The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Seven

e went in search of our fortune with the ring a few more times, but it was no use. The Frog of the North could not be found. Each time our journey ended with us at some point not wanting to go on any farther, and just stopping to eat blueberries.

Finally I came to the conclusion that the ring I received as a gift was not the right ring, or if it was, its use required a lot of effort and the sort of knowledge I didn’t have. I lost interest in the ring, stuffed it back in its leather pouch, and got on with other things.

In my search for the Frog of the North I had often come upon the Primates’ hut. Naturally I already knew them, because quite a few of us humans had remained in the forest. And Pirre and Rääk were actually human, though hairier than any of us. That was plain to see, since they didn’t wear animal skins, but walked around stark naked. They claimed that that was their ancient custom, and that the decline of our people hadn’t started with moving to the village or eating bread, but with putting on alien creatures’ skins and adopting iron tools stolen from ships. There wasn’t a speck of metal in their home, just hand axes made of stone. These were clumsy and almost shapeless, but Pirre and Rääk assured us they sat comfortably in the hand and were healthy to use.

“It’s our own stone, not some foreign iron,” they said. “When you take a stone like this in your hand, it gives you strength, massages your palms, and calms your nerves. In the olden days, with these stone axes you did all the work; you were in a good mood and nobody got upset.”

Unlike Tambet, who also held sacred the ways of his ancestors and tried steadfastly to walk their well-worn paths, Pirre and Rääk were very mild. They didn’t demand anything of anyone. They didn’t want other people to bare their bottoms, and they never quarreled when they saw someone with a knife in their belt or a brooch on their jacket. If anyone had visited Tambet carrying a piece of bread, he might have set his wolves on that person as punishment for their impertinence, or at least cursed such a village lickspittle in the strongest terms. Pirre and Rääk, on the other hand, never spoke ill of anybody. They were friendly and hospitable, and were not offended even when a visitor declined to eat the half-cooked hunk of meat they offered them. “Well, you’re not used to it,” they would say kindly and laugh, their yellow fangs glistening. “You eat burned food. Doesn’t matter. How about we char this bit of meat till it’s black for you, if you like it better that way. But it isn’t healthy for you. The olden people all ate half-cooked meat; it’s good for the digestion. You don’t want any grubs? What a waste; they used to be our people’s favorite delicacy! Look, you take a grub, squeeze it empty onto your tongue. Mm! Delicious!”

They screwed up their eyes with pleasure and licked the grub mash off their lips, and yet their display of ecstatic enjoyment didn’t ever convince me to taste this delicacy. Pirre and Rääk didn’t impose their preferences on me, though. They roasted my piece of meat blackish brown and wished me a good appetite, laughing sunnily. Then they let me eat in peace, while they combed through each other’s hairs and picked out spruce needles, ants, and spiders.

Even as a little boy I had visited Pirre and Rääk now and then, at first with Uncle Vootele, later alone or with Pärtel. But while searching for the Frog of the North I got to know the Primates better. A couple of times I even stayed the night with them, when an all-day hike through the forest had worn me out, and I didn’t have the strength to go home in the evening. My mother knew that nothing could happen to me in the forest, because I already knew the Snakish words well, and thanks to them I had nothing to fear. So she didn’t worry if I didn’t turn up at home for the night. Sometimes I slept at Ints’s snake nest, sometimes at Uncle Vootele’s place. But lately I had liked being at the Primates’ home, because there were lice there.

Pirre and Rääk were breeding them.

Lice were their pets. The Primates had no children, so they directed all their tenderness and care to lice. The lice lived in specially built cages; there were plenty of them and a whole range of sizes and shapes. There were quite ordinary gray lice, but also frog-sized ones, creatures that were specially bred and fed, which Pirre and Rääk would sometimes take in their laps and stroke with their hairy hands. Most interesting of all, all these lice obeyed their masters. As I have said, insects don’t generally understand Snakish words. You can talk to an ant as much as you like; you will make no headway. A grasshopper disturbing your sleep with its chirping will crackle into song regardless of your having repeatedly yelled words of Snakish at it that would have immediately struck any other creature dumb. It isn’t possible to make a spider or a ladybird understand Snakish; they are born idiots. Lice are also actually extremely obtuse creatures that would normally never obey your will. All the more remarkable, then, that Pirre and Rääk had trained them up like clever fighting wolves.

The lice did exactly what their master and mistress commanded. They would approach closer, lie down, get into line, climb on each other’s backs, roll along the ground like fox cubs. If you stretched out a hand to them, they would politely offer you a paw.

All of these tricks they would do only at Pirre’s and Rääk’s command. If I tried to force them to do anything, they wouldn’t move a muscle. I was very disappointed, because I knew I spoke Snakish very well, no worse than the Primates did. When I asked Pirre and Rääk why they didn’t comprehend my Snakish words, the Primates laughed heartily.

“Ordinary Snakish words aren’t enough,” they said. “Listen carefully to the way we speak to them; we pronounce Snakish in the old Primate way. Long ago, when our ancestors were still living in caves and didn’t know fire, they had power over insects. How else would they have survived the attacks of the gadflies and mosquitoes that could freely get at them, without campfire smoke to scare them away? Nowadays their ancient pronunciation has been forgotten. Even we can’t speak it as they did tens of thousands of years ago. Of all the insects, we can only communicate with lice, which have lived in the fur of animals for a long time and learned a few things from them. But it’s beyond our powers even to scare away blackflies. It’s sad that the old skills die out.”

It was a pity for me too, because I myself would have liked to keep mosquitoes and gadflies away from me using Snakish. They were disgusting creatures and they bit painfully. Now I was trying to at least learn how to talk to the lice, but it was too hard a nut to crack. No matter how much I practiced, I just couldn’t pronounce the Snakish words like Pirre and Rääk. The difference was minute, but whether I liked it or not, my tongue slipped back into the old furrow.

Pirre and Rääk said I shouldn’t bother myself, since it wasn’t possible to learn Primate pronunciation.

“It must be inborn, just as your forefathers had inborn fangs,” they told me. “You can sharpen your teeth as much as you like, and rinse your mouth with any sort of infusion, but your teeth won’t ever become poisonous. That’s how it is with our language. You are not a Primate. Our families are related, yes, but our ways parted long, long ago. You don’t have a tail, either.”

Indeed I did not have a tail, unlike Pirre and Rääk, who had a soft little bulge growing out of their behinds. So I no longer tried talking to the lice, and only wanted to know whether they were able to command only their own trained lice, or whether they could manage with an unfamiliar louse as well.

“We think we could,” replied Pirre and Rääk. Incidentally, they always spoke together, one saying one word, the other the next, so it wasn’t possible to understand with which Primate you were talking. In fact it wasn’t possible to imagine them apart; they were always together, moving around side by side, and sitting clinging to each other. I don’t know whether this was from their great love, or whether hanging on to each other is simply a Primate habit. Apart from Pirre and Rääk I didn’t know any other Primates. There probably weren’t any. They were the last of their kind.

In any case, I sought out a bear in the forest, and asked him to give me a louse. The bear agreed happily. At the time he was skulking around the home of a friend of my sister’s, and I had a sneaking suspicion they had an assignation, because bears simply can’t keep away from girls. This bear must have had some affair going on with my sister’s friend, but that wasn’t my business. As long as he didn’t trouble my sister. I took some lice from the bear and left him sitting under a bush.

A bear like that, on the prowl for a woman, may sit patiently in one place for several days, without eating or drinking, his head cocked, his paws meekly on his belly, and a silly lovesick expression on his face. It makes a huge impression on a girl. “Oh, what a sweet teddy!” they sigh tenderly, and the bear, having managed to create the desired impression, gets to his feet and shambles awkwardly over to his beloved, a globeflower picked from a meadow in his teeth. And when he has continued to show his skill by weaving a dandelion wreath and putting it on his own half-cocked head, then not a single woman can resist such an idyllic scene.

I took the lice I’d received from the bear to Pirre and Rääk, and after the Primates had tenderly stroked them and let them scurry over their hairy fingers for a while, they commanded the lice to lie on their backs — and the creatures did so, waving their legs in the air.

“You see, they obey!” said Pirre and Rääk joyfully. “Smart creatures! We’ll let them in with the others; we’ve got enough room.” They could never have enough lice; they picked up every one they came across.

At this time Pirre and Rääk had another exciting task in hand. They had already bred frog-sized lice, but only a few, and wanted to breed lice that were the size of goats. The sturdier lice were separated from the smaller ones, they were allowed to multiply, and from these the very hugest were selected. This did not take long, however, as the lice bred quickly and had plenty of offspring. A few months later a goat-sized louse was born. I have to say that it was an impossibly hideous creature. With a little louse, the ugliness wasn’t visible, as it was simply a little speck, but a big louse was the most unpleasant animal you can imagine. Pirre and Rääk didn’t think so. They were very pleased with their monster.

“In the olden days, all animals were much bigger than today,” they said. “There were incredibly bulky creatures living in the world, which have died out by now, or gone into hiding to sleep forever in darkness. A big animal has a big sleep! They may never wake again, and nobody will see these magnificent giants again. So it’s so nice to see this louse, which will do very well bustling about on the fur of some terribly huge and ancient creature. Leemet, look at it carefully! Before you, you see a fragment of a world of hundreds of thousands of years ago!”

I looked at that fragment and I didn’t like it at all. I was very pleased to be living now, not hundreds of thousands of years before. I wasn’t about to say that to Pirre and Rääk, but for form’s sake I praised their louse, and I even agreed to take the animal for a walk, because the Primates thought it needed exercise. Pirre and Rääk themselves strayed away from their cave extremely rarely, since a little piece of primeval thicket remained just around their home, consisting of strange plants that had died out long ago elsewhere that Pirre and Rääk ate, and from which they harvested their grubs. Away from this little ancient ground they didn’t feel at home.

I invited Ints and Pärtel along, attached the leash to the louse, and took it walking in the woods. The insect was indeed the size of a goat, but extremely stupid. Apparently it couldn’t understand that it was no longer the size of a seed and tried to fit through the narrowest slits, expressing an insane eagerness as it did so. It didn’t care about our injunctions, but tried obstinately to press into some little holes that were a tenth its size. As a result the louse often got trapped, flailing its legs helplessly until we heaved it out with great effort. It was a terrible nuisance, and we decided to take it for a walk in some clearer place where it couldn’t climb anywhere.

We went to the lakeshore, but the louse was even stupider than we had thought. It didn’t perceive at all that the surface of the water was not the same as the grass, rushed headlong straight to the lake, and naturally fell in.

“Can this bastard swim?” squealed Pärtel, and I couldn’t really answer him, because I was no expert on lice. But after a few moments it became clear that it could swim after all, since it rose to the surface and floundered in the water, but again so stupidly that it steered away from us instead to keeping to the shore.

“It won’t be able to swim across the lake,” said Ints. “It will get tired out and sink to the bottom. And as far as I’m concerned it can stay there; such an animal is no use to anyone.”

“I’m afraid I’ll still have to go in the water and try and save it,” I said. “Pirre and Rääk would be angry if we didn’t bring it back. It was entrusted to me and I’m responsible for it.”

I stripped naked and was ready to jump into the water when somebody sternly stopped me.

It was Ülgas the Sage.

“Where’s your sense, boy!” he asked angrily. “Don’t you know this lake is sacred? This is the home of the lake-sprite to whom I always sacrifice two squirrels when the moon is young, so that he will stay in the lake and not let our homes drown in its currents. You must not swim here. It would anger the sprite terribly! First he would pull you down under the water, and then he would flood the whole forest. Get dressed immediately and get out of here, your friend too. The lake-sprite loves silence. He must not be disturbed.”

“I’m sorry for that, but I want to catch that beast!” I said. Ülgas scowled at the louse splashing in the lake, and his face became pale.

“But that’s the lake-sprite himself!” he muttered, falling to his knees, as if at that moment his shinbone had broken in half. “The sacred lake-sprite is showing himself to us. What could it mean?”

He stared at the louse bobbing in the water, his eyes big with wonder.

“Boys, you’ve offended him in some way!” he thundered, raising his arms heavenward. “He came for you, and I must not let you go. The sprite has the right to a sacrifice.”

“That is a louse, not a sprite,” said Ints scornfully. Adders didn’t believe in sprites, just as they didn’t believe in blooming ferns. They knew the forest inside out, and they knew what lives there and what does not. They did not stop people from going to the sacred grove and bringing sacrifices, although in their eyes it was completely senseless. Adders never interfered in other beings’ affairs, as long as it didn’t affect them directly. In their view, everyone has the right to live their lives just as foolishly as they like.

Clearly, then, the sight of a snake did not exactly please the Sage of the Grove. He eyed Ints disdainfully and then looked again at the louse swimming in the water.

“What are you talking about? What louse?” he said. “Lice are small. That is the lake-sprite. I ought to know such things. Don’t make him even angrier!”

“It really is a louse,” I assured him, and I told Ülgas about Pirre and Rääk’s experiments. The mention of Primates didn’t make the sage any happier, because, just like the adders, the Primates didn’t believe in sprites, and never visited the grove. “In ancient times there weren’t any groves, and these sprites were only invented later,” they would explain. “In those days long ago, when the woods were still full of Primates, people would bow in homage to other beings than those, but sadly, we no longer remember who they were and how they were worshipped.”

At any rate Ülgas still didn’t want to believe that it was an ordinary, if oversized, louse swimming in the water, and not the lake-sprite. Unfortunately at that moment the bug managed to flounder closer to the shore, so that its legs reached the bottom and it clambered onto dry land. It was wet and drooping, shivering a little, and tried instantly to scuttle down into a pine root.

“Now you see that it isn’t a sprite,” I said. “Apparently it just looks like a sprite. I didn’t know that sprites look like big lice.”

Ülgas the Sage glowered angrily at the louse.

“Boy,” he said then, having turned his back decisively on the creature and putting his heavy hand on my shoulder. “I want to tell you that you have dishonored the lake-sprite by throwing that horrible animal into the water. The sprite’s domain is polluted and I will have to bring him many sacrifices to quell his rage. And you must help me, since you are most to blame for angering the sprite. Come back here at midnight tonight and bring with you all the wolves from your barn. This time, squirrels’ blood won’t be enough! I must do everything in my power to stop the sprite from avenging this indignity.”

“Mother won’t let me have the wolves killed! They give us milk.”

“Your mother will have to get used to it, because her son has done evil!”

There was no trace left of the kindly old granddad; with his burning eyes and whiskers trembling with rage, the sage more resembled a rat standing on his hind legs. “A mother is responsible for her son. And she is guilty too, because if she went to the grove every week as she should, and took you with her, she would know that one has to be very respectful to sprites, and you would know that too. In the olden days people went to the grove every day, to show respect to the powerful forces of nature and to earn their goodwill and friendship. Then it wouldn’t have occurred to any brat that he could throw a filthy louse into a sacred lake. Leemet, terrible things will happen to you if you don’t respect the sprites! Even I can’t placate the nature spirits if you anger them with this shameless behavior. You really would be better off listening to me, instead of befriending Primates and snakes too much. They may be our brothers, of course, but they’re quite a different breed.”

Ülgas’s talk had scared me. Did I really have to bring all our wolves to the lakeshore, so that the sage could slit their throats and buy the friendship of the lake-sprite with their blood? What would Mother say? We needed the wolves. Of course we could get new animals — there were many abandoned wolves whose masters had moved to the village trotting round the woods — but that kind of much-traveled wolf didn’t give much milk. It would take a long time for them to get used to a new pack. And anyway, replacing the wolves would be inconvenient and I had a very bad feeling in my heart. In the end I wasn’t to blame that the louse rushed into the water. I tried to explain that to Ülgas, but he said that it didn’t matter, since the lake-sprite was angry anyway, and that awful things would happen if he wasn’t given wolves’ blood. He commanded me to be at the grove with the wolves at exactly midnight, adding that in the olden days wolves alone would not have sufficed. In olden days the guilty party — meaning myself — would have had to be cut into pieces and thrown into the lake. But he, Ülgas, was such a skillful sage and such a great friend of the lake-sprite that he was able to placate the sprite with wolf flesh alone. Or at least he would try.

This kind of talk terrified me even more. What if his attempt failed and Ülgas decided to sacrifice me to the sprite after all? We sneaked away from the lakeshore, leaving Ülgas muttering some spells.

I had a very bad feeling, as any child would who has done something naughty and now has to go home to tell his mother. At the same time I knew that the sooner I got this horrible business off my shoulders the better. I wanted to pass the decision on to my mother. Let her tell me what to do: whether to go at midnight to the lakeshore with the wolves or not.

I asked Ints and Pärtel to take the louse back to Pirre and Rääk, while I ran home.