Twenty, 10 March
My valley
Dronikus, a novel set on a burning planet called Earth.
Zola the fish
The number of passengers thinned as the day and the journey wore on. The rickety old train had held together despite Zola’s apprehensions. For endless hours it had chugged across the hot desert plains and by mid-afternoon it began to wind its way up through rocky passes and into the mountain range.
Finally, in the late afternoon, they crested the pass and to both the train and its occupants’ relief, began coasting on the downhill slopes. From here they could see a wide valley below them as it stretched away to hills on the horizon.
‘This is my valley,’ said Chun. ‘Further on down along the base of the mountains was where we lived. My grandparents always spoke of green forests stretching from here to those hills way over there. That was all cleared for the palms before I was born. You can still make out the plantation lines. But as you can see, there is hardly a tree left.’
‘Drought,’ said Chesa, ‘the rains just stopped.’
‘My family was here for many generations, living off the land. They’re mostly all gone now, including me. My aunt and cousins are still here. You’ll meet them soon.’
As the train inched its way down the hill, Chun pointed out where the people had lived, their villages, their markets and temples – a world that now lay crumbling. Zola became aware that as Chun looked down over the ruined landscape and heris own ruined past, heesh nevertheless still held in herm the history of the place, the stories of the community that had once lived and thrived there.
Zola reflected how cloistered and restricted his upbringing had been in his highly privileged world. In heris short life Chun had lived through the transition from a world of riches to one of calamity and catastrophe. Heesh had enormous personal potential – yet heesh would put heris life on the line for it to be different, for the world to heal, for it to find its balance once more.
Chesa picked up on what Zola was feeling and squeezed his hand, looking at him and Chun, as they conjured up the ghosts of worlds that no longer existed. After a while they both turned and saw Chesa smiling at their intensity and seriousness and laughed.
The small train emerged from the black night and creaked its way into the station – an assemblage of uneven platforms and ancient structures lit by huge floodlights. Small groups of ragged travellers waited expectantly, along with a few food and drink vendors, eager to sell their wares.
Chun held up heris Eyeto and stealthily slipped it under the seat, indicating for Chesa and Zola to do the same. They then squeezed themselves out of their places, worked their way out of the carriage and dropped down onto the platform, the only ones to alight here. They saw no sign of dronikus or rators, yet kept their faces hidden beneath hoodies, scarves and dark glasses.
Amid whistles and announcements, the vendors were ordered to stand back and the train trundled out of the station and onward. Within minutes the floodlights went out. The vendors had all disappeared and the three travellers stood alone on the platform in the near dark, relieved, even lightheaded, to be out of the cramped confines of the old train.
Chesa looked at Chun. ‘This way,’ heesh said and walked across the station and out into the darkness, followed by Zola and Chesa, lugging their packs.
They walked through the remaining night-time hours up and along a narrow, rocky path, following Chun’s torch. Noone spoke. They walked in single file, a few metres separating each from the other. Over time the skies lightened as the thick clouds gave way to a starlit universe. Eventually, in the east, the first flickers of day hit the horizon. Dropping down into a steep ravine, they could hear the sounds of water trickling over rocks and smell the rich fragrances of a rain forest. Sunlight crested the cliffs revealing a magnificent panorama below them.
The path sloped down to a series of pools amid large flat rocks beneath tree-lined cliffs. The water ran to an edge of a large waterhole, then onwards, cascading down to a waterfall that dropped to a pool some fifty metres below.
‘Welcome to my home,’ said Chun, happy to have brought them to this marvellous place.
They settled by the side of the waterhole, on a large open area of rock that led into an overhang where they would sleep. All three stripped off their clothes and jumped into the soft, cooling waters, all exclaiming how great it was, how wonderful and refreshing, how they should just stay there forever. They wallowed and swam and splashed – being in the moment, putting all horrors from their minds.
After the water they lay warming their bodies on the rocks in the morning sun, still talking, reflecting on the beauty of this world around them, the trees that were still in full growth up here, the purity of the water and air.
Zola caught a glimpse of movement in small shrubbery. ‘Hey! What’s that? Look,’ he said, pointing. They watched for a while and were rewarded with the sight of a small brown bird moving in the branches. Zola crept closer, ‘there must be insects or maybe berries for it to feed on.’
‘Don’t frighten it away,’ said Chesa, ‘it’s a lucky charm for us.’
Zola came close to the bushes and, despite his cautious approach, did cause the bird to fly off.
‘Look what you’ve done,’ laughed Chesa.
Zola followed the path they had come down earlier, looking up along the trunks of the tall trees, rubbing their bark, feeling their leaves, taking in their odours. He examined the small bushes and vines, looking for signs of insect life. Happily, he found aphids and some small caterpillars and beetles. He even heard the call of birds, including, no doubt, the one they had seen earlier, now chatting with its mate. The life in this forest was nothing like it had been before, he was sure, but at least there was still some life here.
Zola thought of the stillness, the deadness, of his forest on the island of his exile. It had been a long time since he had seen a caterpillar. But he had, recently, seen a bird. Looking up into the high branches above him, he recalled the arrival of the brasselleur, in all its splendour, as it came crashing through the trees towards his compound. As he looked up through the leaves of the canopy to the skies above, he wondered yet again about the mystery of its coming, as if it were a doorway or a pointer to some higher level of being. Zola, normally so rational, so practical, could not find any simple, conventional explanation. Nor could he explain the little tickle it had left inside him.
Arriving back at the waterhole he saw Chesa and Chun relaxing on the rocks. He looked at their naked bodies – Chesa’s well-formed feminine shape and alongside, Chun, delicate with soft skin, small breasts and broad hips. They were both beautiful in their own way, both alluring. Zola felt desire rise in him.
He slipped into the pool again; the cold water helping his body readjust. He dived down, delighting in the clarity of vision and the cool freshness of this water, so different from what he had become accustomed to during his exile. He was still able to hold his breath for long minutes, moving around and under the rocks, looking and feeling for other signs of life, marvelling at the beauty of the weeds and mosses in the deep.
He rose to breathe and let himself sink, again and again. He imagined himself as a fish – in the times when there were still fish and the waters were still pure – his body hanging in the water, hardly mobile, at one with the elements, a sense of harmony, ease, and the naturalness of life. ‘Zola the fish.’
He floated on his back, his eyes closed, only his nose breaking the surface, drawing what he light-heartedly called ‘psychic energy’ from the universe – so calm, so still, so healing.
In a flash, a mighty explosion in the water next to him abruptly brought him back to reality. In shock and confusion, instinctively, he rose up, arms flailing, ready for any eventuality. Chesa’s laughter was followed by her spraying him with water and Chun, still on the rocks, roaring at his discomfort at being dive-bombed.
After having cooked and eaten the food from their hastily-put-together packs, they sat near their small fire, Chesa next to Chun across from Zola. Chun sat staring into the burning coals, heris mood quite sombre.
Chesa took in a few deep breaths, and exhaled loudly, reaching both arms up into the sky: ‘Isn’t this just the most spectacular sight?’
Chun nodded.
Zola also nodded, ‘wonderful, truly wonderful.’ But he, too, was now solemn, being revisited by the blood-laden imagery of the boulevards.
‘Ah,’ Chesa tried again. ‘Ah, the universe, just look!’
‘Mmm,’ Zola agreed.
After a time, Chesa stood and wandered off into the darkness. She could be heard climbing the path, slowly making her way up the hill.
Zola and Chun sat in silence for a long while. ‘How are you doing?’ Zola asked finally. Chun shrugged. ‘You’ve spoken very little about what happened on the boulevard.’
‘What’s there to say?’ replied Chun.
‘She’s in deep pain.’
Chun nodded.
‘And you?’
Keeping heris eyes fixed on the logs glowing in the fire, Chun spoke softly, ‘I can’t let that kind of pain too near to me, to take hold of me. I’ve become very good at blocking it.’ Heesh fell into a long silence before continuing, ‘I feel totally assaulted, to my core and that makes me more angry and more vengeful, but the pain, the despair, I’m able to hold it away. Maybe it’s because of my past, the gender thing, y’know.’
After a while, Zola said, ‘one wonders how we could have been so naive.’ He shook his head. ‘But it does feel like one’s innocence has been taken advantage of, one’s belief that they would stay within the law.’
‘Yeah, that those who make the rules would actually stick by them,’ said Chun.
‘Everything changes from here on, doesn’t it?’
Heesh shrugged. ‘Look at the scoreboard: moral battle, we win; everything else, they win.’
Silence returned against the background of irregular gurgles from the river, the occasional crackling of the burning logs and the subdued night sounds of the forest. Zola went over and crouched next to Chun, putting his arm across heris shoulders. Heesh flung heris arms around him and hugged him.
They made beds of soft leaves and grasses under the overhanging rock where they spread their rugs for sleep. The air had cooled with the setting sun, but it remained hot.
In the dark early hours Chun and Zola were awakened by Chesa screaming. As they reached out to her, the screams subsided and became sobs, deep and intense, her body shaking, as if she were in physical pain.
She grasped Chun and held herm tightly, moaning. Chun wrapped heris arms around her and she lay tight up against herm. Zola sat at a distance, brought her water to drink, said words to calm her, stroked her face, and withdrew to his blankets. For hours Chun held her and kissed her and massaged her. Finally she, and then the others, slept.
At dawn Zola woke to find Chesa by the fire drinking coffee. Chun had climbed down the waterfall and gone exploring along the river.
She brought him a cup.
‘How are you doing this morning?’ he asked.
‘I’m sorry about…’
‘No, no, no – no reason to be sorry.’
She came and sat close by him, where he lay back on the rockface: ‘I was… it was… it was about you and Chun, kind of melting into the rocks.’
‘What do you mean?’
She gestured vaguely to the water, the rocks, the cliffs. ‘I don’t know.’ She closed her eyes and started to shiver. Zola pulled her to him. The shivering grew into shocks wracking her body, as memories of the night’s horrors, like demons within, overcame her. Zola simply held on as she suffered.
Almost inaudibly, she said: ‘Dread, deep, deep dread. I looked up – was I asleep or was I awake? In the here and the now, I knew that I would lose you and Chun. I knew that they would kill the two of you, just like all those people on the boulevard. And then it started to get dark, too dark to see.’ She took in a huge breath and exhaled slowly. ‘It went black and I couldn’t scream anymore.’
She began to relax and lay more easily in his arms, and they stayed like that, not moving, feeling the other’s body alongside. A light breeze rustled the leaves about them and the water babbled and murmured as it slipped down across the rocks and hit the gentle turbulence of the cascades.
She turned and began to run her hand across his chest, and moving her face close to his, stared into his eyes. She threaded her arms around him, pulling their bodies tight. His body responded but he fought it, repressing the tingling expectations, slowing his breathing. He held her in a neutral, non-suggestive way, unsure how to react as her hands began to explore his body.
She pushed forward and put her mouth to his and ran her tongue across his lips, slowly pushing it into his mouth. He pulled back and whispered: ‘Chesa, are you sure?’
Her breath was fast, intense and hot on his face. She pulled him back to her. Again her mouth and her tongue were against his and now he opened himself to her – their desire so strong – guiding his tongue deeply into her.
They kissed and licked and rubbed, looking deeper and deeper into each other’s eyes. She gasped, her body folding against him as he entered her – intense, urgent, miraculous.
They lay together, their bodies sweating, leaning up against the rock, in silence, fulfilled, watching the ripples and eddies of the flowing waters in the river.
After a time, she sat up and put her face close to his and they kissed, only their lips touching. She got up, walked across the flat rock and plunged into the waterhole.
Dronikus is a novel published in 2023, now being serialised here on Substack. You can read a chapter every week for free.
Liking what you’re reading? Don’t want to wait to see what happens next? You can read the full book now by purchasing a digital or print copy of Dronikus from:
AndAlso Books (print edition)
Amazon (epub), Smashwords (epub), Apple Books (epub), Barnes&Noble (epub)
Note from Marko Newman: Hi Dronikus readers. I hope that you are liking what you are reading. There is still a fair way to go in the story with many twists and turns to come.
For those who are joining the story I highly recommend you take the time to peruse earlier chapters to give you a bit of a lead-in to the story.
I suggest:
Chapters 1 to 3, 7, 9 and 12:
I have a favour to ask all readers: please forward the story (any episode) to anyone who you think may like this short weekly hit of fiction reading. Suggest that if they like it they could subscribe to the weekly post. Emphasise that it is free and that one can unsubscribe with one click.
Also, I’m keen to hear any comments or questions or thoughts you may have. My email is: markonewman@icloud.com
Cheers, Marko