Book One: Rise of the King

Chapter Eight

 For all intents and purposes, Gray had given up. There were battles you could win and battles you couldn't. He might as well have been beating his head against a wall for all the good it had done him telling Charlie and his brothers that he didn't want to make decisions for them. They had made it clear that they wanted to stick together. Whatever he said was, for the most part, was what they were going to do. Then there was his wound, which he had decided through pride, a fear of being weak in front of Clea, was much more healed than it was. He put himself back in bed for another week and found that just those few extra days of rest made all the difference.

While he was there he had time to think about things. He knew there was a real decision that had to be made. If they were going to stay and help, they would need to figure out how. Reasonably, sensibly, whatever his distaste for killing might be, he knew that learning how to fight was what he had to do. He had the strength. He just had to learn what to do with it.

He had snuck Eli's Bible and had been reading it. He was bored while the other men were gone all day and reading helped pass the time. He wasn't always sure what it meant, but he figured it would clarify itself when it was meant to. What he had said to Charlie that first night on the plains was true. He was alright with God. He just didn't like religion, doctrine and denominations. It was all so confusing and tainted by structures and rules that God didn't pass down as Law.

There was also the reality of being on this planet and the life that was simply not going to exist. In some part of him that he kept hidden, he had maintained hope that he would someday wake up to find this was all just a strange dream. There seemed very little reason to keep holding onto that pipe dream. What had happened to them was real. They were really stuck on this planet and there was no going home. It was better to just accept their fate. But that was a frightening prospect, a difficult reality to face.

On the eighth day after he had taken to the bed, he woke feeling healthier than he had in a long time. And, for likely the first time in his life, he felt really confident and sure of himself. Maybe his emotional state had been partly to blame for his prolonged recovery. He had heard once, a long time ago, that a person's state of mind could greatly affect their chances of survival in difficult situations. His condition hadn't been life-threatening but he was convinced that there was some truth to the speed of recovery being linked to one's state of mind.

Without anyone going with him, despite how much he wanted to take Charlie along as a crutch, he went in search of Clea. The tall, black-eyed leader of this village had not come to see him after all. He suspected that Clea's traditions and ideas had won out over Charlie's explanation. Ultimately, Gray was glad that it had. If Clea had seen him in that bed, Gray knew he would have had yet another thing to struggle against. He had always been so concerned with how he appeared before people. He wanted to be seen as independent and strong. Though he supposed that he was seen that way, he preferred feeling it to pretending it.

When Gray found Clea, he was helping haul water from the river. Clea stopped, looked at him standing there in his soft clothes and wondered what this strange man had to say to him. Without speaking, he handed Gray one of the buckets and they finished the walk to the village. Gray hadn't considered before that the water that came from the river was the same water that was used for cooking and drinking. The process used seemed very time-consuming. The water had to be poured from a bucket very slowly to be filtered through what reminded Gray of cheesecloth, which separated any insect or sediment. The water was then taken to a cauldron where it was boiled and put through the process again to remove any sediment that had settle at the bottom of the cauldron. From there it was distributed for cooking or drinking and the dirt thrown out.

Gray was sure there was a more efficient way to do this. He would have Charlie take a look, see if the inventor could figure something out.

Clea, meanwhile, motioned for Gray to follow and the two men walked together.