New Life (5)
Three days had passed since Monia, with Blue Sound’s help at the end, finally reached the Summit—her palms torn and bleeding, her leg broken from a single fall along the way.
Monia carefully watched the spider before her. Its body was larger than her own head, and its eight eyes glittered like jewels as it greedily devoured fruit.
The spider, covered in golden fur and a golden body, finished its meal with relish, then slipped through the branches and vanished into the tree.
A short while later, where the fruit had been, a bud appeared, then in the blink of an eye it grew into a flower and ripened into fruit again. Monia watched in quiet awe as a new fruit formed in barely thirty minutes.
“I always thought our fields grew pretty fast, you know?”
Chester, watching the same sight beside her, answered,
“Our fields do grow quickly.”
“But they don’t even compare to this.”
“Yeah.”
Chester turned his gaze elsewhere.
The People of the Summit ruled the top of the island, yet as the spider made clear, they were far from the only ones living there.
Where Chester looked, creatures that would normally snarl and fight over food sat together in peaceful clusters, calmly eating plants. Every time a leaf was torn away, a new one grew in its place, so there was never any shortage, never any need to compete.
Five… no, counting us, six kinds? All these different animals gathered in one place and nothing’s happening.
Even as he marveled, Chester searched for predators. It made no sense for so many herbivores to gather without anything that would eat them.
The People of the Summit won’t hunt anything too weak—they say it isn’t honorable. They always go after the strong ones on the upper levels. Otherwise they live off the fruit and abundance this place gives them, just like these animals.
Or maybe, in an environment like this, predators simply don’t exist.
Think about it. When food never runs out no matter how much you eat, why go through the trouble of becoming a hunter that has to chase prey? Life adapts to its surroundings. Herbivores and carnivores both became what they are for a reason. If the reason for eating meat disappears, so do the carnivores.
Spiders without venom or webs. Rabbits that never run. Foxes that graze on grass.
Looking at it this way, the People of the Summit are the strange ones.
They hadn’t been born on the Summit. They had climbed from the lower levels, step by step, until they finally claimed the top. Even after seizing it, they had never been content to simply live off its plenty.
Chester and Monia called them the People of the Summit, yet in truth they were the most alien presence here.
“Chester, look over there. There’s a raft.”
“Hm?”
Heading toward the deep vertical shaft that pierced the center of the island, Chester and Monia found enormous rafts floating on the water. On them, women of the Summit lounged about, chatting while their children rested on their bellies or against their sides.
A moment later a shark—one that could live in fresh water—burst up in a noisy thrash, only to be knocked senseless by a casual punch from a middle-aged woman who had been scratching her stomach. It became the children’s toy, and before long they had torn it apart and eaten it down to the bones until nothing remained.
“……I always wondered where this island got so much water. Now I know.”
Chester nodded as he watched. Monia looked over.
“Right—I haven’t taught you about filtration yet, have I?”
“What’s filtration?”
“Filtering dirty water through gravel and soil until it’s clean. In a real pinch you can get drinking water that way.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You also said you’d drink urine in an emergency, so I’m not sure I trust you.”
“You actually can drink urine—once, and only when you’re desperate. You can’t live on it as drinking water. And if you’re sick, or if you haven’t taken in enough water the day before and it’s concentrated, don’t drink it.”
“I don’t want any of your weird urine knowledge. I want to know about the island’s water source.”
“W-weird…… ahem.”
Chester cleared his throat and pointed at the lake.
“This is seawater.”
“Huh? You can’t drink seawater.”
“One: I just told you about filtration. Two: why is there such a height difference between sea level and this lake?”
“…….”
Monia thought for a moment, then nodded in understanding.
“The seawater is absorbed into the island and drawn all the way up here. Along the way the salt gets filtered out and it turns into fresh water.”
“Exactly. And look—see all that Grace of the Summit clinging to the walls?”
“Yeah. So while it’s being filtered into fresh water, the Grace of the Summit dissolves into it and it becomes the blessed water.”
Blessed water. That was what Monia called the water that glowed blue under the influence of the Grace of the Summit.
Chester had suggested “blue water” would do just fine, but Monia had insisted you couldn’t call something like this by such a plain name. It was another lifeline for them, she said, so she named it blessed water.
Chester knew that sometimes, when she woke in the night because she couldn’t sleep, Monia would bow and pray toward the jars holding the Grace of the Summit and the blessed water, easing the unease in her heart.
“I wonder what shark tastes like.”
“No idea. You’ve probably had more chances to try it than I have.”
“Hmm. Maybe? I might have eaten it without knowing…… I’m not sure.”
After exploring the Summit for a good while, the two of them headed for the cave Black Wind used as his home.
At the entrance hung a painting Black Wind himself had drawn, and all around it gifts from the People of the Summit for the children about to be born were piled high like a mountain.
They had come the very next day after hearing the birth was near and hadn’t had time to prepare anything. Chester and Monia had meant to find gifts, but the little elder who greeted them told them it was unnecessary.
They had already given the People of the Summit the greatest gift of all—the little sun. Nothing else was needed.
The fact that Chester and Monia still tried to prepare something of their own, and that they wandered the Summit instead of staying glued to Black Wind’s side, made one thing clear: the baby’s time had not yet come.
The child in the womb was moving so vigorously that birth felt imminent, yet it still had not come out.
How active does a baby have to be for them to know it’s about to be born?
Even the strongest creatures are fragile as infants. What were these people, really? The question crossed Chester’s mind, but he decided not to dwell on it.
The world was vast. He was confident he wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere out there lived creatures of legendary immortality, or beasts that, when cut in half, simply grew into two new creatures instead of dying.
Of course, if one of those monsters appeared right in front of him, fangs and claws bared, he might still be startled. He had already been shocked by the giant beasts of the upper levels, after all.
“When do you think the baby will be born?”
Monia was clearly looking forward to it. She asked the same question every time they came to Black Wind’s home.
Black Wind gazed steadily at his wife, then glanced at the two of them as they approached before turning his full attention back to her. After their first meeting and greeting, he had stopped acknowledging them and simply focused on his wife like this.
Chester and Monia sat down nearby as quietly as they could and carefully watched Black Wind’s wife receiving the shaman’s rites for a safe delivery.
Her body was painted with hieroglyph-like symbols meaning luck, blessing, safe birth, baby, health, and more. In several places plants that grew on the Summit had been gathered, bundled, and set alight so that smoke rose around her.
The shaman’s disciples hurried in and out of Black Wind’s home, bringing more plants.
The cave ceiling stayed full of smoke from the constant burning, yet the ventilation was good enough that the smoke cleared quickly and never made breathing difficult.
Amazing.
Chester was struck by how quickly they had thought to use fire in their rites—he had only taught them fire a short while ago.
“Chester, Chester. Black Wind’s wife is pretty, isn’t she?”
“Is she? All the People of the Summit look the same to me, men or women……”
“That’s rude.”
“But they probably can’t tell human men and women apart either.”
“Her fur is so glossy! And her eyes are bright, and her hands and feet are bigger than the other women’s.”
“Ah—yeah, that would make her a beauty among them. Hands and feet are important for their kind.”
Just as humans once prized wide hips because they meant a woman could bear children well, and just as other animals flaunt the traits that help them survive or hunt, a body part that matters to a species—if it is large and strong—is something to admire first.
They were murmuring to each other in low voices when Black Wind’s wife suddenly began thrashing her arms and legs.
“I-it’s coming!”
Black Wind, his hair caught in her flailing grip, shouted as if screaming. At the news that the baby was being born, every one of the People of the Summit gathered and began chanting the same words as the shaman.