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DUN SAT BOLT UPRIGHT in the darkness. Eyes open. Heart battering. He could still feel it coming.
Churning cold metallic water, spray everywhere, his sinews twanged tight, heart banging, ears singing. At least that’s blocking out the sound of... What? What is it? What in the Gods is it? It’s coming, still coming. It’s like it’s, it’s a hunger. Driven. Want and hate. Blood and bone. Closer. Closer and ... He inhaled a final struggling breath and shoved the horror in his head away.
He could hear his brothers and sisters making small stirring noises not far from him. He hoped he hadn’t woken Mother too; he’d never hear the end of it. Since Father had disappeared, Mother had changed. Not close to him. Not warm. He’d become the man of the family and that was that. He still felt too young but what could he do? Someone had to hunt and forage while Mother cared for the little ones and he was the eldest. And now he was waking everyone more nights than not with these blasted dreams.
All that was familiar trickled into his brain: his bed of reeds underneath him, the drone of the fans, and the warm mammalian smell of his family. A new span in the Dark; time to wake up. The nightmares took longer to shake off. He dreamed of something pursuing him through tunnels, his calves deep in water. It was something horrible hunting him down. He ran and ran until his lungs felt like rags. Then, of course, as it got to him, he’d wake up. Every time he tried to get back to sleep, there it would be again, waiting.
He sighed. There was no telling Mother about his dreams. One day Father had gone out and had never come back. Just like that. It was like he’d ceased to exist. Once Father’s smell had faded from their home, it grew harder and harder to remember he had ever been there.
Thinking about Father always made him feel a sharp sadness, even though it had happened two ages ago. Mother had pined, of course. Crying at night once she knew the babies were asleep. Hearing her weep in the darkness, Dun knew he’d be growing up faster than his friends. He couldn’t talk to most of them about his concerns, except Padg. The others were busy playing and chasing each other as if nothing had happened; for them nothing had.
Padg, though, he had his own responsibilities. Being the son of the Shaman could do that. They’d known each other since they’d been the two youngest pups in the village. Padg had always been the most worldly of all their group, not averse to getting into trouble with the rest of them, but certainly averse to getting caught. He’d saved them all from many a beating. Now with Father gone, it felt to Dun like Padg was the only one he could talk to. Odd. The sense of responsibility Dun felt he’d had thrust upon him, Padg had been born with.
***
AFTER BREAKFAST AND helping Mother feed the little ones, Dun went out, slamming the rush door behind him. He walked to the wooden span across the massive river pipe; the crossing that gave the Bridge-folk their name. From there, it was easy to follow the rope path to the village. He needed to reach the Shaman’s compound on the opposite side of the village if he wanted to talk to Padg about why he’d been feeling so odd.
Out of the burrow, he was enveloped by the hum of smell and noise from the village. Some kind of auction of a new piece of found tech seemed to be taking place in the market. He heard raised voices, oddly (usually trading in Bridge-town was a good-natured affair). He couldn’t process any of it today. It was all he could do to follow the rope guides underfoot without walking into anything. His head buzzed. He was relieved to finally reach the woven gate and the wisps of incense and worked wood told him he’d reached his destination.
“Dunno...” was all his friend could muster after Dun retold his dream.
“Well, thanks for that; great help.”
“I mean, it might be something, it might be nothing.”
“Somehow, none of today is working out how I’d planned,” Dun sighed.
A breeze outside stirred the wooden wind chimes beside the lean-to shed Padg used as his workshop. Dun stretched out his arm to feel along the rack that held his friend’s work in progress. He felt twisted bamboo staves that would be made into sword-spears, preferred weapon among the Bridge-folk. A shup-shup-shup sound indicated Padg had resumed work with sanding the sword-spear at his bench. The sword was made out of the extremely hard, woody stem of one of the larger fungi growing in the depths; it didn’t stay sharp for very long, but long enough. The hunters usually carried two or three strapped to their backs for good measure. Padg carved particularly well; he was especially good at forming the helical twist in the shaft of the weapon that made it fly true when thrown.
“Padg? Hello?”
“Hush, I’m sanding.”
“Oh.”
The rhythm of the sanding was a reassuring odd kind of tune with the wooden, just musical, clunking of the chimes.
“Padg?”
“Sanding? Tricky. Needs concentration.”
“Sorry, it’s just...”
The sanding block clattered to the floor.
“Right! I give up,” Padg said. “Grab a rod from the rack; there’s some scraps in the bucket. You need something to occupy your hands.”
Fishing was always Padg’s go-to in a crisis. They left through the back flap of Padg’s workshop and headed to his favorite spot: a rusted through hole at the top of the massive pipe. They scrambled up the side using massive bolt heads in the metal surface of the pipe as a makeshift ladder. Once at the top they gathered their kit, baited the long lines necessary to get down far enough and let each one fall through the hole with a satisfying ‘plop’.
They fished for a while in companionable silence. A lazy breeze, scented faintly with vinegar, drifted up through the hole.
“Detail!” Padg cried suddenly.
“Eh?” Dun cocked his head, bewildered.
“Detail, my friend. That’s what was bothering me.”
“Good, I’m glad. Care to tell me why?”
“Your dream. Most peoples’ dreams are vague, full of confused smells, feelings, sometimes sounds. You know, the I was there with my friend but it was really my sister and then the tunnel became my house, kind of thing. Yours felt like you were there.”
“You can say that again,” Dun said.
“Maybe you were.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. Maybe you were there. Or at least maybe you will be.”
“You’re talking in riddles.”
“Might be I’m not explaining it right. Listen, Dad talks about this kind of stuff all the time. You sit around and hear enough of it, and you kind of get a feel for it. Let’s go back and find him; I think he’ll be able to help. Besides, the fishing’s rubbish today.”
