Apples, shells, stones,
and lumps of metal filled young Mario Guilermo’s pockets in case of contest, to
help him achieve mutual advantage. In the Tahni Amacite village downstream of
Grey Bunyips waterfall, Mario traded a bag of eighteen apples for: five left
handed lightning whelks, twenty cockles, eight abalone shells, and two pearls.
He left himself one apple to be eaten sometime later. Taking the
seashells with him, he then spent the rest of the morning strolling back upstream
of that fall.
After
the bight in the river where Finlee traded once a moon, Mario followed the river
branch leading right, where a narrow, winding path had been worn into the
forest floor by night travelling creatures.
At
the next fork in the river, a ferryman in a boat with a blue, green, and yellow
stripe around its rim and an eye on its aft, took unshapen greenstone as
payment from Mario to safely travel further upstream and disembark on the
opposite bank. They made two stops along the way, to pick up and drop off two
young women travelling together. Mario guessed from their reserve and seashell
ornamented dress, that they were carrying pearls from distant coastal lands. He
also guessed they were sisters by the way they argued over ones wild and
unkempt hair. The boat was fairly nearly overturned when the older one
threateningly produced a sea shell hair comb. At that point, Mario had
interrupted the conflict to help them strike a deal –the elder sister obliged to
tame her hair before the city gates, but not whilst traveling.
Once
ashore, and walking quickly in his excitement, Mario entered a Marlowe
settlement nestled into the sunlit foothills of Kilmaro woodland sometime late
in the afternoon. Here, he gave his seashells in order to receive a portion of deep
purple crystal.
Mario
then went to the outskirts of that town to a metalworker, and bartered his
amethyst and a small lump of diamold for a mining chisel, rock hammer, and
sharpening stone –but he did not have enough to give for a pickaxe too. Having
to wait overnight for his tools, he settled by an open fire in the middle of
the settlement, where another trading traveller was resting, and local children
were delighting in breaking open hot river stones with cool river water.
The
next morning, Mario conversed with some locals drinking outside their home as
they traded gemstones –the sort of which Mario hoped to obtain for himself by
labour.
When
Mario revealed he had no stones yet to trade with them, some of the men laughed
and shooed him away. However, two men heard Mario’s plan to exploit a new
place, saw the time and effort he had already invested to follow his aim, and
heard his plan –soon they too began to believe in the potential of his vision.
Together,
one of the men offered to give Mario a used pickaxe, and the other offered a
shovel, in return for a share of his gains. Mario agreed and again asserted his
ability to return with gemstones, and so the Marlowe men invested in Mario.
With
the special hand tools, Mario did not return directly to his own community, but
instead travelled three days to the dark side of Kilmaro, where the lesser
mountains began their range towards the Paper Plains. Great curtains of spider’s
webs stretched through the canopy there, and –at certain times of year – forest
wandering ants were said to consume unwary sleepers. At a small mountain, returning
to a neglected fireplace of his making between two tributaries and a spring,
Mario entered a hollow in the rock nearby and unrolled his woven mat of soft
rush. It was agreeably quiet and calm inside the cavern compared to the forest
outside, and Mario found respite in the lack of humidity and cool temperature.
He dined on crickets and rested well that night, picturing the yield of his
labour in the day to follow.
Woken
by the clamour of countless birds, Mario relished the colours of dawn as he
began to eat the apple he had been carrying for several days.
After
lighting a long burning torch he had made of dead tree limb, he dropped the
core of his apple and roughly buried it in the guano with his foot by the
entrance, before stepping into the illuminated darkness in search of precious
stone.