Year One (3)
A bear freshly woken from hibernation was hunting a turtle to fill its empty belly.
Ordinarily a bear would never bother with a turtle. Smashing through that hard shell just to get at the meat was far too much trouble. Starving as it was now, though, it would put anything in its mouth.
Having driven its claws through the gaps in the shell and killed the turtle, the bear set to work diligently cracking the carapace open so it could eat.
How much time passed, who could say — but at last the bear succeeded in peeling the shell away, smacked its lips, and began to feed.
The moment it took a bite and chewed with relish, an arrow tore out of the underbrush at terrifying speed and buried itself deep in the bear's skull.
Pierced cleanly from eye through brain, the bear collapsed on the spot. From the distant brush, Chester rose, rubbing at his brow ridge, and slung the crossbow he'd been holding onto his back.
"Well now. It helps with shooting, too."
"Wow. Even a bear goes down in one shot. Can't you make a regular bow like this?"
"Probably impossible. A bow relies on the power of its limbs — to be that strong, the limbs themselves have to be just as strong. Monia, if I made the limbs out of solid metal, could you draw and shoot it?"
Chester lightly tapped the crossbow's prod against a nearby rock. Metal scraped stone with a soft rasp.
"Hmm. If you made it thin enough it might work… Never mind. What we have is fine. A bow that's too strong takes so much effort to draw you can't shoot comfortably anyway."
They talked as they secured the bear. It was heavy, and large for a beast of the island's lower level, so carrying it would be a struggle. They decided to rope it and simply drag it along.
Walking behind Chester, Monia looked at the bear being hauled through the brush and felt a strange sensation wash over her. That terrifying bear — the same kind Chester had once fought so desperately to bring down — had died with nothing more than a finger on a trigger.
So this is what progress means.
The advancement of civilization. The conveniences it brought. She had felt it when she first got her hands on a machete, when they melted metal into tools, when they took bows from the sailors and put them to use.
She took a quiet pride in the fact that few people could have felt as keenly as she had just how much technological progress eased a life.
It felt like only yesterday that she had been chipping stones with torn fingers and broken nails to fashion crude knives. Now she was armed with a decent bow and all manner of iron tools.
Remarkable.
Monia was currently retracing the path of human advancement that Chester carried as knowledge. And she knew that in that process, the things Chester had learned from his father had been an enormous help.
How did the people of old manage it all?
Without any knowledge passed down — starting from nothing, discovering and researching and thinking through every single step — she couldn't begin to imagine how many failures must have lined that road.
How had they discovered fire? How had they conceived of sharpening stones into weapons and tools? How had they come to make clothes? How had they found metal, and how had they developed the craft of working it?
Monia freshly realized that every single comfort she had taken for granted as a duke's daughter was steeped in an unimaginably long history.
And that thought led her, naturally, to her own future.
Someone leaves something behind in the world, and those who come after inherit it and carry it further. So what could Monia herself inherit and develop? Or what could she leave behind?
Leave behind. Leave behind. Hmm.
What was most valuable to her?
Her eyes drifted, unbidden, to Chester.
…Ah. A baby, maybe.
They were carefully practicing contraception — pregnancy on a deserted island would make everything so much harder — but if they ever left the island…
Monia's face went bright red. Unconsciously, she gently, tenderly stroked her lower belly.
When they returned home, an unexpected guest was waiting for Chester and Monia. It was Black Wind.
Several months had passed since they first met him on the upper level, and Black Wind had changed quite a bit.
His build and appearance were the same, but what he wore was different.
What he carried on his back was the two-pronged sword Urgo had left behind — more precisely, the one Black Wind had taken from him. He'd looped a rope through the hilt and bound it to his body, so the blade swayed with every movement.
Next were the scars. Fighting the huge, powerful beasts of the Floating Island's upper level in his drive to become chieftain, Black Wind's body had accumulated more of them. Long gashes, puncture wounds, torn flesh — every kind.
The People of the Summit revered strength, so unless a wound was truly severe they did not rely on the shamanic arts that used the Grace of the Summit.
Born with strong regenerative power and living on water rich with the Grace of the Summit, minor wounds healed without a mark. But when a wound was quite dangerous, a scar remained.
Last were the ornaments. The People of the Summit fashioned ornaments from the most powerful weapons of the prey they hunted and wore them proudly. At first Black Wind, not yet a warrior, had worn none at all — but since becoming a warrior cub he had distinguished himself splendidly, and now he had more ornaments than he could count on two hands.
"What brings you?"
"After winter, family eat this. Celebrate. I bring."
So saying, Black Wind held out the bundle of leaves in one hand.
Chester accepted the object carefully wrapped in leaves and bound with rope, and thanked him.
"Grateful. We'll enjoy it."
"Good. Ah — look forward to child born."
"? Of course I am."
At Chester's answer, Black Wind grinned with a mischievous look and vanished.
Chester watched him bounding away over the distant trees, then looked down at the leaf-wrapped package.
"What do you suppose this is?"
"No idea. Shall we have it for dinner? The bear… we can smoke it."
"Then let's take care of the other things first."
The three of them put away the food Black Wind had given them to celebrate a successful winter, then went down to the river to butcher the bear.
They roped the carcass, hung it from a thick branch to distribute the weight, and cut the throat to drain the blood.
Once the blood was out, the rest was easy. In the past they would have struggled endlessly with the bear's hide and tough meat, but things were different now. Chester used the vibration of his knife to slice right through the thick pelt.
"The hide? Are we keeping it?"
"Hmm."
What to do with the hide. Chester thought of how little salt they had left at home, and of the seaside salt farm that still wasn't properly running.
"Let's toss it."
It was a real shame, but the hide would probably rot before they could get enough salt. Monia nodded with a regretful expression.
Chester skinned the bear leaving the head attached, then flipped the hide over to wrap the skull. Monia swung her vibrating machete at the neck.
"…Whew."
She'd severed the head easily enough, but holding down the vibrating machete was no simple task. The vibration had always been fairly strong for her, but when she activated it calmly she could still handle it with some freedom. Now just gripping and enduring it made her whole body tremble.
"My body's gotten a lot weaker."
"We'll rebuild it slowly."
It wasn't only Monia who had weakened. Chester had too. The butler's uniform that had once been so tight it threatened to burst now fit him just right, and his stamina had dropped so much that simply roaming the forest all day left him sweating and panting. Before, this much wouldn't have bothered him at all.
"A whole year of hardship on this island — gone…!"
"Getting stronger takes time. Getting weaker is fast."
"That's so unfair!"
Why was nothing in this world easy? Monia swallowed bitter tears.
Chester comforted the dejected Monia while easily carving the bear meat with his vibrating knife.
Hmm. The vibration does feel stronger now that my body's weaker.
There were no other problems. The knife was simply that sharp. But that sharpness was itself the problem — it was so keen that sometimes it sliced straight through bone as well.
In the end, Chester gave up carefully filleting the meat the way he used to and started cutting it into chunks instead.
After portioning it out, he gripped the bone in the middle and pared the meat away the way you'd turn a fruit to peel it. Monia, less skilled with a knife than Chester, filleted as usual and accepted that a few bone fragments would end up in the meat.
Once all the meat was carved, Chester gave Ant a few pieces of organ meat, then wrapped the bones and remaining organs together with the head in the hide and threw the bundle downstream.
"Let's head back."
"Okay!"
Back home, they put the bear meat into the smokehouse they had cleaned of snow and debris over the past few days and set it to smoking.
"Shall we cook what Black Wind gave us in this smokehouse too?"
"Let's! I'll get it!"
While Chester watched the smokehouse, Monia brought the leaf-wrapped package. Carefully they untied the rope and opened the leaves.
"Come to think of it, the Summit already has big leaves coming out."
"Do you think the fruit has grown already too?"
"Could be."
"I hope it's fruit! I want plain fruit — not something pickled in salt."
Chatting away, they finished unwrapping the package and looked at what lay inside.
"…"
"…This is."
For a moment the unexpected gift held their gazes captive. Then they looked at each other.
"Can we… eat this?"
"Well…?"
How on earth were they supposed to eat this? The two of them sank into deep thought.