!Xabbu was a good storyteller, active and involved. He changed voices for the different characters and punctuated the tale with broad gestures and even dancelike movements, leaping to his feet to show Porcupine journeying to her father's house, greedily scooping his hands toward his mouth as he portrayed the All-Devourer eating all that he found. When he crouched and said, in the flat, frightened voice of Mantis waiting for the monster, "Oh, daughter, why is it so dark when there are no clouds in the sky?" Sam truly felt the horror of seeing one's own sins come home at last.
When he had finished, she noticed that a few of the fairytale folk from the surrounding campsites had moved closer to listen. "That was wonderful, !Xabbu. But it's so scary!" It had not been the simple folktale she had expected. Something powerful that lurked in the unfamiliar images, in the confusion of motives, made her wish she understood better.
"But the story says there is light behind the greatest darknesses. Grandfather Mantis and his people survived and moved on." His face fell. "I thought that it was my job to preserve them, and with them the story of my people. I thought that was to be the work of my life, but I have done nothing to make it happen."
"You'll do it," she said, but !Xabbu's nod of agreement was perfunctory. She wanted to see him animated again, thinking about something other than Renie and their terrible situation. After all, it wasn't as if they were in a hurry anymore. They had nowhere else to go. "Can you tell me another one? Do you mind?"
He raised an eyebrow as if he suspected her motives, but said only, "Yes, but then I would like to go look for Renie again, in case new people have come in while we were sleeping." He looked out at the Well. "In fact, this place does bring another story to my mind—one of the greatest of my people's tales."
"Chizz," she said. "What's it about?"
"It is another story of Grandfather Mantis, about how the moon came to be in the sky . . . and about other things. You will see why I cannot help thinking of it in this place, beside this hole in the ground full of stars swimming in the waters of creation."
"The waters of. . . . Do you really think that's what it is?"
"I do not know, but to me it looks like the pictures I have seen in the city-school where I studied, pictures taken through the eyes of telescopes looking far away out into space—and back in time, too, as they explained to me, since the light itself was old when it reached us. To me this Well looks like a place where universes are born."
Sam felt a little shiver. She could not help wondering what it would be like to drown in that deep hole, to gasp out your last breath even as galaxies of light swirled around you. "Scanny," she said quietly.
!Xabbu smiled. "But the stories of my people are seldom of great things, of wars or stars or the creation of universes—or even if they are, they are spoken of in a small way. We are a small people, you see. We step very softly, and when we die, the wind soon has blown our footprints away. Even Grandfather Mantis, who once stole fire from beneath Ostrich's wing to give to his people so they would not fear the dark—yes, even Mantis, the greatest of us all, is only a tiny insect. But he is a person, too. All things in those first days were people." He nodded, eyes closed as he composed his thoughts, "This story starts with a very small thing indeed, as you shall see. A piece of leather.
"One day Grandfather Mantis was out walking, and discovered a piece of leather beside the trail. It was a piece from the shoe—you would call it a sandal, I think—that belonged to Rainbow, his own son. It had broken loose and been left, forgotten. But something about the shoe-piece called to Grandfather Mantis. Something about it seized his attention, this tiny, discarded thing, and he picked it up and carried it with him."
As !Xabbu spoke, his preoccupation and sadness dropped away. His voice rose, his hands fluttered into the air like startled birds. Sam saw that more refugees were moving toward them, drawn by his animation in this quiet, sad place.
"Mantis came to a pool of water," !Xabbu said, "a place where reeds grew all around, a hidden, fertile place, and he put the shoe-piece in the water—it was almost as if a dream had come to him and commanded it, but he was not asleep and he had not dreamed.
"Grandfather Mantis went away then, but he could not forget about it. At last he came back to the pool and called out, 'Rainbow's shoe-piece! Rainbow's shoe-piece! Where are you?' "
"But in the water the shoe-piece had become a tiny eland. Now, if you do not know it, to my people the eland is the greatest of the antelopes. My own father hunted one so long and so desperately that he followed it out of the desert which was the only world he knew and stumbled into the river delta of my mother's people. And Grandfather Mantis himself, it is said, when he wished to travel in dignity and power, would ride between the antlers of a great eland."
!Xabbu showed the proud stride of the eland in a sort of dance, head held high, so that Sam could almost see antlers worn like a crown. The throng of refugees was growing around them, several rows deep across the headland. Wide eyes watched the little man avidly, but !Xabbu did not seem to notice his swelling audience.
"But this eland in the pool was not great and powerful. It was small, wet, and shivering, so new that seeing it brought tears to the eyes of Grandfather Mantis. He sang a song of praise and gratitude but he did not touch it, for it was still too small and weak. Instead he went away, but when he came back he found small hoofprints in the earth beside the pool and he was so full of joy he danced. The eland saw him then and came to him as though he were completely its father. Mantis then brought honey, dark, sweet, and sacred, and rubbed it onto the little eland's ribs so it would become strong.
"Each night he returned to the pool and his eland. Each night he sang to it, and danced, and rubbed it with sweet honey. Then at last he knew he must go away and wait to see if the young eland would grow. Three days he stayed away from the pool, and three nights also, though his heart was very sore. When he returned on the morning after the third night, the eland walked out of the water in the light of the sun, its hooves clicking. It had grown to magnificent size, and Grandfather Mantis was so delighted he shouted out, 'Look, a person is coming! Ha! Rainbow's shoe-piece is coming!' For he felt that he had created the living creature from Rainbow's discarded piece of leather.
"But Rainbow and his sons, Mongoose and Younger Rainbow, were not happy when they heard what Mantis had done. 'He thinks to fool us with his stories,' they told each other, 'and keep the meat to himself. Everyone knows that old Mantis is a trickster.' So they went to the pool and found the young eland grazing on the bank. They surrounded it and killed it with their spears. They were very excited—it was a fine, big eland—and began to laugh and sing as they cut it up.
"Grandfather Mantis was coming to the pool when he heard their voices. He hid in the bushes and watched them, and soon came to realize what had happened. He was full of anger and sorrow, not just because they had killed his eland, but because they had not shared it with him, and had done everything without ceremony or even a dance of gratitude. He was afraid of them, though, because they were three and he was but one, so he waited in the reeds until they left, still laughing and singing as they carried away the meat from their kill, wrapped up in its own skin.
"Mantis came out of the reeds and walked to the place where the eland had died. Rainbow and the two grandsons of Grandfather Mantis had left only one thing behind, one of the organs from the eland's stomach, that which contained the black, bitter gall that not even my people, though schooled by need to eat almost anything, can swallow. They had left the gall hanging on a bush. Mantis was so sad and angry that he took his spear and hit the organ sack. From inside it the gall spoke to him, saying 'Do not strike me.'