The Best of R. A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  The latter I do not believe.

  Suddenly Holly was into a hole in the ground headfirst, like a gopher, like a ground squirrel, like a Shelni. I followed her, letting myself down carefully, and not headfirst. I myself would have to study the Shelni from the outside. I myself would never be able to crawl inside their green goblin skins, never be able to croak or carol with their frog tongues, never feel what made their popeyes pop. I myself would not even have been able to sense out their dens.

  And at the bottom of the hole, at the entrance to the den itself, was an encounter which I disbelieved at the time I was seeing and hearing it. There occurred a conversation which I heard with my own ears, they having become transcendent for the moment. It was in the frog-croak Shelni talk between Holly Harkel and the five-year-old Ancient who guarded the coven, and yet it was in a sort of English and I understood it:

  “Knockle, knockle.” (This from Holly.)

  “Crows in cockle.” (This from the guard.)

  “Wogs and wollie.”

  “Who you?”

  “Holly.”

  “What’s a dinning?”

  “Coming inning.”

  So they let us in. But if you think you can enter a Shelni coven without first riming with the five-year-old Ancient who guards it, then it’s plain that you’ve never been in one of the places. And though the philologists say that the “speech” of the Shelni is meaningless croaking, yet it was never meaningless to Holly, and in flashes it was not meaningless to me. The secret guess of Holly was so.

  Holly had insisted that the Shelni spoke English within the limits of their vocal apparatus. And they told her at this very first session that they never had had any language of their own “because no one had ever made one for us”; so they used English as soon as they came to hear it. “We would pay you for the use of it if we had anything to pay you with,” they said. It is frog-croak English, but only the pure of ear can understand it.

  I started the recorder and Holly started the Shelni. Quite soon she had them playing on those jug-shaped flutes of theirs. Frog music. Ineffably sad sionnach skirries. Rook, crow, and daw squabbling melody. They were pleasant, weird little pieces of music that sounded as though they were played underwater. It would be hard to imagine them not played under the ground at least.

  The tunes were short just as all tunes of children are short. There was no real orchestration, though that should have been possible with the seven flutes differently jugged and tuned. Yet there was true melody in these: short, complete, closed melody, dwarfed perfection. They were underground fugues full of worms’ blood and cool as root cider. They were locust and chaffer and cricket din.

  Then Holly got one of the most ancient of the Shelni to tell stories while the jug flutes chortled. Here are the two of them that we recorded that first day. Others who listen to them today say that there is nothing to them but croaking. But I heard them with Holly Harkel, she helped interpret them to me, so I can hear and understand them perfectly in frog-croak English.

  Take them, Grisly Posterity! I am not sure that you deserve even this much of the Shelni.

  The Shelni Who Lost His Burial Tooth

  It is told this way.

  There was a Shelni who lost his burial tooth before he died. Every Shelni begins life with six teeth, and he loses one every year. Then, when he is very old and has only one tooth left, he dies. He must give the last tooth to the Skokie burial-person to pay for his burial. But this Shelni had either lost two teeth in one year or else he had lived to too great an age.

  He died. And he had no tooth left to pay with.

  “I will not bury you if you have no tooth left to pay me with,” said the Skokie burial-person. “Should I work for nothing?”

  “Then I will bury myself,” said the dead Shelni.

  “You don’t know how,” said the Skokie burial-person. “You don’t know the places that are left. You will find that all the places are full. I have agreement that everybody should tell everybody that all the places are full, so only the burial-person may bury. That is my job.”

  Nevertheless, the dead Shelni went to find a place to bury himself. He dug a little hole in the meadow, but wherever he dug he found that it was already full of dead Shelnis or Skokies or Frogs. And they always made him put all the dirt back that he had dug.

  He dug holes in the valley and it was the same thing. He dug holes on the hill, and they told him that the hill was full too. So he went away crying for he could find no place to lie down.

  He asked the Eanlaith whether he could stay in their tree. And they said, no he could not. They would not let any dead folks live in their tree.

  He asked the Eise if he could stay in their pond. And they said, no he could not.

  They would not allow any dead folks in their pond.

  He asked the Sionnach if he could sleep in their den. And they said, no he could not. They liked him when he was alive, but a dead person has hardly any friends at all.

  So the poor dead Shelni wanders yet and can find no place to rest his head.

  He will wander forever unless he can find another burial tooth to pay with.

  They used to tell it so.

  * * *

  One comment on this burial story: the Shelni do have careful burial. But the burial crypts are plainly dug, not by the six-fingered Shelni, but by the seven-clawed Skokie. There must be substance to the Skokie burial-person. Moreover, the Skokie, though higher on the very low scale than the Shelni, do not bury their own. Furthermore, there are no Shelni remains going back more than about thirty equivalent years. There are no random lying or fossil Shelni at all, though such remains are common for every other species here.

  * * *

  The second story (of the first day).

  The Shelni Who Turned into a Tree

  This is how they tell it.

  There was a woman who was neither Shelni nor Skokie nor Frog. She was Sky Woman. One day she came with her child and sat down under the Shelni tree. When she got up to go she left her own child who was asleep and picked up a Shelni child by mistake. Then the Shelni woman came to get her own child and she looked at it. She did not know what was wrong but it was a Sky People child.

  “Oh, it has pink skin and flat eyes! How can that be?” the Shelni woman asked. But she took it home with her and it still lives with the Shelni and everyone has forgotten the difference.

  Nobody knows what the Sky Woman thought when she got the Shelni child home and looked at it. Nevertheless she kept it, and it grew and was more handsome than any of them.

  But when the second year came and the young Shelni was grown, it walked in the woods and said, “I do not feel like a Sky People. But if I am not a Sky People, then what am I? I am not a Duck. I am not a Frog. And if I am a Bird, what kind of Bird am I? There is nothing left. It must be that I am a Tree.” There was reason for this. We Shelni do look a little bit like trees and we feel a little bit like trees.

  So the Shelni put down roots and grew bark and worked hard at being a tree. He underwent all the hardships that are the life of a tree. He was gnawed by goats and gobniu; he was rough-tongued by cattle and crom; he was infested by slugs and befouled by the nameless animal. Moreover, parts of him were cut away for firewood.

  But he kept feeling the jug music creeping up all the way from his undertoes to his hair and he knew that this music was what he had always been looking for. It was the same jug and tine music that you hear even now.

  Then a bird told the Shelni that he was not really a tree but that it was too late for him to leave off growing like a tree. He had brothers and sisters and kindred living in the hole down under his roots, the bird said, and they would have no home if he stopped being a tree.

  This is the tree that is the roof of our den where we are even now. This tree is our brother who was lost and who forgot that he was a Shelni.

  This is the way it has always been told.

  * * *

  On the second day it was remarkable how much
Holly had come to look like a Shelni. And she was hardly taller than they were. Ah well, she has come to look like every sort of creature we have ever studied together. Holly insists that the Shelni have intelligence, and I half agree with her. But the paragraph in the basic manual of this world is against us:

  —a tendency to attribute to the Shelni an intelligence which they do not possess, perhaps due to their fancied human resemblance. In maze-running they are definitely inferior to the rodents. In the manipulation of latches and stops they are less adept than the earth raccoons or the asteroid rojon. In tool handling and true mimicry they are far from equal to the simians. In simple foraging and the instinct for survival they are far below the hog or the harzl. In mneme, the necessary prelude to intelligence, they are about on par with the turtles. Their “speech” lacks the verisimilitude of the talking birds, and their “music” is below that of the insects. They make poor watchdogs and inadequate scarecrows. It appears that the move to ban shelniphagi, though perhaps sincere, is ill-advised. After all, as an early spaceman put it, “What else are they good for?”

  Well, we have to admit that the Shelni are not as intelligent as rats or hogs or harzls. Yet I, surely due to the influence of Holly, feel a stronger affinity to them than to rats or hogs or coons or crows or whatever. But no creature is so helpless as the Shelni. How do they even get together?

  The Shelni have many sorts of songs, but they do not have any romantic songs in our sense. After all, they are small children till they die of old age. Their sexual relationship seems distinguished either by total unawareness or by extreme bashfulness.

  “I don’t see how they bring it off at all, Vincent,” Holly said the second day (which was yesterday). “They are here, so they must have been born. But how do these bashful and scatterbrained three-year-olds ever get together to bring it off? I can’t find anything at all in their legends or acting patterns, can you?

  “In their legends, all their children are foundlings. They are born or discovered under a blueberry bush (my translation of spionam). Or alternately, and in other cycles, they are found under a quicken tree or in a cucumber patch. In common sense we must assume that the Shelni are placental and viviparous. But should we apply common sense to goblin folk?

  “They also have a legend that they are fungoid and spring out of the ground at night like mushrooms. And that if a Shelni woman wishes a child, she must buy a fungoid slip from a Skokie and plant it in the ground. Then she will have her child ready the next morning.”

  But Holly was depressed yesterday morning. She had seen some copy by our sponsor The Singing Pig Breakfast Food Company and it disturbed her:

  “Singing Pig! The Children love it! Nourishing Novelty! Nursery Rime Characters in a can for your convenience! Real Meat from Real Goblins! No fat, no bones. If your can has a lucky number tab, you can receive free a facsimile Shelni jug flute. Be the first on your block to serve Singing Pig, the meat from real Goblins. Cornstarch and natural flavor added.”

  Oh well, it was only an advertisement that they used back on World. We had our recording to do.

  “Vincent, I don’t know how they got here,” Holly said, “but I know they won’t be here very long. Hurry, hurry, we have to get it down! I will make them remembered somehow.”

  Holly got them to play on the tines that second day (which was yesterday). There had been an impediment the day before, she said. The tines may not be played for one until the second day of acquaintance. The Shelni do not have stringed instruments. Their place is taken by the tines, the vibrating, singing forks. They play these many-pronged tuned forks like harps, and in playing them they use the tree roots for sounding boards so that even the leaves in the air above partake a little of the music. The tines, the forks are themselves of wood, of a certain very hard but light wood that is sharp with chert and lime dust. They are wood, I believe, in an early stage of petrifaction. The tine fork music usually follows the jug flute music, and the ballads that are sung to it have a dreamlike sadness of tone that belies the childish simplicity of the texts.

  Here are two more of those ballad stories that we recorded on the second day (which was yesterday).

  The Skokie Who Lost His Wife

  This is the way they tell it.

  A Skokie heard a Shelni jug flute jugging one night.

  “That is the voice of my wife,” the Skokie said. “I’d know it anywhere.”

  The Skokie came over the moors to find his wife. He went down into the hole in the ground that his wife’s voice was coming from. But all he found there was a Shelni playing a jug flute.

  “I am looking for my poor lost wife,” the Skokie said. “I have heard her voice just now coming out of this hole. Where is she?”

  “There is nobody here but myself,” the Shelni said. “I am sitting here alone playing my flute to the moons whose light runs down the walls of my hole.”

  “But I heard her here,” said the Skokie, “and I want her back.”

  “How did she sound?” asked the Shelni. “Like this?” And he jugged some jug music on his flute.

  “Yes, that is my wife,” said the Skokie. “Where have you hidden her? That is her very voice.”

  “That is nobody’s wife,” the Shelni told the Skokie. “That is just a little tune that I made up.”

  “You play with my wife’s voice, so you must have swallowed my wife,” the Skokie said. “I will have to take you apart and see.”

  “If I swallowed anybody’s wife I’m sorry,” said the Shelni. “Go ahead then.”

  So the Skokie took the Shelni apart and scattered the pieces all over the hole and some of them on the grass outside. But he could not find any part of his wife.

  “I have made a mistake,” said the Skokie. “Who would have thought that one who had not swallowed my wife could make her voice on the flute!”

  “It is all right,” said the Shelni, “so long as you put me together again. I remember part of the way I go. If you remember the rest of the way, then you can put me together again.”

  But neither of them remembered very well the way the Shelni was before he was taken apart. The Skokie put him together all wrong. There were not enough pieces for some parts and too many for others.

  “Let me help,” said a Frog who was there. “I remember where some of the parts go. Besides, I believe it was my own wife he swallowed. That was her voice on the flute. It was not a Skokie voice.”

  The Frog helped, and they all remembered what they could, but it did not work. Parts of the Shelni could not be found again, and some of the parts would not go into him at all. When they had him finished, the Shelni was in great pain and could hardly move, and he didn’t look much like a Shelni.

  “I’ve done all I can,” the Skokie said. “That’s the way you’ll have to be. Where is Frog?”

  “I’m inside,” said Frog.

  “That’s where you will have to stay,” the Skokie said. “I’ve had enough of both of you. Enough, and these pieces left over. I will just take them with me. Maybe I can make someone else out of them.”

  That is the way the Shelni still is, put together all wrong. In his wrong form he walks the country by night, being ashamed to go by day. Some folks are startled when they meet him, not knowing this story. He still plays his jug flute with the lost Skokie wife’s voice and with Frog’s voice. Listen, you can hear it now! The Shelni goes in sorrow and pain because nobody knows how to put him together right.

  The Skokie never did find his lost wife.

  This is how it is told.

  * * *

  And then there was the second story that we recorded yesterday, the last story, though we did not know it then, that we would record of the Shelni:

  The Singing Pigs

  This is how they say it.

  We have the ancient story of the singing pigs who sing so loud that they fly up into the sky on the tail of their own singing. Now we ourselves, if we can sing loud enough, if we can jug the flutes strong enough, if we can tang the tines
deep enough, will get to be the Singing Pigs of our own story. Many already have gone away as Singing Pigs.

  There come certain bell men with music carts. They play rangle-dangle Sky music. They come for love of us. And if we can hurry fast enough when they come we can go with them, we can ride a tin can over the sky.

  Bong! bong! that is the bell man with the music cart now! All the Shelni hurry! This is the day you may get to go. Come all you Shelni from the valley and the stream and jump on the cart for the free ride. Come all the Shelni from the meadows and the woods. Come up from the tree roots and the holes underground. The Skokie don’t get to go, the Frogs don’t get to go, only the Shelni get to go.

  Cry if the cart is too full and you don’t get to go today, but don’t cry too long. The bell men say that they will come back tomorrow and every day till there are no Shelni left at all.

  “Come all you little Singing-Pig-Shelni,” a bell man shouts. “Come get your free rides in the tin cans all the way to Earth! Hey, Ben, what other animal jumps onto the slaughter wagon when you only ring a bell? Come along little Shelni-Pigs, room for ten more on this wagon. That’s all, that’s all. We’ll have lots more wagons going tomorrow. We’ll take all of you, all of you! Hey, Ben, did you ever see little pigs cry when there’s no more room for them on the slaughter wagon?” These are the high kind words that a bell man speak for love of us.

  Not even have to give a burial tooth or other tooth to pay for the ride. Frogs can’t go, Skokies can’t go, only the Shelni get to go!

  Here are the wonderful things! From the wagon, the Shelni get to go to one room where all their bones are taken out. This does never happen to Shelni before. In another room the Shelni are boiled down to only half their size, little as little-boy Shelni. Then they all get to play the game and crawl into the tin cans. And then they get their free ride in the tin cans all the way to Earth. Ride a tin can!