“No. It is the ruin of the world that will come when Chuh Mboi Aku awakens. He shall take the water of the seas and send the water from the hot heart of the world, and soon thereafter, the world will end. It is a story that doesn’t fit into the other stories of the gods and men, and as difficult as it is for you to grasp, so it would leave our People in confusion. Confusion would only distance them from all the gods. It is a mercy for them to not know. We, who keep the wisdom of our People alive, are alone burdened with it.”
Okyek Meh Thih was dissatisfied with this. He wasn’t a secretive boy, and the old man had never required secrecy of him before. What value was there in hiding any truth from his People?
“Who inscribed this? It is old.”
“It is older than our People. It is from the time of the empires, when our forefathers were counted among the ten thousand tribes that were now and then part of the great kingdoms, which came and dissolved. There is a story of the man who painted this, that he came from an unknown land, by an unknown means, speaking an unknown tongue. But this man strove to spread his warnings of the end of the world.”
“And yet,” the boy Okyek Meh Thih asked cautiously, “he was regarded as more than just a madman?”
“Not until long after he was dead. His carving remained, ignored, until the visions of the People, in generation after generation, spoke of the same fate of the world.”
Okyek Meh Thih couldn’t help but think that the inscription was of something different altogether. “This picture, what is it again?”
“The water from the hot heart of the earth.” The old man would sit there and answer his questions for hours, if necessary. His grandfather possessed inexhaustible patience.
Okyek Meh Thih traced his finger over the small bumps drawn on the wall at the base of the fountain of water. “Are these the rocks from which the water springs?”
“Those are the trees of the jungle.”
The boy saw the picture anew. “Then the water from the hot heart of the earth will tower over the jungle like a mountain?”
“And the rain will fall, scalding all living things,” the old man added.
Okyek Meh Thih bowed his head. “Forgive my insolence, but I have disbelief in my heart that I cannot put aside.”
The old man said nothing.
“This insults your honor. How may I amend the crime?”
The old man waited to speak, although the boy could see the answer forming. “You are wise to have your doubts. The truth be known, I never fully believed in this until I had the dream of the thing, Chuh Mboi Aku. Only then did I believe. You may dream of it. You may not. There are those in the village who may dream of this thing, and you will recognize the influence of Chuh Mboi Aku when these unfortunates come to you for a cure for their sleeplessness. Chuh Mboi Aku is real—this I believe. Chuh Mboi Aku will end the world as this picture shows—this I have never fully believed.”
It was a revelation that this venerable old man was capable of doubting any aspect of the traditional faith of his People.
“You will be like me, I hope, Grandson,” the old man continued. “You will live in doubt until your dying day. This I pray. For the only evidence to allay such doubts …” The old man nodded at the wall.
The boy trembled at the thought. “Then what is the benefit of anyone, even Caretakers of the People, having this knowledge?”
His grandfather made a wry smile. “I know not, save this one thing. There is a task that falls upon you, should the thing that makes dreams make too many. When his dreams begin to cause true disruption to the People, then it is for you the task of coming here to this cave, to speak the pleas for enlightenment to Chuh Mboi Aku.”
Okyek Meh Thih was now more confused than he had been. “Leave my people in their time of need? It is not the way of the Caretaker—you taught me this. To speak to a god who has never listened? Why?”
The old man spoke sternly, and he was a man who never angered. “Because it is your most important command and your only binding duty.”
The boy was amazed.
“We will likely not speak of this again but for one time, when you take the oath to be Caretaker for the People and follow all the duties of the Caretaker, and I will demand of you this vow—to carry out your duties of obeisance to Chuh Mboi Aku without fail. Boy, tell me now if you will not be able to make me that promise during this rite.”
The boy was taken aback, and his mind was in turmoil, but the old man was willing to wait for the answer. The old man waited for a long, long time.
“I will swear to this duty, and I will commit to it again when I take the mantle of the Caretaker.” The old man only nodded. “I perceive, Grandfather, that you understand this little more than I,” the boy suggested.
“Grandson, you are wise beyond your years and insightful beyond all Caretakers who came before you.”
“Do we know even who mandated this duty to the Caretakers of the People?”
The old man nodded. “This we do know. This is the one thing I have not told you. It was Quoo Uhl who declared this duty.”
“Ah.” Quoo Uhl was the one who founded the People, gathering together the wanderers of the forest many generations before. Now the boy remembered that Quoo Uhl’s story began with him coming down from the mountain into the forest. “If you had told me this before, it would have been easier to make my decision.” Before the old man could comment, the boy added, “But this way you have been provided with a truer measure of my faith.”
The old man smiled.
Okyek Meh Thih became closer to the old man that day, and he kept the secret of the inscription of the god who ignored mankind, the one called Chuh Mboi Aku. They had left the cavern then, and the boy’s memories of the place were pleasant, for here he had grown high in the eyes of the man he most esteemed.
But that man was long gone, and Okyek Meh Thih was older and sitting alone in the cavern of the dismal elder god Chuh Mboi Aku. He was speaking his plea of enlightenment, in the presence of the ridiculous painting. Why was he keeping company with a power that ignored him when he should be down in the jungle being Caretaker to his People?
Without even his bird for company.
He missed the bird.
He wondered where his bird had gone.
Chapter 16
The young woman caressed the bandaged leg of the purple bird and examined the creature. It scrutinized her in return.
Sarah Slate was in her early twenties and looked younger, but she possessed wisdom beyond her years. It was as if the eclectic knowledge of her globe-trotting forebears had collected inside her.
She knew the science behind the creature. It was Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus, the hyacinth macaw, family Psittacidae, subfamily Psittacinae. Macaws were the biggest parrots, and they were native to South America. They could live sixty years or more, and ate nuts and fruit. They could be tamed and kept as pets.
This one wasn’t exactly tamed, wasn’t exactly a pet. There was much to this animal that was inscrutable. It knew a few dozen dirty limericks in English. It also possessed an intelligence that was far beyond that of any normal bird.
But the intelligence came and went, as if a human personality was wrestling for control of the bird’s mind. Sometimes it came through strong and clear, but usually it was just a drift of static beneath the surface.
Chiun, Master of Sinanju Emeritus and the caretaker of the great bird, had entrusted its care to Sarah, whom he honored and regarded above most others. She was also the only other human that the bird seemed to accept—probably because she had nursed it back to health when its leg was wounded by an angry resident of Folcroft Sanitarium.