Chương 3: Part 3 - Catching Breath

Those who deride the food of the Sauvain as simple fail to appreciate the savor and quality added by contrast. Begin with a simmering desert stock, add sand to taste and garnish with ash. Serve in a cool evening under the cerein, and oh - you would weep to taste it, had you the water. Tasjadre Ra Novo, Jehamyn Sadedrem Despite Arjun's exhortations, the consensus seemed to be that Mosidhu would take at least a couple of days to reach Ademen Tacen.

They were given water and flatbread, bland but filling, and told that Tesvaji would host them at a meal in the evening. After that the locals dispersed and left them alone, their curiosity apparently sated. For the first time in weeks, all four travelers were faced with the prospect of an afternoon where they could simply… relax.

For Mark and Jesse, there was no question of what to do next - they laid out the truck's solar array, then played an immediate and intense series of rock-paper-scissors to determine who got to nap. Jesse, victorious, bounded to the M-ATV and lay out flat in the back compartment. He was asleep in seconds. Arjun would hear nothing of resting, enthusing over everything from the magnificent tree to the thatching atop the village's huts.

His eyes were alight as he flitted around the village, sketching and scribbling in his notebook. Jackie and Mark stopped trying to keep up with him after the first hour, instead finding themselves drawn to a benchlike ridge of bark protruding from one of the tree's mammoth roots. The shade of the branches far overhead left the base of the tree cool, even a touch humid. A light breeze swirled around them as they sat and looked out over the village below.

The green fields spread out beyond the tight cluster of huts around the tree, trailing away into the vastness of the desert beyond.

"This is nice," Jackie commented, stretching her hands above her head.

"Air conditioning is a blessing from heaven, don't get me wrong, but it's so much better not to need it." Mark didn't reply, letting the wind brush through his hair and stream across his upturned face. Swatches of the dull blue sky peeked through the tree cover above, shifting as the wind slowly pushed the colossal branches to and fro. Several minutes passed in silence, and eventually Mark let out a long, long sigh.

"So, do you have any idea what we should do?" The question hung in the air for several moments more, the light breeze buffeting it in playful circles around their heads.

"You're not talking about the bandits, are you?", Jackie sighed. Mark shook his head.

"I'm not sure," she admitted, sitting upright with a resigned look.

"I'll be honest, I'm trying not to think about it," she said.

"There's food and water, there's angry bandits, there's this damn endless desert - there are so many other things to think about besides the fact that we can't go home." She grimaced and slumped forward.

"I don't even like saying it out loud," she muttered.

"I'm supposed to fly out places, there's a fancy dinner when you get there and then you spend a week or three in the bush doing surveys until you figure out where the oil is. Then there's a fancier dinner in the city and you go back home. That's my life." She shook her head.

"Was my life. Now there's no airplane, no surveys, no god-damned oil - and I don't have a clue where to go from here." Mark leaned back and closed his eyes.

"Focus on the dinner," he advised, yawning.

"Home had dinner. This place apparently has it too. The fundamental constant." He cracked open an eye at Jackie's miserable laugh and saw a tear streak down her cheek.

"Listen, Jack, I don't know what the fuck we're going to do about getting home. Normally in a situation like this you make yourself visible and wait for rescue."

"Pfft," Jackie snorted, wiping her cheek.

"Well, that's off the table."

"Right," Mark said grimly.

"They've probably got tons of people working on reopening the way back home, but even if they manage to figure it out there's no way we can just sit and wait. It's going to take them time, and we need to survive until then. Let's call that priority one." He sat up and looked around, taking in the village surroundings.

"I figure we might be able to stay here, at least for a while, but survival is all this place is good for. It may be that there's something we need to do on our side to get home, and the folks here don't strike me as having expert knowledge on subjects mystical and arcane. The merchants back at camp mentioned a large city to the west, and if anyone knows about that sort of shit they'll be in a population center. So, arcane fucking mysteries - priority two." Jackie frowned.

"For all we know, this is the large city," she pointed out.

"Nah," Mark chuckled, "that'd be funny, but I don't think so. From what I remember in the carto sessions they said the desert ended far to the west, and past that point was the city." He shrugged.

"I figure we can get the lay of the land from Tesvaji while we're haggling over supplies."

"A lot of this hinges on what we can trade for here," Jackie said.

"We may have to help him despite your misgivings." Mark gave her a flat look.

"You're the one that wanted to help, now you don't want to?"

"No, I want to, and I know we did the right thing helping Gusje," Jackie said frustratedly, "it's just - you made good points! We don't know him, we don't know the politics. This could be one of those villages with a terrible secret. We could show up to dinner tonight and the entree could be freshly killed babies. It could be live babies." Mark choked, momentarily incapacitated by an amused fit of coughing.

"I dunno," he managed.

"After two weeks of rationing our MREs…"

"Shut up," Jackie said with a laugh, smacking his shoulder lightly.

"You're terrible. But seriously, you made me think about it." She paused, hesitating.

"You were speaking from experience, weren't you?" Mark's smile died and his face slackened.

"Yeah," he said quietly.

"Back when things flared up again in Syria. Our unit worked with local forces in a small town called Al-Hawl near the Iraqi border. When things heated up there for round two of the civil war, the guy in charge at the time read the tea leaves and tossed his lot in with the coalition forces. There weren't many people still living there at that point, but he knew all of them. He gave us guides, terps, intel on where the Russian arms shipments were coming in, everything we could have asked for."

Mark trailed off, like he had just become aware that he was talking. Jackie tucked her knees up to her chest and waited silently.

"He was a great guy, too," Mark said after a moment.

"Big bushy moustache, a billion grandchildren. Liked to misquote nineties action movies and race his shitty Hilux. He knew everyone by name and was always happy to see you. Then one day we're talking with him and a man charges out of nowhere, filthy and ragged with a shitty gun, starts spraying the building we were in. We returned fire and put him down, gut-shot. He keeps ranting, screaming about his wife, his children. Eventually he dies, and we ask our guy if he knew who he was."

Mark shook his head and hunched forward.

"'Some Kurd,' he said, like he was talking about a dead goat. It didn't sit right with us. We started keeping an eye out, asking questions. Two weeks later we found a building full of refugee Kurds. The women were chained up and drugged, to keep his soldiers happy. The children were kept in cages, two or three to a pen," he growled, balling his hands into fists, "to keep his soldiers happy. The ones that didn't survive were in a ditch out back with the men."

"Jesus," Jackie whispered.

"What happened afterward?"

"Nothing," Mark said, laughing darkly.

"The guy was the best intel source in the region. He blamed the whole thing on one of his lieutenants, made a big show out of shooting the guy and going on about how terrible it was. We were told from up top that the matter was considered resolved." He shrugged.

"But we knew it wasn't. They just hid the next building a little better. And now when I see this great guy, nice village, loves his daughter, and he tells me the men we killed to protect her were 'some Aedrem' - I can't help but wonder what that means to him." Jackie didn't know what to say to that, so she sat with Mark and watched the sun play over the fields. In the distance a line of villagers worked to clear an overgrown field, their arms rising and falling as they chopped at the tangle of vegetation.

Heat haze distorted everything past the edge of the oasis, turning it into a blurred backdrop of pastel tans and reds that danced around them. The eye of that hurricane was cool and green, and they sat together until Mark wearily clapped his hands to his knees and stood.

"Come on," he said, extending a hand to help Jackie up.

"Let's find Arjun."

"You're talking about one hell of a coincidence," Neil said, pacing back and forth excitedly.

"Doesn't it make sense to assume one event generated both types of material?" Arjun shook his head.

"Dr. Yin, you're forgetting that explosive volcanism is orders of magnitude below the pressure needed to shock quartz. It would be a good assumption if it were possible, but it just isn't."

"Recorded instances of explosive volcanism," Neil corrected crossly.

"We're standing on a new world, who knows what's possible here?"

"The difference in energy levels between what we've seen and your theorized event is so large that a meteor impact occurring simultaneously with major volcanic eruptions begins to look rather plausible by comparison," Arjun countered.

"We even have recorded instances of large impacts serving as a volcanic trigger event on Earth." He paused to chuckle ruefully.

"Ah, I'll never get used to having to qualify a sentence like that," he said.

"Regardless of the root cause, I think we can both agree that this means the planet is or has been prone to both heavy volcanism and highly energetic concussive events of some stripe."

"Fair to say," Neil acknowledged.

"I will nitpick on one more point, though. The sheer amount of this material so close to the surface and its remarkable homogeneity would tend to suggest that the generating event was recent." He looked mildly troubled as he considered his statement.

"Perhaps very recent," he amended.

"Certainly not long enough ago that I would suggest we're in a dormant era."

"I'll settle for a dormant couple of months, thank you," Arjun joked, slapping Neil on the back.

"You may well be right. Come on, let's take this batch of samples back and get a better look at them."

"Too right," he replied, mopping his brow.

"Fuck's sake, Arjun, how are you not dying out here? You're barely sweating." Arjun raised an eyebrow at the younger man and began walking toward the camp.

"I lived in Delhi for many years," he said.

"It's not even humid here." This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Gibson and Roth fell in beside the pair, walking over from the pitiful swatch of shade they had found beside a craggy rock. They traced their footsteps and the colorful path markers they had left, picking their way back to the camp just as the first shadows from the near ridge were nibbling at the perimeter.

They walked down into the ridge's shade, sighing with relief as the sun stopped its assault on their backs.

"Finally," Neil groused, panting.

"You know, we should consider doing some of these surveys at night. It'd be more comfortable, at least."

"The merchants said not to wander at night," Jesse said. The others turned to look at him, and he shrugged. Roth snorted.

"Our local buddies are scared of a lot," he said.

"They're scared of the mountains, they're scared of the dark, they're scared when the wind blows and when it doesn't." He spat into the sand and shook his head.

"Not saying I'm signing up for night patrol, but come on - we've got a whole damn company camped out here. If their boogeyman comes calling a bullet between the eyes ought to quiet him down some."

"We told them that," Jesse said, "more or less. They still want to leave."

"Well, best of luck to them finding someone else to pull their asses out of the sand next time," Roth said. They squinted their eyes as a sudden gust of wind tossed grit in their faces, and Roth spat on the ground once more as it quieted.

"Argh," he moaned.

"Tell you what, doc. If you can find a time with no sun and no sandy fucking wind, I'll take you anywhere you want to go." Roth turned back when no response came, then stopped in confusion.

"Wait," he grunted.

"Where the fuck is Dr. Yin?" They finally found Arjun after following a curious honking noise echoing over the low roofs of the huts. It turned out to be the war cry of a sleek-looking bird nearly a meter tall that had taken great offense to Arjun's interest in it. Mark managed to stop laughing for long enough to extricate the frazzled-looking old man and corral the bird, handing it to a villager who was amused nearly to self-injury by the whole scenario.

"Damn, Arjun," Mark chuckled, "I wouldn't have thought you could sprint that fast."

"Clean living, I suppose," Arjun gasped, still trying to catch his breath.

"To be honest I'm as surprised as you are." He flashed them both an exhilarated grin, straightening up.

"Besides, did you see that monstrous thing? It had teeth! Not just a serrated beak, but teeth!"

"Yeah, I noticed," Mark said with a grimace.

"Dumbass bird was trying to chomp on me a bit when I grabbed it." Arjun shook his head vigorously.

"They don't teach you kids anything anymore," he lamented.

"It wasn't a bird at all, that's what I'm-""Feathers," Mark observed, pointing at the unhappy creature now poking around its pen.

"Beak. Stick legs. Squawk squawk." He shrugged.

"Bird." Jackie stepped between them as Arjun prepared to launch into what promised to be a lengthy discussion of taxonomy, forestalling Mark's education with an upraised hand.

"Guys," she said flatly.

"Please consider if bird classification is a priority topic at the moment." Arjun looked like he wanted to interject, but then seemed to deflate as the moment passed.

"All right," he conceded.

"Shall we go rouse Mr. Gibson and compare notes before dinner?" The three of them walked back toward the truck, wending their way between huts and field-hedges as Arjun excitedly pointed out things he had noticed during his wandering - the household water-catches, the engraved stone pillars jutting from the fields like the fingers of a buried giant.

He earned them some odd looks from the villagers as they passed, but for the most part the residents of the village were content to go about their business and let them do the same. By the time they arrived back at the truck the sun was low enough that it had dipped below the far fringe of branches on the west side of the tree. Jesse was sitting on top of the truck's cab, leaning back in the sunlight. Beside him sat a diminutive figure, and as they drew closer they saw that it was Gusje's mother.

"Uh-oh," Mark muttered, hastening his stride.

"Hey, Jesse!", he called out. Both of the figures on the truck looked his way. Jesse leaned over to say something quietly, then slid off the cab to the ground.

"Hey, social butterfly," Jackie teased.

"Making friends?"

"This is Saneji," Jesse replied, gesturing to the woman perched on the truck." Saneji't, eratymyn satsam a Mark, Jackie, Arjun a'co evit," he said politely, pointing to each of them in turn. Saneji nodded to each of them as they were introduced, then extended a hand to Jesse. He hesitated, then lifted her dancer-like by the waist and set her down on the ground. Jackie couldn't help but admire the improbable air of dignity that Saneji lent to the process.

Looking at her it was easy to see the resemblance to Gusje - she had high cheekbones and a piercing stare in common with her daughter, and their hair was plaited back in the same manner to reinforce the look. She wore a dark, colorfully embroidered wrap that was bound in place with an ornate wooden pin. It covered one shoulder and left the other bare, and on that arm she wore several metal and wooden torcs around her bicep.

She smiled up at the three newcomers, apparently unfazed at being carried around by a man nearly twice her height." Sasetim ajhed udeti," she said warmly." Sasimyn sasin majhe itelyvat u'uda." She swept her smile over each of them once more, then turned and walked gracefully back up to the longhouse.

"Uh," Jackie said.

"Jesse?"

"She said we're welcome here," Jesse answered.

"She also suggested we might want to clean up before dinner." Jackie plucked at her travel-stained t-shirt, one of a handful they had discovered wadded up in the back of the truck. She had escaped in her own clothing, of course, but this shirt had the advantage of not being liberally coated with blood. Her pants were darker and hid the stains, but Jackie was all too aware that they were there.

She was still luckier than the men, as Arjun had only his ragged oxford-cloth shirt and khakis while Mark and Jesse still wore their ACUs. Her nose had stopped acknowledging it some time ago, but she was sure they were all a bit ripe by this point.

"Yeah, that's fair," she sighed.

"Maybe Saneji has one of those snazzy sarongs in your size, Mark."

"I could rock a sarong," he mused, striking a pose.

"Also, I'm hungry. Let's head up." They were spirited away to back rooms almost as soon as they entered the longhouse, a bemused Jackie carted off by a gaggle of women while the three men were firmly directed to a room with a small basin of water and a stack of folded cloth.

"Well, gentlemen," Arjun said, stripping off his filthy shirt, "after this long, modesty must needs take-" He paused. Mark and Jesse had already disrobed completely and were dipping swatches of cloth in the basin. Shaking his head, Arjun walked over to join them.

"So, Jesse," Mark said, "you were chatting up Tesvaji's lady? Bold move." He waggled his eyebrows.

"I didn't, ah," Jesse replied, scrubbing the back of his neck nervously.

"I just woke up and she saw me sitting. She came over and introduced herself." Mark gave him a look of mock incredulity.

"Like one does in a real conversation? And how'd that go?" Jesse paused his washing, staring off to the side.

"She told me stories about when Gusje was little. How she'd push her brother off his chair or go chasing lizards through the house. She told me the story of how she was named, they do that when the children are older here. She said that now Gusje travels far out to find rare herbs and ingredients that they can use for medicine or trade, that she's one of the best at it. That's what she was doing when we found her."

"This is beginning to make more sense," Mark said dryly.

"Did you actually talk back to her?" Jesse shifted.

"A little," he said quietly.

"But mostly she, uh… sometimes people just have stuff they want to say."

"You're unbelievable, man," Mark chuckled.

"Still, she seems to like you - so it can't have been a total disaster. Did she give any reason for telling you all that?"

"She wanted to say thank you," Arjun said, his voice subdued.

"She probably knows there's trouble coming because of what we did. It might be overstepping for the Madi's wife to directly thank us for something like that, so instead she just told us who we saved, what Gusje means to her. Why she's glad we did it, despite the cost."

"She was nice," Jesse said.

"She reminds me of my mom." Arjun barked out a short laugh.

"You must have had quite the momentous childhood, then. Even meeting her briefly I get the sense that Saneji is not a woman to be trifled with. She has a certain maternal poise and grace about her..."

"Whoa there, silver tiger," Mark said, raising an eyebrow at Arjun.

"I'd tell you to keep your pants on, but..."

"Hah!", Arjun chuckled.

"You don't have to worry about me, Mr. Walsh, I'm a married man. But speaking of pants…" He walked over to another, larger pile of cloth sitting on a low bench. Some investigation revealed them to be loose leggings in the style Tesvaji had worn - perhaps even his, given that they were in his house. It was clear they had found the largest garments they could muster on short notice… which meant that as they tried them on, they found themselves wearing what amounted to loose-fitting, airy shorts.

"No shirts?", Mark said hopefully, casting his eyes around the room.

"None of the men were wearing one earlier," Arjun pointed out.

"Besides, given the fit of the pants I think I can imagine what that would look like."

"Oof, good point," Mark said.

"Well, our old stuff is out of the question, now that I'm scrubbed up I can smell it from across the room."

"When in Rome," Arjun said airily.

"The weather certainly doesn't demand more. Perhaps we can inquire about laundry before dinner begins." He shrugged and opened the door to the common area.

"Shall we?" He nodded, and the three of them left the room. The sun was dipping below the horizon by the time they walked out of the longhouse, but the upper reaches of the tree still stood in its fiery glare against the deepening blue-grey sky. Villagers flitted around to posts and eaves, tying ornaments that glowed with a hot forge-light in the dusk. Fascinated, Arjun ran over to one before Mark could stop him - but he reached out his hand to touch one of the lights and was unburnt.

Drawing closer, Mark could see that they were yet more strange coins, copper with neatly embossed script flowing across them. The vine-like whorls of writing seemed to pulse with flame as he watched, and all three men stood entranced until the savory aroma of roasted meat jolted them back to reality.

Arjun clapped his hands and cackled as they saw a familiar-looking roast bird being brought out on a wooden platter, the first in a long procession of trays, bowls and baskets that adorned a long table set up in the clearing. Starchy-sweet tubers, roasted, mashed, boiled and baked came out alongside brown loaves of bread with their crusts still crackling from the oven. Slices of succulent melon were stacked high around pitchers of its sweet, clear juice, and stoneware jugs of a malty, fizzy beer came soon after.

Mark turned at a tap on the shoulder to see Jackie, clad presentably in what appeared to be two of Saneji's sarongs tied together. She stood looking at the men in their gauzy shorts for a moment before all four of them dissolved into laughter, Arjun cackling and wheezing while Jesse chuckled quietly beside him. Tesvaji struck a long, thin piece of wood at the table's head. A resonant note rang out to still the buzzing conversations and draw all attention to the Madi.

Saneji stood beside him, and beside her their children. A tall young man, Tesvaji without the scars and hard-earned muscle, stood closest to her. Gusje stood beside him, and finally there was a shy slip of a girl clinging mutely to her arm. Tesvaji began to speak, and while Jesse dutifully translated in a low voice Mark found that he couldn't focus on the words.

Something out in the desert was calling soft, haunting notes that echoed through the basin, answered by another and another until Tesvaji was speaking against the chorus of the desert's nighttime awakening. He finished with a clap of his mighty hands and immediately food was pushed in front of the four guests with hearty helpings of beer and juice. Mark tore into a slice of the bird with gusto, relishing the crisp charred skin and juicy meat after weeks of splitting cold MREs.

He had nearly cleared his plate before he noticed the villagers gaping at him, shocked by his prodigious appetite. A moment of embarrassment at his excess was banished immediately when Tesvaji, roaring with laughter, came over to present him with a whole loaf of their deliciously tangy bread and a brimming mug of beer.

Before long all four of them were being plied with food from villagers eager to see just how much these giants could eat, and when he waved off a final offered plate of roast bird the crowd gave a shout and beckoned them away from the table to dance. Drums beat and wooden flutes skirled as Mark gamely tried to avoid stepping on any feet.

Looking over, he saw Arjun dancing a surprisingly nimble duet with Saneji, while Jackie spun in circles with a laughing Tesvaji as the men of the village hooted at him for the difference in their heights. Even Jesse was being reluctantly coached through slow, deliberate dance steps by a flock of giggling women that spun and twirled around him, dancing away from his feet and darting in to grasp his hand.

Mark spun in a gentle wind of music and laughter, the lights hanging around the clearing seeming to shine ever brighter as the crown of the tree glowed a deep blood-red with the last rays of the sun. When it fell into night, the fading sky gave way to a blanket of stars that wrapped around the warm ember of their cheery clearing. He danced without feeling the first chill air of the night on his tear-streaked face. For a few hours he forgot where he was, and his sleep afterwards was mercifully dreamless.