Gods of Green Mountain Page 8

  A large smile split Far-Awn’s tanned face, shining his white teeth in the sunlight. “Father, you have said something nice to me! As for me, I am delighted to see you! And my mother, and my brothers…but they are not all here.” He looked then toward the row of large red boulders in a parallel row, and his brows creased in a frown. “Why are Bret-Lee and Sal-Lar strapped down on that rock?”

  No one could answer, though guilt flushed their faces, and they looked uneasily at one another.

  Far-Awn saw the godsigns painted on the face of his sister, and also on Sal-Lar. He paled with shock before he spoke. “Have you all gone mad? Have you started again practicing the evil ways of the ancients?” His incredulous eyes scanned the ragged, starving people. “Has not the weather killed enough of you, so that you seek now to kill yourselves—like the warfars?”

  “Baka’s family is forgiven,” cried out the high elder, throwing down the crystal blade. “They do not have to die now, for there is meat to eat.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth, when a man near-crazed with hunger quickly scooped up the sacrificial knife, and rushed toward the flock of puhlets standing obediently still. Even quicker, Far-Awn moved. He reached Musha, who had his head lowered, about to charge the killer of one of his wives. Far-Awn struck the blade from the man’s hand just before it plunged into the throat of a quivering female puhlet. Swiftly picking up the knife, Far-Awn stood beside Musha, still prepared to attack and defend his family. In a voice as loud as his father’s, Far-Awn said, “These puhlets are not for eating!”

  His words stunned the starving population. They were ravenous, near death, and sustenance from the Gods had been sent to deliver them—and a boy with a knife and a crazed male puhlet were keeping them from eating—and living!

  Baka wiped his brow free from sweat, as stunned as any other. He might have known his feeling of pride in his youngest couldn’t last. He had entirely lost his mind—the puhlets not for eating?—of what other use were they?

  “Far-Awn,” he began gently, the way one speaks to the demented, “I am proud that you have survived life in the wilderness, and alone assisted in the birthing time, but we are starving. The tortars don’t nourish us enough. Look at us, we are skin and bones, and your sister and her new husband lay on a sacrificial altar because of the desperation you see here. The remaining altar blocks were put there for each member of your family. Are you willing to see all of us die to save that flock of yours?”

  “I have vowed to Musha that never again will any of his kind be bred for our tables, and I will keep my word.”

  Baka stared at the giant male animal, who pawed the ground with a fierce glow of anger in eyes that had only been placid and dull before. He swallowed in disbelief. Centuries ago all wildness and fight had been bred out of the puhlets. They never fought back. Willingly they submitted to their fate. “Far-Awn, what have you done?” he whispered hoarsely. “You have turned our domestic animals against us. You have betrayed us, to favor them.”

  Half-turning, Far-Awn began to unstrap a mesh bag that was tied to Musha. Every animal bore such a burden: net bags that bulged full with something the likes of which no one had seen before.

  “Look,” said someone, “the idiot son of Baka brings us fruit when we want meat!”

  Ignoring the remark, Far-Awn displayed before all a fat rosy pink melon with an inch or so of red stem. He used the crystal ceremonial knife to slice the melon open. A delicious aroma wafted through the air, causing everyone’s nose to sniff. Again the shining knife flashed, and Far-Awn handed a slice of the melon to his father. “Taste it,” he said. “Go on,” he urged when Baka hesitated, his eyes on the strange fruit.

  Baka took a small bite and rolled the bit about in his mouth, savoring the flavor on his tongue, and then swallowed. His mouth curved upward in a wide smile. “By the Gods! Whatever it is, I’ve never eaten anything nearly as good!” In a moment, the slice of melon in Baka’s hand had disappeared, rind and all.

  Handing the knife and what remained of the melon to his father, Far-Awn walked over to Bret-Lee, who lay as rigid as a stick of wood, still tied to the altar. Very gently Far-Awn slipped his arm under her head, and tilted his water bag to her lips. A magenta liquid dribbled from her still lips. “Drink,” ordered Far-Awn softly. “Drink, little sister. You have never tasted anything like this before.”

  “She cannot drink,” Lee-La said sadly as she came to stand behind her youngest son. “The water clocks told us we slept four nights and three days in the caves, and Bret-Lee was overcome by the dim-despairs. Look at her, she is already turning brown.”

  But Bret-Lee moved. Her eyes fluttered open, and she made an effort to grab the bag from Far-Awn’s hands. He cut her bonds, using his own knife, and held the bottle to her lips, smiling to himself as she drained it dry. He cut all the ropes that bound her, and those of Sal-Lar.

  His ten-year-old sister, so near death but a moment ago, sat up and rubbed sleepily at her eyes. She gazed solemnly thoughtful at Far-Awn. “I thought you ran away with the puhlets, but I am happy you are back.” Then she turned her attention to Sal-Lar, who was stiffly sitting up, chafing his wrists that the ropes had burned. Bret-Lee flushed with healthy color to see him so close at her side. “What are you doing here?” she asked, fluttering her eyelids.

  Sal-Lar smiled, although smiling wasn’t allowed. “We are married now, Bret-Lee. You managed to say the words, even when you didn’t know what you were doing.”

  The full lips of Bret-Lee quivered. “You mean I missed my own marriage ceremony? And I got married in this old rag I’m wearing? Oh, Mother! How could you allow that to happen?”

  No one heard Sal-Lar’s answer through the bedlam that broke loose. The mesh bags of fruit were torn from the backs of the puhlets. The melons were cut open, broken open, smashed open. The fruit of many colors was jammed by the handfuls into eager and ravenous mouths. Even the stems were eaten. They ate until they fell on the ground, their bellies full for the first time in their lives.

  As Far-Awn stepped over the bodies sprawled on the ground, he noticed smiles on the faces of many. He was smiling too when he reached Musha’s side and patted the great animal’s head. “See, Musha. It’s exactly as I said it would be. No one will ever want, or need to eat, puhlet meat again. Now you and your family are free.”

  Musha rilled and looked up at his master. He turned his head in the direction from which he had just come. It had been a long, long journey back to where humans lived and took care of them. Musha looked again at the wilderness where the warfars lived. Then he nuzzled Far-Awn’s hand.

  “I understand,” Far-Awn murmured in sympathy. “You have been domesticated and tamed, and have forgotten the old ways of fending for yourselves. So stay here if that is your choice, and I will see to it that puhlet meat is never again eaten. Things here will change. I will see to it.”

  Musha looked trustingly at the boy who had cared for him since his birth. He looked at the people lying supine on the ground, the suns beaming bright on their faces. His puhlet brain was not large and given to thinking prolonged thoughts, only impulsive ones. Somewhere though, a little flicker of doubt quivered.

  Musha moved closer to Far-Awn, deciding to trust.

  2

  The Annals of Sal-Lar

  Sal-Lar married Bret-Lee for a second time, and this time she was aware of the ceremony, and got to wear the first new dress of her life. They lived happily for many years, and when Sal-Lar was an old man and the father of many children, he recorded the beginnings of El Dorraine in his most elegant script:

  “You here, who have never known hunger, real hunger, the kind that gnaws at your stomach lining, and keeps you always miserable and weak, and sets your mind near crazy for want of nourishment—so much so you could eat the shoes from your feet—you cannot possibly appreciate the thrill and delight that was ours when first we tasted that miraculous fruit of the star-flowers!

  “The melon Far-Awn gave me had a rosy flesh with a
tantalizing flavor, which I was always just on the threshold of identifying, but never quite did. Always another fruit had to be eaten to make certain of the flavor, and I never was. Not then—not now—that was part of its miracle.

  “We began our education that day when Far-Awn explained how the net bags were made of the webby roots of the strange plants that he had found growing on the desert plains of Bay Sol. So difficult it was for us to believe he had been there, and lived! Then that boy, suddenly grown very authoritative and sure of himself, so that all were impressed, did a most remarkable thing. He took each one of those empty net bags, formerly the containers for the fruits—and he buried them! I began to think he was truly sun-mad. The very next inexplicable act he performed didn’t reassure me of his mental capabilities either, not one bit. He took our most precious, clear and purified water and sprinkled it over those dry mesh bags he had just buried! Someone started to object. Baka Valente, Far-Awn’s father shut him up. ‘Fool!—let that boy do as he wants! What need do we have now for water except for bathing—now that we have melons that are both food and drink to us?’

  “So another asked very respectfully why he bothered to plant bags made of dry, dead roots. Far-Awn looked up from his work and chuckled. He didn’t bother to tell us his reasons, until the last mesh bag of dead roots was planted and watered. Then he sat down, with us all gathered around him, and told us the whole of his adventure: how he stayed in the cave with the puhlets, fearing the warfars would eat them during the night, and the storm from Bay Gar came and kept him asleep for four nights and three days, the same as it did us. Only he suffered less severely, for he had the warmth of the puhlets snuggled up close to him, while our fires burned low, and then went out.”

  Sal-Lar paused then in the recording of the story. He sipped of the purple wine his secretary so readily offered. Everyone alive knew the tale almost as well as he—but there would come a day when all alive at that time would be dead…and there should be some permanent record, for tales grew so exaggerated when repeated over and over again by many tongues. He thought again of the time when everyone alive then would be dead, and he sighed. Strange, how the coming of the fruit changed their lives!

  He wrote: “What a celebration we had that day! For the first time in many months we felt vigorous and strong! But for Far-Awn, we would have made absolute hogs of ourselves. Far-Awn insisted we must eat sparingly of the fruit, for it had to last until he could bring back more from his supply hidden in the cave of the red-rock hills. All the men offered to go with him and help bring back the fruit that made us feel drunk with power. I was fortunate to be one of the men chosen by Far-Awn to accompany him back to the cave. And while we journeyed, as unbelievable as it seemed then, the root bags Far-Awn had planted germinated and started a new crop of food for us. Far-Awn gave each one of us a long and penetrating look. ‘Do not think for one minute the fruit of those white star-flowers is ordinary fruit. It is a special gift, sent by the Gods.’

  “We believed that. Without question.

  “Ah, those were sun days! And so were all the days that came after. It was a joy to awaken in the mornings, to spend our time discovering the many-faceted merits of that superlative fruit! It didn’t take us too long to learn what Far-Awn had discovered: It was more than just a fruit—it was every fruit! It was more than just one vegetable—it was every vegetable we had ever known, and some we had never experienced.

  “We named our new source of sustenance pufars. Half for the puhlets that led Far-Awn to them, and half for the boy. Every day we learned something new about the pufars. Ten thousand and one books could be written on that particular subject, the agriculture, and the multitude of methods for preparing pufars, plus the many other things that can be done with them outside the realm of food for our stomachs! You who are reading this have experienced all the advantages of that most marvelous fruit. But we of old El Sod-a-Por, we had the fun and adventure of discovering for ourselves!

  “It was a thrill beyond expressing to wake up to the first sun’s light, and know that today something new and totally unexpected might very well be discovered by one’s very own self! A spirited competitive rivalry developed among the inspired pufar farmers, to see which of us could develop a new strain, a new flavor, a new use. But all of us were put in the shade by the genius of Far-Awn. He was way ahead of us. We were left stunned by the imagination and talent that boy had—and once we all had considered him crazy and lazy too!

  “Far-Awn taught us what light could do, and how the quantity and quality of light mattered so much. We didn’t ask why of Far-Awn, we just accepted.

  “If the plants were grown in full sun all day, with a plentiful supply of water, the resulting fruit was bright orange, and it tasted divinely sweet. With full sunlight but a limited supply of water, the fruit became brilliant red, with still another nuance of sugar-sweet flavoring. And in full sunlight without even one drop of water, the fruit turned a deep, rich yellow and developed a thick husky hull, with a sweet-sour mash inside that was delightfully refreshing. Grown in only partial sunlight, with a little water, the fruit was pale and pink. It was this delicately flavored melon that Far-Awn first fed us, and so it was always my favorite.

  “Other plants were grown in the shade, with only speckled light coming intermittently, and these developed into various shades of green and blue, the color and flavor depending on the degree of shade, the degree of water, the degree of occasional light. But the plants that grew in total darkness gave us our biggest surprise—and to many, our greatest delight! In the darkness, the fruit developed only a thin brittle purple shell, as fragile as an egg. Inside, the pulp was almost liquid. It could be eaten with a spoon, or strained and made pure liquid to pour in a cup. It had a very pleasant zingy taste.

  “Someone—I forget just who—was able to resist the temptation of drinking this liquid straight down. That someone kept the purple liquid until it aged into a magenta color and when swallowed, it burned our throats, and warmed our insides. It was unpleasant, rather sour, yet somehow it was very pleasing. It reacted on us strangely. We smiled for the first time in our lives. We quickly hushed, of course, lest the Gods see they had given us too much. Then and there, there were those who decided to specialize in the cultivation of the grown-in-darkness purple pufars. Many variations of the liquid purple were developed but many have covered that subject far better than I possibly could.

  “Let me write this, as a man who remembers the past well, that until the coming of the pufars, all that any of us on El Sod-a-Por could think of was food and how to obtain it, of shelter and how to retain it, of all of life and how to sustain it! We were obsessed with the weather, with the perpetual struggle against so many odds. We never thought we could win—we just wanted to hang on! After the pufars came into our dreary, monotonous, hopeless lives, doors swung open that we hadn’t even realized were there.

  “We had food now that grew bountifully, with such little care; we had the time and the energy for discovering the joys of other things. But we were so accustomed to our old obsessions, to our old habits of labor and nothing but endless hard work, that we couldn’t readily give them up without making substitutions. The pufar itself became our obsession—and what zealots we were!

  “I recall my wife, pregnant with our first child, looking at me wistfully. ‘Sal-Lar,’ she said, ‘you work as hard now as you did in the underground caverns. Can’t you stay home at least one day, and forget your work?’

  “I gave her an incredulous look. ‘Stay home and do nothing all day?’ I asked. ‘What would we do, all day long?’ ‘We could think of something,’ she said rather vaguely, ‘something we could do that was just fun, and not hard work.’

  “At that time I could think of only one thing that was fun, and she was already pregnant. So I threw off her ridiculous suggestion that I stay with her and do something that was fun for a full day! I set out at a trot, eager for the factory work that was a challenge to our ingenuity, and found my brother-in-law, Far-A
wn, already busy at work. He had not yet married, although every unmarried girl in the upper borderlands was crazy for his attention. There had been a time when I thought he felt some attraction to my sister, Santan, but Santan had married one of Far-Awn’s brothers and had two children. I am most proud to write here that I was Far-Awn’s very closest friend, so that he could confide in me with perfect reliability that he would marry only when he found just the right girl. That ‘right girl’ seemed a long time in coming. I felt rather sorry for him that he was so hard to please, for there was much joy in having a wife.

  “Since our full stomachs gave us a new kind of lusty good health, our energy was boundless. We attacked with full and gusty zeal any challenge given to us by the Gods of the Mountain. We were determined to outdo the expectations of those mighty, unknown ones who lived on the mountain, and our easy successes were indeed a rich and heady wine.

  “For the first time, we on El Sod-a-Por thought of ourselves as something other than struggling toilers, expendable nothings of no real importance or meaning. For the first time we had the means, we had the strength, we had the will to resist, to fight, to win! We weren’t just going to hang on—we were going to ride! For the first time, we were men! In time, we grew to think of ourselves as even more than men: We had the power now to rival that of the Gods—or so we came to believe foolishly. But I am getting ahead of myself again….

  “We had ploughed, seeded, planted, and grown, then harvested and eaten. Then came an even greater discovery: Until this time we had been eating the pufars raw, or drinking them down like water or wine, experimenting in all the flavors of their growth. It was my own wife, along with her mother, Lee-La, who accidentally dropped a pufar into the fire. Very upset, the two women hauled the fruit out quickly, for such was our ingrained tendency to waste not, even when there was plenty, and they were afraid the fruit would be spoiled. My wife cut open the fruit with the burned black shell and tentatively tasted of the half-cooked fruit.