The Ugly Little Boy

Interchapter Five. The Other Ones

SHE WHO KNOWS could feel the warpaint glowing like fire on her body beneath her robe as she descended the hill. If she dared, she would have gone down the hill naked, and let them all see how she was painted, both the Other Ones and the men of her own tribe. Especially the men of her own tribe. Let them know that a woman could wear the paint as well as a man; and that if they did not choose to strike a blow against the enemy, she was capable of doing it for them.

But of course she couldn't go down the hill that way. A woman covered her lower parts except when she was offering herself in the coupling-rites: that was the rule. If she were wearing a loincloth the way the men did, she could at least go bare-chested to the battle, as they did, and let the enemy see the paint that was on her breasts. But she had no loincloth. All she had was a robe, and that covered everything. Well, she would open it in front when she came before the Other Ones, and they would know from the color that was on her skin that they were facing a warrior, even if she was a warrior who had breasts.

She heard Silver Cloud shouting at her, far behind her on the path into the valley. She ignored him.

And now the men of the War Society could see her approaching them. They were still locked in their absurd stalemate, face-to-face with the row of the Other Ones; but they turned their heads and stared at her in amazement as they drew near.

"Go back, She Who Knows," Blazing Eye called to her. "This is no place for a woman."

"You call me a woman. Blazing Eye? Woman yourself! Women, all of you! I see no warriors here. You go back, if you're afraid to fight."

"What is she doing here?" Tree Of Wolves asked, speaking to the air.

"She's crazy." That was Young Antelope. "She always has been."

"Go back!" the men called. "Get away from us! This is war, She Who Knows! This is war!"

But no one was going to make her go back now. Their angry shouts were like the buzzing of harmless insects in her ears.

She Who Knows reached the bottom of the path and strode toward the shrine. The ground was spongy here, because of the three rivers. There must be water running under the earth, she thought. With every step her bare toes dug deep into the cold, moist, yielding soil.

Behind her the sun was getting higher, rising now over the crest of the hill on which the People were camped. The litde white sliver of the moon that had been showing before was no longer visible. The wind was in her face, brisk and hard, like a slap. She came forward until she was close to the line of War Society men.

Nobody was moving. The Other Ones warriors were frozen like statues.

Caught Bird In Bush was standing at the end of amp;e row nearest to her. "Give me your spear," She Who Knows said to him.

"Go away," said Caught Bird In Bush, sounding as if he was being strangled.

"I need a spear. Do you want me to face the Other Ones warriors without a spear?"

"Go-away."

"Look! I have the war paint on!" She opened her robe in front and let her breasts show through, boldly splattered with the blue pigment. "I'm a warrior today. A warrior needs to have a spear!"

"Make one yourself, then."

She Who Knows spat and stepped past him. "You, Young Antelope! Let me have yours. You don't have any need of it."

"You are a crazy woman."

Tree Of Wolves reached out across Young Antelope and caught She Who Knows by die elbow. "Look," he said, "you can't be here. There's going to be a war."

"A war? When? You just stand here and make stupid noises at them. And they do the same thing. They're just as cowardly as you are. Why don't you attack?"

"You don't understand these things," said Tree Of Wolves disgustedly.

"No. No, I suppose that I don't."

But it was poindess to ask any of them for a spear. They didn't intend to let her have one; and they were all holding tight to their weapons, no doubt remembering how she once had grabbed up Blazing Eye's spear and threatened him with it. That had been a defilement. Blazing Eye had had to make a new spear afterward. Stinking Musk Ox had told him that he couldn't go into batde carrying a spear that had been handled by a woman, and he had burned the old one and carved another, cursing and muttering all the while. But what good was the new one, She Who Knows asked herself, if Blazing Eye was too timid to use it?

"Very well. I'll do without one."

She swung around and stepped forward, taking two or three steps toward the line of Other Ones, who were watching her as though she were a demon with three heads and six tusks.

"You! You Other Ones! Look here, look at me!"

They gaped at her. She opened her robe again and let them see her painted breasts.

"I'm the warrior of the Goddess," she told them. "That's what this paint means. And the Goddess orders you to leave this place. This is Her shrine. We built it for Her. You have no business being here."

They were still staring, astounded.

She Who Knows let her eyes rove up and down the line of them. They were all tall and pale, with rank black hair dangling down past their shoulders, but cut short across their foreheads, as if they deliberately wanted to expose the hideous flat high-rising domes of their skulls.

Their arms were long and narrow and so were their legs. Their mouths were small and their little noses were absurd and their chins stuck out in a repellent way. Their jaws seemed feeble and their eyes looked colorless. The sight of them stirred old memories in her, and she saw once again the thin, lanky Other One whom she had encountered beside that little rock-rimmed pool, long ago when she had been a girl. These men looked just like him. She couldn't tell one from another, or any of them from the one she had once met. For all she knew, he was here today, that one from the pool. And then she realized it was impossible, for these men all looked young, and he would have to be old by now, nearly as old as she was herself.

"How ugly you are," she told them. "What pale simpering monstrosities you are! Why are you sniffing around at a shrine of the Goddess? The Goddess never made you!

You were made out of rhinoceros dung by some passing hyena!"

The Other Ones continued to look at her in a blankfaced bewildered way.

She Who Knows took another step forward. She gestured at them, making a chopping movement with her hand, as though to sweep them away from the vicinity of the shrine.

One of the Other Ones spoke.

At least she assumed that that was what he was doing. He uttered a long series of thick, furry sounds that came out of his mouth as though his tongue were attached the wrong way around. It was mere noise. None of it made the slightest sense.

"Can't you speak right?" She Who Knows asked. "It's impossible to understand a thing you're saying. Let somebody else speak, if you aren't good at it."

He spoke again, just as incomprehensibly as before.

"No," she said. "I don't know what you're trying to say."

She walked closer and swung herself about so that she was facing toward the far end of the line of Other Ones.

"You," she said to a man down there. "Can you speak any better than that one?"

She pointed at him and clapped her hands. His eyes went wide and he made a kind of dull mumbling sound.

"Use words!" She Who Knows ordered him. "Don't just make idiotic noises! -Pah! Are all of you foolish in the head?" She pointed to the man again. "Speak! With words! Didn't any of you ever learn how to speak words?"

The Other One made the same sound again.

"Stupid as well as ugly," said She Who Knows, shaking her head. "The work of hyenas, is what you are! Made out of rhinoceros dung."

The men were baffled by her. No one moved.

She walked past them, to the shrine itself. The waters of the three rivers came pouring in from all sides, splashing high. The People had built the shrine right at the meeting place of the rivers, against an outcropping of rock that rose above the water. Goddess Woman had gone crawling out amidst the icy spray to place the rocks in the proper pattern and to pile the sheets of the special shining rock between them. Approaching now, She Who Knows saw the Goddess-lines that the priestesses had scratched in the stone: five this way, three that, three the other way. But something had been done to them. Someone not of the People had drawn a circle around each group of the Goddess-lines, digging deep into the rock, and had added other figures above them, strange disagreeable-looking symbols, painted ones that curled and twisted around like something you might see in a bad dream. They had painted some animal pictures there, too: a mammoth with a big humped head, a wolf, and a creature She Who Knows could not recognize. That had to be the work of the Other Ones, She Who Knows thought. The People used paint to color themselves, when the need arose; but they never drew painted symbols on rocks. Never. And to paint pictures of animals was simply foolish. It could anger the spirits of the animals you were painting, and you would never have success at hunting such animals again.

"What have you done, you filthy beasts? This is a shrine of the Goddess that you've defiled. A shrine of the Goddess." And she said again, louder, since they showed no sign of having understood: "A shrine of the Goddess."

Blank looks. Shrugs.

She Who Knows pointed to the earth, and to the sky: the universal signs of the Goddess. She touched her own breasts, her womb, her loins; she was made in the image of the Goddess, and surely they would understand the gesture. Surely.

But they just went on staring.

"You don't have any intelligence at all, do you?" she cried. "Stupid! Stupid! You're a bunch of stupid animals!"

She clambered up onto the rocks, slipping and sliding on the wet surface, nearly falling at one point into the rushing river. That would be the end of her, falling in the river; but she caught a jutting fang of the rock and steadied herself. When she came close to the shrine she reached out and tapped her finger against the painting of the mammoth.

"Wrong!" she shouted. "Evil! Sacrilege!"

She wet her finger and rubbed it against the painted image. It smeared and became blurry.

The Other Ones looked perturbed, now. They were turning to each other, muttering, shuffling their feet back and forth in place where they stood.

"Your paintings don't belong here!" She Who Knows cried. "This is our shrine! We built it for Her! And we came here to worship Her and ask Her guidance." Diligently she scrubbed at the painted image until it was a messy ruin. She reached for the others then, but she wasn't able to reach them: her arms were too short. Only the spider-like arms of Other Ones could reach that far up the rock.

But she was satisfied that she had made her point. She scrambled down from the rocks and walked back to the place where the two groups of warriors still faced each other.

"You understand?" she asked the Other Ones. "This is our shrine! Ours!" She went toward them, right up to them, fearlessly. They stirred uneasily, but none lifted his spear. They were afraid of her, she knew. A holy woman, a woman with the Goddess within her: they didn't dare offer any resistance.

She glared up into their faces. They towered above her, tail as trees, tall as mountains. She pointed toward the west.

"Go back there, to your own country," she said. "Leave us alone. Let us make our offering in peace, you ugly bad-smelling animals! You blockheads! You stupid beasts!"

She caught hold of the Other One closest to her and pushed him in the direction she had been pointing. He drew back from her touch, taking a few steps away. She made a shooing gesture at him.

"Keep going! All of you, get moving!"

She Who Knows moved among them like a whirlwind, shouting, pushing. They edged nervously away from her as though she were carrying a plague. She followed after, waving her arms, yelling at them, single-handedly driving them out of the immediate vicinity of the shrine.

Then she halted and watched them go. They drew off perhaps a hundred and fifty paces, to a place where one of the two smaller rivers emerged around a bend and shot forth between a double wall of rocks. There they halted; and now, for the first time, She Who Knows saw that there was an encampment of Other Ones back there, a cluster of women and children and old people, hidden away in a bushy gully.

All right, She Who Knows thought. They have been driven away from the shrine; that was as much as she could hope to accomplish. But it was no small thing, and she had done it all by herself-though the fire of the Goddess had been burning within her all the while, or she never would have succeeded.

She went back to the men of the War Society.

"Without even a spear," she said to them triumphantly.

Young Antelope shook his head. "What a crazy woman you are!" But his eyes were shining with admiration.