TOWERS of LIGHT LORE - BJORN BORN OrIGIN

Male Bjorn Born Child Left, Adult Male right

The pains of birth had subsided when the actual pain began. Faint daylight streamed through the edges of the tent flap, illuminating her new baby. Shai’la looked down and saw the unthinkable. The top of his bald head had small bumps in it, poking up from under the flesh. It looked as if the knots of his spine just continued up his head from the base of his neck to the top of his forehead.

“Demon Sired! Abomination! Nephilim! That’s what they would say,” she thought as tears came to her eyes.

That was not the truth. This was her little baby boy. She had been faithful to her husband, Lord Kai’fel the Just. This was no demon child. But the others, the dissenters, would use this against him. They would try to discredit him by claiming his wife was unfaithful. They would claim she had an affair with a demon, or worse, claim he himself was the demon sire.

He was so righteous and just. He would deny these claims and likely go to his own death to defend her and their newborn son. But to what end? This child would be shunned by the tribe, and with such a deformity, would he even live beyond this day? He was so small. She had never seen a child of full term so very small.

As she wept and stroked her baby’s bald head, her gaze caught on the bracelet on her wrist. Lord Kai’fel had given it to her on their wedding day. A single bear’s claw hanging from a cord of leather. It was supposed to be a sign of strength. A sign of their union lasting for generations. Now she was not sure either of them or their son would last through the night. If only Kai’fel had not become the Lord. The famine cam,e and he had to be the one to bring them to this place.

This place, he said, would be safety and solace from the dust storms. These cold mountains with their ill winds and stale water. There was something wrong with this place. This place is what was wrong. This place corrupted her baby boy. It was the winds and the waters, not demons.

Nothing was right in this place. The winds, the waters, the plants, none of them were clean and good. Even the mighty bear was not immune; many had mange or lice or seemed to wheeze and cough like an elder with the wasting disease. The bear was their sign of strength, yet there seemed to be no strength here.

Except in the fir grove. That place always looked healthy and right. The bears there slept in the caves as a group, despite the bears’ usual territorial behavior; it seemed the group of them tolerated hibernating in the same area. They should have had their cubs by now, this late in the winter. They would all be nestled in their mother’s warm embrace, blind and helpless, growing strong on mother’s milk. Her poor baby boy needed that strength.

With her free hand, she fingered the bear claw on her wrist. Kai’fel harvested this claw at his right of passage, battling a great bear that had taken to killing men. The hardness of the claw exuded the strength of the beast that bore it. It was at that moment that she knew what she had to do.

Slowly and carefully with some pain, she rose from her bed of firs with her son in one arm. She laid him back on the firs for a moment and found her soft leather boots in the tent’s half-light. She put them on and found her cloak as well. She then grabbed a blanket to wrap her baby in and slowly raised the tent flap to look out. In the early dawn, a few women could be seen beginning to tend the communal fire at the center of the camp, but the smoke and dim dawn light obscured their view.

She stole away from her tent, careful to step in others' footprints in the snow as she stole out the back of the camp and towards the fir grove. It was a lon,g slow walk for Shai’la as she was weak from her labor. But she made the mile walk to the stream that came from the spring that pooled above and flowed down to the side of the bear's caves.

When she got to the stream, she cracked the thin sheet of ice on top and reached down to cup a drink of icy water in her hands. This was the only water that wasn’t foul and stale in this land. But it was so far from their camp that she only tasted it on occasion. The icy cold water was the shock to her system that she needed to steel herself to finish her journey.

With very slow and deliberate steps, now she approached the mouth of the cave. When she was at the mouth, she listened and could faintly hear the slow, steady breathing of sleeping bears. She looked down at her new baby boy and began to weep again. In the pale sunlight, his deformity was more pronounced, and even his skin looked pale and sickly now.

With that image firmly in her mind, she unwrapped the long length of cord that was wrapped around her wrist that made up her bear tooth charm. She retied it on her baby’s neck loosely. Then, before she lost her nerve, she stole into the bear's lair, silent as a cat, and placed her baby to nurse on the largest mother bear next to the other cubs. Then, just as quickly, she stole away, tears streaming down her face.

Shai’la returned home slowly, determined to implore her Lord to return to their homeland. She did not tell him of the fate of their son, other than to say he had passed at birth. There were a handful of other women about to give birth. Shai’la ensured that she was at each of these births.

Over the next few weeks, three of the five new mothers gave birth to deformed children. One boy and two girls. The boy’s affliction was like her son's, but the girls were different. Their bald heads lacked the down of a newborn, and instead, in clumps on the left and the right near the peak of their skulls were two patches of hard bristles like a turkey’s beard. They were all very undersized and sickly pale in color.

She was careful with these births to convince the mothers their baby had died and that she would save them the sorrow of burying them. In each case, she sought out the caves and a new mother bear for the child.

With the fourth child lost, Lord Kai’fel finally felt the full weight of his wife’s pleading. The last child was his own brother’s child. There would be no heir for their father’s line if this continued. In mourning for the loss of his own heir and to see so many others at a loss as well, he called forth the elders and proclaimed their return to their homeland. A hard life in dry earth was far less sorrow than to see their next generations never be.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — Author’s Notes

As I thought about Still Small Voice, I considered adding non-human or meta-human people groups to the story. I talked it over with my kids, and they had some interesting ideas. So I decided it would be good to include more than just humans in the story. But at the same time, I didn’t want to do what “had been done to death” already. It’s hard to differentiate your storytelling when the character set is essentially the same groups, elves, dwarves, and the like.

I have been working through NPR’s top 100 science fiction of all time. There are some fantastic stories in there. When it comes to different people groups and races, Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn world has some amazing examples, and so does Roger Zelazny’s Amber series. There was real depth in each of these, and they weren’t the tired standard fantasy and Sci-Fi alternate human races. I wanted my races to have a real backstory and place, as they all were genetically human at one time. As I thought about each group's genesis, I wanted there to be a clear reason for the differentiation. The previous short story is for Bjorn Born.

The Bjorn Born get their name from the symbiotic relationship they have with the Bears that migrate from the Eastern Heathland to the Iron Hills and back each winter to hibernate. Due to the properties of the Iron Hills, hibernating there would potentially be dangerous for the bears alone. There is a type of fungus that grows in the caves there whose spores can cause respiratory illness for the bears, and a moss that causes a type of mange that destroys their fur. The loss of fur can lead to hypothermia and death for the bears.

The Bjorn Born live with the bears in their hibernation caves throughout the winter. They tend to the bears, keeping the mold and moss from harming the bears. In the spring, the able-bodied adults migrate with the bears to the eastern heathlands. Meanwhile, the elder Bjorn Born and nursing mothers remain in the caves to raise the young Bjorn Born.

In the eastern heathlands, there are a number of insects that can prove dangerous to the bears. There is a type of lice that will destroy the bear's coat, and ticks that spread disease. When the bears bed down for the evening, the Bjorn born tend to these pests on the bears much as they do the dangers in the caves in the winter. They also gather different herbs, berries, nuts, and flora as the seasons proceed to take back to the caves for the winter.

The bears intuitively recognize the benevolent nature of the Bjorn Born and treat them as if they were their young. They will chase off any attacking predator and even humans if they should approach the Bjorn Born while they sleep during the day. They will also allow Bjorn Born to ride on them.

Which is especially important during the Migration because the Bjorn Born cannot swim as a general rule, and the migratory path from the Eastern Heathlands to the Iron Hills is a shallow river crossing across the Bjorn Ford.

The Bjorn Born themselves are small meta-humans in shape, with very pale pink to near white skin color. They are nocturnal by nature as they are much smaller than the general human population, ranging from 3–4 feet in height, with the brawniest male, Bjorn Born, having the build of a seven or eight-year-old human child.

They primarily live on a diet of nuts, dried berries and various types of fungus that grows in the caves. The moss that can destroy the bear’s coats can be cultivated and tended in such a way as to become a type of rough cloth. The Bjorn Born male and females alike wear one-piece full body robes that have been grown from the moss.

Because of the organic nature of the robes, they are also incredible camouflage for the Bjorn born. During the day, they pull their arms out of the sleeves and can lie down such that they merely look like a natural outgrowth of moss on the ground.

The Bjorn Born are an unreached people group from the perspective of the Good Book and the source of the light in the tower. Between their nocturnal nature and the bear's general protection, the general human population is only aware of them as a legend. The lack of awareness of the Good Book and how to seek out the light also makes them particularly susceptible to corruption when the darkness invades the eastern heathlands.