The Ugly Little Boy

Interchapter Three. The Place of Three Rivers

IN THE NIGHT Silver Cloud dreamed of the sea.

He was young again, in his dream. He dreamed that he was only a boy, just a summer or two older than the boy Skyfire Face who had been taken by the Goddess in a whirl of light. He stood by the edge of the sea, feeling the strange wet wind blowing against his lips. His father and mother were with him, Tall Tree and Sweet As A Flower, and they were holding his hands and leading him gently toward the water.

"No," he said. "It's cold. I'm afraid to go into it."

"It can't hurt you," Tall Tree said.

But that wasn't true. No one went into the sea, no one, not ever. Every child learned that as soon as he was old enough to learn anything. The sea killed. The sea would drain your life away m an instant, and cast you back up on the shore, empty and still. Only last year the warrior Speared Five Mammoths had slipped on a snowy cliff and fallen into the sea, and when he washed ashore a little while later he was dead, and they had had to bury him in a little cavern in the rock near the place where he fell, chanting all night and burning a strange-colored fire.

Now here were his own father and mother urging him toward the sea. Did they want him to die the way Speared Five Mammoths had died? Were they tired of him? What kind of betrayal was this?

"The sea will make you strong," Sweet As A Flower told him. "The sea will make you a man."

"But Speared Five Mammoths died in it!"

"It was his time to die. The sea called to him and took him. But your time to die is far away, boy. You have no reason to be afraid."

Was it true? Could he trust them?

They were his mother and his father. Why would they want him to die?

He held their hands tighdy and stepped forward with them, toward the brink of the sea.

He had never been this close to it before, although his tribe had always lived in the coastal plain, wandering up and down along the shore following the game animals. Now he stared at the water in wonder and fear. It was like a great powerful flat beast lying before him, dark and shining. A roaring sound came from it, and along its edges a part of it was rippling and surging with white foam. Here and there a piece of the sea would rise up high into the air and come crashing down against the rocks along the edge. Sometimes, standing on cliffs much like the one where Speared Five Mammoths had fallen to his death, Silver Cloud had looked far out into the sea and had seen graceful animals moving about in it, moving among the floating blocks of ice. They were different animals from the mammoths and niusk oxen and rhinos of the land- slim, sleek, shining things that moved through the sea as though they were flying through air.

Last spring one of those sea animals had come ashore, and the Hunting Society had fallen on it and killed it, Aid the tribe had enjoyed a great feast. How tender its meat had been! How strange! And its thick beautiful fur-how soft, how wonderfully soft. Tall Tree had made a mantle for Sweet As A Flower from the sea-creature's dark rich fur, and she wore it proudly on the special days of the year.

Were they going to give him to the sea in return for the fur of the sea-creature? Was that it?

"Take another step, boy," Tall Tree urged. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

Silver Cloud looked up. But his father was smiling.

He had to trust his father. He stepped forward, clinging tightly to their hands. The edge of the sea came up around his ankles. He had expected it to be cold, but no, no, it was warm, it was hot, it burned like fire. Yet after a moment he no longer felt the burning. The sea pulled back from him, and then it returned, higher than before, up to his knees, his thighs, his belly. Tall Tree and Sweet As A Flower walked farther out into it, taking him with them. The ground on the floor of the sea was very soft, as soft as the sea animal's fur, and it seemed to move about under his feet as he walked.

He was chest-deep in the sea, now. It wrapped itself around him like a warm blanket.

"Are your feet still touching the bottom?" Tall Tree asked him.

"Yes. Yes."

"Good. Bend forward. Put your head in the sea. Cover your face with the sea."

He did as he was told. The sea swept up and over him, and it was like being covered by a blanket made of snow. Snow too ceased to be cold, when you got deep down into it. It became warm, like fire, and if you stayed in it long enough you would fall asleep as if you were wrapped in a rug. That was what an older girl had told him: she had watched, once, as an old woman of the tribe whose bones were bent and whose eyes were dim was taken out and put into the snow; she had closed her eyes and gone to sleep, very peacefully indeed.

So now I will go to sleep in the sea, Silver Cloud thought, and that will be the end of me. And somehow dying no longer seemed to matter. He raised his head to see whether his father and mother had their faces covered with the sea also, but to his surprise they were no longer beside him, nowhere to be seen at all. He was entirely alone.

He could hear his father's voice coming to him from far away, telling him, "Come out of the sea, now, boy. Turn around and walk out."

Yes. He would do that.

But as he walked toward the shore he felt his body changing with every step he took, stretching, growing taller and thicker, and he realized that he was turning into a man, getting older moment by moment. His shoulders were becoming broad, his chest was deepening, his thighs had become thick and strong. By the time he stepped out onto the rocky shore he was a warrior in the prime of his life. He looked down at his naked body and it was a man's body, dark and hairy. He laughed. He rubbed his chest and slapped his hands against his thighs. In the distance he saw the fires of the encampment, and he began to sprint toward it to tell everyone of the strange thing that had happened to him.

As he ran, though, another strangeness overtook him: for he realized that he was continuing to grow older every moment. Age had him in its grip and would not release him. He had left his childhood in the sea. Then, coming out of the sea, he had been full of the jubilant strength of young manhood. But now he was panting a little, then gasping for breath, slowing down from a sprint to a (rot, and then to a walk. And then he was limping along, hobbling, for something had happened to his left thigh and his whole leg was stiff and sore. He looked down at it. There was blood all over it, as though an animal had raked it with its claws. And he remembered, yes, yes, he had been hunting with the Hunting Society, and the snow-leopard had come down suddenly on him from aboveHow difficult it was to walk, now. How old and tired I am, he thought. I can no longer stand straight. Look, my hair is turning silver all over my body.

There was pain in him everywhere. He felt his strength going from him. What a strange, troublesome dream this was! First a boy entering the sea, and then coming forth and rapidly growing old, and now he was dying, dying, in some unfamiliar inland place far from the sea, where the earth was cold and hard and the wind was dry, and there were only strangers all about him. Where was Tall Tree, where was Sweet As A Flower-where was Silver Cloud?

"Help me," he called, sitting up in his sleep. "The sea has killed me! The sea-the sea-"

"Silver Cloud?"

Someone was at his side. He blinked and peered. She Who Knows, it was, kneeling next to him, staring at him anxiously. He struggled to regain control of himself. He was trembling like a sick old woman and his chest was heaving wildly. No one must see him like this-no one. He fumbled about for his staff, caught its end, levered himself awkwardly to a standing position.

"A dream," he muttered. "Bad omens. I'll need to make a sacrifice right away. Where's Goddess Woman? Get me Goddess Woman!"

"She's gone down there," She Who Knows said. "She's cleansing the shrine."

"Shrine? What? Where?"

"At the Three Rivers. -What's wrong with you, Sil-ver Cloud? You seem all confused!"

"The dream," he said. "Very bad."

He stomped forward, leaning on his staff. His mind was beginning to grow clear again. He knew where he was. There were three rivers meeting in the valley beyond.

Yes. The long pilgrimage backward along the trail had come to its end. They were camped on the high sloping plateau that looked down into the flat place where the three rivers flowed together. By the misty light of dawn Silver Cloud saw the rivers below, the largest one coming sluggishly in from the north carrying with it a rich cargo of blocks of ice, the two smaller and swifter ones merging at sharp angles out of the east and west.

Last year-it seemed like ages ago-they had paused in this very place for many weeks, hungry weeks at that, until the Goddess had miraculously sent them a herd of reindeer, so dazed with hunger themselves that the Hunting Society was easily able to drive a dozen of the bewildered beasts over the edge of a cliff. What a fine harvest of meat that had been! In gratitude they had built a wonderful shrine to the Goddess at the place where the rivers met, using the heaviest blocks of stone they could lift, and decorating them with a curious shining rock that they had been able to pry out of the side of the cliff in thin glittering sheets; and then they had moved onward, continuing their long eastward migration.

And now they had returned.

"I don't see Goddess Woman down there," Silver Cloud said to She Who Knows.

"She should be at the shrine."

"I see the shrine. I don't see Goddess Woman."

"Your eyes are no good any more. Silver Clofcd. Here, let me look."

She stepped in front of him and looked into the misty valley. After a moment she said, sounding perplexed, "No, you're right, she's not there. She must be on her way back already. But she said she was going to stay down there all morning, saying the prayers and purifying the shrine-"

"Silver Cloud! Silver Cloud!"

"Goddess Woman? What are you-"

The priestess came rushing up the side path that led from the valley. Her face was flushed and her robes hung askew and she was sucking in breath as though she had run all the way.

"What is it? What is it, Goddess Woman?"

"Other Ones!"

"What? Where?"

"All around the shrine. I didn't see them, but their footprints were everywhere. The long feet-I know those feet. The prints everywhere in the wet ground. Fresh prints, Silver Cloud. They're all over the place, down there. We've walked right into their midst!"