‘And now for your questions, young Kel. You deserve some reward for visiting me.’
They both retired to the little room where they had eaten earlier, and after Mec produced some more refreshments, sat down on the gourd stools.
‘Well, what’s the first story you want to hear.’ asked Mec, settling his back against the wall of the room and crossing his outstretched legs.
‘The story of the greater and lesser knives, please.’ replied Kel politely.
‘All right. As you know, the greater knives are only given to those who reach a certain age, which you will soon attain, and there is a very good reason for this. The larger knives are not easy to come by, and are only given to those who will look after them and use them very carefully. The lesser knives are more numerous, and so we can afford to give them to anyone who we think is capable of using them sensibly.
‘Now, you are about to ask, how do the knives come about? Well, we make them. There is an area deep in the forest known as the killing sands, and it is from there that we get the material for the knives. A very long time ago, according to legend, it was discovered that a glassy black stone found in the killing sands, if hit with another hard stone, would shatter into long shards, and these pieces are the basis of our knives. There are a lot more of the little shards as some are made when we trim the larger ones to shape. The strange thing is that when the black stone breaks, it always does so leaving a very sharp edge’.
Mec paused to bite into one of the large yellow berries he had brought in, spitting out the seeds with great accuracy into a large gourd pot at his feet while he munched the succulent fruit.
‘Sorry Kel, do please help yourself, don’t wait for me to ask you. Now where was I? Oh yes, the knives. The handles which protect your hands from the very sharp cutting edge are also made by us, and without them, the black cutting stones would be of little value to us.’
‘We use the juice from the stave plant mixed with fine wood dust scraped from a piece of dead wood. The handle end of the blade is dipped into the mixture and then given a quick dip into a bowl of urine when this has set a little, it is recoated with the juice and wood dust mix, dipped into the urine bowl again, and so on, slowly building up in thickness to form a protective handle.
‘So that’s how the knives are made. I’m sure you can see why we look after them so very carefully, for not only are they difficult to make, but the getting of the shiny black stones in the first place is not without its difficulties. As I said earlier, those who actually collect the stones from the killing sands die, and do so in a very unpleasant way. Also the sands are a very long way from here, and take several cycles of the greater sun to reach, and just as many for the return journey.
‘Usually, those who have been brave enough to recover the shiny stones have died before they can return home. Shortly after leaving the sands, they get very sick, and quite unable to hold any food down for more than a few moments, and then all their body hair loosens and comes out as soon as it is touched by anything. This is followed by black marks like bruises appearing, and shortly after that they die.
‘But that was a very, very long time ago. What happens now, and has done for some considerable time, is that when a member of the tribe gets to be very old and near to death, they are taken to the killing sands and there retrieve some of the shiny stones. As they are going to die soon, it is considered the last helpful act that they can do for the group.
‘There is no compulsion to do this, but very few refuse. As far as I know, none of the stone gatherers have ever survived long enough to get back to their group area, but as they were so near death anyway, it matters little’.
Kel saw the sad look on Mec’s face, and didn’t really know what to say, although he felt he should say something.
‘The killing sands are linked to several other stories.’ Mec said, after a long pause.
‘There is one story, or I should say legend, about the giants who walked this world long, long before we were here. They were four or five times as tall as we are, if you can believe that, and lived in ‘Sitys’, whatever they might be.
‘They may be like my tree cave, but a lot larger, I don’t know, and I don’t know anyone who does. It is said that they had things in which a lot of them could travel, instead of walking as we do, but I can’t imagine what they would be like, and it’s only a story.’
‘Where have all the giants gone?’ asked Kel, eager to keep the stories going.
‘Nobody knows. It is said there was a time of the Great Lights, very bright lights, much brighter than the greater sun when seen from the top of the forest, and after that there were no more giants, or anything else much for that matter.
‘Some story tellers think that the killing sands are something to do with the disappearing giants, but no one knows for sure as it all happened so very long ago, and we have nothing much to go on except the stories themselves.’
‘What are the sands like?’ asked Kel, his appetite now well and truly whetted for more.
‘So it is
