TRANSHUMANCE (2)
By:
January 22, 2026
We are thrilled to serialize Transhumance, a post-apocalyptic novella by HILOBROW friend and contributor Charlie Mitchell.
TRANSHUMANCE: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10.
Little Dog grumbles and plods along the trail. Baba slides forward and matches his pace.
“You’re stoppered up — and you’re only quiet when you’re mad,” Baba murmurs. His legs slowly plant themselves around roots and stones. The elder’s probing only buries whatever’s stuck in his craw even deeper.
“I’m still only a kid to you. How come?”
Baba arches an eyebrow.
“Me and Virgil are the same age. River went when she was even younger than us,” Little Dog exhales sharply. Blood pumping faster. Eyes fixed on the trail. Cheeks hot while chewed by cold — he feels angry words frothing up his throat.
“I — we — we all grow up on the stories by the fire. I’ve even seen more winters than some of the kids going this year. But you pass over me. I feed, post, shear, weed and till, even shoe, I’m healthy and my senses are sharp. You pass over me every year and they say I’m not ready but there isn’t a thing I don’t do at Heart Cave. How am I not ready?”
The tirade hangs in the air between them and the droop of pine needles. He feels his heart thudding. He regrets most of his words. So it went when he did things out of anger; even as relief slowly kneads its way into the vacated places. Baba strokes his beard as they walk on, immovable as ever, nodding somberly.
“Remember the ice cream Khyber churned last summer?”
Little Dog flung up his hands; here came the browbeating.
“No no really, how brutal the heat was by solstice? How cold — mm, hard to envy cold now — but the honey in every mouthful, the small grains of ice. After working under the sun all day,” Baba smacks his lips, craned upwards. “Wonderful thing that, something all the Kindred can enjoy together.”
“It was pretty good.” He remembers — he ate too quickly and got a brain freeze but so did Virgil. Sticky hands caked with dirt and sugar viscous. Cream sludge filling his belly to the brim, followed by a killer thirst, slurping down gourd after gourd. Sated; water sweet from the cedar cask it slept in. There was some specific charge to that high summer dusk; he knew it wasn’t wholly the ice cream that had hallowed it in his memory.
Little Dog restrains any physical tell while Baba yarns on about the impermanence of ice cream — he pastes his sight on the trail ahead. He’s come to loathe anything short of plain talk; something is powerfully condescending in a metaphor lesson.
Baba’s expression is placid. “Are you starting to see where we’re headed? Smelling what I’m stepping in?” He winks a goad at Little Dog, who is not looking at Baba.
“In short pal, it is a privilege, and because you can count on it there’s no good reason to rush it until you’re ready. And when you’re ready, you’ll understand why there can’t be a rush; like any good task, if you hustle through it there’s bound to be consequences.”
“For fuck’s sake I’m not desper — for ice cream? If I am desperate it’s—”
“Language. I never said ‘desperate.’ Man bellysick with desperation — you could put a knife and fork into that sort of aura — that’s different. I think you want to go for the stories you’ve heard, and not the calm the Kindred have when they come back. How many times have you imagined yourself on Transhumance as some sort of badass?”
This is the first time Little Dog has ever heard Baba cuss; he blushes and tucks his face in the neck fold of his hood. Baba nods slowly.
“I know — I was your age once too. And at your age, nobody reckons that elders were ever anything but elders. It’s so urgent for you because you’ve made it out to be about glory, which is a commodity and pal, Transhumance is anything but commodities. Nature doesn’t cater to glory. As much as we’re part of her, she doesn’t care a lick about things like that,” Baba sighs.
“Sarah gored by a bison she tried to swoon ‘because she felt its heart’ — River carried her back for the next two weeks. Chema caught and crushed in an avalanche with no business above the alpine line — who we found only after the thaw. The only two I’ve blessed and felt gray about; a maiming and cycling, and both weigh on my heart every day. In the end they weren’t ready, and they weren’t ready because they had an expectation they brought to Transhumance. So I can’t, won’t ever, send someone who isn’t ready.”
Baba’s tone is gentle; no shred of accusation but his words still split Little Dog open. And out tumbles those past fancies of Transhumance. Spearing marauders, saving some warlord or president’s daughter, taming wolves and befriending bears he would ride. Fancies Little Dog never saw harm in, all tumble into a grave and are entombed in seconds.
Little Dog walks on with Baba in a shamed silence. Something is hollowed out in the youth and he struggles for any words at all to tell off Baba or describe what has just fled and leaves a hole behind. This was some defilement. To barge into someone’s mind and demean dreams — and to seat them alongside something especially juvenile like ice cream. How had Baba done this? It’s possible that Baba was right; he had just been his age once, too. Regardless of the route or purpose it feels like transgression.
Light is steadily trickling into the forest — the youth maintains the pace because it’s the mature choice, and the elder will never even suggest abandonment.
To be continued…
Complete story to be published at HILOBROW later in 2026.
MORE ORIGINAL FICTION & POETRY AT HILOBROW: James Parker’s COCKY THE FOX | Karinne Keithley Syers’ LINDA, LINDA, LINDA | Matthew Battles’ THE SOVEREIGNTIES OF INVENTION stories | James Parker’s KALEVALA bastardizations | Annalee Newitz’s “THE GREAT OXYGEN RACE” | Charlie Mitchell’s “SENTINELS” | Josh Glenn’s “VALIDATION SESSION” | & more.