The Coming of the Demons
They had moved back, away from the river, but Littlefeet had not been able to shake the sensation that things were not as they should be. For one thing, they seemed so far outside their traditional territory that he was certain that the Family was headed far closer to the coast than it had ever been, and it didn’t take a genius to see that the distant mountains to the west, which had always defined their boundary, were considerably farther away and looked more like ghosts or discolorations in clouds than high snowcapped peaks.
Father Alex was feeling much the same misgivings, and the unexplained deaths of the other family’s scouts, even though months had passed, continued to haunt him.
Lost? How in God’s name could the Family ever be lost?
It was inconceivable. Yet every time they had scouted west they had hit other rivers, natural barriers as uncrossable if not as wide or as threatening as the great river to the east, that simply should not have been there. Since the land did not change in this fashion, at least not like this, it meant that they had jogged more south than west after re-treating from the great river and had somehow gotten caught in a new area.
No, that couldn’t be right. How could there be rivers on both sides of them if they had not ever crossed a river in the first place? Rivers did not spring whole from the ground; they had sources in the mountains or in the upper lakes fed by various streams and waterfalls.
He called the Family council together, and they were as baffled as he was. Finally, one of the old Brothers who had clearly not much longer to live but whose experience was all the more valuable for that said, “We must depart from our traditional ways this once, it is clear. Since, as it is said, we cannot have a river on both sides without crossing one, and we have not crossed one, then one of two things has happened. Either the one to the west does spring from the ground even though we have not seen this before, in which case we must travel north along it to its source and go around it, or God is shaping a new path for us, in which case we will not find a source and will be forced to go where He wills. In either case, the course is clear. To the western river, and then north.”
They all prayed for guidance, but the only thing that they received was the wisdom of the old Brother, who had survived some fifty-plus years, and that would have to do. The Lord, Father Alex reflected, always seemed to make the struggle so hard. As he was so fond of noting to his questioning pupils, though, God always answered every single prayer. It was just that He usually said, “No.”
Littlefeet was back pretty much to his normal self now, and was feeling far more secure. He was the veteran now, instructing the new young would-be warriors and scouts and wearing his scars and limp like battle tattoos. He still thought of Spotty, but not as much as he used to. It was Greenie, in fact, who had borne his son just a few nights before, while Spotty had delivered someone else’s daughter. His thoughts were much less on any one-time adolescent romance than on the idea that one day his son would be in the men’s kraal and he would be able to teach him all the skills of survival. Still, he could never quite get out of his mind how she had stood by him all that time he’d been injured, first in his soul and then in his body. That counted. That would always count.
The smaller river they followed now was not on anybody’s list of known features, and that was one reason why nobody liked their position. Still, over the week since they’d turned back north, it had been growing progressively narrower, and the creeks that they had to contend with that fed into it tended to be small, shallow, and easily manageable. It seemed obvious that either they were going to reach its source fairly soon or that it would cease to be a real obstacle and allow a ford. The current was swift, but already it seemed quite shallow.
In the evenings, Littlefeet liked to go near the shore and watch the water. He wasn’t at all sure why he found it fascinating, but more than once he wished that people could somehow get in and move around in a big river or lake even if it was so deep you couldn’t touch bottom. There were stories about folks who could do that, but he was one who had never believed it possible. Certainly nobody in this Family knew how to do it.
Still, in the early evening or again in the predawn light, if he was up he would watch it, almost as if hypnotized by its rippling power, and he watched things float by on their way down to the sea. Leaves, even some logs, all sorts of stuff that fell in the river seemed to float along the top and go for some distance downstream before mostly hitting the bank or some built-up reef and sticking there.
He began to wonder why you couldn’t find a log that would hold up a person and float on top of the water. It would be risky, sure, and scary, since when it finally hit something you might fall off or, worse, get stuck out in the middle, but the thought stuck in his mind. The other warriors found the idea interesting but hardly practical. Besides, why in heaven’s name would you ever want to? What would be the purpose or the need? It seemed to them to be all risk and no reward.
He supposed that they were right, but it still seemed like there should be some use for it. Suppose you were out here, scouting, say, and got cut off by Hunters? You couldn’t make it back and you were outnumbered, but if you could jump on something and float with the river, you could escape them and maybe get back since they would lose the ability to track you. It was a thought, even if his limp kept him out of the scouting business for now. He began to try and figure out how to prove his idea.
The nightmares came and went, but as they moved north there was a certain heightened intensity to them when they involved the demon images themselves. You could always tell when you were eavesdropping on demon thoughts; there was a curious fish-eye appearance to everything, where every view seemed grossly distorted, and almost always from above. Not too far above the ground, it was true—but above the level of the highest things that grew. The colors, too, were off, and the vision was often double or even triple. He hadn’t been sure whether these were really things he was getting from other creatures or whether they were in his own head, but as they progressed he got his answer.
Others now were having them, too, and more often than not the images were strikingly similar to his, if not as detailed or vivid. He began to talk of it with the other young men, all of whom were equally worried.
“There are demons ahead on this path,” Big Ears agreed. “Demons ahead, and water on the other three sides. This is not good.”
“It is as if we are being forced into their arms, if they have arms,” Hairy Toes put in. “They clouded our Elders’ minds, and those of the scouts, to put us into this trap. They mean to take us, that’s for sure.”
“I’ll die before I let any demons take me!” Littlefeet told them firmly. “I’ll not be caged and made into some mindless thing for their amusement!”
The others murmured agreement, but all knew as well that their first responsibility wasn’t to their own welfare but to the welfare of the Family.
“They may just want the women, to breed their foul mixed-breed monsters,” Great Lips suggested. “You know, like they tell in the ancient stories.”
“Well, we’ll fight ’em all the way, no matter what the cost!” another warrior told them, and they all nodded sagely. There was a certain comfort in talking this way as a group, but, later on, almost all of them would consider what they had said and wonder how they with their spears and blowguns could possibly stop the demons from taking anything and anybody they wanted.
Not that they hadn’t all seen demons, at least once. At great distances, of course, and without a lot of definition, but they could hardly be missed, particularly some clear nights, when they sped across the sky in their moon ships and did things that everyone knew were impossible, like streaking so fast you could hardly see them and then stopping in an instant, and making sharp right and sharp left turns at great speed. That was supernatural power, there was no doubt of it.