could have shouted for joy. Instead, I followed silently behind him, my own shorter legs having difficulty in keeping up with him. As we drew closer to the pigs we slowed the pace, until we were some fifty rods downwind and crawling through the grasses.

There were about seven of them rooting around with their snouts amongst the palm trees. Clay had already fitted an arrow to his bow and we crept forward, the grasses scratching at our bellies and the storm flies sticking to our sweat. I was unable to brush away the insects that entangled themselves in my hair, for fear of scaring away the pigs. The irritation they caused me however, was compensated for by the excitement I felt.

The atmosphere was heavy, bearing down on our naked bodies with a damp weight and I knew that soon the rain would fall in torrents and the visibility would become too poor to see a rod in front.

Clay stopped, and carefully parted the grass at the edge of the clearing. Around us the insects hummed and crackled and kicked up such a din I was sure they were warning the pigs of our approach. Gradually, the bow was slid into the opening Clay had made and he took aim with the weapon horizontal. One of the pigs had its trotters, goat-like, on the base of a trunk and was chewing some berries from a low branch.

I heard the ‘thwunk’ of the bow releasing the arrow.

Suddenly this pig stood up completely on its hind legs like a human, staggered two paces and gave out a terrible shriek. For one moment I thought it was going to run at us on its hindquarters, screaming in rage, but then it fell backwards, kicking and squealing. The other pigs scattered, one of them heading straight for our hiding place. It was a young boar and I could see the fear travelling over its face like ripples over water. It kept coming, directly for Clay.

Clay half stood, seemingly mesmerized by its charge. He made no attempt to run or reload the bow and when the boar was some five rods from him I leapt out and ran towards the creature, throwing myself on its back and wrapping my small arms around its head. It kicked and spun in its tracks, snapping with its vicious mouth at thin air. I gripped with my legs around its middle, squeezing hard, until it grunted and quickly rolled over with me, into some thorns. My legs slackened and released the animal which ran back, into the forest.

When I stood up, picking out the painful, long spikes, the boar was gone. Clay was tending the pig he had shot, cracking it over the head with a stone. He deliberately turned his back on me as I approached and so I knew he was pleased with me. His rejection of me was comforting.

We tied the pig’s legs together and pushed a pole through them, hoisting it onto our shoulders. The grassland was alive with dancing spots of white and black as the insects heralded the imminent rain. A heavy globule of water hit my shoulder and we started to run, looking for shelter amongst some rocks. As the drops increased to a stream, we found a dark overhang and crawled underneath.

We had only been there a few moments when we heard the sound of running feet mingled with the drumming of the rain. Then heavy breathing like someone gasping for air after a hard swim and choking on water. Suddenly a figure came tumbling in beside us and on seeing the place occupied, crawled away quickly to the far side of the shelter.

The rain roared down. No one said anything for a long time.

In the gloom of our shelter I could see Clay’s eyes studying our companion, a young woman. Her own eyes told us she was one of the Night Family: they were large with irises as dark as black pebbles. Chance meetings such as this, with the other Family, were not uncommon at dawn and dusk, though we rarely did more than just acknowledge one another. My brother regarded her for a long while before he finally spoke.

‘My name is Clay,’ he said.

The girl turned slightly away and let her head drop so that her long black hair fell over her face, obscuring her features. We could no longer see those mushroom eyes and Clay began humming softly to hide his embarrassment. He plucked at his bowstring, pretending to make music to accompany his tune. Then he said abruptly:

‘Don’t you have a name? Are you mute? Let me see your tongue.’

I heard a sigh that became a whisper, then an audible word. The word was ‘Tilana’.

‘Tilana. Tilana,’ muttered Clay, as if tasting it like a piece of food on his palate. ‘Strange names for a strange people.’

Suddenly her head jerked up and there was anger in those round eyes.

‘Strange people yourself. Who are you to call us strange people? Who asked you to speak to me? Leave me alone. The storm will be over soon.’

‘Funny people,’ mused Clay, ignoring the outburst. He seemed amused. ‘Hunt by night, not by day. Live in caves, not in yurts.’ He twanged the bowstring as if to emphasize a point he had made.

‘Le. . .