Back in the hut, Rap soon discovered the rules. He could go out any time he wanted, but he must not take any of the fur robes or the buckskins that lay heaped by the door. Bare feet and his shorts were all he was allowed. That restricted his movements like a chain on an ankle. Nor might he enter any of the other buildings.
The log house was home to thirty-four boys, ranging in age from toddlers up to Little Chicken, who was easily the oldest and largest, and certainly the ruler. Males had little to occupy them in the great forest in winter, for the women did all the work. The boys spent their time in sleeping, combing their long hair, and rubbing themselves with the well-matured bear grease that gave them their loathsome stench. Thinking it might have some value for keeping out the cold, Rap tried it himself, but the only advantage he could find was that it stopped his skin cracking. He felt no warmer for it and thereafter he stank as badly as the others. They also played complicated games with sticks and a board; and they wrestled. Little Chicken loved wrestling, but there was no one there large enough to give him a reasonable match. Rap would have been the closest, but there seemed to be some reason why Little Chicken must not tackle him, for which Rap was duly grateful. Little Chicken, therefore, would organize teams bf the others, usually Fledgling Down and Cheep-Cheep, the two next in age, but sometimes four or five of the smaller boys. Then he would take on the whole team. He always won, usually ending by bouncing his opponents off the walls.
Within a few hours, and merely by sitting and listening to the boys’ chatter, Rap began to uncover the secrets of the language. It used comparatively few words, and only in simple ways. Many were exactly the same as the words he knew, and many others were almost the same with certain sounds switched in a predictable-fashion—th to t and f to p, and a few others. Soon he was making sense of the talk.
Then he made the mistake of asking a question. Little Chicken barked out, ”Not answer!” and jumped up. He scrambled across and arranged himself cross-legged in front of Rap. “You speak now?” he demanded intently.
“I speak slow.”
That was very satisfying news. “Seven days I get my name!” Little Chicken grinned, showing his oversize goblin teeth.
Rap looked blank.
“New name! Not Little Chicken—Death Bird.”
“Good name!” Rap said politely. Not knowing the word for tattoos, he waved a finger around one eye, and a vigorous nod showed that his guess was correct.
Obviously this was all a cheat. Little Chicken was at least two years older than any of the other boys, and Rap had already noted some tattooed and married men who could be no older. So Little Chicken had been held back, the fruit kept on the tree until it was overripe, so that he would have an unfair chance in the testing, whatever that might be. Now this pushover stranger had arrived to make the contest even more unfair. Little Chicken was justifiably confident.
“Tell me about testing?” Rap asked.
Little Chicken looked surprised, and then an expression of great delight came over his big ugly face as he realized the extent of Rap’s ignorance. ”No!” He swung around and snapped orders to the others-no one must talk of the testing. Happily he turned back to his victim.
“After testing I have good ideas!”
“Yes?” Rap was certain that he was going to disagree.
“I light small fires on your chest!”
Rap did disagree.
“I pull off ears and make you eat them!”
“I pull feathers off chickens,” Rap said firmly.
“Flat Nose!” Little Chicken sneered. “I push your toes up your nose.”
Rap made a loud clucking noise and flapped his arms. That worked. Little Chicken almost gnashed his teeth with fury, while a few of the braver boys behind him snickered.
Frequently thereafter Little Chicken would come to sit and stare gloatingly at Rap and announce some new atrocity he had just thought of, but the clucking noise was a potent reply. It drove him almost to distraction, and often drove him away. Either some rule prevented him from using violence, or else he was saving that for later.
The grisly threats were unbelievable, Rap decided just another strategy to unnerve the victim, as the garbage had been. He firmly resolved not to let it rattle him, but that was not an easy resolution to keep. By the time the village settled down to the sleep that night, his head was swimming with the weakness brought on by hunger.
But he had farsight. He had easily located the food store, in a room at the back of the single women’s lodge, and there seemed to be no locks on any of the doors. Kept awake by his howling stomach, he lay in his fur robe among the sleeping boys and waited through the long hours until the whole tribe seemed to be asleep and all activity had ceased, even in the married quarters. Then he arose, dressed himself in the largest buckskins he could find in the heap by the door-they could only be Little Chicken’s—and quietly staggered out into the dark.
There were no sentries in that climate. The dogs kept guard and Fleabag himself was the first to notice him, but Fleabag seemed to be peculiarly susceptible to whatever it was Rap could do with animals. He came up sniffing and allowed his ears to be scratched. If Fleabag was not a purebred wolf, he was something close to it, but for his new friend he lay down and required that his chest be rubbed. Then he accompanied Rap past the big lodge where the men slept among their wives, over to the house of the single females.
Gratefully Rap slipped inside, blocking Fleabag’s attempts to follow. He stood in the dark, until his violently shaking limbs were under control again. At the far end lay the young girls, old women were at the front. There were two hearths, but the fires had been banked and the room was dim. Quivering with hunger and nervousness, he began picking his way very slowly toward the big larder that made up the rear half of the building, stepping around or over the sleepers. Here was the tribe’s holy of holies: the winter food and the unmarried girls. Nowhere could be more off limits for a stranger, but certainly Rap had nothing to lose. Holding his breath, mouthing a silent prayer against creaking hinges, he eased open the big door and swiftly grabbed up a lump of frozen fish. He closed the door again, turned-and his heart made a wild leap, as if trying to escape on its own and fly away to Krasnegar. A very tiny woman was standing right in front of him, peering up with difficulty because of her extreme stoop-a dim, hunched figure canopied in the voluminous robe and hood of a female goblin. Her face was dark and dim, unclear in the crawling glow of the embers, but he could see wrinkles, and she was obviously very old.
For what seemed a small eternity, neither spoke. He felt sweat trickle down his ribs like ice. Why did she not raise the alarm? “Faun?” she said softly. Her voice was the dry crackle of a boot on frozen grass. “Why a faun here?”
Rap said nothing. He tried to lick his lips and tasted blood from their open frost sores.
“Far from the vales,” the crone warbled in a tuneless but fortunately quiet croak, “Where his ancestors manifest . . . No, that’s not right. Not manifest! Magnify?”
She showed a few sharp goblin teeth, gnawing her wrinkled bottom lip. ”Why is he using power here, eh?”
Rap tried to speak, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Apparently she had not thought to shout an alarm. He forced his quaking limbs to obey, sinking down on one knee to be less conspicuous if anyone else roused. Now their eyes were about level.
“I’m hungry,” he whispered. “That’s all.”
She did not seem to hear. “What goes creeping where my love lies sleeping? Eh? Fauns near my sweeting? Power in the dark woods. Fauns!”
“Please don’t wake the others.”
“He uses mastery on the dogs, that’s all.” She was very, very, old, and probably mad.
Then his heart made another frantic bound—she was not there!
His farsight was detecting nothing where his eyes saw her, and his eyes could also see the embers on the hearth shining through her robe.
An evil spirit? He tried to rise and his legs would not move. He rubbed his eyes, and the vision seemed to solidfy, blocking out the gleam of the hearth. He clenched his teeth to stop them chattering.