When Snark had gone looking for Mother, overcoming her fear, deciding to disobey the prime command (“Stay in the cave!”), she’d found bones. She’d been hiding that from herself for many years, but here at the trembling edge of sleep, nothing could be truly hidden. Longings came out, and hates, and loves, and old, old memories that she’d tried to obliterate. Old horror would sprout, old bones would walk, old blood would fountain up.
Though homelier things returned as well. Like the stories of Breadh that Mother had sung.
“Homely Breadh of long ago!”
Snark remembered once when they’d been inside the cave, Mother cross-legged, Snark in Mother’s lap. She hadn’t been Snark then. Mother had called her Laluzh, Laluzh-love, Laluzh dearest daughter. Laluzh, last remnant of the faithful.
“I sing, Laluzh-love, of our homeworld of Breadh, where we patterned our lives as the weaver of the cloth, light and dark, day and night, sorrow-joy, pleasure-pain. On Breadh we were born, on her bosom we grew, there we found our nearhearts, there we danced when we wed. On Breadh’s shoulder we grieved when our loved ones were lost. So it was, so had been, for time out of time.”
This was story rhythm, a kind of chanting. Mother could do it for hours. Sometimes the story rhythm changed, becoming inexorable:
“But then the tempter came. Ancient and sly was he. Rising from dark of caves. Mammoth with mighty feet. Furred like Behemoth he. Whispered in darkness, he. Telling the songfathers. How they might never die. If they would make the choice. Leaving beloved Breadh. Where even animals. Were kindred souls to us. Leaving behind our gods—”
“And the old men listened to the tempter,” interrupted Snark, anything to break that rhythm, that pounding.
Mother nodded, rocking back and forth, resuming the sweet motion Snark loved, like being cradled on the waves of the sounding sea: shush shush shush, to and fro. Mother sighed as she answered, not in story talk but as herself.
“The old men listened. They listened to sweet words and tempting promises. They bowed down before the tempter and called him the Gracious One. Gracious to them, indeed, for the price demanded was not paid by them but by the womenfolk. Godmongers have always found it easy to pay for their beliefs with women’s lives.…
“So, they chose. Some of the people on Breadh said they would not do what the tempter ordered, they would remain behind, on Breadh, but no one was allowed to remain. Even after they were taken to the new home, the faithful refused the new commandments. Though we pretended to follow them, it was in appearance only. In secret, generation after generation, we remembered the old ways and recited the old prayers.”
“For we are the faithful,” Laluzh/Snark said.
“We are the faithful, Laluzh-love. And faithful we remained, even when a traitor among us denounced us to the songfathers. Then we were reviled and persecuted, some of us were tortured and killed. We decided to run away, to go back the way our ancestors had come, to return to Breadh.”
“Many of us. Many, many of us!”
Mother didn’t answer for a long time. There was only the shush shush shush of her garment on the floor as she rocked. Her face was wet when she spoke. “There were many of us who came to the gate. Enough of us to open that gate, for it is a heavy gate indeed, made of stone set upon stone. We were many as we came through that gate, but who knows if any came to Blessed Breadh. A few families of us ended here, and only Mother Darkness knows where the others ended.”
“And the scourges came….”
“True. When we opened the gate, scourges of the tempter pursued us, coming through the gate with us. Almost before we knew they were here, they had killed some of us. Yet faithful we remained, for in the end, where can even these scourges bring us except to the waiting arms of Mother Darkness and Father Endless, they who were before the Consequential Egg was hatched?”
She rocked Laluzh/Snark, softly shush shush shush, singing in her mother voice:
“Ahau, Father Endless, Mother Darkness. Ahau, thou who wert before the stars. Ahau, eternal entropy, refuge of the sorrowful, haven of the weary, salvation of the aged, unlit by grief or pain. Ahau, to lie upon the breast of darkness knowing only peace.”
The song was like a lullaby, a hymn to the gods left behind on Breadh, a memorial to those who entered the gate, a plea for those few left on this world: Mother and Laluzh and the four other children, silent Nanees and strong Ehrbas, weepy little Hahnaan and some other little girl whose name Snark couldn’t remember. Six of them in all. And Mother herself was gone by the time the ship came.
An Alliance ship, screaming out of the sky, landing upon the moor, where the children ran back and forth like panicked animals. Twenty standard years ago, when she’d been eight or nine. Old enough to remember the questions.
“Where did you come from, little girl?”
“I live here.”
“What happened to all the grown-ups, little girl?”
“The scourges of the tempter ate them. Something killed Mother, but I put her bones away safe, in the Mother Darkness jar.”
Glances, one man to another. A finger circled beside an ear. Crazy little girl. Out of her head. Must be a survival pod somewhere nearby. Kids must have been boosted off some ship in trouble. Castaways. Couldn’t actually have lived here for any length of time. Impossible. There was nothing here: no agriculture, no edible animals, no beasts of any kind. Only seabirds, fish.
“She’s gone snarky from the trauma,” said one.
“What’s snarky?”
“Snark’s a kind of a duck thing. From Herangia Five. It goes crazy and drops eggs on people.”
The label had stuck. Laluzh became Snark the crazed, later Snark the liar, Snark the thief. Eventually, she forgot Laluzh, forgot Perdur Alas, forgot Mother. Only the cave had remained, a place of safety and comfort. She might
