The First Heroes

by Harry Turtledove

  “My brother, watch your tongue,” Dett said with great weariness. “You would not speak so lightly had you seen Klevey’s hate-filled red eye.”

  Mebaw, for once, had the decency to look embarrassed.

  Later that day, they put small Orrul’s body to rest in the barrows beyond the village, then prepared an offering to the Mother of the Sea. They went down to the harbor, ignoring the icy drizzle, and everyone—even Gefalal the stranger girl and Fummirrul, who had left the sheep alone to participate—placed a pinch of grain in a bowl. Then Dett’s father and uncle took their boat a short distance into the bay where they dumped the bowl and a chunk of venison, in hopes the Mother would find it pleasing. The Mastersinger, accompanied by Mebaw, sang many verses in praise of the Mother while Orrul’s closest relatives made an offering for his safe journey to the world of the dead.

  Although Dett grieved for the loss of his small son, his spirit felt lifted by the devotions. And it helped that the heavy rain clouds blocked out the dread, red skies.

  Unfortunately, the offering did not please the Mother, for there soon followed the coldest autumn and winter anyone could remember, even Grandmother Glin. It truly seemed as if the Mother had lost her strength, and Lord Father Winter reigned supreme. A snowfall ordinarily lasted a day or so, but now white drifts blanketed the island. No sooner did one melt than another covered the land once again.

  Klevey was working in tandem with his oath-brother, for his vile touch was evident in the stunted wheatstalks, the frost-damaged vegetables, the withered and brown grasses. With the cold and the failing crops came the deaths, leaving no family unaffected. Uncle Talloc was hardest hit, losing a dozen family members to different ailments. Only his oldest son, now a widower, and Gefalal survived. Dett’s wife, Jolpibb, and the baby died before the solstice, and only Grandmother Glin’s skillful nursing saved Rarpibb from a deadly flux. Grandmother herself seemed undaunted, save she walked more slowly and her back was more bent. Otherwise, she was as enduring as the red cliffs, taking punishment from the pounding waves, yet still standing.

  Fummirrul, on the other hand, no longer smiled and joked, and his slim frame seemed bonier than ever. He had ceased complaining about the pesky new sheep and treated Rarpibb so tenderly the little girl wearied of it. One night, she tried pinching him to provoke him into teasing back. He simply moved away to the other side of the hearth and continued sewing a seam in his trousers. That was usually women’s work, but the only woman in Dett’s household was Joloc, and she was sorely overburdened. Under more ordinary circumstances, Grandmother Glin would have stayed to help Joloc; Glin had no permanent home, being related to everyone, but moved where she was needed. As the most skilled healer, she was in constant demand that season. It would have been too selfish of Dett to insist she stay after Jolpibb died, not when others needed her care.

  Rarpibb, small as she was, helped where she could. Her sister was teaching her homely skills, but she was still clumsy at sewing and weaving and weak from her illness. Dett hoped Rarpibb would stay healthy and learn more, for the day would come when Joloc’s courses would begin, and she would eventually wed and move into the house of her husband’s family.

  But that was still several years distant. For now, Fummirrul’s somber ways were a more immediate burden on Dett’s mind as he and Mebaw worked to repair a hole in Mebaw’s roof. “It’s as if Fummirrul’s spirit is being crushed by all the deaths. He has not laughed in days. Every week, he reports we’ve lost another sheep, and Joloc counters that another villager has died. How long can Klevey plague us?”

  Mebaw barked his knuckles on a chunk of flagstone and swore mildly. “Well, Grandmother insists that your encounter with the Seaman means that at least some of us will survive. The elders agree with this interpretation. I’d even go so far as to say that you have something to do with our chances.”

  “Me? I’m nobody special. It’s men like Father and Uncle, the bold ones, who accomplish things.”

  “But the Seaman appeared before your mind’s eye and did not deny you when you asked, ‘Is there nothing we can do?’ ”

  Dett laughed bitterly. “Here’s what I can do: patch a roof.”

  “Fine. Maybe that will prevent the rain from soaking my family, and thus we shall not freeze. You have saved perhaps nine people.”

  “Always joking, brother.”

  “I am not joking. You may have already helped us prepare for this cold reign of Lord Father Winter, with your clucking over the strange skies. My wife, matching your worries with her own, was especially frugal with our grain this summer. Thanks to her foresight, we will have enough to last till spring. Other wives did the same.”

  “Jolpibb among them,” Dett said, tears welling up in his eyes.

  “Ah, but I have spoken with men from other villages on Western Island. Some of them are already starving, and Klevey’s culled their flocks the way he did in your dream, right down to the last lamb. Your boy Fummirrul may mourn our losses, but we’ve still got a decent-sized flock, and promise of more come spring. I went by our pasture yesterday, and that troublesome ram was humping the ewes like a woolly bridegroom on his wedding night. Made me feel proud to be male, he did, and the other ram, the brown one, was having his share of the ladies, too.”

  Talk of the sheep made Dett feel uneasy. “All the same, it is easier to be frugal when there are fewer mouths to fill. I imagine there is plenty still in Uncle Talloc’s storebins, as there is hardly anyone to eat it in his house.”

  “Hush! Here he comes, his own self, and he looks angry. Greetings, Uncle!”

  “Greetings, Nephew Mebaw. I would speak to you a moment, Nephew Dett. A matter of concern between our families.” Talloc drew his sealskin cape across his barrel chest—he was built like Dett—and waited for the younger man to slide down from the rooftop.

  “Something wrong, Uncle?” Dett asked.

  “Your son, Fummirrul, has been spending time in the company of the stranger girl, Gefalal. He has been doing so for many months now.”

  “If this has been so for many months now, why do you sound annoyed by it?”

  “At first, I did not mind. Fummirrul has helped her learn our tongue. Perhaps she learned more from him because he is nearer her own age. I am grateful, for her position in my house has grown in importance since Klevey has taken so many of mine, including wife, daughters, and daughters-in-law. It is good she knows simple words and commands. But he must not come near her any longer.”

  “Why? Where is the harm? They are but children.”

  Talloc kicked a loose stone, sending it ricocheting off Mebaw’s house. “Because she is now meant for Glinaw, my last remaining boy! I do not want anyone, not even a grandnephew, taking her and planting his seed within her!”

  “How absurd, Uncle!” said Dett. Clearly, grief had rattled the older man’s wits. “She is still unbloodied, and Fummirrul has not yet sprouted his man’s hair, nor had his first dreamtime wetness. He’s a boy still, with the slender shoulders of youth and a high voice like those of the shore-birds. As for his manhood . . .”

  “I care not that Fummirrul’s manhood is as yet unripe. If he stays any longer by Gefalal’s side, he will know what to do as soon as it is ripe, and he will desire to do it with her.

  “Gefalal could start her courses any time. She is a woman in shape, no longer the ragged stick-child we rescued last spring. Her hips have widened, to prepare for bearing my grandchildren. Her breasts have rounded, the better to nurse my grandchildren.” Talloc’s breath came a little faster, puffing white in the cold air, and he shifted his feet, as if suddenly uncomfortable. Dett had not seen enough of Gefalal to realize how much the stranger girl’s body had changed over the seasons, but clearly Talloc knew it in detail. Dett suspected his uncle’s lecture had two goals: to protect Gefalal for Glinaw, or, if Glinaw died, to save her for himself. Glinaw had the same wasting cough that had taken many of the villagers in the last month. And Talloc was still virile, though getting on in years: his wife
had died in childbirth not long after Dett’s dream.

  Dett said, “As you wish, Uncle. I shall speak to the boy, though I am sure you are worrying needlessly.”

  “You would worry, too, had you been as afflicted as I! At least three of your children still breathe! Even those daughters of mine who dwelt with their husbands are gone, and all the grandbabes with them.” He choked up, then abruptly walked away.

  “Well!” said Mebaw from above. “That was an unpleasant performance.”

  “He is shaken by grief.”

  “Shaken by lust, if you ask me. He’s just waiting for the stranger girl to ripen, then he’ll pluck the fruit. Glinaw doesn’t have a chance; he must have breathed plenty of Klevey’s fumes.”

  This uncomfortably echoed Dett’s own thoughts, but he said nothing out of respect for his uncle’s position and sympathy for his losses. It sometimes seemed Mebaw respected nothing.

  “I must speak to Fummirrul,” Dett said. “This news will only make him gloomier, I fear. He enjoys talking with Gefalal.”

  “Go, then. I can finish this myself.”

  Dett pondered. “It grows late. He should be putting the sheep back into their enclosure soon. I will wait for him there, if he has not yet returned from the pastures.”

  He began trudging through the village, noting house after house and remembering those who had died. Icy slush covered the ground; Dett could feel the chill creeping through his boots. As he made his way past the silent fields, he realized he had been avoiding the sheep pen ever since his frightful dream. He knew why: he didn’t want to see the place where Klevey had run rampant before his mind’s eye. Even now, ascending the rise, he felt uneasy, though the harsh winter landscape differed significantly from the green grasses of his dream. The tiny pink flowers were long gone.

  He heard the sheep baaing as he approached, but not the frantic calling he remembered in his dream. Nor, when he looked down, did he see ruin and destruction. The sight, however, was sobering: perhaps a fourth of the flock had died, and some of the remaining beasts were sickly. By some weird twist, all of the animals taken by Klevey thus far had been from the old flock. The new southern sheep, for all their frisky and peculiar ways, seemed in far better health.

  Fummirrul, a sleek figure in black from his cap down to his mittens, was in the far corner of the enclosure with one of the new rams and several ewes. It might have been Trouble, but Dett wasn’t quite sure. Fummirrul jumped with alarm when his father called his name.

  “Why do you start so, my son? Are you up to some mischief?” asked Dett. “I have important news. Your great-uncle Tal—what is that stuff? What are you doing there? Have the wind demons swept all sense from your mind?”

  Dett advanced purposefully on his son, who cowered beside the wall. At his feet was a large pile of seaweed, which Trouble and the ewes were munching. “When you told me these animals had a fondness for seaweed and even leaped the wall to get it, I took it as a joke. You children, when mere tots, would often unknowingly place yourselves in danger, trying to get something forbidden to you. So, I thought, it was with these sheep. Being ignorant creatures, they do not know any better. You, the shepherd, like a parent to a wayward child, would teach them the right way to behave.

  “Now, in this time of troubles, I find you have abandoned your duty and have given in to the whims of these beasts, supplying them with what they crave. Likely they will all die, thanks to your foolishness! What made you think you could do this?” Dett did not often shout, but he did so now, frightening the sheep and sending a nearby flock of gannets flapping into the sky.

  “Father, you gave me the idea!” Fummirrul blurted out. His face, like Dett’s, was red with suppressed emotions, but he had ceased his trembling.

  “I? I never said a word!”

  “That day when you stopped by the pen with Uncle Mebaw, you said a man must do his best to cope with a dilemma. My dilemma was that the sheep kept eating seaweed on the shore. How could I deal with it? Building the wall higher would only stop them while they were in the enclosure, but they were constantly running off when I took them to the pastures, too. Tying them up didn’t work—they chewed through every rope I tried. So I thought to ask Gefalal what they did with the sheep on her southern island. You remember, she and her brother, the boy that died on the boat trip, were shepherds to this very flock of bothersome sheep.”

  Dett blinked. Until this moment, he had forgotten his original purpose in coming to the pen. “Gefalal. Yes. What then?”

  “I’d talked to her before, Father. It’s so interesting to know her people have many different words from our own. For instance, she calls the ocean—”

  “You stray from your story. Uncle Mebaw and the Mastersinger would scold you for rambling. What did she say of the sheep?”

  Fummirrul rubbed the head of a nearly grown lamb as it butted him with affection. “It took a while to understand enough of her words. We learned more from each other when I brought her out to the pastures. She is very good with the sheep. Father, you will never guess what she told me! These southern sheep eat seaweed nearly all year long, save the summertime when the ewes are lambing. When the young lambs are a few months old, they too eat the seaweed. See this rascal here? He likes it as much as his father does.” The lamb was now taking delicate nips of the seaweed at the boy’s feet. Trouble, nearby, took far larger mouthfuls, as did the ewes that had ambled over, now that Dett had stopped shouting.

  “At first, Father, I didn’t know what to think. It seemed stupid. But then Klevey walked in your dream, and the Seaman appeared, too, with seaweed draped over his flipper.”

  “And he left the seaweed after he vanished,” said Dett, thinking hard. “Do you think he left it for us to feed the sheep?”

  Fummirrul shrugged. “I am just a boy. I don’t know much about interpreting dreams. But it seemed to make sense. So I used that—and Gefalal’s advice—to convince myself that it was all right. Father, it must be all right! For the grasses have grown poorly and there is not enough grain for the village, let alone the flock, but there is still seaweed. The old sheep are starving, but I have lost but one of the new flock, and that a swaybacked lamb.”

  Dett didn’t reply at first. Only minutes ago, he and Mebaw had been discussing the meaning of his dream. His brother thought he, Dett, would somehow help save the village from Klevey’s destruction, and maybe he was right. Well, partly right. Dett did not see how he could be a savior when all he had done was fuss and fret. He was a confirmed worrier. Jolpibb used to tease him about it. But perhaps his cautious ways had saved lives.

  Fummirrul, on the other hand . . . He had interpreted an elder’s dream and taken action on it—a bold thing to do for a mere boy, but the interpretation could be a valid one. Dett’s gaze passed from the weak older sheep to one of the new ones. Most were gray, but this was the brown ram, and he stared back with bright brown eyes. The brown was having his share of the ladies, too, Mebaw had said. The sheep’s robust condition—and that they were intent on breeding—certainly seemed to vouch for the validity of the interpretation. Come spring, the Western Islanders who had lost their flocks would lack wool and mutton, but Dett’s village would not.

  “F-Father?” Fummirrul sounded anxious. “Is it all right?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Dett said. “I will talk to the council about it. Grandmother may be irked to realize that you may have interpreted an important dream more accurately than she or the Mastersinger did. My son, if you have a talent for such things, perhaps you will be Mastersinger after Uncle Mebaw.”

  Fummirrul wrinkled his nose in distaste. “I want to go to sea with Grandfather and the uncles. That is why I want to learn Gefalal’s tongue. Then, if we go to the Great Island, I can speak to the people there, and trade for their things.” He scratched the lamb’s ears, looking wistful. “But, of course, someone else would have to watch the flock.”

  This intention surprised Dett only a little; Fummirrul was a restless spirit, not given to stay
ing in one place, growing grain and gathering seabird eggs off the cliffs. Dett believed his son would do well as a fisherman-trader, especially if he made the effort to learn other people’s tongues.

  But that was all yet to come. “You have done well with the sheep, but when you are a man, some other clever youngster will take your place as shepherd.” That youngster might have been Orrul. Or the baby. “However, I fear you must wait some time before learning more of Gefalal’s language. Great-Uncle Talloc has forbidden you to see her.” When Fummirrul began to cry out in protest, Dett raised a restraining hand. “I do not agree with him, but as she is in his household, I cannot countermand his desires. He may change his mind, given time.

  “Look. It is beginning to snow again. I will help you move the sheep into their barn, and then we will see what messes little Rarpibb has made for us, eh? That mutton stew last night was so tough, I thought she’d cooked her doll.”

  That won a sly grin from his son. “True, Father! Say, if I hid her doll and pretended to eat it, that would make her squeal indeed. May I play such a joke?”

  With that, Dett understood that Klevey’s rampage had caused only some of Fummirrul’s low spirits. The rest came from worrying about his feeding the sheep.

  “Indeed you may. It will be fine to hear her squeal again. I have sorely missed that sound.”

  The elders readily accepted Fummirrul’s interpretation, once they had inspected the old and new sheep, and heard from Gefalal that the creatures did thrive on seaweed on the Great Island. Klevey and Lord Father Winter continued to torment the islands for another year. Illness took more lives during the second winter after the Day of Darkness; Glinaw, the Mastersinger, and even Grandmother Glin succumbed. The elders, however, took care that no one starved, carefully doling out precious mutton as needed. Talloc, in particular, readily shared what his depleted family would not need. It also helped that they were better prepared for Lord Father Winter’s fury; everyone had plenty of warm woolen clothes and thick blankets.