Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country (2 page)

Safely at home during this terrible time, Zan achieved honor by killing a lioness that endangered the clans. He was given a name of honor, Zan-Gah—meaning Zan of the Rock—because he had shown himself so stalwart and brave. But Zan-Gah was tormented by the loss of his twin, and went to look for him. That was a dangerous quest, and Zan nearly died searching the hostile land. Meanwhile, Dael suffered whole years of imprisonment
and savage abuse before his twin brother could discover where he was.

If Lissa-Na had not come to love the imprisoned boy, he would have died in his cage; but she helped him survive, and it was she who would secretly release him. However, before the brothers could get away together, Dael slaughtered one of his Noi enemies, crushing his skull with a single blow.
Kind-hearted Dael a killer?
It was over before Zan could do anything to stop the horrific act. Lissa-Na, who had let Dael go, would certainly be held responsible for the killing. So she had to leave too.

The escape of Zan, Dael, and Lissa, rendered more urgent by the gruesome dead body at their feet, proved possible only because of Noi superstition. The Noi were terrified of twins. Swift warriors pursued Lissa and the brothers, but when they saw a “double man” they retreated as from double devils. They had not known that their prisoner was one of an identical pair.

In the progress of their flight, the three were soon taken captive again, not by the Noi, but by their old foes—the wasp people. They were put in seclusion, and would have been hurled headlong to their deaths in a deep abyss but for a nighttime rescue by the gigantic Chul. The uncle of Zan and Dael, Chul once again proved himself faithful and strong—and wise when wisdom was required. He easily snapped the bars of their pen, and off they sped! Still, only with much difficulty did the fugitives return to their home. Only by facing much danger did Zan and his clansmen repel the wasp men's subsequent invasion of their lands. When the fight finally was over,
Zan-Gah was a hero; and Dael, it was plain to see, was much changed from his former self.

A year or two of peace and convalescence followed. Dael and Lissa-Na married, and soon Lissa was with child. What happiness! The moon itself never looked on water as Dael's eyes lingered on his pregnant wife. With eager anticipation he watched Lissa grow and her time approach. All of Dael's sorrows were converted to joys, his deep psychic wounds gradually healing.

Lissa-Na appeared to Dael's people (the Ba-Coro) to have come from a different world—but they liked her. Her intelligence was remarkable, so that she easily untangled what could seem the most knotty problem, making the old men wonder. Her startling beauty rendered her unpopular with some of the women at first, but she was eventually recognized for the healer she was. Her very name meant Healer, and her skill was impressive.

Then in childbirth, Lissa-Na died, and Dael's heart died with her. Lissa's sprightly distractions had kept Dael from his memories, enticing him from all the horrors of his past. How gently and with what exquisite tenderness she had coaxed him from his sorrows! She had fed him when he was hungry, nursed him when he was sick, and relieved him when he was oppressed. She had visited him in his agonized moments, and loved him when he could not love himself. And suddenly she was gone.

Her death was horrible. Childbirth screams echoed from the damp cave sanctuary—forbidden to men—
where women bore their young. Lissa's baby finally came out like a fish, took one look at the world, and died. The mother followed an hour after. News was brought to Dael by a woman whose face was ever after painful for him to see. Lissa-Na never once had seen Dael cry, but now his eyes were wet and his face was swollen with grief, like a bawling child. His loss crushed his manhood more than all of his former miseries. After a while he was quieted, until soft and tender memories, rushing upon him, caused him to mourn his loss anew with heartfelt tears.

Lissa's red hair was still flaming when they laid her in a shallow grave. It had been her glory, and now, framing her ashen face and spreading down her neck and shoulders, it made a cushion for her dead baby. A neat layer of flat stones was placed on the grave to prevent hungry animals from digging up the corpses. Dael would have built a mountain of stone in her remembrance, but that sort of honor was reserved for men. It was not customary for a woman's grave. A barrow would keep her spirit alive instead of allowing her to return to the earth of which she was a part.

Afterwards, Zan-Gah saw the change—saw the dark nimbus descending over his brother. Dael ceased speaking. He gazed into empty space for long, unexplained periods, or at the fire, as if he were seriously contemplating throwing himself into it. He would not eat, and devoted himself entirely to brooding ruminations occasionally punctuated by facial twitches and wrathful
expressions that came and went like glimmers of lightning in a storm-blackened sky.

The climax came suddenly. Well past the middle of the night, Zan felt a shaking of his shoulder as he slept, and then an impatient foot kicking at him. Instinctively grabbing for his spear, he looked up and saw the orange glow of a torch, and as his eyes adjusted to the invading light he recognized his brother's ghastly face. Zan understood at once what was happening. Dael's dangerous brow was furrowed, and the vein of his forehead bulged under the old scar. Zan had not seen that expression for some time. His twin's teeth were clenched, and his eyes darted nervously back and forth. His every motion expressed a profound agitation, and Zan knew that what he had been dreading had come.

“It is time, Zan. Let us go!”

“Where? It's dark!”

“I want to find where the river comes from.” In the orange light Dael looked like a priest or a magician who mumbles his incantations to invisible spirits. He was scary.

Thoroughly alarmed, Zan leapt to his feet. He knew what it meant. It meant that Dael could not endure his own thoughts and needed to escape—anywhere! It meant that he could not bear to be stationary. Even now Dael was pacing up and down like a madman.

“I'm sleeping, Dael,” Zan said. “I'm not going anywhere, and neither should you.” He started to lie down. Dael kicked at him again.

“Then I must go alone?” Dael's face was frightful with emotion. He turned to leave.

“No, wait,” Zan said. “I'll go. But call Rydl too. And wait a little for the sun. We can't go in the dark!” Zan was stalling.

“What good is Rydl in manly matters?”

“Still, I want him to come. What about Chul?”

“No.”

Fortunately, dawn would soon arrive. Even in the dark of night Zan was unable to restrain Dael's urgent impulsion. Rydl approached, and at a glance comprehended the situation. That was why Zan wanted him around. Rydl was quick to grasp things. And he was a great friend; Zan never had a better. Rydl did not want to go who-knew-where in the middle of the night, but in a whisper Zan begged him to assist in controlling his brother. In his present state Dael was apt to walk off a cliff—or jump off.

A new idea lit—or rather darkened—Dael's face. “The wasp people have been quiet. They are planning something. We cannot live with this danger.” Even in his better days, those who knew Dael avoided mentioning either the wasp people or the Noi in his presence.

“Which is it to be, Dael, the river or the wasp people?”

“
Come! Come!
” was all Dael replied.

Zan wished that he could get his brother to lie down and go to sleep. Bed would be balm to him, but never had
Dael seemed so disinclined to rest. Zan tried to reason with him: “What do you seek, Brother? You don't even know where you are going.”

“They are like serpents waiting to strike. They must be destroyed before they have done their mischief,” Dael responded abstractedly, seemingly unaware of his brother's question.

“Let me get some things,” Zan said quietly. From his appearance, Dael might actually have undertaken, all alone, the destruction of the wasp people. “Do you have everything ready for a journey?” Zan asked. Zan knew he didn't.

Suddenly, Dael was rushing about, gathering supplies as if it had only just occurred to him that one could not travel without supplies. He seemed more interested in weapons than water or food.

By now, Pax was awake. “Where are you going, Husband?” she asked. Zan nodded toward Dael's hyperactivity, and she too immediately understood. She tried to say something calming to Dael, but it was as if he did not even see her.

The sun was coming up when Dael, Zan, and Rydl departed—and Pax went with them.

 

 

 

 

When Zan's wife came along on the strange and vague quest that Dael had begun, she came spear in hand. That was most unusual for a people whose women never carried weapons. In the Ba-Coro clan, as in most tribal societies, the roles of men and women were clearly defined and strongly separated. Only the men carried spears. Men fought the battles and hunted the game; the women did not. But Pax
did
hunt, to the consternation of the males, and she was very good at it, as her grandfather Aniah had been.

Many people loved that aged, sinewy leader, but none more than this grandchild. When Pax was nine, she began secretly following him as he hunted (at that time Aniah always went out alone), doing what he did, stepping as he stepped, and shadowing him like a ghost. She was eleven before Aniah discovered that, as he was stalking the deer, he himself was being stalked. If he had not suddenly fallen—a rare event for the still-agile man—Aniah would not have seen her. When Pax impulsively rushed forward to aid him, he was amazed at her presence. He demanded to know what the child was doing there, and in her
soft-spoken explanation it gradually came out that she had been tracing his steps for two years.

Now Aniah was amazed indeed! He, who had no equal in stealth, had been outdone by this little girl! He had gone into the woods a hundred times, and she had always been a few steps away, watching him! Aniah was a thoughtful man. He reflected for a few days on what had happened. When he went out next he invited Pax along—and every time thereafter. He taught her each secret skill that he had—how to use her eyes, nose, and ears, and how to move more quietly than the animal she trailed. In a little while she was able to track even a beetle by the footprints it left in the dust.

Pax brought down her first deer unaided, and dragged it forth with difficulty as it panted its last. For Aniah there was a certain sorrow in it, not only because it seemed so unfit for a young girl, but because she was so like the doe she had speared. Pax was slender-boned, graceful, and delicate, with large, dark eyes that sparkled with moisture and betrayed a trace of timidity. She whispered something in the dying animal's ear, and so did Aniah. They carried it home together.

None of this was received well by the men of the clan (although many of the women secretly rejoiced). At first they even refused to eat the flesh of an animal attained so much in violation of their established ways. But in time Pax's activity was better accepted and she was granted a degree of latitude, mainly because of the great respect her grandfather commanded; but also, as it turned out, because she was exceedingly good at hunting. Aniah,
called the greatest hunter who ever lived, was very old, and becoming more and more rheumatic. He had to reduce his exertions. Zan, whose name meant Hunter, was not especially skilled, although he was as adept as the other men of the clan. Who now became the greatest hunter of the Ba-Coro? No one would admit it, yet everyone knew: it was Pax, a girl.