They walked across the comfortably padded flooring, around the fire-place and towards the back of the room, where an ornate throne-chair carved from solid wood sat empty upon a raised platform-like area. To one side of the platform, a thin human figure more ancient and wrinkled than even Mouse reclined on a small bed, covered up to his chin by an ornate woven blanket and half propped up by a mound of colorful pillows. On his lap was a small laptop computer. The old man was transfixed by it visually, and was also listening attentively to it using a set of headphones.
"Great One, I bring you the one that I have spoken to you about: the white man Ed Rumsfeld," Mouse announced loudly.
The old man finally glanced up at his two visitors, smiled, sat his headphones and computer aside and reached a thin shaking hand out to Ed for a brief handshake. "Thank you for coming, Ed Rumsfeld. Please forgive my escapist preoccupation with technology; I find that I am very fond of flash mobs, particularly operatic, symphonic, and dancing flash mobs."
"Yes sir, there are some very good ones on the internet," Ed agreed.
"I would love it if the Philadelphia Opera Company would surprise me with a flash mob here in my lodge, but I don't suppose it will happen."
"Probably not," Ed agreed, thinking of the arduous drive and border guards that had to be overcome to get there.
"TALKING USING MY PITIFULLY WEAK VOICE TIRES ME. MAY I SPEAK SILENTLY? CAN YOU HEAR ME CLEARLY?" Turtle Man asked.
"I'LL DO MY BEST, SIR," Ed replied in kind.
"YOU DO VERY WELL FOR ONE NOT OF OUR BLOOD," Turtle Man responded. "MOUSE DID WELL TO BRING YOU HERE TO US."
"MY ABILITIES ARE AN ACCIDENTAL RESULT OF SCIENCE," Ed admitted. Ed recalled to them his nasty experience with the army/fire ants the year before, and how his neighbor Jerry Green had saved him by injecting him with his personal experimental drugs and how he had also been bitten by a jant. It was a story that he had kept from everyone, including Mary, and it felt good to at last tell someone about it. For some reason he trusted Turtle Man and Mouse with his secret, even though he had just met them. He briefly wondered if his trust was a notion that they had subtly given him telepathically or if it was totally his own.
"TELL US MORE ABOUT THE JANTS AND WHY THEY ARE HERE," Turtle Man requested.
Ed told them what he knew, but there was admittedly much more that he didn't know, including jant intentions towards the Tribe and humanity.
"You have been invited to be here, Ed Rumsfeld," Mouse at last stated, "but they have not. Our sacred lands and Mountain are not to be trespassed upon."
Ed hadn't ever thought of it that way. "I'm sorry; I guess that notion never even occurred to me. The jants are insects that like other insects go where they please without permission from me or any other human. They seem to want to go everywhere. But they have not harmed any humans so far as I know, and people don't appear to even notice them."
"THAT IS ONE REASON FOR OUR CONCERN," thought Turtle Man. "THEY ARE NOT EVEN NOTICED, YET THEY ARE HIGHLY INTELLIGENT AND SHARE OUR WORLD. MANY CAME HERE TO US WITH YOU, BUT WE HAVE FOR SEVERAL PREVIOUS MONTHS SENSED THE RESTLESS THOUGHTS OF COUNTLESS OTHERS FAR FROM OUR LONELY MOUNTAIN. THE MEANING OF MOST OF THEIR THOUGHTS IS HIDDEN FROM US. WE HAVE WONDERED ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF THESE STRANGE THOUGHTS AND ARE HAPPY TO AT LAST DISCOVER THEIR SOURCE, BUT WE ARE VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE JANTS."
"I share your concern," said Ed, "and will discuss this with them."
"AS WILL WE, ED RUMSFELD," said Turtle Man. "IN THE MEANTIME WE HAVE TWO VERY IMPORTANT REQUESTS TO ASK OF YOU."
"Great!" said Ed. "I will do my very best to satisfy them, assuming they are reasonable, of course."
"FIRST," said Turtle Man, "BOTH YOU AND YOUR JANT COMPANIONS MUST STAY OFF OF GIANTS' REST MOUNTAIN."
"That's fine by me," agreed Ed, "and I'll talk to the Jants about it, though I don't really regard them to be my companions."
"SECOND," continued Turtle Man, "YOU ARE TO TRAIN YOUR TELEPATHIC ABILITIES BY TALKING WITH AN A'NO:WARA."
"With an actual turtle?"
"ESPECIALLY WITH A PARTICULAR WISE TURTLE," added Mouse.
"FROM IT YOU WILL LEARN MANY SECRETS," continued Turtle Man.
"OR YOU WILL NOT," explained Mouse. "IN WHICH CASE YOU WILL BE BANISHED AND SENT AWAY."
"OK, but considering that I'm a newcomer and unfamiliar with all this, isn't there anything else that you can tell me?"
"YOUR REQUEST IS A VALID ONE," said Turtle Man. "AS A HELPFUL HINT I POINT OUT THAT TURTLES ARE VERY QUIET AND SLOW, ESPECIALLY IN COLD WEATHER."
"Well dah!" Ed thought.
****
CHAPTER VI
The Quiet Turtles
"And that's all that they told you?" asked Doc, as he, Jack and Mary sat with Ed around the comfortably warm fire in their longhouse after a filling but adventuresome lunch. Actually, Ed thought that the baked squirrel entree wasn't too bad. The taste was a little gamy and they had to watch out for the tiny little bones, but over-all he thought that it was a satisfactory lunch. Ed wasn't altogether surprised to learn that his three companions had previously dined on squirrel. While she grew up with Uncle Jack Mary ate many unusual things.
"That's pretty much all they said, aside from the fact that before he was chosen to be the Turtle Man his name was Talking Turtle," confirmed Ed, who had just told the little company everything, including what he knew about the jants. It had felt good to tell Mouse and Turtle Man his secrets, and it felt doubly good to openly disclose everything to Mary and to Uncle Jack and his friend Doc.
"Nephew, you're just full of surprises, aren't you!" Jack said. "That jant business is every bit as crazy and wondrous as what's going on here with the Mohawk Tribe and their Mountain, I suspect. And I'd like to personally meet this Jerry Green fellow! He sounds to me like a kindred spirit."
"By the gods I hope not!" Ed said. Yes Jerry had saved his life, but he was also a barrel full of trouble. Now that he thought about it, Ed realized that in many respects Jack did indeed remind him of Jerry, except that although Jack was bright, Jerry was a super genius. Their similarity was an unsettling thought.
"Where are the jants that secretly traveled here with us?" Mary asked.
"Pretty much all over the Reservation by now, I suppose," Ed said. "I spoke with them first thing after visiting with Turtle Man. They said that the Mountain itself is too cold to interest them, so we don't have to worry about them not following Turtle Man's edict that they stay away from it."
"If they can be trusted," said Doc. "Who knows what the little buggers are actually thinking?"
Ed didn't come to the defense of his diminutive acquaintances. True, the jants at Jerry's request had saved his life and protected him and Mary from most climate change driven invasive critters after that, but he had never developed a feeling of closeness with them or felt that he understood them. They were after all insects, and Ed had a lot of trouble figuring out the motives and character of even his fellow humans! On the other hand he liked bugs as much as the next guy: which is to say not so much, but as with most insects, he had simply gotten used to jants being around. They were tolerable as long as they were seldom seen and weren't biting him or eating his food.
"As to my second assignment from Mouse and Turtle Man, I don't know where to even start. How does one talk with a turtle? And how will I tell which turtle is the wisest? Will the wise one spout poetry or should I give them all I.Q. tests or what?"
"To talk with a turtle you probably need to have one on hand," suggested Doc. "Maybe you should find a turtle, any local turtle, and ask it where to find the wisest turtle that it knows of. After all, maybe it takes one to know one."
"That sounds logical but we certainly haven't noticed any turtles at all since we've been here," Mary noted.
"Wrong time of the year for them," explained Doc. "Much too chilly for them lately. They've dug themselves under leaves and soil by now, and have probably gone into hibernation. Of course you probably wouldn't much notice them even in the summer; the
y are small, quiet, shy, and very well camouflaged."
"Swell!" Ed said. "I'm supposed to find a particular wise talking turtle and I probably won't be able to find any turtles at all, let along an awake and wise talking turtle. Besides that, I have no idea how to talk with a turtle anyway."
"Maybe you can already talk with turtles," Jack conjectured. "Maybe due to the Jerry drugs it's easy for you to talk to turtles but you just haven't met any yet since your transformation. Heck, maybe you have Dr. Doolittle-like powers and can talk with any animal. Have you been to a zoo or pet shop lately?"
"No," confessed Ed. "If I had been, wouldn't I be more likely to be able to talk with dogs and cats?"
"Probably," said Doc. "Only a hundred and seventy million years of evolution separate humans from dogs and cats. That is to say, our latest common ancestor is estimated to have lived eighty-five million years ago, allowing the thought patterns of each to diverge since that time for a total of a hundred and seventy years of evolutionary change considering our genetically separate evolutionary lines. That we can get along at all with dogs and cats must obviously be accounted for by some sort of convergent evolution, but such beasts are close cousins to humans compared to turtles. You'd have to go back in time perhaps four times as long to find a common ancestor for humans and turtles."
"Any genetic similarity may well be irrelevant though," pointed out Jack, "since you can already telepathically converse with ants that share a common ancestry with humans that is probably at least twice as ancient as your common ancestry with turtles."
"What kind of turtles live around here?" Mary asked, turning the conversation back towards something perhaps useful.
"Common wood turtles, mostly, I suspect," said Doc. "They roam about on land but like to stay within walking distance of streams."
"They have short little turtle legs and they probably move them very slow," noted Mary, "so they must remain quite close to streams."
"Maybe that's why Turtle Man reminded me that turtles are slow," Ed reasoned, "so that we would look for them near water."
"There's a small stream near here," said Jack. "Let's go."
The four of them spent the rest of the day traipsing through forests and fields near the stream in a hopeless search for turtles. They looked under countless rocks, leaves, and logs, while Ed broadcasted telepathic turtle greetings and 'listened' in vain for a telepathic turtle response. Jack noted that since a mud-covered sleeping turtle probably looked much like a mud-covered rock, they could have even found some turtles and not even realized it.
It was a tired, frustrated group that reconvened for supper at the longhouse as sunset approached. "Ever hear of a snipe hunt?" asked Jack. "As a young boy scout I was encouraged to run about in the woods all night, yelling and making weird sounds to attract fictional forest creatures known as snipes. It turned out that it was all a silly hoax of course. Our pack leaders sat back at the campfire laughing and munching down s'mores and hot-dogs while we scouts naively ran around all night making fools of ourselves. Not that we wouldn't have probably somehow made fools of ourselves anyway, of course."
"Do you think that our Mohawk friends are pulling a hoax on us?" asked Ed.
"Maybe," said Doc. "Turtles are such small minded critters I can't imagine them communicating with humans. Maybe this turtle talk business is the Mokawk version of a snipe hunt."
"No I don't think it's a hoax," said Jack. "And the snipe thing wasn't a total hoax either. It turns out that there actually are small woodland birds called snipe, but you can't find them by blundering around in the forest all night yelling. Among some Iroquois tribes the snipe is even a clan animal."
"Is there some useful purpose behind your amusing snipe parable?" Doc asked.
"Perhaps we are going about this the wrong way," Jack suggested.
"So what's the right way?" Ed responded.
"We obviously don't know, but we apparently haven't found it yet," said Mary. "However I think that Jack is right. Perhaps at this point we need to use our heads more and our feet less."
Doc shook his head. "Well then, if admitting ignorance is indeed the first step towards wisdom I suppose that we've just made some real progress. Any actual useful thoughts?"
"Let's ask the Mohawks how they find turtles," suggested Jack. "I've eaten turtle soup several times while I've lived here. It's very tasty."
"OK, then why don't you ask Tribe members about that tomorrow," said Doc. "In the meantime I'll consult the Tribe reference library about turtles."
"And I'll consult myself," said Ed. "Thanks for all the help but this is supposed to be some sort of trial for me, not you guys. Whatever the answer is, it must mostly have something to do with me and my telepathic abilities."
That night as Mary slept soundly Ed thought and thought about turtles but came up with no new ideas about how to speak with them or where to find them. With all the concentration his tired brain could muster, a hundred times he thought such things as "HELLO TURTLE; WHAT'S UP?" and then 'listened' intently for a response, but 'heard' none.
****
"Maybe it would help if I understood this talking turtle business in the context of the bigger picture here," Ed suggested to his friends the next morning over breakfast. "Like for instance why the hells am I here on this Reservation and what could it have to do with talking with turtles?"
Jack and Doc exchanged nervous glances. "The Tribe Elders know secrets that they don't share with us or possibly even with most of the Tribe," said Doc.
"Doc and I think that we've figured a lot of it out but we aren't totally sure," said Jack.
"Some of it is pretty wild and without supporting proof we'd be laughing stocks in the outside world," added Doc.
"Worse, if we blab too much about what we think we know we could be kicked off the Reservation," said Jack. "It took years before they trusted us enough to help look for a telepath for them. It took four months for me to convince them to give you a try-out, Ed. The fact that you married my niece makes you part of my family, I argued, and that may have tipped the scales in your favor. These folks are very family oriented."
"Why do they need another telepath?" Mary asked. "They seem to have several telepaths in the Tribe already."
"They have dozens, but they say that they need a telepath with very special skills," said Doc. "Ed has raw untested talent that they hope will satisfy their needs. They were eager to recruit someone that could communicate with ants."
"I can't communicate with ants, only with jants," Ed noted.
"Whatever," said Doc. "It got you in here anyway."
"And what they apparently need is someone with the ability to talk with turtles?" Ed asked. "Does that make any sense? Turtles are a Tribe clan animal, right? Tell us more about clans. Keep it simple; pretend that Mary and I just got here only a couple of days ago and don't know much of anything about Mohawk tribes or their sacred Mountain."
"Here in the Tribe the three clans tend to have different duties," began Jack. "Most men in the Wolf and Bear Clans are warriors that guard the Reservation and go off to build sky-scrapers and big bridges and come home with TVs and practical manufactured goods such as tools, clothes, and plastic sheets for roofs."
"Some hold other jobs," said Doc. "Chief Mike married into the Bear Clan and eventually landed the Tribal Chief job."
"The Turtle Clan is the most mysterious one," admitted Jack. "The Elder Council of Mothers elects one Turtle Clan man in a generation to be the Tribe Religious Chief and take the name Turtle Man."
"Turtle Man leads their religious rites, whatever the hells those are," added Doc.
"Have we fallen in with a crazy cult of turtle worshipers?" Mary asked.
"I don't think so," said Doc. "Typical Mohawk tradition is that Tharuhyawa:ka, or Sky-Holder, is the high god. But there are other old legends involved here. The Tribe is very tight-lipped about it, but it definitely has to do with evil beings that they believe dwell in the Mountain."
"Mouse mentioned so
mething about evil dwelling in the Mountain," said Ed.
"Evil beings created by Flint, evil twin to Sky-Holder," said Jack. "I heard the legends when I was investigating the other Iroquois tribes; that's what brought me here. They say that this particular Tribe not only keeps the eastern gate of the Iroquois Nations safe from other tribes and whites, it also keeps the Iroquois and everyone else in the world safe from the man-eating Atenenyarhu: the Stone-Coats."
"Stone-Coats?"
Jack and Doc exchanged nervous glances.
"Come on guys; if you already heard this off the Reservation it can't be much of a Tribe secret," reasoned Mary. "Tell us what you know."
"The Stone-Coats are giants with skin of stone," said Doc. "They are spear and knife proof, apparently, and I bet that they'll turn out to be bullet-proof as well, if they exist."
"They are also known here and across the world as Ice Giants, because they thrive in the cold," said Jack. "The Norse and many other peoples of the world also have legends about them. I've followed the legends around the world. I suspect that this is but one mountain of many that harbors sleeping Ice Giants."
"And I suspect that you guys are complete loons," said Ed. He had hoped that he had been brought here to this culture-forsaken wilderness for some practical purpose, but this business about sleeping giants was completely crazy. "Ice Giants? This is why you had me quit my job in Virginia and come to this God-forsaken back-woods place?"
"You are our ticket to learning all the Tribe secrets about the Ice Giants, Ed," said Doc. "Even if the Stone-Coat Ice Giants don't exist in reality, understanding Tribe mythology is key to understanding Tribe behavior."
"It's the chance of a lifetime," added Jack.
"Swell," said Ed.
****
CHAPTER VII
Talking Owls and Hairless Bear
"Pack our bags," Ed told Mary a short time after breakfast. "I think that we need to escape this looney-bin."
Ice Giants Wake! Page 6
