by Don Wilcox
“I’ll go with you, Looma,” I said. “No.”
“But I must. I can’t let you go through this alone.”
“It is for me alone,” Looma answered, folding the parchment and tucking it back into the little painted packet. “All my life I’ve known that this must be for me alone. It is my pledge.”
I must have acted as if I expected to argue the matter, for Looma’s hand and eyes went toward her side where the little poison dagger was concealed.
“As you say,” I concluded.
“I am ready now,” said Looma. “But it is still an hour till sunset—”
“I am ready now.”
We climbed the bank of stones and loose earth. A few trees and bushes dotted the steep surface. The loose sandy soil appeared to have accumulated by successive landslides. Perhaps it was soil that had washed down from the mouth of the cavern—or sifted down from the action of winds.
There were foot tracks—fresh ones—ascending that precipitous grade.
Our eyes lifted toward the mouth of the cavern. We were not yet high enough to see to it. With each step of our progress the entrance grew wider and higher. Now we could distinguish the wedged stones that formed the ceiling. Here and there were long shafts of evening sunlight piercing through the gaps in the cavern roof.
Such smooth, weird shaped stones! They assumed all sorts of grotesque fantastic shapes. They had been shaped by the action of winds and blowing sands.
But more fantastic than any of the natural formations was that living object which stood squarely in the center of the cavern entrance!
First we saw his ragged hair, his tattered gray whiskers blowing in the breeze.
Ascending a few steps higher, we could see the complete figure of the mad derelict, swaying restlessly, slapping the ground with his rusty old sabre.
Either of us was surprised. I had felt instinctively that this forlorn creature was bent on taking his madness out on us sooner or later. Thirty or forty steps lay between us and him.
“Keep back of me,” I said, taking Looma by the hand.
“Wait,” Looma whispered. “This way!”
We circled a little to one side, for Looma had noticed a half-dead tree. She pointed to a straight tough limb that was the right size to fit into my hands. It was but the work of a minute to convert the limb into a club. I weighed the finished product in my hands. It felt right.
“Slippity-slappity-slickety-slackety!” the insane old man ripped out in a razor-edged voice. He followed through with an uproarious volley of laughter. His glittering eyes crisscrossed us as we approached him.
“Stay back, Looma,” I muttered, “until I clear the path.”
The crazy man stopped his laughter and set up another nonsensical rhythm—a grotesque mixture of words and clangs of his sabre against a rock.
“Slippity-slappity (clang!) . . . Slip-pity-slappity (clang!) . . . slippity-slappity (clang!) . . .”
At the same time he waggled his old head vociferously and did a hobbling dance.
“Listen, you!” I shouted. “Chase yourself down the bank! You’re not wanted here! . . . (Jet on!”)
The old man’s words and music took a new turn, still in rhythm to his dance. “Let me kill her. I’m your friend. Let me kill her. I’m your friend. Let me—”
“He’s hopeless!” I grumbled to Looma. I had a profane notion that if this cave was supposed to be sacred, he was certainly doing his blessed best to put a curse upon it. I swung my club threateningly. “Get away, damn you!”
“Let the lady tell me . . . Let the lady tell me . . . Let the lady tell me!” the old man squawked.
Looma accepted the challenge. With a depth of tone that was afire with purpose she called, “I am going in. I ask you to get away!”
To my surprise the madman hushed his stream of blabbing, turned toward Looma with a deep lopsided gesture that was meant for a bow. He started down the hill.
On the third or fourth step he stopped and began to chop at a tree root with his sabre. Clang! Clang! Clang! Without looking back at us he struck up a new singsong verse:
“If you knew, you’d rather die . . . If you knew, you’d rather die. . . If you knew, you’d rather die! . . .”
“Wait, Looma—not yet!” I hissed. She was moving cautiously toward the big open cavern. I caught a glimpse of the place and saw nothing to arouse my alarm. It was a single big open room, walled and roofed with the curious sand-worn stones. There was obviously nothing in the place itself to be feared. It was only the nearness of the madman that I feared. “Don’t let yourself get trapped in a comer till I’ve chased this devil into the river—”
Then it happened. And so swiftly it happened that it had all the earmarks of sudden death.
The strength of a madman is only matched by the quickness of a madman. With a swiftness and a cunning that I would have thought impossible for this limping old demon, he sprang around and flung his sabre—squarely at Looma!
I leaped blindly. A blazing stab of pain cut me through the shoulder. I started to tumble down the embankment. I barely caught my balance—with the aid of the extra weight that swung outward from my shoulder—the sabre!
The next instant Looma was tugging at that sabre, jerking it out of the tight muscles that had caught it. She tore it free. The blood gushed down from the gash that had rendered my arm helpless. The madman cut loose with a hideous laugh.
Laughing, he came toward us. I was too slow to snatch the sabre from Looma’s hand, for I still had a deadly grip on the club. I swung. His arm flew up to take the blow. It struck hard. It unbalanced him. But with the strength and swiftness of madness he froze onto the weapon.
Down we went together, tumbling pell-mell over rocks and crusty heaps of sand. I tried to kick free of him. He got me by the good arm, sank his nails into my flesh, clung to me as if his fingers were so many steel bolts. Club and sabre were gone and forgotten by the time we rolled out onto the broad level cliff. It was teeth and nails and hair now.
We rolled to a stop. We tore at each other like beasts.
For an instant we were caught in a deadlock so tight that all motion ceased. His teeth closed down on the wrist of my good arm. With that same hand
I pulled hard and steady at his whiskers. I was above him. Blood from my ripped shoulder splashed down on his brown sweat-smeared chest.
Strength against strength—life and death at stake! And yet all motion seemed to have ceased in this instant of deadlock. From beyond the edge of the cliff the mocking melody of the spring sang up to us. From the sandy slope above us came sounds of Looma’s footsteps. Was she coming down to help me with the job I couldn’t finish?
The strength of my arm, the tug of my fingers at the ugly whiskers brought the old man’s head back—back—back over the edge of a rock that my knees had crowded under his neck. I gave a little lunge. My weight crushed down, my right knee crunched his Adam’s apple. The demon beneath me choked and gagged. My right wrist slipped free of his teeth. There was scarcely the strength left in my good arm to deliver the punches I struck at his head— But why should I strike him? The fellow was dead.
Looma was beside me. The faint came over me very slowly. I fought it. I fought as hard to stave off that faint as I had ever fought anything in my life. And for good reason. Looma was clutching me in her arms, she was kissing my face, kissing my lips—Blackness—blackness—deeper and deeper. Burning pain, mingled with soothing moments—a tightening at my shoulder—no more flow of blood—cool water over my arms, over my face—softness at my lips—blackness, blackness—why did I have to pass out . . .?
CHAPTER VI
The Cave of Voices
It seemed days and days. Nights and nights. It was nightmarish. I tried to wake myself up. I couldn’t. I couldn’t force my eyes open. I couldn’t make my arms move. And all the while I was having such frightful dreams. Sand—sand—sand! It kept sifting over me. It was going to cover me up. I was being buried alive in sifting sand.
But I could still breathe. I was still alive. My arms were burning frightfully. The sand must be blazing, must be blowing out of a fire. Still, there was a coolness at my forehead—a strange coolness! If I could only wake up!
Those voices! Would they ever cease? Whenever the sands blew over me the voices were there—deep fathomless whispers—the talking of the winds—the mysterious voices of the night—the howling cries of blowing sands that brought pain and death. Why, the cave was full of them—and they were all talking in the ancient Traysomian tongue—mystery words of the Traysomian tribe that I could never understand.
Cave? What cave? Where was I? Where was Looma? I wanted to call her. I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself out of these depths of blackness. Sleep was on me. It had me bound. It wouldn’t let me go.
Sands . . . Voices . . . Winds that howled and laughed and whispered in mystic Traysomian words . . . Looma . . . Looma . . .
I awoke to find that I was lying somewhere under a vast, clear starlit sky. It was the last hour of night. The waning moon was nearing the western horizon. A faint gray of morning streaked the east. A wide panorama of purple mists spread before me—the Lakawog valley. My first thought was, what a glorious, magical land—a land of plenty with nobody living in it. It could be Looma’s and mine!
Looma! Where was she?
In the cave, of course. Gradually everything came back. I was lying high above the sacred spring, far back from the edge of the cliff that overhung it. I could barely hear the teasing laughing voices of the falling waters.
Above me stretched the heaps of sand, dotted by rocks and trees and foottracks, barely visible in the early morning twilight. And farther above, the sacred cave—
A gentle wind was blowing through that cave. I could hear its weird song, its mystic whispers. I could see little lines of bright sand sift down the hillside. The tracks which we had made had sifted full. And now, as my dreams came back on me sharply, I discovered that sand had drifted close around me, half covering my legs, nearly burying the provision bags that Looma had evidently tucked around me.
I tried to rise up. In spite of the torturing pains through my shoulder and arms, my muscles responded to my will. I came up on my hands and knees. The tightness in my shoulder told me that the healing processes were at work. And I knew at once that I had Looma to thank for that. She had bound me with cloth bandages, and though the material was crude rough cloth, the skill of her efforts had been effective.
Leaves dropped from my forehead as I struggled to my feet—leaves that had helped to cool my fever during the recent nights.
How many nights had passed? Perhaps not more than two; certainly no less. The crusted healing surfaces of my wounds proved that.
I cast my eyes about for signs of the body whose life I had choked out. By the growing light of dawn I beheld the mound of stones a few yards beyond me. Looma had taken care of that, too.
Already the madman’s grave, swept over by sand, had begun to blend in with the hillside scenery as a thing forgotten. Only the old rusty sabre, standing sentinel-like near the mound, brought back the vision of that haunting terror that had come so near to claiming Looma’s life.
“Looma!” I called in a croaking voice. I staggered weakly up the hillside toward the mouth of the cave. “Looma! Looma!”
She was there. She was breathing slowly, deeply. I thought she must be asleep, so slowly and evenly was she breathing. But she was not lying down. She was on her knees. Her back was toward me. The darkness of the cave was upon her. Such light as there was gave a faint glow to the handle of her dagger, and to her bare arms.
“Looma!” my voice lowered to an intense whisper. Something in her attitude warned me—frightened me—bid me stay back. She was in a sacred ecstasy that must not be interrupted.
“Looma!” I breathed, but the weird whispers of the winds through the cave took my breath away. There was something paralyzing about those wisps of voices. They were so unmistakably accented like words of the Traysomian tongue. They were the voices of nature whose mysteries were too deep for any creature of civilization to fathom.
Slowly, ceaselessly, Looma’s shoulders rose and fell with the ever-so-slight movement of her breathing. At the cavern entrance I waited, watching. I was within thirty feet of her. I knew that I must go no closer. I must wait until the light of dawn melted away the shadows that engulfed her. Then her mysterious sacred rites would be done. She would come to me at last, freed of the chains that had bound her from me.
At last her arms drew upward, her shadowy form rose weakly. She was about to turn.
“Looma!” I called eagerly. “I’m waiting for you—”
“Please go back!” Her voice was low and heavy, and her words were spoken slowly as if she were weighed down with some great sorrow.
“But, Looma—” I gasped. I was somehow choked with nameless fears. Why didn’t she turn and come to me? Instead, she was motioning with a slight wave of her fingers for me to go back, I obeyed. Several feet from the entrance of the cave I waited.
I saw her come forth into the morning twilight. I saw, and every drop of blood in my body went cold. Looma was a jeeble, white-haired old woman.[*]
She did not turn to look at me. She made her way cautiously down the bank of loose sand, aiding herself by catching hold of trees and projecting stones.
Nor did she stop when she reached the broad level top of the cliff above the spring. She plodded on, slowly and carefully, down the precipitous rocky trail over which we had ascended together only two evenings before.
I followed.
At the mirror-surfaced pool a few yards below the spring I caught up with her.
“Looma!” I cried.
She was kneeling at the edge of the pool. The white light of dawn was on her face. She was looking into the mirror of waters. She saw the waves of white hair that fell over her shoulders, she saw the aged wrinkled face—a face that was kindly and mellow with the wisdom of old age. And she gave no expression of surprise at what she saw.
At last her dark beautiful old eyes lifted to meet mine.
“Trodo,” she spoke, and the very earth seemed to tremble beneath me, “what has happened can never be changed. What is is as it should be. I would not have it otherwise . . . except for you.”
“You knew—” I choked.
“I did not know,” she answered slowly. “I only guessed. But now—” she looked intently at her reflection in the water—“the veils of mystery are gone. I know what lies before me. The winds of wisdom have swept over me. I have been endowed, Trodo, with the timeless truths that dwell within the island of Traysomia. They are mine to give back to my people.”
She arose and stood, a venerable figure. Her watery old eyes were bright with the mystic light of knowledge, her thin fingers clutched the little blue leather packet that hung from her withered neck.
“I am to be the wise old woman of the tribe, Trodo. Now that I am what I am, there is nothing in the world that I could ask except a few years of life to serve my people.”
“Looma!” I cried and I was startled by the note of horror that my voice betrayed. “If I hadn’t let you go in that cave, Looma—”
Even as I spoke my hand brushed against the object that weighed in my pocket. Dazedly I brought it forth—the stone doll. In my trembling hand it rested—the warning that the madman had thrown us. Obviously the features of that doll were meant to represent an old woman; the white thistle fibers were the white hair of old age.
“He tried to tell us, Looma!” I gasped. “He tried to tell us—and I killed him! Looma, if I had known—”
“Vling-gaff, Trodo!”
That was all. Just vling-gaff. But the depth of compassion in Looma’s voice as she uttered her last words to me told me the volumes that would always be left unsaid. . . .
I followed after her for part of a day’s journey, but whenever she looked back to see me coming she waved for me to stay. There was a gentleness in the wave of her hand that I found compelling
. She seemed to be saying, All wisdom is mine . . . I know best . . . You must not come . . . Though I am aged my step is sure . . . I will get back . . . Your part is done . . .
At last I grew faint and dropped by the way. After sleep and food I slowly wended my way back toward the center of the island. I drank at the spring. I made my way up to the top of the cliff that overhung it. Above me, where the land sloped upward toward the mouth of the cave, the winds had quieted. Loose sand no longer sifted down.
I picked up the old rusty sabre that projected sentinel-like from the ground. I ambled back down the rocky trail, paused to look at my own reflection in the crystal pool. My face had become a little older, more weather-beaten, somewhat ragged with neglected beard.
As I moved on, going nowhere in particular, a hazy thought slipped through my mind. When, in some distant year, another Traysomian bride should be brought to the cave by her young husband to fulfill her tribal appointment, I would doubtless be the madman who waited in their path.
[*] One of the most venerable, and most superstitiously regarded legends of the South Sea Islands is the legend of the wise old women who rule the destinies of the tribe. For whole generations they live on, unchanging, ever-old, never aging further. And from their lips come the wise words that guide the tribe in every important decision.
Scientifically, there is no explanation of these weird old women, but native stories hint of uncanny things. It is not impossible that radioactive emanations, perhaps from some deep-buried deposit of pitchblende, filled the cave where Looma knelt, and acting upon the tissues of her body, so changed them that she became, physically, an old woman in a few days. And yet, in spite of the outer effect, she remained unimpaired mentally, and was still physically strong, and able to live out her life, to the benefit of the tribe.
