Chapter 7
“Coaxtl, wake up. I think they’ve found me,” Goat-dung said into the wispy fur of the cat’s left ear.
Coaxtl stretched and yawned. Who has found us, youngling?
“The Shepherd Howling and the flock. They’re coming to take me back.”
Coaxtl rolled over and sat up on her haunches, front feet propping her erect as she listened to the low voices speaking in words that were not quite intelligible. After listening for a moment, the cat lay back down again.
Fear not, child, it is nothing but the voice of home.
The Shepherd Howling had spoken of the Great Monster, who seemed to be the same being the cat called Home, and how the monster had a voice, though the Shepherd always described it as a growl or a roar or a gnashing of teeth or spewing of spittle or something equally nasty. He said the Great Monster had its counter part in all of the tales of Earth, of the under world guarded by the bones of dead men and of terrible devouring fires and tortures. When he had her or any of the other members of the flock punished, he reminded them that if they didn’t mend their ways, the Great Monster would do much worse to them when they died still in sin and error, uncorrected by his teachings.
Horrible serpents and worms and flame-belching beasts were supposed to guard the Great Monster, or be aspects of it. The underworld held all of these bad things, according to the Shepherd. Goat-dung wondered if she would see them. So far, she had only met Coaxtl.
The cat’s unconcern should have lulled her back into exhausted relaxation from her adventures of the past two days. But she found that the voicesand the possibility of returning to the flockhad frightened her so much that she couldn’t sleep.
“Did you ever hear,” she asked the cat idly, “what it used to be like on Earth back in the olden days, before we were moved for our heinous crimes and sins to this cold place and put at the mercy of the Great Monster?
Goat-dung awaited the cat’s answer with sleepy anticipation, for in spite of all of the things that she had hated about living in the Vale of Tears, and as much as she had feared the Shepherd Howling, she liked the stories that he and everyone else told constantly. They told stories of why it was good to cook one way and not another. Stories of why a house should be built in one way and not another. Stories of how horrible it had been in their homes before they came to the Vale of Tears. Stories of how they had first met the Shepherd. Although some of the stories were frightening and the pictures they made in her head filled her with revulsion, she missed the stories. She missed having them told to her. The stories were a respite from beatings and made work go faster. A lot of them were ones like those she had just been remembering, about how the Great Monster devoured people and twisted their lives, but some were nice, about the olden days on Earth. These were told mostly to make everybody feel sad for how much they had lost through their sins, but Goat-dung liked hearing them anyway.
Oh yes, the cat said. My grandam told my dam and said the tale was passed to her by an old, old male who was passing through on his way to die. But I don’t think such stories are fit for cubs myself.
“What do you mean?”
The olden days were bad ones. First all of the things that make life good went away. Then for a time everything was sterile and made of notreal materials. Trees had leaves on them that were not alive and bark on them that was not alive, and they did not grow from the ground, for it was not alive either. Underfoot was hard and unyielding stuff, and between one and the sky were barriers. At first, some real air was allowed to pass through them but later, only light, and sometimes that light was not real, either. This was bad enough while it was clean and free of any tiny living things, but in time, the Earth became filthy, as well as dead. Finally, one of our kind had the sense to make certain that she and a male of her acquaintance were included in the manifest when creatures were chosen from our lands.