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  The Llungruel and the Lom

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2013 by Brian S. Wheeler

  The Llungruel and the Lom

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – Poisoned in the Field

  Chapter 2 – Choking on the Lom

  Chapter 3 – Claiming the Wild Mark

  Chapter 4 – An Old Man’s Sad Imagination

  Chapter 5 – Currents Through Shadows and Wisps

  Chapter 6 – Violently Tossed Upon a Cruel Sea

  Chapter 7 – Drumbeats Upon Arrival

  Chapter 8 – The Lizard’s Fevered Dance

  Chapter 9 – Burning the Fields

  Help Spread the Story

  About the Writer

  Other Stories

  I – Poisoned in the Field…

  “I’ve filled my basket with lom, brothers!”

  Elloch and Malek clearly heard their youngest brother Talson. As twins, Elloch and Malek shared the responsibilities inherited as oldest brothers of a house filled with siblings. They instructed their brothers and sisters in the letters taught by the outsiders’ schools. They admonished their siblings when rivalries broke into fisticuffs, and Elloch and Malek’s arbitrations preventing many such fights from erupting. Most of all, Elloch and Malek supervised their siblings in their duty to help harvest the lom.

  “How does he harvest so much lom?” Elloch asked Malek as Talson waved a wicker basket brimming with the crop. “It’s not even afternoon, and Talson has gathered so much. The heat doesn’t affect him. Maybe the sun can’t find enough skin to burn on his thin body.”

  Malek carefully took another step forward in the field. He did not turn to note the basket Talson waved towards him. He swept a long staff through the knee-high lom, holding his breath each time his staff tapped an obstruction hidden in the thin, wheat-like stalks. But what he poked proved to be only clumps of dirt, and Malek paused in his steady advance through the lom field to answer Elloch’s question.

  “He collects so quickly because he is foolish.” Malek turned and glared at Talson. “How many times do I have to tell you to take more care in the harvesting of the lom? Do you wish to suffer the lizard’s bite, Talson?”

  Talson frowned. “The fathers scare away the llungruel at the front. Their tattoos frighten the llungruel away from our feet.”

  “Listen to your brother,” Elloch growled. “Malek doesn’t need your back-talk.”

  Malek sighed. “Tattoos protect the wise, Talson. Not the foolish.”

  Since the outsiders had introduced the crop, the fields surrounding Elloch and Malek’s village teemed with lom. The gray stalks grew thick in the ground claimed from the swamp. Though a tasteless plant no matter how it was prepared, the lom protected the village from starvation following the arrival of the outsiders, whose giant, gray ships belched soot into the sky, whose oozing oil spoiled the seas from which Elloch and Malek’s people once filled their nets. The fish and the crab were now gone. However tepid the lom tasted, the plant filled the village’s plates at nights when the people’s stomachs hungered.

  “Talking of tattoos,” Elloch began, “have you decided what mark you’re going to take?”

  Malek shook his head. “I don’t know if I have the imagination for the old customs. I can’t guess what creature I should have poked beneath my skin.”

  Elloch chuckled. “Nor I. Maybe we’ll just claim another pair of horned erlichs for our backs like all the other men. Old Glennis must be able to trace the creature’s shape in his sleep.”

  “But at least the erlich is strong,” Malek replied. “We can give thanks we have the erlichs to pull our plows when it’s time to plant the lom, or to carry the lumber we take from the swamp to make room for more fields and for more homes.”

  “I still wish now and again that we might find new animals to etch on our backs,” Elloch laughed. “The llungruel wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

  The village’s men walked well ahead of Malek and Elloch’s place in the field. Each man beat at the lom stalks with long staffs like that held by Malek. Many hooted and whistled. They bore their backs bare to the sun, no matter the sunburn that peeled and blistered their skin come afternoon. Each back bore the welted, dark marks of their tattooed flesh. Many a man’s back held the picture of the humped erlich, so admired for its strength and determination. Some bore the wicked grins of the swamp’s jhakalu, the dreaded beast of barbed tail and fanged mouth that had been so feared when the swamp still choked the landscape. Backs bore the plumes of the feathered renfras, the extinct birds screeching their old shrills of warning before swooping death from the sky. The men who pounded the lom with their staffs placed much faith in the horrible aspects burned and scratched in their skin to protect them from the smaller creature at the forefront of every villager’s fear.

  The llungruel had been a rare swamp creature before the outsiders arrived to ruin the seas and introduce the lom. The llungruel had seemed a creature found only in bedtime stories - the lizard with the red, luminous eyes that fit in the palm of a child’s hand, the tiny lizard that rumor whispered jumped high among the trees growing in the deepest sections of swamp.

  But the village had cleared much of the swamp to make room for the growing of the lom, and the llungruel found the lom, the crop that tasted so tepid to mankind’s tongue, to be a savory cuisine. The llungruel emptied from the swamp and migrated into the lom fields. The llungruel gorged upon the lom stalks. Made so robust by such an easy diet, the lizards multiplied at a furious pace. Soon after the introduction of the lom, villagers spotted the llungruel hanging from cabin roofs. They saw lizards sitting upon plates kept in the cupboard. They uncovered the llungruel nestled deep in the bed’s blankets when the breezes blew cold.

  As the bedtime stories had war
ned, the villagers learned that the llungruel’s bite possessed a venom more cruel than the nightmares told.

  The llungruel did not hesitate to bite the ankle or foot that trod, unaware, through the lom. The llungruel’s fang was sharp and long, and easily penetrated a village boot.

  The lizard’s venom quickly filled its victims’ blood with the wild thoughts of the llungruel. The venom filled the reasoning mind with savagery. Those bitten by the llungruel raked and clawed at husband and wife. Children’s teeth tore into the necks of brothers and sisters. Those bitten by the llungruel ran naked through the streets, ran wild through the lom fields and into swamps from which they seldom returned. Those who were bitten hissed in the corner of their homes while fever sapped their strength and burned their minds. The fever alone could kill, and yet, tending to those afflicted with the llungruel’s bite was near impossible for the way the ill writhed and gnarled against the hands that sought to soothe their affliction.

  Since the coming of the outsiders, since the loss of the sea’s sustenance, since the introduction of the lom, the llungruel’s bite became a common hurt. Those who recovered from the lizard’s venom appeared to lose much of their zest for life. They often looked fearful of the open sky, preoccupying themselves with finding the shelter of thick walls or low ceilings. They withdrew from those they loved. The villagers believed much of the llungruel remained in the mind that survived the lizard’s fever.

  Many died for the savagery that swept through their minds. Since the coming of the outsiders and the lom, there was not a native family who did not know the loss of one bitten by a lizard small enough to fit in the palm of a child’s hand.

  “Malek!”

  Elloch’s hand seized his brother’s arm as he discerned a frantic swaying in the lom behind the line of village men.

  Malek froze. “I see it!”

  One of the men in line whistled to warn the others. A high shriek answered beneath the lom. A creature hissed as the men approached with their staffs beating at the ground.

  “It’s not running away from the line,” Malek stammered.

  Elloch’s eyes grew wide. “It’s guarding a nest. Llungruel could come out swarming in any direction!”

  “What’s going on, brothers? What’s going on at the front of the line?”

  The twins spun around to scream for Talson to remain still. The llungruel would run towards the vibrations of smaller feet when the larger men neared with their staffs pounding the ground.

  Talson was already running towards his twin brothers, the wicker basket filled with lom swaying and slapping against his hip. The single llungruel shriek was joined by many and the lizards spilled out of their nest. Elloch and Malek jumped as the creatures swirled through the lom surrounding them.

  “Ow!”

  Talson’s face blanched as he reached towards his ankle.

  “Ow!”

  Talson felt a second sharp pain, his eyes widening as he withdrew his hand to see the puncture mark made by a llungruel’s fang in the skin between his thumb and his finger. The swelling started quickly and his fingers stiffened.

  Talson swooned and stumbled to his knees, llungruel shrieking in the lom surrounding him. His brothers were immediately at his side, attacking the ground with their staffs.

  “Where did it bite you, Talson?” Elloch aked his brother.

  Talson began shaking, the venom of two llungruel bites coursing through his blood. Malek tried to grab his brother’s shoulder, but Talson's teeth chomped upon the fingers that tried to help him and drew blood. The men were soon lifting Talson from his feet while the boy writhed against their efforts, scraping at eyes when his arms freed, kicking at knees when his legs were not hindered.

  Talson growled when the men bound him. He drooled when the men stuffed a cloth into his mouth so that he would not bite.

  Elloch and Malek sobbed as they followed the men back to their village. Their hearts were heavy. The worried frowns upon the faces of the men who carried Talson were frightening, but they were not as terrifying as the wild contortions that spread across their brother’s face.

  Talson languished in the llungruel’s venom, and the twins knew that their brother would have to fight against the fever with an animal’s savage mind.

  * * * * *