The Worlds Within

A submission to Lunar Awards Season 10 - Fantasy

Photo - Reddit - edits the author

Introduction - this story grew a life of its own and never in fact flushed out the basic premise upon which it was begun. I expect any reader will feel it could only be the beginning of something and not whole of itself, and perhaps I feel that about it too. But being unable to craft it to the original conclusion within the time and words allowed (through many diversions) and very much wanting to share this with the fantasy crew - even if I fear I cannot win as a result - it is all about the taking part and sharing and so I submit my offering to the gods.

With thanks to

Winston Malone

of the lunar awards -

Lunar Awards Season 10 | Round One Starts Now! | Fantasy

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The Worlds Within

What do they see when they look at me? Do they see what I can see? Can they see what is inside of themselves as I can? The iron spring-wheel inside father’s time holder is going to break soon; the daughter inside Haanena that she doesn’t know is there. Do they see me like I see them, like I see everything, or am I a different thing to them? What am I?

“Ilmari! Come up will you. They’re back.”

Ilmarinen’s sister, Haanena, called to him but he ignored her. She would come down to him and he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. He turned the delicate samako in his hands, holding it up and counting its heartbeats through the camouflage of its wet skin.

Your heart beats slowly, samako, and you are small, like varpu. But her heart beats three for every one of yours, and she is warm while you are as cold as your pond.

A rustling of grass told him Haanena approached. A hand fell on his shoulder and he turned to smile up at her, the sun making a golden haze through her hair.

When will she feel her child? What will she name her? What will she grow to be…will it be written in her bones before she comes, like it’s written in her mother’s bones what she should be?

“Come up from the weeds and the water. They’re back! Don’t you want to know? Best get up before father comes down for you, eh? You know what he’s like.”

Would she want to know, before she needs to know?

Ilmarinen stood in a fluid motion and followed his sister, catching up and holding her hand. She was older; not by much, and she grew ever taller than him each year.

“You’ll grow. You’ll see,” they told him, but his bones knew otherwise.

She’s built to be ‘Sastaja, not Hoitaja. Will she hunt the Paths or beat the mats? Her daughter is growing every day. I can see her. Her heart beats faster than samako, slower than varpu, but she’s still smaller than both. Hotter.

Ilmarinen distracted himself in this questioning way as they walked back to the farm. She asked him why he spent so long by the lake.

“The animals,” he said. Was that not reason enough?

“Do they speak to you?”

His attention had turned to a bird high above her in the sky - kotka - on long wings, gliding, circling without effort. Does he know how to fly or does some magician tell him? Could I learn? He wondered how he might get near enough to kotka to see inside, see how it worked, how the bones were set; count the heartbeats.

“Ilmari! Answer! Can you speak with them? Is that why you’ve always got some little friend in your pockets and pouches?”

“No. But I know when they hurt or if they are broken. And I know when Arto doesn't want the plough.”

“Pfff. We all know that!”

Their father and mother both approached from the back of the farmhouse, calling and beckoning them to hurry inside. Father looked how he always looked, but mother had a ruddy glow about her. Ilmarinen had felt sure he would not be called for the Run, even though he was fourteen, but now? He might be wrong. As they entered the house, he smelled roasting meat. So… I shall Run.

“Stand here then, son,” his father said, slapping him manfully across narrow shoulders as they gathered in the family hall. The uncles were there; also Martius the neighbour and his twins, Martiusson and Marta, too. “Let us take a look at my boy - our son - that is become a man!”

“At last,” one of the uncles muttered.

Ilmarinen slid his mind away from the moment he saw coming in the flushed faces and pounding hearts that gave away the ruling of the Elders. His father strode round him, sizing him up, and nodding, then briskly pulled his son’s woollen robe up over his head and cast it aside. Ilmarinen stood naked before them and all were silent.

“Still not a hair on his kulli!” growled Uncle Ukko, the eldest of the kin. There was a murmur of laughter, and Father spun and held up a hand to stop it.

“The Elders forbad him for his youthful look, not want of years. The law says thirteen years, and if not then, at fourteen a boy must Run “He will have fifteen years by the time of the Run. I showed them the family stone! I told them Show me the law that says no, or let him Run! He will grow. Hair will come and my son, our boy - will Run a Path this year.” He turned back to face Ilmarinen “You’ll make us proud. We’re always proud.”

Ilmarinen was distantly aware of the room, but his thoughts were far away in the air with kotka, circling without effort.

“Put on your robe, Son. Let us eat. Your mother took a young rangifer. It’s been hanging for two weeks, waiting for today!”

Ilmarinen dressed and thought of the beast they would eat. The black varis worrying at one of the far sheds had told him something dead was within it. He’d gone in and found what his mother had taken the life of. She hunted well; that was her Path. A single arrow wound showed it. He tried to see what it was that was broken, but only a living thing could show what was within itself; living things or automata and time holders - things with wheels and springs of iron within them.

Later that evening, after the feasting and the stories and the children were up in the raftercots, Ilmarinen’s father, Svin, and the uncles Ukko and Kyosti, sat with honey wine and fat candles. Talk was sparse amongst them. Farmers all three and close born, their minds worked the same and they chewed over similar thoughts. Svin’s pride in his boy was strong and as real as any father’s love would be for an only son… but. The uncles knew it was not their place to say it and eventually Svin spoke for them all.

“What manner of man can he become? That is what troubles me, brothers.” They grunted their agreement. “It is all we want for our young, to find the Path they have the bones for, eh?”

Hmmm

“We three?” he swirled his hand in the space between them “Farmer’s bones are in us …our father’s bones, and Farmers proud. His mother? ‘Sastaja! It’s written plain across her - and Haanena, if she wants - hunters, both! But what of Ilmari? I cannot read his bones. Can you?”

“We won’t be carving a Warrior Miner into the family stone. That I can say.” said Kyosti, and drained his tankard.

The brothers shook their heads in agreement. Ukko spoke. “He’s small, for one of our stock. His colouring dark, not fair. His eyes…when he looks at me, I cannot hold his gaze. It’s like…”

“Like he was took by the Vaihdokas? A changeling?” Svin bridled and sat back.

“No…no, brother. Not that. Never. Of course not. We all saw his mother push him out, and he’s always been slight.” Ukko shook his head “I meant…that when you try to catch his eyes, it’s like he’s looking inside you.”

“That’s it!” said Kyosti - I didn’t have the words for it, but yes, that’s the look he has about him.”

“We shall have to hope the right Path will find him because neither he nor his bones speak of the Path he wants for himself. I only wish…I only want for him to Run a fair enough Path - in the judgment of others - that he be not made mockery of. To look at him, nobody will expect over-much. Just a fair Run for the boy, and I will be proud and happy for him.”

The men nodded and hmmmmed in agreement, raising their tankards.

A moon passes and soon it will be the vernal equinox, a time of growth, renewal and birth. The day of the Run when the young forge a Path and become what they are meant to be. Boy becomes man; girl becomes woman. It is in the way of nature that the girls Run their path a year before their brothers.

Ilmarinen always loves this time of year - the Kaivat-Messut - the spring fair, comes and with it the guilds and trades, merchants and mystics; brother and sister monks; magicians and artists; farmers, beastmen; hunters and makers and Warrior Miners. What he loves most, above all of the pageantry and display, are the strange beasts and machines that are brought. Things that have no purpose on a farm, things that he never gets to see but once or twice a year, if he’s lucky.

Who would not wish apprenticeship to the Warrior Miners? Boys of running age and younger crowd around their rugged cohort, clamouring to try and wield an earthaxe; carry a helm or ignite a gas lantern’s cold green flame. Most are wary of the beasts, the blinkered mayra with their iron-shod claws and unrelenting bite. But creatures like these are what Ilmarinen yearns to see.

If I could only touch them, see how their bones lie within their rough black striped hides. Could I know the secret of their power over the stones?

It was the same, his wondering mind, with all the animals and beasts that came and all the machines and artifacts. Telescopes, spring-driven engines and time-holders. Things with pieces within them that moved together to make wonders happen. But for him, the greatest wonder of all was what made life work.

When the spring wheel breaks, there is no mystery. But where does the life go when the machinery of an animal stops?

His mother and father had pressed him on the question of his Path with increasing persistence. “At least, then, tell us what garments we can bring you? You cannot Run with your work robes, lad. And what of a blade or some other tools? Tell us and we can gather what you need.”

“Will you trap for me a kotka, Mother, or some other great bird? Only, you must take him alive so I can ask him how he flies.” His mother laughed, but as this was the only thing he asked for, she honoured his wish. Amongst the family, all of them fashioned, foraged and borrowed all manner of things they thought would lbe of use. He was Svin’s only son, after all.

The day of the Runners’ Meet arrived, and Ilmarinen was carried aloft to the town square on the shoulders of Ukko and Svin. His rough farmer’s garb was gone and in its place he was clad in a waxed wool shirt and trews, a leather jerkin, hooded cape, knife belt, forage pouch and fire sticks. All manner of crafting tools hung on the belt; a water skin, pack and short bow across his back. In his pouch, he brought with him Lumikko, somewhat like a weasel and somewhat like a cat. He loved the smell of it’s fur, and its heartbeat was four times faster than his own, whatever time his own heart kept. He would not leave it behind.

Pa-pa-pa-pamm… pa-pa-pa-pamm he could feel it’s heart through the leather of his pocket.

Despite all his new clothing and equipment, Ilmarinen felt like neither one thing nor another. He didn't feel himself, whatever that was, but it didn't matter to him; in the square, standing tall amongst the Guildmasters and Clanlords, Stood Fornjot of the Warrior Miners. At his side, bristling, chain-bound and blinkered, Grimrir, legendary mayra. Her claws glinted, unbreakable in star-metal sheaths. I must lay a hand on her, if I can. I must know her was all Ilmarinen could think of.

His father urged him on and he was swirled into the crush of thrusting pubescent youth. A rolling wave of cheers and blaring hunting horns saluted the Runners. Over one hundred leagues some travelled to the Meet at Laaranion, the largest town before the great capital to the south. Laaranion’s proud reputation was to set the hardest Paths and forge the strongest men and women, honed on the rugged land, extremes of climate and dangerous beasts. Most importantly of all, this was the only region of the known world where mayra dwelt. Powerful, striking beasts, the most coveted of their kin; only a Warrior Miner could harness the mayra and ride them into the earth to the war-metal seams. Laaranion was their Guildhome.

Overwhelmed by the cacophony and tumult of sounds and smells, the crush of bodies and animals, Svin and Ukko pressed themselves against the side of a roast meat seller’s stall. The Runners Meet was not something they relished, for all its spectacle and wonders. They were content to stay back and watch for any sight of Ilmarinen, hoping he was holding his own in the circling throng. It was a hypnotic scene. Then, at the arrival of noon, marked by the Watchers in their curious crooked Guildtower, trumpets sounded and the crowd, as one, slowed to stillness and quiet. Fornjot mounted Grimrir, hefting his earthaxe high. Treading hammer blows, she ascended the podium; a retinue of Warrior Miners gathering below.

“Runners of Laaranion! You are come of age to make your Path! This land is the forge and you are the iron. This year marks your first Run, and the best of you may run three times more again, but only the very best of you!”

There were roars and horn blasts.

“Six nights and seven days have you each to find your Path and make your Run. There shall be trophies and honours for the Farthest Run…the Fastest Run…The Bravest Run…The Strongest Run and the Most Cunning!” At each pause, different groups within the crowd cheered, giving some indication of the Path they wished for.

“I am not a man of words and the laws of the Run are carved deep and old. They do not need my retelling. On the morning of the third day, the Hunt will follow you. Mark your deeds and claim your Path! Take trophies. If any should outrun the Hunt by nightfall on the seventh, then they will be made Champions!”

There came another, mightier roar from the crowds.

“Be bold, be brave but also be wise! There is no trophy for the Most Foolhardy! This is your first run, let it not be your last!”

The crowd ooooohed together at the warning, then more laughter came.

“There is but one Forbidding,” continued Fornjot “None may hunt Mayra! - Winter is the season for that challenge, and that winter is three years hence. Come home to your mothers with all your blood and bones!”

I must lay my hand on her.

The square erupted in cheers again. Then, like an eel in the mire, Illmarinen chose the moment to slip from the crowd and between the back slapping retinue of Warrior Miners, skins dark with mine dust, gold about their necks. He scaled the podium steps before anyone could stop him. From the back of the square Svin and Ukko jumped forward in shock at the sight. Great Goddess! What is he doing?! The cheers of the crowd turned from celebration to surprise.

Ilmarinen clambered up to the squat hulk of the armoured beast, taking in her thick musk, the sinew and bunched muscle of her haunches beneath the black and grey bristled pelt. Grimrir turned with a snarl, ears flat back, drawing up her body and readying a massive paw to strike at his unexpected approach. Fornjot in turn spun on the spot, bringing the brandished axe round to bear with a double handed grip.

Oh great mayra. I am no threat. It is my wish only to learn how your bones are knit and how beats your mighty heart.

Ilmarinen dipped his head and lowered himself on one knee, palms up and empty but eyes returning the gaze of the beast which towered over him. His wonder at the nature of her chased any fear away.

Fornjot did not strike; he expected Grimrir to take the head off the small wretch of a boy with a single swat of her paw, but instead, she lowered it and moved her muzzle towards the lad. There was no deadly blow; instead she took a deep sniff of him and growled a low rumble of greeting.

She speaks!

It was speech, but not in words, not spoken. Her thoughts reached out to meet Ilmarinen’s.

Strange man-cub. Curiosity. Greeting.

He reached forward with both his hands to touch the sides of her striped muzzle. All that she was inside was revealed to him and he was in awe. He saw how her bones lay within her; the muscles and the glowing pump of her heart, the flow of blood, the shimmer of thoughts in her head, unlike any other beast…and something else. In the chest, at the base of her throat between her forelegs, something dark, dense, without a living glow. It was some organ or muscle that he could not see within, and threads passed from it like roots into her body.

What is this,Grimrir? The dark part of you that no other creature has?

An eye. A nose. An ear. Whiskers of mind. A far tongue for iron.

Grimrir grumbled again and squatted back onto her haunches, sitting up almost like a dog.

Know it, man-cub.

Ilmarinen stood and pressed both hands into the fur of her chest. For an instant, before he pulled back his hands in shock and something like pain, his senses became one with hers. It was too much of an assault; sensations that were alien to him and which left an afterglow in his mind. When he closed his eyes, it was like he was inside a sphere of perception, extending all around him, above and into the ground. Dense amorphous shapes and fading colours lay within it. He opened his eyes.

I understand.

Grimrir extended a massive paw and laid it lightly upon his head. At this, Fornjot let out a mighty guffaw of laughter and thumped the head of his earthaxe to the wooden boards with a boom. He picked up Ilmarinen and swung him onto a shoulder, then turned to face the crowd.

“If there was a prize for most Foolhardy, then it would surely go to this one! Has there been an award for most Brave given before a Runner left the gates? What say you!” There were cheers again and much laughter. Fornjot swung him down.

“Do you Run this year, lad?”

“Yes, Lord Guildmaster.”

“And what’s the Path you seek, lad?”

“My way… isn’t clear, Lord.”

“Well, lad, you have a way with a beast that is rare indeed! Perhaps that is your Path!” Mirth cracked clean lines into the dirt of his face; the only thing that shone clean on a Warrior Miner was the burnished gold of their guild chains.

Fornjot turned to the crowd, raising up Ilmarine’s arm to the air with his hand, almost lifting him off the ground “What’s your name, lad?” he whispered down.

“Ilmarinen.”

“ILMARINEN! TAMER OF BEASTS WILL RUN!” he bellowed across a waving a sea of saluting arms. “RUNNERS! FORGE YOUR PATHS!” With a kick to the backside, Ilmarinen was sent into the crowd now racing from the square and carried along the high road to the Northern Gates.

-o()o-

The cart ride back to the village and their farms passed swiftly for Svin and Ukko, and all they could talk of was the shock and disbelief at what had occurred at the Kaivat-Messut.

“He’s always loved creatures, but small things from pond and hedge; that weasel he carries with him…but not…not that!”

“I would think my eyes were lying if you had not seen it too! Grimrir! He was fearless before her, and she honoured him! She honoured our boy!”

At the farm all the families were gathered, neighbours too. Some had been there with their boys or just for the spectacle; they could scarce believe the tale that Svin and Ukko recounted - Ilmarinen lauded by the Warrior Miner’s Guildmaster, braving the fearsome Grimrir.

“Some great path must lie ahead of him.” was their conclusion.

For Haanena, the news brought her joy. She worried for her strange young brother more than most. She spent the most time with him and saw the strangeness of his ways. She struggled to see where his place in village life, or in any trade or skill might lie, the way he spent hours searching out the company of animals; quiet and with a head filled with notions.

She had wanted to speak to father about something odd she had found in one of the sheds, up in the roof beams. A strange tangle of sticks and oilskins; hide bindings. She had never seen it before. For the moment, however, this was forgotten amongst the proud speculations of the family. They talked long into the night, and showed no sign of stopping, and as she felt tired, she excused herself.

Up in the raftercots, she spied something resting on Ilmari’s bed. It was a peculiar manikin fashioned from wood and reeds. He was clever with his hands, carved animals for her when they were younger, but this was something else. Attached to the manikin’s back were delicate wings, crafted from thin willow and silkleaf. Like kotka’s wings she thought.

Downstairs, they still talked of Ilmarinen and where he might be sleeping on his first night, or whether he would sleep at all.

-o()o-

Ilmarinen’s mind was not where his body was, but in the periphery of his perception, the stream of Runners was a flow that carried him along. He was some way from Laaranion before he realised he was alone and had come to a stop in the forest. Alone with nothing but the thought and the realisation that he had spoken with an animal. It was an animal!

He took Lumikko from his pocket. He was sleeping, but immediately woke in the warmth of Ilmarinen's hand and scampered up and down his arm, round his neck and in and out of his clothing. He caught hold of it and held it up to his face to study it, touching its chest between its delicate front paws as he had done with Grimrir. I wonder… are they beastkin? There was nothing, not even the tiniest speck of something like the dark mass within the Grimrir’s chest.

The sound of a stream made him realise he was thirsty, and he sat down on moss coated rocks beside the water to decide what he should do next. I must speak with the mayra again…but how? And what of the Run? Everything is uncertain now. While he thought on, he set Lumikko free to roam. He will be hungry, like me. It scurried off and then would return to drop small morsels - nuts, wild mushrooms and beetles - in front of him. At the sight of the food, his stomach growled. Can you sense what I am feeling, little friend? My gut speaks to you, even if I can’t. It would explain our heartbeats…explain many things…

Then the answer came to him; what he would do to take two birds with one bean…He stood with purpose, gathered up the foraged snacks for Lumikko, filled his waterskin afresh and checked all his gear. His little companion rustled out from the reeds, a worm in its mouth, leapt onto him and up into the pouch. You do sense my thoughts after all… Taking his bearings, Ilmarinen headed off.

-o()o-

In the Warrior Miners Guild, Fornjot tossed his armor to waiting squires and a few pennies to the burrow boy. There had been an especially magnificent pile of shit to deal with and keeping her burrow clean kept Grimrir in a better mood which was better for everyone. The dark holes of the mayra stable burrows steamed and muffled grunts could be heard as Fornjot strode up to the Long House. There would be talk, tonight, about the lad who had dared to approach a Warrior’s mount. If only he could talk to the beast and understand what had passed between them. It was unheard of that anyone should do as that lad had done, and escape with blood and bones intact. Unheard of, wasn’t it?. He would speak with the Archivists; there might be something in the histories.

In the burrows, Grimrir drummed at the walls and floor of her chamber rhythmically with her paws. Echoes came back to her from the mayra in their several burrows and throaty glottal sounds, almost too deep for a man to hear, passed through the tunnels and between the beasts.

-o()o-

Ilmarinen did not understand fear. He had a sense for what would be and what would not be. He did not fear what he sensed would be bad, he simply did the other thing. Spending hours watching nature at play around his home had shaped his philosophy.

A hunting bird will take lumikko when it can; the hunting fish will take samako when it can. Prey cannot escape its fate, but I am not prey; I do not lack a mind. I move from the dangers that I can see and never walk where hunters walk. The things that could harm me, then, are the dangers that I do not know, or the dangers that I choose to seek out, and such things hold no fear.

It was without fear, then, that he stood at the sheer cliff edge of the mountain guarding the mouth of the valley from which flowed the river Laara, namesake of the city of Laaranion. His folk at home imagined him many leagues hence by now, some three days into the week of the Run, but they were wrong. Once at the mountain summit, there was nowhere to go but down again, so Runners would not come here, reasoned Ilmarinen, not when the goal was to travel as far as possible with the hunt on your tail. If the Runners do not come, then the Hunt will not, and I will have the time I need.

Instead of running, Ilmarinen had made camp and foraged the strong sapling wood, resins, vines and broad silkleaves that were required for his plan. From his back pack he pulled out a small manikin - much like the one his sister had found in his raftercot. Then he sat and waited for sun to warm the day a little, and for kotka to take to the air.

And there they are!

The large birds circled up from below him, rising on the warming air currents under their graceful wings. Making some last adjustments to the miniature wings on his mannikin, Ilmarinen launched it away into the void before him. It dipped and seemed to start to fall, but then as it gathered speed, the head pulled up and it began to glide in a long, rising spiral, higher and higher until it was lost to view.

Ilmarinen was not afraid. The bones of his contraption mimicked the bones of kotka as did its shape match kotka’s wings. The whole was fashioned carefully and held strong and light with vine threads and resinous glue.

Come, Lumikko - today we are become birds!

With this, he launched himself out into the air. His plan was simple - it just needed his wings to work.

I shall circle and ride the air as high as I dare, and then when it cools and I begin to sink, I shall set myself toward the northern coasts. To hunt the mayra is forbidden, but to talk with them is not. If I call to them, they will come to me…I know it!

If honours had been important to him, he might have thought that, by virtue of his ingenious wings, the honours for the Farthest, Fastest, Bravest and most Cunning Runs would be his to claim. But such thoughts never came to him. He would never think himself worthy of honours, nor honours worthy of having. Through all the life he could remember, he had felt himself different; unlike his kin folk, unlike any animal that he had laid hands upon and gazed within. But then… his mind had spoken with Grimrir, and she had spoken back, laid a paw upon his head and bid him see into the depths of her.

He could not explain it. It made no sense - the mayra were surely beastkin to Lumikko , his little weasel - you had but to look upon them and the similarity was plain, if not the size. And yet …there was no living thing with which he had felt more kinship in that brief mind opening moment than the hulking war beasts. It made no sense, but still he knew what his Path would be - must be - and on his long wings he soared northwards towards it.