"Fiery Birds", Part IV

Gioff was deep into the coastal oak forest, and approaching an area cleared around an ancient live oak. The tree's branches came down to the ground in a number of places, all of them surrounding a massive, thick trunk, as big around as a house.

No longer looking infirm in the least, Gioff grabbed a hold of one of the low branches and swung himself up. He pulled himself up until he was standing on the massive branch. Moving nimbly, catlike, he walked up the branch until he came to the massive trunk. Once there, he carefully moved himself down into a hollow at the center of the tree, until his feet landed on a hard, metal floor. Reaching into a pocket in the wood, he found a small lever and gave it a tug.

Gioff and the metal plate began to move down, and soon he disappeared altogether, from the tree and into the ground below. 

-

Zho finished up the fish he had caught, and noticed that the Sun was getting lower. He didn't want to tarry for long on this alien shore, and could feel a wind picking up. There was a storm brewing, apparently offshore and to the northeast. He knew that he had a day at least before the storm would arrive, if this was like the storms back at Seaside. 

He had picked a piece of the soft, black rock from behind the dunes, and carried it in his pocket. It was about the size of a fist. As near as Zho could tell, if this rock got warm, it could be shaped. Maybe on his way back he could grab more of it, for reasons he had yet to know. It might be useful. 

If he was going to return, that is. Zho had no idea what lay beyond the next horizon, and perhaps he might not want to return.

The Sun was nearing the treetops and those denuded trunks beyond the dunes when Zho extinguished his campfire, pushed the boat off the white sand and again into the gentle sea. Again, he rowed the boat until he could feel the tug of the strong offshore current, which was much closer to the shore here. Soon, he pulled his sweeps in, and let the current carry him. Perhaps it knew the way. 

Perhaps the fiery birds controlled it. 

What were they, anyway?

- 

It was dark before Gioff returned to Seaside. 

There were a great many things on his mind, but he was also aware that it was out of his hands now. He had done his part, much like he had done many years before, and before that. 

That was what he was tasked with doing.

He didn't like it. But it was what kept him alive. It was the deal he made.

Gioff had done what he was supposed to do, that was all. For the good of the village. 

And his own health. 

-

Night had long settled over the sea, and Zho began to bed down to sleep. From what he could tell, he was parallel to the shore, and racing along in the current. The Pale Band was particularly bright tonight, and a section of it looked thicker than he remembered. As he lay in the boat and looked at the faint golden band that ran from west to east, and to that thicker patch, he noticed how it was swirled, like a whirlpool, and seemed to twinkle more than the other sections. The more he watched, the more he felt that he could actually see it spiraling in on itself. 

Zho remembered his father Kha having told him a story once that, long ago, there was a great round thing that was in the sky instead, and it had been stolen. All that was left was the band.

It seemed like a silly story, even Kha acknowledged that. 

Looking at that spiral within the band, though, Zho wondered if maybe there was some truth to the old story. Not that anyone looked long at the night sky any longer. "Sky worship", as the elders called it, was forbidden. All you needed to know was the circle of stars that marked north, and nothing more. The Pale Band was just the Pale Band, the Milky Way was just the Milky Way, and the world was a vast disk that stretched out from horizon to horizon, letting the Sun and the Night trade places every day.

There was no magic, it was all just the way things were. Common sense. 

Zho looked at the sky longer, though, and wondered about the stoires his father told him, especially now that he could see that spiral, and saw that it changed.

Before pulling the oilskin over him, Zho decided to look to the north again, to the glow, to where the fiery birds were. 

The glow was brighter, and almost stretched across the northern horizon. For the first time, he could see not one, but many, tiny fiery birds, flying through the hazy light. He also saw two fiery birds that got his attention.

These were very low, and moving slowly, almost deliberately. They were less than a fist held at arm's length apart over the northern horizon. Their starlike light seemed to grow brighter and dimmer as the fiery birds moved. Zho could see they were moving back and forth over the distant horizon.

That was when Zho realized they were heading towards him.