From that day on, while Tull’s party kept eyes upon the serpents out at sea, one of the group always remained to protect the tiny humans, watching over them.
Ayuvah taught them to make spears and to cook over a fire, to crack acorns with rocks and dig for roots.
Phylomon shot several bobcats in the area, and they tanned the hides for clothing, and stacked boulders to make a home for the little people.
Tull took them hunting for rabbit and quail, and found several inland lagoons where the water was shallow and clear, and he was able to spear large pike to feed the group.
Along the coast, seals and walruses sometimes climbed up the rocks, and Tull killed a walrus and brought it to camp, but the little people ate it and got sick on the blubber, so they did not try it again.
Scandal busied himself cooking meals for the small folk, as much as time and provisions allowed, making salads of seaweed and soup from sea cucumbers.
Over the next week, two serpents out near the island disappeared, and Tull explored the coast forty miles east, watching the rocks near shore for any sign of a dying female serpent. He found more serpents, some as far as four miles out to sea, but none had laid their eggs next to the mainland.
The mothers rose from the water often, exploding upward fifty feet into the air, and once in the air they shook their heads and roared, and the silver scales at their bellies flashed in the sunlight.
Once Tull saw a great mother leap up at an angle, and she was traveling so fast that nearly her whole body, all two hundred feet, shot into the air.
Though there were few serpents, in the evenings the great mothers sometimes surfaced two at a time. One could hear their bellows for miles inland, and Phylomon said, “I have watched the great mothers in their nests for many years, and even when these waters were full, they did not make such a noise. Never did they leap so high. They are ill, I fear. Ill and crazy with pain. I think that they will all die before long.”
At the end of the week, Phylomon showed his maps, marking the spots to show where and when the serpents had been sighted. By vectoring these locations and by mapping stone outcropping during low tides, he pinpointed the places where eggs might be found. But there was no way to get to them.
Even at the lowest tides, the men could not walk over to the island, and Scandal talked jokingly of sailing there.
“That sounds like a fine way to get eaten,” Tull argued.
Scandal laughed. “The way I figure it,” he said, “I’ve cooked up an awful lot of fish and hogs and chickens in my life. A man can’t live with that on his conscience. It would be only fair that I become a meal for someone else. I only wish someone would stuff a few bread crumbs up my ass before I go, and serve me with a little brandy sauce on top.”
But the truth was that they could not risk sailing out there. Their little boat was far too small, a simple sailboat, and they had to keep pulled high up onto the shore, out of the water.
One day at sundown, Scandal and Phylomon returned from the beach to the shelter they had made for the little people and sat down to a meal. The men had entered that comfortable period where they seldom spoke.
Suddenly, from the oak tree behind them, the gray bird flapped its wings and headed off north, across the waters, to a place where there was only ice and islands.
It made Phylomon uneasy. The damned bird was heading for the isle of Bashevgo, where the Slave Lords lived. But why? It should have flown to other nameless islands to the north, where the Creators lived.
Could the Slave Lords be in league with a Creator? Had they captured one, subverted it?
It made him uneasy.
An extreme low tide came the next morning, and four small haystack mounds emerged from the water, leading to the island. It was good news, and everyone except Ayuvah went down to the sea to watch.
Patches of dark red kelp lay exposed in the shallows, and from those patches, Phylomon calculated where the rocky outcroppings would be, the trail they could follow to the island.
They watched for it for nearly an hour, before the tide turned and water began rushing inland.
Tull, Scandal, and Phylomon had all climbed down to the rocky shore to hunt for serpent eggs, when Ayuvah came running to the cliff top above them. He was holding a tiny woman by the neck, shouting for help.
Tull was first up onto the rocks. The woman had a white snake fastened to the back of her neck, and she flailed her arms in an attempt to escape Ayuvah. Her eyes rolled, and white foam issued from her mouth.
“A gray bird came!” Ayuvah shouted. “It sat in the oak by the hut and vomited snakes onto the ground. One of them fastened-horribly to the neck of this woman-who-I-pity, and she fell to the ground. She got up and took a spear, and stabbed-I-regret some others. Four little people have died. I stomped the other snakes and threw them in the fire. The gray bird-we-all-should-fear only sat and watched what happened. I shot it, and the act of throwing it into the fire made me glad.”
Phylomon held up the tiny woman and studied the “snake” on the back of her neck. To his eyes, it appeared more like a gray eel.
It had pale eyes, the color of its skin, and whether the eyes saw anything, he could not tell, for they did not move and were of a solid color. Its mouth had the sucker shape common to lampreys, and it was firmly fastened to the base of the woman’s skull.
Phylomon wrapped his hand in a robe, and put it around the snake, then gently pulled on it. The tiny woman screamed, and as Phylomon tugged, the lamprey came loose—yet it had a long raspy needle-thin tongue attached firmly to the tiny woman’s neck.
Phylomon tried to gently pull the tongue out, but the little woman shook with convulsions.
He let go of the snake, and it clamped onto the tiny woman’s neck again.
“Damn,” he said. “I can’t get it to let go.” Phylomon took out his knife and stabbed the snake, ripping its guts open. The tiny woman shrieked and fell unconscious. He stopped and looked at her. She wasn’t breathing.
“It killed her,” Scandal said.
“I think it’s some kind of parasite,” Phylomon said. “I’m not sure what it eats.” He pulled the snake back, trying to remove it, but its raspy tongue held tight. After a great deal of work, he was able pull it free, inch by inch.
The tongue itself was a needle-shaped piece of cartilage, six inches long, with tiny ridges. At the tip of it, he found gray matter from the woman’s brain. He cut the snake open and peeled aside its belly. Like the gray birds that were the eyes of the Creator, it had few internal organs. No intestines, no stomach. Just lungs and arteries, and a belly full of gray matter.
“God,” Scandal said, “It was sucking her brain out!”
“No,” Phylomon said. “It’s not a parasite. The gray matter you see in its stomach isn’t digested. It was always there. Instead, I think the lamprey simply stuck its tongue up into her spinal cord and inserted it into her brain. From there, it was easy to control her.”
“What do you mean?” Ayuvah said.
“It may have seen through her eyes, felt with her hands. I don’t know,” Phylomon said. “But I believe that this snake, or lamprey, or whatever you want to call it, forced her to murder her brothers and sisters.”
Phylomon glanced up at Scandal. The fat man’s lip was twitching, and he was watching the tiny lamprey in horror. Phylomon studied the woman. She had a tiny red hole at the base of her neck, a pucker mark like one sees from a small bullet hole.
“Why would the Creators make something like that?” Scandal asked.
“They’re experimenting,” Phylomon said. “I think that they are looking for a way to selectively destroy the human population. The little humans were made only as a test, to see how effectively these snakes could force them to kill.”
Phylomon noticed something else. “See these pucker marks? I saw the same marks at the base of the gills of that dead serpent a few days ago. Whatever the Creators are up to, killing the serpents is also part of their plan.” He sighed, considered. “I should have
known it. That is why the Creators have not responded to my calls for help.”
“What are they up to?” Tull asked.
“The Creators were built to maintain the ecological balance of this continent,” Phylomon said. “Yet you have seen Craal—a habitation solely for Thralls and the Slave Lords. Even here on in the Rough, there are almost no wild mammoths left—the ivory hunters have taken them to the verge of extinction. Certainly, the Creators cannot ignore this imbalance.”
Phylomon sighed. “I believe that creators plan to liquidate this continent, kill off all of the humans and Pwi, and start over.”
Phylomon considered. It had been a century since he’d last been to the islands where the Creators dwelt. The great worms with their omniwombs kept themselves hidden deep in the earth, and they had formed numerous beasts to protect their lands. “They’ll kill us all,” he said, “unless we can stop them.”
***
Chapter 38: A Breakfast of Sturgeon
The world was white—snow on the ground, white clouds above, whitecaps on the waves. Fifteen days before winter solstice a storm swept from the north, a storm with teeth. It was also the evening Anee reached perigee with Thor and the tides hit their semiannual low.
Scandal and Phylomon had moored their boat to a rock. They planned to leave for the island in the morning to hunt for serpent eggs, so they were camped nearby. If they couldn’t go on foot, it would be a short trip by boat.
Tull and Ayuvah sat together in the hut they’d built for the tiny humans, cooking one of their oxen. Part of its carcass hung in the oak outside, while the front shoulder roasted on a spit.
Cooking the huge slab of meat would be an all-night job, for it had to be turned regularly. Yet it was a pleasant task, for its smell filled the room. With the coming of snow, the hunting would get more difficult. The oxen would feed the community for many days.
Four serpents were left out by the rocks. Only the day before, they’d watched one serpent repeatedly leap from the water and roar her pain. After several hours she floated to shore on her back, alive, barely breathing.
Phylomon had walked out onto her head to check her gills. She was bloody and torn, like the previous serpents, and in her gills he found large red lampreys full of venom. The serpent had scraped out her own gills trying to remove the parasites, then she slowly suffocated.
“It is an economical way to kill them,” Phylomon had said. “Since they hunt and breed in schools, it must not have been difficult to infect the entire population. In a few months, they will all be dead. Perhaps with some eggs we can do some good, preserve the species for a few more years.”
“They will do good,” Ayuvah had said. “My father saw it.”
That night as he drowsed by the fire, Tull did not have much faith. He felt exhausted, and his faith seemed to drain along with his energy.
The night felt frigid, and the wind blew through chinks in their stone house, whistling a song of despair and death. The tiny people were in danger freezing.
Worse, Ayuvah had spotted the tracks of a rogue Mastodon Man to the east only three miles from camp, and a bobcat had been on the prowl two nights in a row, so he worried that the tiny humans needed protection. But Tull personally believed that the tiny people would need more protection from the cold than from predators.
Ayuvah had not been able to make clothes for all of them; they had only a few crude blankets. They huddled under blankets in corners of the room, and Tull heated boulders by the fire, then rolled them over so the tiny people could warm themselves as they slept. He was especially careful of a new mother. Her tiny daughter was so small that she fit easily in the palm of Tull’s hand. Tull gathered all the little women to watch the birth so they would know what was happening when their own cramps began, but most wandered off halfway through the ordeal. They were not interested in the babe, perhaps not even aware that the child was one of them.
Outside, lightning struck, and it began to hail. Ayuvah sat up and licked his lips, peered around nervously. He reached into Tull’s pack, pulled out the brass weather globe, touched it. The planet Anee hovered in the air in front of him for a moment, and he looked at the great swirl of clouds above them.
“This storm will last all night, and perhaps all day tomorrow. See how it hangs over us?” He watched Tull roll a hot stone to one of the groups of little humans.
“You do that well,” Ayuvah said. “I remember when we left home, you were surprised when I warmed Little Chaa’s bed with a stone. You thought it was an act of love, and you desired to learn to love.”
Tull smiled at the thought. He’d heated many stones.
“Have you learned to love at all?” Ayuvah asked.
“I loved Wisteria. In a way, I loved Tirilee—and I still crave her. It is strange, but I cannot think of her without tasting her kisses. The kwea of my time with her is strong, and I ache with pain to give love to someone,” Tull answered in Pwi, for it was the better tongue for describing depth of emotions. “Still, loving each of them was like turning a corner on the worm stairs. Loving each of them was different, and neither of the two women left me fulfilled. Perhaps they only taught me what love isn’t. It isn’t slavery. It isn’t entertainment. It isn’t lust.”
Ayuvah laughed. “Love is what you’re doing now.”
Tull moved several people apart, set the rock between them and covered it with dirt. “All I’ve done here is try to keep these little asses from killing each other and teach them to pee outside. I’m not sure I even like them. I don’t think this is love.”
“No,” Ayuvah said, “you have devoted yourself to them. You are tired, yet for their sake you do not sleep. Devotion is the heart of love. When love fails you and you are filled with pain, you can still be moved by devotion.”
Tull thought a moment. “Ayaah, you’re right,” he said, putting another rock by the fire. He got out his tiny clocks, the tools he had stolen from Denai, and began dismantling a flower clock, trying to see how the gears and springs fit together.
Outside, lightning cracked the sky, followed by thunder. The wind shook the oaks nearby, howling through the branches.
“Do you hear that sound-I-fear?” Ayuvah said.
“The lightning? You never feared it before.”
“I fear it,” Ayuvah said. “I planned to spear sturgeon in the lagoon tomorrow, but the water will be muddied by the waves. I won’t be able to see the fish.”
“We have meat enough,” Tull suggested, nodding toward the shoulder of the ox. Some fat dribbled into the fire, and Tull got up and turned the meat on its spit.
“I’d rather have fish,” Ayuvah said, “But even if I were to tie some cloth to a hook and make a jig, the sturgeon would not be able to see it. The water will be too murky. The fish will all be forced to feed down deep, near the bottom.”
Tull glanced at Ayuvah. He’d seen his brother spear fish many times, but Ayuvah had never fished with a line. The Pwi thumb was too clumsy to let him easily tie the tiny hooks to the lines that the humans used. A Pwi would not use a hook.
“It will be all right,” Tull said.
Ayuvah smiled secretively. “I know.”
Tull closed his eyes, and Ayuvah said, “I love my family. I wish I could hold them tonight. Little Sava, I am sure she has grown since we left. When you get home, she will not recognize you.”
“Unh,” Tull grunted.
“Don’t go to sleep, my brother,” Ayuvah said. “Let’s listen to the thunder.”
Tull opened his eyes. It was very late, long past midnight. “How does the sky feel tonight?”
“The sky feels cold,” Ayuvah said. “I hear the wolf-wind howling.” Outside, distant thunder rattled, and their little stone house shook again.
“Then you should be pleased to hear the voices of your Animal Guides,” Tull said, trying to comfort him. “Would you like to come over here and sleep with me?”
“No,” Ayuvah said, “I will stay by the door, in case the Mastodon Man.…” The fi
re crackled, and Tull looked at Ayuvah. He sat straight, his arms awkwardly folded, the way a man will when he is not at ease. He licked his narrow lips. “I’ve made a doll for Sava,” Ayuvah said, “from reeds I found by the lagoon. If I had paper, I would wrap it for her, the way humans do.”
“Unh,” Tull said, closing his eyes.
“Wrapping the present in paper prolongs the joy one feels to watch the child open it. Also, I have a present for Etanai—some blue fabric that shines like sunlight reflecting from a spider’s web. I found it in Denai, drying upon a line. Tull, stay awake with me!”
“Unh,” Tull said. A wild breeze forced its way through the cracks in the stone, and Tull smelled something putrid—sour fat and dirty hair. His heart suddenly pounded, and blood rushed in his ears. He rolled to his left, grabbed his sword from the floor.
Behind him the door crashed as if it had exploded, and the heavy wooden door fell on Ayuvah. A Mastodon Man stood in the darkness outside, its huge frame far too large for the doorway. Its hair was grizzled and yellow, almost the color of flesh. It bent down on its knuckles, stuck its massive head through the doorway and looked at the fire, at the meat cooking on the spit. It sniffed at the fire, then saw Tull.
And in his mind, Tull was a child again, and his father was yelling at him, shaking a pair of bloodstained manacles in the air. In his mind’s eye, Tull could not see the detail of his father’s face—only the shadow, the great looming size of the beast he had been. Jenks’s face was twisted in rage, and there was nothing in him that seemed human. He was only a beast, mindless and cruel.
Tull shrank inside, the way he had tried to shrink as a child, to make himself so small that he could vanish through the cracks in the wooden floor, to make himself so small that he would be beyond notice. A thin moan escaped his lips.
The kwea of fear was strong, bands of iron, and to be moved by it was a holy feeling. Tull moved to the music of this momentary passion. His mind seemed totally clear, yet he could not unclench himself to stand.
It had been this way when Little Chaa was killed. It was a terror of more than the giant shaggy beast before him. It was a terror that took form only at night, a kwea that took shape only when he saw the animalness—the beast’s complete ignorance of its own cruelty—that nested in the monster’s eyes. And he knew that many years ago, Jenks must have had that look in his eyes when he shackled Tull.
Serpent Catch: Book Two of the Serpent Catch Series Page 22