The Elder Origins (5 page)

Jamison held one hand onto the reigns of the horse and his arm around Madison’s waist, guiding her along. He had been certain from the moment that the giant wind had struck their camp that it surely took his younger sister with it. He could visualize the instant he saw the others with shards of wood in their limp bodies that Madison had the same fate. He expected to find her with a piece of a tree through her as if it had been a spear held by one of the French horsemen who had burned their village to the ground. Now he could not let go of her. Madison did not try to get away from his supportive grip. She felt as though she may fall from the weight of the fabric on her lean figure if he were not holding her up.

Madison only thought of how she would never see her home ever again. Not just the small area they had grown to call their home, but England. The ships had been taken by the sea along with their smaller boats. The loss of the woman and several men who had been killed by the trees that flew through the air, all their food, their supplies, the voyeurs notes and studies of what they have developed and found in this new land, their homes of clay and logs. It was all gone. There was no more ‘home.’ A group of the men and the other one remaining woman lay in the grass trying to recover. Their clothes served as the only blankets of protection between themselves and the ground. Blood matted some their clothing from the shards that had shredded the sky of all their belongings. Others held closely to their arms or legs that had been burned from the fire as they tried to save whatever they could, which proved nearly impossible. They were fortunate to have saved the horses, although now they had no way of feeding them and the stream for water was no longer accessible.

“Nothing can be done until morning,” said Lyndon. “We rest now and treat our wounded. Tomorrow a few of us will go back to collect anything that can possibly be salvaged.”

“Nothing can be salvaged. If the fire did not destroy everything, then the water took what was left far from our reach.” Jayden’s voice buried any hope there may have been for collecting materials that might be left. “We must move forward. Find shelter near any waters we can. We never found the source of the stream. We’d best find it by tomorrow before we die of thirst. Then gather what food we can. Food and water are the only things we should worry of now.”

“And what of our wounded?” said a member of the crew. “They cannot make such a journey.”

“We can use the horses to transport them if they are at all able. We will make trips back and forth to collect as many as we can and move them toward whatever descent waters we find.”

Lyndon nodded in agreement. “With the game we have managed to find there must be more water nearby,” he said.

“If this didn’t frighten them away,” said Jayden.

Lyndon was silent for a moment.

“This is dire, indeed, but not hopeless,” said Jamison. “If the natives here can live off the lands, then we can learn to as well. We have enough men who have knowledge of the wooded areas and the hunt to sustain us. We simply need to find adequate shelter and water tomorrow.”

Madison looked off into the woods they spoke of. They were in the distance marked only by a dark line of uneven trees, barely visible in the backdrop behind the remaining smoke from the extinguished fire. Her eyes burned and her throat felt raw from breathing in the smoke, but she could still make out the light from deep within the woods. It was faint, but it was there, almost as if it was floating through the woods along the length of the valley. Instinctively, she knew the natives were watching them. Had they seen the disaster take place? Had they watched? Against all hope, she longed to know if they were merciful beings. Would they help them knowing that their chances of survival were nearly depleted? Or would they watch as they disintegrated from existence.

Madison met eyes with Jamison beside her and glanced towards the woods. He noticed the torches moving slowly through the trees as well, although he looked subtly so the others would not see his attention leaving the conversation. He nodded his head to Madison to signal his understanding that they were not alone. But he would not speak of what the two of them had seen until the next day. He figured that if they were in any danger from the natives, and if they were truly hostile, their position now was in the open. Their group was at its most vulnerable. If ever there were a time for these natives to claim their territory as their own and no one else’s it was now. Yet the men in the woods made no advance toward their weakened faction. They simply moved across the length of the woods and then disappeared into the forest, leaving no trace that they had been watching from afar.

             
Madison kneeled on the ground, her knees digging into the dirt. She tore from the hem of her long garment to wrap a young man’s arm. It was sliced almost to the bone and small pieces of wood stuck out from his skin surrounding the wound, the flesh around it burned. There was nothing she could do ease the pain that he undoubtedly felt. Others were hurt worse and he dared not cry out as she took the wooden splices, gently as she could, from his skin. The rope that had been around her waist holding her dress in a dainty female form had been removed in an attempt to create a sort of sling for another man nearby. The other woman nearby managed to escape with only a small cut above her eye while it was clear that others may not make it through the night.

Their party upon their few ships had started with nearly forty men and three women were now left to almost twenty. It was suspected that those who had not been consumed by fire had been dragged away to sea. And their ships, the largest in scale she had ever beheld, had been stripped from them. The original voyeurs who had taken all their knowledge of ship building and all those possessions they owned into creating this venture were down to seven from the original fifteen in their group. The rest had simply been looking for work or a better way of life. She stood and walked to Jamison who now rested upon the ground after caring for the wounded he thought could be treated.

              “I think the three on the end there may be gone by morning,” he said without looking at her. “The others have wounds I don’t know if I can rightly treat.”

             
“You have done all you can for them,” she said softly. “It lays in God’s hands now.”

             
“Does it?” His voice was stern and unlike his usual manner.

             
“He will guide us to safety tomorrow. I’m sure of it.” She was not willing to let him give up even if she knew as well as he did that things could become grimmer the following day. It was the first time she had been the one to comfort his fears for ages.

             
Jamison sighed as he looked to the ground, his hands crossed over his legs as he stared into the open hills before them. The cool breeze made his clothing cold to Madison’s skin as she touched his shoulder and knelt down beside him.

             
“I don’t see God’s hands in this anymore,” he whispered.

             
“How can you of all people say such words?”

             
“I spoke with Jayden. The things he said he saw back there, they were of no God.”

             
She waited for him to continue to speak. He appeared too lost in thought for her to interrupt.

             
“I thought I saw it myself, but I was not sure,” he said finally. “I thought it was the gust of wind that forced the fire to spread. But it had dwindled when we put out our fire rings. Only a small trace of the flames remained. The wind should have taken it down completely, not spread it.”

             
Madison was not sure what he meant. Surely it was possible that the remainders of the fire could have set the grass to burn.

             
“The flames burst from the ground, Madison… as if the fires of hell had reached up from under the earth.” He paused and she leaned forward to see his face. There were tears forming in his eyes. In all her life she had only known her brother to cry perhaps twice. He was not one to allow his emotions to be seen by the likes of anyone.

“Jayden saw the fire as I did,” he continued. “I am sure others saw it as well but have not spoken of it. A force
purposely set our homes to flame. The wind was of no normal strength and took as many as it could. The fires set to finish what the wind could not. Then the water, it chased us. It chased the remainder of us when the shaking grounds beneath could not trap our legs.” He stopped for a moment before continuing. “We were not meant to survive this. The sea was meant to take us. It’s as if we were willed back from where we came.”

             
“Jamie, you of all people do not believe in such things. You have told me for years not to believe the words of others, especially when they attempted to tell me of the magic that beheld the world. You told me that only God can be looked upon for answers to things we do not know. And you condemn every man who was to look at a soul as if it were of a mystical nature. You said that these mystics exist within Gold alone and not in forms we can see in this world. And that man had been misguided. Jayden speaks of things he does not understand as you do.”

             
“This is not of what I believe, Madison. It is of what I saw.”

             
“You were tired from the day’s journey. I am sure you simply saw the flames from the sparks remaining in the fire.”

             
Jamison looked again over the horizon. “We will know soon enough.”

             
When dawn approached, Madison had only taken in a couple of hours of rest. Jamison lay at her side. They both grew chilled in the night air with nothing to cover themselves. Madison lifted her head from Jamison’s shoulder, his body attempting to keep her warm. She quietly lifted herself and walked to the deeply wounded a few yards away from where she lay. They had stopped crying and whimpering from the pain. Perhaps it was the sudden silence that had stirred her. She leaned forward to feel for a heartbeat on one of the young men. There was none. She listened harder for a sign, some breath of life. The air around her went hollow with the silence. She carefully checked the others. Their numbers were now down to a mere sixteen.
 

5

              There had been no sign or sound of animals for days. One man spotted a deer the morning after their small community was brought to the ground, but nothing had shown itself since then. The air felt far too still. The breeze of the sea was gone and the only thing Madison heard outside the voices of others was that of crumpling grass. Twigs broke under her feet as her light step breached the solemn ground. The earth had not stirred again, the sea was in an unsettling state of calm, and the sun had disappeared behind grey clouds. She began to wonder if these conditions were a reflection of her own emotions. Everything was hushed and bleak.

Jamison
found a source of water for the group. He brought what he could from the jugs that remained around one horse’s neck and everyone took turns drinking only small sips to conserve some for those who were worse off. Many remained ill from their injuries that had now turned into fever. Their movements were restricted as Jamison and Madison took turns going to the stream. Fetching water was the only break they got from looking upon the dead or dying. 

Jayden and Lyndon along with a few remaining members of the crew started to build a small sort of shelter by the stream that they suspected fed into their previous one. Their resources were next to nothing, but they placed logs and thick branches atop a nearby setting of rocks for shelter. They layered them and tried as best they could to create something when there was nothing.

              Madison’s hands were warmed by the sensation of the water running through them in the stream. She let the water run across her fingers and over her wrists, enjoying the sensation of it touching her skin. It strangely tingled every nerve, but she thought nothing of it. Even if this water was not completely in well form, it was their only option.

             
She brought some up to her lips and let the tingling into her mouth and down her throat. Its warmth felt good on her insides as it touched her throat. She gently patted the back of her sweat soaked neck before taking more water to her mouth and savoring her fill of it. She needed to stay satisfied if she were to make more trips to the stream and back to the area where more wounded and sick lay dying.

             
“We need to move our injured here. We can’t expect Madison to keep making these trips back and forth,” said Lyndon.

             
Jayden seemed to like to idea of her doing the work for them. “Jamison helps her enough. And better she make trips than transport those who may die in the process of being moved.”             

She knew that he
spoke with her in ear shot intentionally.

Have I not aided in the preparation of every meal th
at you have consumed here, sir?

             
“That is not the point. We are not safe out in the open as we are here,” Lyndon said harshly, growing tired of everyone expecting Madison to begin carrying twice her own weight simply because she was there.

             
“Do you think us safer somewhere else?” Jayden spat through his teeth. “We would have no proper way of seeing others headed in on our camp.”

             
“They would have done so already. They obviously have little to no interest in us,” said Lyndon. He had also grown quite frustrated with Jayden’s sparing of words. “We need to be closer to the stream, at least for the time being.”

             
“We cannot move more of our sick with only our three horses who have taken ill as well,” said Jayden.

             
“They could make it farther if we helped them.”

             
Jayden didn’t even feel the need to respond. The way this man before him made decisions based on what he thought people capable of while answers appear directly in front of him was as frustrating to Jayden as the situation itself.

“Then you move them. Or let them rest in peace for the remainder of their lives, which should not be long. The choice is yours,” said Jayden. His voice was harsh without even raising it. The way he spoke made it sound as if the right choice was the obvious one.

The shelter they built wasn’t for the sick. Jayden built another shelter near the stream as Lyndon had ordered, but saw no use for it so long as the sick couldn’t be moved. Lyndon saw it as a means for those who lived long enough to make the mile long journey to it. It took Madison several trips with Jamison to remember the route to the stream correctly. Her nerves were fully aware of all around her as she walked it by herself. Jamison trusted her enough to make the journey by herself, which gave her confidence; even though the only sound within those woods was that of her own movements.

             
Twigs and leaves moved and crackled beneath her feet as she made the trek back to where the sick lay. Jamison was there doing everything he could to comfort them. Birds no longer sang for her and the smaller animals did not run from her as she walked as they normally would. It was almost as though they had all cleared since the disaster struck their new home. Each time she hiked through the damp woods, she felt the skin on her feet begin to peel and possibly bleed from lack of protection from her shredded shoes. Yet within moments of resting and kneeling on the ground to give water to the wounded, she felt her feet recover almost instantly. As if being off of them for even a moment was the only reprieve she could offer them. When she took off her clothed shoes for the first time since that morning, they weren’t blistered or even peeling. They were in the same condition they had been in that fateful day.

             
Her stomach hadn’t growled for some time. She expected it to be in torment soon. But the water appeared to give her all the satisfaction her body needed. The others who had not fallen ill found it quite sustainable as well. The sick however, begged for any scrapple of food that they could possibly find. Jamison suggested that there may be fish in the stream, but they hadn’t found any or seen a shadow suggesting their presence lurking within the water.

             
Jamison took Madison by the arm and gently led her away from the sick and the others sitting by the fire ring they had built, although no food burned upon it. Men simply stared into it, knowing their eventual fate was as disheartening as those who lay behind them.

             
“I think we will lose more by sun rise. The woman’s breathing is shallow and quick. The others are just as bad and their hearts are racing,” he said in a low and hushed voice.

             
“I brought them the water. Perhaps we can make it last for the night to sustain their comfort.”

             
“I’m not sure they could drink it. The woman is so ill she nearly fell asleep in my arms. I don’t think she has long.”

             
Madison hung her head. She tried to stop tears from breaking the composure she had managed to keep contained for so long. But the tears never came. They could do nothing for their dead but place them in the woods far off and cover them with dirt and long thin branches. Their efforts couldn’t even give them a proper Christian burial without tools. She lifted one hand to her face in a vain attempt to stop tears if they were to come. Jamison took her to his chest and held her there, grasping the back of her head and stroking her hair.

             
“Did you see any animals while you were away?” he asked her, continuing to stroke her head.

             
“No, there was nothing. How much longer can we go without food?”

             
“I am shocked we have managed as long as we have. There is no sense to it. We should be famished by now. It has been days.”

             
She moved away now, almost embarrassed by her moment of weakness.

             
“It must be the shock from it all,” he continued. “I’ve known myself not to eat as much when discouraged.”

             
They were interrupted by Lyndon and Jayden’s return and Madison quickly went towards the fire expecting tears to soon come. And yet she already felt herself beginning to calm.

             
She sat in front of the fire they built and gazed upon the other seven who sat around it. She passed the remaining water around and watched as they took a couple sips each and passed it down the circle.

             
These men had barely a drop of water in hours. Jayden and Lyndon told them to quit working hours ago
.

             
Their work had started early in the day. Perhaps their fill had been taken during the day’s work. But their lack of food… the men did not appear the faintest bit tired from the work Jayden had them do for gathering wood and anything usable for shelter near the stream. And their hands… perhaps they had also cleaned them in the stream. Yet they appeared as they had not touched a single day’s work since having been there. Madison had attempted to help their aching joints, hands, and feet in the past by providing buckets of warmed water for them for soaking during their first months after arrival. She decided to dismiss it as she heard the labored breathing of the men and the woman only a few feet behind her. They had no cloth to wrap them in to protect from the cold. Though they did not appear to need it as they were sweating to the point of soaking the only clothes they wore.

             
We may not survive this to the morning either if we do not find a way to keep warm. If thirst does not take us, the night’s cold will.

This night’s air was crisp, that much she was aware of. The fire kept her warm as she sat amongst the men.

Th
e curiosity of the natives watching us shall be short lived
.

Her
thoughts were the only sound she heard other than the fire before her.

Death shall take us all soon.