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“DO YOU KNOW WHAT FORETELLING is, Dun?” The voice of Barg the Shaman was deep and reassuring. Dun guessed that came with the job.
“No.”
Dun, Padg, and his father enjoyed the warmth of the small air vent in the hut. Many of the shared buildings and all homes had a vent somewhere. They all came out of the ground or walls and delivered air in varying temperatures and smells, ending usually in a metal grill or mesh. The vent in Barg’s floor had the unusual combination of a warm air flow and no smell other than a slight tinge of metal. This allowed Barg to place bags of herbs on the grill, which warmed by the air flow, would permeate the hut. Dun felt wrapped in perfume: the sweet and the spicy, the nutty and the resinous; too enveloped and overwhelmed to work out one smell from the next. It was a warm blanket of aroma, comforting and welcoming.
“Have you been sleeping well, Dun?”
“Well...er...no. Not really.”
The Shaman didn’t reply. Dun felt he had to fill the void, but his brain skittered to work out exactly what to say, without sounding foolish.
“I’ve been dreaming quite a bit. Every rest. Usually several times each rest.”
“And you’ve been remembering them all, in great detail?”
“Yes. How did you...”
“Getting more compelling, more vital?”
“Yes.”
Somewhere in the depths of the vent Dun could hear the ping of metal expanding. The Shaman made a non-committal humming sound.
“When they first started, they were weird. On the inside of my head. Noises and scents but really vivid, quite random. Then there was this odd sensation... Like tingling or prickling, waves of something, blankets maybe but not, sometimes filling the whole of the inside of my head and hurting. I’m not describing this very well.”
“Those are called extra-sensory factors.”
“Oh?”
“Things that you can’t describe in sounds, touch, smell, taste or air-sense. It takes a while to get used to those, but you will. They’re something that you won’t really make a lot of, unfortunately. We don’t know what they mean. They come in different types; some foretellers have called them flavors; it helps to categorize them, but ultimately it’s hard to tell what they might mean. Historically, foretellers tend to ignore them, to be honest.”
Dun was so lost in his own thoughts in the effort to take everything in. Barg filled the gap this time.
“Have the dreams been getting more consistent? Recurring?”
“I’ve been having one dream that has, yes.”
“What happens?”
“I’m running along one of the rivers, in a tunnel and I’m being chased by something. A horrible something. It’s hunting me. It won’t give up and it’s gaining on me. But I can’t smell it or air-sense it; I just know it’s coming. Almost, but not quite like, I know what it’s thinking... A horrible ‘other’ thing.”
“The same every time?”
“Yes, well, starting the same every time, but it seems like there’s some more each time. Like a story?” Dun had intended his tone to be rhetorical, but Barg answered.
“Yes, like a story. Except this one may be real. And you may be in it.”
“Hey, I said that,” Padg chipped in.
“Thank you, Padg,” his father replied. “You have been listening all these years. It is a shame, though, that you’ve never had the foretelling gift.”
“Curse, more like.”
“Padg!” The Shaman could crack his voice like a whip.
“Sorry, Father.”
“What do you mean, ‘curse?’” Dun asked, worried.
“Some people find the responsibility that comes with the gift of foretelling too much for them.”
“That’s the folk it doesn’t drive bats!”
“Padg! That’s quite enough. This is a serious discussion of a very serious matter. If you can’t listen seriously then go outside. Young Dun here has the gift of foretelling whether he wants it or not. What matters now is that he understands it and what he does with it.”
“Sorry.”
“Hmm.”
A distant clang echoed up the air vent with a sigh of acrid air.
“So is it the future then? I’m experiencing the future?”
“No. Not exactly. Sometimes it may be the future, sometimes it can be the past, sometimes it is a foretelling from far away. Neither your future or your past.”
“So what use is that to me? Or to anyone?”
“That is for you to decide,” Berg said. “That is what makes the difference between a good Foreteller and Mad-folk. That is the riddle that is foretelling.”
“So you can’t tell me what my dream meant?”
“No. Only you can know that. All I can say is that you do have the gift.”
“But this dream,” he corrected himself, “foretelling seemed so real. And it’s not happened to me yet, so it must be my future, mustn’t it?”
“Each foretelling appears from the mind of someone there, sometimes many minds. All of that appears in your mind. It seems like it’s come from you. This is a lot to take in for one day, my young friend. Go home and think about it. Return to me after the next rest, and we’ll talk some more.”
Dun left the hut in a daze, foretelling, multiple futures, madness, extra-sensory-whatever-the-hells-they-were. He already had way more responsibility than ever he felt ready for, and now this. It was a long while before Dun realized Padg was still there walking alongside him, and to be honest with himself, Dun hadn’t the first idea where he was going. He let his legs and the noisy current of folk carry him, while his conscious brain wasn’t occupied with the task of directing him. The smell of Dodg’s sweet-food stall on the market hit him just before he hit it.
“Dun!” Padg laughed.
“Sorry—in another world there.”
Feeling guilty for dragging his friend halfway across the village, Dun felt in his shoulder bag for some trade strips he knew still carried some credit. He could smell the Sweetcrackle dried mushrooms on the stand. He asked for two handfuls and handed over the wooden trade strip. The sound of a few brief scratches followed as Dodg made tallies on it, before handing it back to Dun.
“Thanks.”
The friends walked on munching side by side for a while. They tried to give the bowl in the center of the village, where auctions usually took place, a wide berth. The rowdy market that Dun had heard earlier seemed to have descended into a full-blown row. The raised voices of Bridge-folk seemed to be interspersed with the nasal shrieks of a group of River-folk traders.
“You don’t think that’ll happen to me do you?” Dun said.
“What?” Padg said. “Foretelling? Sounds like it already has.”
“No, not the foretelling or whatever it’s called; the going mad.”
“Don’t know. Probably not.”
Probably. That was reassuring. Well, he’d have to settle for that for now, while he worked out what exactly was going on inside his head. Until then, he was supposed to do chores. Mother would need him by now. It would be chaos there, though; the pups fighting, Mother shouting. It wasn’t much better staying here, whatever the hells was going on today. He needed time alone to think. He said good-bye to Padg. Maybe another go at some fish?
***
DUN CREPT BACK THROUGH the rush door of the family home at River-hole. It was eerily quiet. Maybe Mother had taken the little ones to crêche in the village; it was about that time. He searched for his hunting bag. His mother had made it for his father, and Dun felt awkward using it. The bag was a traditional folk woven one from reeds, as opposed to the recent trends of making bags out of materials from found-things. Dun didn’t have much to do with found-things. Not particularly because of the inherent danger or because of any traditionalist streak in him, but mostly because they were usually so damned expensive. The market traders and traveling visitors from the Machine-folk who collected and sold found-things made plenty of trade tallies to offset the risks they took, but on the whole, Dun didn’t get it. For most problems, there was a folk generated solution available, cheaper or free, and that suited him fine. He swung the bag over his shoulder and made for the passage that led from the family room down to the river. The texture of the bag in his hands was strangely comforting today.
He could feel the cloud of fresh moisture many strides before he reached the river. The sensation was something he took for granted. It permeated the whole tribe’s life, his family’s especially since of all the tribe, they lived closest to it, their home called “River-hole” due to a convenient tunnel to the bank. The noise of the water rose and fell with the seemingly random levels of the river, quieter today as it happened, but it was always there. He walked down to the edge of the water; there was the walkway along the edge of the river. He walked the familiar route to his favorite fishing place, underfoot the textured metal mesh lightly crunching with rust. Stopping at his usual place, just after the air grill on the wall, he lay down on his belly, arm in the water, to wait.
Patience was one of his strong points. He was always able to distract himself in one part of his brain, working out what he’d do next, planning ahead, while another part of him lay in wait, wired and sprung to pounce. A swish in the water and a fish would be caught, stunned and in his bag. That is, if a fish came along. He twitched his fingers. Funny, it seemed like he was having to reach farther down today, to even reach the water. Ah well, everything today seemed like more effort. Maybe, it was his attitude he should be focussing on...
“Aaaaaaaang!”
In the water, the blood, his hand, the pain. Something churning in the water. Angry, cold, alien. He snatched his hand out, sure to feel blood dripping down his arm but no. His hand was fine, wet with water, but fine. He wiggled his fingers. What the hell was going on? His pulse hammered. The dreaming, foretelling, again? While he was awake? He could scarcely cope with it every night. Would it be every night? Gods, he hoped not. He forced his breath slowly through his teeth.
Whether or not he could stand it, he was starting to understand the folk who couldn’t. When he was very young, there was someone from the village who had started behaving oddly. Beng? Or was it Teng? Dun couldn’t recall, but he could remember that the poor unfortunate became more and more strange and disassociated, talking to himself, arguing with absent demons. Eventually, you couldn’t smell him in the village and no one talked about him anymore. Now Dun knew why. He was beginning to imagine how this new “gift” could easily crack someone. The sleeplessness alone was enough to fray him at the edges.
He slowly clenched and unclenched his hand. He had the gift, want it or not, and he was just going to have to cope. There was no one else.
A cramp in his shoulder told Dun how long he’d been there. It never normally took this much effort to find a catch. He moved his spot to somewhere farther upstream, a spot he liked less but nearer the village bridge where the pipe turned. It was busier there. Dun didn’t like the disturbance, people going into the village, the noise of the market more obvious, but it was a sure place to catch something. He waited again. Slowly a chilling feeling crept up his insides; he carried on fishing, trying to quell it, but in the end, he had to let the obvious overwhelm him. No fish. There were no fish.
There had always been fish. How could there not be? He sat back on his haunches, head in his hands trying to think. The family would be fine—there were mushrooms he could find if he wanted—but that wasn’t the point. They’d be fine for now. All the Bridge-folk would be fine for now. But fish were an important part of what everyone had to eat. And then there was trade, although the woven weed bags that the Bridge-folk produced were very fine, by far the most important trade good was the fish. And there was something else he couldn’t put his finger on. A tickling in the back of his mind. Something important. He had all the fragments, but he couldn’t make them into one piece. Something was terribly wrong. One of the Elders in the village needed to know. Now.
He went straight to the Shaman’s hut. All he heard when he got in earshot was the snick-snick of Padg whittling. Dun could tell the noise of Padg’s carving from twenty or thirty strides away.
“Padg!”
“Hey! What’s wrong? You’re panting.”
“Where’s your father?”
“Some meeting of the elders in the Moot-hall. Why?”
Dun grabbed Padg by his shoulder and pulled him up to standing. The sword-spear he was working on fell to the floor with a clatter.
“Hells! Do you know how long those things take to sharpen?”
Dun kept pulling. “Come on, we’ve got to go there. Now!”
Padg stopped resisting and fell into an easy lope, alongside Dun. “Why?”
“Fish!” Dun shouted.
“Eh?”
“There’s no fish. In the river. None.”
“Gods!”
They slowed only as they reached the Moot-hall, a long low building built like the rest of the village hut dwellings from reeds and mud, but this was the largest building in the village and had the added feature of double-skinned walls, stuffed on the inside with fur to damp down noise from inside and out. However, no amount of auditory dampening or protection was going to hide the raised voices heard when the friends arrived.
“...care how important this is. He’s too young!”
Padg grabbed Dun and pulled him down into a crouch, just around the edge of the Moot-hall from its door.
“He’s wise for his years.”
“But not many of those!”
“He’s perfectly capable.”
“Enough!” The voice of Ardg, the village Alpha, was heard loudly, and then more quietly he said, “We have no choice.”
“But we would be sending him to certain... danger. Why can we not send a fully grown band of hunters?”
“You know why, Greng. We and only we of the Elders-moot know of the other threat that faces us. We must act with that in mind.”
“How goes the discussion with our River-folk ‘guest?’” Dun made out the odd, deep tones of Myrch, the Alpha’s most recent advisor.
“He still won’t tell us what he was searching for.” A female voice was Swych’s, the head of the Hunter’s Guild.
“Though clearly up to no good, poking through the Bibliotheca. All of our records and maps?” Myrch said.
“We have nothing to hide,” Ardg said.
“You say that like it’s a good thing,” Myrch said.
Both Padg and Dun were lifted off their feet swiftly and silently, gripped by the scruff from behind.
“People who listen at doors, get bent noses.”
The quiet, precise voice carried almost no scent. It could only be Swych, head of the hunter’s guild and tutor to both Padg and Dun in fighting and tracking and stalking food.
Dun and Padg, in mid-air, were still too stunned to reply. She had come out of nowhere, like a wraith, without even disturbing the air.
“Now what should we do with a pair of ear-flapping vagabonds, eh?” Swych said, hauling them up effortlessly. “I think we’ll let Ardg decide what punishment is fitting.”
With that, she swirled them around the corner and kicked the door to the Moot-hall deftly, so it swung inward.
“Friends, Elders, our meeting is adjourned. I have found some skulkers at the door jamb. What punishment do we deem fit?”
“Ah,” the Alpha said when the scent of Dun and Padg quickly followed them into the hut. “I suspect what we have to say to these young rogues may be punishment enough.”
