Naturally he regretted it straight away, because bears are generally not bloodthirsty animals, unlike for example wolves, who will serve humans, carrying them on their backs and allowing themselves to be milked — though only under the influence of the Snakish words. A wolf really is a fairly dangerous domestic animal, but since there is no tastier milk to be had from anyone in the forest, one reconciles oneself to its sullenness, especially as the Snakish words render it as meek as a titmouse. But a bear is a creature with sense. The bear had killed my father in desperation, and since the murder was committed in the heat of passion, he punished himself on the spot and bit his own tool off.
Then my mother and the castrated bear burned my father’s body, and the bear fled deep into the forest, vowing to my mother that they would never meet again. Apparently this was a suitable solution for my mother because, as I said, she felt terribly guilty and her love for the bear ended abruptly. For the rest of her life she couldn’t stand bears, would hiss as soon as she saw them, and in this way she retreated from her former life. This hatred of hers later brought much confusion to our family, and strife too, but I will speak of that later, at the right time.
After my father’s death, my mother saw no reason to stay in the village; she strapped me on her back, took my sister by the hand, and moved back to the forest. Her brother, my uncle Vootele, was still living there, and he took us into his care, helped us to build a hut, and gave us two young wolves, so we would always have fresh milk. Although she was still shocked by my father’s death, she breathed more easily, because she had never wanted to leave the forest. This was where she felt at ease, and she didn’t care a bit that she wasn’t living like the iron men or that there wasn’t a single scythe in the house. In our mother’s home we no longer ate bread, but there were always piles of deer and goat meat.
I wasn’t even one year old when we moved back to the forest. So I knew nothing of the village or the life there; I grew up in the forest and it was my only home. We had a nice hut deep in the woods, where I lived with my mother and sister, and Uncle Vootele’s cave was nearby. In those days the forest was not yet bereft of people. Moving around, you would be bound to meet others — old women milking their wolves in front of their huts, or long-bearded old men, chatting away crudely with the vipers.
There were fewer younger people and their numbers kept decreasing, so that more and more often you would come across an abandoned dwelling. Those huts were vanishing into the undergrowth, ownerless wolves were running around, and the older people said that once you’ve let it go, it’s not really a life for anyone anymore. They were especially distressed that children were not being born anymore, which was quite natural. Who was around to bear them when all the young people were moving to the village? I too went to look at the village, peering from the edge of the forest, not daring to go any closer. Everything there was so different, and a lot smarter too I thought. There was plenty of sunlight and open space, the houses under the open sky seemed a lot nicer to me than our hovel, half-buried in the spruce trees, and in every home I could see big numbers of children scurrying around.
This made me very jealous, for I had few playmates. My sister, Salme, didn’t care much for me. She was five years older, and a girl besides; she had her own things to do. Luckily there was Pärtel, and I ran around with him. And then there was Hiie, Tambet’s daughter, but again she was too small, tottering around her home on stiff legs and falling over every now and then on her bum. She was no company for me at first, and anyway I didn’t like going over to Tambet’s place. I may have been young and stupid but I did understand that Tambet couldn’t stand me. He would always snort and hiss when he saw me, and once, when Pärtel and I were coming from berry picking and, out of the goodness of my heart, I offered a strawberry to Hiie, who was squatting on the grass, Tambet yelled from inside the house: “Hiie, come away from there! We don’t take anything from the village people!”
He could never forgive my family for once leaving the forest, and he stubbornly persisted in regarding me and Salme as villagers. At the sacred grove he always scowled at us with obvious disdain, as if he were offended that stinking village mongrels like us would push our way into such an important place. And I only went to the grove under duress, because I didn’t like the way Ülgas the Sage anointed the trees with hare’s blood. Hares were such dear creatures; I couldn’t understand how anyone could kill them just to sprinkle on the tree roots. I was afraid of Ülgas, although in appearance he wasn’t so horrible; he had a kindly, grandfatherly face, and was good to children. Sometimes he would visit us and talk about all sorts of fairies and about how children in particular should show great respect to them, and bring a sacrifice to the water-sprite before washing at the spring, and then another after emptying the water bucket. And when you want to bathe in a river, you should bring a few sacrifices, if you don’t want the water-sprite to drown you.
“What sacrifices should they be?” I asked, and Ülgas the Sage explained, laughing affably, that the best thing to take is a frog, cutting it alive from the head lengthwise and throwing it into the spring or river. Then the sprite is satisfied.
“Why are those sprites so cruel?” I asked, frightened, because torturing a frog like that seemed horrible to me. “Why do they want blood all the time?”
“What rubbish you talk! Sprites aren’t cruel,” said Ülgas, admonishing me. “Fairies are simply the rulers of the waters and the trees, and we should obey their orders and do their bidding; that has always been our custom.”
Then he patted me on the cheek, telling me by all means to come back to the grove soon—”because those who don’t visit the grove will be torn apart by the dogs”—and left. But I was torn by terror and hesitation, because I just couldn’t cut a live frog in half. I bathed very rarely and as close to the shore as possible, so I could scramble out of the water before the bloodthirsty water-sprite, without the propitiation of a frog-corpse, would leap at me on the shore. Even when I did go to the sacred grove, I always felt uncomfortable, looking around everywhere for those horrible dogs that lived there and kept watch, according to Ülgas, but all I met was the withering gaze of Tambet, who no doubt took offense that a “villager” like me was gazing around a sacred place, instead of concentrating on the conjurings of the Sage of the Grove.
Being thought of as a villager didn’t really worry me, because, as I said, I liked the village. I was always pressing my mother to know why we moved away from there and asking if we could go back — if not for good, then at least for a while. Of course my mother wouldn’t agree, and tried to explain to me how nice it was in the forest, and how tedious and hard the life of the village people was.
“They eat bread and barley gruel there,” she would say, clearly wanting to scare me, but I couldn’t remember the taste of either of them, and the words didn’t provoke any disgust in me. On the contrary, those unknown foods sounded alluring; I would have liked to try them. And I told my mother so.