The dilwildi led me by way of an ancient path to the foot of the piers. Here we were above the jungle in the tangle of waterless rock that formed the central majority of the island. It took me most of the afternoon to painfully make my way to the top of the pier. I had concluded that after spending the night there I would have to return to the jungle, for here there would be neither food nor water.

I stood on the mighty pier and looked inland at what had once been an island on a salty sea and saw in my mind’s eye trees, parks, and boulevards where now lay only waterless waste and ruins.

For there were ruins. Before me lay an entire city, stripped by the elements until only the stones remained. From the sea I could have looked at this mountainside and never guessed that the barren rocks I saw were the sole remnants of the handiwork of man.

Man – or something else.

I wandered the streets of the ruined city with my cadre of furred companions. The wind whistled in utter loneliness through the ruins that once had sheltered – what? Man? Some humanoid creature?

Or were the dilwildi the descendants of those who had built this city, generations removed from civilization and reverted to pre-cultural savagery?

Then I knew. The dilwildi were the pets of those who had built the city. For generations they had been bred for docility, for gentleness, and for the savoring of human (?) company. That they survived their masters in loneliness was perhaps the greatest tragedy wrought here.

How I knew this, I could not have said, but I had experienced too much to question such knowledge.

One building was somewhat better preserved than the others. The dilwildi led me to it but would not accompany me in. It was hardly ten meters across and circular, a ring of smooth metallic columns which had once supported the roof that now lay in ruin. I picked my way among the rubble toward the center of the circle and sat down, watching the sun set to the west. A great lethargy took me and I closed my eyes.

IV

She woke me to a golden dawn. The floor where I lay was carpeted with rugs woven in alien and intricate patterns but otherwise the building was bare of furnishings and open to the gentle breezes that rose from the sea bearing the scent of salt and fish.

She was a study in perfection, a dream made flesh.

Varicolored eyes, tumbled hair of a hue not auburn but red, deep, brazen, absolute red, skin of copper fading to cream beneath her breasts and beneath her arms where the sun could less readily go. She wore a chain girdle of silver supporting a golden ankh, otherwise she was naked.

Rising from her shoulder blades were wings like those of some gigantic butterfly. Not the feathery white wings of an angel, nor yet the leathery red wings of a demon. Spreading, rounded, varicolored wings.

*****

A great lethargy took me and I closed my eyes.
She woke me to a golden dawn. She was a study in perfection, a dream made flesh.

Cliche? I don’t think so. More like the avatar of every dream by every lonely and hungry young male. Some of us are lucky enough to find that “dream made flesh”. I was, but there were long years of waiting before that happened, and their memory was fresh when I wrote this.

Butterfly wings? Okay, that’s cliche. Sorry about that, but hell, it was my first novel.

Suddenly, I was scared.

I took out my flint and steel. I wanted no fire; I abhorred the very idea of fire. How could a man desire a fire in this sunny glade?

I struck flint to steel.

The presence was there, sitting unseen beside me in the grass, somewhat irritated but also greatly intrigued. I could feel its curiosity at my acts. Involuntarily, I turned my head but found nothing.

I lay back in the sun and slept.

I woke shortly to find that my kindling had burned down to ash. Why had I slept? Was it exhaustion or had I been ordered to sleep so that the fire would die?

Suddenly I wanted no more of this island. I took up my cane and turned back toward the shore.

The dilwildi were arrayed in a crescent, barring my path. There was neither anger nor hostility in their expressions. Rather, their entire attitude was of sorrow and hurt. Still they frightened me, lined up against me as they were, and I reached for my rifle.

I could not find it.

For the first time since I had built it, I had forgotten it. It lay with my belongings near the gig.

I turned downslope toward the dilwildi. They closed about me, mewing with the soft cry I had heard in the night, a heart–rending cry of sadness entirely unlike their exuberant “dilwildi.” They closed about, gripping my legs, restraining me gently. In fear as much as in anger, I struck out with my cane. One of the dilwildi was bowled over, bleeding from parallel cuts where the antler tip had caught him.

Instantly they retreated, ringing me with a wall of shocked horror. The presence was likewise horrified.

I fell to my knees, tears streaming, my insides torn and twisted at the thought that I had harmed so harmless a creature. I fell forward and buried my head against the earth. There was cold on my shoulders and I looked up to find the sun obscured by clouds – clouds on a planet that knows no clouds. Fear was in me, but more so a load of guilt so great that I could not bear it. I buried my face again.

They surrounded me then, burying me in a mass of soft, furry bodies, each tiny creature radiating good will and forgiveness. I slept.

(Guilt before God. Innocence in Eden. Is there anyone alive who doesn’t recognize the Judeo-Christian tradition here? And there is nothing wrong with that. Our common heritage is what makes literature comprehensible between us.)

***

When I woke the sun was up on a new day. I had slept warm under a blanket of living fur and only now did the dilwildi stir themselves and rise. One lay near my face and as I rose he looked inquiringly at me. I could see the twin weals across his belly. Raising his tiny hand, he touched my face and traced down to my chin. I drew myself awkwardly into a sitting position and faced him, ready for whatever message he bore, but if he was a messenger, he was mute. He waddled up and slipped into my lap like some huge cat, stretching and watching me with an intensity that provoked my laughter.

All that morning we worked our way higher and inland until at noon we had reached the barrier presented by great balks of stone set into what I knew to be a pier. How I knew, I could not have said, but it came to me that they sat at the edge of a fossil ocean and that the jungle I had traversed was the floor of some long-dead bay. more tomorrow

III

The dilwildi stayed with me throughout the day and his brethren from the trees dropped down by ones and twos to inspect me. I laughed insanely at their antics and wondered if my mind was slipping from being too long alone. They were friendly and inquisitive creatures who got into every part of the gig and all of my belongings, save one. They would not approach the rifle. This I could not understand since they had not seen it used, nor could I understand my revulsion from meat. Finally I dismissed the dilwildi’s actions as a dislike of the smell of gunpowder and my revulsion as a stomach too long accustomed to raw fish.

For all my rationalizations, I could not dismiss the presence I had felt.

I slept most of the morning, making up for the night, and when I woke the dilwildi were still with me. I felt a nameless restlessness and a desire to explore.

Leaving the gig, I limped inland, avoiding the glade where the dead herby lay. For hours I walked, eating from time to time of the fruits available. Siskal and lal were both in fruit, though they never fruited at the same time near the colony. Here, I thought, would be the ideal place to move our settlement, but no sooner had the thought occurred than I was dumbstruck with grief as I pictured the destruction of the paradise by my brother hunters.

I had gone about two kilometers when my way was blocked by a rock ledge overgrown with brush. I did not know how far it extended in either direction, so I tried to climb over. My antler cane slipped on the first rise and tore away the turf.

I viewed the exposed material with amazement.

Neither rock nor soil, but flaky rusted metal. At first I thought this was the remains of something lost during the colonization, but our artifacts would not have gone to rust so quickly. Whatever lay here predated man’s arrival on Harmony. I surveyed its length and breadth in wonderment. It could be the wreckage of some air or space craft, but I thought not. Once, we are told, this planet’s ice caps must have been smaller and at such a time the sea level would have been higher. This, I felt, was the remains of some gigantic sea vessel, lying where it had come to rest on what had been the bottom of the sea.

I circled the wreck, if such it was, and continued inland. The dilwildi accompanied me, flying in intricate patterns above me. Always one or more of them flew just above me or waddled beside me. Occasionally one of them brought me fruit. My guides, for so I thought of the ones who stayed near me, eased my path by pointing out game trails and twice led me to seeps of clear, cold water.

Still it was not an easy journey for me and my leg ached abominably by mid-afternoon. I sat in a sunny glade and brought together the makings of a fire, determined to go no farther that day. I piled a pyramid of kindling and took out my flint and steel, but the afternoon was warm and somehow I lost interest in making a fire. I put the flint and steel back into their packet.

Suddenly, I was scared. First the meat, then the call to the interior, and now this. My will no longer seemed my own. How had I concluded so readily that the overgrown ridge was a ship? It seemed more sure than a surmise. Somehow, I knew. more tomorrow

When morning came, I had not slept, nor had I left my perch. At first light I reloaded the upper barrel of my rifle. I had not dared to do so in the dark for fear of overcharging it. I dropped down from the tree, recovered my cane, and limped out to the herby. The meat would be rank for not having been bled, but my hunger could overcome any delicacies of appetite.

I laid my rifle close at hand and drew my knife. I would cut a steak and broil it.

I could not.

I stood with my knife poised and could not bring it down to lay back the skin and expose the firm, red meat beneath.

Cursing myself for a child, I plunged the blade in angrily. The firm flesh gave before my blade and I shuddered at its texture, though it was a texture I had known all my life. What was wrong with me?

I laid back a flap of skin from the haunch, forgetting to skin the beast properly. There was a stricken gasp from the trees where the unseen audience of flying things waited. Yet it had not been an audible gasp; I had heard it in my mind. I cut out a steak, though my hand trembled so that I could hardly control it. The mass of flesh which came out was misshapen and bloody. My stomach contracted.

It had returned and it was appalled.

Cursing, I carried my steak to the edge of the trees and built a fire. I impaled and broiled it. The juices dripped from the meat and sizzled in the fire while my stomach turned flips in anticipation. Let phantoms be damned; I was hungry and I would eat. I took the steak down half raw and sank my teeth into it.

I gagged. The blood juices were a fire in my throat and I barely avoided vomiting. How could I ever have eaten meat before? I threw the steak aside.

One of the flying creatures left its sanctuary and floated down to me. It was mammalian; its wings were covered with a tight, furry skin. I was reminded of stories of terrestrial bats, but this creature inspired no loathing. Its weight was about ten kilos and its wingspread greater than the reach of my arms. Its belly was round; like the herby it was earless and tailless. Its face was whiskered, looking for all the world like a terrestrial seal, and its expression was both benign and bemused.

“Dilwildi!” it said, so I named both the individual and his race after that sound. The creature looked up at me as if deciphering some great puzzle, then sat back with a thump, scratching its plump belly. “Dilwildi,” it announced again and I broke into laughter. It was not offended; rather, the tiny face seemed to beam even more happily.

The dilwildi drew up his wings and flapped heavily across the glade to a siskal bush, here of treelike stature. He slipped clumsily from branch to branch, then returned bearing a half-dozen siskal fruit which he gave to me. I bit into one and never had fruit tasted so good.

*****

No, I’m not a vegetarian, and this is not propaganda.

Actually I grew up on a farm. I know where food comes from first hand. I’ve done things as a jackleg veterinarian that you don’t want the hear about. I’ve attended hog butcherings. I’ve killed animals out of necessity, but never for sport. I don’t hunt and I don’t fish, not because I think it’s wrong, but because I wouldn’t enjoy it. I’m not a vegetarian, but I understand how a person could decide to be one.  more tomorrow

I killed the herby cleanly as he stooped to drink.

The herd scattered with cries of terror and the forest night sounds fell silent. For a moment I felt exultation, then a nameless dread. It was as if I had sinned in the face of God. Never had I felt such guilt.

Some presence moved in the jungle night. Something sleeping was wakened; something quiescent was angered.

Some thing became aware of my presence. I could feel its personality as it probed and quested.

I did not move.

The spirit of the place moved in the moonlit glade. A breeze stirred the trees, flattened the grass. The herby lay on its side, feet stretched stiffly toward me, lying in an obscene black pool of its own blood.

I dared not move, yet the thing found me. It moved in the tree beside me where no material thing could be seen.

Spiraling above the clearing, rising from somewhere inland, I saw the heavy flying things that had eluded me during the day. They rose like a cloud, circling, like some great aerial hieroglyph. Their cries came down to me, “Dilwildi, dilwildi, dilwildi.”

The presence sat unseen beside me in the tree, its essence scratching at the surface of my mind, seeking entry, finding none.

“No!” I was whimpering like a child in the treetop, overcome by some unspoken guilt. I was a man, a hunter. What business did I have with such feelings. Yet they were not to be denied.

The flying things descended to the clearing, making a circle around the dead herby. One slipped forward, scuttling crabwise to investigate this incursion of violence into a realm that knew no violence. How did I know that? Yet I did.

They were clearly creatures of the air who moved clumsily on land. Their wings were disproportionately long and seemed not feathered but furred; beyond that I could tell little about them.

Over the course of millennia, legions of demons have crept into earthly folklore and scores of these have made their way into the Monomythos. In my imagination, they sat with me that night.

The flying creatures left the ground in a concerted rush, flying laboriously into the trees. They had come from the rocky fastness at the center of the island.

Within me was a desire to follow them, to track them to the place of their origin. Was this my own wish, or something left me by the presence?

Then I realized that it was gone and I was alone again.

*****

Where is the boundary between science fiction and fantasy? Most of what we read lies near the border between them. Star Wars is clearly a fairy tale with light sabres. Hogwarts has boring lectures, student pranks, and demerits even while it is teaching spells and potions instead of history and math. There are more things in heaven and earth, Albert, than are dreamt of in your theories.

Perhaps it all lies in the difference between the unknown and the unknowable. If anything is actually unknowable. And if anything can be truly and finally known.

Beyond philosophy, there is the practical. I knew as I began Jandrax that a book of science fiction where the technology was reduced to nineteenth century level, could become dull without at least the whiff of the uncanny. The ruins at the end of chapter one were there from the first draft, and the “potbellied, winged mammals” on the mural there are the dilwildi which Jean will get to know in the next few posts.

I knew from the first that there would be a touch of the supernatural before Jandrax was through, but I didn’t know until I got there what that would entail. more tomorrow

I staggered and nearly fell, so unaccustomed was I to the firm, unswaying earth.

The grass underfoot was not the ubiquitous gluegrass that the colonists hate. It did not cling to boots and clothing, carrying its mucilaginous spores. This grass was fine and sweet smelling, a pleasure to touch and an invitation to lie upon. I had heard of such grasses from the elders, but had thought them fantasy. The trees seemed even taller from beneath, and the profusion of birdlife and wildflowers was even more breathtaking than the soft grass and immense trees. Standing alone, cut off fully from my fellow man, I broke down into tears at the beauty around me and at the poverty of life as I had previously known it. Beside this, our settlement, our fields, and our silly pretensions to manhood looked pale and drab.

II

I stayed in that clearing for three days, living without shelter under the canopy of trees. On the first day I washed my clothes and built a bonfire to dry them. Then I bathed again and luxuriated in a clean body, cleanly clothed. I cooked the fish I had caught, but I did not see any large herbivores, nor did I wish to try to kill any of the small creatures around me. Never had I seen such a profusion of life except in the migratory herds during the melt, and I did not wish to subtract as much as one creature from it.

Each night I heard the crooning and the incessant “dilwildi, dilwildi.” I saw the large flying creatures several times at a distance during the day and every night close up in the darkness. I was convinced that they were not birds.

There is a creature called a milik which feeds on the dried seedpods of the siskal. There are never very many of these creatures and they are quite small, but they do provide a certain amount of sport and a bit of fresh meat in the off seasons. In order to snare them, boys often row far upstream on the Lydia during low winter. Six years ago, my father got the idea of attaching a sail to our gig and sailing upstream before the wind, then drifting back down. Since then several others have copied his idea.

Papa never had to contend with tacking against the wind, so his gig had neither keel nor centerboard. The sail itself was a large, clumsy square of sewn up herby hides. After ten weeks at sea I was only too familiar with the gig’s shortcomings.

Refashioning my rigging into a lateen pattern and building sideboards took the better part of three days, after which I decided to hunt. Though I had not wanted to set snares for the smaller creatures, I was not reluctant to face a herby and there were herby tracks in abundance along the inlet.

Herbies are burro-bodied, tapir-headed, earless, and tailless herbivores. They are devoid of defense, depending on their speed, agility, and prodigious birthrate to perpetuate their species. I had seen no large herbivore tracks other than these and no large carnivore tracks at all. This was an oddity, for without carnivores to thin their numbers, the herbies would soon have eaten the island into barrenness.

Several times I had heard the herbys come to drink during the night, so after finishing my work in the gig I slept away the afternoon in preparation for a night hunt.

Of course I could not stalk, but I had discovered their favorite watering place and took my place in the lower branches of a tree waiting in ambush. They came after midnight and I had calculated right in getting myself downwind of them. I killed one cleanly as he stooped to drink. more tomorrow

When dusk came, the crooning resumed, alternating with an airy cry of, “Dilwildi, dilwildi, dilwildi.” I searched the trees for the sources of the noise and saw patches of deeper darkness sitting at intervals along the larger limbs. Occasionally one of these would move, but I could not make them out. Alpha rose, with her tiny red companion Gamma in train. Beta, our third moon, would not be up for hours yet, but these two gave a silvery sheen to the lake, highlighting the darker gouges of the long, sweeping rollers. One of the patches of darkness detached itself from a limb and sailed seaward. I tracked it with my rifle, an instinctive, defensive action, but there was no reason to fire. It flew, but somehow I did not think of it as a bird. I followed it with my eyes until it was lost in the distance.

I slept too soundly that night. I had seen no carnivores, true, but there must be such or life here would quickly overpopulate. In the morning I slipped the oars into their sockets, cast off, and worked my way out of the inlet. I was in a foul mood, for rowing cost me much pain in my leg, yet I dared not set the unpredictable sail.

I rowed out into the lake a half kilometer to better survey the island, then turned west to follow the shore. The wind was against me, making the task harder than it need have been. From this distance I could see how thin the fringe of jungle actually was and how rugged were the hills beyond. Except for the shore, it was a forbidding and utterly inhospitable place.

I rowed for several hours, searching for a proper anchorage. I also filled my waterskins for the first time and set the line out to catch some fish more palatable than rocod. I had given up the idea of finding large game, but if I could get ashore and build a fire, cooked fish would be a delicacy by comparison.

At one point a flat plain no more than five meters above water level extended several kilometers inland. Here the jungle too thrust inland. There was an inlet into which I rowed.

It was not a river, of course, for there was nothing to feed it, yet it no doubt carried snowmelt from the mountains during the melt. Now the inlet was merely a thin arm of the lake, first a half–kilometer wide but soon narrowing to a dozen meters. My passage was silent but for the cutting of my oars, and the birds were in full song. Trees soared overhead, their branches intertwining to make tunnels of the smaller channels off the main stream. Twice I saw the large flying creatures overhead, but they passed quickly from sight.

I paused to check the charges in my rifle, for with a section of jungle this large I would have to revise my earlier assumption that there would be no large animals. It was my seventy-sixth day of raw fish.

The inlet continued for several kilometers, growing gradually narrower until trees began to meet over the main channel. I tied up to a tree and worked my way across the steps that its roots provided onto dry land. I staggered and nearly fell, so unaccustomed was I to the firm, unswaying earth.

*****

As I prepare this for serialization, I am struck by how much 1979 me doesn’t sound like 2016 me. It sounds more like Andre Norton, or H. Ryder Haggard, or Edgar Rice Burroughs. I grew up reading old books which were trapped in the amber of underfunded libraries, and started out writing like their authors.  more tomorrow

In a band at the water’s edge were giant trees whose roots must burrow down to water and whose boles thrust skyward, and beneath them layer upon layer of vegetation – saprophytes, mosses, lichens, an abundance of fruits and flowers, vines, and birds of all colors flittering between the layers of green. Yet even from my position at water level I could see the unyielding rock rising up behind the jungle, at places seeming only a hundred meters wide.

Nowhere on the planet have we found anything like this. Perhaps it is the moderating effect of the surrounding lake that allows such to develop. I do not know; such knowledge as I have is sketchy on these things. Perhaps Jandrax would have understood.

I sailed west around the island, looking for a safe anchorage. Were I whole, I could have run ashore anywhere, leaping out and dragging the boat up on some rocky shingle; with my injury I needed a place where I could tie up without beaching my craft. Once I entered the mouth of an inlet, dropping the unpredictable sail and rowing in, but the inlet was surrounded by low and swampy ground that I could not negotiate.

I stayed in that inlet, tied up to the knobby root of a low-growing tree and slept poorly, mindful of the new sounds around me. I did not hear the coughing of longnecks or the squeal of krats – for which I was thankful – but I did hear many sounds that I could not identify, especially a soft, crooning call that echoed throughout the night.

I missed the sunrise the next morning, shaded by trees and tired out by an uneasy night. When I woke, soft light was filtering through the jungle and the birds were about their daily tasks. I saw several species new to me and familiar species that were somehow different, like the leatherbill that landed on my prow, his brilliant red underbelly at odds with his continental cousins.

I caught rocod from the murky waters and ate them raw, but I kept my rifle close at hand, hoping that some herbivore would come down to water. I was thoroughly sick of raw fish. Leatherbills came to watch me eat, so I set my line again and, dividing my new catch, spent an hour feeding them. They were very bold, one even venturing to eat from my finger.

No herbivores came, nor had I really expected them. This fringe of jungle would be the abode of small creatures only. I saw what I took to be huge birds circling the island as I approached it yesterday, but they were not in evidence today.

I realized, with a twinge of guilt, that I had not notched my calendar board yesterday.

I spent the afternoon lounging in the boat. I had not realized the depth of my loneliness at sea; now it fell in on me again. In the afternoon I stripped and went overside for a much needed bath. At sea I had not dared do this for fear of becoming separated from the gig.

I considered sailing out to fill my waterskins rather than drink this muddy shoreline water, but I could not bring myself to leave this haven even for an hour. The next day I would go, however, for I was determined to find a landing where I could actually go ashore. I cursed my leg in bitterness, knowing that I had passed a hundred landings, including this one, where an agile man could have gone ashore.

When dusk came, the crooning resumed, alternating with an airy cry of, “Dilwildi, dilwildi, dilwildi.” more tomorrow

Chloe’s child should be nine months old now; simple arithmetic makes him a good bet to be mine, but Anton claims him. Perhaps; no one will ever really know. I saw him only once and I burned with a hunger that was nine-tenths shame.

There is nothing for me at the colony. The men despise me and the women shun me. So be it. They have cast me out symbolically, so I have cast myself out physically.

When I was younger I would have dreamed of finding where the herds go and returning triumphant with the knowledge. No more. Youth is dead, and dreams. Still I am curious, and out here on the open water my loneliness is less poignant than it was where I had my fellows around me, showing me by daily example that I am less than a man.

My supplies are limited but I have fishhooks and line. Every fish I catch sacrifices his entrails to make more bait so the supply is endless, if monotonous. I never dreamed how tired a man could get of raw fish.

I learned much from the computer before I undertook this trip, but little of it made sense. Now I have begun to put it together into a coherent pattern; the strange sounding names and terms are no longer meaningless. Keel, tack, tiller, before the wind. They were meaningless before. Now I know them well. Tacking is what I do from dawn to dusk, a keel is what I lack to do it well, leeway is what I am making – that is, the wind is blowing me away from where I want to go. Our lake is huge, 200 by 750 kilometers and I had intended to cross it diagonally. It seems that I will be at it forever and I would have long since died from my ignorance if I were on a terrestrial ocean, but there are no storms on this planet and I have only to reach out my hand to have fresh water. Water, fish, wind, sky, water. I live, but I become unutterably weary.

Using my knife, I make a notch in the calendar board as the sun sets, and count. Seventy-two.

***

By taking sun sightings at dawn and sunset I have been able to establish my latitude, but I have no way to determine my longitude. Each day finds me further south. It is now the seventy–fourth day of my journey and I have spotted land, but not the opposite shore of the lake. It is the great island which my map shows, or so I think.

I will stop here in hopes of finding the materials with which to improve my craft, especially with which to build some form of keel. Also, I may find some of the smaller life forms here to supplement my diet of fish.

***

The island rose from the sea like the top of some mountain with great rocky headlands upon which the waves broke. On a planet without storms or rain, the rocky faces are stark and unweathered.

The island rose up devoid of vegetation, locked in the grip of low winter, the season of desert before the snows come. Only immediately adjacent to the lake was there a band of dense vegetation, drawing moisture from the lake itself.

*****

At the second three asterisk break, the story changes from present to past tense. Present gave immediacy that could not be sustained, and past is the tense of story telling. At least, it used to be. When Jandrax was written, the modern, ubiquitous use of present for story telling had not yet swept over the globe in a noxious wave. more tomorrow