Part Two
Chapter 10
COMING-OF-AGE
T wo hands-and-feet seasons had passed since the Great Oxagrete Feast; enough time for there now to be mature Traeppedelferes who had not yet been born then. The taste of oxagrete was beginning to fade from the memories of the race (excepting, of course, the hunters), and a few brash young skeptics like Geoluscite were openly doubting that such an event ever even took place.
Monwyrt was also both hands and feet seasons old now - a significant age.
Traeppedelferes, through custom arising out of convenience, ceased to track age past the point it could be easily represented by the digits of the hands and feet. This time of life corresponded nicely with the rights and responsibilities of coming of age. Also, admittance to the Great Banquet, permission to petition the Yldras, and the lifting of curfew were granted at this age. But they also had to answer for their own actions to the Yldras now, without the intervention of their instructors (or former instructors) on their behalf.
The coming of age was a less momentous occasion for Monwyrt, though, than it was for his contemporaries in the caves. He had for many seasons now been a hunter, and the hunters out of necessity enjoyed a much greater degree of autonomy. The lifting of curfew, for example, was entirely meaningless to them, after roaming the forests alone for hand-days at a time. For Monwyrt it did mean, however, that he would be assigned a chamber inside the caves (albeit a small one) for his own use, a privelege the inside Traeppedelferes were granted upon leaving their apprenticeships and entering into their trades.
The natural forum for celebrating the coming of age was of course the Great Banquet, and when both hands and feet Great Banquets had passed in the life of a Traeppedelfere he or she was permitted to attend the next one. There was, however, no special ceremony or observance, the celebration was strictly a personal one, entirely in keeping with the celebrant's new status of equality and conformity with the tribe at large. The current class of both-hands-and-feet age would simply attend the Banquet, their respective Yldras would mention them in their reports, and their various masters and instructors would swell with pride (or sigh with relief) as they passed any deserved credit (or culpability) on down to them.
Monwyrt arrived at this milestone with mixed emotions.
While a cild, his every thought and dream had led him toward that glorious day when he would be named morwetraeppe. The thrill of that achievement soon passed, leaving a greater yearning than before. So, his every breath was drawn and accounted for as so much progress toward being named hunter. But somehow, as rewarding and challenging as the life of the hunter was, once he had reached that rank it still left Monwyrt with the inexpressible impression that there was more, somehow; that he was missing something, somewhere; that he was blind but had not yet learned that he was blind. He approached his coming-of-age with a jaded outlook; no more eager anticipation for him - he was sure this event would come and go with no more lasting effect than the previous ones. Monwyrt indeed was coming of age.
Not that he didn't find being a hunter all he had thought it would be. Far from it.
He had rapidly developed a reputation, even while still a morwetraeppe, for being able to make long runs, for staying out on the trail with remarkable endurance. His surprising disbelief in drygeslaep certainly proved itself true for him, at any rate. He found himself losing track of the days he had been away from the morwetraeppe's cabin, and wandering further and further afield, more interested in exploring the lay of the mountains and streams than in his own whereabouts. More than once, still as a morwetraeppe, he had encountered a hunter who had been instructed to tell him to report back (if he could be found). One hunter told him on such an occasion (and to Monwyrt's own amazement) that he, Monwyrt, had been out from the cabin an incredible two hands' hand-days, and that he was then so far distant from the caves that the hunter himself was getting anxious, and was exceedingly glad to find him for his own sake.
Of course, it didn't really matter how many days a morwetraeppe stayed out in the forest as long as he performed his duty of flushing game to the hunters. But when he strayed so far as to have no hunters near to flush the game toward, he was guilty of a gross lapse of judgment and a dereliction of his duty, and when a hunter would actually have to be sent out after him, well, that was downright wrecking! and Monwyrt was severely chastised and properly penitent.
But Monwyrt's abilities as a morwetraeppe could not be ignored, and what is more, he distinguished himself in the development of his hunting skills to such a degree that his instructors found themselves asking his opinions on matters they were unsure of: the identity of an unusual herb, for example, or the direction of the nearest source of water in an unfamiliar part of the forest, and other things. Finally, his promotion to hunter could not be denied him in spite of his wanderings or his youth (he was a morwetraeppe three seasons only), and Monwyrt found himself named hunter at the tender age of two hands and three seasons.
To his credit, he seemed to lose all interest in exploration, and threw himself to the last claw into his hunting. At first he was hard pressed to fill his quotas (as every new hunter was). Gradually, though, he found he could come in a day early, two days early, even three! from a hand-day hunt. These extra days gave him time to think, which proved to be a mistake - he found his ennui begin to overtake him again, and that unsettled him. So he decided to throw himself into the hunt with intensified fervor; no more days off between hunts! He would bring in all that he could carry or drag on a litter, and almost immediately turn and go out into the forest again.
His skill (no one could persist this long in calling it luck!) in the kill became the subject of many a conversation amongst the hunters. Some were plainly envious. A few, however, complained to their Yldras that they had seen a marked decline in their own kills since Monwyrt had gone on his tear, and that although the overall total may have remained constant, these other hunters had been forced to spend many more days on the hunt to meet their quotas. This left the Yldras in the awkward position of having to reprimand one hunter for doing his job too well, while offering the popular incentives to the others for improvement.
The wise Yldras rose to the occasion, though, and came up with what seemed to be the perfect solution. Monwyrt was sent out on a special assignment suited to his skills: he would stretch the perimeters of the hunters, familiarize himself with the outlying areas, and use his hunting prowess to depopulate sections of the forest not hunted by his colleagues, who would assist him by bringing in part of his kill. Monwyrt himself all too gladly accepted this challenge, and everyone was satisfied with the compromise.
It was while Monwyrt ran these extended hunts that he developed what he thought of as his "method" of hunting. He found that he could ignore completely any effort to hunt the thriddahypes, in favor of gratifying his wanderlust, and only exert himself to meet his quota at the last moment. He discovered a talent for mimicking the thriddahype's call, which proved to be surprisingly irresistable, and rather whimsically incorporated in the call his own phrases. "Come out, thriddahypes, lose your skins!" he would shout in what he imagined to be the language of the beasts. He experimented with varying the messages, testing the resulting calls over several hand-days for their effects on the thriddahypes. It didn't seem to matter; whatever form his calls took, they seemed to work, and he filled his snares with the beasts whenever he set his mind to call them.
Monwyrt was delighted with the discovery of this method. The pride of invention was almost overwhelming. Suddenly for the first time he burned with an eager impatience to return to the hunters' cabin, with the intention of sharing his new knowledge.
One day he made up his mind to return, and a weight seemed to be lifted from his shoulders, he didn't know why. He set off immediately on a dead run. He told himself that his method of hunting would wonderfully improve the hunters' lives, and indeed would benefit all the tribe! and hurried on this errand as if driven by divine inspiration. He didn't realize for a moment that the true motivation behind his enthusiasm was a proud, almost avaricious lust for lionization. The temptation of fame flooded his mind, but always only as the deserved reward for the great service he was about to do the race. Subconsciously, however, the reward soon so outweighed the service in the balance of his thoughts as to render the latter insignificant in comparison. Monwyrt saw himself raised up, and heard his praises shouted, and felt the warm adoration of masses of his grateful Traeppedelferes. His heart pounded, his feet flew, and the forest sped by, unnoticed in his transport.
The thriddahype call was all but forgotten in Monwyrt's monomanic reverie; the long run and lure of glory had conspired to completely block the very object of his errand from his thoughts. The nature of his reward took a sudden new and curious attitude: one of vengence! He saw now that he had been persecuted, thrust out away from the tribe, banished! in effect (without pausing to consider how agreeable that banishment had been to him). They thought he was different; they were laughing at him! Well, now they would feel the whip of his righteous wrath! He, Monwyrt, would become Yldra Monwyrt; no, would become Maegenyldra Monwyrt, and would sit in majesty on the dais at the Great Banquet (which he had never even attended yet!) and deign to rule with such inscrutible wisdom and grace that none would dare to look him in the eye, or speak his dreaded name above a whisper!
This vision absolutely enchanted him, this fabrication of wrongs and retributions. He ran on recklessly, blinded by the royal purple over his mind's eye, ruling with a gloved hand of stone.
Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. An unexpected scent had instantly blown the era of his rule right out of his head forever. What had he been thinking? Maegenyldra Monwyrt? He stood panting in a sort of feverish daze. Everything he had ever enjoyed in life was voided in a flash by that title. It was preposterous! Hunting, the forest, freedom - all gone in the stub of a toe. He realized with a sense of panic that he had run very far, and could not remember passing landmarks he knew now he must have passed. He sat down, tasted the air, and looked around, to make absolutely certain of his whereabouts.
He was still in a part of the forest quite remote from the caves, one hand and three days' run out, and at least three days' run from the meeting-place designated for him to drop off his kills for others to relay back. He had never met another Traeppedelfere out this far before, but the scent was unmistakeable: the wet smoke of a morwetraeppe's dying fire! Monwyrt smiled to himself; this must be a morwetraeppe much like he had been: heedless of drygeslaep and long-running. He reflected for a moment on the futility of lighting fires in this extremity of the hunting-grounds; there probably were no hunters within two days' run in any direction, except himself, of course, and he had no need of smoke to find game. Why then had this morwetraeppe come out so far? He decided to find the morwetraeppe, and ask.
For a hunter to find the source of a smoke-scent in the forest was a matter of utterly mindless simplicity. It couldn't be any easier if all creation consisted of nothing but a short, straight path with the hunter at one end and the fire at the other. So it was only a few moments before Monwyrt spied the smoldering flame away along the slope, and the reclining figure near it.
Upon his approach he noticed that the antunge was as if asleep, although her eyes were open. He came round the bole she was leaning against, and recognised Hunigceace. She was breathing strangely; rapid, shallow breaths unevenly interrupted by startlingly long periods of involuntarily trapped breath, ending with a sudden gasp and the resumption of the rapid breathing again. Her eyes were fixed on some imaginary point in the distance, and seemed not to see Monwyrt at all when he intentionally walked across her line of sight. Her water-bladder was dryge, her lips were parched. He took his water-skin and held it to her mouth, moistening her lips, but she did not drink, although she licked her lips with a leathern tongue. Monwyrt held her hand; her fingers and thumbs were lifeless, and her arm hung limp.
"Hunigceace!" he cried, "what wrong? Why not say? Why not see? Why here? Say to Monwyrt! Why?"
At the sound of the name "Monwyrt" she uttered a brief gasp, then continued breathing with the same staccato rhythym as before, but her eyes loosed their grip on that distant mirage, and began rolling as if in search of something. When they came at last to rest on Monwyrt, she smiled, but that smile soon faded again, and she mumbled, "No, just dream again, just drygeslaep dream again, drygeslaep dream, dream again, dream."
Drygeslaep! Although all his instructors and masters had repeatedly stressed it, and other hunters and former hunters had testified to its insidious horror, Monwyrt had never really believed in it, and had always considered tales of it as some kind of conspiracy of terror concocted by self-aggrandizing montebanks to inflate their own images in the eyes of the tribe. As such, he had never paid much attention to the lectures on curing it, and now he racked his brains in an effort to recall anything that might help.
"Hunigceace," he called again, "Hunigceace! I am Monwyrt. Say to me, Hunigceace, how I help? What need?"
She focused her eyes on him again, and then down at her hand which he still was clutching anxiously, and she smiled again. Her belabored breathing relaxed a little. "Monwyrt!" she said faintly, "Monwyrt, not dream!" She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, and gave Monwyrt's hand a feeble squeeze. She was exhausted.
He tried to give her some more water, and finally succeeded in getting her to swallow a little, but the effort of even so simple a thing seemed to drain her, and he let her lay back and sleep, covered with his hunting-skin. He tried to nurse her back to health, but she was too weak to eat, or even talk, and only managed to swallow a small mouthful of water from time to time before she would fall asleep again. Monwyrt was at a loss as to what to do, and so, on the evening of the day after he had found her there, he resolved to do the only thing he could think of, and that was to carry Hunigceace back to the caves.
Hunters are strong and tenacious, and have remarkable endurance. Moreover, they are trained to haul their kills, which can amount to a great deal of weight, long distances in short periods of time. But Monwyrt knew that to ride lashed to a game-rick, which was an unreliable and wayward vehicle, and was liable to fall apart or jump over a rock and toss its helpless load down the mountainside, would be nothing short of torture to a sick morwetraeppe. So he decided the only course to take was to carry Hunigceace on his back all the way, and hope she would survive. He did not pause to consider that from such a distance, with such a load, any other hunter would be more concerned with his or her own survival, and probably would have let a drygeslaep morwetraeppe lie.
At dawn the next morning, in the chilly shade of the mountain, with the treowdwellan screaming, Monwyrt hefted Hunigceace across his shoulders as gently as he could, and started toward the caves.
Two-hands-and-five days later, Monwyrt brought an unconscious Hunigceace near the high entrance of the caves. He was haggard and exhausted, and had carried her almost non-stop for the last three days, as she had ceased to come around even to take water. The only thing that had kept him on his feet had been the knowledge that she would certainly die if he quit. He had no great faith in the healing powers of the Yldras, but he thought just being in the caves themselves might do her good in some mysterious way, so he doggedly kept to the trail night and day. At last, only a short run from the actual entrance, an emerging hunter ran to him and took her off his shoulders the rest of the way. When Monwyrt came to the caves, lagging behind the fresh hunter, Hunigceace was already being attended to by an old antunge in a small chamber near the entrance, and messages had been sent out for her instructor (Ceappraett) and the morwetraeppes' Yldra (Pipasefte) to come at once.
The old antunge was looking down at Hunigceace and shaking her head slowly as Monwyrt stumbled into the chamber. "Drygeslaep," she said to him, mournfully, and then in shock saw his condition. "Come," she put her arm around him to hold him up, "you I can help. You eat, drink, rest." She led him into a nearby chamber (it was his own! though he had never been in it yet, and she hadn't realized it was assigned to anyone) and, after helping him down onto the cot, rushed off to secure a little coecil and blowanslaep cider. Upon lying down, his aching joints and back cracked and popped, and he was frozen by a flash of pain all through his body, which was followed however by a relaxation so sudden and complete that he thought he had never known such bliss, and he sank immediately into a bottomless slumber. No sooner had he done this, though, than those limitless depths were plumbed by the return of the antunge with his meal. "Eat now," she shook him by the arm to rouse him, "drink now, then sleep, or sleep too long, and wake to great pain." It occured to Monwyrt that that was what he was doing at that moment, awakening to a great pain, but he was grateful for the food after all, for he was sorely hungry.
He slowly ate the rather dry coecil, and sipped the cider, which flooded him with a gratifying warmth, and when he had finished, he decided to look in on Hunigceace before he went to sleep. Ceappraett and Pipasefte were already in the room with the antunge and the morwetraeppe.
"Hunigceace live?" he asked the Yldra, whom he had never met.
"Not know," she replied in a voice remarkable for its utter lack of emotion. "Not take cider, breathe too fast, bad signs." Monwyrt's heart fell. He had expected this, but even so...
"She not take water three days," Monwyrt told them, thinking somehow it might help. "She sick when I find her."
"When you find?" Pipasefte asked.
Monwyrt thought. The walk back had become such a tangle of seemingly interminable days in his mind, he struggled to account for the time. "Not know," he said finally, "three hand-days, I think, maybe two days more."
The three antunges looked at each other in amazement. Pipasefte shook her head slowly. "Three hand-days she not eat?" Her meaning was clear to Monwyrt, and suddenly he was very tired again.
"Why Hunigceace so far?" he suddenly asked. "No hunter so far other than Monwyrt, I need no morwetraeppe. Why she there?"
Ceappraett cleared her throat awkwardly. "I send her to bring you," she said to Monwyrt. At that moment Galan hobbled into the chamber, roaring with rage.
"Drygeslaep! drygeslaep, little Hunigceace!" he limped up to Ceappraett and bellowed with his powerful voice right into her face, "you cildetan! You happy now? Look at your best morwetraeppe! Look!" He pointed to Hunigceace on the cot, and then grabbed Ceappraett's head between his large hands and forced her to look, too.
"Galan!" Pipasefte scolded, "what you mean?"
Galan ignored her question, turning with emotion to Monwyrt. "Um, Ceappraett," he spat out the name with exaggerated distaste, "send her out to bring you! Not for important reason, but for punishment! She see us together, and become gemaed!" He turned to face Ceappraett. "Gemaed!" He faced Monwyrt again. "I tell her no, Monwyrt hunt too far, not time to bring him. Ceappraett," he grimaced at the sound of his own voice, "say um, Hunigceace swift, there time to bring Monwyrt if send her. I know she gemaed, I go to Yldra, and she," he whirled and pointed at Pipasefte, "she do nothing, nothing! Look, both of you!" He cried aloud as he suddenly noticed the old antunge attending to Hunigceace.
She was folding the emaciated arms across the quiet breast. "She stop breathing just now," she said softly. "Call Wrencanmodor."
"No!" Galan thundered, and raised his staff as if to strike the dumbfounded Ceappraett and Pipasefte down together with one blow. Monwyrt, weak as he was, stepped forward and put his hand on the stick to ward off the blow.
"Galan," Monwyrt said to him, "master, do not do this. Pipasefte is Yldra, Ceappraett is not worthy of your anger. Let us go, talk."
Galan looked at him in surprise, and then slowly lowered his staff, and leaned heavily on it. "You need rest," he said to Monwyrt. "We talk later."
Ceappraett and Pipasefte breathed a sigh of relief with one breath, and cast grateful glances at Monwyrt, who did not see them. Without a word the two of them hurriedly left the room, and disappeared up the hallway.
"Before I rest," Monwyrt said to Galan, "I want to know. Why Ceappraett send for me? What I do?"
Galan finished watching Hunigceace being arranged for the Wrencanmodor. "What you do?" he laughed sarcastically, "Nothing! You forget something, um?" Monwyrt could think of nothing he had forgotten. Galan went on, "Um, I see, you forget. You, Monwyrt, hunter for one-hand-and-three seasons, greatest runner of tribe, have come of age! Hunigceace go to bring you to first Great Banquet, to celebrate."
Monwyrt looked at the poor morwetraeppe, silent. "When Great Banquet? How long may I rest?"
Galan laughed the same disgusted laugh. "You rest as much as you need," he answered. "Great Banquet five days ago."
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