Captives of the Flame Part 20

The sky was smoke gray to the horizon where a sudden streak of orange marked the sunset. The burning copper disk hung low in the purple gap of the mountains. A fan of lavender drifted above the orange, and then white, faint green.... The gray wasn't really gray, it was blue-gray. He began to count colors, and there were twelve distinct ones (not a thousand). The last one was a pale gold that tipped the edges of the few low clouds that cl.u.s.tered near the burning circle.

A touch on the shoulder made the boy turn back. Quorl handed him the second animal, and they went back into the woods. Later, they had built a small fire and had skinned and quartered the animals on the scimitar-like blade that the giant wore. They sat in the diminishing sh.e.l.l of light with the meat on forked sticks, turning it over the flame. The boy watched the gray-maroon fibers go first shiny with juice, and then darken, turn crisp and brown. When the meat was done, Quorl took a piece of folded skin from his pouch and shook some white powder onto it. Then he pa.s.sed the leather envelope to the boy.

The boy poured a scattering of white powder into his palm, then carefully put his tongue to it. It was salt.

When they had nearly finished eating the forest had grown cooler and still. Fire made the leaves around them into flickering shingles on the darkness. Quorl was cleaning the last, tiny bone with big, yellow teeth when there was a sound. They both turned.

Another branch broke to their left. "Tloto," Quorl called harshly, followed by some sort of invective.

It moved closer, the boy could hear it moving, closer until the boy saw the tall shadow at the edge of the ring of light.

With disgust--but without fear, the boy could see--Quorl picked up a stick and flung it. The shadow dodged and made a small mewing sound.

"Di ta klee, Tloto," Quorl said. "Di ta klee."

Only Tloto didn't _di ta klee_, but came forward instead, into the light.

Perhaps it had been born of human parents, but to call it human now ...

It was bone naked, hairless, sh.e.l.l white. It had no eyes, no ears, only a lipless mouth and slitted nostril flaps. It sniffed toward the fire.

Now the boy saw that both the feet were clubbed and gnarled. Only two fingers on each hand were neither misshapen or stiffly paralyzed. It reached for Quorl's pile of bones, making the mewing sound with its mouth.

With a sudden sweep of his hand, Quorl knocked the paraplegic claw away and shouted another scattering of indifferent curses. Tloto backed away, turned to the boy, and came forward, its nostril slits widening and contracting.

The boy had eaten all he could and had a quarter of his meat still left.

It's only a head or two taller than I am, he thought. If it's from this race of giants, perhaps it's still a child. Maybe it's my age. He stared at the blank face. It doesn't know what's going on, the boy thought. It doesn't know what's supposed to be happening.

Perhaps it was just the sound of the word in his head that triggered off the sudden panic. (Or was it something else that caught in his chest?) Anyway, he took the unfinished meat and extended it toward Tloto.

The claw jumped forward, grabbed, and s.n.a.t.c.hed back. The boy tried to make his mouth go into a smile. But Tloto couldn't see, so it didn't matter. He turned back to the fire, and when he looked up again, Tloto was gone.

As Quorl began to kick dirt onto the coals, he lectured the boy, apparently on Tloto and perhaps a few other philosophical concepts. The boy listened carefully, and understood at least that Tloto was not worth his concern. Then they lay down beside the little cyst of embers, the glowing scab of light on the darkness, and slept.

When the giant's hand came down and shook his shoulder, it was still dark. He didn't jump this time but blinked against the night and pulled his feet under him. It had grown colder, and dark wind brushed his neck and fingered his hair. Then a high sound cut above the trees and fell away. Quorl took the boy's arm and they started through the dark trees quickly.

Gray light filtered from the left. Was it morning? No. The boy saw it was the rising moon. The light became white, then silver white. They reached a cliff at last, beyond which was the dark sea. Broken rock spilled to ledges below. Fifty feet down, but still a hundred feet above the water, was the largest table of rock. The moon was high enough to light the entire lithic arena as well as the small temple at its edge.

In front of the temple stood a man in black robes who blew on a huge curved sh.e.l.l. The piercing wail sliced high over the sea and the forest.

People were gathering around the edge of the arena. Some came in couples, some with children, but most were single men and women.

The boy started to go down, but Quorl held him back. They waited. From sounds about them, the boy realized there were others observing from the height also. On the water, waves began to glitter with broken images of the moon. The sky was speckled with stars.

Suddenly a group of people were led from the temple onto the platform.

Most of them were children. One was an old man whose beard twitched in the light breeze. Another was a tall stately women. All of them were bound, all of them were near naked, and all except the woman shifted their feet and looked nervously about.

The priest in the black robe disappeared into the temple, and emerged again with something that looked to the boy from this distance for all the world like a back-scratcher. The priest raised it in the moonlight, and a murmur rose and quieted about the ring of people. The boy saw that there were three close p.r.o.ngs on the handle, each snagging on the luminous beams of the moon, betraying their metallic keenness.

The priest walked to the first child and caught the side of her head in his hand. Then he quickly drew the triple blade down the left side of her face. She made an indefinite noise, but it was drowned in the rising whisper of the crowd. He did the same to the next child who began to cry, and to the next. The woman stood completely still and did not flinch when the blades opened her cheek. The old man was afraid. The boy could tell because he whimpered and backed away.

A man and a woman stepped from the ring of people and held him for the priest. As the blade raked the side of his face, his high senile whine turned into a scream. The boy thought for a moment of the trapped animals. The old man staggered away from his captors and no one paid him any more attention. The priest raised the sh.e.l.l to his mouth once more, and the high, brilliant sound flooded the arena.

Then, as they had come, silently the people disappeared into the woods.

Quorl touched the boy's shoulder and they too went into the woods. The boy looked at the giant with a puzzled expression, but there was no explanation. Once the boy caught sight of a white figure darting at their left as a shaft of moonlight slipped across a naked shoulder.

Tloto was following them.

The boy spent his days learning. Quorl taught him to pull the gut of animals to make string. It had to be stretched a long time and then greased with hunks of fat. Once learned it became his job; as did changing the bait in the traps; as did cutting willow boughs to make sleeping pallets; as did sorting the firewood into piles of variously sized wood; as did holding together the sticks while Quorl tied them together and made a canopy for them, the night it rained.

He learned words, too. At least he learned to understand them.

_Tike_--trap, _Di'tika_--a sprung trap, _Tikan_--two traps. One afternoon Quorl spent a whole six hours teaching words to the boy. There were lots of them. Even Quorl, who did not speak much, was surprised how many had to be learned. The boy did not speak at all. But soon he understood.

"There is a porcupine," Quorl would say, pointing.

The boy would turn his eyes quickly, following the finger, and then look back, blinking quietly in comprehension.

They were walking through the forest that evening, and Quorl said, "You walk as loud as a tapir." The boy had been moving over dry leaves.

Obediently he moved his bare feet to where the leaves were damp and did not crackle.

Sometimes the boy went alone by the edge of the stream. Once a wild pig chased him and he had to climb a tree. The pig tried to climb after him and he sat in the crotch of the branch looking quietly down into the squealing mouth, the warty gray face; he could see each separate bristle stand up and lie down as the narrow jaw opened and closed beneath the skin. One yellow tusk was broken.

Then he heard a mewing sound away to his left. Looking off he saw slug-like Tloto coming towards his tree. A sudden urge to sound pushed him closer to speech (_Stay away! Stay Back!_) than he had been since his arrival in the woods. But Tloto could not see. Tloto could not hear.

His hands tightened until the bark burned his palm.

Suddenly the animal turned from the tree and took off after Tloto.

Instantly the slug-man turned and was gone.

The boy dropped from the tree and ran after the sound of the pig's crashing in the underbrush. Twenty feet later after tearing through a net of thick foliage, he burst onto a clearing and stopped.

In the middle of the clearing, the pig was struggling half above ground and half under. Only it wasn't ground. It was some sort of muckpool covered by a floating layer of leaves and twigs. The pig was going under fast.

Then the boy saw Tloto on the other side of the clearing, his nostrils quivering, his blind head turning back and forth. Somehow the slug-man must have maneuvered the animal into the trap. He wasn't sure how, but that must have been what had happened.

The urge that welled in him now came too fast to be stopped. It had too much to do with the recognition of luck, and the general impossibility of the whole situation. The boy laughed.

He startled himself with the sound, and after a few seconds stopped.

Then he turned. Quorl stood behind him.

(Squeeeee ... Squeeee ... _raaaaaaa_! Then a gurgle, then nothing.)

Quorl was smiling too, a puzzled smile.

"Why did you--?" (The last word was new. He thought it meant laugh, but he said nothing.)

The boy turned back now. Tloto and the pig were gone.

Quorl walked the boy back to their camp. As they were nearing the stream Quorl saw the boy's footprints in the soft earth and frowned. "To leave your footprints in wet earth is dangerous. The vicious animals come to drink and they will smell you, and they will follow you, to eat. Suppose that pig had smelled them and been chasing you, instead of running into the pool? What then? If you must leave your footprints, leave them in dry dust. Better not to leave them at all."