Legend of Gerîanā: Chapter One
A story of Ore by A. R. Bledsoe
All rights reserved.
Chapter 1: The Last Trial“Open your eyes,” barked a command.
The small, dark-haired girl sighed and opened her eyes. The command came from her mâ, the leader of their herd.
The nine-year-old girl peered down to the watery depths many feet below her. Water of marbled dark blue and foamy white sloshed against the craggy cliff they stood upon. The pink and orange rays of the sun spilled out across the frigid sea.
All eyes of the girl’s herd were on her, she was among the few to make it this far into the trial.
“Gerîanā,” her mâ snapped. The girl knew she was coming to the end of her mâ’s patience. “Jump.”
And so she did. She did not hesitate, not even to take in another gulp of air.
The cool air rushed past her tanned face. Her short, black hair whipped behind her. Her bare, dirty feet pointed down to the turbulent water that waited most impatiently. Its spray felt cold as she neared.
Now! Transform now! Her mind begged her body to obey, to obey just as she had always obeyed her mâ’s commands.
Nevertheless, she plunged into the sea, water enveloped her body and swirled around her, filling her ears and nose.
She felt as if the cold water had infiltrated her heart. Despite the cold, her lungs burned, longing for the cool air above.
She floated for a moment, suspended in the darkness of the depths of the freezing sea. Her heart felt as heavy as an anchor, pulling her down into sorrow and disappointment.
The little girl, Gerîanā [jer-eye-u-nay], had failed.
The daughter of the herd’s leader hadn’t done what everyone expected her to do. She hadn’t transformed like the people in her herd. She hadn’t found her animal form.
Large bubbles surfaced around her, tickling her toes and legs as they rose. A white, furry head appeared from the dark water that surrounded her. It was Belūa [bel-oo-u], a large, friendly man and even larger polar bear in his animal form as he was then.
The child latched on tightly to the slick neck of the bear and without a word, he surged up to the surface. Gerîanā coughed and her blue lips spluttered. Her lungs drew in air through her chattering teeth.
She looked up and saw her mâ’s worried face, which peered over the cliff edge. Her mâ’s face softened, but Gerîanā turned away. She leaned forward and hugged Belūa’s wet, furry neck and allowed him to whisk her away around the rocky cliffs and back to shore.
Once on the shore, she slid off his back and fell onto the course, grey sand. She lay there with no desire to move, hoping to lay like one of the large rocks that dotted the beach. The polar bear gave a low woof and prodded her wet face with his wet nose. His hot breath felt wonderful, and normally his sniffing would have made her laugh, but it seemed nothing could lift the heaviness in her chest.
“Oh, I’m okay Belūa. I mean, I’m not hurt. Just cold and…and…” her words trailed off. She wasn’t prepared to face the reality of what happened or at least hear it said aloud.
Belūa grunted and rubbed his head against hers in a more gentle, consoling way.
“Thank you, Bel. It was my first Vertevē [ver-tu-vee] Trial. I know not everyone transforms their first time.” She repeated the words he drilled into her over and over when she grew anxious in the days leading up to the trial. Belūa gave an approving sniff, then backed away and returned to the water to retrieve the next child who might have not transformed as she.
Gerîanā didn’t want to leave. If she hadn’t been so cold she would have remained on the shore until her parents forced her to leave. However, the sun was nearly gone and the cold air was only getting colder so she got up and made her way toward the smattering of trees lining the shore.
It seemed like a lifetime since she had begun the trials that morning, there at the very bottom of the cliff. She had been so full of hope even until the last trial of jumping off the cliff. How could she not transform? Was she weak?
An elderly lady rushed to her with a furry blanket the moment Gerîanā stepped beneath the cover of the woods.
“Oh Gerîa,” she simpered using a nickname that only her Grand (means grandmother to people of earth) was allowed to use, “I rushed down here as soon as I heard the splash.” She vigorously rubbed the small girl’s arms with her hands over the blanket. “You feel any warmer?”
Gerîanā nodded even as her lips continued to chatter. “They have no business doing the trials during the cold season, I’ve always said it,” her Grand went on as her solid, big-boned arms pumped up and down, rubbing her arms.
“I’m better, I’m better Grand. Can we go home?” Gerîanā asked finally. She thought she could see the outline of Belūa approaching the shore. She didn’t want to stick around and greet the next kid who didn’t transform. She didn’t know why but it made her squirm with shame to see someone else meet the same fate as her. She loathed herself for feeling that way, but it made her feel normal and all together unspectacular.
“Well, I would whisk you away to my cave but we will need to meet with Felīxa and Adonarī first,” Grand replied apologetically, mentioning Gerîanā’s parents.
The little girl’s shoulders slumped, she was wanting to postpone this meeting as long as she could. She couldn’t bear to see the look of disappointment or even worse, pity.
“I tell you what,” her Grand said, holding Gerîanā away from her to look into her eyes. “How about I give you a ride back up to the top?”
The little girl paused and then gave a small smile, “Okay.”
In the blink of an eye, Gerîanā’s six-and-a-half foot Grand was a towering, black mountain bear. Amidst her sea of black fur, specks of silver hair caught the light of the rising moon as it shone through the leaves of the trees around them. Her Grand was always a powerful and beautiful sight to behold both as human and bear.
Gerîanā gripped her blanket around her with one hand and with the other she climbed onto her Grand’s helping paw and was boosted onto her back. Gerîanā grabbed hold of her fur and leaned into her Grand’s warmth allowing it to remove the chill from her bones.
With a low growl, the giant bear warned Gerîanā that she was about to take off.
“I’m ready,” Gerîanā mumbled into her fluffy, black, and silver-speckled fur, and Grand began to lumber up the slope back toward the top of the cliff.
They passed trial after trial which lined the path she had walked many hours before. Some trials looked like posts with leaves from the tropical part of their island, others were sacks filled with different rocks or minerals found in places far away. Each trial represented a different group of animals: the small and large carnivores, the hoofed animals, the mammals of land, mammals of water, scaled beasts of water, and so on. Each trial was supposed to identify what triggered a kafārba to transform into its animal form. As they went on, each trial became farther apart and fewer. She saw the embers of a fire marking the fire trial and she fought the urge to stretch out her still throbbing left hand from when she passed it through the flame. The trials near the cliff top were by far her least favorite. They were the hardest and sometimes most painful ones.
Her Grand slowed as they reached the disengaging crowd of onlookers who had stayed to watch the remaining children complete their last trial. Five of the hundred or so children who had gone through the trials had made it to the last trial with her. Two of the children were her friends, both twins, named Nāuna and Hāunā.
Some part of her hoped they hadn’t transformed as well. Her heart plummeted as she thought of the Vertevē Journey. It was a journey the children would take once they passed their trial. On this journey, they would learn how to transform without needing a trigger and how to use their animal forms. It was a rite of passage for kafārba children. Fish would travel with their older fish mentors through the sea and the hoofed would travel with their companions to various plains and so on, each traveling to a destination specific to their animal form. When they returned, they were officially accepted into their kafārba herd and recognized at the Vertevē Celebration held every third set of moons (approximately three years). Gerîanā had been so looking forward to the Vertevē journey. Her mâ, a lioness, and fâ, a wolf, were even leading a herd that year.
It was this knowledge that made her failure to transform all the more disappointing.
Grand made her way through the crowd as animals and people parted to make way. Gerîanā tried her best to sink deeper into her Grand’s fur as she pulled the fur blanket over her head. She felt she was being paraded for all to see.
Grand stopped and Gerîanā could hear voices. Soon she heard her name being called. Reluctantly she loosened her hold on the blanket and slowly clambered down off her Grand’s back to face her mâ and fâ. They stood in their human form with their arms stretched out for her. Seeing them with smiles instead of disappointment made a sudden well of emotion flood her. She ran into their arms with tears slipping down her cheeks. They crouched to her height and welcomed her, letting her cry.
“Ah, my dear. You didn’t doubt we would love you still did you? How many times have we told you?” Her fâ held her away to look into her face as he spoke, “Not every child transforms in their first Vertevē Trial.”
“I didn’t even transform until my third Vertevē,” her mâ chimed in. “You will, my dear, just not this time. It is a shock that the other four children transformed on the cliff trial as it is.”
Gerîanā looked up sharply at her mom in shock.
“Yes, your two little friends,” she chuckled. Every trace of a tough leader left her face. “I almost had to shove them in. Nāuna became a most beautiful cobalt raven, which makes sense now with her fine dark hair. And Hāunā gave us a little scare. He landed in the water and didn’t come back up. Belūa eventually found him as a little Nôna [known-uh] fish.”
“Oh poor Hāunā,” Gerîanā breathed. She in particular loved Nôna fish for they were known for being large and beautiful, with black, scarlet, and brilliant blue and long, yellow fins on their back and stomach which drifted behind them as they swam up and down the streams through their village. However, for all the reasons she loved them, she knew Hāunā would despise it. Though he was quite skinny for a boy, he had aspired to be a large meat-eating beast with sharp teeth and long claws.
“Ah, he will learn to appreciate who he has become,” her mâ said matter-of-factly. “As for you, we happen to come from a long line of large beasts. Your Grand, as you know, is a bear and even your Grandō (which means grandfather) had been a great lion. And we happen to live in a herd that is mostly made up of smaller creatures. Naturally, it won’t take most of the children as long to transform. So don’t be discouraged, darling.”
Dark grey fur filled the little girl’s vision and a warm, wet tongue licked her face. Shocked, she stumbled back, pushing away what she found to be a baby wolf.
“Fārā [fare-aye]! Dear boy, let your sister be,” Gerîanā’s mâ exclaimed with a small chuckle.
“F-Fārā?” spluttered Gerîanā. “I thought he was too young to join the trials?”
“Ah well,” her mâ looked disapprovingly at her husband and then back at her, “your fâ was in charge of watching him and…”
“And I thought there was no harm in letting him do the easier trials,” her fâ cut in defensively. He looked down and chuckled at her baby brother as his tail wagged so much it shook his whole body. “That’s my son, I say. He transformed early just like me.”
Gerîanā’s face went red and her mâ harrumphed at him.
Her fâ, realizing what he had said, quickly changed his tone and added, “But you, my dear, will be just as strong as your mâ or even as large as your Grand. It does seem that the largest transformations take the longest.”
“That’s right,” Grand chimed in. “We’ll have to give you lots of vegetables and bigalow meat and soon enough you’ll be big enough to transform.”
Gerîanā felt heartened at this and she was even able to giggle when her brother, who had begun chasing his tail, caught it, tripped, and rolled onto his back. He seemed to think it was funny too because he just lay on his back, his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his tail wagging.
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