Her ears were filled with their screams as the show began.
The mans in the cage slapped their hands over their ears so that they would not have to hear. Mans do not take pleasure in the suffering of anyone, not even their own tormentors.
“Hey, Red. Have you any food for a man who has lost his way?”
She turned. The funny-looking little man was back.
“What do you want now?” she said to him.
From outside, there came the whoosh as of a heavy chain being swung, followed by a soul-searing scream. The little man in the little oafen shoes smiled like music to his ears, then shot both hands into her bowl of grains.
“Food. That’s the first thing,” he said, swallowing fistful after fistful. Then he rubbed his stomach. “Better. Much better.”
Without invitation, he opened the sack of silver on the cot next to her, reached in, and stuffed his pockets greedily with coin, and then said, “That’s the second thing, and that’s it for me,” and dashed toward the opening at the back of the cave.
She shouted after him — shouted, but none of the ailing oafs on their cots took note of it because of the entertainment of the screams from outside. She shouted: “Who are you stealing that money for? He’s going to get in trouble with the authorities, you know?”
His answer surprised her: “I’m stealing it for myself.”
And he disappeared through the hole in the bottom of the cave wall.
She pondered this answer as the torture outside the cave continued. It lasted all day, for oafs are skilled at torture and can make it last all day.
At the end of the day, she assumed the traitors were dead because of the absence of screams, but she still did not have an understanding of the odd little man’s strange answer to her question.
A man who steals for himself.
That evening, to celebrate the death of the traitors, the one called Gen’rl assembled the host of oafs outside before the fires and bid the two oafs of talent play their colored flutes, and the colors were blue for sky and red for blood and gray for hope.
And they played the Life Song of Great Lord Gerwargerulf.
And the one called Gen’rl came and sat beside the red-haired female man as she played on her small singing harp along with the poet and the players of the colored flute.
And the one called Gen’rl put his arm around the female man. She looked up at him and he looked down at her with fever in his eyes.
And the one called Gen’rl ordered that the large cage be emptied of mans.
The cage contained a hundred mans, and they emptied it. And then they emptied the mans of their lives through the brutish methods of the bashing of heads against stone and wood, as they had done the night before, and they did devour the mans with much noise and revelry.
She played through the monstrous festival of blood on her small singing harp the songs she used to play for the boy and his family when she was free, and it helped, though not a lot.
That night after it was all over, she lay on the cot with the one called Gen’rl, and he kissed her as though he were the oafen husband and she were the oafen wife, and that was the beginning.
He ripped off her tunic of war and had his way with her.
She wept all through it.
After his fever for her had been sated, he said, “You know how it ends, don’t you?”
She knew, for she had seen it many times in the mines. Oafs always eat the mans they have ravished.
“I do not want to die. I want to live,” she cried out. “Let me live, I pray, oh master. Oh great master, let me live.”
And the oaf called Gen’rl did chuckle in his amusement. “But what is the life of a man?”
The red-haired female man pleaded for her life. “Is there no mercy in your heart?”
“You are beautiful, and I desire you in a way that is obscene. If I allow you to live I place myself in peril. I have committed a sin against earth and heaven.”
“I will not tell.”
“Hahaha. And what about these good oafs? Will they keep our secret too? Soldiers cannot keep such a secret.” He held her close to his mouth and told her, “We are not the first, and we shall not be the last. There are oafs who have had offspring with mans. No one talks about it, but it is true and it does happen. I would not deceive you. I think we are the same species — we are just bigger, but I am not a scientist so I cannot swear to it, and the ones who have done this thing were put to death or banished and the offspring of their union sold for food. It is an especial meat and expensive. The poor cannot afford it, but I have eaten it many times, this offspring of oaf and man.”
He touched her and she wept a large tear at his touch.
“It is delicious,” he said.
He touched her again and she sobbed loudly.
“Yes, yes. This is indeed regrettable. Soldiers know of this. Soldiers do this all the time, but we do not talk of it. I am an old soldier, and it is a shameful act that I have committed. Tomorrow, after the victorious battle, I will slay and eat you. Don’t think me cruel, for it is better than eating your own children, is it not? It will save us both the embarrassment.”
And he rose up and bound her with rope next to him so that she could not escape. Then he lay back down.
Soon his lips were snoring against her weeping eyes.
That night, her mother came to her in a dream.
Her hair was red like a forest of fires. Her face was brown like the bark of a strong tree in the middle of the forest. And she was smiling a great and triumphant smile.
On her feet were shoes small enough for even a man to wear.
Then her mother, with the triumphant smile upon her face, climbed a great ladder and into the clouds disappeared from sight.
Despite all that had happened, the little female man was comforted by this dream because she understood it to mean: The time has come. Their world shall pass away.
9
Their World Shall Pass Away
In the morning the one called Gen’rl said to those gathered around the map, “Today we go to final victory. There is no turning back. This is the day we have been longing for. We are outnumbered, but we are not undone. Let us pray! Oh great creator, protect us as we do your will. And if we fall in battle, remember us evermore in your kingdom to come!”
And they said, “Verily in your name!”
And he said, “Verily in your name! To arms, great oafs!”
The female man was bound in rope on his cot. She was the last man alive in the cave, all the others having been devoured.
One of the ailing oafs was put to watch her, but he slept for most of the morning and then gasped loudly and finally on his cot, and he was dead.
She knew that he was dead because his chest was no longer wheezing. He was dead, but not from his ailing.
From behind the dead oaf appeared the strange little man, and the blade in his hand was red with blood. She looked again and saw that the oaf’s throat had been cut clean through.
The strange little man wiped the blood from his blade with his shirt, and then he used it to saw through the rope that bound her. He told her, “Come with me if you want to live.”
Brushing back tears, she said, “I want to live.” And they raced to the hole at the back of the cave.
“Don’t forget your harp,” he told her.
She went back and got her harp and then he showed her how to flatten her body so that she could fit into the hole at the back of the cave, and then she followed him through the hole, and just in time.
She heard the soldiers loudly chanting their victory as they came back early from the battle that they had won: “Fe! Fe! Fe! Victory!”