The Man Who Spoke Snakish (21 page)

Mother and Salme shouted something to me, probably warning me to be careful, but I didn’t hear what they said. A rage was throbbing inside me. It seemed to have welled up from the depths of my body, and I had the feeling that I had discovered some secret cave within myself. Moss that had long lain dry was suddenly struck by a thunderbolt and was crackling ablaze. Into the dark evening sky I hissed a long sibilation that the adders use just before they strike their teeth into the body of their victim with lightning speed. Then I ran to Tambet’s hut.

It was dark and silent there. For a moment I listened at the door, then I leapt in. The shack was empty. There was no Tambet, Mall, or Hiie. So they must have already left. I would have to run like a wolf if I still wanted to save the girl.

I rushed into Tambet’s barn. The wolves were lying there side by side, but at the sight of me they leapt to their feet and started baying. I hissed the necessary Snakish words to them, the wolves fell silent, lowered their heads obediently, and I jumped onto the back of one of them and together we sped toward the sacred grove at breakneck pace.

Yes, they were already there. The flames were blazing. Ülgas was standing in the light of the fire, his arms raised heavenward, and Hiie crouched there like a little crumpled ball, Tambet and Mall like two stone statues a little way off.

On the wolf’s back I charged into the middle of the grove, which was actually a terrible desecration, since animals had no right to enter the sacred grove. Before they could comprehend
it, I pulled Hiie to myself on the wolf’s back and hissed Snakish words meaning “run now as fast as you can!”

The wolf rushed away and behind my back I heard Tambet cursing me and Ülgas screaming in an unnatural, bloodcurdling voice. After a little while the noise abated. Along the forest path we raced at full gallop. It started to rain, and soon we were wet through. Hiie was unconscious; she hung limply over the wolf’s neck and was starting to slip downward. I hissed to the wolf to slacken his pace a little. Actually he would have done that anyway; two people were too much of a burden to him. Just at that moment we heard the baying of other wolves behind us.

These were Tambet’s wolves, and he sat on the back of the first of them; behind him galloped Ülgas, and they were gaining ground on us, as my wolf was tired and had to carry two people, while the wolf pack behind us was running without a load. It was clear that they were almost upon us, and I turned my face to my pursuers and hissed to the wolves through the ever-increasing rain a sibilation that would put them to sleep.

But the wolves did not fall asleep, their baying approached ever nearer, and I heard Ülgas screaming, “Hiss, oh hiss, pupil of the adders! These wolves won’t obey you! Their ears are stopped up with wax. You have no power over them!”

Pouring wax into the ears of animals was a disgusting and also dangerous trick, because it would not be possible to gouge out the wax, and in the future these wolves could never be guided in any way by Snakish words; from now on they would be their own masters and would do whatever they pleased. But in his blind hatred of me and his insatiable desire to cut Hiie’s throat, Ülgas was prepared to take this step. My wolf was now starting to stumble and I knew that soon the game would be up.

At that moment there galloped out of the thicket another wolf, which jumped alongside my steed and I saw, sitting on the wolf’s back, Mall.

“Turn left,” she said without looking at me, looking only at the unconscious Hiie, whom I was holding in my arms. “There is the sea. On the shore you’ll see some rocks; hidden behind the biggest one is a boat. Take it and go; then you’ll be saved.”

The next moment she led her own wolf into the bushes and was gone. There was no time to thank her for her good advice, and in the end Mall had only done a mother’s duty. She had never treated Hiie tenderly, but the sacrifice of her daughter was too much even for her.

I directed my wolf to the left and in a moment we were by the seashore.

For me it was a familiar place; just here, years ago, old Manivald the coast guard had been burned for his funeral. I saw the big rocks, and behind me I heard the wolves’ breathing and Ülgas’s fearful yelping. If Mall was wrong or lying, and there was no boat, they would catch me I knew. Summoning the last of its strength the wolf sped across the beach sand, straight toward the rocks.

There was a boat. I threw Hiie into it and pushed with all my might. The boat was sunk deep in the sand and didn’t want to leave the spot. I yelled in desperation, bit my lips hard, gathered all my strength—and got it to move. A moment later we were on the water. I found the oars in the bottom of the boat, and when the wolf pack, with Tambet and Ülgas, reached the shore, we were sloshing away at a safe distance.

Of course the wolves could have jumped into the water and tried to swim after us, but since their ears were stopped up with
wax, they couldn’t be given the order, and naturally they didn’t want to voluntarily make themselves wet. But Ülgas and Tambet waded into the water, although the decrepit sage almost immediately stepped on a rock on the sea bottom and went sprawling. Tambet kept on wading until the water reached his chin, then started swimming furiously and far, but it was all in vain. The boat was much faster than the old man, and his bobbing head became ever smaller, until it merged with the darkness. However, we heard Tambet’s voice long afterward. “I’m coming after you!” he screamed. “I’ll find you, wherever you escape to! I’ll bring you back! I’ll catch you!”

iie was sleeping in the bottom of the boat, curled up like a little snake. In the meantime I had started to worry for her and feared that she had been hurt in the escape, but when I looked more closely I saw a faint smile on her face and heard her breathing deeply and peacefully. She was all right.

We were drifting slowly on a completely smooth sea, not a single wave in sight. The rain shower had stopped long ago. At first I had rowed, but then I stopped bothering, since I wasn’t able anyway to choose where to go. I was waiting for sunrise so as to find out exactly where we were.

The strange and wild fury and the hitherto unprecedented brutality that had taken over me the previous night had long since dispersed. I was again the ordinary cautious and pious Leemet, and I was quite frightened to think about the peril I had been in. Had I really hissed Snakish words into the night sky like an ancient warrior going into battle? Where did I take that unexpected strength and rage from? By now it had completely dissipated and I thought with dismay that Mother would surely
be worrying and expecting me, and I regretted that I had got involved in this mess.

Dawn finally came. The first rays of the sun were spreading wide over the sea, as if someone had dripped liquid wax into a mirror of water, and at that moment Hiie also woke up. She opened her eyes and looked at me, at the sea surrounding us, and her look contained no hint of surprise or dread. And yet she had been unconscious since the time when I pulled her onto the wolf’s back from under Ülgas’s knife. The last thing she could remember was being in the grove at night and hearing the strange tones of the sage, his arms stretched heavenward. Now she was in a boat with me. But Hiie seemed not to find this odd at all. She smiled at me, sat up, and stretched herself.

“So you saved me,” she said. “I knew it.”

“How could you know it?” I asked. “I got there at the last moment and the escape wasn’t easy at all. They almost caught us.”

I told Hiie quickly about the events of the past night—how we had ridden on wolfback and how Ülgas had poured wax into the ears of the other wolves. Hiie giggled, as if I were telling her something terribly funny. Only when I mentioned the part played by her mother in our plan of escape did she grow serious for once.

“Poor Mum!” she said, but then burst out laughing again. “And poor Dad!” she giggled. “He must he furious with us. He had arranged everything so nicely and spectacularly; just a little more and the forest would have been saved. But now we broke it all up and the ancient life won’t ever come back again. Oh, how disappointed he must be!”

Laughter fairly burst from her mouth. I had never seen Hiie like this before. Her eyes blazed, mischievous dimples had appeared
on her cheeks, and when she tried to suppress her laughter even a little, and pressed her little white front teeth on her lips, she looked like a tiny mouse. That night she had changed beyond recognition; on the open sea, in the bright light of the first rays of the sun, she was strangely beautiful. By leaving the forest she seemed to have pulled herself free from some invisible threads that had oppressed and bound her until then. She seemed to have emerged from a cocoon. I must have been gazing at her in such amazement that Hiie started laughing again, stretched out her arm, and splashed me with water.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked. “You saved me, you sent the forest to destruction, and you struck down the ancient way of life—what next? What else can you do?”

She laughed, rested her head on her knees, and gave me a sly look. At that moment I was madly fond of her. She was so sweet and glowing, and in her eyes was a naughty glint that charmed me. Suddenly I felt that maybe Mother was right and that it might really pay me to take Hiie …

This is what I was thinking at that moment, though only the previous day I’d fallen in love with Magdaleena. That love had not faded away, but Magdaleena and Hiie were simply such different girls that I could calmly admire them both. Magdaleena was primevally female, luxuriant, with long blond hair—a real beauty. But Hiie—at least at this moment in the boat—was still slender and boyish. Her hair was dark and not long at all, but she gazed at me with a special, fresh, newly budded charm.

You could almost claim that during her long sleep Hiie had been reborn. This thought terrified me: I was afraid that the new and radiant Hiie might vanish just as suddenly and change back into the pallid and timid girl who used to melt into the
bushes. That fear alone would have held me back from returning homeward, because I didn’t want the miracle that happened at sea to fade away when Hiie got back to her old familiar surroundings. In any case, it wasn’t possible to return home. No doubt there was waiting for us on the shore a whole pack of deafened wolves, which Ülgas and Tambet would set upon us to leap on our necks. We had to choose some other route.

“We could go there,” said Hiie, pointing to a distant dimly blackish strip of land, which must have been some island. “It must be quite far away. Can you manage to row there?”

“If I get tired, I can have a rest. We’re not in a hurry,” I answered. “But what will we do there on the island?”

“What will we do here either?” asked Hiie. “Or do you want to spend the rest of your life in a boat?”

She chuckled again.

“It’s quite nice here, in a way,” she said. “It’s easy to wash and you don’t have to go far for a swim. As for eating, that’s a more difficult matter, and if the weather gets cooler, we’re going to get cold, won’t we?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “It would be awful to spend the winter here. So by the time snow arrives, we have to get to that island. It’s so important, because in winter the sea freezes over and I won’t be able to row anymore.”

“Yes,” agreed Hiie. “So don’t have too long a rest, a couple of months at most, then you have to start rowing again.”

“I’ll try to manage that,” I promised.

“Let’s try to make the best possible use of these few days,” said Hiie. “Such a beautiful morning—how about going for a swim?”

“Swim …” I only had time to say in reply before Hiie had pulled off her wolfskin jerkin and jumped naked into the water.
I stared at her in amazement. Hiie swam around the boat and cried, “Come on in! The water’s so warm!”

I didn’t like the idea of stripping off in front of Hiie, but it was impossible to refuse. Shyly I removed my jacket and trousers and lowered myself into the water so that the boat was between us.

For the first moment the sea was still very cold and I swam a few strokes quickly to get warm. Hiie’s wet and impish face approached me; we met and swam awhile side by side. The sea covered us, but I knew all the time that right beside me here swam a naked girl, and Hiie suddenly seemed so wonderful to me that I decided to marry her no matter what—and simply visit Magdaleena in the evenings.

I summoned up my courage, swam very close to Hiie, and kissed her nose. She laughed and kissed me back.

This excited me so much that I wanted to take her in my arms right there; I stopped swimming and the next moment sank under the water.

When I rose sputtering back to the surface, Hiie had swum to the boat and was laughing there.

“You’re not a fish!” she cried. “Come onto dry land.” She hauled herself back into the boat and sat there, naked and wet. Bathing had made her even more beautiful. Hiie had truly changed her skin, just like a snake, and this new Hiie, free from her parents, wolves, and all the problems of childhood, was so sweet, so tempting, so irresistible that I swam at my fastest speed to the boat and climbed up to her.

“Keep in mind that we’ve only got until the winter!” whispered Hiie when I kissed her. “Then we’ll be frozen stuck!”

“I know. Before the winter I’ll start rowing again.”

In fact I started rowing much earlier, on the afternoon of the same day. We had been sloshing in the middle of the sea all day, kissing, making love, swimming again, and climbing back into the boat, resting in each other’s arms and talking. I had never heard Hiie talking so much! Usually she was pretty silent, especially back when she used to play with me and Pärtel; it was always we boys who talked and thought up new games, while Hiie only looked at us with round eyes, enchanted at the mere fact that we had taken her into our gang, agreeing with everything that we had to offer.

She was our silent shadow, our little girl grasshopper, whose greatest wish was to keep on our tails—serious and absorbed, as if playing was an important task, to be done with as much care as possible, and as if she were afraid that if she accidentally made a mistake, she must be excluded from our company and would have to stay at home. But at home there was her father, who demanded silence while he meditated on his nation’s illustrious past, and the child’s foolish prattle disturbed him. It had been to Hiie’s advantage to remain as invisible as possible at home, for otherwise Tambet might be reminded, for example, that his daughter didn’t drink wolf’s milk—so it was best for Hiie to move on tiptoes. And so that is what she did, everywhere, always, until now, here in the boat, where she burst into bloom under my gaze. She rested in the crook of my arm, happy and naked, and just kept talking. She was like a fox cub who has suddenly got its eyes and is now greedily ogling the world, and crawling out of the den, instead of drowsily and helplessly lying beside her mother as before. Hiie chatted and laughed until I forced her into silence for a while with kisses, and then she would talk again. And I kept on listening and feeling her warm body against
mine. It was one of the most beautiful days of my life: we were completely alone, far from all other people and animals, the sun warmed us, and there was not a cloud in the sky.

Toward evening we were reminded that a person must also eat and that by nightfall it would be wise to seek some other dwelling place than a little boat, because you cannot always know the sea, and if a storm should suddenly arise, sleeping in a little boat is no fun at all. I put on my trousers and cape and took up the oars. After a couple of hours we reached the island.

“Interesting—are there people living here?” asked Hiie. “I hope not. Most of all I’d like to live here with just you, the two of us.”

“Me too,” I replied. I was no longer worried at all that Mother was waiting for me at home, not knowing anything about our fate. In the end it was she who advised me to go and rescue Hiie, my own bride, and I did, although at that moment I didn’t yet believe that Hiie was my bride. Mother would have to be happy, because Hiie was indeed rescued and had become my bride, so all her little baby clothes had not been made in vain at all. I had to admit that Mother was in the end wiser than I as I trudged hand in hand with Hiie around the island, looking for a suitable cave, because we didn’t care to start building a shack as evening fell. A large hare hopped across our path. I called it with Snakish words, it stopped, and I killed it.

After a little while we found a suitable overnight spot. I lit a fire and Hiie set about cooking the hare, while I lined the cave with skins and tried in every way to make it pleasanter. Sometimes life moves terribly quickly: only that morning had I fallen in love with Hiie; now we already had our own home, and my wife was preparing our first evening meal together. I had become
a husband and a homeowner, maybe even the ruler of a whole island, because so far we hadn’t encountered a single human. We thought we were alone on the island, just the two of us.

But that wasn’t the case. I was just coming with a new load of branches to our brand-new cave when I was grabbed by the leg, so hard that I screamed and fell to my knees. It was already quite dim and I saw to my amazement only two burning eyes, which almost leapt into my face, and I heard a hoarse voice demanding, “Who’s your father? Tell me, who’s your father?”

“My …” I stammered. “He died long ago.” I saw a nose, which stuck out from a gray thicket of hair covering the whole face like a mushroom out of moss.

“Was his name Vootele?” demanded the voice. “Tell me, was his name Vootele?”

“No,” I said with a groan, for my leg was still in an iron grip. I imagined one might have a feeling like this when a wolf gnaws at your shinbone. “You’re hurting me. Vootele was my uncle, but he’s dead too.”

“Ah, uncle!” cried the hairy creature with the burning eyes. “So you’re Linda’s child!”

Linda really was my mother’s name and I said so. The grip slackened immediately, and instead I felt something very hairy and piercing sinking into my face, as if I were being forced headlong into the spruce branches. I was kissed on the mouth and shaken by the ears.

“That’s what I thought; a stink doesn’t lie!” said the stranger. “I always recognize the smell of my own blood. What’s your name, grandson?”

“Grandson?” I repeated in amazement. “My name is Leemet, but are you then …”

“Your grandfather!” announced the hairy old man, hugging me with terrible force. “Your mother, Linda, and your uncle Vootele are my children. Ah, so Vootele has died then! What a shame! My dear son! What happened to him then? Did he die in battle?”

I was too surprised to reply. My grandfather! Apparently then the same one that Uncle Vootele had told me about long ago, the crazy man with fangs, whose legs were chopped off and who was then thrown into the sea to drown. But he hadn’t drowned; he was alive. Indeed only his legs were missing; below the knees his trousers were tied up, so that his empty trouser legs wouldn’t drag along the ground. The old man followed my gaze and declared, “They chopped off my legs, the bastards. But never mind. I’ll still get them in the necks for it. You’ve come at the right time, nephew. I need help. But we’ll talk about that later. Is that girl who’s roasting a hare there yours? I didn’t try to bite her. I thought I’d bump the man off first, but then suddenly I got a whiff of my own blood. What are you doing here, Leemet? Are you on a crusade?”