Gods of Green Mountain (12 page)

"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-Awn, 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.

"That evening when I came home, she greeted me exuberantly. 'Sal-Lar, you'll never guess! Today I dropped an orange pufar in the fire--quite by accident--and it came out tasting like nothing I have ever eaten before! It was soft, and mushy, and so sweetly divine. Mother and I quickly threw a few more pufars in the fire, and we gave some to Far-Awn, when he stopped by. He loved it! He named it a pudding, and suggested we women start cooking the pufars in different methods. "Puhlet meat is not the only thing that can be roasted," he told us, and then he winked his eye.' She stopped and smiled sadly. 'You know, I wish he would find a wife. He is growing old, and he doesn't have a child to inherit his talent.'

"Far-Awn
was
growing old. He was sixteen now, and unmarried, an unheard of age to remain a bachelor. Baka Valente himself once said that at sixteen he had already fathered seven children--few of whom still lived.

"Do I speak overly much of my friendship and closeness to Far-Awn? I hope not, and seek not to impress you with this. But remember, I was the husband of his sister. I was his closest friend. I was his most trusted confidant, more so than any of his brothers, or even his father. The love I had for him was different from the love I had for my wife, but very large, nevertheless. Still, he was for me always an enigma. He could sit staring thoughtfully into the fire, his brows wrinkled in a look of anxiety, when all was going so well. Though he worked as hard as any of us, he was given to overlong periods of just thinking, of daydreaming, of planning for the future when every day was so perfect now. We accepted this oddity of his personality as part of his talent and character, and respected the differences that were his. Still, his thoughtful frowns when he thought of the future put a few thoughts in my own head, trying to ponder on what could be the cause.

"While Far-Awn thought of the future, of ways to defeat the storms when they came, the rest of us combed our brains to devise, invent, and originate different methods of cooking and preparing the pufar fruit. You see, we were very much enthralled with the needs and demands of our stomachs, for never had they been so cherished and delighted before. Into our ovens went the pufars, and they became not fruit or vegetable at all--but the very finest meat! Meat that was as tasty any day as the best puhlet flesh! Fried, the pufar was strongly akin to the best cuts of the quickets! Boiled, baked, stewed, roasted, toasted, or poached--any method at all produced new unique results. Not any one of us could say which flavor was the most pleasing. Even the texture could be altered with the cooking.

"So we grated, we ground, we pulverized, mashed, and rolled. We sliced thin and long, short and chunky. We diced, we minced, and we pounded--and then we cooked!

"Overnight it seemed we became a nation of chefs of great merit. Overnight we became exacting gourmets to add to our already gourmand appetites. Rivalry between the best cooks began, and juried competitions were an everyday event--and oh, how delightful to be a judge!

"We became plump, but never fat, for our old habits of work without play were still very much upon us. Strange, how devoted we were with our obsession for food, for eating, as if that were all there was. So enthralled we were with our cuisine--as if that alone offered us limitless expectations!

"Be understanding at this point. From time immemorial, in the aeons since we had uprooted ourselves from the ground, we had been nothing but tillers of the soil, farmers, dirt-dobbers, always on the verge of starvation, slaving always to nourish our bodies, balancing perpetually on the rim between life and death. Isn't it only natural that once our immediate physical needs were satisfied, we would have the presumption to think--no,
determined
would be a better word--to determine that we would conquer all that had beaten us down in defeat before? Can't you sympathize with our exaltation because at last we were well fed?

"The future wasn't ours. That belonged to our children and grandchildren. We had no thoughts of tomorrows--tomorrow could take care of itself. Today was our time to shine. When the tomorrows came, we would be cork brown and dead in our graves.

"So we thought."

Far-Awn
Meets His Match

A
youth discovered one day, just fooling around with a split and hollowed-out fruit hull, that strings could be stretched across the hull and fastened down, and from this primitive instrument, sounds could be made that resembled that of the wind blowing down through the hills.

Music was born that day.

The youth took his music maker home and played it for his sister. Her eyes widened in a wondering rapture that jumped her to her feet, and she began to move, fitting her movements to the rhythm of the wind singing through a hollowed-out fruit hull. Dancing was the child of the music.

Like everyone there who discovered something new and exciting, the two children rushed to Far-Awn and played and danced for him. A dreamy, faraway look came into Far-Awn's eyes as he watched and listened--for this was not the first time he had heard music--but never before in El Sod-a-Por.

"What are your names?" he asked of the two, for he would tell Sal-Lar so the discovers of music and dancing could be recorded in the book Sal-Lar would compile.

The boy answered, awed to be in the presence of Far-Awn, "I am Mah-Lan, and this is my sister, Mar-Laine. Our father is Hen-Shee; he grows the purple, grown-in-darkness pufars."

It made Far-Awn laugh to hear that. He always laughed more easily than anyone else. "Perhaps your father's crop accounts for your unusual talent. When you go home, tell your parents how much I enjoyed your music and your dancing. Teach others how to make instruments, and invent different shapes to make new sounds." Only then did he turn his violet-blue eyes on the lovely girl, Mar-Laine. Her red-gold hair was very much like the color of his own. Her complexion was creamy fair, like his own, without even a hint of green. Thoughtfully, admiringly, he scanned her figure from head to toes, and it was unheard of for a man to be too taken with the beauty of a young girl. "Are you married?" he asked, his broken heart mending a bit, though he had grieved many a lovelorn day for not having Santan.

She shook her head, unable to speak. She marveled that he could look at her so approvingly, when she was just a nobody, and he was the most important person alive.

"Would you mind if I asked how old you are?"

She swallowed nervously, for she was middle-aged and not yet married, and certainly he would laugh and be scornful. How could she tell him she had waited all her life for one special man to come and say sweet words, when men weren't given to saying sweet words, except to domestic animals. "I am twelve," she answered shyly, keeping her gaze riveted to the floor.

"That is an advanced age, and not married, tsh, tsh. Are you perhaps disliking of men?" He said all this teasingly, strangely affected by the girl who was like his twin in looks, only of another sex. And he'd never seen anyone dance before--why it was like another form of communication.

"Sir," she said properly, lifting her head to meet his gaze directly. "Every day of my life my parents urge me to get married to someone, anyone. But I cannot marry just any man! I want what other women don't seem to care about! I don't want just a man to make babies, but a man to love me for what I am, and also not just for what I can do. I want a man who will listen when I speak, and not hush me up like I don't have a mind at all to think with. I have a very good mind--so if you are not afraid of a woman who dares to be different, I might consent to teaching
you
how to dance."

He was charmed, bedazzled, especially when she smiled at him flirtatiously. "And, may I add, sir, you are much older than I am, and not married, nor are you betrothed, to my knowledge."

"Does everyone know everything about me?"

"No one knows anything about you," she said tartly. "But if you think I am unduly impressed with you, think otherwise. You are too much like my mirrored reflection. Except, of course, you do have a few minor differences."

"Minor?" he asked, taunting her, for he'd never enjoyed a girl so much. "I call the differences between you and me the most major difference in the world."

She backed off, surprised he thought as she did. Was he like her in all ways but that of gender? Was she no longer to feel an alien in her own world? He came then to her, and caught her hand in his. "Come dance for me again, Mar-Laine, and teach me to move as you do. I have a strange fluttering in the middle of my chest that says you and I are destined for one another, and all the tears I shed for another were only wasted."

Turning, she darted a long look back at him, then skipped off. Leaving Far-Awn sitting in his father's large, strong house with a head full of romantic notions and not practical ones. Oh, there was a girl like his mother! Not just a female for breeding, but one for loving as well! What miracles the pufars had brought about!

On and on he sat, flipping his thoughts away from love and the beauty of Mar-Laine, until he was dreaming of one of the most important of all his innovative inventions. From beginning to end he thought it out, and then he acted.

He gathered all the members of his large family, male and female about him and gave them each specific orders. Then he joined in with the work, demonstrating exactly what he wanted done. Mar-Laine stood to the side, invited without explanation.

"What by the Gods are you doing now?" demanded Baka, sitting idly in the sunlight while everyone else worked. In his hand he held a cup of the magenta wine, from which he sipped from time to time. Life was so easy now, he had time for sitting and drinking, and asking querulous questions. "With so much good food overflowing our storage bins, why waste your time messing about with those rock hard hulls?"

Without interrupting his labor, Far-Awn answered, "These yellow hulls are the toughest material we have. I have thought of a use for them."