Chapter 8
Company
Fyn had a smile on his face as he hurried down the narrow tunnel that led to his family’s burrow. He’d never been this happy before, which was saying something because Fyn was usually happy. But the experience of going outside and seeing the world for the first time had changed him. He didn’t think he’d ever stop smiling now that he knew what lay just above his head. Why do we live down here when the surface is so amazing?
Fyn was wondering this as he entered the burrow and found his family-brother in the kitchen. His family-brother was his actual brother unlike the other young males of the community which Fyn would just call brothers. In this same line of thinking, Fyn had four family-sisters as well as a family-mother and father, but he had countless sisters and every adult in the community was considered a mother or father to Fyn. Naalyms found family to be a very important part of life, so the whole community took part in raising every young pup.
Fyn’s family-brother was Martys, short for Martysithia. He was in the kitchen, preparing food on the heat rock, and didn’t appear to notice that Fyn had come through the opening.
“Guess what I did today, Martys,” Fyn greeted his family-brother excitedly.
Martys barely seemed to come out of his own thoughts as he glanced over his shoulder. “What’s that?”
Fyn jumped atop one of the nearby stools and said triumphantly, “I went outside today!”
His family-brother finally turned completely around. “Oh yeah. Well, what did you think?”
“It was amazing!” Fyn beamed. “I can’t wait to go back.”
“Yeah, that’s how I felt too,” Martys replied, though his expression still remained rather solemn. He turned back to his food as he continued, “But I wouldn’t get too excited; you’ll be stuck in these tunnels more often than not.”
Fyn’s smile dropped just slightly at his family-brother’s attitude. Martys had never been known as the cheerful one of the family, so Fyn wasn’t surprised that his family-brother didn’t share his enthusiasm.
“I didn’t know you liked the outside,” Fyn commented.
Martys shrugged. “Anywhere’s better than here.”
“I guess,” Fyn said, not really sure if he agreed with his family-brother. He liked the burrow and the community underneath the surface. It was home. But Fyn hadn’t really lived anywhere else. How do I know I wouldn’t like some other place better?
“Why don’t you go outside more often then?” Fyn inquired. “I’m sure it’s not hard to find an adult to take you out.”
“It’s not that,” Martys replied as he removed his food from the stone and dished it onto a plate. “I don’t even need an adult anymore to go outside. There’s an old tunnel down off the third-tier side shaft that takes you to the surface without anyone knowing. But once you get up there, where do you go? If you haven’t noticed, there’s nothing but grass for a hundred leagues in every direction.”
Martys took a seat at the kitchen table, which was big enough to fit twelve on its loneliest day. Naalyms liked company, and Fyn’s family was no different. Supper especially was a time for everyone to get together. The tunnels in the burrows were usually empty every night because the entire Naalym community was sitting down at someone’s table, whether their own family’s or another’s, to enjoy food and fun.
Joining his family-brother at the table, Fyn considered Martys’s last remark. ”But what if you made it past the grasslands? What’s outside our country?”
“I hear the Humans have communities to the West and North,” Martys said, taking a bite of his food. “While mountains block us to the South, and the ocean lies to the East.”
Fyn stared transfixed at his family-brother. This was stuff they didn’t teach him in his classes. “Do you think we’ll ever get to see any of those thing?”
Martys shrugged. “You might not. Most of our kind don’t stray far from the burrows. But I plan on seeing the world one day. Especially the ocean. I hear it’s like the grass; it stretches as far as the eye can see. But it’s all water, rolling and moving to the wind.” Fyn could see that his family-brother was actually becoming excited. “I’ve thought about going one day. Just heading east until my feet hit the water. It couldn’t be more than a two day trip, I would think. I’ve looked over the maps we have in the study, but they aren’t very thorough; none of them are really. Our kind don’t do much exploring if you haven’t noticed.”
“Do you think I could come with you if you go?” Fyn asked excitedly.
Martys laughed. “You go outside once and you think you can travel the world already? You haven’t even studied Magick yet.”
“That’s not true,” Fyn argued. Well, it was true he hadn’t studied Magick in his classes, but he’d played around with controlling fire. A few times, he and Stybs had gone into one of the sub-level storage rooms and set a small fire on the ground. Then they’d taken turns trying to make the fire burn brighter or hotter or longer. They couldn’t always do it, but Fyn had fun trying.
“I can control the elements just as well as you,” Fyn continued his argument.
“The mere fact that you said control and not enhance the elements means you don’t know how,” his family-brother replied with a smug smile on his face.
Then a sweet but cutting laugh came from the main opening. Fyn and Martys turned to find their second oldest family-sister standing there. Fyn grinned. He loved all his siblings, even his family-brother, though that was hard at times, but Elyda would always have a special place in his heart. Since he was a newborn, she’d taken care of him more than any of his mothers, including his own family-mother. She still watched over him to this day, especially whenever Martys was being a bully.
“So taking one course on Magick makes you an expert, Martys?” she asked.
“I never said I was an expert,” Martys corrected quickly. “I was just saying I know more than this little pillow bug.”
“Hey, I’m not a pillow bug,” Fyn chimed in.
“Martys, if you did as much studying and practicing as you did daydreaming and complaining, you might have already become an expert on Magick,” Elyda remarked.
“I don’t complain,” Martys argued. “I just don’t like that we’re forced to live in these tunnels. There’s a whole world out there, and we’re trapped here.”
“Trapped?” Elyda questioned. “What are you talking about? This is our home.”
“Well, maybe I wish this wasn’t my home. There’s bound to be better places out there than this.”
Elyda just shook her head. “You’re never going to be happy with what you have, will you?”
Martys stood abruptly. “You always ruin everything, Elyda. I’m going to eat in my room.”
“Aw, Martys don’t leave,” Elyda protested. But Martys had already walked off without looking back.
After their family-brother had left the room, Elyda turned to Fyn. “He sure enjoys being off by himself, doesn’t he?”
Fyn shrugged. “I guess he just likes it better that way.”
Fyn didn’t know it at that moment, but this was the last time he’d ever see his family-brother.
* * *
As the sun set on a cold, bleak day, Fyn sat atop a hill looking out across the land to the East. It had been a week now since the first time he had come to the surface. It had only been a week, but it felt like a lifetime ago. How could things have changed so much?
Fyn no longer had a smile on his face as he looked at the possibilities the surface held; all he could see was the brutal reality of being outside the tunnels. Now, he understood why his kind stayed inside those tunnels, why they hid from the world.
But Fyn sat atop the hill despite the danger. He sat atop the hill because he wanted to believe again what the world had to offer. He wanted to believe again what he had felt the first time he had come to the surface. He wanted to believe again t
hat this world had good to offer and not just bad. He had to believe it again, or he didn’t know if he could ever be happy again.
A noise behind him made Fyn turn, and he watched Stybs scramble up the last bit of slope.
“What in the name of Light are you doing up here? The entire burrow is looking for you.”
“Did you bring what I asked?” Fyn questioned. He figured everyone would be looking for him, but he knew they wouldn’t find him on the surface. That’s the last place anyone would want to look right now.
“Yeah, I brought everything,” Stybs answered. “But I’m not going to give you anything until you tell me why you asked me to meet you outside of all places.” He glanced nervously towards the sky for a moment before looking at Fyn with concern. “I know what you’re going through must be tough, but this seems stupid.”
Fyn knew what he was doing was stupid, but that wasn’t going to stop him from doing it. “You want to know why I’m out here?”
“Yeah, I do,” Stybs insisted.
Fyn took a moment and looked at his friend, his brother, and then explained, “After the farewell ritual, my family-mother sat me down and told me I had a choice. A choice of what I wanted to focus on. She said I could either focus on the negative and be sad and angry and mourn the injustice of losing my family-brother. Or I could focus on the good and be happy for what Martys gave me when he was here and for the life he got to live.”
Fyn ended and lost his gaze on the horizon. Stybs let a second pass in silence before asking, “So this is you focusing on the good?”
Fyn shook his head. “No, I can’t do that just yet. I have to go find it first.”
“You have to go find the good?” Stybs asked skeptically.
Fyn turned to his brother. “I have to go find what my family-brother gave me while he was here.”
“What does that mean?”
Fyn grasped his brother’s shoulder. “It means we’re going to the ocean.”
“We?” Stybs asked, his eyebrows rising.
“Yep,” Fyn nodded. “My family-brother might have liked to do things on his own, but I think I could use some company.”
Fyn grabbed the pack of supplies from Stybs’ hand and slung it onto his back. “Or you can go back inside and tell everyone you let a child of Rolath’s 3rd family go off to get killed on his own.”
“You mean youngest child.” Stybs corrected with a small grin.
“Right,” Fyn returned as he started off away from the setting sun.
“This is stupid,” Stybs said again, but Fyn could hear his brother only a few steps behind, following him down the slope of the hill. It might be stupid, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.