This inexplicable, unexpected turn of events did not lessen his determination. It didn’t occur to him to abandon the search and catch up with the main flock. A decision once made in due deliberation was not to be altered. Instead, he followed the faint hoof markings deeper and deeper into the black unexplored wilderness.
Now the frigid air became even more pungent, bitterly sharp. His nose seemed a wide-open door letting in too much air, until his brain numbed and seemingly froze. His coat of puhlet fur he drew closer about him, tugging the collar about his neck and face, pulling down the hood until only his eyes and nose were visible.
Above him stars glittered in an ice-dark sky. The tiny triple moons rotated about each other, and the planet of El Sod-a-Por, giving Far-Awn just enough light to follow the tracks in the snow-covered ice.
Farther and farther he went in. Until the soft snow turned crusty and crunched beneath his fur-covered boots. From that it went all slippery bare ice. It became almost impossible to keep his footing. Time and time again he fell. Why, oh why, did those foolish puhlets come here?—and why, by the gods, did they have to wander in so far? The trail of their hoofprints made small indentations in the ice, leading straight and true, as if they were headed toward a known destination. Yet this couldn’t be. They had never traveled here before. It gave him a strange, unreal sensation to follow the confident, never deviating trail.
The bitter cold stung his eyes, his cheeks. It prickled his nostrils with a thousand ice needles. His eyes watered; the tears froze on his lashes, making small icicles that jabbed at his face whenever he blinked. His legs became heavy, almost too weighted to lift; still he struggled on. All the while he called himself all the names his father had tagged him with—fool, idiot, besotted, sun-heated, crazy boy! Wind-stirred his brain was! How had he ever convinced himself this was the right thing to do? Never again would he trust his instinct—he would reason as his father did: to keep what you had and forget what you didn’t.
Between the curses that he piled one on the other on himself, he found time to pray, to allow his anxiety for the other one hundred and thirty-six puhlets wash over him with great, fresh waves of guilt. Long ago he should have trained his puhlets to be more independent. He shouldn’t have enjoyed so much the loving, blind adoration they gave him. Yet, contrarily, look where independence had landed the six lost ones!
Once more he slipped and fell. This time as he struggled to regain his feet, he felt strongly the urge to sleep. Sleep—everyone was instinctually conditioned to sleep immediately at darkness. Though he had been here some time, and just now was sleep overcoming him. Could it be, if one was well rested and well fed, one could deny the darkness and not sleep? He tried this, fighting back the primitive, basic need to close his eyes and escape into oblivion. Into the void where there was no chore undone, no pains of hunger to endure, no gods to please…where there was nothing but peace. Peace. How nice, how comforting to just lie here and rest…just for a while.
Far-Awn closed his eyes. Dreams came of buildings such as he had never seen before…of roads smooth and even, without rocks…homes clustered together in multitudes…flying objects in the air. Other marvels unbelievable visited behind his closed eyes. I am dying, he thought. These are daydreams coming in the dark. It is a gift from the Gods to ease my passing.
Suddenly to his ears, almost closed in death, came the soft rilling of a contented puhlet. Sleepily Far-Awn opened his eyes. Again a puhlet rilled, and so near! Stiffly he pushed himself upright, valiantly found his footing on the ice, and hurried on as fast as he could. And in his head whirled all the colors and impressions of his weird dreams, so that he was, even as he walked, still bedazzled with visions.
Then, there they were! In front of him, all six!
With their fur black as ink, curled up tight, and sharply etched against a luminous white background, so contentedly the puhlets grazed, as if this alien territory was as familiar to them as any. Munching quietly on the small white flowers and green leaves that sprouted from cracks and crevices in the ice. It was from these flowers that the luminous light emitted, silhouetting the six animals.
Thrilled and overcome with happiness to see them alive, Far-Awn ran forward and hugged each puhlet, scolding them only a little, so delighted he was just to see them again. On impulse, he then dropped down on his knees and leaned to peer closely at the strange little flowers that lived and blossomed in this sterile place of perpetual night.
How curious, he thought, plucking one flower and putting it into a coat pocket.
4
The Birthing Time
On the highest hill of his farmlands, Baka stood peering sharply in all directions. His deep purple eyes scanned the horizon. Hoping to see his youngest son leading home the flock of puhlets. That boy! Staying out all night! In a lifetime of bizarre behavior, this was the most incredible incident of all!
Did that fool boy think he could defend the puhlets while he slept? If there was one thing he had depended on in this son, it was his love for his puhlets. Now, even in this, he had proven himself inadequate. “Oh fool, fool am I!” Baka shouted out into the air. “I should have tossed him as a babe into the black abyss where all born deformed go!” But Baka had pitied Far-Awn, loved him despite his strange coloring. “Such a pretty and sweet little child, with those big violet eyes, almost blue, and that odd red-gold hair and creamy skin. How cruel the Gods could be…to afflict him in appearance, as well as intellectually.”
As Baka stood there, berating himself and Far-Awn, he saw rounding the curve of a hill, the huge male puhlet his son called Musha. In relief, Baka heavily sighed. So, he had survived the night. He knelt and bowed his head to the ground, thanking the Gods of Green Mountain.
In a loose file, the flock straggled after Musha, all tired and bedraggled. Even from where he stood, Baka could see some animals were bloody, with torn hides, and ragged ears almost ripped off. Baka ran forward, hurrying to examine the injured. The warfars had attacked! There was blood and black hair on the horns of Musha! He stared at the blood in disbelief, and then plucked off the stiff coarse hair, sniffing it. Warfar hair…it had an odor, only theirs. Musha had fought back, resisted slaughter. This was unheard of—puhlets didn’t fight, they were too timid. He went to the other males and examined them. They too had fought to protect their females, fat with young. How incredible! Baka laughed, then smothered it quickly with his hand, glancing quickly back at Green Mountain…perhaps the Gods hadn’t heard.
Baka straightened and glanced around for his son. Nowhere in sight. Ah, so Far-Awn was dead…died in defense of his beloved flock. And now his beloved strange son was digesting in the bellies of the warfars. Tears glistened Baka’s eyes. Another son gone. How grievously his heart felt the loss of this one. He had lost other children, so many, but this one had touched him as no other.
Bowed down in grief, Baka led the flock home. Only then did he think to count the members of the flock. One hundred and thirty-one. Nine lost, and his son dead. Sadly he went into his home to tell his wife. “So,” said Lee-La, “Far-Awn is dead. Why aren’t you glad, Baka? Haven’t you said a thousand times he has been nothing but trouble to you? Now your addled mad son is dead and eaten, and will soon fertilize the ground—and rid you of your shame. We will have another son more to your liking, if we are lucky.” Then, in Baka’s arms she was crying.
When her tears were dried, she went to the oven and drew out the baked loaves of bread. She began to prepare another meal. Her daughter came to help. At the dinner table, Baka would tell all his children at once that Far-Awn had died in defense of his flock. Bravely died—now who could be ashamed of that?
Hours later, Baka was in a fenced area, tending the wounds of the puhlets, when from behind him sounded the voice of his dead son. Startled and fearful, Baka spun around to see Far-Awn coming with six female puhlets close behind him. Baka thought his eyes might fall out from his head, so hard did he stare.
Speechless he listened to Far-Awn’s tale of ho
w he had wandered far from home, too far to return before night came. And he had fallen asleep on the very rim of Bay Gar. “And when I wakened in the morning, I found six of the females had wandered away. So I ordered Musha to lead the main flock home, and told him to fight if the warfars attacked. And you see, he did fight, he and the other males. And only three died, and I saved six.”
Baka’s face darkened in rage. His voice like thunder as he roared, “Risking the lives of the entire flock to save six? Are you mad? Where was your judgment? How can you stand there, a son of mine, and try to explain to me you used any judgment!” Baka’s huge hands rose to clutch at his own head, to keep them off Far-Awn’s throat. “But why should I expect anything different from you!” Still, why should he be surprised again…anything could be expected from a boy who “thought” so much, who laughed, who sang, who dreamed, and who shirked his duties at every available opportunity!
“Boy,” he began again in continued fierce anger, “just suppose a storm had blown in? Suppose a larger group of warfars had attacked? Suppose the birthing time started so far from home, alone on the trail and far from human assistance? What then would you be saying to me now? How would you justify any of that?”
“But Father…it didn’t happen that way,” Far-Awn said weakly, for he knew every one of his father’s suppositions were true. “And think of how brave Musha was and the other males. They saved all females but three.”
“Three?—stupid boy, the number is twice that at least if you count the young inside them!” So he stormed on, raging at the boy, hiding the knot of grief that had faded in his chest, refusing to acknowledge to Far-Awn how glad he was to see him alive, unharmed, and he had saved the lost six. Braving that frigid devil’s land of Bay Gar. Could I have done that? Baka asked himself.
But while Baka stood there, trapped in the fiery unreasonable temper that was his, continuing to rage, enumerating again all of the disasters that might have happened and probably would occur—if ever his brainless son ever did such a fool, thoughtless thing again—the sky overhead darkened from pale citron-green into an ominous umber-gray. The smoke-blue fur of the puhlets vibrated and rippled in uncertainty and apprehension.
The feathered quickets and quackets in their penned yards turned suddenly noiseless, then in haste waddled toward the entrances to their underground shelters. The ceaseless motions of the tree fringes stilled to hang without quiver in the absolute vacuum that settled weightily on the land. The air hung, suspended like a sword.
The hot word half-spoken froze on Baka’s tongue. His head jerked up. His short red beard jutted straight out from his square jaw. His bulbous nose quivered, sniffing the air. Which way? From which direction would it come?
Six of Baka’s sons came running in from the fields, the other five still working in the deep bowels of the inner-earth. “Tell us, Father,” called out his eldest, due to marry soon, “Will it blow hot, or will it blow cold?”
Truly, Baka thought, the Gods always have perfect timing for their visitations. Then, with second thought, he was ashamed, for his youngest son might still have been on the long trail leading home, and for certain, the storm would have killed them all.
“To the underground!” Baka yelled out to his sons, “whichever way it blows!”
Far-Awn already had the door open to the tunnel, and was leading the puhlets down the slanting descent. The animals stepped daintily, careful, but with confidence, for they had been this way many times. Down into the caverns all went, human and otherwise, to escape the terror of the storm. Hardly was the heavy door closed and bolted behind them when the storm broke with all the frenzied fury of nature gone mad.
The umber-gray sky blackened into night. The winds came, sweeping away the still vacuum, bending low the grasses and the green and violet sproutings just poking their tips out in the fields so carefully tended. Before the fierce wind the young sapling trees bent to the ground. Those trees too old and rigid to yield to the wind’s relentless demands of tribute were yanked up and hurled away, to fall shattered and broken, sometimes miles from where they had rooted.
Then, Bret-Lee, the single daughter of the house of Baka, did a reckless thing. She dashed outside to rescue the clothes she had hung out to dry in the dual heat of two suns. The clothes whipped and snapped at her, as if alive and eager to be off and free to fly with the wind. With her arms full of the clothes, she was hurled back at the house. Fortunately, her mother held the door open, or she would have been driven straight through. She was unable to close the door—it was left open, along with the back door opposite it, this giving the wind a clear passage through. Long ago, those harassed people had learned this was the way to do it: submit, open the doors—or gone would be the house.
After the wind came the rain.
Thundering down with the noise of ten thousand running horshets! The water pelted the hide-covered homes. It smashed down the tender young plants; it flooded dry gullies and ravines, making them into instant tiger rivers that hungrily devoured the surrounding lands. Those living things that had taken refuge in the recessed places were drowned relentlessly in the fast cascades of rushing waters. Through the center of Baka’s house, the low center funneled the water through, keeping the rest dry. Baka had been clever in designing his home, and it outwitted the weather in many ways.
On the cultivated fields, only the huge overhanging rock boulders, hauled into place and position by hundreds of men, kept every speck of growing life from being washed away.
In the deep underground burrows and caverns that were constantly being expanded by the men and boys of El Sod-a-Por, the humans and domestic farm animals waited for the fury of the Gods’ wrath to cease.
Beneath Baka’s farm, a female puhlet began a woeful rilling. It was a familiar sound to every person there, announcing to all that the birthing time had begun.
“Wouldn’t you just know it would have to happen now?” Baka complained in sour irritation. “When this storm is over, we’ll have to repair the damage done to our fields, and take care of the pukas too!” He didn’t have to order his sons to build fires and stack the piles of wood and balgar nearby; they were already busy doing this. All of their extra supplies were kept underground, although it was cold and damp, and fires had to be kept burning at all times; at least all that they possessed wouldn’t be swept away by the wind and rain.
The boys raced about bringing more wood. Far-Awn was sent to carry the message to his mother and sister that the pukas were coming. Everyone’s help would be needed, and his mother was especially good at this.
Easily Far-Awn found his mother and sister in the underground room beneath their home. In the weak yellow light of an oil lamp, both were busily knitting, one of the occupations saved for times like this. “Oh, my son,” his mother cried on seeing him, “you are alive!”
“Yes, of course,” replied Far-Awn, “did you think I was dead?” He laughed and hugged his mother close, and kissed her cheek. “Don’t you know I expect to live to be a thousand, at least?”
Fearfully Lee-La whispered, “Son, don’t talk like that. That’s defiance. You die when the Gods say you die.”
Far-Awn smiled and gave her the news of the birthing. Immediately the knitting was put aside as unimportant, and all three gathered up as many blankets as they could carry from the piles just brought down from the house. Far-Awn led his mother and sister back to the large cavern where the puhlets were. Long before they reached there, the painful rilling cries of the females in labor could be heard.
How very much Far-Awn wanted to stay and help. How very much he wanted to cuddle the new little babies against him, but because he was fleeter of foot, he was sent away again, this time to find his older brothers still working somewhere else.
Through the long dark tunnels he ran, his light throwing weak beams into the darkness. As he raced, he called. His voice echoed and rebounded throughout the many chambers. Finally an answering call responded. Now he had to stop and decide from just which direction the
true voice came. Fortunately, he guessed correctly.
When Far-Awn came upon his five older brothers, they were industriously hacking at the rock in the earthen tunnel walls. Each strong young body was covered with black grime, dust from the soft black stone they called balgar, black stone that burned hot and long in their fires, giving off much more heat than wood alone, though wood was used to start the fires.
“The birthing time is here!” Far-Awn sang out loudly. “Father says you are to come at once and bring all the balgar you can carry!” When the five boys heard this news, they threw down their picks and raced toward the underground pool of inky dark water. In minutes they were stripped bare; then all five plunged in, splashing and shouting with the shock of the cold water. They had to wash off the black soot, for the young pukas had to be handled only by clean hands. “And put on clean clothes too,” Far-Awn yelled, before he turned and ran, leaving his brothers still bathing.
When he reached the cavern where his mother and father and Bret-Lee were assisting the females in the process of delivering, all was brightly lit and very warm from the fires attended by the six brothers already there. Already six new pukas were nestled near their resting mothers, too small and too weak yet to stand. Still other pukas were coming. Baka and his wife and daughter were very, very busy. The female puhlets were half the size of the males, and very delicate. Not one gave birth easily, despite the inordinately small size of their young. The expectant mothers not yet ready stood restless and anxious, two young ones particularly nervous. For these two it was their first time. Their fears communicated to the other, older females, and only the oldest and most experienced at birthing could remain sedate and calm.
Gods of Green Mountain Page 3