For long minutes I stared at my new friend Dy-lee, while the thoughts
churned in my brain. At last I shook myself, as a bear does on coming
out of a cold stream, and I began to try him with questions, partly in
gestures and partly in words which I hoped he might understand. First
I pointed to the shaggy folk. Yes, they were his people, he signed.
Then I indicated the guardian. He pointed at me. I shook my head.
Indicating my rough loincloth of cave cat fur, I showed him the rich
black and white apparel of the little figure, and then touched my bow
and quiver, my hatchet, my knife. No guardian carries a weapon of
any sort, as the beasts will never molest one of their craft. Dy-lee
seemed to know this, for he nodded vigorously, but then showed me
where we were similar--the brown furless face and body. I said, Yes,
that this man was of my people, but differing from me in profession.
He understood this. I asked him, after several tries, whether he had
often seen such men as this; and he signed to me, Yes, that there was a
place of meeting on the plain. I then asked if he had thought I was a
guardian when he first found me the afternoon before, and he answered,
No, pointing to my bow and hatchet.
These folk having no weapons, I was at a loss to know how he had
recognized what mine were for; because the instant I had thrown up
my bow he had seen I meant to shoot, first him and then his tame
dogwolves. But after a moment's thought I remembered that in two or
three of the old pictures there were depictions of the bow and arrow. I
went back down the wall and found them. Evidently these people had once
known the use of such things, for here they were, rather hairy but not
yet covered with the thick shag, stalking a deer with bows. Somewhere
in their evolving they had either lost the art or found a better. Here,
in a later picture, they were hunting a great knifetooth bear. Ah, that
was it; they had domesticated the dogwolves, and given up the bow. I
imagined that it might have come in handy to protect themselves, for
surely they could not always travel amongst a howling pack of their
canine friends; but obviously they had discarded it entirely.
I returned to the startling picture of the guardian, and pointing to
the horrid figure of The Nameless, I bent my head in pantomime and gave
an exaggerated shudder.
Dy-lee repeated my motions exactly, and pointed away to where I
imagined they dwelt. He said something, apparently his name for the
beings. I said, "The Nameless." Again he shivered--it was a real
reaction this time--and pointed east.
* * * * *
East? But that was the direction in which lay the Fearful Forest, the
three brooks, Sunset Fields, and my own glen. I had not realized this
at his first motion, being somewhat confused by the underground cavern.
I shook my head, pointing west. _There_ dwelt The Nameless.
He would have none of that. No, they lived to the east. I pointed west,
he pointed stubbornly east.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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