Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country

by Allan Richard Shickman

  “Filthy hag, you will get your wish!” Dael exclaimed, and he might have killed her with his spear if Zan had not intervened.

  “Dael! No! This unlucky woman was once kind to me, and may have saved my life.”

  “She is a wasp and she dies! Terrible old woman! Why should we keep her alive?”

  Zan could see that it was useless to reason with his brother. Rydl came to Zan’s side to second him, and Chul interposed his bulk. It was the first of many coming confrontations. Meanwhile, the old woman looked directly at Dael and smiled, stretching her palms forward in supplication, as one who welcomes a friend or begs a favor.

  Dael, prevented from his purpose, was coldly furious. “I gave you that one”—he pointed at Rydl—“because he is dear to you, although I don’t know why.” He smiled an ugly, insinuating smile. “But this one is mine.”

  “What is wrong with you, Dael?” Zan asked. “Do you enjoy killing?” Zan was immediately sorry to have asked that question—because he knew the answer.

  Pax, in a tone more gentle than she usually addressed to Dael asked: “Have you lost your mind, Dael?” And she too was sorry to have inquired.

  Dael lowered his spear and turned on his heel. “We will see,” he muttered, and he walked away.

  The confrontation was over. Dael had backed down. Chul, relieved, built a bonfire, and Zan gave some thought to what he wanted to do. He had known many of the dead, and even had pleasant memories of some. Hurnoa and other women had been kind to him, and some few had looked on him with pity as well as mockery when they considered him a speechless fool. Now all were corpses.

  Thal, Zan’s great father, had taught him to respect the dead. “Their angry spirits will haunt your life and turn it sour, but that is not why you should do them justice. Do it because you would wish it done to you.” Justice required that the many bodies should be respectfully disposed of.

  Zan had an idea. What would be reverence for Zan would be annihilation for Dael, he thought. Dael longed to destroy, and this could be an opportunity to satisfy his thirst and finally quiet him down. “Dael,” he called. “Here is our fire. Let us purge the demon and destroy the wasp men’s nests.”

  Dael leapt eagerly to the task, beginning with Jaga’s putrid house and the other ground structures. The furious blaze drove them back, and as they watched the conflagration from a safe distance, Dael almost danced with glee. Dael loved fire, and delighted in seeing the wasp dwellings burn. The smell of rottenness was now replaced by the acrid stench of burning corpses as crackling fire and rolling smoke erupted from the dens.

  The nests suspended in the trees above presented a problem, being deliberately built to be inaccessible; but Dael was not to be deterred. Placing a burning rod between his teeth, he climbed one of the supporting trees and inched out along a heavy limb. Rydl went up after him, but Rydl, having been born in one of these nests, was as used to climbing and swinging as walking on the ground. While Dael struggled to keep his balance, Rydl made a scoffing show of his skill by hopping back and forth on Dael’s limb—forty feet above the ground! Dael lay down, clinging to the branch and fearing any shift of balance. Rydl extended a foot, not a hand, to him.

  There was no friendship between them. Dael glowered and rose on his own, at last managing to cast his torch into one of the nests. In his captivity, Zan had learned some of the wasp man’s skill in climbing, and together the three set every hive ablaze. Those below watched the spectacle. For Hurnoa it was like the end of all, and she stood transfixed. Her whole world had died and was now disappearing in clouds of black smoke.

  There were seven separate camps, and it was a labor to bring fire to them. After the first, they knew to destroy the topmost nests before those below, thus avoiding the rising heat and fumes. The dwellings had been fashioned largely of bark and leaves. Because they had been sealed with tar, they burned and smoked furiously in great, roaring spheres of fire. By the time night fell, the spectacular blaze illuminated the lake and surrounding area with an unnatural glow that tinted every object, even the distant granite cliff and its long-descending waterfall. In time the fires waned, but the trees continued to drop bright showers of sparks for a while. All the travelers were tired, and prepared for a night’s rest.

  As Dael was about to sleep, Zan approached him. “Do not be angry, Dael. You see that our enemies are ashes, and that there is nothing in this land that is not ours. What a victory this is for us!”

  Dael refused to be pacified. “Do not cross me again, Brother,” Dael replied, not looking at Zan but at the flickering glow on the distant granite cliff. “And do not suppose that you are as strong as I.” That was all he said, and Zan departed to join his wife.

  By morning, nothing was left of the wasp dens but gray ashes and a few glowing embers. An early breeze took the last of the fetid odor away, and the land was purged of the evil. Except for the scarred trees, all was beautiful and peaceful, and few signs of the holocaust remained.

  Zan made a speech: “Friends and kinsmen, we have come here at great risk, ready for a fight that might well have led to our destruction. But spirits—good or evil—have fought for us and undone our enemies. And not a blow was struck by our arms! The land, the Beautiful Country is purified—and it is empty. It is ours! Dael, what do you think? Can we not…. What happened to Dael?”

  All were present but he. No, Hurnoa had disappeared somewhere too! No one knew where they were, and Zan, with fearful misgivings, instructed his group to seek them out without delay.

  It took only a few moments for Zan himself to find Dael behind some bushes, conversing peaceably with Hurnoa. But how could that be when Dael hated the old woman and spoke but little, even to his friends? Zan drew closer. A slight smile on his face, Dael was reclining, leaning comfortably on his elbow, and talking softly to her. Then Zan saw. Dael’s hands were covered with blood. And it was the seated corpse of Hurnoa that he was quietly addressing.

  6

  RYDL

  When Rydl climbed to the high treetops to flame the wasp men’s nests, he felt no joy, as Dael did. For Dael it was a feast of revenge. To Rydl it was a last act of respect for the people who once had been his own. When he came to the dwelling of his father, he could not bring himself to enter. His father was dead now. All he could do was say a prayer and put the putrid hive to the torch.

  Rydl was a runaway, but he had hoped to see his father once again, to mend the old divisions that had put them apart, and make peace with his people. That was the dream he was carrying with him since he had left with Zan and the others. He even allowed himself to imagine the joy of his homecoming.

  Yet he had never loved his father, and had rarely felt a moment’s comfort in his presence. Styg had been a brute, and Rydl learned to fear him at an early age. His gentle mother (he knew all about her) had died when he was born, and Styg, unable to show his grief and anger, had taken both out on the child. Even as a boy Rydl recognized that he should stay out of the way of his father’s sudden, violent outbursts; and bore that watchful look of fear that children have when they know they may be struck or abused without reason at any time. Rydl found that when his father was aloft, he had best be on the ground, and that he would be most comfortable above when his father was below. Styg did not understand how he had driven his son away, and angrily resented his sullen coldness. His feelings for his son—an unpredictable mixture of love, perplexity, and hate—only frightened the boy.

  When Rydl was nine years old, Styg’s brutalities sent him running. By sheer accident, Zan-Gah in his wanderings became the father and brother Rydl so much needed. Zan had found him under the vines, wretched, terrified, and near starvation, and had taken him into his care. Rydl gratefully followed Zan to the point of being an annoyance—trailing his footsteps, singing, talking to himself, and hopping about. But it was Zan’s magnificent virtue that he could understand the needs of a troubled, homeless lad, and tolerate his antics. He did not despise Rydl because he was young and weak and in need. The fact was
that he liked the silly kid. In return, Rydl was doggedly faithful to the older boy, and in time became that rare thing, a truly loyal friend.

  In spite of the difficulties of his childhood, Rydl was a joyful person. Released from his father’s persecutions, his mind became active and his heart glad. His happiness showed itself in an unusual restlessness of spirit. He was continually playing, climbing, jumping from rock to rock, chasing a chipmunk, shouting to hear his echo, or simply babbling to the empty air.

  But as he grew older, Rydl developed a different restlessness, more of the mind than the body. Now he would shout to the cliffs to see how long it took for his echo to return; and he would wait silently for a chipmunk to appear in order to study its habits. He watched the behavior of ants by the hour—how they moved in predictable ways, or how the red ants instinctively fought the black ones. “People are like that too,” he had commented to Zan, and Zan had thought over and remembered Rydl’s words.

  By that time, Rydl had grown into a tall, slender youth. His face was pretty, almost the face of a young girl, and he had long, graceful, and feminine curls. No one would have guessed, looking at him, the fierceness of the people he had come from. He was noted for his mildness and a strange dreaminess that was ever interrupted by flashes of thought.

  Rydl was not like the other lads, although it would be difficult to say how he differed. Perhaps it was his alien origin. He looked at things—often very small things—more closely than necessity seemed to require, giving rapt attention to objects that others did not care to notice at all. And he was always analyzing and inventing. His mercurial mind occupied an entirely separate realm from that of his fellows.

  One time he noticed that some seeds had been spilled and were producing feathery sprouts. Over and over Rydl would look at them. He pulled some up and peered at the roots. He tasted them. Then he seemingly forgot all about them. But several days later, Zan noticed that Rydl was talking to an oak seedling he had plucked up: “I am sorry, little being, to have ended your short life, but I have need of you.” He took the plant to the nearby river to wash the dirt off, afterwards studying it almost reverently as if it held an important secret. He split the acorn and examined the new plant’s insides, sprout and root. And then he thought about it—and thought! Later that afternoon he was observed examining each grain closely in the light before eating it. Three weeks later he was stooping over a small green patch. It was rice, which he had planted. Then he planted squash seeds and watched the vines grow and spread. No one among the Ba-Coro had ever thought of growing anything.

  Rydl’s ideas were often the object of mockery. He suggested dipping rocks into the wasp poison, combining the advantages of two separate weapons, poisoned spear and sling. Zan pointed out that a sharp poisoned rock might be hard to carry, and everybody laughed. Still, Rydl was long fascinated with the idea of somehow combining the virtues of the sling with those of the spear.

  One spring dawn, Rydl was seen placing a pole in the earth to mark where the sun rose; and each day afterwards he noted that it rose in a slightly different place. He marked its rising every ten days. This was Dael’s chance to jeer at what he did not understand. Out of spite he kicked down the posts Rydl had carefully set up, and the experiment ended. Another time Rydl drew a map on the ground with a stick. “How can that lump of earth be a mountain?” Oin had scoffed. “And how can that red coal be our campfire?” echoed Orah. “Or that mark a river?” Only Zan refrained from laughter. Rydl’s inventiveness commanded respect, even when his ideas seemed crazy. Besides, sometimes they made sense.

  What Rydl had that his fellows lacked was a creative imagination. He occupied a separate world as lively as theirs was stolid and dull. While others plodded on in the same way their fathers had, Rydl, who no longer had a father, was constantly inventing new solutions—or at least asking new questions. Little escaped his notice and his wonder. He alone asked where tongues of fire came from and where they went. He could look at two handfuls of seeds and tell which would taste better. He could guess which way a boar went when the trail was cold. He learned to erect hunting blinds (even Pax had not thought of that), and to put out squash for bait to bring the animal within striking distance.

  All of these curious ways were laughed at, mostly in a friendly way. Chul brayed out his laughter too, but Rydl did not mind. He knew Chul was a man of no imagination and liked him anyway. And Chul liked Rydl—not only because Rydl’s ingenuity had once saved his life, but for another more basic reason: dullness admires genius. Both had kind hearts, and between such people there is always friendship.

  Rydl could do marvelous things—he quickly had learned to spin rope from Lissa-Na—but for some reason, no one seemed to take him seriously. Chul looked at his works in utter puzzlement. Pax was fascinated by his originality, but she was puzzled too. And Dael openly jeered at him. Dael had kicked down the sun-marking poles, and also trampled the patch of green, daring Rydl to do anything about it.

  “Do not be concerned, Little Friend,” Chul said. (Chul was in the habit of calling Rydl that.) He laid his great, hairy hand on Rydl’s shoulder. “You are clever, and being smart is more important than being strong.” Dael happened to overhear Chul’s words, and imitating his heavy, gravelly speech repeated them in a mocking tone in Rydl’s ear: “Being smart is more important…Being smart is more important…!” And Oin and Orah joined in until they were all tired of it. Rydl dismissed them for the fools they were and walked away.

  About that time Rydl began to develop a snare for animals, using a sweet bait that he thought might attract a possum. Their meat was tender and delicious and well worth catching. But when he actually caught one, Dael took it for himself and was eating its roasted flesh by the time Rydl discovered where it went. Rydl’s protest met with violence. Dael easily overcame him and pinned his face to the ground.

  “Would you like to taste dirt, worm?” he said, twisting Rydl’s arm behind his back. “Rydl, the worm. Rydl, the maggot. Go play in the dirt, worm!” And he let him go so he could continue eating his stolen dinner.

  Rydl was no coward, but he had long experience with abusive people and knew better than to respond in kind. Practically from the first moment he met him, Rydl was wary of Zan’s twin. There was something explosive within Dael that constantly threatened to erupt. It was wisdom, not cowardice to avoid him. Rydl understood that the savage cruelty that had ended Hurnoa’s life was the work of a disturbed mind. If there were to be a fight, one of them would die—probably he himself. Nor could he easily bring himself to fight Zan’s brother to the death, unless there were no way out.

  Yet Rydl had learned to take care of himself. He knew a dozen ways to trip up his enemies, and could quickly invent still more—like the time he gave poison mushrooms to the great louts who tried to kidnap him and ran away while they were vomiting. He was an adept climber, and could escape Dael’s anger like a fugitive squirrel if necessary and laugh at him from above.

  Never once had Rydl mistaken one twin for the other. Rydl loved Zan and wished he could like Dael too. The harder Dael was on him, the more Rydl sought Zan’s company and protection. When alone together they sometimes spoke in the wasp tongue, a dead language to everyone but them: “I know that he is that way,” Zan said in the foreign tongue, “but it is not wholly his fault. If only you knew what he was like before his capture, before his ordeal, you might feel sorry for him. He was milder than you are—kind, generous, and always laughing—an entirely different person! I remember how he avoided fishing because he didn’t want to hurt the fish! Do not hate him, Rydl. He has suffered so much…and now Lissa’s death…and truly I fear he is not in his right mind.”

  Rydl was pacified, and he went on experimenting and making his traps and tending some new squashes, until Oin and Orah trampled them down.

  7

  THE

  TRAP

  The antipathy of Rydl and Dael would prove to be a lengthy story. Later on, after the adventurers had returned to their home with th
e news of the wasp people’s destruction, Rydl would begin another project:

  There was a girl, about thirteen years old, who had never learned to speak. No one knew why. She was extremely shy and kept to herself as much as she could, apparently ashamed of her impairment. Rydl made it his business to draw her out, and when he had somewhat overcome her timidity, he sat her on a log, pointed to her, and spoke her name: “Sparrow.” Then he pointed to himself and spoke his own. Sparrow knew what was expected of her and ran away, but the next day Rydl tried again, and every day afterwards. Her painful attempts to speak, when he finally could get her to try, were almost comic. She could only sputter. Rydl was not discouraged, but continued his efforts for a few minutes every day.

  Rydl himself was not a perfect speaker. Being a foreigner, he spoke with an unusual pronunciation, which had frequently opened him to coarse mockery. Actually, despite this flaw, Rydl had a noble command of language that none of his comrades could approach, and a pleasant tone of voice that appealed to many, especially girls. It was this that had attracted Sparrow.

  Rydl discovered that Sparrow could sing a little, even if she could not form words, and he guessed that this might be the key to her improvement. When Dael caught Rydl in his efforts, his sneering smile was mixed with a frown of incomprehension. He dismissed them both with laughter—at her for her wordless song, and at him for his accent. “An idiot teaching an idiot,” he muttered within Zan’s hearing. Zan remembered his own captivity, when he too had been called “idiot,” but he said nothing.

  Some of the tribesmen assumed that Rydl was in love, and anyone could see that Sparrow was captivated. No one had ever shown her the least attention, and now Rydl was spending time with her every day, and softly singing to her. Soon Sparrow actually sputtered a word or two, and did a little better as time went on. She tried hard because she was in love with her teacher and wanted to please him. Rydl was pleased, but he did not return her blossoming affection.