Chapter Two:
Where It Lies Quiet Within the Earth
VI
Crawling on my stomach, I crested the hill and fumbled
for my binoculars without betraying my profile to any observant eyes. The tall
grass bent around my body in a loosely-woven cloth. It swayed and caressed my
body like the long hair of a gentle lover. The midmorning, Indian summer sun
was sweltering whenever the air remained calm for several minutes. But the
increasing northerly wind reminded me of why I had dressed in several layers
despite the sun.
Through my binoculars, the
Androscoggin Plains undulated and rippled in an auburn sea as the air swept and
dipped across the rolling country around me. The air was a living creature: the
wind was its breath and growl; its teeth were the cold that bit through my
clothing.
I scanned with my binoculars
in a semicircle without shifting position. Pap and Cali were visible against the greenery of the
river bottom, some two kilometers away. Through my links, my GPS confirmed the
distance with their own. Just for the sake of tradition I put my binoculars
down and pulled my battered old compass from inside my shirt. I picked two
landmarks, for triangulation, and began to unfold my topographic printout to
get my bearings.
Go nieri antaw laht
was scrawled across it in my mother’s hand. She wished me good luck in her
non-native Shondrean. Her signature doodle of a smiling face accompanied her
wishes. I couldn’t help but smile, feeling the knots in my stomach begin to
untangle for the first time in two weeks. So far, she had not followed through
with her threat to petition the CAF.
I compared my compass
bearings to my GPS and found I was right on. I felt pride for one current thing
in my life. I put the topo and compass away.
The grass was high enough
that I felt more confident sitting up. Slowly turning my head and twisting my
upper body, I scanned in a full circle looking for the buck I had been stalking
for most of the morning. In this rolling country, he would not stay still long
enough for a legitimate shot; always disappearing behind some bit of brush,
creek bed or hillock as he browsed and grazed. He was a smart, old antallop,
always using the terrain as cover, and that was why he had grown so huge.
He was the trophy I longed
for. He would dress out at an easy one hundred-fifty kilos and his horns
spiraled a full meter towards the sky. I had already passed on two does and a
solitary, lesser buck this morning after seeing this big, old buck. I sat and
replayed the morning’s hunt in my mind.
We had played hide-and-seek
in a meandering northeasterly direction, paralleling much of the river. I would
try to figure his direction and run ahead, using the terrain for my own
advantage, to establish an ambush. He would shift his path slightly and the
only open shots I would ever have were always beyond the range of my rifle.
He had almost caught wind of
me a half-hour earlier as he circled to check his back trail. I had been
slouched, almost doubled over and trying to jog along the base of a hill as he
browsed down a dry creek bed on the other side. This was the closest to him I
had been all morning.
I blew it as we stumbled
into each other’s paths. Rushing to head him off again, I had thrown caution to
the wind and I hadn’t had my rifle ready for a shot. And I should have known
better by my age: such recklessness could get me mauled or killed in this
country. I glanced up the hill and froze. The buck was only ten meters away,
standing broadside on the top. It would have been a perfect shot if he hadn’t
been staring right at me.
Thankfully, the wind was at
his back and he couldn’t scent me. I froze in a half crouch with only the top
of my head showing above the grass. I tried not to quiver and barely breathed. I
couldn’t bring my rifle to my shoulder without him seeing me. I prayed to the
fates of the river that I wouldn’t unnecessarily shake or move.
Somehow, painfully slowly, I
slipped below the top of the grass into a sitting position with my knees up. After
an eternity I brought my rifle to my shoulder and rested it on my knee. My
lungs forced ragged, nervous breaths and my hands shook too hard, as I held my
rifle, to sight on him properly. His image bounced within the view through my
scope.
He snorted, stamped a hoof,
and trotted down the far side of the hill. He did not appear spooked. I gave
him a few minutes and crawled on my belly to the top of the hill. If he had
started loping away I might have a shot.
He was nowhere to be seen.
From the hill I studied the landscape
some more. The banks of the creek were shallow just beyond where the buck had
climbed this hill. I could see into it for more than a kilometer. There were no
more long hills or rock fields for him to disappear behind. We were coming upon
the bleak, open country of the Follav Duhv. If he crossed those black sands I
would easily have him in sight for a shot.
The terrain we were in had
started a long, gentle slope towards the river bottom of the Sruh Antallop. The
wind was coming up from that river bottom. I hazarded a guess that he had
simply bedded down after our encounter, with the river at his back, and was
chewing his cud somewhere out in the grass.
He would probably be there
for a couple of hours before he would return to feed. The rut had not yet
started so there was little to make him move rashly. I decided to wait him out,
scanning the grass with my binoculars from the hill. I would stalk right past
him if I tried to do otherwise for the time being.
I timed my movements to the
gusts of wind. Relying mostly on their nose, antallop don’t see good definition
but are super-sensitive to quick motions. I swayed with the grass and shifted
into a more comfortable position.
My right shoulder was in
line with the rough direction we had come. That was south-southwest. With my left
shoulder almost northeast I could swing my rifle across an arc covering most of
the buck’s potential paths. I bet myself that he would continue to make his way
for the evergreen swamp at the headwaters of the Sruh Antallop after he
finished his nap. I began to mentally prepare myself for the wait, confident
that I would succeed.
The wind died down a little,
the air re-warmed and I felt like taking a little nap myself.
With my rifle cradled across
my lap, I centered my weight better and closed my eyes. My nose and ears took
over the work of observation. Humans hadn’t entirely lost a keen sense of smell
but merely placed it on a back shelf and the Shondrean liked to utilize the
contents of that shelf.
Slowly and fitfully, I
sought to meditate and relax. This would be crucial for me to win the waiting game
with big, old buck. I tried to open my consciousness to the world around me
through feeling rather than seeing. It felt similar to an uplink into the
Cog-Net. There was sensation and inner-visualization. Instead of perceptual icons
and taskbars came recalled landmarks, the wind on my exposed face and the
smells of the grass and earth. I tried to ignore the sensations of my own body
and radiate my thoughts away from it.
I tried to ride along the
circular river of biological energies—the auras that emanate from every living
thing as surely as generators free electrons to move down a power conduit. Generations
have tried to quantitatively define and manipulate these energies. Civilizations
have sought to tap the truest secrets of life. But they are to see and feel,
not own. We may clone an animal but we still require a formatted building block
such as a host egg or phage. That initial, required spark of life belongs to no
one.
Some still think of it as an
enigma to be deciphered. Others readily refer to it as soul; as Anam for the
Shondrean. They are content to let it all flow in the great, circular river of
life. Whatever it may be, it emanates from all life and pools like fallen rain.
All pools eventually overflow into streams that meld into a river that feeds
itself; it flows back on itself; it evaporates; it rains and pools.
I let myself slide on the
concepts as surely as my soul was part of the cycle of Kinyantai n’Sruh; of the
currents of fate. The meditation nourished and balanced the long famished, less
tangible parts of myself.
To the forebears of the
Tuahan Solas Shondra it was considered magic. To us, in the contemporary, it
still was. The magic was the balancing of the three interlocking links of our
existence—physical, mental and spiritual. Triangular in shape, they intertwined
on a common point and the ring of the great river flowed and wove through their
outer sides. The workings of the magic were the combination of meditation,
prayers and ritual action to reunite fractured harmony between these links. It
could touch upon other existences we didn’t encounter in our every day lives.
The Shondrean likened
themselves to a partially uprooted tree, always striving to reunite with the
earth and the flow of life around it. For a truly uprooted tree slowly withered
and died. This was a lesson that too much of humanity was still trying to
learn.
I desperately needed to
re-harmonize but my thoughts stayed too frenetic, too distracted. I was only
able to tickle my spiritual toes in the river though I did feel the flowing
water, so cool and relaxing. It cascaded down the rocks of a mountain on Tánn’mekkah
and caressed the teaming fish in its care. Great bears splashed into its
presence like playful tickles of an energetic lover.
I felt a sense of arousal
and my thoughts skipped on, not wanting to stay there. I found myself still
thinking of the buck and returned to the sensations of the wind, the feel of
the grass and the smells of the earth.
Crahak!
The report of a small-caliber
rifle ended my meditation. I slipped back to mundane consciousness and let my
vision readjust. The sound came from the direction off my right shoulder, back
the way I had come. I recognized the sound. It was the 6.5 millimeter, lightweight
rifle that Pap had taught all of us to hunt with. The quick report told me that
Cali had shot
her first antallop. For her, the anticipation and fun were over. The hard work
of taking care of the meat would begin.
A surge of adrenaline swept
my body like the blast from a bomb and interrupted my musings on how she would
react to field dressing a warm, bloody carcass for the first time. Throughout
my decade of hunting, I have always sworn that it is a sixth sense, or a
touching of Kinyantai n’Sruh, that alerted me to the presence of animals. I
almost always felt before seeing. Straight ahead, over three hundred meters
away, I saw the silhouettes of ears and horns in the grass.
It was the buck. The shot
must have alerted him. I tried to shift for a better position to shoot. I
prayed he would stand up. I was not going to try a head shot, so low in the
grass, at that distance.
He answered my prayers by
standing and stretching. I eased my rifle up. The rangefinder in my scope
declared him at three hundred, eleven meters. It should be a feasible shot for
my eight millimeter rifle.
I started to admire him. I
had never seen a buck, firsthand, this large and I had to forcibly draw my
thoughts away from his horns. I couldn’t stop looking at them. I ignored the
wind that began to gust again.
My muscles were twitching,
keeping me from making more fluid movements. My heart beat harder and I had
trouble breathing. I was too nervous, too excited. I fought to control this
excitement and everything slowed to heavy, individual heartbeats.
Thump!
Breaths became a long,
sucking wind in my chest that could never really cease.
Thump!
I managed to begin placing
the scope’s crosshairs onto his body; fighting every urge to just soak in the
vision of him. I couldn’t stop looking at his horns.
Thump!
I fought down the invariable
sadness that pervades some part of my soul every time I start to terminate the
existence of a sentient being.
Thump!
Another part of my soul was
fought down as a conflicting bloodlust attempted to come forth. Holding the
power at a fingertip to decide the fate of something was a narcotic rush.
Thump!
I held the crosshairs on the
little spot, low, just behind his shoulder, where his vital organs were aligned
for a swift and fatal blow. I reached out to feel for the invisible line that would
connect my eye to this spot.
Thump!
I tried to focus on the task
at hand. My entire world existed only within that patch of clear light
surrounded by the darkness of the scope’s tube. All else disappeared into the
dark metal. I sought the invisible line.
Thump!
No sounds or feelings
penetrated the steel tube. The warm sun and the stirring of the grass in the
cold wind were ignored. I had to find the line.
Thump!
My thumb slid the safety
forward. I instinctually felt it disengage. The flashpin on the rifle charged.
Thump!
My index finger caressed the
trigger. The antallop began to shake and act nervous.
Thump!
My finger brought the
trigger back towards me. The grass around the buck was bent by a severe wind
gust. I did not quite feel the line as the trigger came back.
And the world erupted back into real time with recoil
from my rifle. I was slammed out of the steel-encased reality with ringing ears
from the muzzle blast and echoing report. Instinctively, I worked the lever to
chamber another charge and bullet. I brought the rifle back to my shoulder and
stared through the scope at the empty space where the buck had stood and the wind
sweeping across the grass.
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