Eight 4

The glen was shaped like a ladle, and the waterfall poured down forty feet of limestone to a pool circled by marble and chalky stone. There was a peaceful spirit to the place, the kind you’d find tucked away in the wilderness on a deep hike.

“Hello, beautiful.”

I’d apparently moved from aphorisms to pick-up lines. Shaking my head, I knelt to drink. The water was clear, cool, and—I was glad to see—there were fish. There was also a stand of fennel nearby, and across the water was what looked like a plum tree and berry bush. I’d be able to take care of both my water and food needs here.

What caught my interest, though, were the stone nodules scattered around the short cliff. Some of them had a glassy, waxy look to them; that was another good sign, since flint was fairly common in terrain of this type. I moved closer to investigate and heard an echo by the waterfall. Was there a gap behind it?

The water was frigid when I pushed through. On the other side, I saw an open space. The cave was about ten feet wide and twenty feet deep, give or take. Moss covered the ground, and there was no evidence of animals using the space as a den.

I could make the cave mine if I wanted, but I’d need a reliable source of heat. It likely got cold at night, and even now I could feel myself rapidly cooling. While that felt good to my overheated body, it might cause hypothermia overnight.

My feet complained, but I forced myself back outside. There was a gap between the waterfall and the cliff on the opposite side of the entrance, and I was able to pass through without getting drenched a second time. I went straight to the flint nodules.

About four years ago, I had been an executive producer on a series called Land of the Living Lost. The show’s premise was to drop a group of modern people into a prehistoric setting to see how they’d fare, and because Southwind was a documentary production company, the cast included bush guides, survivalists, farmers, and even an archeologist specializing in tools.

The show was grueling, with the crew spending months in the bush along with the cast. We rotated them in and out as best we could, but that meant every employee got pulled in to help, even me. Not that I minded. My time on the crew was spent in a haze of nostalgia, reminding me of the days I’d gone hunting with mi abuelito and of the work I’d done early in my career in construction and set and prop design.

I loved the show, just loved it, and all told, over the two seasons it aired, I spent five months on the ground with the cast. The rest of the crew thought I was nuts, but I already had a reputation for being eccentric. Their thinking I was strange didn’t bother me any.

I took a breath as the memories of those times settled into me. All I’d need to do was locate iron pyrite—often found near flint deposits—and I’d be able to start a fire. And the flint could also be used to make tools. That only needed hammerstones, which the stream was full of.

The glen had shelter, water, and food. Everything I needed for my survival was here. It was the perfect place to set up camp. You might even say it was too perfect. A godsend.

Were the ghosts of my loved ones watching over me or the spirits of the land influencing me? Or… perhaps it was something more nefarious? That would explain the muffling of my thoughts and the feeling of disconnection from my body at times. Those were classic signs of spirit possession.

But I promised myself not to think about the source of the strange feeling in my head, and I anxiously ran a hand through my hair. There were scabs forming on my scalp, and along my arms and chest too. Worst of all was the pain from my feet. I’d been forcing myself to ignore the burst blisters, but my feet needed care soon or I’d be in real trouble later. The last thing I needed was for them to scab and heal onto my socks.

Focus on the here and now. Anything else is a distraction.

Ah, that sounded like my yoga teacher. It was nice to know my repertoire of pithy sayings was expanding. Still, the advice was right—there was nothing I could do about my unanswered questions, but I could work toward my survival.

I left the flint nodules to check out the fennel. The plants grew all along the stream’s bank, and the soil at the stream’s edge was wet and soft. My hands alone were enough to dig one out. A quick rinse later and I was crunching on the bulb.

It was strange. I was hungry from all the running I’d done, but I didn’t feel malnourished. From what I saw in the water’s reflection, I didn’t look it either, and yet there was still an emptiness inside me like I hadn’t eaten for days. Like my bowels were completely empty.

A weird thought popped into my head: What if that was because my body was new? What if it’d been created whole, and as a result there was nothing in its gastrointestinal tract.

The idea wouldn’t leave me alone.

When I’d seen my face earlier, I worried my consciousness had taken over some poor kid’s body. Or the body was dead, and my consciousness had reanimated it. In both these cases, though, there should’ve been food left over in the intestines. Otherwise, the body wouldn’t feel as empty as it did, even after eating the fennel.

I didn’t see any way to confirm my body’s newness, though, other than not eating and seeing if I ever felt the urge to poop. If so, that would mean there was food leftover from someone else’s life. If not, then the body was potentially new. Not conclusively proven, but there’d be evidence for it.

The problem was, I couldn’t not eat. This wasn’t a spiritual retreat or yoga workshop where fasting was part of the curriculum. I was in a desperate situation, and getting enough calories was critical. Existential questions, no matter how worrying, would have to wait until later.

Belly full of fennel, I searched the forest around the glen. There was dried vegetation for tinder and more than enough fallen branches for kindling and firewood. I had no problem gathering fuel to last through the night.

Once I’d gotten the materials piled up inside the cave, I sorted through the nodules outside, looking for flint and iron pyrite. Striking one against the other was a common way for ancient peoples to start fires—even the Neanderthals did it.

There were alternatives to flint and pyrite, but I wanted to save my hands from the blisters a hand drill would cause. There was also the option of a bow drill, but that required braiding rope.

Luckily, neither alternative wound up being necessary. I spotted the telltale shimmer of fool’s gold on the surface of several hand-sized nodules. After gathering them up, I clutched a couple of the rocks to my chest and whispered a short prayer of thanks.

Good hammerstones to break open the nodules and knap the flint were even easier to find. The stream provided smooth stones in a variety of shapes and sizes. I grabbed what I needed.

The sun was still up on what was clearly the longest day ever, but I was out of gas. I’d done all I could, and so I retreated back to the cave with my finds. I would’ve loved nothing more than to rest, but the pain in my feet spurred me into action. I needed to make sure I could start a fire before taking care of them, because once my shoes and socks came off I’d be practically immobilized.

I cracked open the various nodules with the largest of the hammerstones. My mind felt fuzzy, but my hands remembered the way of it. They roughed out a section of flint—all it needed was a sharp edge—and I began to strike a chunk of iron pyrite against it. I could almost hear the bush guides from Land of the Living Lost talking about maintaining a flexible wrist.

Eventually, a spark caught on the dried leaf I was using, and I breathed on it as lightly as I dared to help the ember grow. When it was well and smoking, I wrapped the ember with the tinder bundle and blew a little harder. Smoke poured out until, all at once, the bundle ignited, filling my hands with fire.

I placed the bundle in a cage of the thinnest, driest kindling I could find. Then it was a matter of steadily placing larger and larger pieces of wood until I finally had a proper campfire, my first on this world.

I basked in the warmth, letting it soak into me while I took a moment to gather my courage. What came next wasn’t likely to be pretty.

I grimaced while taking off my shoes and socks. One, it was an incredibly painful process, and two, the socks were dark and sodden with blood. The damage was even worse than I’d feared, with large sections of skin sloughing off both feet. The skin seemed unused to the abuse I’d put it through.

It was an interesting data point for the new-body hypothesis, though I had bigger concerns to worry about. As I’d noted earlier, the nearest antibiotics were a world away—I’d have to do my best to keep the injuries clean and dry without them.

Maybe if I use the inside of my shirt to clean my feet?

There’d be sweat and surface bacteria, but every other option I considered was worse. After cleaning them, I’d also have to let my feet air dry until scabs formed, which in turn meant staying off my feet.

I took off my shirt and got to work.

###

I awoke with a start—something splashed in the water nearby.

I placed a branch on the ebbing fire and picked up the largest of the hammerstones. Carefully, I crawled toward the gap between the cave and the waterfall to peek over the side, but I didn’t see anything in the pool’s depths. Checking outside, there was only the moon’s reflection shimmering on the water. The glen was otherwise still.

I eased back toward the fire and kept watch for a time. When nothing happened, I let my eyes close.

###

The water splashed twice more that night. I was ninety-nine percent sure the sounds were from fish breaking the surface to feed on bugs, but I checked the pool and the glen each time, just in case. When I didn’t spot any baboons, horned rabbits, or goblins, I added more wood to the fire and went back to sleep.

###

I woke up shivering. Only a few embers were left among the fire’s ashes. My stomach was cramping with hunger too, and my mouth felt dry. At least my feet were okay; by okay I meant that the burst blisters had scabbed over and there wasn’t any pus or inflammation. I said a prayer of gratitude then, mindful of the spirits that might’ve been watching over me.

Until my feet healed, my plan was to stick close to the glen and crawl whenever I needed to move. I could survive on fennel until then, and make flint tools to pass the time. The plum tree and berry bush would have to wait until I could cross to their side of the stream without getting my feet wet.

Outside, the morning was cool, but if the previous day was any example, it was likely to warm up quickly. I checked for fresh tracks to make sure there’d been no visitors to the glen overnight. Finding none, I dug up more fennel for my breakfast.

Distantly, I felt a craving for coffee. Maybe a pastry too, a pain au chocolat or—

I cut off that line of thinking before it led to darker thoughts. For all I knew, the nearest bakery was a world away too. Everything familiar was.

To keep from brooding, I dragged the flint and hammerstones out into the sun and started tinkering. For the rest of the morning, all I did was practice, encouraging my hands to remember the best ways to knap flint. What the archeologists and bush guides made look easy was actually hard in practice, even if you knew what you were doing. So, I worked slowly and methodically, focusing on not cutting up my hands too much.

The day passed slowly, hot and humid as a New England summer. I slept intermittently to give my body time to recover. I collected wood for the evening’s fire and ate fennel greens when hungry.

During my breaks, my mind bounced from thought to thought, restless and worried—but not too worried or else the thing that muffled my thoughts might come back. The situation was just so nuts. I’d read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, so the idea of alternate worlds wasn’t shocking. I’d just never expected to be on one. I mean, who would?

There were so many questions without answers and nothing I could be confident about, other than that the experience was real. Well, there was one thing: magic existed on this world. The crow-person hadn’t pulled a rabbit out of their hoop. The snake was enormous, the head almost a foot across. That was no magic trick.

I set my nascent tools down and closed my eyes to feel for the magic, force, qi, mana, or whatever this world called it. For a time, I listened to the waterfall, but felt nothing. Nothing mystical anyway. My feet still hurt, and my scabs itched terribly.

Magic didn’t always come from outside of a person. Sometimes it was powered by internal energies, so I turned my attention inward. This was more familiar territory, as I’d started practicing yoga and qigong after my wife Helen died. I’d actually tried a lot of things to find solace, but there were only a couple of disciplines that stuck.

At first, the pain in my feet dominated my attention, and I let it. The poor things had gone through hell. After a time, I became aware of my body’s other aches and pains. Eventually, though, the discomfort faded into the background, and I found my way to my breath and the sensations of the cool air flowing through my nose, up and down my trachea, and into and out of my lungs.

I kept my attention on my breath, immersed in the familiar feeling. Even the panic inside me quieted, and once I reached a stable point of equanimity, I noticed a bubble under my thoughts. Curious, I prodded it with my attention.

An image of my phone appeared in my mind’s eye, except it was made of a silvery metal with dark-copper banding around the screen. Looking closer, I saw the edges of sprockets in the gaps between the screen and its housing.

The phone turned on. Printed on the screen in English was a simple character sheet, like from a roleplaying game. The name field was blank, but there was an age listed: 8. There were a handful of attributes too:

Name

Age 8

Strength 8

Constitution 8

Agility 8

Intelligence 8

Wisdom 8

Spirit 8

Charm 8

Luck 8

I couldn’t help the decades of tabletop gaming knowledge that surged up. You might as well call me Eight with these numbers.

The screen updated, and the name field was filled in to read: Eight.

I… ah… that was more of an observation, not a request. I don’t actually want to be called Eight. My name is Oliver. Ollie works too. Also, is there a help screen? Because I’d really like to know what’s going on.

If anyone was listening, they didn’t respond, and the name didn’t budge no matter how much I willed it. Apparently, I was now named Eight… and there was a character sheet in my head.

A phone too, apparently. Could I call my kids with it? Was there an operator I could ask for help? I imagined myself gripping the phone, and it felt heavy, like the weight of the world was behind it. I started touching the different labels to see if anything happened.

When I focused on the name field, I became aware of my body, my emotional well-being, and something deeper—the sense of self/no-self I encountered in deep meditation.

The age field gave off the sense of being young, yet I was old enough not to be completely helpless.

Strength, Constitution, and Agility highlighted aspects of my physicality. The other attributes described the ineffable and were harder to sense. My thoughts quickened when I focused on Intelligence. Wisdom made me conscious of the connections between me and the world around me. I didn’t feel anything from Charm, and Luck gave off a fickle sensation. Spirit was still like a pond in the early light, morning mist moving across the water.

It was interesting that there were no other attributes displayed. Was it a function of the game system’s mechanics or the phone?

The screen could be swiped up, so I did. The display changed to show a series of stats that looked like secondary attributes: body power, qi, and mana—all of which were listed as 8.

There were other fields on the page. One was called blessings, and I had two: the first from someone named Diriktot who, according to the information next to his name, was a Fallen God of Order, and the second from Meliune, a Goddess of Compassion.

Below the blessings was a section for curses, which was empty. And at the bottom was a section for conditions, also empty.

I put down the phone and rubbed my eyes. Gods and goddesses. There are gods and goddesses.

My family history was complicated—not surprising given that my dad’s parents were brujos, practitioners of traditional Mexican witchcraft—but that was a long time and another life ago. As I got older, I’d mostly settled into a cozy blend of Buddhism, Taoism, and general respect for everyone’s beliefs. I knew that there were a lot more ways of experiencing the capital-T truth than my puny little brain could comprehend.

So that was confirmation then. Gods and goddesses indeed. It was a relief really, knowing for sure. My grandparents had been right after all.

“Hello?” I said, casting the feeling out to the wider world.

There was no response, so I went back to the phone.

The mana field was intriguing, but the number felt locked away: as if it was behind a door and I didn’t have the key. I didn’t have hit points, but there was something called body power instead. When I concentrated, I felt my body’s capacity for action. My sense was that it wasn’t connected to my stamina though. It measured something else—something I didn’t yet know—like it was a battery not plugged into anything.

The feeling of the qi field was familiar from the qigong I practiced, although it was stronger than I’d ever experienced before. Of the three secondary attributes, it was the one that seemed most accessible, which was weird. You’d expect that to be body power. I’d have to experiment to see if that accessibility proved true or not.

Uneasy about the ‘fallen' part of the Fallen God of Order’s entry, I focused on the Goddess of Compassion next. The feeling was gentle—not quite pity, but something more empathetic instead. There seemed to be a direct connection between her blessing and the thing which muffled my thoughts and caused me to feel distant when afraid. Was that meant to protect me from panic? To keep from freezing and help me survive in the face of overwhelming fear? That was the impression I’d gotten, and while I wasn’t entirely sure it was the blessing it claimed to be, it was at least a relief knowing that I wasn’t being possessed.

Speaking of black magic… So yeah, I guess curses are a thing too.

Looking at my phone again, swiping up got me a page with the word “Skills” at the top.

The rest of the page was blank, which was weird given that I had a lifetime of experience behind me. There should’ve been scads of entries under the skills heading. I swiped up again, but the page didn’t change. Swiping down brought me back to the secondary attributes, and swiping down again displayed my primary attributes. As I thought about it, those weren’t accurate either. I was much more intelligent than I was strong. Something screwy was going on.

I flipped between screens, poking here and there, but nothing changed. All that was left was the Fallen God, so I gathered my courage and focused on Diriktot.

The character screen swirled away and was replaced by an illustration of a classic dwarf, except he wore spectacles and a charcoal-gray suit. A leather band stretched across his torso from one shoulder to the opposite side waist, supporting a sheath for the enormous wrench on his back.

The background behind him filled in, and I recognized the corner of NW Glisan and 6th in Portland. The dwarf walked along the street, looking around very much like a tourist in spite of the rain. There was a crowd ahead, and the illustrations moved to show the dwarf wandering over to see what the fuss was about.

The fuss was me. On the floor. In a pool of—what I assumed was—blood. I wasn’t sure what had happened. My last memory was of walking out the office door. How I ended up dead was a mystery.

The tape holding my phone together must’ve come loose, because the phone lying beside my outstretched hand was cracked open. That caught the dwarf’s eye. He moved through the crowd to crouch and peer inside. This lasted a while—the illustrations weren’t clear on how long—but eventually he picked up the phone and patted my shoulder, seeming to thank me for the opportunity to study something interesting.

The dwarf then winked at me—the me watching the illustrations—and the screen faded to copper, only to be replaced by the character sheet. I swiped back to Diriktot’s Blessing, but there were no other messages. No matter how hard I focused, all I could feel was the weight of the phone in my mind. Apparently, both it and this life were his gifts to me.

That I had questions was an understatement—too many questions, all rushing through my head. There was fear and alarm and such a storm of emotions that they triggered Meliune’s Blessing once again, covering my thoughts with a thick blanket of acceptance and burying my emotions until they were barely sensible.

Under its influence, I crawled into the cave behind the waterfall and kept careful watch for anything dangerous. There was no room for anything else, only survival.

###

I awoke from the daze just before dusk. My emotions still roiled, but now that I was conscious again, I was desperate to stay that way. I did my best to not think or feel anything. Instead, I focused on what was observable: the roar of the waterfall, the moss under me, and the smell of burnt wood from the fire’s remains.

I crawled outside and saw the sun and moon in the sky together, one setting and the other rising. The air was gentle and warm, and I couldn’t help as a thought slipped free: This glen really is a good place to camp. Too bad it costs everything familiar to stay here.

It was going to be a long night.