Lamps were brought, shallow shells of oil or animal grease, and sticks were thrust hastily into the fire and then pulled out again to make torches. Flames flickered and flared, breaths were drawn noisily, and finally all were settled around the two elders.
“Now,” said old Ren once more. “You, Tom-small; what did you see?” He didn’t ask him to mind his voice didn’t carry past the male circle, but pitched his own low enough to get his point across.
Tom-small gave a feeble, bashful smile, but went on with what he had to say firmly enough. “We saw all the game had gone upland and we smelled a bad smell none of us knew and we saw two creatures that none of us knew. They were big. We came back, host Rowan.”
“Well told. Short. Anything to add, any of you?”
None had, until Jow, his face now expressionless, asked, “These two strange creatures — what did they look like?”
Attempts to describe them were made, but were not successful. Then Carlo, Ren’s oldest son, said, “May I, then? So… so look here…” He took up a stick, broke it with a snap, scratched in the dirt with the now-sharp point of it. “Did what you see… did it look like this? Or like this? Anything like this? Or like this? Think before you answer, and don’t say it did unless you are quite sure that it did… Eh?”
His brothers and the young guest drew in their breaths, hissing. They nodded, lips drawn back from their teeth. And Lors said, pointing, “One of them did look like that — just like that.” He pointed to Carlo’s first sketch-figure, of something thin and somewhat stooping, standing on four thin limbs, with two stout limbs folded aloft. “And the other was like this other, yes, except that in this picture it’s upright, running on two legs… and when we saw it, it was walking, walking on all fours…
“But it’s them, all right, Carl… It’s them. It’s them.”
And he asked the same question his father now asked, voice upon voice. “How did you know?”
The oldest brother said, “In one of the caves, far, far to the back, up through a crack in the upper part, is a chamber… I think there’s more, even beyond there, but I never dared to look past there… and only once, when I was a boy and playing a game and hiding, I found my way there. But no one else came after me and I grew frightened. I had my fire things with me and I made fire. What I drew here — that’s what I saw on the wall in that chamber. Someone had drawn them there, with lamp-black and green clay mixed with lamp-black. Of course, when I saw them, I was even more afraid than ever, and I got out as fast as I was able. I even left my fire things there. They may still be in there, for all I know… Anyway, the second I saw those drawings, I felt in my heart that they had to be Devils. It was a long time ago and I never told anyone, but I’ve dreamed of them so often I never forgot them.”
All was so quiet upon the finish of his words that they could hear one of the llamas protesting in the stock pens. And old Ren said, “Well, now… You saw paintings when you were a boy, in a sort of secret, side-room in one of the caves; and you felt in your heart they must be Devils. Now, today, your younger brothers and some more young ones, they saw — seems clear enough, seems to be true enough — they saw, alive, what you saw drawn. And Tino, he said that what you saw was Devils. So. It seems to me that it’s natural enough, whenever a boy sees something strange and new and frightening, for him to call it Devil. But, after all, we don’t know what these creatures really are. Fear is easily come by.
“None of you, not even guest Jow, are old enough to remember my rogue uncle, Arno. Everyone was in fear of him, and largely it was because of a tale that nights, when it pleased him, he’d go and change his body into the shape of what they called a half-Devil, a sort of giant cat, all spotted, do you see. I never believed it, never believed any of it. Whichever body he was to die in, they said, he’d turn into the other. So. When news was brought me that he’d died at last, in the caves there, down I went; found him dead enough, and one of his women with him — a miserable thing, she was, fit for him, but she was loyal at least.
“ ‘Did he die as a man?’ I asked her.
“ ‘As a man,’ she said.
“ ‘And has he changed his shape yet?’ I asked her.
“ ‘Not yet,’ she said.
“So I had him brought out and we watched him, someone always watching him, by day and by night, till he began to moulder. Then I told them and showed them how the tale was nothing but a tale, and we buried him. So. Time passed. Years. And once, looking in some old bales and boxes from his time, Rogue Arno’s, I’ll tell you what it was I came across — it was a pelt, you see, the skin of a sort of giant cat, all spotted. Never I saw such a thing alive, nor don’t know where or when it lived or died. But it was not a Devil, any more than Arno was. It was a strange thing, and easy to fear. He knew it, he dressed himself with it by nights, played upon that fear…”
The words of old Ren, slowly, softly, calmly spoken, had gradually softened and calmed the mood of most of his listeners. But they had not calmed Jow, who said, shaking fleecy head, “You don’t mean us to think, host Ren, that whoever drew those pictures in the cave, and our boys, today — you don’t mean to have us think that what they saw were men? Men who put on strange hides to frighten us?”
Ren said, “I don’t know. I didn’t see them. The boys today didn’t see them close, either. I know this: for one thing, if a picture of them was made at the time or before the time that Carl was a boy, then the things the pictures were drawn of were either here then or had been here before then. Nothing happened then to make us fear them, so why should we fear them now? There are, of course there are, strange creatures on land and sea. What of it?”
Jow had vigorous ideas as to what of it. The land they lived in, he pointed out, was an island, and they knew of — though they had not themselves visited them — other islands to the south and east. But they all knew well enough that this land and those other lands had once formed one great land, long ago, before (he used the common speech-figure which meant long, long ago)—“before the Devils came.”
“What did they do when they came?” Jow asked. “Didn’t they split the great land apart? Didn’t they sink most of it? Didn’t they hold it under the water to kill the folk, the way you’d hold a kitten under to kill it? No, Ren. No! You say that fear comes easy. True. But so does the fear of fear, I tell you. I’d rather be afraid for nothing, for then, by and by, we’ll find out it’s nothing — if it is nothing — than let danger slip up and find us unaware and unprepared. Wasn’t California sunk, too? Wasn’t the first Rowan my oldfather, too, as well as yours? Ren! Have you forgotten what it was that he said — the same thing as was said by the other oldparents already here:
“ ‘There is a thin Devil that has four limbs to walk with and two limbs to work with. And there is a thick Devil that walks on four limbs and runs on two: this is the thin Devil’s scout, spy, and dog. And the smell of each is strong, but the thin one’s stench is stronger. The thin Devil is all wicked mind and evil brain; the thick one is that, and teeth and claws as well. Flee before their coming: for the name of the one Devil is Kar-chee and the name of the other Devil is Dragon…’ ”
It was an old man, a net-maker in the days of his strength, and Jow’s near neighbor, who — restless from the thin sleep of old age — had gotten up groaning from his bed before dawn was more than a thin promise on the horizon. First he walked because he could not sleep, next he walked because he had in his mind a certain warm spring which he thought might relieve somewhat his aching bones. Then he walked because he decided he was hungrier than he was rheumatic and his intention was to return. And finally he walked and walked because he had gotten well lost. Then he saw what he had seen and hid half a day in terror and risked moving about only because it came to him at last that the terror of night is greater than the terror of day; and so he came upon Jow, off by himself inspecting his bee-hives.