ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-EIGHT: The Elder’s Croak

 

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“That’s enough staring at our neighbors, Ro,” a woman said. She touched the switch that darkened the bedroom window, hiding the view of the house next door and turning Thegund’s day into night.

“But they’re leaving. Even the grandfathers. And they called a wizard from Chayklo. She’s wrapping the house in—”

“No more about that. Sit down with your sisters. It’s time for a story, and then three wordchains each before sleep.”

 

*

 

“Would you like me to tell you the story now?” Jeneth-art’h asked as his fingers gently captured his son’s hair into a loose braid.

Stu sat perfectly still, face turned toward the stream. “Were they right not to let me hear it? Will it make me cry?”

“I hope it will make you laugh,” said his father. “And if you cry at the sad parts, is that wrong?”

“Can you tell it all in Rityan?” Stu asked quietly.

“Yes. I’m sure it will be even better that way. It’s an old story, after all. It starts like this—”

 

*

 

“In the time before books but not before memory,” said Esh-erdi, kneeling across from Alden Thorn on a green nonagon above a moonlit sea, “in an age before cities, but not before magic, when the Mother Planet was full of dangers that have long since passed away, there was a village hidden in the deepest part of the deepest forest in the world.”

 

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Now, I know what you’re going to ask because everyone asks. Is this the same village from those other stories? The one where the Traveling Man with a Tail Finds Home? The one where The Woman of Power Meets the Detcha?

Yes, this is that same village. Far away and lost except to those who live there.

But this is that village as it was before most of the other stories happened. The Woman of Power had not been born, and the Man with a Tail hadn’t taken the first steps of his trip. This is that village back when they had only two wizards, and the people often lived in fear.

Magic in those days was different than it is now. There were no schools to train people in the ways and responsibilities of commanding reality, so the wizards of the village weren’t as you may be imagining them. The two of them were brothers, twins some say.

The younger brother’s authority was vast, and his brain was clever. When smallspells and wordchains were more than most people knew, he learned the secrets of the elements and heard the whispers of others like him in distant lands. When he was only a boy, he could suck nectar from thrumming flowers without being stung, and as a young man, he hollowed a log and filled it with hungerless fire to keep himself warm at night.

You must be thinking what anyone would think the first time they hear this story. The people of the village had a luck larger than the size of the sky, didn’t they? To have one like him among them, even in a time before schools. Surely he made their hammocks so strong they’d never break and used his authority to seal their baskets so that they wouldn’t leak. Surely he shared all the nectar he could find with them and warned them of trees with heartrot and lifted the weak ones to safety when the unclimbing beasts came hunting.

Well, he didn’t.

He made his own hammock strong, and he came back to the village each night with nectar on his breath and no flowers in his basket, and he whined even when it was his own family that wanted to share the warmth of the hungerless fire.

“I take care of myself. The rest of you have nothing I need, so why should I help you?”

That was the kind of person the younger brother was. He has no name in this story because why should his name be remembered? He took the Mother’s air and ate from her ground and gave nothing back except what others in the village bought or berated from him.

For himself, he lived. Alone, he died. And on our tongues, dead he stays.

His elder brother, though, does have a name we remember even after all this time.

And his name was BRRR-BRRRRUUP-BRRWEEEEE-eeeeeeeemp!

 

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The sound that issued from Esh-erdi’s mouth was so startling after the rich, lulling voice in which he’d been telling the rest of the story that Alden almost jumped to his feet. He ended up on one knee, leaning away from the knight and holding his hands to his chest, while the horrible croak echoed around them.

Esh-erdi shut his mouth and beamed at him.

“No!” Alden said, unable to keep himself from laughing. “No. It was even louder and weirder than last time!”

“I don’t know what you mean. It’s just the elder brother’s name.”

“That’s his name? I feel so sorry for him. What were his parents thinking?”

“It wasn’t always his name. Come back here and listen. If I frighten you into jumping off The Nine-edged Son Whose Own Mother Forsakes Him, the art’h family may not let me visit their house anymore.”

 

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You may be wondering how any person, even an ancient, could end up with a name like that.

And the answer is: because he wasn’t like his younger brother at all.

The elder one’s authority was stronger than the other villagers’, but it was like a breath against the wind compared to the younger’s. And the elder was no more clever than many people who lived in that place. But he was full of effort and patient in his thoughts, and as the years of his youth passed, he found a way to use his authority for the sake of the others.

He learned to use it to change his voice.

…are you maybe questioning if that’s really an example of magic at all?

I understand why you might be, but at this time, in this village, even the adults had very simple voices. They could only whistle with their lips and clap with their hands and drum with their fists. Their throats would make none of those sounds, no matter how hard they tried.

And they were a quiet people because shouts or songs would call danger to them. During the season of whispers, especially, they might not hear their own voices more times than they had fingers.

So it was then, though strange it sounds to us now.

But the elder brother! Even during the season of whispers, he could sing for them all. He sang in the voice of the stillwings that flew so high above the trees no beast bothered to come at their sound.

Try it yourself now. Like this:

Ayyytututut, ayyyytututut, ayyy…

 

The wizard sang like that one day. And on the next, he would sing in the sound of the rain on the leaves. And on the third, he chose the kssksssksskss of the kesbug because it reminded the village that the hard season would end and an easier one would come.

And with every sound he learned to make, he found a new way to help his people. And his voice became the most valuable thing in the whole village. To his neighbors, the elder brother was beautiful, useful, and kind.

And the younger, more powerful brother became jealous when he saw how everyone smiled at his sibling. That wizard huddled beside his warmth while others shivered and kept his healthfat while others chewed on bark, and he told himself his brother was wrong to help the village.

Only a stupid person would give when they weren’t forced to, he thought. My brother is just as selfish as me; he’s selfish for their friendship. That’s why he helps them. That’s all it is. If it cost him much more, he’d abandon them.

He gave all of his attention to thoughts like that, until they darkened to hatred.

I’ll show them the truth, the younger decided. I’ll show them they’re wrong to frown at me and smile at him.

And so he rose from beside his log, and he walked to a beloved wevvi tree not far away. Every precious fruit was plucked the moment it ripened and shared by all, as it had been for generations. So the people of the village didn’t know that if the fruits were allowed to fall and rot, the scent would drive the unclimbing beasts mad with greed.

But the younger knew. Because he had once hungered and ripened some fruit for himself before its time, and then he’d left it in one of his hideaways so nobody could complain to him about putting the tree at risk.

On that day when his thoughts turned to hatred, he ripened several of the tree’s young fruits until they burst. Then he left pieces of them in a trail leading toward the village, and he waited.

Let’s see if my brother helps them now, he thought. Let’s see how useful his voice is when the beasts arrive. He’ll leave the weak old people by the fire. He won’t run to the river to save the children who’ve gone there to catch food. When he sees the beasts acting more terrible than he’s ever seen them before, he’ll take to the trees.

Anyone would.

Anyone…

Do you think he was right about that?

No?

What if I told you that the only thing the beasts enjoyed more than rotten wevvi fruit was the flesh of the villagers? What if I told you they were so fast you had to point your eyes in two directions at all times to have even a chance of dodging them? Or what if you found out they had such vile claws that a single scratch would sicken a person and slowly kill them?

Those were what the beasts were like on a normal day.

Those were the beasts the younger brother set loose on his village.

The first one is arriving right now, and it sounds like this:

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Shhhhhhhhhhh.

Shhhhhh.

 

Even when they move too fast to see, even when they are drunk on the sweetness of the rot, the unclimbing beasts know how to be quiet. It’s only the sound of the forest you hear, passing beneath their claws and scraping against their sides as they run toward their feast.

So you don’t know one has reached the village until you hear one of the watchers cry out in warning,“The beasts are here. The beasts are here.”

The words are no scream in this season, but everyone moves as soon as they’re heard.

The villagers begin to climb—up rope, up limb, up vine. Some of them are running toward the river. A child too young to know better is trying to hide beneath a blanket leaf.

The younger brother is watching.

And the elder is rising from the place where he has been talking worms out of the roots of a bush. He is seeing the first beast and a second behind it. A third. All of them more ferocious than he’s ever known them to be, and he thinks, I can’t do it all.

I can’t save the babe under the blanket leaf and the young ones at the river and the old who are struggling to help each other up from beside the fire. What should I do?

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

And hidden only a step away by magic—for he really is that clever and that talented—the younger smiles at the fear on his brother’s face. Because he assumes the elder is afraid for himself.

As soon as he climbs, I’ll kill the beasts, thinks the younger. As soon as they all stop believing that he’s so much better than me.

If only my brother was here now, thinks the elder, he could save our people. He can do so much magic, and all I have is my voice.

All you have is your voice, thinks the younger. Climb a tree. Forget the others.

All I have is my voice, thinks the elder.

All he had was his voice, and as the jaws of one of the beasts opened wide to take the first life, the elder brother did the only thing he could think of with that voice. Please forgive the storyteller for his poor imitation of it, but the elder brother said, BRRR-BRRRRUUP-BRRWEEEEE-eeeeeeeemp! BRRR-BRRRRUUP-BRRWEEEEE-eeeeeeeemp! BRRR-BRRRRUUP-BRRWEEEEE-eeeeeeeemp!

BRRRRRRRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP.

 

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“Are you all right?” Esh-erdi asked.

“I’m fine,” said Alden, still covering his ears just in case it happened again. “But I think maybe you should call all the seismologists and tell them that was you. Not a shift in our tectonic plates.”

Esh-erdi looked flattered.

 

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The sound the elder brother made was so awful that the beasts it had been directed at died in an instant. It was so frightening that flying creatures fell from the sky and burrowing creatures tunneled so deep they never returned. The children at the river could have filled their baskets with the fish that floated to the surface in the wake of that noise, if they hadn’t been hiding in terror.

Even the people who had seen the elder do it, and who celebrated his victory, were shaken. One man lost all his hair, and nobody felt like procreating for the rest of the season.

But they were fine, really. It was better than being eaten. And once they’d recovered, life in the village was easier than it had been.

The beasts avoided them. The elder brother sang for them all the time to wipe away the last of the fear. And the younger brother became much more distant from them.

It wasn’t as good as him joining them in their joys and helping them in their work, but at least he wasn’t so eager to show off all the treasures he found and the pleasures he made for himself.

Delightful years passed…but then a bad one came.

And another.

The weather was dry when it should have been wet and cold when it should have been hot. The wevvi tree weakened before its time and gave them less and less, and a strange new fish with flesh that poisoned stomachs drove the good ones from the river.

The air filled with swarms of bloodeaters that could drain a child to death in an afternoon. The nights filled once more with the shhhhhhhhhhhh of the occasional unclimbing beast.