Chapter 2: Asking the World for Peace
In the lowest cell at the bottom of the enemy slave ship, Tull could hear the dull rumble of a serpent’s voice beneath the churning of the engines. His animal guide was following, and it spoke incessantly of tearing open the ship, rending its belly in order to rescue Tull.
Yet Tull refused to let it, imagining the carnage that would result, sending an image of all his friends and loved ones dying after such a deed. So the serpent tailed the ship, enraged and helpless, while Tull searched for a way to free himself.
This deep in the hold, the air felt stale, humid. Tull crouched in an iron cage among the cargo, away from the other slaves. Half a dozen Blade Kin worked in the hold at odd hours of the day and night, sorting crates of food and supplies to fill the orders that came down from above.
For the first nine days of their return voyage, the Blade Kin worked seldom and seemed to hurry above decks to the fresh air whenever they could.
But on the ninth day, that changed. All twenty hands moved into the hull and would not go above decks. They filled their orders, then stayed in the sweltering hold, playing cards without their tunics on, wearing only long breechcloths, as if they were Pwi, and sometimes one would look up nervously as if fearing that a superior would come down to check on them.
Over the next few hours, the temperature climbed steadily until all the men were sweating even as they sat.
Tull lay, listening to the Blade Kin talk as they played cards. Deep in the night the men yawned, and one human said, “It’s getting hard to breathe. When will they give us some more air?”
“When it’s safe,” another answered.
“Dathan,” a third Blade Kin suggested, “why don’t you run up there and get a nice breath of fresh air, then bring it back down here for the lot of us.”
The man who had complained looked up, frightened, and the others laughed at his expense. “Laugh, you asses,” he said. “You didn’t see those birds swoop down on the deck. You didn’t have them chase you down below.”
“When do you think they’ll open the vents?” another asked. “They can’t lock us down here forever.”
Their sergeant, an old human with buck teeth, said, “As soon as they clear the eels from the shafts. We stay put till then.”
“By God’s bloated belly, I’d hate to be a Pwi, trying to clean out those shafts,” one man laughed, and the others chuckled nervously. “I saw one fellow, they shoved him up a shaft, and they pulled him back with five big lampreys sucking on the back of his neck, sucking his brains out.”
“Ayaah,” one man said, “better him than me.” The fellow glanced at Tull, as if wondering if Tull might be forced to take a turn in the shafts.
The men spoke no more about what was going on, but Tull understood. The Creators had sent their gray birds to attack. The image flashed through his mind of the little humans he had seen in Craal, the eel-like creatures attaching to their hosts at the base of the neck so that they could bore into the brain stem, take control.
Once the eel attached, the two could not be separated. Tull pitied any poor Pwi used that way.
He could not sleep. The memory of how those eels slithering silently over the ground kept him awake. For hours Tull breathed the stale air, superbly alert, until cooler air broke into the hold.
Only then did he let himself sleep. Tull dreamed that he was hunting with Ayuvah, Chaa’s dead son, deep in the redwoods where wild raspberry bushes grew leaves as large as plates and the vine maple grew tall and thin.
Tull and Ayuvah ran, carrying their spears, and Tull’s stomach growled.
The moss and brush before them was pitted and scarred—a giant mastodon had left its prints in the ground, and had gouged the moss with his tusks as they dragged the earth. Tull could hear it ahead in the forest, crashing through trees, snapping branches.
“I fear the beast will not let us catch it, and I am hungry,” Ayuvah said, and the young Neanderthal stopped to wipe the sweat from his brow with his forearm.
“I’m hungry, too,” Tull said.
“Perhaps the beast will not give itself because we have not asked it,” Ayuvah said. “We are not hunting as men of the Pwi should.”
Tull stopped, and he suddenly felt guilty. It was a lesson Ayuvah had tried to teach him long ago, to ask the spirit of the animal to give itself before the hunt.
Ayuvah pointed forward to the shadows of the forest, and Tull saw a great shaggy brown back, like a small hill, moving ahead. “Perhaps we should not bother asking for this one,” Ayuvah said. “It is more than we could eat anyway.”
Is it greed that makes me hunt this beast? Tull wondered. His belly cramped in on itself.
Ayuvah studied Tull. “What do you hunger for?”
Tull peered into the distance as the mastodon crashed through the forest shadows.
His stomach tightened. But instead of mammoth, he thought of Bashevgo with its army of Blade Kin. He thought of gray birds sent by the Creators, dropping from above, with their worms of destruction. He imagined Eridani warships streaking through the night, and he wanted to end it.
“I hunger for peace,” Tull said.
Ayuvah nodded. “Then ask the spirit of the world for peace.”
“How?”
Ayuvah pointed at the rich humus with his spear.
“Take off your clothes, lie naked on your belly, and beg the world for peace. Then listen to what it tells you.”
In his dream Tull stripped and sprawled on the ground, naked, redwood needles pricking his bare skin, and he talked long to the earth, until the shadows of night fell, and he begged the earth to fill his belly with peace.
Very faintly, like the thundering of a waterfall that is miles away, the ground trembled as if in answer.
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