The First Heroes Read online

  “They must have acquired a taste for it. Don’t suppose a little can hurt them; after all, we eat the stuff, too. But for my poor boy’s sake, I am glad the old sheep and the new ewes do not play runaway.”

  “Heh, for all we know, the new ewes might be frisky, too, but for their new lambs,” Mebaw said with a malicious grin.

  “If you want to remain my son’s favorite uncle,” said Dett, “I advise you keep that observation to yourself.”

  Dett’s village, which nestled in Western Isle’s best harbor, numbered around one hundred and forty people. Most, like Dett and Mebaw, farmed and fished and hunted, but there were a few—including their father, uncle, cousins, and two brothers-in-law—who sometimes ventured farther in their boats, trading goods with nearby islands and catching fish that lived in deeper waters. On several occasions, under the guidance of the Mother of the Seas, they traveled an even greater distance, past the Small South Isles to the Great Island. On their last trip there, they discovered a village put to the sword by sea raiders, save a girl and a boy, both young shepherds. After many arguments, they decided to bring them all—sheep and children—back to the Western Isle, though it perilously crowded their vessels. Seven sheep and the boy died on the way, but the girl now lived in Talloc’s house and would wed his youngest son after her monthly courses began. Now called Gefalal, or “stranger,” she had yet to learn more than a dozen words of their language.

  As the brothers entered the village, they spied Gefalal sitting before the doorway of Talloc’s house, carding wool from the recently shorn flock. She leaped to her feet at their approach and bowed her head in respect. Whether her people were naturally more deferential or she still felt ill-at-ease after several months in her new home, Dett did not know. He only knew the children of Western Isle tended to be more outgoing. Fummirrul, for one, never seemed still unless sound asleep. Dett nodded politely to Gefalal as he passed; she bowed more deeply.

  The sight of the stranger girl brought a question to Dett’s mind. “Has Father mentioned when he and the others will go back to sea?”

  Mebaw frowned. “He and Uncle Talloc are uneasy about sailing farther than the nearest isles because of the weather. They don’t like the cold and clouds any more than you do, Brother Sky-watcher. Our brothers-in-law want to go anyway, this being summer—well, a sort of summer—but the elders urge caution. I suspect they will be even more reluctant to put to sea if they think Klevey lurks beneath the whitecaps.”

  “I hope they will say I was mistaken in my sighting. Still, it is wise to be cautious. Father says the currents between the islands are treacherous enough in good weather, and many lack safe harbors such as ours. Better to proceed with care than lose ships in an unexpected storm.” He turned back to face the western horizon, where the setting sun glowed like an ember. “Sleep well, brother. I intend to wake you early to help me hunt. It is time we had a feast at the Pit.”

  “You are cruel. The nights are too short as it is, and my wife is after me to make her another storage box.”

  “If you spent less time singing and more time working . . .”

  Mebaw brushed off this scolding and headed for his house at the eastern end of the enclave. Dett entered his home nearby, where the usual din prevailed. His oldest daughter, Joloc, was spooning barley porridge into the next-to-youngest, who was humming as she gummed each mouthful. His wife, Jolpibb, was changing the wrappings of the cranky baby, and Grandmother Glin was singing charms over the bed of the feverish four-year-old, Orrul. Fummirrul, now naked but for a wool blanket, was squabbling with Rarpibb, his six-year-old sister. He teasingly held her doll, a blobbly lump of sealskin stuffed with a handful of wool, above her outstretched hands.

  “I am glad Mebaw dragged you from your high perch,” Jolpibb said over the baby’s howls. “You spend so much time gazing at the heavens, I sometimes fear you will forget what happens here on the ground.”

  “I know what happens here on the ground,” Dett said. He plucked the doll from Fummirrul and tossed it to Rarpibb, who cuddled it. “Nothing grows well in the ground but weeds. From above, the sun stares down on us, clothed in vermilion and yellow robes. And today, in the froth at the cliff’s base, I saw something else, something I must report to the council of elders.”

  “For you to propose such action sounds serious,” Grandmother Glin said from the little one’s bedside. “You are not given to speaking rashly.”

  “Would that I were!” Dett cried. “Then everyone could dismiss my worries as they did those of old Telley, who saw disaster everywhere and omens in every least little thing!” He spoke with such vehemence that everyone shut up, even the baby. For a moment, the only sound in the close, smoky room was Orrul’s harsh, labored breathing.

  “Is something wrong with the sun, Father?” Rarpibb asked, a slight tremor in her voice. “Can you put it right?”

  “No man has power over the sun, little one,” Dett said. “Our place is here on the earth.”

  “The sun went away before, when I was little, like Orrul,” Rarpibb said, “but it came back, and now it hardly ever is gone, though sometimes it is hard to see in the clouds. I am glad, because I do not like the darkness.”

  Dett, Grandmother, and Jolpibb exchanged wry looks. To a child, the long nights of winter must have given the impression the sun had indeed left for good. Rarpibb was too young to understand the cyclical nature of the seasons.

  “I do not like the darkness, either,” Dett said. “But I would like some porridge.”

  Dett and Mebaw and several other men went hunting the next day and managed to kill two red deer stags. They also spied a doe with a fawn, but let it go to fatten for the fall. They dragged the carcasses to the Pit outside their village, where many of the women were waiting. They exclaimed over the men’s success, for deer were not plentiful on Western Isle.

  The Pit lay beside a small lake, their principal source of fresh water. A great heap of blackened soil, rocks, and ash stood next to it, the remains of decades’ worth of meals, according to Grandmother Glin. The Pit itself was huge, and lined with clay and stones, capable of cooking several deer at once, or even enormous chunks of whale. A steady parade of youngsters with buckets began filling the Pit with lake water as the men set to skinning the stags on the flagstone workplace. The women tending the Great Hearth made certain to keep clear of their keen-edged stone knives.

  “It’s always at this time I think of that trader,” said Mebaw. “The one with those metal knives.” He sighed, as if longing for a beautiful woman.

  “We do well enough with what we have,” said Dett. “His price was too high.”

  “But I’d never seen the like, not before or since!” cried Mebaw.

  Uncle Talloc nodded soberly. “Sharp as Klevey’s teeth, they were.”

  “And what do you know of Klevey?” snorted Grandmother Glin. “Your skill is with boats, not song lore. You are as empty-headed as the Pit, Talloc.”

  Mebaw came to his uncle’s defense. “And is the Pit so empty? It is near full of water, and then you women will drop in the heated stones.”

  “I confess to being wrong in that respect, grandson. However, your head is like the Pit: full of rocks.”

  The work continued for a time, then Talloc called out, “This is drudgery. Give us a tale, Grandmother, to entertain us while we labor.”

  “Willingly,” she said. “The younger women can heat the stones for the Pit. I will sit and rest my aching bones.” She eased herself on a pile of flagstones near one end of the workplace. From the orderliness of them, Dett suspected they once had been part of a wall, the remains of which were long gone, perhaps used when his ancestors constructed the Great Hearth.

  “I shall speak of Klevey,” she announced. Dett sorely wished she had chosen differently, but as he had not presented his sighting before the council, he saw no way of stopping her.

  “Klevey dwells in the sea, and there is no more monstrous creature to be found under or above the waves,” said Grandmother
. “He is oath-brother to Lord Father Winter, and sometimes they work together, bringing ruin and devastation to men.”

  Rarpibb, who had been toting a bucket, asked, “If Klevey lives in the sea, why doesn’t the Mother of the Sea control him, as she does the Seafolk?”

  “Foolish girl! Does not the Mother have enough to do, battling Lord Father Winter every year?” Grandmother retorted. “How she struggles with him every spring, so fierce you can hear them roaring! How she binds him to the seafloor, and brings back the warm waters for us! How he cunningly breaks free in the autumn, to banish the Mother in turn, and afflict us with storms and plague us with his shrieking wind demons! Until at last, the Mother returns, to confront the chill Master once more and chain him yet again.”

  Mebaw bent his head over his skinning and suppressed a grin, but Dett saw it and knew the reason for it: Grandmother had just given a short account of one of the clan’s most famous songs, “The War Against Winter.” Barely three months ago, during the height of the spring gales, Mebaw sang all fifty verses without error. The Mastersinger showered him with praise, and he was puffed with pride for days.

  Rarpibb, however, grumbled something about why the Mother couldn’t manage things better, and so keep Winter chained. Fortunately, Grandmother’s poor hearing caused her to miss this cheeky observation.

  The old woman continued: “But we do beg the Mother for protection from that dread menace, Klevey, for she alone can keep him satisfied and prevent him from prowling the lands of men. Aye, the Mother, and good, fresh water—those are the only things that Klevey fears.”

  “What does he look like?” Rarpibb asked.

  “His head is gigantic, with a mouth like a whale’s, from which the most foul and venomous reek spews forth. When he breathes, any nearby living thing—be it man, beast, or plant—perishes from his poison. He has no—”

  In the midst of his carving, Dett came over queer, as if the ground tilted beneath him, or he had eaten something that made him ill. “Enough, Grandmother!” he cried.

  She stopped. “What is amiss, Dett?”

  He reeled away from the bloody carcass, trying to keep down his nausea. He snatched a bucket from the foreign girl, Gefalal, and dashed cold water on his face. The queasiness receded, but the uneasy feeling did not. It was similar to what he sensed on the cliffs while watching the strange skies, but much, much stronger.

  He glanced westward, toward the distant cliffs. Standing there, stark against the gray skies, was the red figure he’d seen before, swaying slightly on its flipperlike legs. “There!” Dett croaked. “Look to the west! Klevey comes! Do you see him?”

  The villagers turned to stare, but the gods had granted the sighting to Dett alone. Unable to gaze at the monster any longer, he collapsed, retching. When he managed to look up again, Klevey had gone.

  Beside him, Gefalal shivered with fear. He nodded, hoping to reassure her, then turned to the others, who were also staring at him in dismay. Dett was sober, quiet, and not given to displays, unlike his flamboyant brother. They didn’t know what to make of his behavior.

  “A sighting, nephew?” Uncle Talloc asked in tones clearly hoping for a denial.

  “My second,” Dett whispered. “I saw the Red Scourge yesterday, at the cliff bottoms. I planned to tell the council of it.”

  “It is true,” Mebaw said. “I spoke with Dett not long after the sighting.”

  “This was worse. He stood on our land, though he was there but for a moment,” said Dett.

  Grandmother pursed her wrinkled lips. “Well! This will be a more interesting council meeting than most. Enough so, I suspect, to make me yearn for boredom. Under the circumstances, I shall tell a different tale, for fear my words bring back the Red Scourge.”

  “But I want to hear—” Rarpibb began, but fell silent at a sharp gesture from her mother.

  “I shall speak of the swimming dances of the Seafolk, held in their glittering underwater palaces.” As she related the simple story, the others returned to work. Dett listened anxiously as he hacked at the carcasses. It took a long time for the awful wretchedness inside him to abate. By evening, when the chunks of meat had simmered to perfection in the Pit, the families ate well, but Dett had to choke down nearly every bite. The fresh meat tasted foul, as foul as Klevey’s breath.

  That night, as Dett slept beside his wife and children, Klevey walked through his dreams. At first Dett thought it was just Orrul’s wheezy rattle, which had recently worsened. Then he realized his mind’s eye was seeing his well-tended fields of barley and wheat, and beyond them, the flower-sprinkled rise that marked the sheep enclosure. His mind’s ears heard the sheep calling frantically while that hoarse coughing grew louder. Dream-Dett climbed the rise in the same place he and Mebaw had climbed when they stopped to check on Fummirrul. He looked down on a scene of horror.

  Woolly corpses littered the pen. Klevey, his huge chest heaving as he struggled to breathe air, lumbered after the surviving sheep on his awkward flipper-legs. Not that he needed to go near the animals to cause them harm. Some collapsed from sheer fright. Those close enough to smell the noxious fumes from the monster’s mouth died in writhing agony, while others were felled by blows from his clublike fists. He popped an entire lamb in his gaping mouth; his daggerlike teeth shredded it, and blood trickled down onto his torso.

  As dream-Dett watched, frozen in terror, he noticed two things that gave him hope: Fummirrul was not in the pen and the new sheep were escaping. As the older animals huddled near the wall, the new beasts, in almost orderly fashion, leaped on their backs and vaulted to safety. Even the ewes and lambs made it out, though it seemed impossible that the little spindly creatures could jump that high. Led by Trouble, the largest ram, the entire flock trotted north along the shoreline and disappeared from sight. Dream-Dett could only hope his son had vanished with them.

  Klevey soon decided he was done tormenting the sheep, so he lurched to the wall nearest to dream-Dett, and heaved himself over with his massive arms. Dream-Dett threw himself behind a boulder, hoping Klevey’s single red eye had not noticed him. The Red Scourge followed the path to the tilled fields, and plunged into them. His flippers trampled the young plants; what he didn’t crush, his venomous coughing destroyed. The tender green and golden shoots blackened and died; the skies grew darker and the air colder.

  When all the fields were smoldering, Klevey finally stopped. The destruction was taking a toll on him. Spasm after spasm racked his broad chest. Klevey was skinless, yet his exposed red flesh glistened moistly as though his exertions had made him sweat. Black blood pulsed through the yellow veins crisscrossing his frame.

  After what seemed to dream-Dett an eternity, Klevey stopped barking and wheezing. He rested a moment, knuckles pressed into the turf, then turned toward the village.

  Dream-Dett knew it was futile, but he tried to scramble around the boulder to stop the monster. He slipped on the wet grass and found he couldn’t get up, for something was pinning down his tunic. He wheeled around to free himself, only to find a large gray seal had the cloth in his mouth—nor did it appear ready to let go. It stared at him with eyes unlike any he had ever seen in a seal before. There was intelligence behind the dark pupils. No ordinary seal, then, but one of the Seafolk.

  “You must let me go,” dream-Dett pleaded. “Klevey is attacking my village!”

  The seal, or, rather, Seaman, its mouth still firmly shut on the tunic, shook its head. Its belly and sides were encrusted with wet sand and a long tendril of seaweed was draped over one flipper. This gave it the appearance of having only just crawled out of the sea . . . except there were no tracks of its passing behind it, only the grassy heath, with the virgin shore some distance further.

  “Have pity! Or are you in league with the monster?”

  It shook its head once more, its wide eyes wet with tears.

  “Is there nothing we can do?” he wailed, fully expecting the creature to shake its head a third time.

  It did not, but rel
eased him so abruptly he stumbled onto the grass. When he turned back, the Seaman was gone, leaving nothing behind but the seaweed and a few smears of crusty sand on the grass. Dream-Dett ran into the village, but he was too late. Klevey had gone—the tracks of his flippers quite plainly ran through the entire community and down into the harbor, where they disappeared into the surf. A resounding silence met Dett, filling his ears until he thought his head would burst.

  Then he awoke and found the silence in his own house was real. Orrul was dead, his painful wheezing forever ended.

  The village elders, when summoned by Mebaw for an urgent council, listened to Dett’s account of his dream in an aura of concern. All were shaken by Dett’s queer comments at the Pit and by the death of Orrul while his father was witnessing Klevey in his mind’s eye. They tried to interpret what Dett had seen.

  “Klevey means death and destruction,” said the Mastersinger. The gaunt old man knew more songs and tales than anyone in the village, save perhaps Grandmother Glin. “He has not walked among us in long years. This dream is a sign he has come again.”

  “No doubt of that,” said Mebaw. “My nephew’s death is but the first, and Dett has feared for some time that the strange skies portended ill.”

  Uncle Talloc pulled on his dark beard. “But what can we do? Nothing!”

  “No!” said Grandmother Glin. “If we could do nothing, then the Seaman would have let dream-Dett die with the rest of us. After the Seaman released Dett, he disappeared. Where? Back to his home in the sea, of course. Therefore, we must beg the Mother of the Sea for protection. She alone can keep Klevey in the sea where he belongs, and away from our lands.”

  The Mastersinger nodded sagely. “And do not forget the monster’s dread of fresh water. We should place buckets of lake water beside the door of every house.”

  Mebaw laughed. “And we should hope the weather stays bad! It is so cold and rainy, the enemy will dare not surface from the depths, for fear the raindrops might sizzle his skinless flesh.”