A Journey of a Thousand Seasons Book 1 (Journey Series) Read online

  A Journey of a Thousand Seasons

  Robert J. Matsunaga

  chapter 1

  A Path Begins for Tenashar

  In ancient times, in another existence, when earth was a very different place, when history was very different, the cultures were very different. The people and their architecture, politics, social norms, language, arts, sciences—all things—were different from what we are familiar with. It was a world in which history took a different course. Though the flora was the same, the fauna was very different. During this time of change, it was said, the Senetha were a prosperous people who lived in many villages scattered across the plains and forests of a great continent. They were great navigators and mapmakers who traded with all the known peoples of the world. Some people lived high in mountains, deep underground, or on islands of the great inland sea.

  The village looked as though it had grown naturally out of the plains; Senethian buildings were rounded in all ways—points and angles were considered unlucky. Some of their structures looked like domes stacked on top of domes, while others resembled honeycombs or spiderwebs, but all were arranged in pleasing artistry. Every form of nature was an inspiration to Senethian architects, who used steel, concrete, glass, and a soft material resembling plastic for their buildings.

  The Senetha believed the entire universe was connected by the thoughts of people, animals, plants, and even dirt and stone. All was interwoven, like the links of a chain, the reeds of a basket, or the threads of cloth. While they believed everything had a spirit, they felt these spirits were other beings—neither gods above them nor beings below them. They did not name every spirit, for that would have been a burden, but they had names for great things, such as the sun and the atmosphere, which were revered.

  Among the Senetha were specially gifted people, teachers of wisdom, those naturally versed in all arts and skillful in all crafts—great scientists, mathematicians, engineers, architects, musicians, scholars, and spiritualists gifted in every endeavor important to the Senetha and others.

  The chief of the Senetha lived in a village near the mountains. His was not a large or special dwelling, for the size of a Senethian home had less to do with social rank than it did with personal desire for a large or a small dwelling.

  Though the ancient Senetha faded away, their footsteps were still felt by those who walked the same paths. Anyone passing the past home of a Senetha may feel his or her presence, a current or a breeze passing through the body.

  Among the Senetha were some who had powers few even of their own knew about. Some could talk with the winds and receive warnings of changes in the weather. With soil in hand, a Senetha farmer with such powers could feel the best way to make crops grow better. Of all the gifted Senetha, in all the many seasons of the people’s history, Tenashar stood out.

  Tenashar was a lean, brown-skinned boy on the cusp of adulthood. His thick, straight hair shaded from light brown near his face to black braids twined with colored wires and hanging to his chest. His gaze was intense; his deep-brown eyes were large. Many said that Tenashar’s eyes always reflected distant places. His face was round like a child’s and yet still rugged enough never to be mistaken for anything but the face of a man. His strong, wiry body was also clearly becoming that of a man.

  Tenashar’s one imperfection was a limp. As a young child, Tenashar had fallen from a tree and had broken his leg. He never spoke of it, and no one asked, so no one could say it pained him. Perhaps it was because his bone did not heal in the proper way. For all his strengths––he was strong and deft, handsome and talented—Tenashar was never to be a warrior. The talents he had were the ability to sense the elements, to know when it would rain, what soil was good for planting, and the temperature. He had intellectual understanding of the arts, the sciences, history, and other academic matters.

  Etutsha, the leader of the young men of the tribe, was a tall boy with a beautifully built body and a handsome face. He prided himself on his skills, but he was still jealous of Tenashar, which caused him to taunt Tenashar. “No one comes near you! You’re always alone. You smell and look like something dead. That’s why you live a sedimentary life of nothingness,” Etutsha would taunt Tenashar.

  Though Tenashar was set apart from the other young men, he was not alone. The women of the tribe found Tenashar attractive despite his limp, but this of course created only greater ill will among the other males.

  Tenashar was known to retreat into a private world; he often appeared brooding and moody, though in truth he was simply deep in thought and not acknowledging the world. This deep contemplation allowed him to develop his powers in ways he could never have learned from others, even his teacher Heitac.

  Heitac, an elderly, wise woman, had long, flowing, tangled white hair that seemed to flow like fire. It framed a deep-brown face with wrinkles that conveyed her wisdom. Her eyes and smile, on the other hand, conveyed compassion that invited everyone to draw near. Her body seemed fragile, but she led a healthy life. Her arms were strong, and her fingers were nimble. She was skillful and knowledgeable beyond others in the tribe, who regarded her as grandmother. People from the farthest villages sought her advice and counsel. Heitac advised her students, “When it’s dark, search for the power within you to walk in the future without fear.”

  She had been a respected teacher for many, many turns of the seasons. She had trained many of the council members when they were children, not the least of which was Sanashei, Tenashar’s father, a wise man. Like Tenashar, Sanashei was tall and lean, a muscular man with brown skin and a sharp nose that evoked a warrior’s spirit. His thin lips naturally fell into a smile, and the deeply furrowed brow showed him to be a man of reason.

  Tenashar’s father was the leader of the Senetha, elevated to this important office because of his wisdom and great understanding of nature. Leaders of the Senetha were selected by their people, chosen for their abilities, and could be young or old, male or female. Sanashei had already served as leader for many, many seasons, guiding his people through peace and calamity, including storms that almost destroyed the crops and unexpected floods from an otherwise benign river.

  Sanashei had hidden powers; he could see events in the past and correlate them with recorded history. He could read people’s minds, thus understanding their feelings. He understood all things in nature through his studies of biology and his ability to sense the souls of living things. He understood that his son had similar abilities, although he never told Tenashar about them, for he wanted the boy to learn his own abilities through trial and error.

  Sanashei knew his son was destined to join him in the ranks of the Aura-Laei-I, as the Senetha called the shamans, the wise ones of the village. Aura-Laei-I were very valued, and while few could ever become great teachers, they were more numerous than most realized; they did not wear badges of their office, so most people moved through their lives without ever realizing the aid they received from these folk who lived among them.

  Sanashei’s ability to see through a person, probing deeply into his or her innermost thoughts with just a glance, was one of his chief strengths, although he rarely used this power. Tenashar was destined to have power as well, though perhaps not channeled the same way as his father’s. For instance, the young man’s powers of observation and intellect were far beyond that of ordinary people. Words of wisdom came so often and so easily to him that others naturally felt the spirits favored Tenashar, though this did not stop the jealousy among the young men of the tribe.

  It is known, for things can be seen much more easily once they have passed, that people from a faraway place had chose
n Tenashar for a great destiny. Where did these people come from, and most important, who were they? Some Senethian astronomers called them visitors from beyond the stars. A few would even say they were invisible spirits from other dimensions, as told in old tribal legends from generations past.

  It was said often, and was true, that Tenashar was not perfect and could not become a warrior, but this had ceased to be the highest aspiration for young male Senetha, who had not faced true conflicts for longer than any could remember. The tribe’s warriors were active mainly in its ruling council, and their opinions were valued, yet the wise men and the secretive Aura-Laei-I were at times opposed to their views. Nonetheless, not yet understanding his destiny, Tenashar still felt a bit ashamed he could not join the ranks of the warriors, for this would have guaranteed him a place on the council. However, deep in his heart, neither of these things truly interested him. His future was along a path different from those others had taken.

  chapter 2

  The Orbs

  The Senetha believed everything had a spirit; they considered all nature as having varying degrees of sentient life and thought all things were alive, each with a purpose to fulfill. They believed everything had a balance—every person, every spirit had its good and bad sides, its creative and destructive elements.

  They believed there was a consciousness that the sun, which they called Tachmalo, was a part of. They knew the sun could not grant divine wishes, but many believed it had feelings. Because it provided warmth, the Senetha gave their respect to the sun, but they never worshiped it.

  Not all believed that the sun was an entity unto itself, but none, not even the scientists, disputed that it could grant life or take it away. Without the sun’s heat, the crops would not grow, but that heat could also scorch crops during times of drought.

  To balance the sun’s creative and destructive sides, the Senetha had Cemola, the name they gave the atmosphere, which protected the world from powerful elements from space. Cemola soothed the heat from the sun, protecting the land much as a lantern’s glass keeps the flames in check. However, Cemola could also block the warmth needed by the grains and blight the harvest.

  Did they really believe in these spirits? To the learned Senetha, Tachmalo and Cemola represented the spirits of these things and the real things of nature and science, yet they understood that certain matters were beyond explanation. Senethian astronomers were well aware of the danger of the sun’s rays if not filtered by the atmosphere, and the mathematicians had studied nature with great objectivity. They understood the force that drove the seasons and the weather were very important.

  However, not all things fell into this balanced view of life. None of the Senetha knew that the dreaded Orbs were biological machines, never a part of nature. The Orbs had been built long before by humans who knew how to combine biological, mechanical, and electrical technology to form living computers. These biomachines autonomously tended to the fields and manufactured what the humans required.

  However, what the Orbs had been intended for had become distorted after the civilization that had built them had been destroyed in a nuclear war. The Orbs that existed at the time of the Senetha were very jarring—they appeared and destroyed; they were devoid of a positive side, a balance. They seemed to have no spirits, putting them outside the proper order of things.

  For generations, the Senetha had told stories of the Orbs, which they thought may have come from another world. Orbs appeared seldom—once in many generations—leaving them to be forgotten, or turned into myths, so when they would come, no one was ever prepared.

  It was said that when they appeared, there would be no warning, and all living creatures in their sights would be turned into ash and their life force drained. Nobody ever knew where these creatures came from. Some learned men said they came from the stars, far beyond the sun. Others argued that the great cities that once inhabited the land had created them many thousands of years earlier, but these arguments were made long after the time of which I speak, so Tenashar knew nothing of this thought.

  No one could say with certainty when they first came to the world or the last time they had visited. Perhaps some of the scholars knew the truth, but they chose to say nothing. Most scholars believed that every story about the Orbs was nonsense, ancient foolishness, or perhaps a long-forgotten metaphor. Many centuries had passed since any could truly claim to have seen one of these fabled Orbs—no rumor had even passed of them since the time of Tenashar’s great-grandfathers.

  Even so, certain legends pointed to a time when great cities dominated the land where the Senetha lived. Scholars debated with council leaders about the long-dead cities that none had ever seen, and scientists said both were in error. Perhaps only Tenashar’s father, Sanashei, knew the answers, but he never said a word. Because he chose not to enter the debate, it was assumed by many he was the wisest in the village.

  Everyone debated the very existence of the Orbs, even though the stories had been passed down for generations, stories that Orbs descended from the sky and did not resemble anything known to the Senetha. The Orbs bore no resemblance to or kinship with any living animal—hawk, bear, buffalo, snake, rabbit, or any other.

  The closest creature the old tales could compare the Orbs with was the jellyfish, though some legends compared them to tiny suns, floating stones, large berries, or water bladders. Other legends spoke about how the Orbs propelled themselves with thin tentacles across ground, but some writings mentioned that Orbs flew and hovered by expelling a gas or manipulating a magnetic field.

  As the tales were old and varied, however, they were judged unreliable, for no one living had seen the Orbs or could imagine such monstrosities.

  The rarest and most forgotten of the tales, perhaps because these stories had come from distant, ancient tribes, gave the Orbs a common form, that of glowing spheres of light. However, these stories also mentioned that Orbs had some kind of consciousness and even intelligence greater than that of humans. The scholars of Tenashar’s time did not place any belief in these wild legends; they questioned how anyone could know what the ancients had actually seen.

  All legends agreed on their power and destructive force, however. When they appeared, the land below them was left burned and dead. They hung in the sky and somehow devoured all life. Some spiritualists had said that even Tachmalo, the sun, could not generate such power.

  It was said that in some ways the Orbs and their glowing bodies resembled the sun, because they could generate beams of light in all directions. As a result, many of the ancient people first thought the Orbs were beneficial or friendly. They very swiftly found out differently as the Orbs’ fire destroyed everything—crops, animals, people, and the land itself.

  The students of ancient writings had disagreed that the Orbs were alive; they believed that people who had lived in the remote past or people from another world had created the Orbs the way a woodcarver brings a carving of a hawk out of a knot of wood.

  Techmolan, another spirit the Senetha had named, did not represent anything that could be seen or felt—rather, it represented balance itself. Its function was to bring equilibrium to the invisible winds that drove all the life forces flowing through and circling the earth continually like rivers. The Senetha had believed this long in the past, but in Tenashar’s time, many no longer believed in the stories of Techmolan. When the Orbs appeared, however, many renewed their faith in Techmolan as they cried out for someone to return balance to the world.

  One day, the Senetha received a report that Orbs were descending from the skies in distant places. Those who brought this news said that when one of these terrible things appeared in the sky, it would draw the life out of everything the way a flea draws blood, but with incredible force, and kill the grass and trees, the mountains, oceans, and skies. Plants withered and turned brown as if from lack of water, then black, and then they crumbled to dust. The fruits, leaves, and even the bark of the trees—the trees themselves—disintegrated in the same manner
. The rivers would run dry, and the sky where the Orb hung would turn an odd purple and brown color. The clouds seemed to simply evaporate. Those affected didn’t understand this, not having learned the stories the Senetha had from long ago.

  As the Orbs came, many people panicked and tried to hide in the forests, but this provided very little protection, for the Orbs merely sapped the life of the trees that hid them. Their homes turned to ash as the Orbs moved relentlessly across villages and fields, rivers and plains. No one passed more than a minute in thoughts of fighting back, for even the mightiest warrior could not attack an enemy far in the sky, and anyone who got close enough to fight would be burned to a cinder. The people were frightened; the destruction they had witnessed was beyond anything they had ever seen. The villages that had survived were merely those lucky enough to be out of the path of the Orbs.

  Survivors who fled swiftly enough to avoid the destruction passed on descriptions of the invaders. They said each Orb looked like a giant, hovering bladder propelled by an unknowable force. Below each Orb was a tube, a hollow beam of light hanging from its belly, that groped the ground for living things. Those who had been close enough to get a glimpse behind an Orb’s intense glow all said it had mottled, gray skin but seemed to have no eyes, nose, or mouth.

  One man even claimed the Orb’s entire body swelled as it devoured everything below it, but many thought he must have been too close and had been driven mad, for he also claimed these monstrous things sometimes would stop their relentless eating and merely hang in space, as if asleep. And yet, everyone, even those who had not believed all the stories, thought the Orbs were not simple, mindless tragedies such as floods or avalanches—they were attackers.

  When the Orbs came into sight of the Senetha, farmers could only stand and watch as their crops wilted and the soil turned a charcoal black.

  Tenashar saw the Orbs for the first time when the deadly things slowly moved toward the main village. All could see the things coming from a great distance away and thus had some slight time to prepare to flee, for Sanashei knew they could never defeat the Orbs. Some of the young people wanted to stay and defy the Orbs, but Sanashei told them this was unwise and gave orders for the people to abandon their homes and save their lives.