Summary - Aryel, a girl living a miserable life finds some interesting tracks. Blah blah blah
Questions
1 Does it still sound like a 19th century setting?
2 Does it feel slightly suspenseful?
3 How is the imagery?
4. How about show versus tell?
Still, cautiousness would not go amiss here. She increased the pace once she was satisfied that her footsteps were making barely any noise. On the other hand… If it was a keyl, then she should be moving loudly and make as much noise as she could rather than silently sneaking into the area. No! There isn’t anything here! She wanted to believe that but part of her doubted it.
She had heard the big predators did not take too kindly to being startled, and were just as prone to attack and defend themselves when startled as they would run away when startled. And that was one reason keyls were dangerous. Aside from being easily half again as large as a cow, they had massive crescent shaped heads, the sides of which were razor sharp, and used when the animal was hunting. A single swipe of that head could rip through the flesh of most creatures out there and put the animal down permanently. Then the beast would just insert its trunk like mouth into the massive slash, and start secreting acids into the wound and drink the liquefied remains.
At least that was what Wyllyam said. He claimed he had heard it from a CEC official all the way in Kyl’s Wells. She partially doubted that he had even met anyone from the mythical CEC, the so called human government all the way from Earth that were trying to reconstruct their human alliance that was long since shattered. Shattered since the time of the Martyr some four or five hundred years back. Her father remained quite tight lipped about it, but she could tell he thought CEC was laughable. Not that they didn’t exist of course, just that their mission and purpose was ridiculous.
Still, the explanation for the way a keyl fed seemed likely similar to what Wyllyam said as she had seen the kills of makys before, and much of their kills had been turned into some disgusting ooze that seeped out of the gashes left by the animals.
Relieved that she was alone, she took several steps forward into the trees, scanning the ground for any sort of footprints that might reveal the identity of the maky’s unknown stalker. It only took a few moments until she saw a place where the brush and leaves had been obviously disturbed.
She puzzled over the displaced brush until its purpose became obvious. It was a bed. Something had lay here for several moments but probably not too long. Maybe an hour or three and then it had gotten up and headed off elsewhere. Where exactly it had headed to eluded her. The ground here even with all the leaves didn’t seem to hold the tracks very well. Leaves had already started falling and had covered much of the existing trackway even given the few hours between her arrival here and the beast’s presence here.
Still she was curious. Now she knew it hadn’t been hunters, it must have been a keyl. At least, she figured it couldn’t be hunters. Why would anyone just randomly lie down on a bed of leaves? No, given the time frame, the keyl had probably hidden during the hotter sun of the day and moved on since then. That had probably been at noon or so. It wasn’t incredibly hot in the afternoon, but it was still warm enough that the animal would seek shelter for the moment.
She looked around the area, watching for any sort of telltale sign of the animal that hadn’t been obliterated by the falling vegetation. She remembered in the back of her mind that she still had chores to do, so she occasionally grabbed a large stick or two that they could use, but for the most part, she continued looking for the trackway the animal had made when it had left.
A male keyl this close to her house could be a problem. Wyllyam Korgan had said they sometimes preyed on cattle, and she didn’t want to risk thinking of that as being one of his many falsehoods. If there was one in the area, pa’s herd might not be safe. He would probably find some way of blaming the death of a cow by the hands of this keyl on her as well. Everything that went wrong seemed to have been caused by her.
But first she wanted to see where the keyl was head to. Had the maky and the keyl come across each other coming from different directions? Or had they both been heading in the same direction? Finding where the tracks became visible took probably an hour or two and the sun was starting to head down the horizon. Aryel hadn’t even noticed a glow of its fall as she continued through the area with her gaze locked on the ground.
She let out a squeal of excitement when she finally saw the large pugmarks of the animal further into the forest. The vegetation was less dense here which mean better conditions for finding pugmarks, and she had found several. These were similar to the maky pug-marks, but were even larger and broader. Each mark from the two feet on each leg was probably about the size of her hand fully spread open.
This was a big animal unless she missed her guess gauging by the size of the marks. And the marks indicated that the keyl was heading in the same direction the maky patrol had. Most likely the maky patrol had seen the keyl and skirted around the bigger animal before heading off as fast as they could. The keyl had probably left a bit after that, heading off in search of food somewhere else.
Aryel started following the trail for almost a mile or so. From the way that its pug-marks were spread out she determined it was moving at a slow pace, the movement of an animal that wasn’t in any sort of hurry. The marks gave her goose bumps all over, as she had never been so close to any sort of large predator. It was exciting and exhilarating.
A sudden thought came into her mind. The tracks were heading in the general direction of her families cabin. She paused. The sticks! She looked up towards the sky and realized that the sun was almost down. There wasn’t anything out in these woods at night that she needed to fear, but that didn’t mean the darkness still didn’t set her nerves on edge. And she had left all those sticks behind on the ground and had wandered off after animal tracks.
She would have needed to start hauling her finds back to the house hours ago if she had planned on finishing in a reasonable time. As it was, it would take probably well into the night to get them all. She cursed to herself and turned and ran towards the valley where she had left her pile behind.
It took maybe twenty minutes to reach her pile and she began scrambling to grab as many as she could before setting off towards the cabin as fast as she could. Aryel stumbled more than once in the failing light, but she stopped and managed to retrieve every fallen stick and branch that lay on the ground. She wasn’t going to mess up now.
As she ran, she wondered if the keyl would come close to their cabin. That would certainly give the cattle a fright. Maybe the animal would even go in after them for an easy meal. She partially wished the animal would maul some of the cattle just to cause her father grief. She didn’t care if he took it out on her. He would take it out on her. The maiming of the cattle would be her fault somehow and if he didn’t find some way to punish her for that, he’d find some other excuse. That was just the way he was. He was just a mean old man who had never shown her much of a shred of love in her life.
Sometimes she dreamed what life would be like if she just ran away and lived off the land. She had heard tales of people doing that but she had never actually met one. Another of Wyllyam’s tales. I could do it. And she really knew she could. But always her thoughts returned to home. She really couldn’t leave there. Even though her father seemed to not give a shred of care for her, he hadn’t thrown her out like he had often said he would. Maybe he did love her. He just had an odd way of showing it. Yeah… that must be it, she thought.
She knew she had to be close now, but it was becoming rather dark and she had to watch her steps. She knew the direction back to the cabin even in darkness, but the terrain could always hide deadfalls or rocks that one could trip over. Up until now she had not tripped and injured herself and she had no intention of that happening now
The trees of lion’s manes and copper barks covered the hillside behind their cabin that was located maybe ten or twenty yards from the tree line. The cabin was in a wide meadow with plenty of room for them to have set up a fence that contained their livestock, as well as space for their vegetable gardens. Some of the vegetables were native plants; others like the cattle as well as herself were descendants from the original settlers.
A few more steps and the view of the cabin came into sight. And just in time as well. The sun had almost completely passed over the horizon off in the direction that the ocean laid. She had never traveled that far but one day she wanted to. Her gaze lingered there for a moment and she continued on to the cabin. She would have to make several more trips to get all of the branches back and she was only wasting time by watching things off in the distance.
That was something she had always wanted to do. Go to the ocean. Go to Wyldnys, the major continent on Ryzel. To be able to wander the world and see the sights. Travel to the ancient ruins of Robyn and see the monument to the Martyr. See the large port cities of Korwood and Tel Ryo. But part of her knew she never would.
She had been resigned to her fate for a long time since. Her dreams still spurned her on as she looked for a better life than what she was, but it would never come. Her father had promised that as soon as she became eighteen, he would find some man gullible enough to marry her and get rid of her. “Gullible” had actually been the word he used. She supposed the only thing she could hope for was that her husband would be a decent and kind man. Someone not like her father.
As she took several steps forward towards the cabin, another primal sense of unease gripped over her and she felt the hairs stand on the back of her neck. But when she craned her neck around, she saw nothing out of the ordinary that might give rise to such a sense of caution.
But still, she knew something was wrong here, and she paused in her steps about a hundred or so yards from the house. Something is wrong… she thought. A moment later she realized what it was. The sun had faded beyond the horizon and shrouded the entire meadow where her house lay in twilight. Barely enough light lingered that she could see the house, but darkness was closing in quickly and in fifteen or so minutes, she wouldn’t be able to see beyond what the starlight showed.
