Why forget? Ponch said. Remembering things is good.
“Not when they kill you for it.” Memeki’s voice sounded weary. “And it was so long ago. Nothing that happened such a long time ago can matter now; things aren’t that way anymore.”
What way were they? I don’t understand.
Her voice went low, as if even here she was afraid she might be overheard. “When we’re very young,” Memeki said, “the blood inside us speaks for a while. It says that once there wasn’t a City, or even a little hive. Once the world was big enough for everyone to walk wherever they wanted. And there wasn’t just one King. There were many, and each King had just a few chosen ones. There was always enough to eat, and not so much work to do. And there were no Others.” She briefly sounded confused. “Or there were Others who didn’t want to kill us. I said it was a strange story! Then something happened.”
What?
There was a long pause. “No one is sure,” Memeki said. “But in the story, it’s as if there was a bigger King who made everything to be built—the sky, the ground—the way our own King tells us how to build a nest and kill the enemy. There were some who built the Everything that way, the story says. That other King was supposed to have shown them how. Then Yaldiv came to live in what that Great One’s servants had made. They lived there a long time—”
She broke off suddenly. “But that part of the story makes no sense,” Memeki said. “How could anybody build the sky? No one could reach it. It’s got to be true, what the Arch-votary says the King tells him—that the old stories are madness and death made real, a way for our enemies to trick us.”
I know a story like that, Ponch said. I don’t think it’s a trick.
Silence again. “You don’t?”
From Ponch, Kit got a sudden sense of reticence. If your story is like mine, then there’s more to tell.
“Yes,” Memeki said. She sounded subdued. “It’s as if when everything’s made, another Great One appears: another King. That one went about saying that he knew more things than the first Great One, better ways to live. He said that having so many little kings among the Yaldiv was wrong, and that there should be only one—himself. That would make warriors mightier, he said, and workers stronger, and the vessels more fruitful. The little kings and their consorts said they didn’t want his way of living. They started a war with the great King and his vessels. It went on forever. But, finally, the second Great One realized they would never do what he wanted, so he made the sky catch fire. Small suns like Sek fell from the sky on the little kings, and killed them and all their Yaldiv.”
But the story that your people tell each other now says something different, Ponch said.
“It says there was never any war before the War of Now,” Memeki said. “The only King that has ever been is our own Great One. And when we win the War of Now against the evil City, then the world will be pure.”
Ponch was quiet. Then he spoke again.
Do you want another biscuit?
What? Kit thought. Very slowly and cautiously, so as not to make any noise, he put his hand out beside him. The dog biscuit box was gone. Why, that sneaky—
Vague crunching noises came from the cavern, much amplified in Kit’s inner hearing by the fact that he was inside the mind of one of the creatures doing the chewing. After a moment, Memeki said, “What happens in your story?” She crunched a little more. “Is there a great war? Do suns fall from the sky?”
No, Ponch said. There’s some singing, but mostly we eat.
Kit got a sudden glimpse of Memeki’s mirror-dark eyes looking down into Ponch’s. “Your people’s story… is about food?”
Later, Ponch said, yes. But it didn’t start that way. The crunching started up again.
I hadn’t thought about this for a long time, Ponch said after a moment. You tend not to think about it … there’s so much to keep you busy. Barking. Running. Eating. Doing what the One You’re With wants you to do. But that’s what we’ve done for a long time. We promised to take care of Them…
He trailed off. Kit asked me to tell him the story not long ago, Ponch said after some more crunching. It’s not the kind of thing you ever think of Them being concerned about: They’re even busier than we are. I was so surprised, I told him the puppy version, because I wasn’t sure how he would take the other one. We love Them, but humans can be strange sometimes.
Kit lay there, staring into the darkness, wondering what to make of this. The story seemed to be working its way out of Ponch with the same difficulty as it had worked its way out of Memeki.
It was a very long time ago, Ponch said, when our parents, the First Ones, realized who they were. They woke up and started singing to the Light in the Sky, and heard others singing back, so that they realized we were all singing the same song. Instead of staying alone, the First Ones started to run together in groups, hunting for food together. It was a hard time. The world was full of things to eat, but catching them was hard. Then many of the things we ate went away, or died, and many of us died, too. Our mothers bore more and more of us. They had to, because so many of us died young.
There was more crunching from Memeki. “That must have been terrible. What did you do?”
At first, we didn’t know what to do. There was a pause while Ponch put his nose into the dog biscuit box, knocked it over, and pawed another one out. Then some of the First Ones started to think, Maybe we should go away. Maybe there’ll be more food somewhere else. So we traveled. We journeyed a long way under the Light in the Sky, and came to a place where there was a little more food. But we found something else there, too. We found Them.
He was quiet for a moment. We found them living by themselves, Ponch said, in cold places. They wore furs, like us. They denned in caves, the way we did sometimes. They were lonely, the way we were before we found out how to live together. And they were so hungry! And we remembered how that had been for us, too.
“Did they eat the same things you ate?” Memeki said, sounding dubious.
They did then. Some of us said, “Let’s go away from here! There won’t be enough for everyone to eat.” Others said, “Let’s drive them away! Then there will be enough.” And some—Kit could hear the shadow of a growl stirring at the bottom of Ponch’s mind—some said, “Let’s eat them, and solve both problems.”
Slowly the growl faded. But then, when they found different ways to catch things to eat, and we saw them do it and cried because we were hungry, some of the humans did what the First Ones thought was the strangest thing. They gave us some of what they caught! They started sharing, the way we learned to do when we began hunting together. So we took them in, into life as a pack, and showed them the other ways it could be—caring for the pups and watching out for each other, and especially the hunting in a group. They learned fast. And the humans took us in as well, into life with another kind of creature, and showed us how to learn their strange new ways. Like how they made things with their clever paws—sharp teeth that they could throw, so that food was bitten and fell down without the humans actually catching it and biting it themselves. We learned to drive the food into those extra teeth of theirs, and then we shared the kill with them. That became the bargain. We promised we’d help our human packmates find food when they needed it; they helped us with food when we needed it. When the animals that hated our packmates got close to their dens, we shouted to warn them; then they’d bring out the fire that scared those things away. We’d even sit together, after the meal, and sing at the Light together. It was a good time.