Part Two
Chapter 13
PRELUDE
M onwyrt stood away from the bole and kept his eyes on the oxagrete until it disappeared into the distant forest. This was mysterious. Oxagretes had seen him and let him alone many times in the past, but never from such short range; he had always managed to be downwind, uphill, or hidden, and usually all three.
He could not help but remember Haegtesse's questions, and the thought troubled him. And now, seemingly, and most disturbing of all, the oxagrete was talking to him as it walked away!
Monwyrt felt a sudden urge to call out to the beast, "Wait, come back!" - one of those momentary impulses one instantly decides against - but the oxagrete was already too far off to have heard him anyway.
Could he really talk to oxagretes some way? Even now the thought seemed preposterous. In a sudden fit of zeal he rashly decided to chase the monster down in an effort to find out once and for all, not stopping to consider the probable outcome if it turned out that he could not communicate with it. He picked up his knife out of habit, and took off on a trot.
"Wait, come back!"
Where did that come from? Monwyrt wheeled in his tracks and looked around. There beside his campfire sat his little acquaintance the grunddwellan, looking back at him.
He felt another disquieting inspiration: perhaps he had been too long in the Haunted Lands. Maybe the spell, whatever it was, worked slowly, and he was only now growing gemaed, and it was too late. Here he stood, he said to himself, seriously considering the possibility of talking with a grunddwellan. Well, that voice had to come from somewhere, after all... he walked back to the creature and kneeled to look at it more closely.
They exchanged stares for a few moments, Monwyrt silent with incredulous expectation, the little fellow placidly awaiting a chunk of weodthuf or a berry. The grunddwellan suddenly looked up over Monwyrt's shoulder, and the Traeppedelfere whirled around, expecting in an awful premonition to see the oxagrete returned. But instead, there stood a figure he had never seen before, and he instinctively reached down for his knife.
"Not again!" the stranger sighed, and raised a hand. Monwyrt seemed to understand, though, and resheathed his blade before he had drawn it all the way out. But that was all he understood, and a confused fog settled between his ears. He sat down heavily, resignedly, and looked up.
"I talk oxagrete," he confessed in a daze. "I talk grunddwellan. You talk also? Who you? Or what? Oh, oh, oh, oh! Monwyrt gemaed, I know; never mind. Not important. Not at all! Oh, oh, oh!" He sat on the ground laughing to himself, looking very like the idiot he felt himself to be.
Everything was slowly losing its color and turning a brilliant white: the weodasur, the sceadutreows, his campfire, gear... The change was gradual - when had it begun? Monwyrt looked around: the grunddwellan, his own hands! whiter and whiter, without hue or shadow, yet distinct. The brightness hurt his eyes - well, no, it didn't, but it should - why didn't the brightness hurt? His ears were stopped, there was no sound, he could hear his own breath, his heart beating, wait a moment - what was that? That noise, why, it is the wind blowing through the leaves - and that, that's the grunddwellan scrabbling back to his burrow (no handouts today!). But it is so quiet, there is no sound, yet... in perplexity, Monwyrt rubbed his eyes with his hands. It made no difference: the brightness was still there, even with his eyes covered. The silence, and the noises, were still there when he covered his ears, and he felt very strange.
He turned his head slowly, but the forest whirled by fantastically, white on white, intense as the sun, but cool and utterly natural. Monwyrt compulsively examined his fingers - why? - glowing, numb; he could not feel them on his hands, but one hand could feel the other by touch. They were so soft! wonderfully, impossibly puffy, boneless, it seemed. And the skin! indescribably smooth, a joy, ecstacy to touch. And, of course, his entire body was the same - but what body? He had no legs, and those weren't fingers he had been examining, it couldn't have been, for he had no fingers. He had never had fingers - what had he been thinking? He just knew how fingers would feel, if he had any, of course - what a silly idea!
The ground beneath (or was it above?) him slowly fell away, and Monwyrt decided to allow it to fall, and the faster it fell away, the more he could see, naturally: the forest, and the mountains, and the caves; not as some collapsing scene in retreat, but with the commanding presence of a charging oxagrete. The sum of all Monwyrt's experience was collected before him and available for review in detail in a four-dimensional invisible white on white on white on white panorama. Bah! he waved it away.
The light swelled, as if the entire sky, every speck of it, was covered with a constant flash of lightning, and Monwyrt was relieved by the intensification: it was soothing, more natural, more alive. There they were! He had wondered when he would find them - what? who is that? Suddenly it seemed to Monwyrt that he had been expecting them all his life, but at the same time that he had had no idea of their existence. No matter!
They gathered round him excitedly; points of brilliance against the infinite fire. Something new was among them, who had never tolerated new things, until there were no more new things, and they realized how bored they were with the old things. But what nonsense! There are no ``things'', only "is" or "isn't" - and how they crowded round Monwyrt!
When Monwyrt had become aware of them, the most glorious sounds came into his head: their collected voices, rising, falling, an endlessly varied texture of harmony and joy. He had never felt such peace, such ease, even such pleasure; becumanfisc only could approach it for that instant of nerve-ripping release; but this was continual, eternal. Some of the music spoke to him, somehow, some spoke of him, some was unconcerned with him, but all together it brought him a sense of unity, of belonging, of involvement.
They were concerned about something. This new point of light, so much like them, was presuming to add to the choir of their being, a choir perfected through time and subconsciously rooted through repetition; adding a crude, if beautiful in its own way, voice, a voice not heard amongst them since the passing. The decision was made in the old way. It was unanimous.
Monwyrt exploded into darkness.
Everything hurt: arms, legs, teeth, hair. Blinking and yet blind, he felt the ground with his hand. It was disgusting to touch: rough, filthy. The scents of the forest overwhelmed him in a nauseating instant, and his ears rang to the sound of the bubbling stream, and he shivered in the cool breeze. He was exhausted. Just as sight was returning, he closed his eyes and lay back.
His past attacked him again. There was Geoluscite, of all folk! and Hunigceace - they were in the morwetraeppes' cabin, listening to old Fearthabraegen's tale of the antunge with no name, talking to the beasts. He ran out of the cabin, ran and ran and ran, reckless, breathless. Far from the caves, he tried his thriddahype call - it worked! It worked! Exhilarated, he took off on a run back toward the caves - no, to the Haunted Lands. Suddenly Monwyrt saw himself from a few days back, feeding the grunddwellan - no, feeding the oxagrete! only moments ago. He again watched as the oxagrete turned and walked away, down the corridor from Haegtesse's den. Haegtesse was asking him if he could talk with the oxagretes. No, it wasn't Haegtesse; at least, it wasn't Haegtesse now, it was Snecchen - she was angry, she had thought he was in the Haunted Lands while he was exploring the mountains and she wanted him to go back there, back to the Haunted Lands...
...a vaguely familiar sound, a strange sound, filled his head. Many voices melted together, all saying the same thing, over and over. He could not understand the words, but it was beautiful, almost mesmerizing, a haunting sing-song chant, over and over and over. The longer he listened, the more of it he seemed to understand; it was a lullaby of sorts, a call to stupefaction, an inducement to nirvana, and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard - why was it so familiar? The words were becoming clearer: he could understand them now; well, almost. He would just listen a little longer...
The sun came out from behind a high cloud, and it was stiflingly hot. Monwyrt was walking on a wide, straight, level path, lined with some kind of cabins set at even intervals. There was no breeze, none, and some acrid scent which he could not identify filled the air. It choked him. A huge two-legged beast ran up from behind at a great speed, passing him as if he were not there, and disappeared into one of the cabins (which one?) before he got a good look at it. Was it this cabin? He went in without knocking.
The wind blew the door shut with a crash, and great sheets of rain came slanting down as he stepped into the cabin. The giant, speedy creature had become like Traeppedelferes: there were many of them in the cabin, they were cooking in a huge pot and eating something from deep bowls. What was that scent now? it was not the sharp one from outside, it was, it was... but these were not Traeppedelferes! They were so long, so dark - who were these creatures? what was that sickening odor? where was he?
The creatures, the things, looked up at him. What did they say? "Come, sit with us, eat, share!" What words were those? but he was sure of their meaning, somehow. What were they eating?! He couldn't draw breath, their faces... he turned and ran out into the path in a panic. The cabins seemed different in the downpour; longer, rounder, close together. He had to get away, had to get away - he wanted to find the music again, to hear the voices, but where were they? Were they real? and who, or what made them? He looked about him, so many cabins, all with those things staring at him through the doorways. How did he get there? The hunter's nightmare: being lost! The panic increased to paralysis - Monwyrt froze, gasping for air, starting first one way a step, then another, then another, in the drenching rain... He fell to his knees.
A dry skin of some kind, but woven(!) and very soft and warm, was covering him, and he rolled onto his side and saw the fire on the hearth, and the back of, who? an antunge. She was giving him something warm to eat - he didn't recognize the taste, but it was good - and he looked up to see her face, that face...
Monwyrt opened his eyes with a start, and looked directly into a face, but not the one in his dream. This one was strange, also; more strange, but less haunting, somehow.
He stared into the close-set eyes in a daze, then finally shook himself out of it, and summed up the situation in a single word: "Moc!"
"Well put, indeed," smiled the stranger.
Monwyrt had a flash of intuition. "You gave me those dreams, didn't you? I don't suppose you'd tell me what they were about - or what you yourself are about?" He shut his mouth so quickly his teeth clicked. Where had those words come from? Had he said that? What did it mean? Well, he knew what it meant, of course, he had said it, but how did he know?
"Those 'dreams,' as you call them - yes, I suppose they would be very much like dreams to you; I wonder... Well, some other time. Those 'dreams' were lessons, an entire education, actually; nearly as much so for myself as for you, Monwyrt. Maybe not so much for me as for you, but a little for me. Mostly for you, though. Do you understand? I hope you didn't merely consider those 'dreams' some kind of cheap entertainment, because if you did - I'm going a little fast, eh?"
Monwyrt's mouth had dropped open again.
This, this stranger, it seemed, talked without talking; that is, it had a mouth, or something that looked like it might be a mouth close to where Monwyrt thought a mouth should be; but that mouth did not move at all as the - whatever it was - talked. And not only that, Monwyrt had this odd impression - nothing that he could be sure of, just an impression - that he had not heard its words, not with his ears, anyway. It was as though he just looked into the stranger's face and knew what it wanted to say, and thought up the words himself. And such words! They were words he had never heard of before, never heard used, never used himself - what were they doing in his head now? Not that he didn't know what they meant, he did, and that was another thing...
The stranger bumped its head sharply with the heel if its hand. "Of course! of course! I know what's wrong, now; I should have anticipated it. You have my most heartfelt apologies, my poor fellow, yes, I'm terribly sorry, all my fault! You don't know the music, do you?"
Monwyrt didn't know what he knew. Leornian, had he been alive and on the spot, would have said Monwyrt was half-way to wisdom, which was his sly way of saying half-witted. Monwyrt would not have disagreed with that assessment at this point. He felt like a sack of berries picked from a single bush that had just been emptied into a huge barrel of berries from bushes he had not known existed. "Music?" he asked weakly.
"Ha, ha, wonderful! A barrel of berries, indeed!" the face radiated. "Yes, or, ah, what is it? um, that's it! Um, music, Monwyrt, the gift of tongues - No, not that, you incorrigible Traeppedelfere! - I mean communication, speech, language; what is it? oh, talking! I mean talk, only not as you have been used to doing it, with your mouth and ears - so much work! No, music is simply talk as I am now doing it, directly, from me to you. My words, and what is more, my emotions, my intentions, everthing germane to my message goes directly to you without the cumbersome translating and interpreting that you customarily submit to to make yourself understood. Am I making myself understood?"
Monwyrt was reminded of part of the dream. Voices, a beautiful, rich collection of sounds...
"Yes! Um! It is very beautiful; er, it can be very beautiful; well, for you I'll say it is, it is beautiful, the music, ultimate beauty, maybe... Well, enough of that. The music, Monwyrt, can be difficult to use, very hard for you, I should guess. You see, it is very - that is, to use the music to its full potential, you must control your thoughts, control your inner feelings, not just what you display of them, for the music exposes all. It can be taxing. Diplomacy is particularly dicey, and if two antagonistic parties don't or can't exercise the required tact it can get quite unpleasant. Discordant, you know (perhaps you don't!), extremely grating. Why, there is an entire race of nasty little folk who consider the music - well, anyway, do you understand?"
"No," Monwyrt said. He felt, though, that deep down he did understand, that there was a sort of subconscious root trying to break the surface of his comprehension. That, or he was going to be sick.
"Wonderful!" The stranger was delighted. "Yes, the tiny shoot! There will be the berries soon! Oh, never mind, it is not important - but you will see, you will understand, my friend, you will. For now, think a moment. Do I threaten you? I mean, do you desire to do away with me, or get away from me (as if it were possible if I chose to deny it!)? Don't answer, I know. I just wanted you to notice it. Odd, isn't it?"
"Everything has become odd," Monwyrt answered, "I can no longer judge. But no, I am not afraid of you, whatever you are; if you had intended to harm me I suppose you could have done so at will."
"That is irrefutably so: you do indeed so suppose. Correctly, I might add."
"Don't. If there is one thing about this music stuff which I am not enamored of it is the tendency to encourage verbosity," Monwyrt scolded, then added in alarm, "Did I say that?"
"Ha, ha! you discover that this tendency which you so disdain is not entirely one-sided, eh? Not to worry, you will in time grow accustomed to it. There is some art to wordplay that even a brute of a Traeppedelfere might come to appreciate."
Monwyrt groaned. "This brute has been quite humbled enough for a while. I'll thank you not to belittle my tribe - which brings me to a point of curiosity. Where is your tribe? if you have one, that is - I mean, what the - or rather, where . . . you know -
"Who are you, anyway?"
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