Ica's Tale: From the Treeboat Series

By Z.A. Ispharazi

~ You look so stupid, thought Ica in the privacy of her mind . . .
But to her horror she is "heard" within seconds time,
So the rebellious spark in her has transformed into a burning flame—
One that an oppressive cityfort can't contain ~

Ica Meinforg is telepathic, an ability she discovers during an unexpected interaction with a grim, humanoid being that roams the streets of the cityfort she was born in. This creature is one of many that otherwise go unnoticed by most of the citizens of Citadelia. After this strange event, her life rapidly changes, and she is confronted with the choice between freedom in the perilous outlands or normalization within the walls she has known her whole life.

Ica's Tale is a glimpse into the rich world of the Treeboat Series and is a companion novel to The Oaql Seed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667886152

Book preview

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Ica’s Tale

©2022 Z.A. Ispharazi | a WeavingTheVine creation

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN# 978-1-66788-614-5

ISBN eBook# 978-1-66788-615-2

All rights reserved.

For Nausica,

May you know love so deeply that you never mistake

anything else for it.

Dear Piranhas,

My uncle, Mainard, taught me to read and write. Though that skill has helped me on many occasions, I never realized just how important it was, until I moved in with you rabble. For anyone else who reads this, I’ll explain. Often during our raids, we find something that I can read to everyone around the fire. Usually, it’s a pamphlet from one of the cityforts, the nearest one being Citadelia—a place I call Crapadelia. Recently however, we’ve had our first journal that reads more like a book, but more on that in a bit.

Books are rare things, but people say there was a time when there were millions of them everywhere. That makes me wonder what the Dooña-Proto (the earth before) was like. People must have felt that there was a lot to say, and to have the means and supplies to put all those books together, it’s hard to imagine.

To write this story, I’ve had to scrounge up used and molded parchment from all our hustles put together over the years. That’s why it’s taken me so long. I realize now that these texts that seem so old, unchanging, and authoritative are created by people. Any fool who can read and write can pick up an inkcil and write a book. Maybe that’s how they got millions of books back in the day.

In that place I call Crapadelia (where I was born by the way) everyone is obsessed with the way things were—they say that there was a golden age for people and that we must somehow rise to reclaim our former glory. If there was a time when kids like us weren’t living out on their own like this, then I’m all for it, but I can tell you, nobody is making anything golden back in Crapadelia. To me, it was like living in a nightmare.

Anyway, I’ve felt lost for years now, never expecting that the mission given to me as a thirteen-year-old would somehow pop-up so unmistakably seven years later. It’s because of that journal we found recently, the one that came in with a haul from a successful raid.

Tall and dashing, Tanish led that hustle on the west end of the Pans Forest trail—probably with a smirk on his face the whole time. Bags stuffed with clothes, dried fruit and meat, and tools and instruments were quickly claimed (as usual), and anything with text came to me (also, as usual). So Tanish brought me the second stack of papers he’s ever seen in his life, and I quickly realized that this unfinished book was like my cousin’s journals I had read in Crapadelia. However, this journal is much more extensive and detailed in the study of things from the author’s perspective. It’s obvious that it was in the middle of being written when we got hold of it—which kind of sucks. Come to think of it, it’s the first time I’ve felt bad that we stole something.

I can’t believe a text this long isn’t finished yet. Somehow the author—Niniola—covers everything from her own backstory, to her late husband’s, as well as instructions on how to build things (remember how easily we made that water raft?), and she has sections under the label for Encyclopedia Cyanica, where she has information on random things like bowhead whales, architecture, tribal people, and even legendary things like treeboats.

Here is where I owe you an explanation, this is a part of the book I never read to you guys. When I read the word treeboat, I could no longer ignore my past. I flipped through the book looking for more references to this and found that her most recent entries were about how she met a captain of a treeboat, went to a Haelin Island called Oaql, and how a Reteti Warrior joined her crew! You won’t understand now why I nearly dropped the book when I read this, why my heart began racing like it hasn’t done in a long time, and why I’ve decided to leave you all. It is as if Hava-Ronoki’s spirit is haunting me through this book—not only insisting that I not forget her words, but demanding that I confront the trauma, the pain of my past, and revive the vision I held of a better future.

For those who don’t know me, my full cityfort name is Ica Meinforg, but you Piranhas know me as Doyen-Page. I never cared for raids or gutting bovideer and tapeti, so it was to my advantage to be the designated reader and writer. That’s why, no matter how much I’ve been asked (even little Deebo with his all his innocent charm) I’ve never taught any of you how to read or write. Now, as I write this letter on the eve of my departure, I feel guilty about that, and I’m concerned about you all. As rotten as you are, I’m one of you—I’m a Piranha too—part of the motley family for years, and now, I’m abandoning ship. The youngest have already begun to call me Doyen-Piranha, which Tanish hates. At least he’ll be happy that there’ll be no more competition for leadership now that I’ll be out of the picture.

Anyway, it makes sense to me now, why I’ve been compulsively writing my own story bit by bit all these years, maybe deep down I kept the mission alive by doing so, maybe I’ve been waiting for an affirmation to carry on that which seems impossible.

So, this is for you Piranhas, hopefully you’ve found someone who can read this to you, and hopefully by hearing my story you’ll understand why I had to leave you.

Choo-hoo! and brave like hungry Piranhas!

—Ica, Doyen-Page

Table of Contents

Beginnings

The Ganglies

An Eerie Ordinary

Inside the CSD and Outside the Wall

Normalization

Iloy

The East Bank Forest and River Superior

The Treeboat

Family Issues

Boarding School

Surviving Boarding School

Discovery

Escape

The Cyanian Cat-Fox and Hava-Ronoki

Hunted

The Ancient Arts

Losing the Path

Doyen-Page

Chapter 1

Beginnings

I was born in the cityfort Citadela (Crapadelia). My earliest memories are of dirt roads and stacked shacks made from sheet metal. Then as I got older, I became aware of a world of shiny buildings, black moving sidewalks, and huge adamantine walls that enclosed us all.

I never knew my father. My mother Doris and her brother Mainard kept me alive until I could take care of myself. Our apartment was part of a tenement complex along Caye Burgo in the outer perimeter. It was small and cramped. We slept on cots that we would ritualistically fold up and put away each day, but by each day I don’t necessarily mean daytime. I’ll explain.

In Crapadelia there were times when night would be the new day, the dome over the entire cityfort would close, and artificial lights would light up the dark from way overhead. Everyone would adjust to doing their work and chores during these hours, and sleep while the sun was up outside. I remember the times I could see the sunlight through the cracks in the walls and even through the dome above. I made sure to sneak outside and feel the warmth of the sun on my body, because the fluorescent lights under the dome always felt cold and metallic somehow. In time though, the season changed, and the dome was reopened. I tried to spend all my time out of the apartment then, even though Doris would scare me about the crazy lady who would pick weeds out of the cracks in the roads, along fences and other crevices around our neighborhood. Doris was crazy too, so I never really listened to her.

For me, that so-called crazy lady, Old Weedy (that’s what we all called her), became a great pastime. I would see her slowly walking, her head to the ground, curly salt and pepper hair sticking out from under a circular, rattan hat. I would run and hide, always in a direction I was sure she was headed in. As she sniffed out her weeds like an old goat, I would imagine she was tracking me down so she could capture me, cut me up, and stick me in her cannibalistic human-pot-pie dinner. I would work myself up into a damn frenzy over that.

You know what’s funny though? She caught onto my games. Her tiny little self would hobble a little faster in my direction now and then, with a smirk on her dark wrinkled face, and I would always see her smiling wide, her crooked teeth bared when I would look over my shoulder as I ran away from her.

I would kill rats too. It wasn’t only fun, it was one of my jobs. Each community was given stuff to get rid of pests that infested Crapadelia. For us kids, it became a mission, and a source of pride. We’d walk around in groups with pails in one hand and piddly shockrods in the other (I still have marks from when we’d turn our rat hunting gadgets on each other). Grownups walking by would ask us how our hunt was going, and we’d reply with stories and hard numbers of our showdowns with those hissing and growling creatures that we found pretty much everywhere, indoors and out. There were also stray dogs and cats where we lived, but they were mostly our allies because they would also hunt the rats, who seemed to be everyone’s enemies.

Anyway, I mentioned how my mom Doris was crazy, in fact it was more like she was slow on the uptake. Actually, I long speculated that there must have been something wrong with all three of us—her, Mainard, and myself—because we lived with all the rejects in the outer perimeter. Still, I gave myself a pass because I never saw any difference between myself and the kids in Central, I would blend in with them just fine when I wanted to, and I never argued out loud with myself like Doris used to.

By the way, I wanted to strangle her when she would do that. It would make people uncomfortable when we’d go to Central to do a clean-up shift. She would make us look bad. There we were, picking up trash, and she’d have to go on behaving like trash too. I bet that’s why Uncle Chent (Doris and Mainard’s half-brother) would sneak and visit us during sleep-hours only a couple times a year to give us CC’s (Citadelian Credits) and a bag of (used) clothes. He never brought his wife Lina over (until one day—which I’ll tell you about later), however once he brought his son, called Iloy. I still remember his eyes, roving in fearful fascination of our living conditions, and when they left, I could hear Uncle Chent’s voice through the thin metal door forewarning Iloy how he would end up if he kept acting out.

Mainard overheard this too, he cleared his throat (not that it helped any with what always sounded like gravel in his throat), "That kid’s rebelling Ica, he needs meds beyond the medpac. Better stay away from him." I could tell he was trying to save face because what Uncle Chent said had hurt his pride. But, I mean, as far as I knew back then, Iloy was odd. Even as he left our building that day, he had started talking to a stray dog that was pissing on the old lamp post. I used to laugh recalling that first impression of Iloy, thinking that Uncle Chent never could bury away his past by living large in Central, because crazy seemed to run in the family.

Speaking of which, Mainard was a special case too. He thought of himself as right up there with the elite. He thought it was a mistake he ended up in the outer perimeter and that any day he was about to get promoted to where he belonged—The Scholar’s Ring. So, in preparation for that day, he would read anything he could and even got involved in an underground society where they would hack access to an electronic library somehow. At least, that’s what he would boast. I believed him because he would sneak off and disappear for days, but I never admired him. I mean, he seemed to have it all mixed up. The people in Central didn’t have their face buried in pamphlets all day, nor did they smell like hot rat carcass, and most kept their hair buzzed short and spoke clearly. Mainard on the other hand, looked like a bramble bush grew legs and he spoke as if his tongue and jaw had their own separate lives, desperately trying to escape from his face. But, as you’ll find out, in one way he got what he wanted, but I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone.

If he really wanted in, he should’ve done what I used to do—hair buzzed short, freshly bathed, and I kept my mouth-diaper (facemask) and best clothes folded up neat and hidden for when I would need them. I knew how to blend in, that’s why I was able to explore Central and nobody looked twice. Well, that is, except the Ganglies.

Chapter 2

The Ganglies

I should explain what I call the Ganglies. Nobody seemed to notice them, except me and a few of the kids who also refused to take normalization pills. Now that I think about it, my game with the old weed picker Weedy, was a kind of practice for the actual terror I felt when I saw the Ganglies. There were only a few of them in Citadelia, I don’t know exactly how many because they all looked similar, paler than everyone else, with arms that dangled past their hips because they hunched, bald heads (not buzzed, just hairless like every other part of their face and body), and emaciated frames showing through drapey black see-through togas.

They would walk around expressionless and without mouth-diapers, sporting thin bloodless lips, but it still seemed like they were keeping watch and inspecting things. Since before I can remember, I would see them from inside our apartment window walking by dully. Finally, when I was old enough to inquire about them, I found that Doris had no answers, she would look at me like I was crazy. Ha!

Then brambly Mainard began teasing me about being like my mom, Poor thing, she’s really her mother’s daughter! That’s why I stopped mentioning the Ganglies to any adults, but I did keep investigating with my friends Shilo and Terence.

I would watch people’s eyes in Central to see if they noticed the Ganglies and, for a while, that confused me more because no one seemed to even perceive them. Over time, I realized that people did in fact see them and move out of their way and stuff, but it was as if the Ganglies were a kind of fog to them, these weird beings that people couldn’t really focus on as the distinct individuals I would see them as.

The Ganglies didn’t seem to be part of the social order of Crapadelia either. I’ve seen one by the wastes of the outer perimeter, another strolling through the tenements or the alleys of Central, and I would even see them going into official areas like the Scholar’s Ring without hesitation. They definitely weren’t enforcers, those guys would always be in their yellow and black uniforms, flaunting loathsome struts. The enforcers, they were nothing special, I would walk around confident like that too if I had a prong blaster strapped across my chest all the time.

Still, as I mentioned, the Ganglies did look like they were inspecting things. I decided to study them more closely, using the crowds in Central as cover. I would leave the apartment with my ragged clothes on, while my good clothes were packed in my backpack. There was only one way out of our building—a set of wide-step ladders that were enclosed within a steel wall with tall rectangular vents to let the air in, in what otherwise acted like a giant oven powered by the sun during dome opening season. Also, once a child fell out of one of those ventilation gaps from the sixth level and broke his legs—the rest of us became more careful since then. On the ground floor there was a little area with a heavy metal door that led outside to the dirt road. As I mentioned, we lived on Caye Burgo, a pit infested dirt road outlined by a long strip of shaky cinderblock buildings with aluminum roofs and fencing. On either side of the road were deep trenches that I could stretch my arms up in and still not clear the top. I knew all the shortcuts