“He’s in trouble!” I shouted. Bad move. Not the shouting part, the sitting up fast part. My body was one big black-and-blue mark from our bobsled crash in the forest. A wave of pain hit me like, like, well, like that stick would have hit me if Loor were taking batting practice on me. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before, but I was really hurt. It felt like every one of my ribs was cracked. The pain was so intense it took my breath away. My legs went weak and I had to lie back down or I would have passed out again. Osa quickly grabbed my shoulders and gently lowered me back on the bench.
“It is all right,” she said in a soothing voice. “The pain will not last.”
How could she know that? Unless maybe she thought I was about to die. Nothing short of death was going to stop this burning pain anytime soon. But what happened next was nothing short of amazing. I lay there taking short quick breaths because deep breaths made the pain even worse. Osa then reached out and gently put her hand on my chest. She looked into my eyes and I swear, Mark, it was like I melted. The tension totally flew out of me.
“Relax,” she said softly. “Breathe slowly.”
I did. Soon my heart stopped pounding and I could take a deep breath. But most amazing of all, the pain went away. I swear. A second before I was hurting so bad I couldn’t even cry. Now it was gone. Completely.
Osa took her hand away and glanced over to Loor for a reaction. Loor turned away. She wasn’t impressed. But I sure was. It was some kind of miracle.
“How did you do that?” I asked while sitting up and feeling my ribs.
“Do what?” was Osa’s innocent reply.
“Are you kidding?” I shouted. “My ribs! I was like, dying. You touched me and poof, I’m off injured reserve.”
Osa stood up and said, “Perhaps you were not hurt as badly as you thought.”
“Yeah right,” I shot back. “I know what pain is, especially when it’s mine.”
That’s when Loor decided to join the party.
“We are wasting time,” she said in a peeved voice. “Press is being held by Kagan.”
I didn’t care much for Loor’s style, but she was right.
“Who is this Kagan dude?” I asked.
“There are many things you must learn,” said Osa. “Press was to begin teaching you, but until he returns the task will be mine. Come.”
She walked over to the hole in the wall that was a door and stood next to her daughter. They both looked at me, which I took as my cue to follow. I stood up, ready to feel the pain in my ribs shoot back. It didn’t. Amazing. I then looked at Loor to see if she would spring into attack mode again. She didn’t. So far so good.
“Shouldn’t we find Uncle Press?” I asked.
“We will,” responded Osa. “But first you must learn about Denduron.”
Denduron. Right. That’s where I was. There wasn’t much I liked about Denduron so far, and I couldn’t imagine finding out anything else that would make me like it any more. But I didn’t have a whole lot of options, so I followed the others toward the door. I took two steps and then stopped, remembering something very, very important.
“Uhhh, where do I go to, uh, you know, I’ve got to-”
“Relieve yourself in there,” Loor said coldly, pointing to a far corner of the room where there was a wooden screen separating a small space from the rest of the hut.
“Great, thanks,” I replied and hurried toward it. When I looked behind the screen I learned two things. One was that these people didn’t have indoor plumbing. The toilet was nothing more than a hole in the ground surrounded by a circle of stones. Not exactly comfy. The second thing was that the mystery of why this place smelled so bad was solved. I guess these people hadn’t figured out that an outhouse should definitely be “out” of the house. Man, it smelled like a sick elephant had been using this thing. But what the heck, it wasn’t my house and I had to go bad. So I held my breath against the stink and then took about five minutes to figure out how to undo the leather clothes. I guess these people hadn’t yet discovered zippers, either. It was during this that I realized the furs I had been wearing were gone. I guess somebody took them while I was unconscious. That was fine by me because if I’d had to get through another layer, I would have wet myself for sure.
After I finished, I hurried across the stone hut to catch up. I didn’t know what I was expecting to find outside, so I guess no matter what I saw it would have been a surprise. But when I stepped outside, I had to stop and catch my breath because I had just stepped into another world, and it was like nothing I had ever seen before. The hut I had just come from was in the middle of a village of stone huts. They all looked the same, more or less, with stone walls and roofs made of woven branches and straw. There were no decorations of any kind to distinguish one from the next. Some had smoke curling up from stone chimneys, which meant there were fires burning inside for cooking and for heat. The roads and pathways that snaked between the huts were dirt, well-worn and narrow. And why not? It’s not like they had to worry about cars or anything. All the huts were built around a big grassy area kind of like a town square, with a large, round platform about ten feet across at its center. The base of the platform was made of stones like the huts, and it was topped by a surface made of lashed-together logs. The setup reminded me of those towns that have a gazebo in the center of a park for concerts and stuff. But the stage was empty now. No shows today.
The village was busy with people doing whatever people do in a village like this. They were hurrying here and there, some carrying baskets of food, others moving a herd of goats. They all wore the same kind of leather clothes I was wearing, so even though I felt out of place, I probably didn’t look it. The people who looked out of place were Osa and Loor. As I described them to you, they were both tall, dark-skinned, and athletic looking. There were no other people of color in this village. Just the opposite. The people of Denduron were the palest people I had ever seen in my life. It was like they never saw a day of sun in their lives. That was strange because even though it happened to be overcast just then, I had seen three suns in the sky from on top of the mountain. Could it be that the suns here didn’t give you a tan? Or was it mostly always overcast, like Seattle or something? Whatever the reason, it was pretty obvious that Osa and Loor were not from Denduron, just as they had said.
The village had been cut out of a forest. Looking one way, beyond the huts, was vast farmland. I could see many people working out there, tending to crops. Looking off in the opposite direction I saw the mountain where Uncle Press and I had made our idiot bobsled run to escape the quigs. Any other direction showed nothing but forest. Not that I’m an expert anthropologist or anything, but this first brief look at the village made me think of books and movies I’d seen about Europe back in medieval days. The only thing missing was some huge castle that loomed over the village.
Osa and Loor let me stand there for a few minutes so I could take in the surroundings. I was about to join them, when suddenly I was grabbed from behind and spun around.
“Ogga ta vaan burr sa!”
It was a little guy with long scraggly hair, an eye patch over one eye, and a smile that showed more spaces than teeth. On each of his fingers was a different ring that looked to be braided out of rope. Ten fingers, ten rings. The guy was grubby, but he sure liked jewelry. I had no idea what he wanted until he shoved a furry-looking thing at me. I jumped back, but then realized it was some kind of woolly shirt, like a sweater.