SEALS

Chapter 9: Wanda and the Turdle

A pair of small bare feet hit the dust and a black-haired head came bobbing out of the grass and weeds. Wander was drawing pictures in the dirt. He looked up as the neighbor-girl called him.

"Wanda! Wanda!" she called. Wander groaned.

She skidded to a stop in front of him in her tattered, dirty dress. "My name's not 'Wanda" the boy said with a scowl. "It's Wan-der. Remember the Er!"

"I gots somethin' ta show you, Wanda."

The girl was a little younger than he was, so he should have been more understanding of the lisp in her speech, but he was just a little boy. "Wander! WandER!" he said stamping his feet. "Wanda is a girl's name!"

And so it was in their culture, even though names could be varied and reflective of what people's occupations or interests were. Wander had always toddled off away from his parents and elder relatives as a toddler. When his parents had decided that he had a good enough shot at survival to bequeath him with an official name, "Wander" was what they picked. If the meaning is the same in Wander's native language as it is in the story you are reading, it is quite a lovely coincidence.

"You run like a girl," little Mono observed.

Wander pouted.

"Come on, Wanda, I gots ta show you somefin!"

Wander followed on down the path the girl made, letting his arms fail in that unique way he always did that prompted comments like Mono's. To be fair, she ran like a girl, too.

Mono stopped at a place in a grassy field outside her family's property. She pointed and chattered excitedly. "Isn't he neat? I tried ta pick him up, buuuutttt…"

"It's just a rock," Wander complained, until he saw it move slightly.

"It's a turdle!"

Wander laughed. "It is! Big ol' thing! I wonder where he crawled from."

The creature had feet that were flat and more like flippers than stumps. It had probably come from the rain-gutter swamp near the outer wall of the city-state.

Mono comically hiked up her dress and straddled her chubby little legs over the shell of the reptile. "I'magonna ride it, 'cause I can't pick it up."

"I bet I can pick it up!" Wander boasted. "I'm strong!"

Mono got off and let Wander struggle with her "turdle." He grabbed it by the edges of its shell and tried to lift it. He slid one of his little hands close to its front end.

"Ow!" the boy cried, "It bit me! It b-b-bit me!" He wailed a piercing child's wail.

Just then, Mono's father came out to the field to see what was going on.

"Wanda got bit," Mono said with a pouting lip.

"Let me see," the large man said. He examined the hand belonging to the neighbor-child. "It's alright. Just a little red. He's a boy, so he's gotta be tough."

The man effortlessly picked up the turtle, which pathetically flailed its limbs. "I think we're going to have turtle soup tonight. Quite a lucky find."

It was Mono's turn to cry. "Papa! Don't kill my turdle!"

"It is the only thing they're good for, sweetheart. You know that creatures are sacrificed so that others may live, that some are sacrificed so we can live."

Wander smiled as he rubbed his hurting hand with his healthy one. He couldn't be more pleased to have some turtle soup if Mono's parents had enough to spare for him.

The creature that had been disturbed from its slumber in the dry lake bed was horrible. It was tortoise-like, but quicker than any creature of the turtle and tortoise family Wander had ever seen. It's legs were long and took great strides. He thought of the beast as being something like a result of a successful mating between a turtle and a tick and the no doubt stone-like egg that was laid resulted in a Colossal offspring.

The young hunter rode his horse just out of range, galloping between spouting geysers. He noticed that they seemed to have a timing to them, the jets of water from each of them rather frequent. It seemed rather unlikely, yet that was how it was here in this magical yet gray land.

The damned tick-turtle spat bolts of lighting at him from some kind of generation organ beneath its face. Wander rode around, unsure of what to do until the Dormin spoke to him something cryptic about the energies of the earth. Then, entirely by chance, a geyser spouted just as the turtle-creature was over it, tipping it over. Wander rode toward it, forcing his dear brave mare to fight every survival-instinct she had, but she did trust him. He made short work pumping arrows into the glowing tender spots within the bottoms of his enemy's strange, cavernous feet.

The Colossus toppled and he ran to where it fell and squirmed. I flipped the 'turdle', Mono, he thought to himself as he ran toward its hairy belly. The young warrior was disappointed to find that the belly held no brightly glowing seals. He found himself climbing upon the stone-reptile's back as it righted itself.

I'm riding the 'turdle.'

As another piece of his soul was sacrificed as he made the ninth Colossus a proper sacrifice for the sake of his beloved. The already faded childhood saga of "Wanda and the Turdle" was an adventure he'd never recall again. Somehow, as he felt the memory leaving him, the hunter found it an appropriate price for an existence in which some lives are sacrificed for the sake of others.

The geysers spouted. The wielder of the sword of sacrifice was sent back to the central temple. Rocks grew moss. In endless day, the world went on.