White Ghost and the Poison Arrow Sneak Peek
Chapter 1
Silver moonlight dances on the surface of the lake, bouncing off the ripples caused by the spring breeze. The scent of blossom blows across the water from the forest on the other side. The forest stretches almost as far as the eye can see. A sea of green and pink, all ghostlike under the full moon. Snow topped mountains can be seen in the distance. The snow will remain here long into summer. Remnants from the harsh winter just been. On the other side of the lake, a great expanse of plains lie, stretching as far as the eye can see. The grass is long and green, fresh from the spring rain and bountiful sunshine over the last few weeks. The grunts and snores of a herd of sleeping bison can be heard not far from the lake. A great oak tree sites a short distance from the lake, its wide branches filling the sky and bright green leaves, surrounded by pink blossom, grow like hair. The roots sprawl in all directions, twisting and turning in the ground. This tree is old, and has been standing by the lake since long before people walked these lands. Dark brown branches stretch out like fingers, the bark cracked and rough like dry skin.
Under the lone tree sits a girl of fourteen. Skin flawless and white as snow, hair as silver as the moon its-self. The breeze catches a wisp of hair, blowing it in front of her eyes. She takes her hair into her hand and pulls it all to her right, tying it into a loose braid. Using the water of the lake to see her reflection, she replaces the onyx coloured feathers she removed from her hair just a few hours ago, then secures it all with a leather strap at the bottom. She pulls her doe skin cloak tight around her shoulders. The breeze is nice, fresh and sweet, but still has the winter chill. The fabric of her trousers is soft but warm, made from the skin of a paloa fox, abundant in the grasslands. Many of the people in her tribe wear paloa skins, and they have been passed down through the generations.
In the distance a wolf howls, a long and lonely howl. She is soon joined by others, a beautiful but sad and haunting chorus. Arella sighs. How she wishes she was free as those wolves. She closes her violet eyes and leans back against the rough bark of the oak tree. This is the only place where she can be herself, out in the wilderness away from the tribe. Dream her own dreams and follow her own rules. Arella's tribe have strict rules on how a girl should behave, what she should look like and how she should talk... or not talk as the case may be. Arella has never been one to follow the rules, right from the day she was born. When Arella was born, her mother got into difficulty. The words on her final breath were "My sweet baby Arella". She was born without a father, the product of an invasion from an outside tribe, and with no other family to look after her. As a result Arella was given to another mother who had recently lost her child. Nayleen cared for Arella until she was 10, before she was killed on a hunting trip. Nayleen was a kind lady, but very set in her ways. Arella has been looking after herself since then, and as a result is more independent than the tribe leader would like her to be.
Arella is not well liked in her tribe, and for more than just her unwelcome outspokenness. She looks different from the others. Her pale skin and bright hair make her strange from the rest of the girls in her tribe. They are all dark skinned, tanned and black haired while she is pale. They do not let her be part of any of the rituals. Many in Arella's tribe believe that she is a curse on them, and that one day she will bring them bad luck. Arella's paleness is beautiful but unusual, and unusual things are not welcome in her tribe. Unusual things are something to be feared and rejected. If you do not know how something works, it might be dangerous. This is the way they think of Arella. They do not see her as unique, just something to be feared. If it weren’t for the fact that everyone in the tribe believed in the spirits doing things for a reason, Arella thinks they would have gotten rid of her a long time ago. They have not chased her off, or run her out of the tribe, but they do not treat her with respect either.
In the distance, sounds of music and laughter can be heard. The tribe are celebrating the birth of the chief's new son. He was born earlier that day, and is a healthy addition to the tribe. The chief already has three sons and two daughters, to carry on his name. His eldest son will most likely take over the tribe when his father passes. Arella sits under the oak tree, out of the way of the celebrations that she would not be welcome to even if she wanted to attend. All of the chief's children are model tribesmen. The boys are growing strong, and learning to hunt and fight. The eldest has broad shoulders and big arms, only fifteen but has the body of an older man, and his younger brothers going the same way. While the two girls are beautiful and courteous. They are learning to cook and clean and will make good wives for the warriors of the tribe. The eldest will soon be able to marry, she is fourteen now, and already has an intended husband. Arella would not make a good wife. She is not obedient enough. Why should she do what someone tells her to do, to cook for them, and clean for them and do everything they ask just because they are a man? But the tribe do not see it this way. They have lived like this since the elders can remember. Why change a system that does not need changing.
Arella longs to learn how to fight, and how to hunt. She practices in the fields near the lake, where the rest of the tribe cannot see her, but she could benefit from someone teaching her properly. She is fast and agile, can climb any tree, is flexible and agile, but has no strength to go behind it. She can throw a dagger well, and hit a target from thirty feet away, but her skills with a spear are lacking. At the very least she can run fast and hide, but Arella dreams of being able to join a hunting party and be part of something bigger. As it is, she is not part of anything. The men will not let her join them because she is a girl, and the women will not let her join them because she is different. Arella is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
A thought crosses Arella's mind while she listens to the sounds of the night. Why doesn't she just leave the tribe? Make her own life in the wilderness where she can be as free as the wolves she longs to follow. This thought has come to her many times, and the answer is always the same. She is scared. Arella has never been outside of her tribe, and however uncomfortable she feels in their presence, there is a certain comfort in knowing there are people around you. Arella knows she is not ready to live on her own. She knows the basics of hunting, and she can make a fire, but actually doing things in practice may not be so easy. She is determined to do it though, and she needs it to be soon. Even though Arella is only fourteen, she feels mature, and she knows what she wants. Freedom. More than anything, Arella wants to be free and have no worries.
Arella looks at the position of the moon. It is still early in the night. She shivers as a cool breeze blows across the lake once again. "I think I need to walk, otherwise I might freeze to this tree." she says to herself. Arella often talks to herself. She is the only company she has most of the time, and the company could be a lot worse she would tell herself. The gods can hear her too she tells herself in times of loneliness. They would not have made her this way unless it was for a good reason. This brings her some comfort, but Arella can't help wondering why she was made so pale, and whether her father was a pale man or if she was unique. Arella often though about her father, and wondered who he was. Nayleen had said that all they knew of Arella's father is that her mother started showing signs of carrying a child not long after the village was raided by a passing tribe. This happens all to often, but there is nothing anyone can do about it.
A great owl flies overhead, almost as if it is encouraging Arella to follow it. His big yellow eyes staring back at her as he flies silently through the night sky, his big wings beat once as he glides along. His white belly is the main thing Arella sees, but as he looks at her, the dark brown surrounding his facial features becomes clear, spotted with a lighter brown. This pattern continues down the rest of the owls body, all the way to his tail, fanned out for balance and steering as he flies. He calls out as he goes, and somewhere in the distance his mate calls back. He flies in the direction of the woods on the other side of the lake, calling as he goes.
Arella stands up and realises her feet are cold. She had taken her boots off while sat under the tree and forgotten. She slides her feet into her boots and laces them tight again. "Warmer already." She says. Arella has always preferred to go barefoot, but when walking on unknown land this is not always possible. Last thing she would want would be to hurt her feet and be unable to do the things she loves best. Arella shakes her legs to wake them from the cold and starts walking by the edge of the lake.
The moon lights up the area with great ease, not a cloud in the sky. The stars creating patterns and stories in the blackness. Arella likes night time best. She can see better in the dark then she can in the daylight. You could say she has night vision to a certain extent. During the day, Arella has to wear dark cloaks to shield her eyes, and paints her cheeks with charcoal to reduce the glare. By doing this she can see, even in bright sunlight, but without this she is almost blind. She can see well in cloudy conditions, and almost as good as daylight at night when the moon is out. This is another unique factor about Arella that the other tribe members do not like, but it is a feature that she has grown to love. She can hide in the dark of the forest and watch the wildlife at night, when no other person could do so.
The further from the village she walks, the quieter the sounds of the celebrating tribe get. The crunch of gravel underfoot is a soothing sound. It reminds her that she is alone, at one with nature. She can breathe out here, and she feels at home. Maybe leaving the tribe might not be so difficult after all. They would look at her as a bad omen, and if anything were to happen to the new baby, she would get the blame. This happened a couple of years ago. People die, it’s a fact of life, but in the summer last year, at the birthday of one of the chief’s daughters, a young member of the tribe got sick. She was laid up in bed for days before finally dying. Arella got blamed for this because she sat next to the young woman at the feast. Arella will not risk that happening again.
Wind from across the lake blows smells of fresh blossom and spring towards Arella. She breaths in deep, taking in the scent of freedom. It fills her lungs and makes her smile. The rustle of the long grass in the breeze is like a quiet whisper, telling the secrets of the land in a language she cannot understand. Somewhere in the grasslands a young bison stirs, awoken from a bad dream, and soon quietened by its mother. Crickets play music in the grass and birds in the trees, they have not yet gone to sleep, the night still young.
The crunch of the gravel under Arella's feet stays at a steady pace. She is in no rush on her walk. In fact, she needs this walk to take as long as possible. Arella does not feel like she would be able to go back to her tribe while there are still people in the partying mood. Her presence may dampen the mood, and that would not be welcome at all.
As she walks past the reeds at the side of the lake, a great white swan flies out from the bank, clearly startled by the girl walking close to her nest. she glides back down onto the water a few meters away, shakes her tail feathers and fans out her wings. She looks beautiful and majestic. The swan floats on the top of the water with great ease, the ripples her movements cause are slight. Arella does not know any other creature that is as graceful as the swan, but then she hasn't travelled far enough to know of creatures that do not live close to her homeland.
A mother paloa fox hunts at the side of the lake. Arella crouches in one of the bushes by the water’s edge. She loves watching other animals hunt. The fox gets down low, almost so low her belly is scraping the floor. Her dark brown coat blending in with the ground around her. She crawls forwards, ears pointing forwards, eyes clear and sharp, directed right at the malo duck grooming himself on the bank of the lake. His bright green plumage shining from the water dripping off his bill. He ruffles his feathers, causing the gravel under his feet to shift. The paloa fox takes this as her chance and springs at the duck. He catches sight of the fox at the last minute, but she is too quick for him and catches his left wing. Dust flies into the air as the two battle it out. The fox wins in the end, as they usually do, and she takes her prize back to the three cubs waiting in the bushes just a few meters away. The cubs are the same dark brown as their mother, but they have speckles of lighter orangey brown in the top of their fur. They fight amongst each other for the best bit of the duck, but soon settle into eating it out of sight of Arella, deep in the bushes where they cannot be seen.
The land around Arella begins to change, become for green and full of foliage. There are bushes to her left, and trees beginning to come clearly into view in front of her. It is darker here. Shadows from the trees and interlocking branches are cast onto the ground. Birds now sleep almost soundlessly in the trees. The faint cooing of pigeons can be heard as they snore in their dreams. The leaves dance and move in the breeze, blossom falling like dust. Arella sneezes. She is not normally allergic to flowers, but the pollen just caught in her nose.
Arella can hear the faint buzz of bees, sleeping in their hive. An abundance of colourful flowers line the ground under the trees, a colourful blanket and a paradise for bees. The smell of the honey in their hive is tantalising, but the pain of a bee sting is not something Arella would like to feel twice. She was stung by a bee when she was little, eating a sweet fig and it wanted some as well. However, the bee did not take kindly to Arella shooing it off. It stung her hand and caused it to swell. She will never forget that pain, and would not risk it happening again in a hurry.
The mossy ground of the forest feels strange on her feet after the hard gravel of the lakeside. The sponginess of the lycan makes every step feel like she is walking on air. It’s a strange but welcome feeling. The cool smooth stones beneath the lycan give Arella a solid footing. The forest grows thicker, and the trees stronger the further Arella walks. Roots twist and turn, interlocking under the grass and moss covering the floor, their solid foundations rooted deep in the fertile earth, strong and never failing. There is life in this forest. It feels as though the forest its self is alive and beating.
Arella walks for quite some time in the moonlight. She follows a path made through the trees by the animals that live here, breathing in the smells of the wild, taking in its beauty. She looks behind her, but cannot see the plains from which she came. Arella knows she will be able to follow her own tracks back to the edge of the forest, and so walks on deeper into the woods.
A noise stops Arella in her tracks. The sound of a man shouting, the laughter. This intrigues Arella. All of the men in her tribe are at the gathering for the chiefs new son, so who are these men in the woods? They sound different, voices she cannot recall, and in words she cannot quite make out. They are too far away to hear what they are saying. Arella moves off the footpath and through the trees towards the strange voices.
Arella stops by the edge of a clearing, hidden by the bushes and trees that line it, but with a perfect sight on the men in the glade. There are five of them, all tall and fairly well built. They must all be warriors or hunters, but she does not recognise any of them. They do not belong to her tribe and she did not know there were any others close by here. Arella has been walking through the forest for quite some time though, perhaps she has travelled further than she thought she had.
The men are all dressed in dark coloured furs, some with tattoo's on their arms, and others on their legs. The dark black rings and patterns showing up on their red brown skin. All of the men have long dark hair, some of them have it tied back loosely, and others let it flow freely past their shoulders. They're all young, a similar age to Arella, if not a few years older.
"Who's crazy idea was it to do a training session in the dark anyway?" A young man with bright red feathers in his hair asks.
"Old Man Ujarak." Replies the one with the darkest skin and broad shoulders. "He thinks we need to learn how to fight at night as well as during the day. I don't know what difference it makes myself, but who am I to judge."
"Well I think it will do us good Nootau. You're as blind as a bat in the day, maybe you will be able to hit me in the dark." One of the red skinned men laughs. His eyes seem to shine when he does so. They are a bright shade of green and stand out from the others as they all have varying shades of brown eyes.
"Oh very funny Nashoba. You know I can kick your arse any day of the week." Nootau retaliates. With that the red feathered man lunges at green eyes and they tumble to the floor laughing and pinning each other down.
"All right boys, enough fooling around" Says a bigger man, with a deep voice. "Let’s get on to what we are meant to be doing."
"You're no fun Mato." Says the smallest man in the group. "I was enjoying watching Nootau and Nashoba fight." He laughs. "If you can call that fighting anyway."
"I'd like to see you do better!" Nashoba spits back, a wink in his green eyes. "Bring it on Doahte" Both men unsheathe long sharp weapons Arella has not seen before. Swords, with long, slightly curved blades of shiny sharp stone and dark strong handles. Arella has heard stories of weapons like this, but never seen one. High pitched sounds ring out as the stone of the two blades clash together.
The two men fight each other for a while, each dipping and diving and never touching skin with blade, but getting close on several occasions. This is fascinating for Arella. She is never allowed to watch the men in her tribe practice combat. "It is a secret affair which women do not need to witness." Everyone would tell her when she asked if she could watch. But this is much better. They do not know she is there, and they will not chase her away and tell her not to watch. Arella may be able to learn how to fight properly by watching these men. She wonders to herself "do they come here every day? Or is this a one off and I will not get this opportunity again?" Either way she was not going to leave the forest until they did.
Arella takes advantage of the loud noises coming from the contact of stone on stone and the grunts of exertion coming from the men to hide the noise she makes climbing into a nearby tree. A low branch holds strong as she uses it to climb into the bow, giving her a higher perspective and less likelihood of one of the men discovering her by falling into the bush she was hiding in. She is well hidden by the leaves, but her white hair might give her away if one of the men were to look in her direction. She carefully tucks her braid behind her ear, and pulls her hood further around her face.
The men's fighting continues for a good hour or so, and they all look really tired by the end. Faces all red, well redder than usual, and sweat dripping off all of their heads. Beads of sweat glisten on the shoulders of the green eyed man. He had taken his shirt off at one point during the fight, revealing a well sculpted body beneath. All of the men look as though they are well toned, although some more than others, but it was Nashoba who caught Arella's eye.
"We'd better head back to the village." Mato says. "I think we are done for the night." Arella's heart sinks a little. Will they come back, or will she just go back to the way things were, with nothing interesting happening in her life?
"I like this place." Nashoba says. Hope brews in Arella's chest. "It's much quieter than our usual training grounds."
Mato laughs. "You only like this place better because you have somewhere soft to land when you fall."
"Not fair Mato, you caught me off guard earlier. But I mean it, I do like this place. I will come back here."
"No you're right though. It does seem like a good place to practice. Aren't you worried about that tribe on the other side of the woodland though? They don't live far from the edge."
"They do not dare come this deep into the forest, you know that as well as I. They rear it, and prefer to live in the open on the plains. Plus they are weak. They do not teach their young how to fight early enough, and many die from exposure and lack of food." Nashoba says. With that the men pick up their belongings and begin to leave the clearing. Arella waits in the tree for a few minutes more before climbing down, to be sure they do not hear her. She lands on the floor with a soft thud.
As Arella walks back towards her village, she begins thinking about what green eyes had said. "They are weak." Is that really what people thought of her tribe. She had always seen them as strong men with no fear, but clearly they are not so strong when compared to others. She knew that the people of her tribe did not enter the forest, but always believed it was just because they had no need to.
The walk back seems to take forever. Arella must have really walked far. By the time she reaches the old tree by the side of the lake, the faint orange glow of the sun can be seen on the horizon. No more noise can be heard coming from her village, and it will be hours before anyone wakes up from their long night partying. Arella rubs her sleepy eyes, makes her way to her tent and crawls into bed. Her feet sore and tired from walking so far. It feels nice to take her boots off and lie on a bed of furs, warm and comfortable underneath her tired body. She drifts off into a deep sleep, dreaming of the moon and stars with wolves surrounding her, howling and calling her to join them.
Chapter 2
The smell of cooking meat fills Arella nostrils as she awakens from her deep sleep. She breaths in deeply. "Mmm, I love that smell." She says to herself. Just at that moment, her stomach grumbles. Arella realises she hasn't eaten since breakfast yesterday, and is famished. When she crawls from her tent, the sun is bright and high in the sky. She lifts her hood up onto her head, shielding her eyes from the sunlight, and using the bucket of water next to her tent as a mirror, reapplies the black charcoal to under her eyes. "Much better." she says as the glare dies down and her vision becomes clear again. The sun is already high in the sky, but no one seems to mind that they are all late up today. No one will be hunting after the celebration last night, and nothing else really needs doing urgently. Today will be a day for Arella's tribe to relax and eat but not for Arella. She has lots to do today, and she would like to go back to the clearing in the forest again, see if the men are there. Arella has decided that she will use them as guides, and will learn to fight by watching them.
Arella puts on her boots, then pulls her hood up over her head before moving away from her small tent at the edge of the village. She makes her way to the fire pit at the centre. Over the fire, roasting on a spit, is a large and meaty looking hog, his tusks slightly charred from the fire. An older woman sits tending the fire, keeping it alight while the meat cooks. A few feet away, hanging from the branch of a dead tree is the boars skin, drying in the sun. Beautiful stripes and spots of black cover its pale brown skin. This boar was big, and will feed the entire tribe, all thirty four of them. The Apaloa tribe are small in comparison to other tribes in the area, but this is how the chief likes it. "A big tribe is harder to feed, harder to protect and too many children are a nuisance." He would say when anyone questioned him. You see, only certain members of the tribe are allowed to have children. The chief, although he can take as many wives as he sees fit, and there are two other men in the tribe with this right. Both are members of the hunting team, and have two children each. By doing it this way, it ensures that the numbers in the tribe never get more than the chief can handle. All children born to women that were not with one of these men are killed at birth. Arella was one of the lucky ones. Nayleen was the wife of one of the tribesmen aloud to have children, and when she took Arella in, this made her safe.
Arella breaths in deep. It's going to be another hour till that boar is cooked, then she will have to wait her turn to eat. She is at the bottom of the pecking order, so won't be getting food any time soon. Arella walks past the fire pit and the cooking boar, through the village to the small stream that runs down the back of the site. The water still flows strong, fuelled by melting snow high in the mountains. This stream runs down to the lake Arella was sitting by just the day before. A group of young children play together by the stream on the other side, they are laughing and chasing each other around. They are watched by their mothers, both the wives of hunters. These women are strong and bigger built than Arella. In fact, all of the women in the Apaloa tribe are bigger built than Arella... Joys of being at the bottom of the pecking order, you get the last and usually smallest portion of food.
Being the bottom of the pecking order also has its advantages. Because of the small amount of food Arella has access to, she has learnt to forage for her own fruit and vegetables. Her growling stomach drives her on, she must eat something soon, there won't be much of that boar left once the men have had their fill, and she will be left with the grisly bits that no one likes anyway.
Arella followed the stream down to a small area surrounded by plants, weeds and rushed. She picked up a large sharp stone and used it to dig up one of the reeds from the shallow water. It came loose and when she pulled it out, a large brown bulb hung from the bottom of the bright green reeds. Arella washes off the grue bulb in the stream, uses the sharp stone to cut into its flesh, loosening the skin, and peels it. Inside the skin of the gure bulb, purple flesh can be seen. Arella takes a bite out of the bulb and smiles. It tastes like earthy apples, with a hint of spice. She has learnt from many years of foraging which plants are safe to eat. Arella has spent the last few years watching the animals that inhabit her homeland dig up food and pluck it from trees. By doing this, and watching each animals reactions, she has learnt what is good to eat, and which plants she should avoid. The grue bulbs are by far Arella's favourites, and they do a good job of filling her up. Just one bulb and she no longer feels the hunger pangs she did before.
Before too long, Arella can feel the heat and power of the sun beating down on her. If she does not move out of its gaze soon, she will begin to burn. This is a major disadvantage of her pale skin, and the main reason she prefers the night. She moves to sit in the shadow of a bank of rocks, leaning against them with the village to her left. She can hear the children laughing and playing still, and can still smell the cooking boar, but is far enough away from them to be able to relax.
Far above in the clear blue sky, Arella watches a couple of eagles play in the thermals. They weave and dance, not moving their wings at all, just effortlessly floating yet never coming down. The gradually move out of Arella's view and drift off over the forest calling to each other as they go. The sounds from the village have quietened down, a sure sign that the boar is cooked and everyone is tucking in. "Give it a minute and I will go get some myself." Arella sighs to herself as she watches the world around her. A small green lizard runs along the ground next to her, chasing a cricket that hops away eagerly. The lizards green legs moving as fast as they can carry its scaly body, kicking up small colours of dust as he goes. He finally catches the cricket, and eats it with a crunch. Arella has always loved watching nature at work, and the relationship between predator and prey.
Arella is startled awake as a group of riders from her tribe gallop past her at speed, causing dust and stones to fly everywhere, catching the delicate skin on Arella's legs as them and their horses go past. Arella gets up from her resting place, the sun now on its way down. "Hmm, must have fallen asleep. I'd better go see if there's any food left." She says to herself, doubting that there will be anything left eating on the carcass anyway. "Wonder where they were going anyway?" She thinks. "Must be going for an evening ride." She stops, realising what it must have been. "An initiation of course. When a new male member of the tribe is born, another is promoted to hunter. That must be it. Now it makes sense. Can't believe I didn't see it before. Come on Arella, use your brain."
There is still a little meat on the left flank of the boar, now a little tough and cool from over cooking then being left, but it still tastes good. Arella can taste the mud the boar rolled in, the fruits that he ate and the fresh are he breathed and she chews the meat. It is just heavenly. The village is now all but empty, all the men gone off for the initiation, and the women and children gathered to tell stories. The sun is beginning to set, and now sits low in the sky.
"I think another long walk might be in order." Arella thinks to herself. "Maybe some target practice too." She heads back to her small tent, climbs inside and retrieves her dagger. Arella then hooks in inside her right boot, in the special leather compartment she sowed to them, hidden from sight but easily accessible. It belonged to her mother, one of the few things she has from her. The blade is sharp and cold, Arella can feel its presence close to her skin, even though the leather, the ornate handle only just visible at the top of her boot. You wouldn't see it there unless you were looking for it.
Arella follows the stream down to the lake, and skirts along its edge, just the same way as she had done the night before. As she gets to the forest, she begins to feel her spirits lifting again. It is an addictive feeling, being free and able to do what she wants without others looking at her. To even exist without anyone judging her feels amazing. Arella makes a pact with herself as she walks through the forest. "I will learn how to live without my tribe. I will teach myself how to hunt, and how to protect myself. Then I can feel free all the time, not just when I leave the tribe on a night. I can wake up knowing that I will not be stared at, or whispered about behind my back. I will finally be free, and now is the time to do it. If I stay away from other people, no one will be able to tell me what to do, or hurt me ever again." The more Arella thought about it, the better the idea became. The practicalities of it however were not quite the same. Once she got thinking, Arella realised just how much she had to learn, but then again, others do it. She was sure that she would be able to learn to hunt, and set traps. She just had to watch others do it, then have a go herself.
The orange glow of the sun can be seen through the trees and bushes of the forest, and creatures of the night are beginning to stir, just as those with dominion of the day are settling in for the night to sleep. Birds are beginning to roost, while a nearby owl hoots a wake up call. "The forest is always so alive, no matter where I go." Arella thinks to herself. "I wonder why my tribe are so afraid of the trees. There is nothing evil here, nothing that will harm anyone, and it is madness to think that there is."
Arella walks until she finds a small clearing in the trees, far away from the area she saw the other tribe in last night, and sets up the targets. She uses brightly coloured leaves and pins them to trees with the sharp needles of the boroana plant. Arella sets up a dozen targets, all at different heights and of different sizes then begins her practice. She takes the sharp blade from her boot, pulls back and throws it at the first target. It hits, dead on the mark. Arella smiles. She knows she has good aim, and never fails to miss a target. She retrieves the blade and goes again, and again until all targets have been hit. "I need to find a way to do moving targets." She thinks to herself. Although how she will be able to do this escapes her.
She sets up her targets again, a dozen of them all in the trees. When pinning the last brightly coloured leaf to a tree, Arella pricks her finger with a boroana spine. She winces at the pain, but does not make a sound. She heard something. Just a small noise, a crack of a branch in the distance and a quiet thumping sound, but something doesn't feel right. Arella takes this feeling and does the only thing she can think to do, she sheaths her knife and climbs up the nearest tree with low branches, hiding herself in the foliage.
High up in the safety of the tree Arella listens, and surely enough the sound comes closer to her. A small herd of fawn brown motto deer stampede through, clearly spooked by something. They hit the clearing and scatter slightly, a few go off to the left but most head under the tree Arella is hiding in and keep on going. One of the males gets his moss green antlers caught on a tree branch and panics slightly, freeing himself in the struggle and shaking free leaves and blossom, causing it to rain down on the ground.
Once they can no longer be heard anymore, Arella begins to think about leaving the sanctuary of her tree, believing that the deer were the sound that she heard. She was wrong. Just ask she was about to climb down, he came into view. A large beast with long black fur, highlighted with a deep purple that shined and caught the still orange glow in the air. Her eyes as yellow as the sun its self, looked up at Arella in the tree. Her big paw padding along on the mossy ground, making no sounds as she prowled, the end of her bushy tail flicking as he smelled the air. The big cat was beautiful, and the biggest creature Arella had ever seen on four legs. It was bigger than a wolf by a foot in height, and looked powerful and strong. Arella's breath caught as she realised she was staring right at her. The big cat just watched on under her, under the tree, never moving its eyes from her gaze. This cat was distinctive. It had a large scar covering most of its face, and a white patch of fur behind its left ear. Then quick as a flash she was gone again. Arella has heard stories of cats such as this, ancient auron cats, but thought they were all but extinct in her lands. No one has seen one for over one hundred years, or so her tribal elders have said.
"He could have easily climbed up this tree and taken me." Arella thinks to herself, still clinging to the branch she was holding onto for balance just a minute ago. "Why did she leave me here? He saw me for sure. Those beautiful yellow eyes were looking right at me." She pauses. "Perhaps he was not hungry. Although if that were the case he would not have been following the motto. And I wonder where he came from, I thought they were all gone now." These questions will stay on Arella's mind for quite some time. There is no logical explanation why a creature with as much power as an auron cat would leave something that was as easy prey as Arella was just then, but he did.
Arella finally climbed down from her tree, careful not to lose her footing and fall. She took down all of her targets from the trees, put her dagger away in her boot again and hid the target leaves away in a bush where no one would find them. She then continued her walk through the forest towards the clearing she saw the men from the other tribe in just the night before. Arella has a pretty good sense of direction, aided by the ability to follow the stars. This is only the second time Arella has visited this forest, but she feels as though she knows it well.
After another couple of minutes of walking, Arella finds the clearing. She expected to see the men already there, practising their fighting, but the clearing is empty. The sun has now gone down, and the moon lights up the clearing with a bright silver night. Another cloudless sky with moonlight and stars her only source of light. She crouches at the edge of the clearing, listening for signs of life, for the voices of the strange men, but she hears nothing. “I thought they said that they would be back tonight.” Arella thinks to herself. “This is very strange.” Arella knew it was a bad idea to get her hopes up on this. There was no way these men would return. Now she would not be able to learn how to fight. “Maybe I should go to their village, and watch them from there? It can’t be too hard to find, nor too far away. I’d bet anything it will be on the other side of this forest. I would be able to hide in the treeline and watch them from afar.” Arella thinks to herself.
Just as Arella is about to walk through the clearing towards the other side, she begins to hear voices in the distance. The men are coming. She uses the time she has spare to get herself to a good vantage point, high in the same tree she was hiding in the night before. Once in the tree, Arella made sure she was hiding in the shadows, and lifted her hood up over her head, covering as much skin and hair as she could, and attempting to blend into the dark. “As long as none of the men look directly up here and focus on where I am, I should be able to stay hidden from them… I hope.”
An old man enters the clearing first, followed by the four younger men. He has long grey hair and a small scruffy looking beard, with a belly slightly too large for his skinny legs to carry. His skin is withered and old, the wrinkles plain to see on his red face. Arella has not seen a man look this old, yet so far from death. He looks remarkably healthy for one his age. "What more can you have to teach us Ujarak?" Red Feathered man asks. He seems to Arella to be quite full of himself most of the time. Almost like he already knows everything, and nothing can be taught to him.
"Oh my child." Ujarak says. "You know nothing of real life Nootau." He then fishes around in a big bulky bag he carries over his left shoulder. "Tonight we practice with these." He says as he pulls a strong looking bow out of the bag. He then proceeds to pull another four out and hands them to the young men.
"Bows and arrows are very primitive weapons Ujarak." Says the smaller one. Arella thinks his name is Doahte. "How do you expect us to defend ourselves with these flimsy things?" He spits. He seems very grumpy and shallow minded. Arella is starting to like this tribe less and less. But if they can teach her to fight, it doesn't matter what they are like. With that though, Ujarak pulls back the bow string, knocks an arrow and fires it at Doahte, narrowly missing the top of his head and sticking in a knot on an old tree just behind him.
"Young one, you must learn. Not all fighting has to be done with your hands. You must learn to use other means, and stay away from battle if you can." He laughs. "How do you think I stayed alive this long? By being safe." The others all howl with laughter at this. It is nice to hear people laugh. Arella has missed that sound greatly. The people of her tribe are far too serious to laugh at anything other than her. "Okay then Ujarak, show us how to use these bows." Green eyed Nashoba says.
The old man proceeds to teach each of the young men how to knock an arrow, then how to aim, then finally how to release the arrow. They seem to be getting the hang of it, although their aim is a little off. Arella has to stifle a laugh when Mato misfires an arrow and nearly pierces his own foot. "I can throw a dagger and hit anything in my sight." Arella thinks. "I wonder if I would be able to use a bow and arrow? Where would I get one from though. I don't think anyone in my tribe uses one. Hmm... Maybe I could make one."
Arella spends the next hour of the men’s training studying the bows, how they move, how the pieces fit together and what they are made of. "They don't seem too hard to make. Just a simple balance and having the right materials. I think I should be able to make on. The arrows however might be a little harder. I would be able to make them, but setting the feathers right for balance might be harder."
Arella watches the muscles on the men’s shoulders tense as they draw back and release the bows, each of them shooting bare chested in the heat of the night. Each arrow is fired with power, and each shot getting closer and closer to the makeshift targets, not all that different from the ones Arella was practising her throwing skills with. The moonlight glints off the sharp stones on the ends of long sticks, and feathers on the end bristle slightly in the breeze, helping the arrow to hold its balance as it is fired across the grove towards the targets on the other side.
From what Arella can see, Nashoba seems to have the best aim, although Mato has the most power behind his draws. Ujarak works hard to help the young men to focus their bows and aim as close as they can get. Demonstrating every now and again to show them how to do it, moving their elbows into the right position and correcting them when they make mistakes. He seems like a good teacher. Strict but fair. Arella would like to learn from him, or someone like him at the very least.
All of these men seems strong, over the smallest one. Much stronger then then men in her own tribe. Arella begins to wonder if what the men had said about her tribe the day before was true. Were they really all that weaker than others, and if so why were they like that? Before Arella could think on this anymore, the men began packing up their bows, arrows and picking up the rest of their belongings. “Before you leave, I want to give you some homework.” Ujarak says to them. “I want you to study your bow. Really look at it, and think about how it works. Then I want you to make your own.” This is met my moans and groans from all of the young men. “I will hear no more of that negativeness. The mark of a true warrior is how well they can make their own weapons. No point being able to hit a squirrels eye from 100 feet if you don’t know how your weapon is made, and therefore its strengths and weaknesses.” This makes sense to Arella. You can’t expect to be able to do anything without first learning something’s strengths, weaknesses and characteristics. It would be like trying to light a fire without knowing that fire needs fuel to burn, water will put it out and that the flames are hot.
Arella waits for them to have left the clearing, then slowly climbs down out of her tree. She sees that one of the men has left an arrow behind and picks it up. "This will help me make my own, if I have an example of what they are meant to look like." She then looks around her, listening out for any signs of the men returning. Once she is sure she can no longer hear them, she begins to follow the trail they leave, leading them back towards to village they came from. Arella is curious to know what the other tribes village looks like, and how many people there are. She has only ever seen members of her own village, and has nothing to compare them with.
Arella walked for what seemed like another hour, which would make her about two hours away from her village. The trees suddenly come to a stop and lush green grassland takes over where it finishes. Just beyond the treeline, only a few feet away, a few tents can be seen. These tents sit on the edge of a village, bigger than Arella’s but not all that different. The tents are all brown and black, made from the skin of hunted animals, but bigger than the ones Arella has seen. A big fire pit can be seen at the centre of the village, but smaller ones sit outside some of the tents, with food cooking on them. Small black tailed rabbits roast on the open flames of some, while others look to have some kind of vegetables or roots boiling in large pots.
Arella scouts out the treeline to find the best place to hide herself away where she can see what is going on. She climbs into a tree nearby, with low branches and lots of leaves. Its bow is strong, and supports her weight well. The thick branches make it comfortable to sit on, and Arella nestles herself in the crook where the branch meets the trunk. From up here she can see the vastness of this other village, surrounded by woodland, with a stream running down the top right hand side, plants and bushes grow around it, and some kind of domesticated cattle are kept in a large pen to the left of her, settling down for the night with their young.
A group of children, there must be about twenty of them, gather around one of the smaller fires. An older looking woman looks to be telling them a story. The animated looks on their faces tell Arella that it is a good one. She always loved being told stories when she was a child. The scary ones were always the best. These children look so happy and carefree, like nothing can harm them. A group of young men, including the ones she had been watching in the clearing, are gathered around another fire, laughing and telling stories also. Although from the way they look at each other, these stories would not be suitable for the children to hear.
Arella is drawn in by the sounds and smells of this village. Everything is so nice, and everyone seems to get along. There is no bullying, or name calling or any nastiness at all. The women seem more relaxed than in her village, and some of them even join in with the men’s stories. Arella can clearly see the chief, sitting with his wife and who he assumes to be his two children, but he is also sitting with the other men and women, all swapping stories and laughing as they eat their meals of black tailed rabbit and roots. Everyone in this tribe seem more equal, if that were even possible. The moon grown higher in the sky, and soon everyone in the tribe seem to be drifting off into their own tents to bed down for the night. “I will stay here the night.” Arella thinks to herself as she nestles down into the bow of the tree, bringing her cloak round to use as a makeshift blanket, while still being careful to keep her hair and face covered. “Then head back home tomorrow during the day when the tribe are too busy to notice me moving.” With that, Arella closes her eyes and drifts off to sleep. The sounds and smells of this pleasant tribe her lullaby for the night. Somewhere in the village, a mother sings her children to sleep, sending Arella deep into unconsciousness.
Chapter 3
The sky was still dark when Arella woke up. She groaned slightly and shifted her position. “Turns out a tree is not exactly the most comfortable place to sleep.” She thought, with a numb bum and sharp pins and needles in her feet, she promises herself not to sleep in such an uncomfortable place in a long time. She sits there for a couple of minutes, letting the feeling come back to her lower half. The air around her was still, and the sky clear and bright. The moon was waning, but the light still shone bright, illuminating the village below her. Everyone in this village were sleeping, even the cattle in the pen were quiet. There is a sense of calm here, safety too. While the village sleeps, they do not worry about the terrors of the night. Arella feels at ease with them. Relaxed and happy.
Climbing down from her hiding place in the tree, Arella notices one of the young men sitting by the dying embers of the fire. It is Nashoba, the green eyed boy. He just stares into the embers, his shoulders moving up and down smoothly as he breaths, silent as the night its self. He moves slightly to the side and Arella notices an object in his hand. It’s his bow he is studying. He stares at it with real intent and focus. “What is it he wants me to look at?” Nashoba asks himself. “I know that the wood is strong and bendy, and I know that the string is also strong. I know where the arrows need to go, and how to fire an arrow.” He looks puzzled. A big man with big shoulders and dark skin steps out of a large tent close to the fire and walks over to the boy. “A bow should be an extension of your arm my boy. Not just a weapon. You need to feel the life that was once inside the wood, feel what the arrow must feel when she flies through the air. That is what Ujarak wants you to know.” He pauses. “What’s bothering you Nashoba?”
“I just can’t sleep Dad.” He says back to the big man.
“Have you slept at all my son?”
“A couple of hours or so yes. I just can’t seem to stay asleep, and I’m not even tired.”
“The sun will be coming up soon. A walk might do you some good. It will be your sisters birthday when she wakes, go find her some flowers from the meadow. You know how much she loves meadow flowers.”
“Okay Dad, thanks.” Nashoba says with a smile. Arella knows she cannot follow the green eyed boy into the meadow, it is far too open and with the sun coming up soon, she needs to keep herself hidden. She knows what happens when one tribe meets another, and it isn’t always pretty. If they spotted her in their village, they would most likely kill her. “I’d better head back through the woods and leave this village behind for now. I need to make myself a bow and some arrows.” Arella thought to herself. She had spent a long time analysing how a bow looks, and how the wood bends. She now feels confident that she will be able to make one that will work well. She watches as the Nashoba walks on into the meadow, and the big man goes back into the large tent he came from. “He must be the chief.” Arella thinks. The size and positioning of the tent give it away. It is the biggest one there, and right in the centre of the camp. Arella watches the green eyed boy walk into the meadow. She watches until the brightly coloured flowers and long meadow grass have consumed him.
Arella stands up from her crouched position in the bushes below the tree that was her bed that night and moves into the woodland. It is dark in the shade of the trees still, but the sun is just beginning to rise on the horizon. Arella is stiff from sleeping in the tree, but the more she walks the looser her body becomes. She is following the same track she used to get to the village, and soon finds herself back at the clearing she saw the young men practising in the day before. They seemed so much older than her when they were fighting. Arella being fourteen, was only maybe two or three years younger than them, but so much smaller and weaker. She has a lot to learn before she can go anywhere on her own she realises.
“Now to find the perfect branch for making my bow.” Arella thinks. The forest is full of wood, but none of it looks like it will work. The wood for this bow needs to be bendy, but strong. The wood of the Looba tree is perfect, but there aren’t many of them around. Walking around with her eyes focused on the branches above her, Arella doesn’t see the tangle of roots at her feet and trips. She falls to the ground with a thump, knocking her head on the stump of an oak tree. “Gods damn that hurts!” She says as she touches the spot where the pain is coming from. She feels heat on her hands and instantly knows it is blood. “Oh great!” Arella sighs. “Just what I need. A head injury.” She brings herself to her feet, and instantly feels dizzy. “Maybe sitting down for a couple of minutes might be a good idea.”
As Arella sits on the mossy ground massaging her head and looking at the roots the tripped her, she notices something. The wood of the root that tripped her is a dark colour, almost black. She moves forwards to investigate it further. “This root is bendy, but strong enough to not break when I fell over it.” She wonders. She takes out her dagger and begins cutting at the root as close to the base of the tree as she can get. As she hacks at the root, she notices that the flesh within is a deep purple colour. “An anamoa tree!” She exclaims aloud. Anamoa trees are extremely rare, but the wood is the best for making weapons. The Looma tree is good, and the wood is strong and bendy, but nothing beats an anamoa tree for strength.
After what seemed like hours, Arella finally freed the root from the base of the tree, she begins pulling it from the ground. It lies over a meter long above ground, and is thicker than any root she has seen on a normal tree. As she pulls, the root seems to just come away from the ground and soon she is holding a two meter long piece of root thicker than her arm at its thickest. The root has a slight natural curve which will make it easier to carve into the right shape, and it is strong enough not to bend under pressure. “This is perfect!” Arella looks down at herself, covered in mud with dried blood on her arms and in her hair from her fall. “I must look a right mess.” She laughs to herself.
Arella continues to walk out of the forest, careful where to put her feet and towards the lake near her village. It is now nearly lunch time and everyone in her village will be wide awake. Arella knows she must go back to the village to get fresh clothes, but she cannot take her anamoa root with her. She stashes it in a bush with white flowers and makes a mental note of where she left it.
The walk back to the village from here takes her a while, but it is a nice day. The clouds are covering the sun, meaning she is not finding it too hard to see from the light. “I have to put some coal dust under my eyes when I get back to the village.” Arella thinks.
Once back at the village, Arella quickly goes to her small tent, picks up a fresh pair of leggings and cloak. Arella’s stomach growls at the smell of meat coking over the fire. “Nope. Can’t stop to eat. I have to get myself clean and make this bow.” Arella is determined to do this by the time the sun goes down. Before leaving her tent, Arella takes some flint, for sharpening her dagger and making a fire. She puts the flint in her boot next to the dagger for safe keeping. It scratches against her skin a little. She moves her sock up her leg to stop the rubbing. On her way out of the tent she sees an old fire that has long since burnt out. She puts her fingers into the ashes and rubs it under her eyes. “This will make seeing much easier.” Arella leaves the village with strange looks and whispers from the others, but no more than usual.
Once she has collected the anamoa wood, she comes to the edge of the forest, where the trees meet the water, she decided to follow it round. Walking between the trees and the water is tricky, but it means she can get to a place where she will be able to bathe and make her bow in peace. After a short walk, Arella comes to an area where the lake is shallow and clear, surrounded by trees and completely hidden from view. She looks at her reflection in the water and sees a sight that makes her laugh. A skinny fourteen year old girl, with dried mud and blood in her hair, dirty but smiling. “This is what the others in the village must have seen. No wonder they were looking at me like I was strange.” She takes off her clothes, upbraids her hair and slinks into the clean water. It is a little cooler than she would have liked it, but refreshing all the same. The sun has now come out and Arella can’t help thinking that if the sun was out earlier, the lake might be warmer than it is, but it is clean all the same.
Fish swim in the water under her feet, sometimes catching her toes and making her laugh. Arella dips her head under the water, washing away the dirt and blood from the days trials. She feels a sharp pain in her head as she does this from the cut caused by falling on the root. “Nothing that won’t heal.” She thinks to herself. Arella is used to scratches a bruises, clumsy as she is, she hardly goes a week without getting some kind of injury.
Once she is clean, Arella pulls her clothes into the water from the rock they were resting on a begins scrubbing the dirt out of them too. She steps out of the water and climbs onto the slippy rocks at the side of the lake.
Arella’s skin dries quickly in the warm sun, and she is soon dry enough to put her new clean clothes back on. Her hair is still dripping wet. Arella wrings it out, getting as much of the water out of it as she can, and sits running her finders through it, un-knotting it as she goes, until it is silky smooth. She takes the wet hair, pulls it all to one side and braids it once again to keep it out of her eyes while she works.
Arella lays her wet clothes out on one of the black rocks, these are the hottest and will help to dry her clothes quicker, and puts her boots close to them too. “I love the feeling of bare feet on warm rocks.” She thinks as she walks around. As she looks around her, she has a sudden realisation; the land here is perfect. There is a clearing behind her, surrounded by a thick growth of trees and bushes, the lake to her front, and only a narrow passage between the two to her left, and no way in without going in the water from any other way. This would be perfect to make a small camp for herself, the first step in moving away from her tribe. Three of the trees at the edge of the clearing grow close together, their branches spreading far to the sides rather than up, Minora trees. Their pale white wood spotted with dark green moss is strong, and low hanging branches make for perfect climbing. If Arella could gather enough materials, she could make those trees into a house, away from the ground, nice and safe. Perfect!
Arella is suddenly no longer tired as excitement washes over her. She knows this will take a few days at the lest to do, but the thought of having her own home fills her with joy and energy. “Let’s not get ahead of yourself Arella. We said we were building the bow first, so this is what we will do.” Arella takes the anamoa wood in her hand and begins to carve away the bark from the root. The dark purple wood underneath shines wet. She carves and carves for hours, trying to create the perfect shape.
The sun is setting by the time Arella has finished carving her masterpiece. The root has made the perfect bow shape, and is still strong even without the protective bark. “Almost like it was meant to be.” Arella smiles. Next Arella searches the bank of the lake for the reeds that line most banks. They are plentiful, and useful for more than just the delicious roots at the bottom. With this though Arella’s stomach growls loudly. “I need to stop neglecting my stomach.” She laughs to herself. It growls again. “So before making the string, I think I need to make a fire and cook some food. Sure bulbs are nice raw, but they taste much better cooked.”
Arella takes her flint out of her boots and the dagger too. She gathers dried reeds from the dying plants around her and some twigs from the ground in the clearing. By the time she has gathered all of her fire materials, the sun has all but gone. She piles the dried reeds up on top of one of the rocks, and strikes the flint off the dagger, creating sparks. After only four strikes, the sparks take root in the reeds and a small fire starts. Arella adds a few of the smaller twigs to the fire first to get it going, the adds bigger and bigger ones as the fire comes to life.
She takes the grue bulbs from the ground near the lake, removes the reeds and places them on the black rock, weighed down by a few flat stones to stop them drifting away, ready to be dried out and used to make her bow string. Arella then pokes sharp sticks through the three fleshy bulbs and holds them over the fire to cook. The moon is now high in the sky, a clear night full of stars and only wisps of clouds floating effortlessly across the blackness. The moon half full, but the wolves still howl into the night from across in the forest on the other side of the lake. “Soon I will be as free and independent as those wolves.” Arella thinks to herself.
Arella eats her cooked bulbs whilst listening to the sounds of the night. Crickets chirp happy songs and jump around in the bushes and grass; the wolves howl at the moon, declaring territory; an owl hoots in the distance, answered by a screech from closer to where Arella sits; fish swim in the lake, the light of the moon reflected off their silvery scales. Beauty is all around, and Arella could not be happier to be sat out in it, feeling free and at peace.
Once Arella has satisfies her hungry, she takes the drying reeds from under the rocks. They have dried out quickly on the black stones, and are ready to thread into her bow using the light of the moon and glow from the fire. She makes holes in the bow at the top ready for the string part of the reed. She then takes the reed in her hand and feels along its width for the string. Inside she feels a hard lump and uses her fingernail to cut into the reed to reveal the string. Once the white string like material is revealed, Arella hooks her thumb and finger round it and begins to pull it gently out of the reed. This takes her some time, but when she is finished, a long section of unbroken and very strong string is in her hands. She wraps it around both her hands a couple of times and gives it a tug to test its strength. The satisfying twang the string makes when it does not break tells her that it will be worthy of her bow. She then begins to thread the string through the holes in the top and bottom of the bow, tying them at both ends, although loosely at one end so she can test the tensile strength before tying tight for the finishing product.
After a while of testing with small stones and pulling on the string, Arella is happy with how the bow feels in her hand, almost like an extension of her own arm, and she sets it to the side. Happy that she has made it to the best of her ability. “Next I have to build the arrows.” She says to herself. She knows that getting the balance on the arrow right won’t be easy, but to be able to use a ranged weapon for defence and hunting would make Arella the happiest girl alive. She takes out the arrow she found on the ground after the young men left the clearing and examines it. The feathers on the end are damaged, and Arella dies not think it will fly very well. She sets it along with the bow.
With a full stomach, Arella begins to feel the tiredness setting in. She knows she cannot sleep on the floor, too many predators around that might take advantage of her there, so she must make her way into a tree again. Luckily, the white trees she will make her home are covered in moss. This will make sleeping there much more comfortable. She climbs into the tree, sits back against the trunk and watches as a shooting star flits across the sky above her. “A shooting star is the gods way of telling you something big is coming.” Nayleen used to say to Arella. This worried her a little, but gave her excitement at the same time. Something big could be good, or it could be bad. The gods would never tell you this, only that it would happen, and it would be soon. Arella looks at the positions of the stars in the sky. “Today would have been Nayleen’s birthday.” She thinks to herself. Nayleen died three weeks after her birthday, and Arella remembers the day well. She’d been taken on a hunting trip, to help the men remove the bison horns before returning, an ancient tradition to help ward off evil spirits, although Arella cannot see how that would keep spirits away. When she returned, she had a puncture in her ribs on the left hand side where one of the bison had gored her. She died after four days later, consumed by fever as an infection set in. Arella was beside herself for weeks after. She would not eat, did not sleep, and it was then that she developed her talent for knife throwing. She vowed that she would never be as vulnerable as Nayleen was without a weapon to defend herself. Sleep soon took over and Arella drifted off into a peaceful and welcome sleep.
Arella’s dreams are full of stars and bright lights, and the feeling of happiness is all she can remember when the morning comes. A pleasant night’s sleep, compared to last night anyhow.
The sun was just coming up as Arella opened her eyes, light streaming through the thin cover of leaves above her head. The orange sky made her feel warm, but opened her eyes to the first problem. No roof. Arella needs to make a roof before anything else. Stop the rain from getting in when it does rain, then she can work on a base and walls. She stretches out her arms and legs before using the low hanging branches to climb down from the tree. She leaves her bow in the tree, resting on one of the small branches, hooked on with the string to keep from falling off, makes sure her dagger is tucked safely into her boot and sets off into the forest to look for the branches she needs to make the roof.
After a couple of hours of collecting fallen branches, Arella had a decent sized pile of them by the base of her soon to be tree house. They were all different sizes and types of wood, and it had been hard work collecting some of them. Luckily in a forest as dense as this one, there are plenty of fallen branches. While eating one of the grue bulbs she cooked last night, Arella begins cutting the sprouting branches away from the main branch to make them smooth and straight. She then piles them up on her other side. “I wonder how many branches it will take to make a roof.” She wonders to herself. Her pile of branches is quite large, but she is not sure if it will be enough.
Arella needs more reeds for binding the branches to each other and the tree. She gets herself up off the ground, brushes the bits of bark and moss off herself, pulls her hood up over her head and begins walking along the edge of the lake, further into the forest in search of a bountiful supply of reeds.
Arella sees a large bank of reeds just up ahead on the other side of a small sandy beach area by the lake. The black sand glitters with gold and white. It looks beautiful and Arella is mesmerised by this. She heard familiar laughter coming from the trees in her direction and quickly hides herself in the bushes closest to her. Just as she hides herself from view, the young men from the tribe she has been watching emerge from the forest.
All of the young men are smiling, and are in high spirits. From the looks of things, Arella thinks they are planning on doing combat training today. They all start by stretching out. Sweat gleans on the arms and heads of the young men, hot from walking through the forest. “Why have you chosen here for training today Nashoba?” Nootau asks.
“So when I knock you on your arse you don’t get too badly hurt.” He quips back.
“It will be you who lands on his…”
“Enough children.” Mato says. “Let’s just begin the training already, words will mean nothing when my fist makes contact with your face.” This brings about more laughter from the others, but the training begins then.
Each move is calculated and looks well practised. Every strike is met with a block and a counterstrike, which is in turn met with another block and so on. Doahte and Mato fight with each other, a strange mix to Arella’s eyes as Mato is so much bigger than Doahte, although not as quick. While Mato has the clear strength, and looks like he could life a full-grown bull without breaking a sweat, Doahte is very quick on his feet and gets around Mato without much of an issue. However entertaining watching these two is, Arella cannot seem to take her eyes of Nashoba and Nootau. They are evenly matched in size, strength and ability. There is a seriousness about how they fight, but also playful. These two clearly know each other well, anticipating moves before the other has even thought about it.
Having a good memory will serve Arella well here. As she watches closely, she learns which moves to use against which others; different blocking techniques; different attacks; and how to escape holds. She watches for hours as the men practice their fighting. It’s a shame Arella does not have anyone she could practice this with, but she will make do and learn as much as she can solo.
Arella is so engrossed in watching Nashoba and Nootau fight she does not realise they are getting closer to her. The sun catches in Nashoba’s eyes, causing his to lose sight of Nootau. He catches the green eyed boy under the chin with an upper cut, causing him to fall backwards, hitting his head on the ground beneath him. As he falls, almost in slow motion, He catches Arella’s eyes in the bushes, seeing her pale face and hair. She notes this and quickly pulls herself backwards into the forest. “I know I should have been in a tree from the start, not on the ground where they might have seen me. Now he saw me.” Arella curses in her mind. She retreats to one of the bushier trees for cover, knowing she would not have time to hide further into the forest. “I need to hear what they say, in case they come looking for me or something.” Arella tells herself, although she really just wants to find out if Nashoba is okay.
After a few seconds Nashoba opens his eyes. Nootau, Mato and Doahte are gathered around him with slight concern. Nootau extends a hand to help Nashoba up. “Looks like you took quite a knock there my friend.” Nootau says. “Told you you’d be the one on his arse.”
“A white ghost!” Nashoba exclaims. Everyone looks at him puzzled and Arella’s heart drops.
“What on earth are you blabbering about?” Mato asks and Nashoba takes Nootau’s hand and gets up.
“Did you hit your head on a rock?” Nootau asks. “Must have hit you harder than I thought.”
“No really I saw a white ghost.” Nashoba insists. “What else could it have been. It had a white face, white hair and like, purple eyes.” All but Nashoba burst into laughter. “I mean it guys, I know what I saw.” He sighs as the others laugh, getting agitated now. “It was there.” Nashoba points towards the bush Arella was hiding in. “In that bush staring at me.”
“Ooohhhh.” Nootau mocks with ghostly noises. “The spirits will get you Nashoba.”
Arella’s fear lifts slightly. “Well at least the others don’t think he saw anything. Maybe he’ll forget he saw me and put it down to a bump on the head.” She thinks hopefully.
“I know what I saw. And it wasn’t because I hit my head. I swear to the gods no one ever listens to me.” Nashoba thinks. “We’d better get going back then. I think training’s over for today.” He says out loud, defeated.
“Yeah, and there’s roast hog tonight.” Mato breaths in. “I can almost smell it cooking from here.” With that the men collect their belongings and leave the black beach in the direction of their village.
Once Arella’s heart has stopped beating out of her chest, and she is sure none of the young men will come back, she makes her way back down the tree to the ground. “That was a close call.” She thinks, and she was right. Arella is lucky that only Nashoba saw her and not the others. She gathers her nerves again and once she is stable in her mind, she walks out onto the black sand and towards the reeds on the other side of the beautiful beach. The reeds that grow here grow very tall and thick. She uproots a dozen of them and bunches them together. “This should be enough for now. And I can use the sproutlings to plant in the muddy banks next to the lake near my new home, then I can grow my own grue roots and bulbs.”
Arella heads back through the edge of the forest, a little way in from the lake. Still keeping the lake on her left hand side so she knows where she is going, Arella is surveying the land around her, memorising the different plants and trees that fill the new lands she calls her home. Now Arella knows it is not far from the village she grew up in, but this forest is home to her, and she feels happy living her. She does not miss the sneers she gets from the other villagers, or the looks they give her on a day to day basis. Nor does she miss being last to eat anything when they cook food. Arella is at home in the forest, and that is where she will stay as long as she can.
Arella gets back to the clutch of trees she calls home. The branches she has stripped of their stray twigs are still piled up nicely by the base of the tree, and nothing much here has changed. She takes the reeds over to the black rocks she was sat on just the day before, and using her nails, strips the reeds away from the strong string inside. Because these reeds are larger than the one she used to make her bow, they contain more strings. Each string is around two meters long, and Arella can cut them smaller for binding the branches together.
The task of turning a bunch of branches and reed strings into a roof to cover her turns out to be a lot harder than Arella first anticipated. First, she tried making a roof shaped board of wood with the twigs and carrying it up into the tree, but the shape did not fit. Then she tried taking a few of the branches up with her, but they were not stable enough when fastened to the tree. It is getting late by the time Arella realises what she needs to do “I need to make the supports from thicker branches before trying to add them to the top.” She almost slaps herself. “Why did I not think of this earlier?” For this Arella will need larger branches, as thick as her arm or bigger to hold the weight of the roof structure she will build.
A few thick branches lie on the ground close to the clearing next to Arella’s trees. She gathers them up. “These branches are heavier than they look.” She thinks to herself. “Better make sure they’re secure before I add anything to them. Wouldn’t want this dropping on my head.” Arella’s arms and back hurt by the time she had lugged one of the branches up the tree. She rests it in the bow of the tree and descends again to gather reed strings.
Arella props the branches she will use for structure against bows of other branches attached to the tree for stability and one by one tires them off with the strings. It is hard work but by the time the sun begins to set, Arella has a structure ready for adding roofing to. She climbs down from the tree, steps back and admires her work. “That should work just fine.” She says to herself out loud. Arella tilts her head back to look at the sky, her neck cracking as she does so. “Please don’t rain though until I have a waterproof layer on top.” For this Arella knows she will need dried animal skins. Luckily there are plenty of these in the tent she used in the village. No one else will use her tent. The tribe will believe that this is cursed as well as her, so she will be free to take it, under the cover of night of course.
Under the cover of darkness, Arella walks along the edge of the lake, skirts around to the stream that joins the lake and follows it to the village she used to call home. Everyone is sound asleep, and snoring can be heard coming from some of the tents. The fire pit in the centre of the village has all but burnt out, the embers still glowing but the heat almost gone. The carcass of a deer sits over the fire, the meat left on its bones now burnt and inedible. This makes Arella hungry. “I can’t live on roots all my life.” She thinks to herself. “I will have to learn how to hunt game and catch fish soon or I will waste away.” She looks down at her slowly shrinking frame.
On the far side of the village her small tent sits, untouched by any of the other tribe members, just how she hoped it would be. Arella moves towards it, careful not to make any noise or cause shadows to shift across the other tents.
Inside the tent are items Arella has never really paid much attention to. They belonged to Nayleen, then her father before her. Arella takes the deer skin bag from the back of the tent with these items in it then wraps her fur bedding around it. There isn’t much inside the tent, but that means it should be easier to take it all in one go rather than having to come back for things. Arella then begins removing the sticks and branches that hold the structure up and sets them aside. She then folds up the outer bit of the tent and puts it together with the bedding and deer skin bag. It is a rather large pile of things, but not too heavy thankfully. Arella picks up the pile of skins and her belongings and leave her old life behind.
Wispy clouds float through the sky above Arella, the moonlight reflecting off them lighting the ground under her feet. The walk back to her white tree home seems to take longer than normal due to the heavy weight under her arms. Arella stops by the side of the lake for a few minutes to rest. She drops her belongings on the floor, and inside the deerskin bag, a strange metallic ‘ting’ as it hits the floor. Arella’s interest is peaked. She has never looked inside this bag, never had a reason to. It did not belong to her, and even though all of Nayleen’s belongings became hers when she died, Arella had never thought to look inside the bag.
Arella unfolds the deerskin, untying the strings that told it together, revealing the contents within. Strange pinkish red glass like objects fill the bag, all tied with black bindings to straight black branches. “Weapons!” Arella exclaims as she examines them further. There is a long dagger, the blade shines almost like soft blood. She touches the edge and cuts her finger. She winces with the pain but makes no noise. There is also a spear in this bag. The head small and pointed. The last item in this bag is strange. It is almost like a dagger, but has a long stick, then another blade on the other side. “A double ended grathon?” Arella asks no one in particular. This is an old weapon, not seen for hundreds of years. No on uses these anymore as the balance is hard to get, and stone is too heavy. Realisation grabs Arella. She gasps then catches her breath. “It’s blood glass!” Blood glass is an ancient material, made when a dragon dies and his body turns to ash under the light of a red moon. It is hard as obsidian and sharp as the sharpest thing you will ever touch, but lighter than a feather in comparison to other weapon materials. Happiness comes over Arella as she realises she now has everything she needs to learn how to hunt and fight. With the spear she can hunt fish, and with the grathon she will be able to fight and protect herself… Once she learns how to use it that is. “Why had I not looked in that bag earlier?” She asks herself.
With this a new energy washes over Arella and she picks up her belongings again, setting out once again for her home. Following the lake around the sides of the trees is not so easy with heavy items under her arm, but Arella is keen to get back to her trees to have a good night’s rest. Tomorrow will be spent finishing off the roof of her house and making it water and wind proof. Just as she rounds the corner to come to her little clearing by the lake, a mighty gust of wind catches her off guard. She looks up at the sky, clouds thickening. “Looks like we might need that roof sooner than I’d thought.”
Arella puts down the pile of items she had been carrying on the floor beneath the tree, unfolds the tent covering. She then climbs up the tree with it and roughly places it on top of the scaffolding branches. It will not be totally waterproof, as it is not spread tight or tied down, but at least if it does rain, Arella won’t get too wet. She then climbs down the tree and collects the rest of the items, then takes them up into the tree with her. She unrolls her skin bed and climbs inside it. It is warm and comfortable. Arella falls asleep listening to the wind blow through the trees, and the sounds of the crickets as the chirp in the bushes below her.
Silver moonlight dances on the surface of the lake, bouncing off the ripples caused by the spring breeze. The scent of blossom blows across the water from the forest on the other side. The forest stretches almost as far as the eye can see. A sea of green and pink, all ghostlike under the full moon. Snow topped mountains can be seen in the distance. The snow will remain here long into summer. Remnants from the harsh winter just been. On the other side of the lake, a great expanse of plains lie, stretching as far as the eye can see. The grass is long and green, fresh from the spring rain and bountiful sunshine over the last few weeks. The grunts and snores of a herd of sleeping bison can be heard not far from the lake. A great oak tree sites a short distance from the lake, its wide branches filling the sky and bright green leaves, surrounded by pink blossom, grow like hair. The roots sprawl in all directions, twisting and turning in the ground. This tree is old, and has been standing by the lake since long before people walked these lands. Dark brown branches stretch out like fingers, the bark cracked and rough like dry skin.
Under the lone tree sits a girl of fourteen. Skin flawless and white as snow, hair as silver as the moon its-self. The breeze catches a wisp of hair, blowing it in front of her eyes. She takes her hair into her hand and pulls it all to her right, tying it into a loose braid. Using the water of the lake to see her reflection, she replaces the onyx coloured feathers she removed from her hair just a few hours ago, then secures it all with a leather strap at the bottom. She pulls her doe skin cloak tight around her shoulders. The breeze is nice, fresh and sweet, but still has the winter chill. The fabric of her trousers is soft but warm, made from the skin of a paloa fox, abundant in the grasslands. Many of the people in her tribe wear paloa skins, and they have been passed down through the generations.
In the distance a wolf howls, a long and lonely howl. She is soon joined by others, a beautiful but sad and haunting chorus. Arella sighs. How she wishes she was free as those wolves. She closes her violet eyes and leans back against the rough bark of the oak tree. This is the only place where she can be herself, out in the wilderness away from the tribe. Dream her own dreams and follow her own rules. Arella's tribe have strict rules on how a girl should behave, what she should look like and how she should talk... or not talk as the case may be. Arella has never been one to follow the rules, right from the day she was born. When Arella was born, her mother got into difficulty. The words on her final breath were "My sweet baby Arella". She was born without a father, the product of an invasion from an outside tribe, and with no other family to look after her. As a result Arella was given to another mother who had recently lost her child. Nayleen cared for Arella until she was 10, before she was killed on a hunting trip. Nayleen was a kind lady, but very set in her ways. Arella has been looking after herself since then, and as a result is more independent than the tribe leader would like her to be.
Arella is not well liked in her tribe, and for more than just her unwelcome outspokenness. She looks different from the others. Her pale skin and bright hair make her strange from the rest of the girls in her tribe. They are all dark skinned, tanned and black haired while she is pale. They do not let her be part of any of the rituals. Many in Arella's tribe believe that she is a curse on them, and that one day she will bring them bad luck. Arella's paleness is beautiful but unusual, and unusual things are not welcome in her tribe. Unusual things are something to be feared and rejected. If you do not know how something works, it might be dangerous. This is the way they think of Arella. They do not see her as unique, just something to be feared. If it weren’t for the fact that everyone in the tribe believed in the spirits doing things for a reason, Arella thinks they would have gotten rid of her a long time ago. They have not chased her off, or run her out of the tribe, but they do not treat her with respect either.
In the distance, sounds of music and laughter can be heard. The tribe are celebrating the birth of the chief's new son. He was born earlier that day, and is a healthy addition to the tribe. The chief already has three sons and two daughters, to carry on his name. His eldest son will most likely take over the tribe when his father passes. Arella sits under the oak tree, out of the way of the celebrations that she would not be welcome to even if she wanted to attend. All of the chief's children are model tribesmen. The boys are growing strong, and learning to hunt and fight. The eldest has broad shoulders and big arms, only fifteen but has the body of an older man, and his younger brothers going the same way. While the two girls are beautiful and courteous. They are learning to cook and clean and will make good wives for the warriors of the tribe. The eldest will soon be able to marry, she is fourteen now, and already has an intended husband. Arella would not make a good wife. She is not obedient enough. Why should she do what someone tells her to do, to cook for them, and clean for them and do everything they ask just because they are a man? But the tribe do not see it this way. They have lived like this since the elders can remember. Why change a system that does not need changing.
Arella longs to learn how to fight, and how to hunt. She practices in the fields near the lake, where the rest of the tribe cannot see her, but she could benefit from someone teaching her properly. She is fast and agile, can climb any tree, is flexible and agile, but has no strength to go behind it. She can throw a dagger well, and hit a target from thirty feet away, but her skills with a spear are lacking. At the very least she can run fast and hide, but Arella dreams of being able to join a hunting party and be part of something bigger. As it is, she is not part of anything. The men will not let her join them because she is a girl, and the women will not let her join them because she is different. Arella is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
A thought crosses Arella's mind while she listens to the sounds of the night. Why doesn't she just leave the tribe? Make her own life in the wilderness where she can be as free as the wolves she longs to follow. This thought has come to her many times, and the answer is always the same. She is scared. Arella has never been outside of her tribe, and however uncomfortable she feels in their presence, there is a certain comfort in knowing there are people around you. Arella knows she is not ready to live on her own. She knows the basics of hunting, and she can make a fire, but actually doing things in practice may not be so easy. She is determined to do it though, and she needs it to be soon. Even though Arella is only fourteen, she feels mature, and she knows what she wants. Freedom. More than anything, Arella wants to be free and have no worries.
Arella looks at the position of the moon. It is still early in the night. She shivers as a cool breeze blows across the lake once again. "I think I need to walk, otherwise I might freeze to this tree." she says to herself. Arella often talks to herself. She is the only company she has most of the time, and the company could be a lot worse she would tell herself. The gods can hear her too she tells herself in times of loneliness. They would not have made her this way unless it was for a good reason. This brings her some comfort, but Arella can't help wondering why she was made so pale, and whether her father was a pale man or if she was unique. Arella often though about her father, and wondered who he was. Nayleen had said that all they knew of Arella's father is that her mother started showing signs of carrying a child not long after the village was raided by a passing tribe. This happens all to often, but there is nothing anyone can do about it.
A great owl flies overhead, almost as if it is encouraging Arella to follow it. His big yellow eyes staring back at her as he flies silently through the night sky, his big wings beat once as he glides along. His white belly is the main thing Arella sees, but as he looks at her, the dark brown surrounding his facial features becomes clear, spotted with a lighter brown. This pattern continues down the rest of the owls body, all the way to his tail, fanned out for balance and steering as he flies. He calls out as he goes, and somewhere in the distance his mate calls back. He flies in the direction of the woods on the other side of the lake, calling as he goes.
Arella stands up and realises her feet are cold. She had taken her boots off while sat under the tree and forgotten. She slides her feet into her boots and laces them tight again. "Warmer already." She says. Arella has always preferred to go barefoot, but when walking on unknown land this is not always possible. Last thing she would want would be to hurt her feet and be unable to do the things she loves best. Arella shakes her legs to wake them from the cold and starts walking by the edge of the lake.
The moon lights up the area with great ease, not a cloud in the sky. The stars creating patterns and stories in the blackness. Arella likes night time best. She can see better in the dark then she can in the daylight. You could say she has night vision to a certain extent. During the day, Arella has to wear dark cloaks to shield her eyes, and paints her cheeks with charcoal to reduce the glare. By doing this she can see, even in bright sunlight, but without this she is almost blind. She can see well in cloudy conditions, and almost as good as daylight at night when the moon is out. This is another unique factor about Arella that the other tribe members do not like, but it is a feature that she has grown to love. She can hide in the dark of the forest and watch the wildlife at night, when no other person could do so.
The further from the village she walks, the quieter the sounds of the celebrating tribe get. The crunch of gravel underfoot is a soothing sound. It reminds her that she is alone, at one with nature. She can breathe out here, and she feels at home. Maybe leaving the tribe might not be so difficult after all. They would look at her as a bad omen, and if anything were to happen to the new baby, she would get the blame. This happened a couple of years ago. People die, it’s a fact of life, but in the summer last year, at the birthday of one of the chief’s daughters, a young member of the tribe got sick. She was laid up in bed for days before finally dying. Arella got blamed for this because she sat next to the young woman at the feast. Arella will not risk that happening again.
Wind from across the lake blows smells of fresh blossom and spring towards Arella. She breaths in deep, taking in the scent of freedom. It fills her lungs and makes her smile. The rustle of the long grass in the breeze is like a quiet whisper, telling the secrets of the land in a language she cannot understand. Somewhere in the grasslands a young bison stirs, awoken from a bad dream, and soon quietened by its mother. Crickets play music in the grass and birds in the trees, they have not yet gone to sleep, the night still young.
The crunch of the gravel under Arella's feet stays at a steady pace. She is in no rush on her walk. In fact, she needs this walk to take as long as possible. Arella does not feel like she would be able to go back to her tribe while there are still people in the partying mood. Her presence may dampen the mood, and that would not be welcome at all.
As she walks past the reeds at the side of the lake, a great white swan flies out from the bank, clearly startled by the girl walking close to her nest. she glides back down onto the water a few meters away, shakes her tail feathers and fans out her wings. She looks beautiful and majestic. The swan floats on the top of the water with great ease, the ripples her movements cause are slight. Arella does not know any other creature that is as graceful as the swan, but then she hasn't travelled far enough to know of creatures that do not live close to her homeland.
A mother paloa fox hunts at the side of the lake. Arella crouches in one of the bushes by the water’s edge. She loves watching other animals hunt. The fox gets down low, almost so low her belly is scraping the floor. Her dark brown coat blending in with the ground around her. She crawls forwards, ears pointing forwards, eyes clear and sharp, directed right at the malo duck grooming himself on the bank of the lake. His bright green plumage shining from the water dripping off his bill. He ruffles his feathers, causing the gravel under his feet to shift. The paloa fox takes this as her chance and springs at the duck. He catches sight of the fox at the last minute, but she is too quick for him and catches his left wing. Dust flies into the air as the two battle it out. The fox wins in the end, as they usually do, and she takes her prize back to the three cubs waiting in the bushes just a few meters away. The cubs are the same dark brown as their mother, but they have speckles of lighter orangey brown in the top of their fur. They fight amongst each other for the best bit of the duck, but soon settle into eating it out of sight of Arella, deep in the bushes where they cannot be seen.
The land around Arella begins to change, become for green and full of foliage. There are bushes to her left, and trees beginning to come clearly into view in front of her. It is darker here. Shadows from the trees and interlocking branches are cast onto the ground. Birds now sleep almost soundlessly in the trees. The faint cooing of pigeons can be heard as they snore in their dreams. The leaves dance and move in the breeze, blossom falling like dust. Arella sneezes. She is not normally allergic to flowers, but the pollen just caught in her nose.
Arella can hear the faint buzz of bees, sleeping in their hive. An abundance of colourful flowers line the ground under the trees, a colourful blanket and a paradise for bees. The smell of the honey in their hive is tantalising, but the pain of a bee sting is not something Arella would like to feel twice. She was stung by a bee when she was little, eating a sweet fig and it wanted some as well. However, the bee did not take kindly to Arella shooing it off. It stung her hand and caused it to swell. She will never forget that pain, and would not risk it happening again in a hurry.
The mossy ground of the forest feels strange on her feet after the hard gravel of the lakeside. The sponginess of the lycan makes every step feel like she is walking on air. It’s a strange but welcome feeling. The cool smooth stones beneath the lycan give Arella a solid footing. The forest grows thicker, and the trees stronger the further Arella walks. Roots twist and turn, interlocking under the grass and moss covering the floor, their solid foundations rooted deep in the fertile earth, strong and never failing. There is life in this forest. It feels as though the forest its self is alive and beating.
Arella walks for quite some time in the moonlight. She follows a path made through the trees by the animals that live here, breathing in the smells of the wild, taking in its beauty. She looks behind her, but cannot see the plains from which she came. Arella knows she will be able to follow her own tracks back to the edge of the forest, and so walks on deeper into the woods.
A noise stops Arella in her tracks. The sound of a man shouting, the laughter. This intrigues Arella. All of the men in her tribe are at the gathering for the chiefs new son, so who are these men in the woods? They sound different, voices she cannot recall, and in words she cannot quite make out. They are too far away to hear what they are saying. Arella moves off the footpath and through the trees towards the strange voices.
Arella stops by the edge of a clearing, hidden by the bushes and trees that line it, but with a perfect sight on the men in the glade. There are five of them, all tall and fairly well built. They must all be warriors or hunters, but she does not recognise any of them. They do not belong to her tribe and she did not know there were any others close by here. Arella has been walking through the forest for quite some time though, perhaps she has travelled further than she thought she had.
The men are all dressed in dark coloured furs, some with tattoo's on their arms, and others on their legs. The dark black rings and patterns showing up on their red brown skin. All of the men have long dark hair, some of them have it tied back loosely, and others let it flow freely past their shoulders. They're all young, a similar age to Arella, if not a few years older.
"Who's crazy idea was it to do a training session in the dark anyway?" A young man with bright red feathers in his hair asks.
"Old Man Ujarak." Replies the one with the darkest skin and broad shoulders. "He thinks we need to learn how to fight at night as well as during the day. I don't know what difference it makes myself, but who am I to judge."
"Well I think it will do us good Nootau. You're as blind as a bat in the day, maybe you will be able to hit me in the dark." One of the red skinned men laughs. His eyes seem to shine when he does so. They are a bright shade of green and stand out from the others as they all have varying shades of brown eyes.
"Oh very funny Nashoba. You know I can kick your arse any day of the week." Nootau retaliates. With that the red feathered man lunges at green eyes and they tumble to the floor laughing and pinning each other down.
"All right boys, enough fooling around" Says a bigger man, with a deep voice. "Let’s get on to what we are meant to be doing."
"You're no fun Mato." Says the smallest man in the group. "I was enjoying watching Nootau and Nashoba fight." He laughs. "If you can call that fighting anyway."
"I'd like to see you do better!" Nashoba spits back, a wink in his green eyes. "Bring it on Doahte" Both men unsheathe long sharp weapons Arella has not seen before. Swords, with long, slightly curved blades of shiny sharp stone and dark strong handles. Arella has heard stories of weapons like this, but never seen one. High pitched sounds ring out as the stone of the two blades clash together.
The two men fight each other for a while, each dipping and diving and never touching skin with blade, but getting close on several occasions. This is fascinating for Arella. She is never allowed to watch the men in her tribe practice combat. "It is a secret affair which women do not need to witness." Everyone would tell her when she asked if she could watch. But this is much better. They do not know she is there, and they will not chase her away and tell her not to watch. Arella may be able to learn how to fight properly by watching these men. She wonders to herself "do they come here every day? Or is this a one off and I will not get this opportunity again?" Either way she was not going to leave the forest until they did.
Arella takes advantage of the loud noises coming from the contact of stone on stone and the grunts of exertion coming from the men to hide the noise she makes climbing into a nearby tree. A low branch holds strong as she uses it to climb into the bow, giving her a higher perspective and less likelihood of one of the men discovering her by falling into the bush she was hiding in. She is well hidden by the leaves, but her white hair might give her away if one of the men were to look in her direction. She carefully tucks her braid behind her ear, and pulls her hood further around her face.
The men's fighting continues for a good hour or so, and they all look really tired by the end. Faces all red, well redder than usual, and sweat dripping off all of their heads. Beads of sweat glisten on the shoulders of the green eyed man. He had taken his shirt off at one point during the fight, revealing a well sculpted body beneath. All of the men look as though they are well toned, although some more than others, but it was Nashoba who caught Arella's eye.
"We'd better head back to the village." Mato says. "I think we are done for the night." Arella's heart sinks a little. Will they come back, or will she just go back to the way things were, with nothing interesting happening in her life?
"I like this place." Nashoba says. Hope brews in Arella's chest. "It's much quieter than our usual training grounds."
Mato laughs. "You only like this place better because you have somewhere soft to land when you fall."
"Not fair Mato, you caught me off guard earlier. But I mean it, I do like this place. I will come back here."
"No you're right though. It does seem like a good place to practice. Aren't you worried about that tribe on the other side of the woodland though? They don't live far from the edge."
"They do not dare come this deep into the forest, you know that as well as I. They rear it, and prefer to live in the open on the plains. Plus they are weak. They do not teach their young how to fight early enough, and many die from exposure and lack of food." Nashoba says. With that the men pick up their belongings and begin to leave the clearing. Arella waits in the tree for a few minutes more before climbing down, to be sure they do not hear her. She lands on the floor with a soft thud.
As Arella walks back towards her village, she begins thinking about what green eyes had said. "They are weak." Is that really what people thought of her tribe. She had always seen them as strong men with no fear, but clearly they are not so strong when compared to others. She knew that the people of her tribe did not enter the forest, but always believed it was just because they had no need to.
The walk back seems to take forever. Arella must have really walked far. By the time she reaches the old tree by the side of the lake, the faint orange glow of the sun can be seen on the horizon. No more noise can be heard coming from her village, and it will be hours before anyone wakes up from their long night partying. Arella rubs her sleepy eyes, makes her way to her tent and crawls into bed. Her feet sore and tired from walking so far. It feels nice to take her boots off and lie on a bed of furs, warm and comfortable underneath her tired body. She drifts off into a deep sleep, dreaming of the moon and stars with wolves surrounding her, howling and calling her to join them.
Chapter 2
The smell of cooking meat fills Arella nostrils as she awakens from her deep sleep. She breaths in deeply. "Mmm, I love that smell." She says to herself. Just at that moment, her stomach grumbles. Arella realises she hasn't eaten since breakfast yesterday, and is famished. When she crawls from her tent, the sun is bright and high in the sky. She lifts her hood up onto her head, shielding her eyes from the sunlight, and using the bucket of water next to her tent as a mirror, reapplies the black charcoal to under her eyes. "Much better." she says as the glare dies down and her vision becomes clear again. The sun is already high in the sky, but no one seems to mind that they are all late up today. No one will be hunting after the celebration last night, and nothing else really needs doing urgently. Today will be a day for Arella's tribe to relax and eat but not for Arella. She has lots to do today, and she would like to go back to the clearing in the forest again, see if the men are there. Arella has decided that she will use them as guides, and will learn to fight by watching them.
Arella puts on her boots, then pulls her hood up over her head before moving away from her small tent at the edge of the village. She makes her way to the fire pit at the centre. Over the fire, roasting on a spit, is a large and meaty looking hog, his tusks slightly charred from the fire. An older woman sits tending the fire, keeping it alight while the meat cooks. A few feet away, hanging from the branch of a dead tree is the boars skin, drying in the sun. Beautiful stripes and spots of black cover its pale brown skin. This boar was big, and will feed the entire tribe, all thirty four of them. The Apaloa tribe are small in comparison to other tribes in the area, but this is how the chief likes it. "A big tribe is harder to feed, harder to protect and too many children are a nuisance." He would say when anyone questioned him. You see, only certain members of the tribe are allowed to have children. The chief, although he can take as many wives as he sees fit, and there are two other men in the tribe with this right. Both are members of the hunting team, and have two children each. By doing it this way, it ensures that the numbers in the tribe never get more than the chief can handle. All children born to women that were not with one of these men are killed at birth. Arella was one of the lucky ones. Nayleen was the wife of one of the tribesmen aloud to have children, and when she took Arella in, this made her safe.
Arella breaths in deep. It's going to be another hour till that boar is cooked, then she will have to wait her turn to eat. She is at the bottom of the pecking order, so won't be getting food any time soon. Arella walks past the fire pit and the cooking boar, through the village to the small stream that runs down the back of the site. The water still flows strong, fuelled by melting snow high in the mountains. This stream runs down to the lake Arella was sitting by just the day before. A group of young children play together by the stream on the other side, they are laughing and chasing each other around. They are watched by their mothers, both the wives of hunters. These women are strong and bigger built than Arella. In fact, all of the women in the Apaloa tribe are bigger built than Arella... Joys of being at the bottom of the pecking order, you get the last and usually smallest portion of food.
Being the bottom of the pecking order also has its advantages. Because of the small amount of food Arella has access to, she has learnt to forage for her own fruit and vegetables. Her growling stomach drives her on, she must eat something soon, there won't be much of that boar left once the men have had their fill, and she will be left with the grisly bits that no one likes anyway.
Arella followed the stream down to a small area surrounded by plants, weeds and rushed. She picked up a large sharp stone and used it to dig up one of the reeds from the shallow water. It came loose and when she pulled it out, a large brown bulb hung from the bottom of the bright green reeds. Arella washes off the grue bulb in the stream, uses the sharp stone to cut into its flesh, loosening the skin, and peels it. Inside the skin of the gure bulb, purple flesh can be seen. Arella takes a bite out of the bulb and smiles. It tastes like earthy apples, with a hint of spice. She has learnt from many years of foraging which plants are safe to eat. Arella has spent the last few years watching the animals that inhabit her homeland dig up food and pluck it from trees. By doing this, and watching each animals reactions, she has learnt what is good to eat, and which plants she should avoid. The grue bulbs are by far Arella's favourites, and they do a good job of filling her up. Just one bulb and she no longer feels the hunger pangs she did before.
Before too long, Arella can feel the heat and power of the sun beating down on her. If she does not move out of its gaze soon, she will begin to burn. This is a major disadvantage of her pale skin, and the main reason she prefers the night. She moves to sit in the shadow of a bank of rocks, leaning against them with the village to her left. She can hear the children laughing and playing still, and can still smell the cooking boar, but is far enough away from them to be able to relax.
Far above in the clear blue sky, Arella watches a couple of eagles play in the thermals. They weave and dance, not moving their wings at all, just effortlessly floating yet never coming down. The gradually move out of Arella's view and drift off over the forest calling to each other as they go. The sounds from the village have quietened down, a sure sign that the boar is cooked and everyone is tucking in. "Give it a minute and I will go get some myself." Arella sighs to herself as she watches the world around her. A small green lizard runs along the ground next to her, chasing a cricket that hops away eagerly. The lizards green legs moving as fast as they can carry its scaly body, kicking up small colours of dust as he goes. He finally catches the cricket, and eats it with a crunch. Arella has always loved watching nature at work, and the relationship between predator and prey.
Arella is startled awake as a group of riders from her tribe gallop past her at speed, causing dust and stones to fly everywhere, catching the delicate skin on Arella's legs as them and their horses go past. Arella gets up from her resting place, the sun now on its way down. "Hmm, must have fallen asleep. I'd better go see if there's any food left." She says to herself, doubting that there will be anything left eating on the carcass anyway. "Wonder where they were going anyway?" She thinks. "Must be going for an evening ride." She stops, realising what it must have been. "An initiation of course. When a new male member of the tribe is born, another is promoted to hunter. That must be it. Now it makes sense. Can't believe I didn't see it before. Come on Arella, use your brain."
There is still a little meat on the left flank of the boar, now a little tough and cool from over cooking then being left, but it still tastes good. Arella can taste the mud the boar rolled in, the fruits that he ate and the fresh are he breathed and she chews the meat. It is just heavenly. The village is now all but empty, all the men gone off for the initiation, and the women and children gathered to tell stories. The sun is beginning to set, and now sits low in the sky.
"I think another long walk might be in order." Arella thinks to herself. "Maybe some target practice too." She heads back to her small tent, climbs inside and retrieves her dagger. Arella then hooks in inside her right boot, in the special leather compartment she sowed to them, hidden from sight but easily accessible. It belonged to her mother, one of the few things she has from her. The blade is sharp and cold, Arella can feel its presence close to her skin, even though the leather, the ornate handle only just visible at the top of her boot. You wouldn't see it there unless you were looking for it.
Arella follows the stream down to the lake, and skirts along its edge, just the same way as she had done the night before. As she gets to the forest, she begins to feel her spirits lifting again. It is an addictive feeling, being free and able to do what she wants without others looking at her. To even exist without anyone judging her feels amazing. Arella makes a pact with herself as she walks through the forest. "I will learn how to live without my tribe. I will teach myself how to hunt, and how to protect myself. Then I can feel free all the time, not just when I leave the tribe on a night. I can wake up knowing that I will not be stared at, or whispered about behind my back. I will finally be free, and now is the time to do it. If I stay away from other people, no one will be able to tell me what to do, or hurt me ever again." The more Arella thought about it, the better the idea became. The practicalities of it however were not quite the same. Once she got thinking, Arella realised just how much she had to learn, but then again, others do it. She was sure that she would be able to learn to hunt, and set traps. She just had to watch others do it, then have a go herself.
The orange glow of the sun can be seen through the trees and bushes of the forest, and creatures of the night are beginning to stir, just as those with dominion of the day are settling in for the night to sleep. Birds are beginning to roost, while a nearby owl hoots a wake up call. "The forest is always so alive, no matter where I go." Arella thinks to herself. "I wonder why my tribe are so afraid of the trees. There is nothing evil here, nothing that will harm anyone, and it is madness to think that there is."
Arella walks until she finds a small clearing in the trees, far away from the area she saw the other tribe in last night, and sets up the targets. She uses brightly coloured leaves and pins them to trees with the sharp needles of the boroana plant. Arella sets up a dozen targets, all at different heights and of different sizes then begins her practice. She takes the sharp blade from her boot, pulls back and throws it at the first target. It hits, dead on the mark. Arella smiles. She knows she has good aim, and never fails to miss a target. She retrieves the blade and goes again, and again until all targets have been hit. "I need to find a way to do moving targets." She thinks to herself. Although how she will be able to do this escapes her.
She sets up her targets again, a dozen of them all in the trees. When pinning the last brightly coloured leaf to a tree, Arella pricks her finger with a boroana spine. She winces at the pain, but does not make a sound. She heard something. Just a small noise, a crack of a branch in the distance and a quiet thumping sound, but something doesn't feel right. Arella takes this feeling and does the only thing she can think to do, she sheaths her knife and climbs up the nearest tree with low branches, hiding herself in the foliage.
High up in the safety of the tree Arella listens, and surely enough the sound comes closer to her. A small herd of fawn brown motto deer stampede through, clearly spooked by something. They hit the clearing and scatter slightly, a few go off to the left but most head under the tree Arella is hiding in and keep on going. One of the males gets his moss green antlers caught on a tree branch and panics slightly, freeing himself in the struggle and shaking free leaves and blossom, causing it to rain down on the ground.
Once they can no longer be heard anymore, Arella begins to think about leaving the sanctuary of her tree, believing that the deer were the sound that she heard. She was wrong. Just ask she was about to climb down, he came into view. A large beast with long black fur, highlighted with a deep purple that shined and caught the still orange glow in the air. Her eyes as yellow as the sun its self, looked up at Arella in the tree. Her big paw padding along on the mossy ground, making no sounds as she prowled, the end of her bushy tail flicking as he smelled the air. The big cat was beautiful, and the biggest creature Arella had ever seen on four legs. It was bigger than a wolf by a foot in height, and looked powerful and strong. Arella's breath caught as she realised she was staring right at her. The big cat just watched on under her, under the tree, never moving its eyes from her gaze. This cat was distinctive. It had a large scar covering most of its face, and a white patch of fur behind its left ear. Then quick as a flash she was gone again. Arella has heard stories of cats such as this, ancient auron cats, but thought they were all but extinct in her lands. No one has seen one for over one hundred years, or so her tribal elders have said.
"He could have easily climbed up this tree and taken me." Arella thinks to herself, still clinging to the branch she was holding onto for balance just a minute ago. "Why did she leave me here? He saw me for sure. Those beautiful yellow eyes were looking right at me." She pauses. "Perhaps he was not hungry. Although if that were the case he would not have been following the motto. And I wonder where he came from, I thought they were all gone now." These questions will stay on Arella's mind for quite some time. There is no logical explanation why a creature with as much power as an auron cat would leave something that was as easy prey as Arella was just then, but he did.
Arella finally climbed down from her tree, careful not to lose her footing and fall. She took down all of her targets from the trees, put her dagger away in her boot again and hid the target leaves away in a bush where no one would find them. She then continued her walk through the forest towards the clearing she saw the men from the other tribe in just the night before. Arella has a pretty good sense of direction, aided by the ability to follow the stars. This is only the second time Arella has visited this forest, but she feels as though she knows it well.
After another couple of minutes of walking, Arella finds the clearing. She expected to see the men already there, practising their fighting, but the clearing is empty. The sun has now gone down, and the moon lights up the clearing with a bright silver night. Another cloudless sky with moonlight and stars her only source of light. She crouches at the edge of the clearing, listening for signs of life, for the voices of the strange men, but she hears nothing. “I thought they said that they would be back tonight.” Arella thinks to herself. “This is very strange.” Arella knew it was a bad idea to get her hopes up on this. There was no way these men would return. Now she would not be able to learn how to fight. “Maybe I should go to their village, and watch them from there? It can’t be too hard to find, nor too far away. I’d bet anything it will be on the other side of this forest. I would be able to hide in the treeline and watch them from afar.” Arella thinks to herself.
Just as Arella is about to walk through the clearing towards the other side, she begins to hear voices in the distance. The men are coming. She uses the time she has spare to get herself to a good vantage point, high in the same tree she was hiding in the night before. Once in the tree, Arella made sure she was hiding in the shadows, and lifted her hood up over her head, covering as much skin and hair as she could, and attempting to blend into the dark. “As long as none of the men look directly up here and focus on where I am, I should be able to stay hidden from them… I hope.”
An old man enters the clearing first, followed by the four younger men. He has long grey hair and a small scruffy looking beard, with a belly slightly too large for his skinny legs to carry. His skin is withered and old, the wrinkles plain to see on his red face. Arella has not seen a man look this old, yet so far from death. He looks remarkably healthy for one his age. "What more can you have to teach us Ujarak?" Red Feathered man asks. He seems to Arella to be quite full of himself most of the time. Almost like he already knows everything, and nothing can be taught to him.
"Oh my child." Ujarak says. "You know nothing of real life Nootau." He then fishes around in a big bulky bag he carries over his left shoulder. "Tonight we practice with these." He says as he pulls a strong looking bow out of the bag. He then proceeds to pull another four out and hands them to the young men.
"Bows and arrows are very primitive weapons Ujarak." Says the smaller one. Arella thinks his name is Doahte. "How do you expect us to defend ourselves with these flimsy things?" He spits. He seems very grumpy and shallow minded. Arella is starting to like this tribe less and less. But if they can teach her to fight, it doesn't matter what they are like. With that though, Ujarak pulls back the bow string, knocks an arrow and fires it at Doahte, narrowly missing the top of his head and sticking in a knot on an old tree just behind him.
"Young one, you must learn. Not all fighting has to be done with your hands. You must learn to use other means, and stay away from battle if you can." He laughs. "How do you think I stayed alive this long? By being safe." The others all howl with laughter at this. It is nice to hear people laugh. Arella has missed that sound greatly. The people of her tribe are far too serious to laugh at anything other than her. "Okay then Ujarak, show us how to use these bows." Green eyed Nashoba says.
The old man proceeds to teach each of the young men how to knock an arrow, then how to aim, then finally how to release the arrow. They seem to be getting the hang of it, although their aim is a little off. Arella has to stifle a laugh when Mato misfires an arrow and nearly pierces his own foot. "I can throw a dagger and hit anything in my sight." Arella thinks. "I wonder if I would be able to use a bow and arrow? Where would I get one from though. I don't think anyone in my tribe uses one. Hmm... Maybe I could make one."
Arella spends the next hour of the men’s training studying the bows, how they move, how the pieces fit together and what they are made of. "They don't seem too hard to make. Just a simple balance and having the right materials. I think I should be able to make on. The arrows however might be a little harder. I would be able to make them, but setting the feathers right for balance might be harder."
Arella watches the muscles on the men’s shoulders tense as they draw back and release the bows, each of them shooting bare chested in the heat of the night. Each arrow is fired with power, and each shot getting closer and closer to the makeshift targets, not all that different from the ones Arella was practising her throwing skills with. The moonlight glints off the sharp stones on the ends of long sticks, and feathers on the end bristle slightly in the breeze, helping the arrow to hold its balance as it is fired across the grove towards the targets on the other side.
From what Arella can see, Nashoba seems to have the best aim, although Mato has the most power behind his draws. Ujarak works hard to help the young men to focus their bows and aim as close as they can get. Demonstrating every now and again to show them how to do it, moving their elbows into the right position and correcting them when they make mistakes. He seems like a good teacher. Strict but fair. Arella would like to learn from him, or someone like him at the very least.
All of these men seems strong, over the smallest one. Much stronger then then men in her own tribe. Arella begins to wonder if what the men had said about her tribe the day before was true. Were they really all that weaker than others, and if so why were they like that? Before Arella could think on this anymore, the men began packing up their bows, arrows and picking up the rest of their belongings. “Before you leave, I want to give you some homework.” Ujarak says to them. “I want you to study your bow. Really look at it, and think about how it works. Then I want you to make your own.” This is met my moans and groans from all of the young men. “I will hear no more of that negativeness. The mark of a true warrior is how well they can make their own weapons. No point being able to hit a squirrels eye from 100 feet if you don’t know how your weapon is made, and therefore its strengths and weaknesses.” This makes sense to Arella. You can’t expect to be able to do anything without first learning something’s strengths, weaknesses and characteristics. It would be like trying to light a fire without knowing that fire needs fuel to burn, water will put it out and that the flames are hot.
Arella waits for them to have left the clearing, then slowly climbs down out of her tree. She sees that one of the men has left an arrow behind and picks it up. "This will help me make my own, if I have an example of what they are meant to look like." She then looks around her, listening out for any signs of the men returning. Once she is sure she can no longer hear them, she begins to follow the trail they leave, leading them back towards to village they came from. Arella is curious to know what the other tribes village looks like, and how many people there are. She has only ever seen members of her own village, and has nothing to compare them with.
Arella walked for what seemed like another hour, which would make her about two hours away from her village. The trees suddenly come to a stop and lush green grassland takes over where it finishes. Just beyond the treeline, only a few feet away, a few tents can be seen. These tents sit on the edge of a village, bigger than Arella’s but not all that different. The tents are all brown and black, made from the skin of hunted animals, but bigger than the ones Arella has seen. A big fire pit can be seen at the centre of the village, but smaller ones sit outside some of the tents, with food cooking on them. Small black tailed rabbits roast on the open flames of some, while others look to have some kind of vegetables or roots boiling in large pots.
Arella scouts out the treeline to find the best place to hide herself away where she can see what is going on. She climbs into a tree nearby, with low branches and lots of leaves. Its bow is strong, and supports her weight well. The thick branches make it comfortable to sit on, and Arella nestles herself in the crook where the branch meets the trunk. From up here she can see the vastness of this other village, surrounded by woodland, with a stream running down the top right hand side, plants and bushes grow around it, and some kind of domesticated cattle are kept in a large pen to the left of her, settling down for the night with their young.
A group of children, there must be about twenty of them, gather around one of the smaller fires. An older looking woman looks to be telling them a story. The animated looks on their faces tell Arella that it is a good one. She always loved being told stories when she was a child. The scary ones were always the best. These children look so happy and carefree, like nothing can harm them. A group of young men, including the ones she had been watching in the clearing, are gathered around another fire, laughing and telling stories also. Although from the way they look at each other, these stories would not be suitable for the children to hear.
Arella is drawn in by the sounds and smells of this village. Everything is so nice, and everyone seems to get along. There is no bullying, or name calling or any nastiness at all. The women seem more relaxed than in her village, and some of them even join in with the men’s stories. Arella can clearly see the chief, sitting with his wife and who he assumes to be his two children, but he is also sitting with the other men and women, all swapping stories and laughing as they eat their meals of black tailed rabbit and roots. Everyone in this tribe seem more equal, if that were even possible. The moon grown higher in the sky, and soon everyone in the tribe seem to be drifting off into their own tents to bed down for the night. “I will stay here the night.” Arella thinks to herself as she nestles down into the bow of the tree, bringing her cloak round to use as a makeshift blanket, while still being careful to keep her hair and face covered. “Then head back home tomorrow during the day when the tribe are too busy to notice me moving.” With that, Arella closes her eyes and drifts off to sleep. The sounds and smells of this pleasant tribe her lullaby for the night. Somewhere in the village, a mother sings her children to sleep, sending Arella deep into unconsciousness.
Chapter 3
The sky was still dark when Arella woke up. She groaned slightly and shifted her position. “Turns out a tree is not exactly the most comfortable place to sleep.” She thought, with a numb bum and sharp pins and needles in her feet, she promises herself not to sleep in such an uncomfortable place in a long time. She sits there for a couple of minutes, letting the feeling come back to her lower half. The air around her was still, and the sky clear and bright. The moon was waning, but the light still shone bright, illuminating the village below her. Everyone in this village were sleeping, even the cattle in the pen were quiet. There is a sense of calm here, safety too. While the village sleeps, they do not worry about the terrors of the night. Arella feels at ease with them. Relaxed and happy.
Climbing down from her hiding place in the tree, Arella notices one of the young men sitting by the dying embers of the fire. It is Nashoba, the green eyed boy. He just stares into the embers, his shoulders moving up and down smoothly as he breaths, silent as the night its self. He moves slightly to the side and Arella notices an object in his hand. It’s his bow he is studying. He stares at it with real intent and focus. “What is it he wants me to look at?” Nashoba asks himself. “I know that the wood is strong and bendy, and I know that the string is also strong. I know where the arrows need to go, and how to fire an arrow.” He looks puzzled. A big man with big shoulders and dark skin steps out of a large tent close to the fire and walks over to the boy. “A bow should be an extension of your arm my boy. Not just a weapon. You need to feel the life that was once inside the wood, feel what the arrow must feel when she flies through the air. That is what Ujarak wants you to know.” He pauses. “What’s bothering you Nashoba?”
“I just can’t sleep Dad.” He says back to the big man.
“Have you slept at all my son?”
“A couple of hours or so yes. I just can’t seem to stay asleep, and I’m not even tired.”
“The sun will be coming up soon. A walk might do you some good. It will be your sisters birthday when she wakes, go find her some flowers from the meadow. You know how much she loves meadow flowers.”
“Okay Dad, thanks.” Nashoba says with a smile. Arella knows she cannot follow the green eyed boy into the meadow, it is far too open and with the sun coming up soon, she needs to keep herself hidden. She knows what happens when one tribe meets another, and it isn’t always pretty. If they spotted her in their village, they would most likely kill her. “I’d better head back through the woods and leave this village behind for now. I need to make myself a bow and some arrows.” Arella thought to herself. She had spent a long time analysing how a bow looks, and how the wood bends. She now feels confident that she will be able to make one that will work well. She watches as the Nashoba walks on into the meadow, and the big man goes back into the large tent he came from. “He must be the chief.” Arella thinks. The size and positioning of the tent give it away. It is the biggest one there, and right in the centre of the camp. Arella watches the green eyed boy walk into the meadow. She watches until the brightly coloured flowers and long meadow grass have consumed him.
Arella stands up from her crouched position in the bushes below the tree that was her bed that night and moves into the woodland. It is dark in the shade of the trees still, but the sun is just beginning to rise on the horizon. Arella is stiff from sleeping in the tree, but the more she walks the looser her body becomes. She is following the same track she used to get to the village, and soon finds herself back at the clearing she saw the young men practising in the day before. They seemed so much older than her when they were fighting. Arella being fourteen, was only maybe two or three years younger than them, but so much smaller and weaker. She has a lot to learn before she can go anywhere on her own she realises.
“Now to find the perfect branch for making my bow.” Arella thinks. The forest is full of wood, but none of it looks like it will work. The wood for this bow needs to be bendy, but strong. The wood of the Looba tree is perfect, but there aren’t many of them around. Walking around with her eyes focused on the branches above her, Arella doesn’t see the tangle of roots at her feet and trips. She falls to the ground with a thump, knocking her head on the stump of an oak tree. “Gods damn that hurts!” She says as she touches the spot where the pain is coming from. She feels heat on her hands and instantly knows it is blood. “Oh great!” Arella sighs. “Just what I need. A head injury.” She brings herself to her feet, and instantly feels dizzy. “Maybe sitting down for a couple of minutes might be a good idea.”
As Arella sits on the mossy ground massaging her head and looking at the roots the tripped her, she notices something. The wood of the root that tripped her is a dark colour, almost black. She moves forwards to investigate it further. “This root is bendy, but strong enough to not break when I fell over it.” She wonders. She takes out her dagger and begins cutting at the root as close to the base of the tree as she can get. As she hacks at the root, she notices that the flesh within is a deep purple colour. “An anamoa tree!” She exclaims aloud. Anamoa trees are extremely rare, but the wood is the best for making weapons. The Looma tree is good, and the wood is strong and bendy, but nothing beats an anamoa tree for strength.
After what seemed like hours, Arella finally freed the root from the base of the tree, she begins pulling it from the ground. It lies over a meter long above ground, and is thicker than any root she has seen on a normal tree. As she pulls, the root seems to just come away from the ground and soon she is holding a two meter long piece of root thicker than her arm at its thickest. The root has a slight natural curve which will make it easier to carve into the right shape, and it is strong enough not to bend under pressure. “This is perfect!” Arella looks down at herself, covered in mud with dried blood on her arms and in her hair from her fall. “I must look a right mess.” She laughs to herself.
Arella continues to walk out of the forest, careful where to put her feet and towards the lake near her village. It is now nearly lunch time and everyone in her village will be wide awake. Arella knows she must go back to the village to get fresh clothes, but she cannot take her anamoa root with her. She stashes it in a bush with white flowers and makes a mental note of where she left it.
The walk back to the village from here takes her a while, but it is a nice day. The clouds are covering the sun, meaning she is not finding it too hard to see from the light. “I have to put some coal dust under my eyes when I get back to the village.” Arella thinks.
Once back at the village, Arella quickly goes to her small tent, picks up a fresh pair of leggings and cloak. Arella’s stomach growls at the smell of meat coking over the fire. “Nope. Can’t stop to eat. I have to get myself clean and make this bow.” Arella is determined to do this by the time the sun goes down. Before leaving her tent, Arella takes some flint, for sharpening her dagger and making a fire. She puts the flint in her boot next to the dagger for safe keeping. It scratches against her skin a little. She moves her sock up her leg to stop the rubbing. On her way out of the tent she sees an old fire that has long since burnt out. She puts her fingers into the ashes and rubs it under her eyes. “This will make seeing much easier.” Arella leaves the village with strange looks and whispers from the others, but no more than usual.
Once she has collected the anamoa wood, she comes to the edge of the forest, where the trees meet the water, she decided to follow it round. Walking between the trees and the water is tricky, but it means she can get to a place where she will be able to bathe and make her bow in peace. After a short walk, Arella comes to an area where the lake is shallow and clear, surrounded by trees and completely hidden from view. She looks at her reflection in the water and sees a sight that makes her laugh. A skinny fourteen year old girl, with dried mud and blood in her hair, dirty but smiling. “This is what the others in the village must have seen. No wonder they were looking at me like I was strange.” She takes off her clothes, upbraids her hair and slinks into the clean water. It is a little cooler than she would have liked it, but refreshing all the same. The sun has now come out and Arella can’t help thinking that if the sun was out earlier, the lake might be warmer than it is, but it is clean all the same.
Fish swim in the water under her feet, sometimes catching her toes and making her laugh. Arella dips her head under the water, washing away the dirt and blood from the days trials. She feels a sharp pain in her head as she does this from the cut caused by falling on the root. “Nothing that won’t heal.” She thinks to herself. Arella is used to scratches a bruises, clumsy as she is, she hardly goes a week without getting some kind of injury.
Once she is clean, Arella pulls her clothes into the water from the rock they were resting on a begins scrubbing the dirt out of them too. She steps out of the water and climbs onto the slippy rocks at the side of the lake.
Arella’s skin dries quickly in the warm sun, and she is soon dry enough to put her new clean clothes back on. Her hair is still dripping wet. Arella wrings it out, getting as much of the water out of it as she can, and sits running her finders through it, un-knotting it as she goes, until it is silky smooth. She takes the wet hair, pulls it all to one side and braids it once again to keep it out of her eyes while she works.
Arella lays her wet clothes out on one of the black rocks, these are the hottest and will help to dry her clothes quicker, and puts her boots close to them too. “I love the feeling of bare feet on warm rocks.” She thinks as she walks around. As she looks around her, she has a sudden realisation; the land here is perfect. There is a clearing behind her, surrounded by a thick growth of trees and bushes, the lake to her front, and only a narrow passage between the two to her left, and no way in without going in the water from any other way. This would be perfect to make a small camp for herself, the first step in moving away from her tribe. Three of the trees at the edge of the clearing grow close together, their branches spreading far to the sides rather than up, Minora trees. Their pale white wood spotted with dark green moss is strong, and low hanging branches make for perfect climbing. If Arella could gather enough materials, she could make those trees into a house, away from the ground, nice and safe. Perfect!
Arella is suddenly no longer tired as excitement washes over her. She knows this will take a few days at the lest to do, but the thought of having her own home fills her with joy and energy. “Let’s not get ahead of yourself Arella. We said we were building the bow first, so this is what we will do.” Arella takes the anamoa wood in her hand and begins to carve away the bark from the root. The dark purple wood underneath shines wet. She carves and carves for hours, trying to create the perfect shape.
The sun is setting by the time Arella has finished carving her masterpiece. The root has made the perfect bow shape, and is still strong even without the protective bark. “Almost like it was meant to be.” Arella smiles. Next Arella searches the bank of the lake for the reeds that line most banks. They are plentiful, and useful for more than just the delicious roots at the bottom. With this though Arella’s stomach growls loudly. “I need to stop neglecting my stomach.” She laughs to herself. It growls again. “So before making the string, I think I need to make a fire and cook some food. Sure bulbs are nice raw, but they taste much better cooked.”
Arella takes her flint out of her boots and the dagger too. She gathers dried reeds from the dying plants around her and some twigs from the ground in the clearing. By the time she has gathered all of her fire materials, the sun has all but gone. She piles the dried reeds up on top of one of the rocks, and strikes the flint off the dagger, creating sparks. After only four strikes, the sparks take root in the reeds and a small fire starts. Arella adds a few of the smaller twigs to the fire first to get it going, the adds bigger and bigger ones as the fire comes to life.
She takes the grue bulbs from the ground near the lake, removes the reeds and places them on the black rock, weighed down by a few flat stones to stop them drifting away, ready to be dried out and used to make her bow string. Arella then pokes sharp sticks through the three fleshy bulbs and holds them over the fire to cook. The moon is now high in the sky, a clear night full of stars and only wisps of clouds floating effortlessly across the blackness. The moon half full, but the wolves still howl into the night from across in the forest on the other side of the lake. “Soon I will be as free and independent as those wolves.” Arella thinks to herself.
Arella eats her cooked bulbs whilst listening to the sounds of the night. Crickets chirp happy songs and jump around in the bushes and grass; the wolves howl at the moon, declaring territory; an owl hoots in the distance, answered by a screech from closer to where Arella sits; fish swim in the lake, the light of the moon reflected off their silvery scales. Beauty is all around, and Arella could not be happier to be sat out in it, feeling free and at peace.
Once Arella has satisfies her hungry, she takes the drying reeds from under the rocks. They have dried out quickly on the black stones, and are ready to thread into her bow using the light of the moon and glow from the fire. She makes holes in the bow at the top ready for the string part of the reed. She then takes the reed in her hand and feels along its width for the string. Inside she feels a hard lump and uses her fingernail to cut into the reed to reveal the string. Once the white string like material is revealed, Arella hooks her thumb and finger round it and begins to pull it gently out of the reed. This takes her some time, but when she is finished, a long section of unbroken and very strong string is in her hands. She wraps it around both her hands a couple of times and gives it a tug to test its strength. The satisfying twang the string makes when it does not break tells her that it will be worthy of her bow. She then begins to thread the string through the holes in the top and bottom of the bow, tying them at both ends, although loosely at one end so she can test the tensile strength before tying tight for the finishing product.
After a while of testing with small stones and pulling on the string, Arella is happy with how the bow feels in her hand, almost like an extension of her own arm, and she sets it to the side. Happy that she has made it to the best of her ability. “Next I have to build the arrows.” She says to herself. She knows that getting the balance on the arrow right won’t be easy, but to be able to use a ranged weapon for defence and hunting would make Arella the happiest girl alive. She takes out the arrow she found on the ground after the young men left the clearing and examines it. The feathers on the end are damaged, and Arella dies not think it will fly very well. She sets it along with the bow.
With a full stomach, Arella begins to feel the tiredness setting in. She knows she cannot sleep on the floor, too many predators around that might take advantage of her there, so she must make her way into a tree again. Luckily, the white trees she will make her home are covered in moss. This will make sleeping there much more comfortable. She climbs into the tree, sits back against the trunk and watches as a shooting star flits across the sky above her. “A shooting star is the gods way of telling you something big is coming.” Nayleen used to say to Arella. This worried her a little, but gave her excitement at the same time. Something big could be good, or it could be bad. The gods would never tell you this, only that it would happen, and it would be soon. Arella looks at the positions of the stars in the sky. “Today would have been Nayleen’s birthday.” She thinks to herself. Nayleen died three weeks after her birthday, and Arella remembers the day well. She’d been taken on a hunting trip, to help the men remove the bison horns before returning, an ancient tradition to help ward off evil spirits, although Arella cannot see how that would keep spirits away. When she returned, she had a puncture in her ribs on the left hand side where one of the bison had gored her. She died after four days later, consumed by fever as an infection set in. Arella was beside herself for weeks after. She would not eat, did not sleep, and it was then that she developed her talent for knife throwing. She vowed that she would never be as vulnerable as Nayleen was without a weapon to defend herself. Sleep soon took over and Arella drifted off into a peaceful and welcome sleep.
Arella’s dreams are full of stars and bright lights, and the feeling of happiness is all she can remember when the morning comes. A pleasant night’s sleep, compared to last night anyhow.
The sun was just coming up as Arella opened her eyes, light streaming through the thin cover of leaves above her head. The orange sky made her feel warm, but opened her eyes to the first problem. No roof. Arella needs to make a roof before anything else. Stop the rain from getting in when it does rain, then she can work on a base and walls. She stretches out her arms and legs before using the low hanging branches to climb down from the tree. She leaves her bow in the tree, resting on one of the small branches, hooked on with the string to keep from falling off, makes sure her dagger is tucked safely into her boot and sets off into the forest to look for the branches she needs to make the roof.
After a couple of hours of collecting fallen branches, Arella had a decent sized pile of them by the base of her soon to be tree house. They were all different sizes and types of wood, and it had been hard work collecting some of them. Luckily in a forest as dense as this one, there are plenty of fallen branches. While eating one of the grue bulbs she cooked last night, Arella begins cutting the sprouting branches away from the main branch to make them smooth and straight. She then piles them up on her other side. “I wonder how many branches it will take to make a roof.” She wonders to herself. Her pile of branches is quite large, but she is not sure if it will be enough.
Arella needs more reeds for binding the branches to each other and the tree. She gets herself up off the ground, brushes the bits of bark and moss off herself, pulls her hood up over her head and begins walking along the edge of the lake, further into the forest in search of a bountiful supply of reeds.
Arella sees a large bank of reeds just up ahead on the other side of a small sandy beach area by the lake. The black sand glitters with gold and white. It looks beautiful and Arella is mesmerised by this. She heard familiar laughter coming from the trees in her direction and quickly hides herself in the bushes closest to her. Just as she hides herself from view, the young men from the tribe she has been watching emerge from the forest.
All of the young men are smiling, and are in high spirits. From the looks of things, Arella thinks they are planning on doing combat training today. They all start by stretching out. Sweat gleans on the arms and heads of the young men, hot from walking through the forest. “Why have you chosen here for training today Nashoba?” Nootau asks.
“So when I knock you on your arse you don’t get too badly hurt.” He quips back.
“It will be you who lands on his…”
“Enough children.” Mato says. “Let’s just begin the training already, words will mean nothing when my fist makes contact with your face.” This brings about more laughter from the others, but the training begins then.
Each move is calculated and looks well practised. Every strike is met with a block and a counterstrike, which is in turn met with another block and so on. Doahte and Mato fight with each other, a strange mix to Arella’s eyes as Mato is so much bigger than Doahte, although not as quick. While Mato has the clear strength, and looks like he could life a full-grown bull without breaking a sweat, Doahte is very quick on his feet and gets around Mato without much of an issue. However entertaining watching these two is, Arella cannot seem to take her eyes of Nashoba and Nootau. They are evenly matched in size, strength and ability. There is a seriousness about how they fight, but also playful. These two clearly know each other well, anticipating moves before the other has even thought about it.
Having a good memory will serve Arella well here. As she watches closely, she learns which moves to use against which others; different blocking techniques; different attacks; and how to escape holds. She watches for hours as the men practice their fighting. It’s a shame Arella does not have anyone she could practice this with, but she will make do and learn as much as she can solo.
Arella is so engrossed in watching Nashoba and Nootau fight she does not realise they are getting closer to her. The sun catches in Nashoba’s eyes, causing his to lose sight of Nootau. He catches the green eyed boy under the chin with an upper cut, causing him to fall backwards, hitting his head on the ground beneath him. As he falls, almost in slow motion, He catches Arella’s eyes in the bushes, seeing her pale face and hair. She notes this and quickly pulls herself backwards into the forest. “I know I should have been in a tree from the start, not on the ground where they might have seen me. Now he saw me.” Arella curses in her mind. She retreats to one of the bushier trees for cover, knowing she would not have time to hide further into the forest. “I need to hear what they say, in case they come looking for me or something.” Arella tells herself, although she really just wants to find out if Nashoba is okay.
After a few seconds Nashoba opens his eyes. Nootau, Mato and Doahte are gathered around him with slight concern. Nootau extends a hand to help Nashoba up. “Looks like you took quite a knock there my friend.” Nootau says. “Told you you’d be the one on his arse.”
“A white ghost!” Nashoba exclaims. Everyone looks at him puzzled and Arella’s heart drops.
“What on earth are you blabbering about?” Mato asks and Nashoba takes Nootau’s hand and gets up.
“Did you hit your head on a rock?” Nootau asks. “Must have hit you harder than I thought.”
“No really I saw a white ghost.” Nashoba insists. “What else could it have been. It had a white face, white hair and like, purple eyes.” All but Nashoba burst into laughter. “I mean it guys, I know what I saw.” He sighs as the others laugh, getting agitated now. “It was there.” Nashoba points towards the bush Arella was hiding in. “In that bush staring at me.”
“Ooohhhh.” Nootau mocks with ghostly noises. “The spirits will get you Nashoba.”
Arella’s fear lifts slightly. “Well at least the others don’t think he saw anything. Maybe he’ll forget he saw me and put it down to a bump on the head.” She thinks hopefully.
“I know what I saw. And it wasn’t because I hit my head. I swear to the gods no one ever listens to me.” Nashoba thinks. “We’d better get going back then. I think training’s over for today.” He says out loud, defeated.
“Yeah, and there’s roast hog tonight.” Mato breaths in. “I can almost smell it cooking from here.” With that the men collect their belongings and leave the black beach in the direction of their village.
Once Arella’s heart has stopped beating out of her chest, and she is sure none of the young men will come back, she makes her way back down the tree to the ground. “That was a close call.” She thinks, and she was right. Arella is lucky that only Nashoba saw her and not the others. She gathers her nerves again and once she is stable in her mind, she walks out onto the black sand and towards the reeds on the other side of the beautiful beach. The reeds that grow here grow very tall and thick. She uproots a dozen of them and bunches them together. “This should be enough for now. And I can use the sproutlings to plant in the muddy banks next to the lake near my new home, then I can grow my own grue roots and bulbs.”
Arella heads back through the edge of the forest, a little way in from the lake. Still keeping the lake on her left hand side so she knows where she is going, Arella is surveying the land around her, memorising the different plants and trees that fill the new lands she calls her home. Now Arella knows it is not far from the village she grew up in, but this forest is home to her, and she feels happy living her. She does not miss the sneers she gets from the other villagers, or the looks they give her on a day to day basis. Nor does she miss being last to eat anything when they cook food. Arella is at home in the forest, and that is where she will stay as long as she can.
Arella gets back to the clutch of trees she calls home. The branches she has stripped of their stray twigs are still piled up nicely by the base of the tree, and nothing much here has changed. She takes the reeds over to the black rocks she was sat on just the day before, and using her nails, strips the reeds away from the strong string inside. Because these reeds are larger than the one she used to make her bow, they contain more strings. Each string is around two meters long, and Arella can cut them smaller for binding the branches together.
The task of turning a bunch of branches and reed strings into a roof to cover her turns out to be a lot harder than Arella first anticipated. First, she tried making a roof shaped board of wood with the twigs and carrying it up into the tree, but the shape did not fit. Then she tried taking a few of the branches up with her, but they were not stable enough when fastened to the tree. It is getting late by the time Arella realises what she needs to do “I need to make the supports from thicker branches before trying to add them to the top.” She almost slaps herself. “Why did I not think of this earlier?” For this Arella will need larger branches, as thick as her arm or bigger to hold the weight of the roof structure she will build.
A few thick branches lie on the ground close to the clearing next to Arella’s trees. She gathers them up. “These branches are heavier than they look.” She thinks to herself. “Better make sure they’re secure before I add anything to them. Wouldn’t want this dropping on my head.” Arella’s arms and back hurt by the time she had lugged one of the branches up the tree. She rests it in the bow of the tree and descends again to gather reed strings.
Arella props the branches she will use for structure against bows of other branches attached to the tree for stability and one by one tires them off with the strings. It is hard work but by the time the sun begins to set, Arella has a structure ready for adding roofing to. She climbs down from the tree, steps back and admires her work. “That should work just fine.” She says to herself out loud. Arella tilts her head back to look at the sky, her neck cracking as she does so. “Please don’t rain though until I have a waterproof layer on top.” For this Arella knows she will need dried animal skins. Luckily there are plenty of these in the tent she used in the village. No one else will use her tent. The tribe will believe that this is cursed as well as her, so she will be free to take it, under the cover of night of course.
Under the cover of darkness, Arella walks along the edge of the lake, skirts around to the stream that joins the lake and follows it to the village she used to call home. Everyone is sound asleep, and snoring can be heard coming from some of the tents. The fire pit in the centre of the village has all but burnt out, the embers still glowing but the heat almost gone. The carcass of a deer sits over the fire, the meat left on its bones now burnt and inedible. This makes Arella hungry. “I can’t live on roots all my life.” She thinks to herself. “I will have to learn how to hunt game and catch fish soon or I will waste away.” She looks down at her slowly shrinking frame.
On the far side of the village her small tent sits, untouched by any of the other tribe members, just how she hoped it would be. Arella moves towards it, careful not to make any noise or cause shadows to shift across the other tents.
Inside the tent are items Arella has never really paid much attention to. They belonged to Nayleen, then her father before her. Arella takes the deer skin bag from the back of the tent with these items in it then wraps her fur bedding around it. There isn’t much inside the tent, but that means it should be easier to take it all in one go rather than having to come back for things. Arella then begins removing the sticks and branches that hold the structure up and sets them aside. She then folds up the outer bit of the tent and puts it together with the bedding and deer skin bag. It is a rather large pile of things, but not too heavy thankfully. Arella picks up the pile of skins and her belongings and leave her old life behind.
Wispy clouds float through the sky above Arella, the moonlight reflecting off them lighting the ground under her feet. The walk back to her white tree home seems to take longer than normal due to the heavy weight under her arms. Arella stops by the side of the lake for a few minutes to rest. She drops her belongings on the floor, and inside the deerskin bag, a strange metallic ‘ting’ as it hits the floor. Arella’s interest is peaked. She has never looked inside this bag, never had a reason to. It did not belong to her, and even though all of Nayleen’s belongings became hers when she died, Arella had never thought to look inside the bag.
Arella unfolds the deerskin, untying the strings that told it together, revealing the contents within. Strange pinkish red glass like objects fill the bag, all tied with black bindings to straight black branches. “Weapons!” Arella exclaims as she examines them further. There is a long dagger, the blade shines almost like soft blood. She touches the edge and cuts her finger. She winces with the pain but makes no noise. There is also a spear in this bag. The head small and pointed. The last item in this bag is strange. It is almost like a dagger, but has a long stick, then another blade on the other side. “A double ended grathon?” Arella asks no one in particular. This is an old weapon, not seen for hundreds of years. No on uses these anymore as the balance is hard to get, and stone is too heavy. Realisation grabs Arella. She gasps then catches her breath. “It’s blood glass!” Blood glass is an ancient material, made when a dragon dies and his body turns to ash under the light of a red moon. It is hard as obsidian and sharp as the sharpest thing you will ever touch, but lighter than a feather in comparison to other weapon materials. Happiness comes over Arella as she realises she now has everything she needs to learn how to hunt and fight. With the spear she can hunt fish, and with the grathon she will be able to fight and protect herself… Once she learns how to use it that is. “Why had I not looked in that bag earlier?” She asks herself.
With this a new energy washes over Arella and she picks up her belongings again, setting out once again for her home. Following the lake around the sides of the trees is not so easy with heavy items under her arm, but Arella is keen to get back to her trees to have a good night’s rest. Tomorrow will be spent finishing off the roof of her house and making it water and wind proof. Just as she rounds the corner to come to her little clearing by the lake, a mighty gust of wind catches her off guard. She looks up at the sky, clouds thickening. “Looks like we might need that roof sooner than I’d thought.”
Arella puts down the pile of items she had been carrying on the floor beneath the tree, unfolds the tent covering. She then climbs up the tree with it and roughly places it on top of the scaffolding branches. It will not be totally waterproof, as it is not spread tight or tied down, but at least if it does rain, Arella won’t get too wet. She then climbs down the tree and collects the rest of the items, then takes them up into the tree with her. She unrolls her skin bed and climbs inside it. It is warm and comfortable. Arella falls asleep listening to the wind blow through the trees, and the sounds of the crickets as the chirp in the bushes below her.
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