ChapterOne: LoAnn Aroo and Her Son
A young married couple live in a sod and clay house on the plains. The house is mostly underground. Wide stairs lead down to a wooden pocket door that is inset with thick colored glass panels. The roof is steep and covered with clay tiles that match the color of the surrounding earth. Small round windows peep out from under the roof, at ground level. A thin thread of smoke still spins out of the chimney. A path leads around the house, to the root cellar.

Their soddy is one room, filled with all the necessities of prairie life. There is a brick oven with a pile of dry chips in a clay tub, beside it. There is a ceramic sink, sitting on a drain pedestal, with a water pump bending over it. There is a big fluffy bed. Shelves hold jars of dried plants that line the top of the walls. Tools for gathering roots hang from pegs at the front door. Not all of their belongings are roughhewn necessities. They have luxuries such as a porcelain teapot and cups. They have a stringed instrument that is similar to a violin, and an ornate drum that sit in a corner. There is a pile of linen and cotton yarn with knitting needles sitting on a built-in shelf. Newly made baby blankets and clothes fill the shelf above.

Though the house's outside is made of stacks of sod, the inside is lined with colorful glazed panels of fire hardened clay. These panels have cuneiform stories and instructions pressed into them. Every story and drawing, every song, every recipe and remedy written on the wall is designed to help the couple have their first baby. Once their child is bigger they will move to another house. A house for babies and first time parents.

The doe named LoAnn Aroo and the buck named Obed Aroo, who live in the house, are grazers. Grazers are like kangaroos from the waist down; from the top up, they are humanoid. They eat grass and chew their cuds afterward, like deer. They also eat roots, berries, nuts, and some small insects, as well as drinking tea and coffee, when they can get it - which is never often enough. From belts around their middle, they carry sharp flint trowels that they use to collect plants. Young grazers wear few clothes, but houses built for older grazers have progressively more and more hooks for shirts and coats, scarves and hats.

On this particular winter day, they are not home. They are out with the herd, harvesting roots from the bleak and windy plain. They dug carrot-like roots that have become sugary because of the cold.

She gives him a coy glance.

He smiles at her.

She looks away, smiling at the ground. She glows with the radiance of her pregnancy. He stares. She is so beautiful in this moment. Even the Wind stops blowing. He tried to peek inside her pouch, but she gave him a glare and pushed him away.

"He's sleeping."

Obed smiles in his goofy way.

The older grazers politely hop away, to give the young couple room to be in love.

“You missed one.” she points at the patch of roots he is digging.

“This one?” and he leans over and kisses her.

“No.” and she kisses him back, “that one.” she says.

There’s a warning thump given by one of the other grazers, and they all straighten up and look around, smelling the Wind, feeling the ground with their extraordinary feet.

“Anat Noms.” he says. They flee. They scatter in several directions, separating to ensure that the party of hunters cannot follow all of them. They only follow the pregnant Loann-Aroo, seeing that she is slower than the rest. Every hop she makes comes with a painful flop of her swollen stomach.

Anat Noms are hardy bearded mountain men who ride tinseldons, elephant-like creatures that have shiny metallic hair. They are fierce warriors and great hunters.

Loann Aroo is much slower than the huge tinseldons. She pushs against the ground as hard as she can with each hop, but it isn’t enough. Push . . .land . . . balance . . . push . . . land – S N A P – she has landed on the shallow crust over a rabbit run, fallen and broken her leg. She looks up and sees a snow bank and crawls into it. She wiggles in on her belly and follows the drift for several minutes as it curves around the hill. A thick crust of icy snow stops the surface from revealing her movement and hiding spot. She lays still in the snow. Her breath comes in shallow pants and her eyes are glazed with fear-shock.

Whoomp . . . whoomp . . . whomp . . . whomp, she can hear the heavy footsteps of the tinseldons approaching . . . and passing her . . . and circling around her in a throbbing of heavy footsteps. One steps on her. It crushes her knees and upper thigh. She clenches her teeth and eyes, not daring to flinch or squeak. The footsteps recede. The snow becomes warm and dark.

“Wind . . . take my soul.” she says. She slept.

When the Anat Noms are gone Obed Aroo looks for his wife. He follows her tracks. He finds the circle of tinseldon tracks. He sees a melted spot and blood under the snow. He digs away at the red slush. He turns her over.

She is dead.

Her breath is gone, her lips are cold when he kisses her. Her fingers are cold, but her stomach leaps with the furious churning of the joey who hasn’t died.

Obed Aroo acts on an impulse, an instinct males don't usually have, he pulls the joey from it's mothers pouch and uses his trowel to cut it's mouth from his mothers nipple. He holds his son tightly to his chest and hops to his parent’s house for help. 

Chapter Two: Obed Aroo Looks for Milk

The newborn lives. He is called David, or in the tongue of the grazers, Dahid Aroo.

His grandmother chews a root up into a milky paste and puts it into the baby’s mouth. The baby sucks her finger for a moment. Then he makes a face, a croaking noise, and turns his head from side to side. She watches his misery. It’s her agony too. She finds herself trying to feed the joey a couple of times an hour. 

“You need milk.” says Ru Aroo, Obed’s mother. “I wish I could give you some.” she says this more to herself than to the baby. She isn’t looking forward to watching the baby die, but she considers it the inevitable outcome. “I wish he would have left you with your mother.” A tear ran down the grandmother’s face. “This is such a cruel way for you to die.” A puff of Wind flows in the chimney and the fire roars audibly to answer it.

Obed Aroo and his father, Boaz Aroo are traveling on separate vectors across the prairie. Each checking the nearest newborn houses for occupants who can potentially nurse a second child. Every small child house stands empty and cold.

“Wind . . . I do not want to move into the weeping house.” prays Obed Aroo. “Wind . . . hear me. I need milk.”

Far away, he can see a puff of smoke coming from a very large fire in the man-town. He smells a whiff of burning flesh. It is from the fat of a rendering pig. They only slaughter pigs in the dead of winter when they are very hungry. They hadn’t planned on having to kill this animal.

“Wind?” The breeze strengthened into a blast. Obed clenched his jaw at the thought of going into a town of hungry men to find milk.

These are not Anat Noms, these are quieter, smaller, coastal men. They are not fierce warriors, or hunters. They are meat eaters, and they are hungry. They are gentle and civilized enough for grazers to have dealings with them, cautiously. Grazers have occasionally ended up on their spits.

“Wind . . . oh Wind . . . I will try. I would rather live with you, than in the weeping house.” prayed Obed Aroo.

He goes into the empty house and gets a large sack. Then he goes to the root cellar and fills it with dried mushrooms, dried berries, nuts, onions and other roots; all the preserved food he can carry. He brings it back into the house. He unlatches one of the clay panels on the wall of the house and slides it aside to reveal a tunnel. He lays the sack in the tunnel and rings a bell in the tunnel. He closes the panel and pounds on a drum, in a complicated rhythm that he reads like music from the cuneiform on the wall. After half an hour, he hears an equally complicated clicking sound from the other side of the wall. He pounds with both hands, three times to say “Thank you.” and waits in silence.

After drinking a cup of tea. He opens the panel that leads to the tunnel again. There is a large, beautifully cut, red jewel laying upon the empty sack. He puts the jewel in a pouch on his belt, and refills the sack with food.

He takes the sack of food, the jewel, and his hope to the man-town to buy milk.

Chapter Three: Boaz Aroo and the Anthropologist.

Boaz Aroo is thick in the middle and his hard working, hard traveling days have passed. It is well into night when he reaches the first small child house he intends to find. This is despite the fact that the houses he chose to find are closer than those Obed Aroo went to find.

He is disappointed to find the place empty, but relieved to be inside the comfortable and familiar shelter. He is looking forward to drinking some tea, smoking his pipe, and maybe having a snack before sleeping well into the afternoon on a soft bed.

He slides the door aside and takes a small hop inside. A figure is crouching near a lit candle on the floor. It stands and turns. Boaz tries to back away, but his tail jams against the step, holding him in place. He squeals in fear and pees himself. He has never been a brave grazer. He has stayed alive by being the fastest coward of them all. Grazers don’t expect bravery of their people.

“The butcher!” Boaz says and his eyes rolled back in his head. He fell to the floor in a faint.

“Get up.” The large lizardish man was slapping him on both sides of his face. He is a draconian, made the same way draconians are made in ancient Greece, soldiers sprung from planted dragon’s teeth.

“Owie…Owie.” Boaz says.

“Buck up little fellow, I’m not hungry. I just want to ask you some questions.” says the draconian.

“No. Just kill me. I’m not going to tell you where my family is. I’m not going to give you information so you can hunt and exterminate us all. No, and no, and no again. I won’t.” says Boaz.

“Oh, silly little guy. If I wanted to exterminate you all, I would have already.”

“You sure got a good start on it. Then you started tracking and stalking us.” Boaz shivered.

“I got bored with hunting you. You don’t taste good, kinda like stringy pork, musty goat…not good meat at all.” Boaz frowned at this information. “…and you’re pathetically easy prey, no fun to hunt for sport. . . but your culture is fascinating. Tell me about these writings. I’m trying to decipher them.”

Boaz opened his eyes wide. He thought for a moment and decided that giving information to the draconian wasn’t a good idea. . . but refusing to talk was also a bad idea.

“Oh, umm they’re nothing. Just there for decoration.”

“Poo. This is writing, and you will read it for me.”

“Well, umm . . . you see. . . these are quite ancient houses and we’ve lost the art of reading the walls. Ancient grazers were much more civilized than we are.”

“That’s a lie. This house was built less than ten years ago. These tiles are unstained, unchipped, and freshly formed. Now read.” says the draconian. He smiles showing rows of alligator-like teeth and Boaz shivered.

His eyes darted around the room until he found the recipe for baby formula, that information can’t be too sensitive.

“Twinkle twinkle little star”. . . he recites from memory.

“Hold it, what is this?”

“It is a nursery rhyme, this is a house built for families with small babies.” says Boaz.

“So every house is for a particular type of family? Fascinating. Why are you here? You are an old male, you don’t have a small child?”

“I’m looking for a family with a small child. My son’s wife died, they need a mother to raise the baby. I really must go find a mother. Can I go?” Boaz says. He regrets saying this, thinking that he might lead this super predator to the house of a young child. The thought rumbles like indigestion in his gut. His stomach actually growls.

“Oh, what is this?” the draconian shows Boaz a translucent amber box with things floating in the middle. Boaz takes it and eats it hungrily.

“These are my favorite.”

“Have another, there are several here.”

“Termite and honey bars.” Boaz says between messy bites.

“Covered in bees wax.” The draconian runs a claw along the wax, making a spiral shaving. He bites into the wax and licks away some honey. He picks a termite larva out with his claws, and licks the honey off. Then he thoughtfully chews on it.

“Is it fried?” says the draconian.

“Yes, in peanut oil.” says Boaz.

“It tastes like bacon.” Says the draconian.

“What’s bacon?”

“Meat from a pig’s side, salted and cured.” says the draconian. Boaz makes a face of disgust.

“What’s this?” the draconian holds up a jug with cuneiform writing on it.

“You know exactly what that is. It’s sold in all the man stores. I’m not going to drink with you.” Boaz says.

The draconian smiled.

“Let me get some cups.” Boaz says. “All I can see in this light are the tea cups.” He sets them down. “Do you smoke a pipe?”

“Yes, I do enjoy a good smoke.” says the draconian. Boaz pulls a pipe and some tobacco from his pouch and ignites it with the striker near the stove. He puffs on it like he is playing a trumpet in reverse, to get it started, then he passes it to the draconian. The lizard-man takes several deep draws. He watches the kangaroo-man open the jug of apple wine and pour it into the tea cups.

“It’s a shame you don’t like tea.” says Boaz. “as interested as you are in our culture.”

“How do you mean.” says the draconian.

“There is no richer aspect of our culture than our tea rituals.”

“Really. I prefer tea in the morning. You can show me then.” Says the draconian. Boaz relaxes a little with the knowledge that the draconian intends to spare his life until morning.

“So, this is a house built for small children. There must be toys for teaching little ones to read. An alphabet on the wall? Or toys in the house?” says the draconian. Boaz’s eyes dart to the letters plainly carved in the wall.

“No, our children are slow and dull. They don’t start to read until they are five or six seasons old.” The draconian gets up and walks to the place on the wall that Boaz had looked at and traces the letters with his claw. There is a long moment of silence as he studies them.

“Are there any new houses being built?” says the draconian. I would like to learn to do grazer trades, especially house building ones.

“Not anywhere near here. The house builders traveled south-east and are several thousand miles away. They traveled part of the way by the ships of men.” says Boaz. He sips from his cup, and the draconian passes the pipe back to him.

“So you get news from far away.” The draconian says. Boaz opens his eyes wide. He’s learned from his alphabet mistake and forces himself to look up, even blinking against the lie of his motion.

“No. Just supposition, rumor . . . it’s where they says they were going next.” The lie was obvious and awkward. Sweat beaded on Boaz’s forehead.

“Hawks?” the draconian says. Boaz gives a look of fear. “Owls?” Boaz gives a look of disgust. “Ravens?”

“Yes, ravens.” Boaz says, but he’s shaking his head horizontally. The draconian narrows his eyes and smiles. He runs a claw over a pictograph of a dragon.

“It’s dragons. There are pictures everywhere of dragons.”

“No, . . umm dragons don’t exist. It’s just the . . . ugh” he paused to think up a lie “the name of our mid-summer month. It’s a calendar thing.” Which is true.

“Midsummer dragons. Friends in the air. You are a remarkable people Mr. Boaz.” The draconian drinks the bottle of wine down in one draft and lays down on the bed and falls into a snoring sleep.

Boaz lays his head against the wall and dozes. I could run. I really should run. No I shouldn’t, better for him to kill me, than for me to lead him to others. No matter. No matter. He’s a super predator. Nothing I can do really matters. What about milk? The baby’s probably already dead. It doesn’t matter. Nothing I do matters. I’m just going to sit here.

At home, Ru Aroo was slipping drops of water into the baby’s mouth with her finger. The baby sucked honey from her finger. He even looked up at her and smiled. He slept.

“You look like my father. You look like old roo Goth Hop” She says to the sleeping baby. Ru Aroo was called Ruth Hop before she married Boaz. “There are babies that are born by warm fires into the hands of nurses, given mouthfuls of milk from the moment they can suck, who aren’t as robust as you. The Wind must love you.” 

Chapter Four: Tom Barnum and the Plainview General Store

“Have you added chicory to the coffee?” says Mrs. Barnum from upstairs.

“Yes Mom.” says Tom Barnum, the small boy who runs the store in his dad’s absence.

“Have you dusted the pepper and sanded the salt?” says Mrs. Barnum.

“Yes, I have.” says Tom.

“Have you spun the yarn around some pinecones?” says Mrs. Barnum.

“Not yet, but I will.” says Tom.

“Okay, finish that. Then come up for prayers.” says Mrs. Barnum.

The bells on the front door of the Plainview General Store jingled. Obed Aroo stuck his head in.

“Well come on in. You’re let’n all the cold air in,” says Tom. “What can I do for you today?” Tom’s eyes widen when he sees Obed’s naked torso and kangaroo hind end.

“Milk. I need milk, please.” Obed says and drops his bag of food on the floor at his huge feet. Obed switches his tail back and forth in nervousness, and upsets a rack of spices and spins to catch them and swipes a stand of grazer made teacups that crash to the floor. Six of them break in the crash.

“I can replace those.” Obed says.

“Tom? What’s going on down there.” says Mrs. Barnum.

“Nothing, just the garbage man outside.” says Tom with a wink. “I know you can. Grazers are about the only honest folks we ever deal with.”

“Can I get some milk, for a baby?” repeats Obed.

“Oh, you need a goat?” says Tom. Obed looked confused for a moment. Of course he needed a goat.

“Yes, a milk goat.” says Obed.

“What do you have to trade?” says Tom. Obed opens his sack and Tom looks. He shakes his head and sucks air in through his teeth. “It’s not enough to buy a goat, maybe I can get you a few containers of milk.” In reality, some of the packed canisters of medicinals were rare and worth several goats, and Tom knew this.

“I also have this.” and Obed pulls the red stone from his pouch. Tom whistles. A red glimmer reflects in his eyes.

”That’ll do nicely.” says the boy. Obed nods. Tom snaps up the jewel and buries it in a canister of rice. He gathers a few supplies from the shelves and grabs his coat and hat.

“I’ll be right back.” says Tom as the bells on the front door ring with his leaving.

Obed feels vulnerable. He takes one careful step after another until he is behind the counter and he pulls an empty burlap sack over himself.

I feel silly like this, he thinks to himself. He hears the bells jingle. He hears some shuffling and rattling around. He hears the clicking of hard little shoes coming down the steps.

“What is going on down here.” says Mrs. Barnum. “Slow Bo. What are you doing here?”

“Ugh… I thought I saw a grazer come in here. I’m hungry.” says a thick young voice.

“Do you see a grazer?” says the sharp voice of Mrs. Barnum. “Did you break all these cups?” She looked sharply at his bulging pockets. “Do you have money for all of this?” her voice is raising in pitch and his face was becoming redder than it was out in the cold.

“Umm, No Ma’am.” Bo says. “I didn’t break those cups, they were broke when I came in, and I don’t have any money, but you know I’m good for it.”

“No you ain’t, now empty your bulging pockets and get out.” Mrs. Barnum commanded. Bo hung his head and emptied his pockets of hard candy, a fishing reel, and a flint fire starter.

“You can keep the candy, it’s covered with lint and can’t be sold. It’ll go on your tab, and the cups.” says Mrs. Barnum.

“But, I didn’t. . .” says Bo.

“Where is Tom?” says Mrs. Barnum.

“I don’t know.” says Bo.

“Get.” says Mrs. Barnum. The bells rang. Hard little steps went upstairs. Obed was glad he had a sack on his head. It was a long moment before he heard bells again, and the light squishy steps of the boy.

“Where did he go?” says Tom.

“I’m here.” says Obed. “Under the sack.”

“Silly grazer. What are you doing under there?” says Tom.

“I’m afraid.” says Obed.

“We don’t let people harass our customers, and grazers are some of our most profitable customers. Don’t worry.” says Tom. Obed felt dubious.

“The goat?” says Obed.

“Outside. Don’t worry about the cups, the jewel covers them.” says Tom.

“Are you sure?”

“Ummm.” Tom wasn’t raised to be honest or generous, but the jewel was worth a million cups and goats, and he knew it. “Yes, but remember us if you need anything else. Is there anything I could get for you, maybe that you could pay for with another jewel? Tools? Glass? Delicacies? We can get anything.” says Tom.

“I know, you will need one of these.” He offered Obed a baby bottle. Obed looked at it curiously. Tom reached up and pinched Obed’s chest. “It’s like a tit.” And he pinched the rubber part. “And the glass part is like a mechanical boob that you refill.”

“How do you get milk out of the goat?” asked Obed.

“I’ll show you.” They walked out into the empty street and Tom demonstrated milking the goat. A cat came up and licked the steaming milk from the cobblestones. “You have to milk her twice a day or she will quit giving milk.”

“What if the baby can’t drink that much?” asked Obed.

“Oh, I’m sure he can’t. Do you want a cat?”

Slow Bo watches Tom talk to Obed from his kitchen window. Tom notices the curtain move and knows someone is there. Tom and Obed make their way to the edge of town.

HOP, clack-clack-clack-clack, squish-squash. Nahhah. Repeats itself in the motely rhythm of their footsteps. When Obed reaches the edge of town he puts the bottle in his pouch, hoists the goat over his shoulders, gets kicked in the face in the process, and bounds off at an admirable speed.

Tom and Bo watch.

End