Season of Change ~ excerpt from Mikuyi Moon, Book 7 in the Voice of the Wind: Shadows of Time series

Zalan Fayerfield gazed into the campfire’s flames scrying for an illuminated vision. Dog’s low growl warned him of approaching danger lurking beyond the safe margins of firelight.

He peered into the surrounding blackness where the wind gusted through the stone hollows and crags of the hills. A wolf howled in the distance; closer by a horse snorted.

Dog rose on all fours, growled, his hackles rising.

“What is it, Dog?” Zalan spoke lowly, one hand securely clasping Dog’s collar, the other reaching for his stout oak staff.

With silent stealth the Mikuyi appeared out of the black night. Startled, Zalan lurched to his feet. Dog growled, bristling, yet obediently waited for Zalan’s command — a word or movement to attack or disregard the sensed danger from the stranger. None came. Zalan knew Inali although he doubted the Mikuyi knew or recognized him as the son of Jantz Fayerfield.

Zalan relaxed. Dog, sensing no threat lay down, his yellow eyes carefully watching the stranger.

***

“I was hunting and saw your fire. May I join you?” Inali curiously regarded the young shepherd and the dog’s yellow eyes reflecting the firelight. Within the shadowy folds of the shepherd’s gray hood, the fire-highlighted features of a youth about his brother Tirzah’s age were visibly distinguished.

The shepherd pushed back his hood and gestured to a second log seat beside the crackling fire. “You are welcome to share the fire.”

The youth wore a thoughtful expression, one of recognition. Inali had never seen the youth before.

“Do you know who I am?”

Inali noted the shepherd’s odd pair of bi-colored eyes — eyes that steadily regarded him from across the fire.

The shepherd nodded, said, “You are the Mikuyi.”

Although he was young, the shepherd possessed a presence of self and something familiar in the curve of the youth’s jaw, in how his black eyebrows winged. Blue-black shoulder-length curls shaggily framed the shepherd’s lean, beardless features — a sensitive face. Intelligent, alert eyes observed Inali through the leaping flames and red hot embers that popped and shot orange and yellow sparks into the night sky.

“I have heard of you and your brother. I know you although we have never met.” The shepherd set aside his staff and leaned forward to pour a steaming brown liquid into a wooden mug.

Inali watched, his interest aroused by the solitary youth who invited him to share the cup of tea he offered.

“I only have a loaf of bread and some cheese. You are welcome to share them,” the youth offered.

Inali nodded, continuing to observe as he in turn was watched by the alert dog lying beside the youth, ears pricked, swiveling to catch each sound and lifting his head at any movement Inali made.

A heightened sense of awareness held them. On a fire warmed wooden board the young shepherd tore the loaf of bread into thick chucks and deftly sliced the goat cheese. Inali kept his eye on the youth’s sharp knife.

The youth tossed a crust and rind of cheese to the dog. He sheathed his blade in a scabbard attached to his belt, and leaned back against a log to eat.

Savoring the late supper of bread and cheese, Inali return the shepherd’s curious gaze.

Closer now the wolf howled. The mournful song carried through the dark night; crimson sparks flew into the night sky caught on an updraft of wind. Inali stiffened. The hairs on the nape of his neck crawled. Something strange moved through the autumn night — something felt more than seen.

As he swallowed the last of the tea from the wooden mug, Inali studied the youth. He leaned back against the dried log.

Wrapped in his gray wool cloak, the youth stretched out his legs to the crackling campfire and scratched the dog behind its black ears. The youth was relaxed, undisturbed by the night — but not Inali.

A fire log cracked, burning through. Huge and white, the full Mikuyi moon shed its prismatic radiance over hills capped by granite monoliths; the upright, rough hewn stones gleamed, silent ghosts.

The wolf howled nearer. Inali stood and walked to the edge of the campfire’s protective circle of light. He focused his concentration on the deeper night shadows and cast his gaze along the hilltops, searching.

The dog lifted its head, growled but made no move.

Tension rippled through Inali as he stood staring across the night-draped valley. He lifted his nose, scented the night. The lamenting wolf’s song drifted closer. The primitive song set Inali’s hackles on edge. What was it? Something indefinable yet close, too close instinct warned him.

Inali glanced over his shoulder at the shepherd. Undisturbed the youth watched him from his bi-colored eyes — one blue, one gray. Their dilated pupils reflected the fire’s yellow flames. The dog, resting its head on front paws, seemed to doze lulled by the stroke of the youth’s hand.

***

“Early in the season for the wolf to hunt so far from its northern range,” Zalan said. He thought of the looming danger that threatened his flocks and returned the Mikuyi’s black regard.

“Winter comes early. Already cold brings the hunting pack down to the Sparrow Hills,” Zalan continued. He peered at the Mikuyi. He read the flexing of tense cheek muscles, the defiant set of the man’s shoulders, broad beneath his fur cloak. The Mikuyi presented an intriguing enigma, his honed instinct sharply focused on his environment; the Mikuyi who stalked his life, defying physical limitations, regardless of time barriers separating the past, the present, and the future. In Inali the archetypal ancestor emerged in living flesh and blood. Eridandi once again walked the earth as the old legends foretold.

Awed by his visitor’s physical presence, Zalan felt no fear. He felt, oddly enough, safe. After listening to the night’s voices, the Mikuyi returned to his log seat, swirled his fur cloak around himself. He stared at the wooden mug he held in his hand as if just noticing he still held it and the conscious touch of the physical object drew Inali back from whatever threat he had sensed hidden by the night, waiting for a future appointment in time.

“Not a pack,” Inali said. Slow minutes had ticked past since Zalan had spoken.

Through the leaping yellow and orange fire, Zalan met Inali’s black eyes shot with striated flakes of amber and gold.

“A lone wolf — one without a pack. Perhaps in search of a mate,” Inali said. He picked up a stick of kindling and tossed it into the flames.

“And the Mikuyi?” Zalan asked. “Is he a loner? Hunting the hills on wings of night in search of his mate?”

The firelight bronzed the Mikuyi’s grim, brooding features. Beneath the furrowed eyebrows, black eyes burned with a greater intensity than the flames of the small campfire. Zalan, perceiving his question agitated the Mikuyi, did not expect an answer.

In the deeps of midnight, firelight danced in Dog’s watchful eyes. Alert ears listened to the surrounding night and the sheep he was entrusted to guard, as well as his young master’s life.

***

Inali stared at the youth. The question was not a thought he actively pursued, but one that pursued him. He chased the hunt more for escape than pleasure and all because of a woman, because of an image ever ready to spring into his mind although his heart rebelled.

The question drifting to the back of his subconscious, Inali pulled the warmth of his fur cloak closer and settled back against the log and hoped to find a few hours of sleep uninterrupted by the disturbance of dreams. And Zalan, his flock safe for the night, added another log to the camp fire before he settled down to find his own rest.

***

Inali dreamed. The mist-veiled time and place were familiar yet not. The faces belonged to people he had known, as well as faces of strangers — of those yet to come or to be born. Such was the strangeness of surreal dreams unfettered by the leash of time, physical space, or the limitations of consciousness.

One of many, the others receded, vanished. In that place the wind blew wet against him. He turned, faced the northeast, the heart of the wind’s gusting force. The stray wind lifted the long strands of his unbound hair steaming over his black-furred shoulders. The moistness of drying pigment streaked his face: red of power, white of peace, and black of war— protecting him from harm with its ritualized symbolism of invisible forces.

The wind scurried around him, separating him, drawing him apart from the multitude of strangers. The wind beckoned him to ascend a narrow, guarded height. The throb of drums vibrated, evoking the power of its primordial voice in song.

All the sacred rituals began with the simplistic banging of the drum, of hollow bone on stretched, transparent skin. Each beat, reverberated to the tone of his deepest being. Of all the Mikuyi, he was the one chosen. The choice of his fate led him forward. He took the first step. He took the second step, a third, and on and on, step by step, as the single drum was joined by a second drum, a third drum, one after another until he became the throb of the drum’s song, leading him from lifetime to lifetime — from the darkness of night to the emergence of dawn and a new day.

Within the circle of power he stood, alone in his nakedness. Voices chanted on the wind, voices that spoke in the ancient language of the Objishanda.

Each spiraling step within the power circle led him higher and higher, revealed the presence of the others. He knew them by the traditional garb of their tribal clothing. He knew them by their speech, by their rituals, their customs. They were the seven tribes of the Objishanda: The Onega, dwellers beside the water, their headdresses and costumes of shore birds, turtles and fishes, their lives directed by the ebbing tides of the sea; The Ganunda, mountain dwellers; The Gahada, forest dwellers; The Meltari, star wanders, a tribe lost during the galactic migration; and those tribes now extinct known only in the mysteries of legend and song brought to life by storytellers and the old shamans; The Ahwao, people of the rose; The Majara, shape shifters and spinners of illusion; and the Watchers and the Keepers from each tribe.

All summoned by the Great Ones, they came — all but the Mikuyi, banished in the Before Days but whose shamans clung fiercely to the prophecies of fulfillment and the Mikuyi’s promised return.

Inali stood among the costumed representatives of the Seven Tribes. He was Mikuyi, the one called forth. One by one he witnessed as the seven tribes were scattered upon the twelve directions, swept away by the winds and the tides of time and the civilization of man encroaching from beyond the Mountains of the Sky.

He stood in command of his life, listening. A great voice spoke to the assembled tribes and put forth a long unanswered question: “Who among the Objishanda will chose the Mikuyi?”

A terrible rumble of dissension fell upon the gathered multitude. The drums throbbed, became the beat of his heart. He refused to accept their rejection; he defined the unseen Great Ones whose deep voices moved the winds and sent the Mikuyi scattering, scurrying across the ancient lands of El Nath, withered brown leaves, stripped from their ancestral tree of life.

And when it seemed none there would consent, so long and deep was their bitterness toward the Mikuyi, the lilting timbre of a single voice spoke from among the midst of the many.

“I choose the Mikuyi.”

Whispers of astonishment stirred and parted the mist-veiled void and Inali glimpsed the vague shape of a winged bird flying forth from among the assembled hosts of gathered tribes, shredding the obscuring mists.

“I choose the Mikuyi,” the white winged creature sang.

Inali peered through the shredded mists and beheld the mysterious figure wearing a fantastic headdress of pearls and white feathers and a cloak sewn of swan feathers. Feathered arms opened, embraced him within the folds of soft white wings meeting midnight.

The lilting voice was that of a woman he knew, as he knew the opalescent light of her silver eyes gazing at him through the slits of a white feathered mask.

“I choose the Mikuyi,” the swan sang. “A keeper of the Gahada may choose whoever she wills. There is no escape from that choice. Look upon me and know I speak the truth, Inali of the Mikuyi.”

Even as he reached out to remove the white feathered mask, the dream receded, spiraled into wisps of smoke. Inali awakened to the wild thumping of his heart and the distant roll of grumbling thunder. Jerked from the depths of the bizarre dream, Inali lurched to his feet. To the east, the orange rind of sunrise gilded the deeper purple of rising hills and the jagged edges of the Mountains of the Sky.

The muted gray dawn revealed the hillside where the shepherd and his dog herded a flock of bleating sheep down through the steep valley that skirted the hillside below him.

Black Fire’s snorted whicker greeted Inali and secured him, rooted him. With the rising of the sun, ethereal tangents of his dream vaporized and, plying a conscious effort, Inali shoved aside the dream and whatever it meant, along with the other unsorted feelings and emotions that simmered into his conscience wearing the guise of dreams.

The shepherd had left a portion of bread and cheese to whet Inali’s grumbling stomach. He washed down each swallow with a mouthful of tepid tea brewed to the same brownish hue that he had drunk the previous night. As he chewed, he scanned the craggy hills and their distinguishing landmarks — a rocky outcropping to his left, the gnarled stump of lightning charred oak to his right, and other landmarks by their jumbled, eroded shapes or the colorful patchwork of wild heather, broom and rhododendrons, and the dense stand of forests.

Inali committed the landmarks to memory as his gaze swung across the broad expanse of rolling hills humping skyward one above the other. Lowering his gaze, he searched for the young tender of sheep and the dog. They had vanished from sight but not out of hearing range. A gust of wind rose lifting the morning mist, and brought a snatch of a clanging bells and bleating sheep.

From a long tether looped around the slender bole of a birch sapling, Black Fire grazed. Ears pricked to Inali’s movements and the extinguishing hiss of the campfire. His heart eager for the morning’s ride, Black Fire reared, turned his head east toward the Unfaithful Mountains, but the firm command of Inali’s voice, the hard bite of bridle bit, and the Mikuyi’s heels headed Black Fire toward Fayerton instead.

Copyright 2020, Monroe Media, E.A. Monroe