The Mount

by Carol Emshwiller

  We start down slowly. We could have Jane’s pole lit just a little bit for light, but we don’t want to be noticed, so all we have is Little Master telling us what to step over and what to go around. We’re trying to be quiet, but we stumble a lot. Jane and I hold hands when we can.

  We think we’re pretty quiet, but Little Master says we’re making a terrible racket. Pretty soon he says he smells things close by, and we should stop and wait, and no whispering, while he listens. We squat down and don’t move. We leave it all up to him.

  “It’s your father,” he says. “He’s close to us and to them, too. If I know he’s there, then so do they.”

  I say, “But they think he’s a bear.”

  “He’s got a lot of his own smell on him. I noticed that before. He’s not like Jane—or you, either. Since all of us Hoots are smarter than any of you, after they smell him, none of us will think that any of you are bears.”

  We hear whistling then. It’s those whistles that they never would tell me what they meant. (I ought to be old enough to know by now.) And then answering whistles. After that there’s shouting and crashing around in the brush. And all of a sudden we can see—clear as day. Fires are all around. Even though there’s not that much brush, it’s oily, dry-climate kind of brush and burns easily. I didn’t know it could flare up so high.

  We stand, not even trying to hide. Not that there’s a place for it. Maybe a boulder or two among the brush. Below us, there’s a ring of fire almost all the way around the halfway hut. Those big, black-haired mounts are jumping all over the place, but they’re hopping in an odd way. Then I see they’re hobbled. Their hands are tied, too. Huddled on top of the hut are the Hoot guards. I don’t know which side set the fires, but now the Hoots are sending off fireballs all over the place. One fizzles right above our heads and ashy stuff flakes down on us. Everything crackles.

  Then I see my father—leaping a great leap—a black shadow silhouetted against the fire. It’s more a Tennessee leap than a Seattle leap. I can’t tell if he’s on fire or not or if it’s just his pole, spitting out sparks all around him.

  I grab my knife and follow. I leap a big leap, too. I can feel how much I’m like him. I even whistle. I don’t know what I want it to mean, I just want to do it. I still don’t even know which side I’m on, not for sure. I still want to be well-trained and civilized. I still hate the way they live up here. I hate being all scratched and dirty, but I keep whistling signals I make up on the spot and jump right into the middle of things. I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t even care. I want to be part of it just like I wanted to be one of the guards’ mounts. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll just do whatever comes along.

  Above me, on me, Little Master is making a racket, too. I can only hear a little of it, but I can tell it’s a loud, high, crazy song. I wonder what the Hoot guards will be thinking of it?

  Right in front of us there’s three mounts with their hands tied and then tied to each other. We bump right into them. They look shiny and scary, even those big black mustaches make them look scary, but they’re hobbled and tied, and I’m the one with the knife.

  There’s one practically nose-to-nose with me. For a minute I stare into his eyes. I’m thinking how they’re all big, but I’m almost . . . almost eye-to-eye with him. Time seems to stop, and I see—something that isn’t ever in my father’s eyes—there’s a brightness—there’s hope. That guard can’t be a lot older than I am. His mustache is just painted on, or, more likely, tattooed. I want a mustache tattooed on, like his. My father just has numbers on his upper lip. Those numbers don’t look good, but this does.

  I cut him free. I cut the other two, who are tied to him, all free.

  Then I . . . we . . . turn to the hut. The Hoots are on the roof sparking their poles all over us. It’s raining prickly fire. We can’t see what’s happening, with all the smoke and everybody running and jumping all over the place. I’m still not sure what I’m going to do, but Little Master decides for me. He pulls my head to the side and leans way over. That’s the sure way to make a mount fall. Easy to do even for a small Hoot, so of course I fall. We go down hard—my elbows and my forehead—and I think Little Master hits his head, too. We both cry out, practically the exact same cry. Afterwards we lie there, getting kicked and stepped on, and Little Master whimpers to himself, his legs still wrapped around my shoulders. I’m thinking, if he wanted to pull me down, this wasn’t exactly the best place, right in the middle of everybody jumping on us. I can’t even get up. I crawl out from under, towards the dark, as best I can.

  As soon as we get away from the ring of fire, I can’t see at all—that dark is even darker with the brightness behind us—but Little Master says, “Save me that one. Just one. That one. There.” And with all this banging and shouting going on, he starts to hum a mother song.

  Then my hand touches something warm and trembling—a weak, stick-like leg with no muscles.

  They’re probably looking at each other, Little Master and this Hoot guard, but I can’t see a thing except after-images from the fires.

  If those guards’ mounts are the worst of us, the guards have got to be the worst of them. They’re the kind of Hoots that pushed Sunrise against the wall and had a mount step on her on purpose.

  I still have my knife, clutched so tight all this time I’m not sure I could let go of it if I wanted to. I don’t know what to do. Kill the guard or what?

  “I need one.”

  “Need! You made me fall.”

  “I don’t want you killing any of us. I don’t want you, afterwards, saying you did that. It’s you I love, but I don’t know, anymore, which side to be on.”

  “I don’t, either.”

  Chapter Seven

  It’s them, the mounts, who kill the guards. We don’t have to. I suppose my father takes part, but I don’t want to know about it. Mostly I saw him freeing mounts. But talk about Wild! Last I saw, he looked crazier than ever. He was twirling and twirling his pole around his head, so that it actually blew the Hoots’ fireballs away, sent them high above the fight, so far up most of them dwindled and came down as ash. (I wonder how he knew to do that? I hope some day I’ll get to do it, too.) The mounts don’t actually kill the Hoots, either. The roof of the hut catches fire and they circle it and won’t let the Hoots come down. Some Hoots jump and break their legs right away. The roof isn’t high, but Hoots’ legs are so weak.

  Then the walls start to collapse. The hut isn’t a real cabin, just an overnight shelter made of brush and thatch and stones and a few logs. Up this high there isn’t much decent wood. The ridge poles must have been carried up. The dying Hoots made an odd mewing sound. Probably most of it was too high for us Sams and Sues to hear, but it gave me a funny feeling—hunched up my shoulders and curled my toes and fingers. I suppose it was the part I couldn’t hear that did that. I did let go of my father’s knife, but I picked it up again. Except it was as if my hands wouldn’t work with that sound going on. My brain wouldn’t work, either.

  But then it stopped. And I knew they were all dead. (Except for that one Little Master and I hid.)

  That’s a sound I hope I never, ever, ever have to hear again.

  Then it’s quiet. Quieter than quiet. Everybody just stands there. Listening to the silence. It’s the best silence I ever heard. I’m sure that’s what we all feel. Then everybody sits down, more or less right where they already are. It’s not dark because fires are still burning, though mostly dying. Here and there, a guards’ mount stamps one out and then collapses beside it.

  Even though we’re sitting down, Little Master and I are getting lots of funny looks from the mounts since I’m the only Sam around that has a Hoot host. I’m worried, and I can feel Little Master’s fear in the way he’s sitting and hanging on. I see Jane farther up the hill. I put my knife away and move towards her, slowly, so as not to startle any of the mounts.

  I have to go past them to get to her. They lie, bruised and sweaty and burned and s
mudged, but even so, they still look good to me. I’m wishing I had their silver and red tack. Their lacquered hair—and most of their mustaches are real. I wonder if my father would grow one if I asked him to. I wonder when I’ll be able to grow one.

  By now they’ve spit out their bits. There’s silver cheek-pieces, side-chains, silver surcingles lying all over the place. All of that tack etched with tiny scenes of mounts, leaping, prancing. I always thought that showed how much they love us Sams and Sues—that they decorated everything, even us, with us.

  The mounts let me and Little Master pass.

  The farther up the hill I get, the darker it is, but I can see enough to see my father is there, Jane beside him. He’s sprawled on his back, legs spread, arms spread, taking up a lot of room. First I think he’s dead, and I feel all shivery up and down my spine. I wonder if everything will fall apart now, and I’ll have to find Merry Mary all by myself.

  I guess Jane can see my look even in this light. “Just passed out,” she says. “It was too much for him.”

  “How could anything be too much for my father!”

  I didn’t mean to say that out loud, but I do.

  Jane is washing him with canteen water and putting that stuff we have on his burns. She stops, though, when I say that.

  “Oh, Charley, you have no idea.” She leans towards me to try to see me better in these shadows. The fires are down the hill, but a little light flickers on her face even up here—turns her even more reddish than she already is. “Just because a person is big and strong doesn’t . . . doesn’t mean. . . .” Then she hugs me. I remember Merry Mary’s big-around, strong arms and big breasts. Jane doesn’t feel at all like her, but, though bony, she feels pretty good, anyway. We stay hugging for a while. She doesn’t seem to mind that Little Master is in on it, too, all three of us bunching up together. I see his hands are around her head, but nice and easy, patting like they do for us but never for each other. It’s the primate way. Who ever heard of a dog or a cat patting?

  I’m glad my father is still passed out. I wouldn’t want him to see this. If he was awake, I wouldn’t be doing it.

  Then, still mostly leaning together, we kind of fall over sideways, all three of us, comforted enough to rest.

  Pretty soon we hear my father groan. He starts to come to, so we let go of each other. Jane goes to him, and my father reaches up to her. I turn away, though I can feel, in the twist of his body, that Little Master keeps looking. Then my father gives another big groan, and I hear the rustling of his getting up. It sounds like he doesn’t want to. He starts down towards the mounts and the hut. I get up and follow.

  Like all the fires, the hut is just smoldering now. All along the way to it, there’s just enough light to see the guards are all sprawled out, kind of like my father was. Some are asleep, snoring, and some are looking at the sky. They seem to be waiting for dawn. And just as I’m thinking that dawn is what they’re waiting for, here it comes.

  My father turns around to watch the light on the mountains opposite from where the sun is about to come up, and I do, too. We watch the little rim of pink broaden from slivers outlining the peaks to red splashes, drowning out the purple. But then, when I turn back, I see my father isn’t looking at the mountains anymore, he’s looking at me. He reaches to touch me, and I step away. He looks down then, as if he’s shy. Even in front of me. You wouldn’t think someone so big could ever be shy, especially in front of a child. When I get to be that size, I’m not going to be shy.

  My father turns and limps down among the mounts, and I’m right behind. He’s all wobbly. Like his knees might buckle any minute. The mounts stand up as he comes by. They know who he is. They say, “It’s Heron. Our Heron.” They’re all . . . of course they’re all Seattles, but my father is bigger than they are. I knew he was big, but I didn’t understand, until right now, how he’s even bigger than most Seattles. No wonder I was eye-to-eye with that mount, seeing as who I am. And I can see how the mounts know who I am, too. I guess I don’t have a (so far child-sized) big nose for no reason. And my hair flops, sloppy, over my eyes, just like his. (There isn’t any hair lacquer up at the village. Besides, up there they’re proud of looking Wild.)

  But now, even those mounts look pretty Wild—except their hair and mustaches, which the lacquer keeps in place. And they look kind of stunned and dizzy, and, when they get up, they’re as wobbly as my father. I see the start of their morning beards. Some are too young, but most are as old as my father. I guess it takes time to misbehave enough to be a guards’ mount—for Hoots to give up on you entirely. Like they always say, “Kindness first. Benefits of doubts. Trust. A Sam or Sue may know something you don’t. Ask. Love.” I heard all those over and over when they shouted them at Little Master, and I took them to heart as much as he did.

  The mounts reach out to touch my father as he goes by—he’s heading for the burned-up hut. They don’t know what to make of me, though, what with Little Master on my shoulders.

  I look for that mount I freed first. I wonder what he did so young that was so bad it got him into this much trouble? I’ll bet he hasn’t even come into his full growth. But the mounts don’t like me coming too close with a Hoot on my shoulders, so I keep over to one side.

  When my father gets down by the hut—it’s not a hut anymore, just a pile of smoky stuff—he doesn’t even look at it that I can tell. He collapses down again and puts his arms on his knees and his head on his arms. I’m in no mood for another collapse, and Little Master isn’t either. He says, “Come. Go, go, go.” And grabs my ear on one side and pushes my cheek on the other and turns my head back towards the hill. That’s not at all the proper way to control a Sam, but I let him turn me. We go up, not straight up, but over to the side where there’s a big batch of boulders that rolled down from farther up and landed in a depression. According to what my father taught me, a perfect place for rattlesnakes. This is where we hid the Hoot guard. I remember how my father said rattlesnakes don’t live above a certain height, but I don’t know if this is the height. It’s still morning and cool. I wouldn’t want to go back in there when they’ve warmed up. (Once my father showed me a place a lot like this where we counted seven, all coiled up together.)

  None of us could have seen me hide the Hoot, since I couldn’t see anything myself as I did it. I didn’t even know for sure this was where he is.

  Little Master guides me around behind the rocks and dips me down half under one of the biggest ones, and there’s the Hoot, looking small, curled around himself, and his big hands spread out across his stomach for warmth. Hatless, whites no longer white. He looks up at us, blinking those big translucent eyes of his. I see my silhouette and the sky behind me reflected in the milky blue. I almost can read his thoughts back in there. I see him recognize Little Master. “You!” he says. “You! You! Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All! I give myself.” And then he starts to sing. “Oh best, best. I sing the best there is.”

  I had almost forgotten how the Hoots are always saying, you. But how does he know it’s His Excellent Excellency About-To-Be-The-Ruler-Of-Us-All just in one look?

  He takes the pose, one big hand as if shielding his eyes from the sun, as if Little Master is all shiny and white, though he isn’t now. And bares his neck to be choked.

  Little Master says (to me), “Squat.” He says it as though we were back home, and as if he was still in charge of everything, and I do, just as if he was. He climbs off, balancing on my knife belt as though it was a surcingle.

  The Hoot says, “I need a host.”

  “There aren’t any.” Little Master.

  “Command!”

  “I can’t.”

  I’ve been keeping my mouth shut like a good Sam should, but then I say, “I’m in charge around here.”

  He looks us over. It’s as if he just noticed our handknit sweaters. Our dirt. I guess, big as I am, he can see my age. After all, they’re used to making age judgments when they pick out their mounts. First he says, “You’re a Wild,” and
then he says, “You’re not even grownup.”

  I say, “I’m even almost ready to be a voter.”

  “Hoots live by kindness and by praise. We don’t put fancy names to things, we just do what’s right. If you weren’t a Wild, you’d know.”

  I pull my upper lip out and turn it up to my tattoo. I’m too young to have a whole number, but I have the beginning—an S and a 1 and an A. I saw it in a mirror. Later they’ll put my racing status. If there is a later.

  Then I see him gather his legs under him for the leap-and-choke. I jump back, which wouldn’t have done me a bit of good considering how fast Hoots are, but it’s not for me he’s grabbing, it’s Little Master. Right around his neck. “Now!” he says. “Now!” and holds on and stares at me. Little Master is already starting to turn blue.

  “He saved you.”

  “I need a host.”

  “But he’s About-To-Be-The-Ruler.”

  “I need a Seattle like yourself.”

  Little Master is getting bluer and bluer. I take out my knife. I may not be fast enough to do much, but he’ll have to let go of Little Master to fight me.

  Then it’s my neck he has. So fast I don’t know how it happened. I can see prickly blackness coming in from the sides till there’s nothing but a little bright spot. Next thing I know I’m on the ground and the Hoot guard is on top of me, dead and bleeding from his mouth. Little Master did it.

  The guard didn’t get that sort of death hold on us—nothing happened to my Adam’s apple or Little Master’s, but Little Master went straight for that, first thing.