Author's Note: Yes, this is a follow up to my previous story The War of the Dead. And while I will always recommend people go and read that, because I love that story so much, you shouldn't be lost with "The Small Ones" if you choose not to, as it's quite self contained.
Happy Reading XD
The people who Robin is born to will be given many different names in the years, the decades, the ages to come. Drúedain, Ogre, Savage, Caveman, Neanderthal – all of these are names he will hear and answer to over the years, the centuries of his death, but none of them applied in life. None of them, were what his people called themselves – of course he no longer recalls the exact word they used, but he remembers with a clarity that can only really come when one is dead, the meaning of the word.
The Family.
These are the first people the boy would meet in life. In his early years they were the only people. The only people that really existed in the world. In those first years of life where the entire world is the arms of your mothers and the smiles of your fathers. Of your siblings' laughter as you run to catch up with their greater footsteps.
But he grew older, and the world – the great scope and beauty of it all – came further into focus, and the boy came to understand that The Family were not the only people who walked this strange and grey coloured earth.
There were the creatures of course – the great Bears and Tigers, Mammoths and the rest who they hunted for their fur, and their meat. There were the birds and the fish, and the stars stuck high in the sky where no mortal creature could touch them.
But even as a small child he had understood those kinds of beings, no it was the others – the people who walked, and talked, and sung as the Family did. Those were somewhat more of a surprise.
For one thing there were the other Families – other tribes of their people who were not a father of his, or a mother, not a sibling but rather an uncle, or a cousin, or an aunt. These are the words he uses now, for it is the only way he knows, after his own tongue fades in his mind, to translate the memories. The feelings, the love he held for these people – these strangers that came up the hill to their cave one day – dressed in strange blue furs and with white bangles glittering on their arms. These are the words he uses, even though they are perhaps not the whole truth as a modern human might understand it.
They had come up from the colder, and strange lands to the North – his sisters had explained it to him, as they giggled over their strong hunter cousins. They came to trade of course, and hunt, and exchange gifts with their cousins. And most of all they came to find new members for their family. Their boys were grown strong and tall, and their girls had all begun to bleed with the moon – but they could not make babies with each other. For they were all too close of siblings, sharing birthing mothers, or spirit fathers twice over.
Not like them, his favourite sister had explained – he no longer remembers her real name, as he no longer remembers his own but he knows she shared it with a bird, like him. Although while his was small, hers was a great thing, a wise thing – an Owl. Their family was so large that it would be many years yet before they approached such danger, Owl had explained as she watched the largest of their cousins pose with a great spear.
Robin would never have to travel so far from his Family to help it grow, to help it stay alive. Not unless he chose to, not unless he wanted to. Some people left their homes, and never came back – and that was okay because they were still family. And the Family would always be family even if they lived all the way across the other side of the world. He hadn't understood what she'd been trying to tell him then, but maybe he did when at last the time for the cousins to go home came, and Owl…Owl went with them.
He screamed for her to stay.
He begged for her to stay.
But her heart lay with their cousins.
With the short cousins, and the big one, and the reedy ones, and the girl ones.
Her heart didn't lie with him and their Family anymore, and he couldn't make it.
No matter how hard he screamed, he couldn't make it.
Some of the cousins had stayed behind, just as some of the family had left. Owl was not the only sibling he had lost that day, simply the one that broke his heart.
After Owl left the boy no longer wished to play with his siblings or his cousins, or anyone anymore. When he wasn't needed for meals or the hunting lessons, he would find secluded places to be alone in. To be alone with his own thoughts, his own misery.
Sometimes he would splash about in the small pool just below the Family's cave, catching the tiny fish or frogs that made it their home in the cup of his own tiny hands. He'd think about running back up to the cave to show Owl and their sisters what he had caught – but then he remembered that she was gone, and many of their sisters went with her. So always he would let the things drop back into the pool, and go to find something else to do.
It was on such a day, his hands still wet from the pool, when he found the hole. He uses that word because at the time he knew no other way to describe the place his careless footing had tumbled him into. It was a hole, a hole in the ground. Though not a nasty, dirty hole like one might find the ground animals of the land burrowing into. No, it was large and spacious – large enough at least, for a child like himself to stand up in, without banging his head on the sharp stones lodged in its roof.
It was long too, seemingly more a never-ending interconnected series of tunnels than an actual hole – but still his young mind had settled on that name for his new playhouse, and so it remained 'hole' forever more.
Even now, after having seen so much more in both life and death, he would struggle to properly describe his little hideout – so 'hole' is the word he shall use. For truly it doesn't really matter what he called the place – but rather what it gave him. The perfect place to hide from the worried looks and concerned glances of his family. When it all got too much for the young boy, he would disappear into the forest and climb down into the cool private comfort of his hole.
Eventually he began to fill the place with his own trinkets and treasures. The beak of the bird from his first successful hunting trip, the spear the eldest of his fathers had given him on his birthday last winter.
This was his home, far more than the larger cave – with his parents, siblings, and cousins – could ever be now. Now that Owl was gone, now that she would never come back.
And for a time, well, he would not say that he was happy – but at the very least he had found some contentment. Safe as he was buried in his small, little hole in the ground. But he knew it could not last, for his mothers, and his fathers for that matter, were becoming more and more afraid for him. Worried looks across the fire pit when he would turn away from the games of his year mates. Words of worry when he would lose his patience and try and slip away before the safety of the cover of night.
He knew this stalemate with his grief, this brief contentment could not last. Eventually they would find where he vanished in his free time, and then everything would be ruined. Whether or not they forbid him from returning to his hole, or opened it up for the other children did not matter, his solitude would be ended either way.
He hated the thought – but there was no way to stop it, eventually someone would find his hole, and then all would be ruined.
Just like it had been before the Hole.
He knew it would happen, but if he was to be honest with himself, he'd never thought it would happen quite like it actually did.
The boy had many fathers within the Family, all the children did. For in their clan all men were Fathers, and all women were Mothers.
Every adult took a parenting role to the next generation – but in truth not all parents took their roles as seriously as others.
They called him the Wandering Father, for he could never be made to stay with the family for very long. He said it was because of his role as their trader, but all the children had known the truth of it. He left because he did not truly wish to be Father.
That was okay, for back then Robin had not wanted to be a son, or a brother for that matter. What did it matter if the Wanderer stayed away from their family for moons on end? What did anything matter at all?
Nothing did back then, on that day when Robin had come back from his hole in the ground to find the rest of the family clustered round…something.
He'd been so tired with everything back then, that he had almost considered just crawling under the sleeping furs. Leave the others to their fun, let him get some rest while they were distracted. And yet the spark of curiosity had yet to die in his breast, and so instead he had wandered over.
He had stood behind his twin brothers, on his tippy-toes, to see beyond their too-wide shoulders. Even with that stretch, he only just managed to glimpse the bright shiny rock the Wanderer held up, to the gasps and amazement of the others before Robin tipped over.
A crash.
And a bang.
And Robin was lying flat on his bottom – eyes, so many annoyed eyes, now on him. Annoyance, after so many moons of pushing them away, of his own anger and distance, this was the emotion that the boy was greeted with.
Good.
He didn't want pity.
He didn't want love.
He just wished they'd all leave him alone.
Turn away and go back to their Stone.
Some of his brothers did, and his sisters, turning from the sight of his fall with a scoff. Then the other fathers slowly turned back to the children that actually wanted their love and attention. Many of the mothers had already wandered away, they were needed round the cooking fire, or to skewer the meat. So they hadn't seen the boy's humiliation anyway.
As for the rest, the babies on their knees or at their breasts were much more interesting than him.
Robin didn't look at the Wanderer, for he did not matter, nor his stupid shiny stone either.
No, the only thing that really mattered to Robin back then, or so he had convinced himself – was getting up off that stupid cave's floor. Getting up and running back, back to the safety of his little hole in the ground.
He'd been so focused on that, on getting away from the cluster of the family, that he hadn't even noticed that a pair of eyes were still on him.
Still followed him, as he ran out of that cave and vanished deep into that great forest surrounding their home. Though to be fair, by that point he was so far away he wouldn't have noticed a pair of eyes following his footsteps even if he had cared.
The boy had fallen asleep, curled up like a rabbit in his hole under the ground. He knew it was probably already dark outside, but he didn't particularly care. After all, he had finally gotten his wish– no one cared enough to go looking for him. Not after dark anyway.
He could stay here all night if he so wanted.
He could stay in this hole in the ground for the rest of his life if he so chose. And maybe he would, it was big enough for him, he could hunt and fish for himself – just about anyway. And if the others were finally done with him, maybe it would be better to stay here by himself.
He had come to this conclusion, not through careful deliberation and a weighing of all options available to him, but rather through the fog of a barely awake mind.
Perhaps if he had fallen back to sleep, and let the exhaustion that had weighed him down since…Owl had left…pass, he would have rethought such a plan. Would have finally climbed back to the cave, perhaps apologised to his fathers and Mothers - maybe even cried, been embraced by the Family. Settled down at last, grown up to be a hunter or a gatherer, or a maker of spears. Raised children in the family, grown old.
But that wasn't how this story played out.
Robin didn't get back to sleep.
He didn't wake up refreshed or happy at last, and he certainly wouldn't climb up to the cave himself.
No, he woke to the loud thumping of feet on his hole's roof. And the ever so persistent tinkle of sprinkles of dirt falling on his face. Which had been the only warning he'd received, before the roof came crashing down.
Fortunately, he was able to roll out of the way before the man, the man that had broken his roof, came tumbling down after it.
As the man lay there, panting and laughing in the ruin of Robin's hole in the ground – the boy realised with some irritation that he recognised the fool.
It was the Wandering Father.
He was muddy, and covered in all manner of creepy creatures that crawl under the dirt – but it was him, undoubtedly.
After all, what other adult would have gone so far away from the cave while the light of the moon still shone in the sky.
For more than a second the two lay there, staring up at the new hole in the roof, and the moon that shone down upon it. And then the man laughed and sat up, brushing the bugs and the worms from his fine beard as he said.
"I had no idea there had ever been Small Ones in our lands."
"Small Ones, sir?" Said the boy, now startled out of his own fear and irritation, by this new information.
"Of course…boy…this is one of their holes. Long abandoned of course, hard to say for how long. Maybe an age, a bear life, a man's – probably longer. There was talk of them in the wooded hills when I was a lad, but that was many lifetimes ago now, and even then, those were only rumours. We never saw anything."
Robin was keenly aware, even as young as he was, that the Wanderer referred to him simply as 'boy' most likely because he did not actually remember his name. But what was that next to the knowledge that the man did possess.
"If they built such a place, why would they ever leave it?" If it had been in Robin's power, he certainly wouldn't have.
When he next spoke, the Wanderer was not looking at Robin at all – but rather gazing past the mess he had made, and into the wonder of the finally crafted tunnels that had not collapsed beneath his feet.
"Oh many, many reasons I suppose. Perhaps they outgrew it – the stories say they had many, many children did the Small Ones. For it was not only the women of their race that could bear the young. Or perhaps there was a great sickness – they were not prone to chills and colds as we are, but the Death Sickness will take all. Or perhaps they simply left because we arrived."
As he spoke, he stood up – though unlike Robin, he was so tall that he had to stoop slightly less he find his head outside of the hole entirely, and brushed the dirt from his fine furs.
"Why would they leave because of us?"
The Wanderer's head snapped down, to finally look at Robin, small and covered in dirt as he was. He frowned, and said in a much softer voice.
"I do not think they care for outsiders anymore. If they ever did, tell me boy - when did you find this Smial?"
Robin did not recognise the word that was used, but context clues were everything in these situations. So, he took a stab at answering anyway.
"Several Moons ago, Father."
The Wandering Father's cheek twitched at the title, in a way that Robin would eventually come to see as an expression of irritation.
"And you did not tell anyone else about it?"
The words were a rebuke, but the tone was not, which confused Robin all the more.
"No, I wanted to be alone. Because Owl is gone, and I will never see her again."
The Wanderer did not ask who Owl was – at the time it had been inconceivable to Robin that anyone could not know her. Him perhaps, sure, he was small and not very interesting, but never Owl. Everyone must know Owl, and all who knew her must love her. Thus, surely that was why the Wanderer did not need to ask her name – and yet looking back on it now, with so many years of life and death behind him, Robin considers it far more likely that the Wanderer did not ask, because he simply did not care.
After all, who was Owl to the Wanderer, just one of his many daughters who he would never see. Robin on the other hand, Robin was different. He had been wandering himself these past few moons, and had discovered the home of the Small Ones with assistance from no one. Those tiny creatures of legend that the Wanderer's own childhood had been spent in the pursuit of.
Yet he had never found anything like this hole in the ground.
Perhaps it was luck, or perhaps it was something else – something like an innate ability, something that drew him to the hidden places in the world. And to the other people that dwelled within. Even now Robin himself is not entirely sure, though given what he said next – it was likely that the Wanderer's hope was firmly planted in the latter's camp.
"How old are you boy?"
"Ten Winters, Father."
Another twitch of the cheek, but the Wanderer persisted.
"Old enough then, to be considering a trade. Tell me, where do your passions lie?"
"Passions? I have none, Father. I can hunt well enough, and I suppose I can make my own spears – but I don't really enjoy things anymore."
"That is a stupid answer, everyone enjoys doing something. So, tell me, what do you enjoy?"
Robin thought for a moment. He enjoyed being alone. He enjoyed exploring the woods, and finding new places he'd never seen before. But that was not an answer adults really accepted, at least not without a lot of frowning and sighs – thus he did not really want to voice them again.
But he did not need to, for the Wanderer seemed to read his mind.
"Have you ever thought of becoming a trader? It would of course take you very far away from the Family at times, and that is not a life for everybody. But you would be able to travel to new places, meet people you've only heard of in fire stories. And it is always a trade that is needed in the Family.
"Right now, I am the only one who performs it, and we are becoming much too isolated. The next generation needs to step up. I'd hoped to find an apprentice or two among our sons and daughters, but the others are much too comfortable in the cave.
"But you are not. And perhaps you think it is only your grief that made you run from the cave today, but I would wager it is something more. Something greater that calls to you, that pulls you out into the wider world beyond our family. I know it, because I have felt it too."
Robin bit his lip, and considered, he had never truly thought of having a proper trade before. But this was one that did appeal to him. But he had one question, that he must have answered first.
"And I could see Owl again?"
And at that the Wanderer smiled, and raised his shoulders in a shrug.
"Perhaps, we will see many birds in our travels, why not an Owl."
Robin had grinned at that, believing that his Wandering Father had just assured him that he would indeed see his sister again. And yet looking back now, it seemed much, much more likely that the Wanderer had thought the boy had been talking about an actual owl.