Gods of Green Mountain (8 page)

Far-Awn Becomes a Man

W
hen 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 snapping 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.

Thoughts of tortars, of menu, brought his own hunger into the forefront of his mind. A mind strangely light-headed, so that everything felt unreal, and dreamlike, and with effort he pulled his thoughts into focus. He sighed with the overwhelming ramifications each new day brought, and turned to awaken the puhlets. Startled, his violet, almost blue eyes opened wide, not able to give credence to what they registered! The puhlets were gone, every one! Dead? Eaten by the warfars? No blood did he see--only a trail in the soft snow, hoof marks, theirs. Again he was surprised as he examined the prints. Musha had led the herd away! His Musha! His most dependable animal had disobeyed him...taken his wives and led them away!

Hurriedly Far-Awn strapped his bag of supplies on over his coat and set off at a trot to follow where the puhlets led. Many times he stumbled and fell before he remembered he hadn't eaten. He didn't realize how many days had passed since he ate last--he thought only one night had gone by, not four. He fumbled in his coat pocket for the sole remaining piece of cheese, now gone stale, and ate only half the small piece, savoring the cheese in his mouth as long as he could, forbidding his thoughts to linger on what he would eat when this last bit of cheese was gone.

On and on the puhlets led him, down from the highlands, into the low-rolling plains. Never deviating from a set direction, the puhlets traveled in single file. So well did he know his animals, he could recognize each footprint and name the animal it belonged to. It was a set course, all right, true as an arrow, aimed directly at Bay Sol, that terrible land of sands and burning heat! It was all so reminiscent of that time two years previous, when the six female puhlets had entered the ice plains of Bay Gar.

Far-Awn left the snow covered borderlands behind him. The ground went from hard to soft, powdering beneath his feet. Grainy sharp sands sifted into his hide, fur-covered shoes. He began to perspire. He stopped and took the bag of supplies from his shoulder, and removed his light, but too-hot coat. Again he strapped on his pack but left the fur coat on the sand, weighted down with several heavy rocks so the winds wouldn't blow away so valuable an article.

Weak with hunger, and dry from sudden thirst, he stumbled into the desert wasteland. Scorching hot winds blew incessantly, seeming to suck every drop of moisture from his skin. Constantly he tipped his water bag to his lips, but never was his thirst satisfied, no matter how empty the bag became. He told himself to go easy on the water, to resist the urge to drink...there was no more water here. He licked his lips to moisten them, until his lips became parched and cracked, and his tongue felt like cotton. He swallowed, and there was nothing to relieve his burning throat.

The two suns were high, blazing down on him with baleful, sneering, orange eyes, one behind, and one before. His twin short shadows fought for domination, trying to confuse him. He thought about lying down in the shade and resting awhile. There was not one lengthy spot of shade the suns would allow. "This is a hellish place for sure," he thought aloud, and heard his voice as cracked and old. If my father could see me now, he thought, he too would sneer. There goes my fool son, off again on an idiot journey, bringing back with him only a flower to reward his effort...

Far-Awn sobbed, wishing for his mother's arms, for the touch of her hands cool on his fevered brow. He thought of the lovely Santan who never looked at him, only his brothers. It wasn't his fault his skin wasn't as green as it should be, or his hair wasn't as red, or the fact he stood too tall and moved too quickly, and he hated to wear a grim, set expression like everyone else's. If I live through this experience, I won't dream, laugh, sing...or even think, he vowed to himself. I'll conform...I'll be just like everyone is...sad. But even as he thought this, he knew it was a vow he couldn't keep.

The long day grew old. The first sun neared the place of its setting. Violently the sky flared into brilliance, refracting myriad colors down on the sharp, glittering sands. But Far-Awn's vision was already bedazzled from too much brightness, too glazed with fatigue, with hunger, with thirst to see the first sun's magnificent leave-taking. His bodily needs cried too loudly for relief for Far-Awn to notice anything but its demands. Far behind him on the trail lay his empty water bottle.

So this was the fabled Bay Sol! The eternal desert of heat, dry, scorching winds, and suns, suns, suns! Nothing moved, except for the sand blowing. Nothing grew, nothing lived...not a leaf, not a petal, not a twig. There wasn't even an ant, or a gnat crawling on the ground, or a bird in the sky. There was no sound but the whiz of the wind blowing the sands. Not once had Far-Awn heard of a traveler surviving the desert heat. Why was he here? He tried to recall, but he couldn't.

Instinct guided him, kept his eyes fastened to the puhlet trail, following blindly, without conscious volition. He fell again and again, and always gained his feet and stumbled on, gasping, half-crying, desperately needing relief from the single sun still remaining. Again he fell. This time, as he struggled to rise, his unfocused eyes fell upon five long shadows in a file. Shade! What he needed, what he wanted, what he had to have! You see, you see, he told himself, when you reach a point of desperation, the Gods do provide! Then his glazed eyes lifted and fixed upon what made the five shadows on the hot burning sand...and he beheld the most horrible sight he could ever expect to see. He tried to blink away the vision--for it had to be that! His eyes were deceiving him...some devilish trick caused by that cursed sun! But after he had blinked, and shook his head, and fought to clear his reasoning and his sight, the five shadows were still there when he looked again--and the five standing objects that cast them. He swallowed over the lump of horror in his throat.

Five withered, grotesque things projected from the sand, cork brown and splintered dry as any dead wood...even so, with their features blurred and fusing together, those five things were still recognizable as once living and moving human beings. Far-Awn had never seen one of his kind in this state before. The shock numbed him. He lay sprawled on the burning sand, his head raised, his mouth gaped open, his eyes wide, as if about to scream. The hot air entered his mouth and stole what moisture he still had left, so he couldn't have managed a scream if he had tried.
Who were they? Why were they here?
They were all facing the direction from which he had come. Could they possibly be from the lower borderlands? Could they have traveled so far, only to give up and root themselves--to die--so near their goal?

As he stared, speculating on the obscure meanings of why those five men were there, dead, withered brown, a gusting strong wind blew and buffeted the figures. One listed and fell against another--then, in a row, the mummified men all collided, one against the other, shattering to pieces as they fell to the ground. And before Far-Awn's very eyes, the dry limbs, heads, torsos powdered into dust that was swiftly swept away. Now there was nothing left to show they had ever existed and made a valiant attempt to reach the upper borderlands. Staring down at the sand, Far-Awn wondered how many had died in such attempts as this? "All those dust storms the hot winds blew," he cried, "dust that comes into our sod homes, through the cracks, crevices, under the door...Is this the dust of the dead? The dust of millions upon millions of dead?"

The fantasy of this caused Far-Awn to jump to his feet! He ran forward like one demented! "Is this to be my fate too?
No! Never will I root my feet in the sand and give up and wait to die! I might die, here, today, or tonight--but I won't be rooted, not in that accepting way!"

He ran, stumbling, falling, tearing the clothes from his body, not once thinking of turning back. Not considering that at all. He was here for a reason--the puhlets were leading him--but why enter so far where nothing grew? Into his heat-crackled brain came the thought that animals were in some ways wiser than men...they held on to their instinctual behavior and trusted it, never doubting as men did.

He fell for the last time and couldn't rise. He crawled on all fours, like an animal, panting with the effort of every inch gained. The second sun sank behind the horizon. Once more the sky blazed with a kaleidoscope of shifting, intense, and vibrating colors that were caught and kept in the crystals that abounded everywhere.

With sunlight gone, refrigerated darkness came quickly, closing down on the burning sands. The hot winds chilled. Exhausted, Far-Awn sprawled flat on the sands and slept. Unaware he was cold; unaware he was hungry; unaware he was near the limit of endurance, and very close to death. Before his last consciousness left him, he was aware of only one thing: "At least I did not bury my feet and ankles in the sand to wait for this final, everlasting sleep. I am still a human, almost a man." A whisper of pride came with this.

For the first time in his young life, he had a dream--a nighttime dream! He saw Santan the young and beautiful coming slowly toward him, holding out her arms, with a soft shining look in her eyes. What was there about that look that so enchanted him? Oh, he dreamily thought in his sleep, she is looking at me the way my mother looks at my father. It is that mysterious thing called love between man and woman that everyone was so ashamed to feel.

When I am a man it won't be that way for me and my beloved. We will feel proud of whatever it is men and women do to make babies. Certainly they didn't go about it in the same way as the animals? Nobody had ever told him. No one spoke of shameful things like that. No one had time to talk...maybe that was it. It had to be it.

But as he dreamed on and on, his body woke up as if from a long, long dream, and he would never need to be told the ways of loving a woman. His lips curved upward in his sleep. How dumb not to have known all along, when his body had known since the day he was born.

He changed that night in his dark sleep of desperation. He grew up and became a man and never knew it. He accepted what he was, different, and never questioned the why of what he was.

He
was,
therefore he was important.

Otherwise, why else would he be allowed to live at all?

The Gift of the
Star-Flowers

T
he first sun dawned as spectacular in its awakening as it was on leaving. Bemused and weak, Far-Awn sat up and looked around him, confused as to where he was. He lifted trembling hands and rubbed at his eyes, unable to believe that he had survived the night. How? The cold of the darkness should have shriveled him brown, and still he lived. It was then he saw the many hoof marks on the sand. His puhlets had come while he slept and lain down beside him, protecting him from the bitter cold of the desert night. Now they were gone again. He swelled with love for them, grateful they had saved him, but was disappointed they had left without waiting for him to awaken.

Quivering with weakness, he staggered to his feet, and fumbled in his pants pocket for a crumb of any kind--forgetting he had already searched there yesterday. He had to drag his legs, so weighted they were. He sagged forward like an old man, following still the trail of the puhlets.

Their contented rilling came to his ears long before he saw them and made him laugh. His laughter sounded like madness, crackling with insanity and foolishness. Almost crawling, he made it to the top of a sand dune--and on the other side, there they were, all grazing in contentment. They saw him, looked up, and rilled softly in welcome. Musha separated from the females and ran to him. His throat too dry for speech, Far-Awn patted the giant animal's head, and clung to Musha's thick fur as the big, strong male almost dragged him to where the females grazed on the white flowers and green leaves that sprouted from the sand.

The dainty females, fluffed out with white, insulating fur, ate with such obvious pleasure that Far-Awn released his hold on Musha, and fell to his knees, and quickly stuffed a handful of the white blossoms and green leaves into his own ravished and parched mouth. Before he could stop eating, he had greedily consumed several dozen handfuls.