Far-Awn crouched between the two young females, stroking each, murmuring softly into their ears. At his familiar touch, and the sound of his voice, both became calmer, ceasing their pitiful nervous cries. After awhile he ran out of soothing words to say, and he began to sing softly. Every puhlet, even giant Musha, stood still and quiet with ears uplifted to catch each note and inflection of his voice.
Not one of his brothers, or even Baka, complained this time because he sang. It was plain enough for all to see that his lilting notes gave comfort when Baka’s harsh commands to “Stop making that awful racket” did nothing but add more distress. Baka gave this momentary thought. Could it be there was some practical use to such a frivolous thing as singing?
Then Baka cried out, disturbing the new calmness. “What’s this? I have seen many a new puka, but never one such as this!” He extended his hand for all to see, and cupped in his rough, burly, calloused palm, was a tiny new puka, violet instead of pale pink—and glowing all over with a bluish luminous light!
All of those in the firelit chamber stared at the uniquely bright little fellow, who raised his head alertly, while he struggled to gather minute and delicate legs under enough to stand.
“He seems quite strong,” said Lee-La, “but what is wrong with his color?”
“The Gods only know!” was Baka’s irritated reply, annoyed by anything he didn’t understand. And he was a hundred times more annoyed when something unprecedented happened to an expected normalcy.
The five remaining brothers came running, balgar grime still clinging to the fringes of their clean faces. They too had to stand in awe before the glowing small puka.
Gingerly Baka placed the bright little creature beside its mother. He brushed his hands raspily against his coarse shirt, as if to rid them of some contamination. The mother puhlet didn’t seem to notice any abnormal difference in her offspring. She nudged him with her soft purple nose, until he was snug in her fur that covered him almost completely.
In the long hours that followed, five more times did Baka call out, “Why here’s another of those shining pukas!” Baka wondered, just what new devilment had been sent to needle him.
The pelting rains, the devastating winds, were long gone by the time the last puka was born.
Wearily, Baka and his family emerged from the caverns into the daylight. In the silence bred with long experience with storms, they stood without speaking to survey what was left of their home, their fields, their fences, their barns, and their storage bins. Not much was still standing.
Already the deluge of water had completely disappeared. The cracked crusty surface gave no evidence at all that it had so recently tasted water. In the cultivated meadows where the top crust had been removed, the soft, boggy inner-earth was watered every day by a series of connected irrigation ditches. Now all the little plants that had stood so firm and straight a few hours ago were flattened down into the mud, or washed away.
No good to stand and sigh or cry, he thought. Baka left his sons to save what they could, while he and his wife and daughter hurried on to see what repairs would be needed on their home.
Left alone in the underground caverns, Far-Awn fed the fires to keep warm the baby puhlets until they were strong enough to walk. Already the little ones who were born first were satisfying their hunger, while the newer ones lay weakly pink without moving, just looking bewilderedly around. That is, all but the six little violet ones who still glowed luminously. They were nursing greedily, able to stand and run about from the very first.
To Far-Awn, there was something familiar about the halo of bluish light that radiated from them. From the pocket of his fur jacket, he pulled out the small white blossom he had plucked from the ice of Bay Gar. It lay in his palm, pure and opalescent white, as fresh as the snow that frosted the peaks of the Scarlet Mountains, although many long hours had passed since he took the flower from the ice. However, the glowing radiance had faded. This disappointed him. He had intended to show his father the significance between the flower and the shining pukas. Nevertheless, he put the flower back in his pocket for future consideration.
5
The Beginning of the End
It seemed to all the bedeviled, beleaguered people of El Sod-a-Por that every year the weather grew worse, not better. The horrendous storms blew in with increasing frequency and ferocity. Worse, when they came, they stayed longer. The families waiting for them to abate in the safety of the underground passageways dreaded to go out again into the sunlight and see what had been taken from them, and all that they would have to begin again.
Although everyone knew the underground offered only temporary refuge, some gave up life on the surface land and tried to stay under. They dug shafts into the cavern rooms to let in some light, for they knew that without some sunlight, they couldn’t live for long. This seemed a solution of a kind, so more and more of the beleaguered people moved down into the dark tunnels. Their fields on the surface were left unattended while they concentrated on growing underground a variety of tortars, a fleshy sort of root vegetable that was able to flourish without sunlight. Unfortunately, tortars were the only edible plant that would.
Only the hardiest, the most tenacious of them refused to yield to this easy but unhappy way of living. Those most determined stayed on the crusty dry surface to nurse along their crops and animal herds against all the hazards. Some called them foolhardy—admittedly resilient but fools just the same—to put life in the sun ahead of possessions and safety.
Among those who persisted were Baka and his family, refusing absolutely to consider moving permanently into the dark, cold underground caverns.
“It is better to be alive and cold and miserable in the underground dimness,” expounded the new inner-earth dwellers, “than warm and dead in the sunlight.” More than a molecule of truth lay in this statement, for so many died in the wind funnels, so many froze, so many fell stricken from the heat and dust that clogged their lungs. Those who didn’t die from the heat or the cold died in the deluging waters or were crushed by falling trees or boulders or were worn down from sheer fatigue, until they sickened into death.
There were so many ways to die on the surface, but there was only one way to die underground.
Some whispered that the Gods would have their revenge on Baka, who resisted them at every opportunity. “I will not!” raged Baka when a delegation of his neighbors requested that he sacrifice his most potent male, the one Far-Awn called Musha. “I will give a lesser male to the Gods, but not Musha!” His friends and neighbors scowled: to give a lesser male was not a sacrifice. Only the best would appease the Gods. They had given their most fertile males, so why should Baka be allowed to give less?
Not more than one bag of grain would Baka burn at the altar! He cheated in so many ways, his neighbors whispered among themselves.
Only by wearing his woebegone expression did Baka hope to disguise his antagonism to a religion that demanded the best of everything in sacrifice. Baka grumbled to his wife. “Next they’ll be asking for my best son to sacrifice…and then my daughter. Give the priests Musha and there will be no ending to their demands. And how do we know if the Gods even notice?”
“Ssssh!” cautioned Lee-La in a hushed voice of fear, cautiously looking around to see who might have overheard. Then she asked, with strong curiosity on her round pleasant face, “Our ancestors used to give their first son, but if you were forced to sacrifice your best son, which would it be?”
“None!” shouted Baka angrily. “Those days are gone! Of human life we have too little—I won’t give one, the best or the worst!”
“But just for my benefit, tell me which is the best?”
Baka glared at his wife in hot temper, then threw himself down on the bed. The second sun was near the horizon. Soon all would fall into oblivion, but he had the time to wonder briefly which son would he willingly sacrifice—if someday he must: Not one, not one…not even the worst, who was in some ways the best. I too am a fool, he thought, a
nd then slept untroubled, even by dreams.
It came about in the days that followed that once-friendly neighbors stayed as far from Baka and his family as they could, lest they share in Baka’s special punishment from the Gods when it came. And come it would, sooner or later. Twelve sons alive and healthy—though Far-Awn was doubtful mentally—was sure to be noticed. That woebegone expression of Baka’s could be just the result of overwork and too much mental strain, and not his natural humble expression, as it should be.
Finally, the weather became so unendurable, all but Baka moved underground. He and his family alone were left above to suffer whatever the Gods chose to give him. Those below waited, beginning to feel that Baka and his entire family was indeed just the sacrifice that would appease the Gods who lived on Green Mountain.
That year Far-Awn was twelve. Of necessity he once again led his flock of puhlets far, far from home. The storm-devastated land was stripped almost bare of life. His flock was greatly reduced in numbers, so many of the pukas had died from the extreme weather changes, despite all that human help and care could provide. The fields couldn’t produce grain, the trees weren’t allowed to blossom into fruit with so many winds to tear the limbs from the trunks. Now puhlet meat became the staple diet, and soon they too would be gone—if things continued on as they were.
The twisted, gnarled black burran trees grew more profusely (if anything could be said to grow profusely) than any other type of tree on the borderlands. These strong valiant trees were as bare of fringes as any other. Far-Awn felt a deeper sinking of his heart on seeing this. If the burran trees could lose their long, thin crimson fringes, then what other tree could hope to hold its own? Never before had he seen these trees so exposed, without one single rippling fringe to disguise the ugliness of their knobby limbs.
The hide-covered farm homes he passed were leveled to the ground. The once-cultivated fields were now as hard and dry as the crusty, wild and arid countryside. Not one spot of growing green could he see when he looked out over the meadows, plains, and hills. Only in the sheltered places between the high boulders and smaller rocks, and in some of the low ravines, could he find wild grasses for the puhlets to eat, and very meager grazing it was.
Sadly, Far-Awn watched his beloved flock crowd and shove against the rocks, seeking more, as if they could move what even the windstorms couldn’t budge. In the underground bins at home, most of the grain was gone. What now would the puhlets eat? What now would any of them eat, except the very animals that were his charges?
But somewhere, someplace there had to be food for the puhlets, for all of them. So on and on Far-Awn led his flock. A little was found growing between this rock and that. His puhlets even ate some of the dark, bitter greens which grew under the red rocks. The same grasses which in better times had caused them to turn aside their plush-purple noses in disdain.
The flock consisted of only twenty, including the six that had glowed luminously bluish at birth. Their inner glow had faded shortly afterward, but it seemed to Far-Awn that these six were different in many small ways from the others. He was certain it was more than just imagination that these six were quicker, stronger, more intelligent. What food that was found now was found by them.
As the puhlets grazed on the dark bitter green they disliked, rilling from time to time in discontent, Far-Awn slowly nibbled on the food his mother had packed for him in a small bag. He ate the little sparingly, knowing this was the only food he could be assured of for a long, long time. For he wasn’t going home, not tonight, or tomorrow night.
He was running away, taking with him the last remaining flock of puhlets left alive on El Sod-a-Por!
6
The Setting of the
Second Sun
The day before his decision to leave, Far-Awn overheard his father explain to his mother the reasons that the puhlets would all have to be killed, all but one male, and two females to perpetuate the line for the future: “People are starving. There is no grain to feed the puhlets. The land doesn’t yield wild grasses anymore. The meat is needed. Soon the puhlets would be too thin to be of any use.”
“But Baka,” his mother had asked, “how can seventeen puhlets feed the hundreds that are starving? After they are eaten, they will demand the last three as well—and what will we do when all puhlets are gone?”
For that monumental question, Baka had no answer, except to say, “The flock is starving anyway. Better kill them while there is still some flesh on their bones. Lee-La, are we to stand by and let our neighbors die, while we have meat?”
Horribly distressed, and quite disbelieving, Far-Awn had peeked from his hidden place to see from his father’s expression if he really meant to do such a dreadful deed. His father’s sagging shoulders, his deep revealing sigh, told him that Baka was honestly speaking, and it was not just anxiety speculating.
Yes, what would they do when every puhlet was dead and eaten? To kill all but three of his flock was no solution. He knew his flock, their ways. Keep Musha alive with two females only, with no other males to stimulate his physical needs through rivalry, and there would be no pukas conceived! Musha would grow sick from despondency with two females only, when he was accustomed to having so many! Far-Awn steeled his will against his father, his family, against all the people who had given up and gone to live underground. “Let them eat tortars! They shall not eat one more of my flock!” he flared aloud, so that Musha lifted his great head and stared at him questioningly. Far-Awn reasoned that his family could live on tortars too, since everyone else was. No sensible reason why his flock should dissipate to zero just because they all had a craving for puhlet meat that tortars couldn’t satisfy. As for himself, he never ate puhlet meat. He lived on the cheeses made from their milk, and he used to eat bread made from grain that didn’t grow anymore, fruit that trees couldn’t yield now, and berries the bushes no longer grew.
On the whole of the upper borderlands, only Far-Awn’s flock survived. Of those who lived on the lower borderlands, it had been years and years since one had come through the maze of underground passages to give news of the disasters in that distant, remote place Far-Awn never expected to see. But from what he had heard from the elders, it was not a better place. It was much the same as what was here.
Little did his mother suspect, when she prepared his food bag, that he planned not to return in the evening. She kissed his cheek and told him to be careful, as she always did. “Far-Awn, your father loves you. Never doubt that. Though he calls you idiot and stupid, he doesn’t mean it. He is proud that you are the only shepherd to keep his flock alive, but he can’t bring himself to say so.”
In the pocket of his coat, Far-Awn held the hope of a solution: the star-shaped opalescent flower that grew in the nightworld of Bay Gar. He would take his flock there, and let them eat of the luminous flowers again. Though it was dangerous, and he might well die in the attempt, for already he was weaker than he had been since his birth. But the puhlets traveled so slowly, wandering off, seeking food. They would never reach even the twilight zone near Bay Gar before the setting of the second sun.
Now, as he saw the first sun slide behind the Scarlet Mountains, he wondered, as he wondered every day, just what lay beyond those distant rock mountains. The Green Mountain, of course, but what else? A better place than here? Somewhere there had to be a better place. It would have to be a better, more productive place if the Gods lived there. They would select for themselves the best; it stood to reason this would be so.
Pulling himself from abstract thoughts, Far-Awn sounded a trilling call to pull his flock back together, for the second sun would soon follow the first. With its disappearance would come darkness, and the instant sleep. Slowly the roving puhlets gathered about him, obedient as always.
It would take time to find a sheltered place between the huge overhanging boulders. A place where the storms couldn’t deluge them with rain, or the winds couldn’t sweep them away in the darkness. But most important, it had to be a safe place whe
re the prowling warfars wouldn’t find them, for they had to be as hungry and desperate for food as the puhlets.
Finally, after long searching, he came upon a high place with a rock shelf protecting a large cave underneath. To reach there the puhlets wouldn’t leave a trail of scent for the warfars to follow, for it was rock all the way. To be so lucky, to find such a perfect place to spend the night gave him joy enough to spill a song from his lips. Singing, he led the way to the cave and ordered Musha to keep the herd there, while he set off again to find water. He crawled on the ground, feeling with his left palm, his most sensitive one. He felt all the likely places, and from time to time put his nose to the ground and sniffed. Finally his knowing and sensitive hand rested on a cool, damp spot. He quickly leaned to sniff. Yes! It smelled earthy and strong as it should. Water was underneath—and not too far from the cave. But it was too late to start digging. He would have to do that tomorrow. Already the second sun was low, glorifying the heavens with crimson and streaks of vermilion, coloring the clouds violet and orange with outlinings of gold.
Lying down in the cave with his puhlets, Far-Awn watched the sensational ending of the day. Strange, he was the only one who looked upward to enjoy the sunsets. No one else noticed. But of course, he was strange to think colors were beautiful, for they couldn’t be eaten, or worn, or burned to make warmth. Soon he would be expected to choose a wife and start a family. Already four of his brothers were married. All of life on El Sod-a-Por was rushed quickly into maturity. No time to dawdle in the foolishness of adolescence. Grow up, take on responsibilities, breed as many children as possible, for half were sure to die—if you were lucky to keep even 50 percent alive.
There was a girl named Santan who lived on the neighboring farm. She was being courted by the brother next to his age. Ah, but she was pretty. But not once had she flashed her purple eyes at him, or pouted her lips prettily, the way girls did to let you know they were interested. Far-Awn doubted that any girl would accept his proposal—he was too well gossiped about as having the sun-madness. He would no doubt die a bachelor, the most despised of all humans, for they contributed nothing and only took from those who reproduced. Far-Awn sighed, then fixed his eyes on the single Green Mountain, higher than all the surrounding Scarlet ones. He prayed to the Gods reputed to live there, for food for the puhlets, for days without storms, for relief from anxieties…and perpetual hunger, and a future that seemed only bleak from this particular point in time. “And perhaps, all-powerful ones…a little something extra, such as helping Santan look at me with some warmth, and not as something too odd for her eyes to behold.”
Gods of Green Mountain Page 4