by Tad Williams
"It is the mountain turned upside down," !Xabbu had said when they first approached it, even as Azador hurried ahead of them like a man rushing to meet his lover after a long separation. Sam hadn't quite understood, but she thought she could see now what he meant. Everything in this most other of Otherlands seemed to be something else turned wrong-way 'round.
She was grateful to spot the fires of the Gypsy camp at last. The more she looked at it, especially during the times it went dark, the more the Well came to resemble a cave, a burrow. She could imagine something as big as the mountaintop giant but even more disturbing suddenly climbing up out of its swirling depths. But the Gypsies, like the other fairy-tale denizens of the place, did not seem frightened of the Well at all. For them, the end of the world had become the occasion for reunion and even celebration. As she and !Xabbu made their way back across the base of the bluff and down into the camp they could hear music and singing voices.
Felix Jongleur had not joined them in their search. Sam had been grateful, although she thought it odd that such a sour, cold-eyed man would choose to remain in the Gypsy camp, surrounded by living stereotypes of carefree amusement. Now, as they came back through the outskirts of the camp, she saw him sitting by himself on the steps of one of the wagons, watching a trio of Gypsy women in long shawls dancing to a busy fiddle. She pulled !Xabbu in another direction: at the moment, she thought their hearts were both too heavy to deal with that terrible old man.
Azador had spotted them making their way across the camp and came to meet them. He had traded his travel-worn clothes for new ones, a colorful vest and puffy-sleeved white shirt. His black boots shone. He had even combed and oiled his hair, which gleamed nearly as brightly as his boots. With his splendid smile and chiseled jaw, he looked like something from a not-very-convincing netflick.
"There you are!" he called. "Come! There is music and good talk. We will wait until the Lady comes to us, then we will be saved."
As he led them through the settlement, which was made up of many little family camps, Sam wondered at how quickly his anger at even being thought a Gypsy had been replaced by a belonging that was almost religious. As she stared at the gathered Romany, and was occasionally stared at in return, she couldn't help feeling that they were all a lot like Azador—so extremely . . . Gypsy-ish, for lack of a better term . . . as to seem almost a joke. There were men with huge curling mustaches pounding out horseshoes on small anvils, and old women dressed entirely in black gossiping like crows on a wire. At the edge of the camp some of the others had set up games of chance and were busily fleecing all the interested non-Gypsies in the vicinity with dried peas hidden under fast-moving thimbles.
I guess this is what you get when you make your Gypsies out of old fairy tales, she thought.
Azador led them down close to the banks of the Well, where his own extended family had made their place. As he introduced his relations to her, most for the second time, a Romany parade of chats and chais and chabos, all dark flashing eyes and white flashing teeth, Sam found herself in danger of falling asleep on her feet. !Xabbu saw and took her by the arm, then asked Azador for a place where she could sleep. She was guided to one of the wagons by a clucking Gypsy granny who led her to a tiny bed scarcely bigger than a bookshelf. Sam wanted to protest that it was !Xabbu who needed the sleep even more than she did, but somehow she wound up lying down. Within seconds, it was too late to say anything.
If Sam dreamed, she did not remember the dreams when she awoke. She stumbled out and nearly fell down the wagon's steep steps. The old crone was gone. All around, Gypsies lay sleeping on the ground, as if the party had raged so long that they had dropped where they stood, but the sky was unchanged, still the same murky, bruised gray.
I miss time, she thought sadly. I miss mornings, and the sun, and . . . and everything.
Someone was singing, a low and quiet wandering in a minor key. She walked around the edge of the wagon to find !Xabbu squatting beside a guttering fire, drawing in the gray dust with the end of a piece of charred firewood as he sang. He looked up and offered her a weak, almost ghostly smile.
"Good morning, Sam. Or good evening."
"You can't tell, can you? Sometimes it feels like that's the most impacted part of this whole thing." She crouched on the ground beside him. "What are you drawing?"
"Drawing?" He looked down. "Nothing. I was only letting my arm move while I was thinking. Like dancing, perhaps, but not so tiring." He couldn't muster another smile, even for his own small joke,
"What are you thinking about?" She was fairly certain she already knew, but he surprised her.
"Jongleur." He looked around. "But before we talk, let us go somewhere more. . . ." He searched for the word.
"Private?"
"Exactly. Where we can see for a distance around us." He stood and led her between the wagons, past more smoky embers and more sleeping Gypsies, toward the bluff that loomed above the encampment, they climbed until they could sit on a small headland at the end of a long slope with the wagons a hundred meters below them. There were still people nearby, some even camped along the slope—not Gypsies, but fairy-tale folk, as Sam thought of them, talking cats and gingerbread children—but they seemed listlessly uninterested in the newcomers.
"What are you thinking about Jongleur?" Sam asked as they settled themselves.
"That there is some mystery between him and Azador I do not understand." !Xabbu frowned. "First there is the way he helped Azador lead us here. Then there is his interest in the Gypsy camp—this man, who has nothing but scorn for the other people and creatures he has met here."
"I know." Sam shrugged. "But maybe there's a simple explanation. He did build the network. It makes sense he might know some things about it we don't, and not want to tell us. He's not, like, Mister Generosity."
"True. But there is still something about it that puzzles me."
They sat watching the movements of the awakening Gypsy camp, as well as the larger crowd of people and semi-people surrounding the Well, a tent city of the not-quite-human. The weird, lunar landscape brought back Sam's fierce sense of homesickness.
"So are we really waiting here for the end of the world?" she asked.
"I do not know, Sam. But there is always hope. Have I told you the story of how the All-Devourer came to the kraal of Grandfather Mantis? That is a story about hope. I told it to Renie, because she is the Beloved Porcupine."
"What?" Despite the heaviness of her spirit, Sam was startled into a laugh.
!Xabbu nodded his head. "Yes, that is what Renie also did when I told her. Porcupine is the daughter-in-law of Grandfather Mantis, his favorite of all the First People. And she was the bravest of them all as well—even when Grandfather Mantis himself was overcome by fear, she kept her head and did what was necessary. That sounds like Renie, does it not?"
Sam looked at him fondly. "You really love her, don't you?"
He did not speak for a moment, but a complicated set of emotions played across his face. "My people do not have a word that has so many meanings as your English word 'love' Sam. I care for her very much. I miss her badly. I am very, very frightened and unhappy that we cannot find her. If I did not see her again, my life would always be smaller and more sad."
"Sounds like love to me. Do you want to marry her?"
"I would like to . . . to try to have a life together, I think. Yes."
Sam laughed. "You may be from somewhere else, !Xabbu, but you've got the single-guy stuff down pretty well. Can't you just say it? You love her and you want to marry her."
He growled, but it was only mock-irritation. "Very well, Sam. It is as you say."
She guessed that his light-heartedness did not go very deep. "We'll find her, !Xabbu. She's here somewhere."
"I must believe it is so." He sighed. "I was going to tell you the story of the All-Devourer. It is frightening, but as I said, it is also a story of hope."
Sam settled in. "Go ahead."
!Xabbu was a good storyt
eller, active and involved. He changed voices for the different characters and punctuated the tale with broad gestures and even dancelike movements, leaping to his feet to show Porcupine journeying to her father's house, greedily scooping his hands toward his mouth as he portrayed the All-Devourer eating all that he found. When he crouched and said, in the flat, frightened voice of Mantis waiting for the monster, "Oh, daughter, why is it so dark when there are no clouds in the sky?" Sam truly felt the horror of seeing one's own sins come home at last.
When he had finished, she noticed that a few of the fairytale folk from the surrounding campsites had moved closer to listen. "That was wonderful, !Xabbu. But it's so scary!" It had not been the simple folktale she had expected. Something powerful that lurked in the unfamiliar images, in the confusion of motives, made her wish she understood better.
"But the story says there is light behind the greatest darknesses. Grandfather Mantis and his people survived and moved on." His face fell. "I thought that it was my job to preserve them, and with them the story of my people. I thought that was to be the work of my life, but I have done nothing to make it happen."
"You'll do it," she said, but !Xabbu's nod of agreement was perfunctory. She wanted to see him animated again, thinking about something other than Renie and their terrible situation. After all, it wasn't as if they were in a hurry anymore. They had nowhere else to go. "Can you tell me another one? Do you mind?"
He raised an eyebrow as if he suspected her motives, but said only, "Yes, but then I would like to go look for Renie again, in case new people have come in while we were sleeping." He looked out at the Well. "In fact, this place does bring another story to my mind—one of the greatest of my people's tales."
"Chizz," she said. "What's it about?"
"It is another story of Grandfather Mantis, about how the moon came to be in the sky . . . and about other things. You will see why I cannot help thinking of it in this place, beside this hole in the ground full of stars swimming in the waters of creation."
"The waters of. . . . Do you really think that's what it is?"
"I do not know, but to me it looks like the pictures I have seen in the city-school where I studied, pictures taken through the eyes of telescopes looking far away out into space—and back in time, too, as they explained to me, since the light itself was old when it reached us. To me this Well looks like a place where universes are born."
Sam felt a little shiver. She could not help wondering what it would be like to drown in that deep hole, to gasp out your last breath even as galaxies of light swirled around you. "Scanny," she said quietly.
!Xabbu smiled. "But the stories of my people are seldom of great things, of wars or stars or the creation of universes—or even if they are, they are spoken of in a small way. We are a small people, you see. We step very softly, and when we die, the wind soon has blown our footprints away. Even Grandfather Mantis, who once stole fire from beneath Ostrich's wing to give to his people so they would not fear the dark—yes, even Mantis, the greatest of us all, is only a tiny insect. But he is a person, too. All things in those first days were people." He nodded, eyes closed as he composed his thoughts, "This story starts with a very small thing indeed, as you shall see. A piece of leather.
"One day Grandfather Mantis was out walking, and discovered a piece of leather beside the trail. It was a piece from the shoe—you would call it a sandal, I think—that belonged to Rainbow, his own son. It had broken loose and been left, forgotten. But something about the shoe-piece called to Grandfather Mantis. Something about it seized his attention, this tiny, discarded thing, and he picked it up and carried it with him."
As !Xabbu spoke, his preoccupation and sadness dropped away. His voice rose, his hands fluttered into the air like startled birds. Sam saw that more refugees were moving toward them, drawn by his animation in this quiet, sad place.
"Mantis came to a pool of water," !Xabbu said, "a place where reeds grew all around, a hidden, fertile place, and he put the shoe-piece in the water—it was almost as if a dream had come to him and commanded it, but he was not asleep and he had not dreamed.
"Grandfather Mantis went away then, but he could not forget about it. At last he came back to the pool and called out, 'Rainbow's shoe-piece! Rainbow's shoe-piece! Where are you?' "
"But in the water the shoe-piece had become a tiny eland. Now, if you do not know it, to my people the eland is the greatest of the antelopes. My own father hunted one so long and so desperately that he followed it out of the desert which was the only world he knew and stumbled into the river delta of my mother's people. And Grandfather Mantis himself, it is said, when he wished to travel in dignity and power, would ride between the antlers of a great eland."
!Xabbu showed the proud stride of the eland in a sort of dance, head held high, so that Sam could almost see antlers worn like a crown. The throng of refugees was growing around them, several rows deep across the headland. Wide eyes watched the little man avidly, but !Xabbu did not seem to notice his swelling audience.
"But this eland in the pool was not great and powerful. It was small, wet, and shivering, so new that seeing it brought tears to the eyes of Grandfather Mantis. He sang a song of praise and gratitude but he did not touch it, for it was still too small and weak. Instead he went away, but when he came back he found small hoofprints in the earth beside the pool and he was so full of joy he danced. The eland saw him then and came to him as though he were completely its father. Mantis then brought honey, dark, sweet, and sacred, and rubbed it onto the little eland's ribs so it would become strong.
"Each night he returned to the pool and his eland. Each night he sang to it, and danced, and rubbed it with sweet honey. Then at last he knew he must go away and wait to see if the young eland would grow. Three days he stayed away from the pool, and three nights also, though his heart was very sore. When he returned on the morning after the third night, the eland walked out of the water in the light of the sun, its hooves clicking. It had grown to magnificent size, and Grandfather Mantis was so delighted he shouted out, 'Look, a person is coming! Ha! Rainbow's shoe-piece is coming!' For he felt that he had created the living creature from Rainbow's discarded piece of leather.
"But Rainbow and his sons, Mongoose and Younger Rainbow, were not happy when they heard what Mantis had done. 'He thinks to fool us with his stories,' they told each other, 'and keep the meat to himself. Everyone knows that old Mantis is a trickster.' So they went to the pool and found the young eland grazing on the bank. They surrounded it and killed it with their spears. They were very excited—it was a fine, big eland—and began to laugh and sing as they cut it up.
"Grandfather Mantis was coming to the pool when he heard their voices. He hid in the bushes and watched them, and soon came to realize what had happened. He was full of anger and sorrow, not just because they had killed his eland, but because they had not shared it with him, and had done everything without ceremony or even a dance of gratitude. He was afraid of them, though, because they were three and he was but one, so he waited in the reeds until they left, still laughing and singing as they carried away the meat from their kill, wrapped up in its own skin.
"Mantis came out of the reeds and walked to the place where the eland had died. Rainbow and the two grandsons of Grandfather Mantis had left only one thing behind, one of the organs from the eland's stomach, that which contained the black, bitter gall that not even my people, though schooled by need to eat almost anything, can swallow. They had left the gall hanging on a bush. Mantis was so sad and angry that he took his spear and hit the organ sack. From inside it the gall spoke to him, saying 'Do not strike me.'
"Mantis became even more angry. 'I will strike you if I wish,' he said. 'I will throw you down on the ground and step on you. I will stab you with my spear.'
"The gall spoke to him again, saying 'If you do, I will come out and cover you in with my darkness.'
"But Grandfather Mantis was too angry to listen. He lifted his spear and stabbed the organ. The
gall came out as it had threatened, bitter, dark as a night without stars. and it covered Mantis in, even flowing into his eyes so that he was blinded.
"Mantis threw himself down on the ground, crying, 'Help me! I cannot see! The black gall has covered my eyes and I feel myself to be lost!' But no one heard him calling in that remote place by the pool, and no one came to help him. Mantis could only crawl along the ground, feeling his way, blind and helpless. 'Hyena will find me this way,' he thought, 'or some other hungry creature, and I will be killed. Grandfather Mantis will be dead—will that not be a sad thing?'
"But no one came to help him and he could only crawl on through the darkness. Then at last, just as he became so tired and fearful he could not move any farther, he put his hand down upon something. It was an ostrich feather, white as smoke, bright as a flame, and the heart of Grandfather Mantis was filled with hope. He took the feather and wiped the black gall from his eyes. When he could see the beauty of the world again, he took the feather and wiped off the rest of the bitter gall, which fell away, leaving the feather clean and untouched. Marveling at this wondrous thing, delighted with his escape, Grandfather Mantis threw the feather high into the sky where it stuck, a curve of white against a darkness as black as the gall. He danced and sang. 'You now lie up in the sky,' Mantis told the feather. 'From this day, you will be the moon, and you will shine at night and give light to all the people when there would otherwise be darkness. You are the moon, you will live, you will fall away, then you will live again and give light to all the people.' And it did. And it does."
!Xabbu fell silent, lowering his head as if saying "Amen" at the end of a prayer, Sam could not help noticing all the faces surrounding them in the unending twilight—childlike, expectant faces. The. crowd had grown larger still, pressing in like victims of a disaster pleading for information, until they surrounded the small knoll many rows deep.
