Kingdom: Chapter 1 - Newcomers (fiction)
In the Treeless Forest, two buzzards watch the approach of three unfamiliar creatures who bring with them a danger the world had long forgotten.
Welcome to Kingdom, an epic eco-fantasy by Ollie Francis.
Find archived chapters, short fictions and more at www.olliefrancis.co.uk.
“…For Junos welcomes weary hearts,
And travellers in his name,
To the place the gods still call their own,
Where life is born again.”
from The Forest of the Gods - A Godsong of Highwood
The buzzards had been aware of the newcomers for a moon or more, their presence drifting over the scentscape like pollen in summer. They brought the smell of sand and the dried mud of water holes, the panic of fire and the lingering rot of the grave. They had stayed at the limits of the treeless forest for the first moon, never venturing far from their camp, and the buzzards had watched them from a distance, wary of their strange appearance. All three walked on their hind legs like bears in combat, only dropping to all fours to clamber over the toughest terrain. Most of the time their forepaws hung limp by their sides or hooked around thin branches of moonstone that looped around their shoulders. Their skin hung loose from their bones as though their flesh had been stripped away from within. Occasionally one would glance up at the huge stone towers of the valley with huge, blank eyes that flashed in the midday sun, pale and flat as lake ice.
But now something changed in their behaviour. They were making their way closer day by day, scrambling noisily over the rubble floor clumsy as newborns.
The buzzards shuffled closer in their nest, pictures flowing between them like the morning air as they struggled to understand these strange new visitors.
The things were not bears, they decided. These newcomers were something else.
The buzzards themselves had only been in the stone forest for three moons, exchanging the harsh snows of winter back in the Kingdom for the unending heat as they crossed the Eastern Desert. They had left, the two of them together, flying out across the unending sands to nest here in this land of dust and stone. No trees, no plant at all grew in this place, though the hollow rock towers loomed tall as the pines of Northwood, stretching out in unnatural straight lines either side of the valley for a morning’s flight in either direction. This new land, dry as it was, allowed the children of the wind to hunt as they wished; to use beak and claw as the gods intended. Here there was no bloodwood tree and no groundling law to tie them down. In the treeless forest, they had the chance to be free.
But that freedom was threatened by the arrival of these new creatures. Whatever they were.
Today they were closer to the nest than ever before.
The smallest of the creatures stooped to examine some scrap among the boulders. The thing it found was the shape of a flat pebble with sharp, angular corners, small enough to be held in one of its forepaws. The buzzards had seen these things before. There were thousands of them rotting gently in tumbled piles within the vast caverns that riddled the stone towers and stinking of damp wood, which was strange considering there was not a tree for a day's flight in any direction. The two-legged creature took the edges of the pebble in its long, delicate claws and unfolded it, fanning its insides like the petals of a flower in bloom, fascinated by the patterns it had discovered.
The other two had finally spotted the nest and now began barking loudly at each other in excitement. The smaller one seemed not to hear the ruckus, absorbed in the pebble’s folds, and it wasn’t until the largest of the three creatures placed a paw on the small one’s shoulder that its attention jolted to their discovery and they began to sign to each other.
The birds knew the minds of earthbound animals were far too flat and literal for any meaningful communication but the signals made between these creatures down there seemed different to anything they had seen back in the bloodwoods. Moreover, the grunts and chirps that stood for emotion changed so quickly between the creatures that the birds started to fear for their sanity. If this was a symptom of hungerblight in their kind, the buzzards would have to be careful. A mindless animal would take greater risks than a sane one and would not back down as easily. Dissuading them from making the climb would be harder. And more dangerous.
Yet somehow they appeared to come to an agreement. The smallest of them ducked down behind one of the shell-like boulders that lined the valley and untangled a stiff length of moonstone from the hair on its back. It lay the stick on top of the boulder, resting its head gently against one end and angling the other up towards the nest until it was pointing straight towards the birds.
The buzzards watched, curious, and the creature stared back along the steady length of the moonstone branch with its cold, flat eyes. It never blinked. Not even once.
For a moment, they thought it might have died. Maybe if they waited long enough then the other two would drift away and the birds would find themselves with a cache of carrion that could last them weeks.
But the creature was not dead.
It let out a small, shallow breath.
Held it.
Pulled the trigger.
And sudden thunder shook the narrow valley.
Welcome to Kingdom, an epic eco-fantasy by Ollie Francis.
Find archived chapters, short fictions and more at www.olliefrancis.co.uk.
Series one of Kingdom was originally released as a podcast in 2022, found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and wherever else you can listen.
Support my work and Buy Me A Coffee.
