Gods of Green Mountain Read online

  Darkness fell like a mantle. Swiftly with night came the onslaught of sudden deep cold. Instantly Far-Awn plunged into the abyss of sleep. Snug against the warm puhlets, he was covered completely by their silky hair. He was protected. He fell into the deep sleep El Sod-a-Porians called the “little death.”

  Because they were descended from plant life, El Sod-a-Porians couldn’t awaken until the sun rose and its rays shone upon them. Even weak and murky sunlight helped unfold them from the arms of the small death that took them every night.

  While Far-Awn slept in the cave with the puhlets, far from home, those sleeping in the cold and dank underground burrows needed light from the sun as much as he did. They had to keep a shaft to the surface to let in the morning light. Even so, they withered and died when they stayed too long in the inner-earth dimness. A long-dormant remembrance of their plant-life past would steal into their minds and weaken their ability to walk. Eventually it weakened their will to move. If they stayed underground long enough, they would instinctually burrow their toes into the soft muck until their feet and ankles were buried. Then their arms would slowly fold over their chests, and their eyes would close as they grew rigid in ennui, waiting without ambition, without desire, without hope.

  It was one terrible shock to find a beloved one in this dreaded state of dormancy. The rooted one would have to be rushed up into the sunlight quickly, before they withered more and turned brown and died. Occasionally the sun could cure them, bring them back, but most of the time the rooted ones would stay too long in the dim underworld, and even the brightest of suns couldn’t gift them with moving limbs again. Then there was nothing to do but stand and watch the loved one’s citron flesh slowly turn bronzy yellow, and from this into dry, corky brown, the color of death and decay.

  This was why Baka insisted on keeping his family on the sunlit surface, preferring to risk the known dangers of nature’s wrath than to endanger his family’s health by exposing them to the insidious despairs that could creep up without warning. But when he lost his eldest son and his wife and new baby, all swept away in a rushing torrent of water, along with their home just newly constructed, his head bowed down in grief and doubt. He saw Lee-La looking at him stark-eyed, a silent question written on her sad face.

  “We have lost our eldest, and our youngest,” she said in a small voice. “Didn’t I tell you Far-Awn would guess what you intended to do? He can’t live out there…he and the puhlets will all die.”

  “I told you all along the boy was a fool!” shouted Baka with fierce anger. “I wasn’t going to kill all the puhlets—but I had to do something to appease the anger of our ‘friends’! To please the Gods, they will lay us all out on the altars and slit our throats. I have overheard their mutterings. They say we are challenging fate to stay here on top, while all others have broken in will.”

  “Suppose we go underground too,” pleaded Lee-La, “maybe then the Gods would be pleased. Hasn’t our teller of tales told us many times it was the Gods’ coming that blew us up from the ground in the first place?”

  “Nonsense! The mountain has always been there! Green mountains don’t blow like fringes from the trees!”

  “But just suppose some of those ancient folktales are true,” persisted Lee-La in the unwomanly stubborn way that made her husband scowl with disapproval, and darkened his sour mood even more. Wives were to be seen and not heard; wives were to accept and never question; wives were to be used as a man would; wives were, in other words, just another burden until they produced children who were hearty enough to earn their keep. Most of all, wives were never, never to complain! “Baka, don’t sit there and scowl! Answer me! Do you think it truly possible that once we were only green plants?”

  Baka rolled his purple eyes upward, expressing profound exasperation. “What a question! How am I to know about the past? Yesterday’s truth was today’s fallacy, so said the wise men, and today’s fallacy is tomorrow’s truth.” What it boiled down to, in Baka’s reasoning, was no one knew anything that was absolute. Here was his reliable trusted wife going heretic on him, believing in superstitions! Men were men, never plants! Yet, he felt trapped by a world set against all mankind; a world without mercy, giving frustrations too huge to overcome. He worked, he slaved, he tried to do his very best, and still, even when he did, everything went wrong. His shaggy red head bowed down in grief. He’d lost two beloved sons in such a short period, plus his first daughter-in-law and his first grandchild.

  Where was Far-Awn? Didn’t he have enough anxieties without having to worry over that boy and the only surviving flock of puhlets? To steal the only meat left on all the upper borderlands—that was a crime punishable by death. He didn’t have to actually hear all his neighbors whispering. He saw their hands lifted to shield the movements of their lips. He knew they resented him, and did what they could to avoid him and his family. He saw all those furtive dark looks of resentment. Just as if his family weren’t eating tortars like the others. He was so sick of the things he felt ill just to look at one of the repellent sickly things of a nothing gray color. Oh, Gods of the mountain! Color was one of the things Far-Awn talked about so much. Just another of the unimportant things he thought mattered.

  Angry at everything and everyone, Baka jumped to his feet, then stalked to where he could stare out of a small window covered with the thin and transparent skin of puka underbellies. The second sun was downing, blazing the sky with myriad beautiful colors. Rainbows everywhere he looked. Colors…Why did Far-Awn think them important?

  In his mud hut covered by hides, Baka drove a strong fist straight through the window!

  His wife gave him a long, long look. Was he too losing his mind? She went to him nevertheless and put her thin arms around him. “I love you, Baka. I’ve never said that before, and you’ve never said it to me. If you were to die tonight. I would go on living feeling half a person.”

  He was embarrassed. Love was not a thing to be spoken about. The Gods envied those who lived and loved. Yet he whispered daringly, “I think I may love you too, Lee-La.”

  7

  All Hope Gone

  Far-Awn was flat on his stomach, stretched out on a rock shelf gazing at the brilliant multicolored sky and admiring the shifting, ever-changing variety of hues sometimes streaked with black. The black in the red heralded the coming of yet another storm. He didn’t know that his father was thinking of that storm, and trying to send him thought messages of warning. “Far-Awn, if you be alive, wherever you are, hide yourself well, and keep those puhlets alive!”

  Far-Awn wakened to a new day and a blazing hot sun. His throat was dry and raspy with thirst, and he knew the puhlets suffered the same thirst as he. He didn’t take the time to nibble on the food that was left in his bag, but set out immediately to dig for water in the spot he had located the night before. Patiently his animals crowded about and waited.

  Once the thick hard top crust was removed from the ground, like a pastry from a soft fruit pie, the rest was easy. From his pack of supplies, Far-Awn removed a bundle of long, tough hollow reeds. One he drove into the soft muck, connecting others as he drove the reeds in deeper and deeper, forming a pipe. When the resistance against this improvised pipeline gave way, he knew he had struck water. It was then he siphoned up first the mud and then pure and clean water, ice cold from an underground pool. He filled his collapsed water bags and found a rock basin, and emptied two bags full, so the puhlets could drink. He went back for more water, and then drank himself. With quenched thirst, he could think now about food.

  Without food, some of the weaker females wouldn’t make the journey to Bay Gar, and he didn’t want to lose even one of them. Giant Musha was the only male left alive, so least of all could he afford to lose him—and it took three times as much food to fill Musha’s belly than a much smaller female. It took him half the morning to come upon a deep ravine, overhung by a huge slab of rock, underneath which a slimy moss grew. It repelled Far-Awn to just look at it. But the animals in his starvi
ng flock weren’t in the least finicky today. While he stood there, pityingly watching his animals eat the sickening mess, he sensed something move in the shadows behind him. Quickly Far-Awn spun about to catch a glimpse of sleek black fur that ducked furtively into the rock shadows. The warfars had managed to follow them here, despite all he had done to cover their trail. Not on the rocks could they have left scent—it must have been the wind that betrayed them to their enemies. This complicated an already overwhelming situation. The weakest of his female flock were going to straggle behind the main flock, easy prey.

  Musha came to him, woefully rilling. Far-Awn understood the rilling as talk of still unsatisfied hunger. Reproachfully the animal looked at his master. “Well, I’m doing the best I can,” apologized Far-Awn. “I can’t find what isn’t there, now can I? And I’m hungry too.”

  Again Musha rilled, this time from nervousness and not reproach. Far-Awn glanced backward. Just as he thought. Six warfars came out into the open, grown unusually bold from hunger. He yelled and shouted and flailed his arms wildly, then swiftly bent and hurled several rocks with savage intent. One rock found its mark. A warfar screamed, and all six ran. “Cowards!” called out the boy. “Stay and fight in the light! I know you’re waiting for dark—but you won’t get us then either!”

  He spoke bravely before he looked at Musha and grinned. “You see what kind of cowards they are? A little rock sends them screaming for cover. You did a great job defending your harem last time—so keep up the good work.” Far-Awn didn’t speak to Musha about being the only male, no assistance from younger bucks this time. And he himself would be deep asleep after dark. But if Musha didn’t fight exceptionally well, he would never know, for after killing Musha, the warfars would slay him next, and take their time with the murdering of the females and the young within them.

  Turning north, Far-Awn took two steps in the direction of Bay Gar, then halted, frozen still by what he saw. Low on the distant horizon a mammoth dark cloud was lifting. Even as he watched, it spread in density, coming closer. A storm from the north! The very worst kind—with the exception of the wind funnels. Oh, what luck he was having today! If he left these hills and headed as fast as possible toward the twilight zone, the storm would find them on flat open terrain, with no shelter, and the warfars on their trail. He had hoped to reach Bay Gar before nightfall, find the flowers for the puhlets to eat, and then hurry out.

  Quickly deciding, he headed the puhlets back toward the cave, ordered them inside, and hurried about collecting all the thorny bushes and brambles he could find. The puhlets in the cave mulled about unhappily, wanting to graze and satisfy their hunger. They threw him soft, beseeching looks whenever he came with his arms full of scratchy wild growth. “I’m sorry,” Far-Awn said, throwing down his burden and going back for more.

  Long before the setting of the second sun, Far-Awn had constructed in front of the cave’s entrance a thick barricade of thorny brambles. Once inside the cave, he pulled them snugly into place. Now let the storm come—the warfars, the dark cold night, and whatever it held. He fell asleep assured he and the puhlets would all be safe.

  During the night, the warfars came sniffing hungrily at the wall of thick brambles and thorns. They snarled and growled and tore at the bushes with their paws, and screamed out in anger from the cuts the thorns inflicted. The smell of their own blood drove them into a frenzy, and the uninjured warfars turned on those bleeding, and quickly killed and devoured them. Still hungry, those remaining once more turned their attention to the needled barricade. Another pack of roving, starving warfars lifted their noses and caught the scent of death and blood, and ran screaming to join in the attack to pull down the wall of thorns.

  In the cave, Far-Awn was fast asleep with seven of the female puhlets cuddled up close to him for warmth. Musha stood up on his feet, lowered his giant head, his horns unsheathed, his front hooves pawing at the rock surface, planning to fight when the wall eventually gave way, though the odds were thirty to one. His customary mild complacent expression changed into one of grim determination. Fighting was new to him, a domestic animal, and he was growing old. The youngest females behind him wailed in fear, while the older ones huddled up close to Far-Awn only lay there, calmly chewing their cud, waiting for whatever fate chose to deliver.

  The first sun was due to rise in an hour. That would be an hour too late, for most of the barricade was torn away now from the fierce assault of the near-crazed warfars who had fallen to fighting and tearing at each other, for by now, all had suffered cuts and were bleeding. It was then the blustering freezing winds from Bay Gar reached the hills. Icy winds that tore at the landscape, whistling with frigid breath that sent the maddened warfars scurrying for cover. Far back in the cave, Musha lay down, and put his huge head on the frail chest of his master, sighing heavily in relief as he closed his eyes.

  Outside the deep cave, the strong winds blew, bowing young trees to the ground, snapping off limbs too old to yield before the gale’s strength. Then the sky, colored ebony, released water that froze into sliverlets of ice to pelter relentlessly down. After that came the blizzard of snow.

  In only minutes, all was covered with a thick blanket of white.

  Deep down in the dark dank caverns and burrows of the upper borderlands, all human life lay held in the still power of the small night death, including Baka and what remained of his large family. Always the best predictor of weather, Baka had taken his family down there, prepared for the worst, but this time, the worst was far worse than even he could have anticipated.

  At the hour when the first sun should have risen and driven away the darkness, the dawn was the color of the ink pools of the inner-earth. There was no sunlight to fall into the deep shafts, dug for just this purpose, to wake those sleeping. Unattended fires sputtered low and then went out. The caves and burrows turned extremely cold as the storm raged on and held back the dawning of the second sun. Ever colder grew the underground hide-aways. Even if the fires had burned brightly, emitting warmth, the firelight did not have the life-sustaining power to bring those still, cold unmoving forms into life again. Babies lay stiff and cold in the frigid arms of their mothers. Small animals cuddled close to the children that loved them. Husbands lay with young wives, arms tight about each other. The tenders of the fires sat frozen into statues, their eyes glued shut with ice.

  For three days and four nights, the thick murky storm clouds kept out all light from the twin suns. One by one, those frozen in the dark frigid caverns died in their sleep. Others, near death, deep under piles of puhlet hides, unconsciously struggled in their sleep to stay alive. The pet animals, not caught as the humans in the need to sleep during darkness, roamed restlessly, hunger gnawing at their stomachs. They sniffed at the dead bodies, fighting back the temptation to satisfy that hunger with the dead, frozen flesh of those they had once loved.

  Lee-La was held tight in the arms of Baka, with opalescent tears frozen on her cheeks. Clutched tight in Baka’s fist was a crude primitive idol, dual-headed, representing the Gods of Green Mountain. The cruel, heartless Gods who had never demonstrated even once the least degree of mercy.

  Even so, Baka had fallen into sleep with that idol in his hand, and a prayer whispered on his lips. What else was there to do, when all other hope was gone?

  8

  Far-Awn Becomes a Man

  When Far-Awn awoke, bleary-eyed, weak, and trembling from the overlong, enforced sleep, he saw the thorny barrier had been swept away completely from the cave’s entrance.

  Spread before him in startling clarity was a world totally changed from the dry, dun-colored earth of his yesterday. A heavy covering of pale, blue-white snow sparkled in the dawning light of the weak first sun. The red-rock hills cast violet shadows on the snow, and the Scarlet Mountains were iced and frosted into glittering rose-pink peaks. The black and gnarled fingers of the burran trees dripped with a million sparkling icicles. As Far-Awn’s incredulous eyes jumped from here to there, he heard and saw the sn
apping and popping as frozen and weighted branches broke and fell to the ground, one after the other.

  Storms, many, Far-Awn had seen—and the after-math—but never had he seen such a morning view as this! So far from home, in the highlands looking down, and he was alone. So much awesome beauty and desolation his eyes beheld, enchanting him, chilling his spine with the power of what one single storm from Bay Gar could do! It occurred to him that the same world could look extraordinarily beautiful or desperately frightening, depending on one’s vantage point. To his father, down in the lowlands, it wouldn’t be beautiful—for all those people down there, this storm was the crowning touch of disaster.

  Looking down from his high place into the distant valleys, Far-Awn thought of his father, all of his family and his neighbors, wondering how they were faring. In those low fields, so diligently ploughed by his father and brothers, the neat rows, newly sprouted and hand-watered, would be under feet of snow. All the hopes and dreams sprouted along with the green would be as frozen and dead as the seedlings. The tortars would continue to grow, but oh, so sad to live for the rest of your life with one item on the menu.