Chapter Four - Advice
The following events took place a little more than a day later.
"It is a great honor to be among your people, Daniel," said Tyee.
Daniel's eyebrows raised. "Your American is very good!"
Tyee smiled. "Thank you. Gordan has been instrumental in teaching it to us and has proved to be an excellent learner of Chinook as well."
Daniel seemed intrigued. "Oh? I hope that he proves to be a learner of many other languages as well. He is my Foreign Adviser after all."
Gordan blushed. "Daniel, if I may."
Daniel nodded. "Yes, I have heard the news as well. Go, be with him."
Gordan thanked Daniel and rushed out.
Daniel smiled. "He is young and headstrong, but he will prove to be a great asset for me. Now, Tyee, let me take you on a tour of what is soon to be the greatest city in the world. We call it Washington."
The following events took place an hour later.
There lay Matthias, his head swathed in bandages, slipping in and out of consciousness as he fell closer to the precipice of death. Gordan sat at his side, accompanied by their friends as they stood with him in his final days.
Rose was berating herself. "I should never have allowed you to go up that scaffolding, Matthias. It was too risky. And now ..." her voice trailed off as she burst into a fresh set of tears.
Matthias smiled weakly. "Don't fret, you. I'm not long for this world, but I hold nothing against you. Ha, I was trying to show off by placing those stones. Serves me right." He coughed and felt more of his strength ebb away. "Tycho, take care of her for me, eh?"
Tycho nodded. "I'll keep two eyes on her."
Matthias looked at Penni. "Hey."
She smiled, trying to hold back tears. "Hey yourself."
"We never did get to build any monuments or statues to ourselves, did we?"
"No, we didn't."
"That's okay."
To Nataly he looked. "Have you finished that calculation yet?"
She shook her head. "No, but when it's done, I plan on calling it the Matthias Theorem."
"Sounds like a good name to me."
And finally, to Gordan. "Hey, buddy."
Gordan smiled weakly.
"Hey, chin up. You're the Foreign Adviser to the grand poobah himself!"
"I was kinda hoping to serve America with you," admitted Gordan.
"Yeah, but the world needs you. You'll do something big one day that'll help a lot of people out, I'm sure of it. Mark those words."
"I will," said Gordan.
"Oh, yes. One other thing. Nataly, I did hide your notebook last year."
"You did?!" Nataly was furious. "How could I have missed it! You had better be grateful that I found it!"
They all laughed at the memory of Nataly going frantic, trying to find her precious notebook, which contained all her thoughts, calculations, everything.
In the midst of the laughter, no one noticed Matthias breathe his last with his eyes closed and smile wide.
The following events happened within a week.
The funeral was over. As he had requested, Matthias had been ceremoniously burned at night. With the ashes still flickering, the five friends stood looking at the moon and stars.
"He was a good man," said Gordan finally.
The others stayed silent, remembering Matthias.
Someone walked up alongside Gordan. It was Tyee.
"I did not know your friend, Gordan. But I can see that he was important to you." He spoke in his native Chinook.
Gordan replied in Chinook. "Yes. He was a great fighter."
Tyee understood the few words of Gordan to mean that this was a time of remembrance. He looked at the stars himself, remembering his comrades who died in battle against the lesser tribes that were not so friendly.
Nataly straightened. "What is that star?" she asked. "I don't recall ever seeing it before."
"I see it too. What's more, it's getting brighter," said Tycho. "What a strange anomaly."
Suddenly, they all were bathed in an intense, pale white light. They were frozen. Feelings that they would never experience again rushed through their bodies. The light would not let them move, as hard as they tried. They could not even speak. Gordan at once felt both pain and joy, anger and happiness, fast and slow. Years later, he could only describe it as, "That which you both never would want to feel because you knew you were not worthy of feeling it, and yet would want to feel because it felt so wonderful."
Then, just as suddenly as it had come upon them, it stopped.
They all fell to the ground, collapsing as one onto the soft grass. The star had disappeared, not to be seen again for generations upon generations, perhaps never.
They lay there with time slipping away and the full moon rising into the evening sky.
They did not wake until morning. As the sun replaced the moon, shining into the new day, Gordan awoke with a splitting headache.
As the rest of the group all got up clutching their heads, he could only assume that they were suffering the same thing as him. He took a deep breath and attempted to describe to himself what he was feeling.
It was as if time had stopped for him, yet the world moved on. As if he was frozen yet could move and interact with everything there. The grass gave way to his feet, the nearby bird fluttered away as he approached, yet he couldn't help feeling that time itself had stopped.
Very strange.
He was able to confirm this feeling with the other five, so he knew he wasn't insane at least. This would be something that would play out over time, of that he was sure. For now, they should get back to Washington and get checked out by the medicine man.
Nataly shaded her eyes. "Washington looks a little more ... completed."
Gordan stared toward Washington. She was right. Stone huts with straw roofs had sprung up from nowhere, and a rectangular palace of stone rose above it all.
Tyee was standing next to Gordan. "What is this sorcery?" he muttered in his own language. "Yesterday, they had barely begun. This morning, they are finished."
Tycho was stunned. "Nothing I thought of
all my ways of improving efficiency
I had nothing like this prepared."
This event took place 15 minutes later.
"I woke up, and I was inside this big house. I can't explain it," said Daniel.
The seven of them were all standing inside what appeared to be Daniel's new place of residence. Currently it seemed to be a misshapen and hollowed out piece of stone, but as Penni had seen there was great painstaking detail carved out keeping the building, as it was, supported everywhere without pillars. She had told Daniel that she would add some purely ornamental pillars later.
"We're not sure what happened either," said Tycho. "We were all standing in the field, and suddenly there was this blinding light. It was as if we couldn't move. Then it stopped, we all collapsed and woke up with huge headaches."
"I checked around with some other people, and they reported the same effects this morning," said Penni. "Waking up in a strange place and disoriented. But nobody else had headaches."
"Like I noted earlier," said Gordan, "This is likely nothing. But if it is something, we'll have to be patient to see what it is. In the meantime, we should mark this date as monumental. Whatever happened, happened. And Washington has been built in practically a month. Our previous estimates thought the time to be at least five years before we were completely through."
"Yes," said Daniel. "Now, Nataly, what I would like from you is a rundown on the resources that we have around us."
She smiled. "Already did it." She pulled out a crumpled piece of writing material and laid it flat out on the massive oaken table that had also appeared during the night.
"As you can see, I've marked out some areas of note. All around is grassland, and beyond that, we have forest from the northwest clockwise to the east. The river is to our immediate west, and eventually goes to the sea. It comes from the north, but beyond that, we're not sure of its origin. I've marked each area in equal boundaries, setting them up in squares. These three squares, or tiles, as I call them, provide some metals that will be good for production. We could set up mines all around this area and increase our production tenfold. We also have those cattle to our southwest, and you know that we have the workers domesticating them. The only question is whether to irrigate that area or to mine it. The irrigation will help us in terms of food, but the mine will help with production. It's your call ultimately, Daniel."
She paused for breath. "The only other thing we found was that to our northwest, on the other side of the river, were some very strange creatures. I'm not sure how we could utilize them, but I'm sure we could find some way."
Daniel was silent. Nataly cringed. "Was that too much information? I'm sorry, I tend to ramble on."
Daniel waved her off. "No, no. It was excellent. It's helped me make some decisions that will definitely be a great boon to us in times to come. With that said, I will be appointing you my Domestic Adviser."
Nataly's jaw stood agape as Daniel swept by her to stand in front of Tycho. "You are a man of deep thought and science. I'll be needing someone like you to be my Science Adviser."
Then to Penni. "You are quite the visionary. You would do well as my Cultural Adviser."
He stopped at Rose. "I've seen you cataloging the items we've found in our travels. When we meet other tribes, I will need a Trade Adviser to help with trading, obviously, but also to detail what we have and what we need. Can I count on you?"
Without even waiting for an answer, he moved to Tyee. "You are a strong leader of the Chinooks. Can you be the military leader of America?" This time, he waited for a response.
Tyee considered the proposal.
"It would mean giving up my position as leader of my tribe. It would be a difficult change. The language
barrier is still a problem. So, it means changes, not just for me, but for my tribe. However, they are strong."
He paused again.
"Alright. I will do my best."
Daniel grinned and clapped him on the back. "Excellent! Let's get to work! We have a lot ahead of us!"
End of Chapter Four.
I go in and out of writing moods, but I'm going to try to force myself to finish the next part real soon. It's pretty much done. Just needs to wrap up nicely.
I'm definitely looking forward to more!
I just hope I get it.
