Etruscans

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “I know. So was I. But he is no monster,” Repana added to reassure her daughter in spite of the lurking doubts she herself still harbored. “You have given birth to a healthy boy who looks as normal as any other.” She didn’t add that she had checked the babe for additional fingers or toes and its spine for a tail.

  As if to prove her words, the infant opened his mouth and gave a lusty bellow. Both women laughed. “Little man,” Vesi murmured fondly. “My little man.”

  “Men need names. What will you call him?”

  “I do not know, Mother. There are no purtani to take the auguries, so how am I to know what sort of name he needs?”

  “You must give him a name of your own choosing then.”

  Vesi blinked.”That is too great a responsibility. Names have so much power over those who bear them. What if “I choose wrong and do him

  Unseen, Pepan bent over them. The girl feared the responsibility but he did not; he knew what name the child should have. With all his strength he tried to shout it loud enough so she could hear. Hora Trim!

  But his strength was not enough. Though the shout resonated throughout the Otherworld, Vesi barely heard a whisper. She turned her head quickly, eyes wide. “Was that the wind?” she asked her mother.

  “I heard nothing. There was a storm earlier but it is over now.”

  Hora Trim!

  Vesi shivered. “There is a draught here.”

  HORA TRIM!

  Abruptly Vesi smiled, lips moving as she formed words. “Hora … trim.” She looked up at her mother. “I will call my son Horatrim.”

  Repana raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Meaning spirit of heroes?”

  “Is that not a perfect name for a little boy?”

  As she gazed down at the child, Repana was not so sure. His Rasne forebears were undoubtedly heroic, but the infant’s sire was very different. Yet perhaps Horatrim was a good choice. “Such a noble name just might help counteract the influence of the siu,” she told Vesi.

  At the mention of the siu the young woman stiffened; her eyes became distant and glazed. “No demon had anything to do with my son. Nothing, I tell you!” Her voice rose shrilly, startling the baby, who began to cry. Vesi’s eyes were wide and wild. She was as brittle as glass, threatening to shatter at the slightest blow. Her mother feared she might lose her mind.

  “Of course, my child,” Repana hastily agreed. “I am simply weary and made a foolish slip of the tongue. I meant to say the name would protect your son against any demons he might encounter when he is older. It is a good name, a fine name. Rest now. You have done well.” She stroked Vesi’s forehead and murmured soothingly until both mother and infant grew calmer.

  But long after Vesi fell asleep, Repana was still trembling.

  The physical attack must have been terrible indeed, she thought, but to relive it unbearable. I have to be careful with Vesi. We must find a safe place to raise the child where no one will mention its origins and bring the memories flooding back. Repana realized they could not return to their spura. Even if Pepan had succeeded in getting the others to forgive them, there was always the danger someone would say something.

  When Repana announced to Wulv that the baby was alive and well, he was eager to see the infant at once. But Repana discouraged him; she was uncomfortable with the idea of allowing the woodsman too near a new baby. “They’re both sleeping,” she said. “There is something you can do, however. We will need moss for diapering, can you find some?”

  Wulv looked almost insulted. “Some? How much do you want?”

  “As much as you can carry,” Repana said with a hint of a smile.

  Delighted to be of use, he set off at once and soon brought back not only moss but a freshly snared rabbit for Vesi’s dinner. “Meat makes milk,” he assured Repana as he showed her his prize at the entrance to the hut.

  “I suppose you have a great experience of nursing infants?” she remarked sarcastically.

  He took no offense. “Hunters have to be observant. I have seen what the women in my tribe do. I have watched the beasts of the field feed their young.”

  Repana bit back an angry retort. “My daughter is Rasne, which of course means she has delicate sensibilities,” she said firmly. “Vesi prefers fish. White fish.”

  “This deep in the forest she had better eat what she can get. We’re not on the banks of the Tiber now. When you go home you can—”

  “We will not be going back to our spura. Even … even if the Lord of the Rasne sends for us himself.”

  Wulv stared at Repana. “But I thought …”

  “Our lives there are over.”

  “Then where will you go? You can’t stay here forever. The forest is full of dangerous beasts who won’t respect the sanctuary of the stones. And I can’t protect you night and day; I have to sleep sometime.”

  “Are you saying you would abandon us?”

  “I am not. I gave my word to the Rasne lord. I may not have much, but I have my honor.”

  Repana nodded. “We will rely upon it then. Pepan recognized your quality and I trust his judgment. But tell me, Wulv—you have a home elsewhere, do you not? Someplace safer, where we could go?”

  “I can’t take you there.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s … well, it isn’t much of a place, nothing like I’m sure you’re used to. There’s a hut like this one only bigger and made to stand winter weather. It’s part of a compound with a shed for storing hides and a smokehouse for fish, all on an island I built up in the middle of some swampy ground that floods a lot. In fact, my home is usually surrounded by a lake. People leave me alone there, which is the way I like it.”

  Repana clapped her hands together. “It sounds perfect!”

  Wulv was disconcerted. But before he could think of a way to discourage them, he heard a voice. Not a human voice, it sounded more like the soughing of the wind through the leaves, yet it spoke in clearly distinct human syllables.

  Take them.

  Wulv grabbed his knife and glanced wildly around. He saw only Repana, the hut, the circle of stones, and the forest beyond. Yet with a hunter’s infallible instinct, he was aware of another presence. He touched the bear’s claw amulet on his belt. This was indeed a cursed place.

  Take them, the voice repeated. Whatever Repana wants, you must do. Your future lies with them.

  Wulv had to fight back an almost overwhelming desire to throw himself on the ground and do worship. Surely one of the gods was speaking directly to him. In the memory of his tribe, such a thing had never happened to one of the Teumetes before. He was simultaneously terrified and elated.

  “What is wrong with you?” asked Repana. “The color has left your face.”

  You must take them with you, insisted the implacable voice.

  “I will. Oh, I will!”

  Repana was perplexed. “You will what?”

  “Take you to my home as soon as your daughter can travel. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  She gave him a hard look. But just then Vesi called to her, and forgetting everything else, Repana ducked inside the hut.

  Once more Wulv swept his eyes around the glade. There was nothing noteworthy, only the sentinel stones standing their eternal vigil. A bird’s cry drew Wulv’s attention upward. Although the sky was a delicate eggshell blue, a gathering of clouds portended rain. One in particular puzzled him. Its shape changed so swiftly. One moment it looked like soft billows of foam, the next it resembled rugged mountain peaks. As Wulv watched, the mountains became an army marching away into the distance.

  From the Otherworld things looked different.

  Wulv, the hut, even the circle of stones were to Pepan no more than misty and somewhat indistinct shapes. The cloud, however, was very solid.

  Pepan, intoned the voice of the Prophet, we must go now.

  What will happen to me if I stay here?

  You are vulnerable in the Otherworld, Pepan. A siu could contaminate your hia, making you one like them.
It would be a great pity to see such a noble spirit corrupted. Your ancestors would grieve; our happiness in the Netherworld would be marred.

  But I cannot die?

  No, his father’s familiar tones replied, you cannot die. Only flesh can die, and you are done with that.

  Then I will watch over the women and the infant all their lives. I am strong, stronger than any demon.

  The hovering cloud darkened. You are also overconfident, proclaimed yet another voice in accents he could hardly understand. I was like you once, a thousand years ago. But you will learn, Pepan. We all learn.

  With a mighty roar the cloud turned an inky purple and began to twist into a giant knot. The roar increased. The cloud convulsed, folding in upon itself. Abruptly came a sound like the boom of a monstrous drum and the knot unwound into a long, thin rope the color of spring violets, stretching all the way from the circle of stones to the horizon.

  The sky shimmered with rainbows.

  The air smelled of the distant sea.

  A hush fell upon the Otherworld.

  As Pepan watched, the violet rope grew thinner and thinner until only one filament remained. Then that too was gone and he was alone.

  Alone in a way he had never been before.

  Within the hut, the baby began to cry.

  SIXTEEN

  Throughout his life, Wulv had lived intimately with nature. Later he told Repana, “I’ve seen every weather there is and every sort of cloud too. But never one like that one. It was unnatural.”

  “How can a cloud be unnatural? The Rasne believe that clouds are nothing more than heated water, rising as steam.”

  Wulv looked shocked. “The Teumetes know that clouds are the exhalations of our gods.” His voice trailed away as he gazed, awestruck, into the heavens once more. “The gods spoke to me from the clouds. I swear it. And that one cloud in particular sailed away in the direction of my home. I am to take you both there as soon as possible. Do you think your daughter will be strong enough to leave here tomorrow?”

  Repana of the Silver People was not about to argue with one who had a message from the gods, his or anyone else’s. “We will see how she feels in the morning, Wulv.”

  As it happened they had to wait a few more days until Vesi was able for the journey. Childbirth combined with her injuries had weakened her more than she would admit, but her mother’s keen eye would not be fooled as to her condition. “When my daughter is strong,” she argued with Wulv, “she will be able to travel faster. As it is, we would have to stop too often to let her rest, we would hardly make any progress. So go and bring us some fresh meat. I will make her a nourishing broth. You will eat some too; you look as if you need it.”

  On the morning before they set out for Wulv’s home, the Teumetian carefully demolished the little hut in the glade, smoothing away every trace of its existence.

  “This is a sacred place,” Wulv pointed out. “We must leave it as we found it.”

  Repana nodded. The Rasne understood all too well the importance of keeping any sacred space undefiled … unlike the brutal and warlike Romans, who were said to burn other people’s temples and throw down their gods.

  Carrying her baby close to her breast, crooning constantly to it, Vesi followed Wulv with her mother at her back as they made their way along the narrow forest trails. Even at High Day it was very dark beneath the primordial oaks. Repana kept glancing over her shoulder, convinced she could hear something behind her. But there was nothing she could see, only a few thin shafts of light slanting down through the canopy of the leaves overhead. Yet each time she looked back she felt certain there was more undergrowth than she remembered and the forest had a more pungent, fecund odor.

  As he followed the little party, the hia energy that Pepan radiated left its mark on the forest. Branches dipped greedily to absorb some of it; leaves burgeoned and grew glossy with their share. In Pepan’s wake, roots clawed through the soil, clutching after the last tendrils of the nourishing force. The hia of the dead fed the living, who in turn would die, decay, and feed new life-forms in a never-ending cycle. The integrity of the whole depended upon the death and rebirth of its parts.

  The only constant was change.

  Pepan’s strength was continually dissipated and then restored by the surging emerald energy of the living forest.

  Just when it was most needed, Wulv called a halt. “I’ll find some drinking water for Vesi,” he said. “You sit here with your back against this big tree and close your eyes and rest. I’ll be only a shout away.” Not for the first time, Repana was impressed by Wulv’s consideration.

  When weariness began to take its toll on Vesi, he volunteered to carry little Horatrim. She demurred. “What can he know about babies?” she hissed to her mother, her whisper loud enough for Wulv to hear. “You carry him,” she said, thrusting the child into Repana’s arms.

  But Repana was weary as well. When she stumbled and almost dropped the infant, Wulv caught her and steadied her, then gently eased the babe from her arms. “I won’t hurt him,” he insisted. “I like babies.”

  Repana raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever held one before?”

  The Teumetian thrust forward his lower jaw in a way she was coming to recognize. “I like babies,” he repeated stubbornly.

  “But have you ever …”

  “I’ve held bear cubs and fox kits, day-old wolves and orphaned fawns. I know what to do,” he said, wrapping the baby in his bearskin mantle.

  Too tired to argue, the women gave in. For the rest of the journey their guide carried Horatrim as carefully as any mother could wish. From time to time he even murmured to the baby and was rewarded by a gurgle that pleased him inordinately. “I think he likes me,” Wulv confided shyly.

  Shortly before sunset the forest gave way to a marshy expanse fed by a tributary of the Tiber. Wulv stopped and pointed. At the marsh’s lowest point a lake glinted; a tiny islet was barely discernible in its midst. “My home,” he announced with shy pride. “I built it myself. Piled up earth and rocks until I had a raised place that was always dry. Made that causeway leading to it too, so I can get home even in time of flood.”

  Repana was too tired to be interested in the details of the place. It looked appallingly primitive, but at least it was a sanctuary. “How much farther?” she wanted to know.

  “We’ll be there before dark. Take care to follow in my footsteps. If you step off the path you could find yourself neck deep in water.”

  Now Repana was doubly glad that Wulv was carrying the baby.

  The path twisted and turned, dipped and doubled back on itself in an ever more intricate pattern meant to confuse invaders. Beyond the forest marsh grass took over, slender, supple leaves that gradually grew higher and higher, until they were walking through a verdant tunnel. The ground underfoot was boggy in places, making every step an effort. The Teumetian moved with confidence, barely glancing at the route he followed. He was concentrating on the baby in his arms. Finally, he stopped and allowed the women to catch up. “Welcome,” he said simply, stepping aside at the neck of the narrow causeway that ran out to the artificial island in the center of the lake. Several thatched huts stood on the island. “All this is mine,” the Teumetian added, indicating the little compound with a wave of his hand.

  Gratefully, Repana and Vesi stumbled along the causeway and collapsed together on the bed inside the largest hut. As Repana’s eyelids drifted closed, the last thing she saw was Wulv carefully handing Horatrim to his mother.

  In the morning, while Vesi was nursing Horatrim, Repana allowed Wulv to show her around his little domain. Although it was very crude, Repana was forced to admit to herself that Wulv had achieved a surprising level of domesticity.

  “The spit over the firepit rotates—look, I’ll show you; it works with this foot treadle I made—so meat roasts evenly,” he explained proudly. “And in this shed here, where I smoke fish, I’ve arranged flaps in the roof so I can control the amount of smoke.”

  “Is there
only one way onto this island of yours?”

  “Only one. And I can barricade the causeway if wolves or bears get too close.”

  “What about two-legged predators?” wondered Repana. “What is to stop them from swimming across?”

  “Nothing—except for the pointed stakes I sunk into the mud around the margins of the lake. And the water here is full of eels. I feed them on blood and scraps of meat. If any attacker were to jump into the lake and injure themselves, the eels would be drawn by the blood and do a bit of attacking of their own.”

  “Eels cannot kill a man,” protested Repana.

  “No, but it would take an extraordinarily brave man to attempt to swim through a swarm of biting eels,” Wulv told her with a grin.

  Repana subsequently commented to Vesi, “He is a resourceful man and more intelligent than he looks. In fact, if I did not know Wulv was a Teumetian I would not take him for a savage.”

  “Perhaps the Teumetes are not savages,” Vesi suggested.

  Repana’s eyebrows flew toward her hairline. “Of course they are! You heard what Wulv said about being descended from bears.” But privately she was beginning to have doubts as to just what constituted a savage.

  In the days and moons and seasons that followed, Repana’s good opinion of Wulv continued to grow. She and Vesi found him unfailingly courteous according to his own standard and gifted with a sense of humor that made their exile more bearable. When winter closed in, he brightened the long nights by telling rambling jokes that had no point but were somehow very funny and singing bawdy, equally funny songs in a husky voice.

  Repana tried to pretend she did not understand their meaning, but sometimes she blushed.

  Wulv found her blushes beguiling. At night he lay sleepless thinking about them, and when spring came he brought her armloads of wildflowers. “There are more flowers around the lake than I ever saw before,” he commented.