Midnight at the Well of Souls

“Hmmmm… Dull stuff but I can see your point,” the other sympathized. “Crindel got stuck under Elder Mudiul on some esoteric primitive game an Entry dropped on us about three hundred years ago. Seems it has almost infinite patterns after the first few moves, and there was this project to teach it to a computer. Couldn’t be done. Weird stuff. Almost went off to the Meditations and rotted, Crindel did.”

“How’d the Worthy get out of it?” the first one asked.

“Mudiul got a virus and it got the Elder quarantined for nine years,” chortled the other. “By the time the Worthy got out the Board had closed down the project and redistributed the staff. The Old One’s got off on whether rocks have souls, and that ought to keep the Worthy out of harm’s way until rot wipes the Worthy.”

They went on like that for some time, and the conversation did little to clear up anything in Vardia’s mind. About the only useful fact that came out of the discussion was the obvious limits of third-person-singular pronouns in the language.

She noticed that both wore gold chains around their necks as their only adornment of any kind, but, trying not to be conspicuous, she couldn’t see what was fastened to them.

They had been walking for some time now, and several other things came into her mind. First, the locals seemed to live in communities. She passed groups of them here and there, their numbers ranging from three or four to several dozen. Yet there were no signs of buildings. The groupings seemed to be like camp circles, but without the fire. Occasionally she could glimpse mysterious artifacts here and there in the midst of the groups, but nothing large enough to stand out. Some groups seemed to be singing, some dancing, some both, while others were engaged in animated conversations so complex and esoteric that they melded into a tuneful chatter like a blending of insects.

Also, she was aware very suddenly, she felt neither tired nor hungry. That was a good thing, she reflected, since she had no idea what these people ate.

She continued to think in her own, old language, but had no trouble understanding others with their singsong chirping so alien to her.

The two she had been following took a side path down toward a large grouping that was gathered in a particularly attractive spot. It was a pastoral setting of multicolored flowers and bushes alongside a fast-flowing stream.

She stopped at the junction of the main road and the access trail to the lake, partially blocking the side trail. Someone came up behind her and brushed past her, making her conscious of her blocking.

“I’m sorry,” she said automatically and stepped to one side.

“That’s all right,” the other replied and continued on.

It was almost a full minute before she realized that she had spoken and been understood!

She hurried after the being who had spoken, now far ahead.

“Wait! Please!” she called after the creature. “I need your help!”

The other stopped and turned, a puzzled expression on it.

“What seems to be the trouble?” the creature asked as she came up to him.

“I—I am lost and confused,” she blurted out to the other. “I have just—just become one of you, and I don’t know where I am or what I’m supposed to do.”

Realization hit the other. “A new Entry! Well, well! We haven’t had an Entry in Czill in my lifetime! Well, of course you’re confused. Come! You shall sleep with us tonight and you will tell us of your origin and we’ll tell you of Czill,” it said eagerly, like a child with a new toy. “Come!”

She followed the creature down to the grove. It moved very quickly, and eagerly gathered its companions as fast as possible, excitedly telling them that they had an Entry in Riverbend, as the camp was apparently called.

Vardia took all the attention nervously, still bashful and unsure of herself.

They gathered around asking questions by the hundreds, all at once, each one canceling out the others in the general din. Finally, one with a particularly strong voice appealed for quiet over the noise, and after some work, got it.

“Take it easy!” it shouted, making calming gestures. “Can’t you see the poor one’s scared to death? Wouldn’t you be if, say, you went to sleep this night and woke up a Pia?” Satisfied, it turned to Vardia and said gently, “How long have you been in Czill?”

“I—I have just arrived,” she told them. “You are the first persons I’ve talked to. I wasn’t even—well, I wasn’t sure how.”

“Well, you’ve fallen into the worst pack of jabbering conversationalists,” the one with the loud voice said, amusement in its tone. “I am Brouder, and I will not try to introduce everyone else here. We’ll likely draw a bigger and bigger crowd as word of you gets around.”

It was interesting, she thought, that such weird whistlings and clickings should be instantly translated in her mind to their Confederacy equivalents. The creature’s name was not Brouder, of course—it was a short whistle, five clicks, a long whistle, and a descending series of clicks. Yet that was what the name said in her mind, and it seemed to work in reverse as well.

“I am Vardia Diplo Twelve Sixty-one,” she told them, “from Nueva Albion.”

“A Comworlder!” someone’s voice exclaimed. “No wonder it wound up here!”

“Pay the critics no mind, Vardia,” Brouder told her. “They’re just showing off their education.” That last was said with a great deal of mysterious sarcasm.

“What did you do before you came here?” someone asked.

“My job?” Vardia responded. “Why, I was a diplomatic courier between Nueva Albion and Coriolanus.”

“See?” Brouder snorted. “An educated one!”

“I’ll still bet the Apprentice can’t read!” called out that one in the back.

“Forget the comments,” Brouder urged her with a wave of its tentacle. “We’re really a friendly group. I was—is something the matter?” it asked suddenly.

“Feeling dizzy,” she replied, the ground and crowd suddenly reeling a bit. She reached out to steady herself on Brouder. “Funny,” she muttered. “So sudden.”

“It comes on like that,” Brouder replied. “I should have thought of it. Come on, I’ll help you down to the stream.”

It took her down to the rushing water, which had a strangely soothing effect on her. It walked her into the water.

“Just stand here a few minutes,” the Czillian told her. “Come back up when you feel better.”

Automatically, she found, something like tendrils were coming out of small cavities in her feet and were digging into the shallow riverbed. She drank in the cool water through them, and the dizziness and faintness seemed to evaporate.

She looked at the riverbank and saw that they were all watching her, a line of fifteen or twenty light-green, sexless creatures with staring eyes and floppy leaves on their heads. Feeling suddenly excellent once more, she retracted her tendrils and walked stiffly back to the bank.

“Feel all right now?” Brouder asked. “It was stupid of us—you naturally wouldn’t have had much water in you. You’re the first Entry in some time, and the first one ever for us. Please, if you feel in the least bit strange or ill, let us know. We take so much for granted.”

The concern in its voice was genuine, she knew, and she took comfort from it. All of them had looked concerned when she had been out in the river.

She really felt she was among friends now.

“Will you answer some of my questions, then?” she asked them.

“Go ahead,” Brouder told her.

“Well—these will sound stupid to you all, of course, but this whole business is entirely new to me,” she began. “First off, what am I? That is, what are we?”

“I’m Gringer,” another approached. “Perhaps I can answer that one. You are a Czillian. The land is called Czill, and while that explains nothing, it at least gives you a label.”

“What does the name mean?” she asked.

Gringer gave the Czillian equivalent of a shrug. “Nothing, really. Most names don’t mean anything these days. They probably all did once, but nobody knows anymore.

“Anyway, we are unusual in these parts because we are plants rather than animals of some sort. There are