Chapter 2 - Choking on the Lom…
The men carried the twisting Talson over their shoulders into their village of wooden cabins resting between the lom fields and the sea. Mothers stood in the doorways of their homes, anxious to see whose boy squirmed, gagged and bound, upon the backs of those who went to the fields. Elloch and Malek walked behind the men, and their hearts sank deeper every time one of those mothers threw back her head and shrieked a high warble to warn cabins further down the road of the approach of yet another writhing bundle of a boy carried in from the lom field.
“I trusted you to look out for him!”
The mother's wails moved through the village much quicker than the men’s steps, and Moriah clutched at the strong arms that lifted her young son Talson over her head.
“Moriah, you must let us carry him home,” one of the men pleaded as Moriah scratched at his arms.
“He is my boy!”
Another man grasped Moriah’s shoulders. “He does not recognize you! He has suffered two llungruel bites.”
Moriah gazed upon her son. Talson’s face glistened in sweat. His eyes widened in fear at the sight of another being his fevered mind failed to recognized. The sight of his mother gave him no comfort, and Talson released a new round of furious kicks at the shoulders that supported him.
Moriah slumped onto the ground. Elloch and Malek ran to her side and supported her. Moriah clutched at her twins.
“He got in the way of a nest of the young,” Elloch whispered to his mother.
Malek finished his brother’s hope, “Talson was probably bitten by the young, mother. He suffered two bites, but we can hope he did not suffer an adult llungruel’s venom.”
But Moriah slowly shook her head. “But two bites? And Talson is still young.”
Elloch and Malek’s father met them at the door to their cabin, his breath panting from his run from the docks, where he scrubbed clean the hulls of the outsiders’ ships, a job that afforded his family much in the village, but a job that took him away from his sons who did their duty with the arrival of the lom harvest. Caleb looked to the twins. His eyes flashed no anger at the brothers, but they reflected a fear that Elloch and Malek regretted more.
“Quick,” Caleb urged the men, “put him upon the bed on the first floor.”
Elloch and Malek grasped one of Talson’s legs as the men dropped their younger brother upon the bed and removed the bonds that had restrained the venom’s fury. Talson kicked instantly. He hissed at his father. He spit at his mother. His teeth flashed and chomped at the hands that tried to soothe his heated brow with a cool, damp cloth. Moriah sobbed as she watched the men again tie Talson into bonds and gag his mouth. Talson thrashed until he ran out of energy. But his eyes remained wide. His eyes continued to glow in fear.
“Why can’t he sleep so I can cool his forehead?”
Caleb grabbed his wife’s hand. “He fears as the lizard.”
Tears streaked down Moriah’s cheeks. “I don’t know what else to do for him.”
“You’ve done all you can,” and Caleb’s heart cracked to tell it. “You’ve applied the compress as the doctors tell us. We have forced Talson to drink as much medicine as the outsiders tell us is safe to fight the venom. We can only wait for the fever to break. We can only wait through the night.”
“A mother can’t just do nothing and wait,” Moriah scowled.
Caleb took his wife’s arm and pulled her out of the bedchamber. “We have to give him space. See how he shivers from the fear as much as the fever. Talson cannot see any of us. He sees only through the llungruel’s eyes.”
Moriah surrendered to Caleb’s pull, slumping into one of the wide chairs that circled her family’s table in the main chamber. “The doctors are not of us. I have little faith in the ways of the outsiders. We never had to eat so much lom before the arrival of their boats. We did not suffer the llungruel so cruelly before their coming. The old ways were best, Caleb. The outsiders have no right denying us our sacred island where the old medicines grow.”
“None of us remember how to even build a boat, Moriah,” Caleb sighed. “It will do no good to dream of the old island and its medicines. We can no longer visit that place.”
Caleb gathered his children and advised them each to pay Talson a visit before they left that stricken brother to the night. None of the children, neither Elloch nor Malek, nor any of the younger siblings, neared the bed upon which Talson writhed in his bindings. Talson shook in fear and grunted as his brothers and sisters regarded him with their tear-filled eyes. Caleb embraced his children when they sobbed. Throughout that visitation of brothers and sisters, Moriah cried at the family table.
Though their spirits weighed so heavy, Caleb’s children gathered at the table. The memory of famine still stirred in the village, and so the evening meal, no matter how tepid tasted the lom, no matter what fever coursed through a cabin’s walls, was not skipped on account of melancholy. And as did many another village household, Caleb’s family ate silently, doing their best to eat while an occasional grunt or thrash from Talson was overheard through the bedchamber’s door.
Many elders still breathed throughout the village whose tongues could recall the savor of the feasts they once pulled from the sea in nets teeming with sustenance. Such elders taxed their families’ patience as they described the smell of fish smoldering over open fires, with their stories of how the shellfish pleased the palette. The elders claimed such was their history, that they did a noble deed by recounting such times to their grandchildren. But the village came to think such stories more fantasy than history. The outsiders had arrived, and such creatures of the sea were no more than fables. Such meats only ever existed in dream. Such elder talk made the lom taste no better. Such elder talk did not clean the waters and resurrect the fish.
Caleb forced a smile as Moriah sadly served potions of the boiled lom to her children. Caleb tasted his first bite and wished Moriah might have sprinkled perhaps a little spice onto the offering. His efforts to clean the outsiders’ ships earned his family more of the spice than most of the villages knew. Caleb pined for the spice for a moment before reprimanding himself for dreaming in such indulgence. How could his wife concern herself with the spice when Talson sweated and writhed on the other side of the bedchamber door?
Still, the lom tasted so alien on his tongue. As the village adage spoke, only the llungruel craved the lom. The lom was a sad weed, and the flavor the crop provided to the llungruel’s tongue made the plant cruel.
“Well,” Caleb sighed, “at least we can give thanks that our plates are heavy when we gather at the dinner table.”
Moriah flinched. Caleb watched his children trade uncertain glances. When Talson writhed in the other room, the father’s words sounded like blasphemy.
“We must eat,” Caleb continued. “Talson’s absence tomorrow from the field will only give the rest of you more work when we must gather all the lom we can so that we do not go hungry in the winter. No matter how our hearts break tonight, we must remain strong for tomorrow’s crop.”
A snap sounded through the bedchamber door. Moriah jumped from her seat, but Caleb caught her before she reached the door.
“He is the llungruel.”
Moriah pounded against her husband’s chest, but Caleb’s grasp remained firm.
“He is my son,” she cried.
Elloch and Malek felt too afraid to stand from table, too frightened to look away from their plates stacked with lom. Talson screamed behind the door. The family heard the sound of the remaining restraints tear. There was the pounding of frantic feet before the locked bedchamber door shook from the weight of Talson’s body cast against it. The noise of crashing furniture shattered the nerves of Caleb’s children. The sound of Talson’s screams and the scratching of Talson’s fingernails against the walls turned Moriah’s face pale. Talson flayed behind the locked bedchamber door, a creature desperate to discover escape from the confines that in the fever seemed more of a cage than of
a home.
Caleb gazed upon his family gathered at his table, while behind his shoulder Talson threw his fury against the bedchamber’s door.
“He would recognize none of us if we should open the door,” Caleb spoke slowly to be understood past the fear he saw in his loved one’s faces. “He would only hurt himself or attack you should you near him. That room is strong enough to hold him. We can only wait. The fever must run its course.”
Moriah glared at her husband, whom she had loved so deeply, and with whom she had raised good sons and daughters. Life was not easy in her village. Life was not fair. But unlike her village elders, Moriah told no stories to distract her attention from the truth of her peoples’ lives. Instead, Moriah turned again to her plate and choked the bitterness of her heart with another spoonful of the tasteless lom.