In those ancient days, Ehvelen Families had just one child at a time. They had not yet been plagued by Giants’ diseases, or by the insanity of one person killing another. They were hunters, not warriors, for they knew no people other than their own, and every Ehvel learned to recognise the warm comfort of the Mother’s presence within her being. How can you deliberately harm someone who also shares this wonderful experience?
So, the little people of the Original Forest lived long. Back in the mists at the beginning of time, the Mother had taught Her daughters how to limit the birth of children through the careful use of sixteen plants. Children were only allowed to be born to replace untimely deaths, and when a child of a Family attained adulthood.
The child of this Family had just turned seven. He was an unremarkable boy to look at — normally. But now, now he was a running statue in oozy black mud. His straight brown hair was usually a tangle. Now it was a semi-solid black maelstrom that trickled rivers of mud down his bare back, over his face, on top of mud caked there so thickly that none of his hundreds of freckles were visible. Two excited blue eyes glittered through long eyelashes bedecked with mud as he forced his sturdy little body into a last desperate sprint towards the oval mudbrick house. He felt as if his lungs would burst. The weight of the sodden trousers dragged at every step, and he was tempted to throw away the mud-weighed shirt he held in his right hand. His little bronze dagger was still in its sheath, but his sling was gone, and the weight of the stones had torn the pouch off its loop.
"Mother! Fox! Trout!" he shrilled over the ever-present song of the rapids that gave the Family their name, though he hardly had breath left for shouting.
Three of his five parents were outside in front of the house, enjoying the early summer sunshine. The junior husband, twenty-two-year-old Trout, was an exact adult copy of his son (but without the mud). He had a long-handled bronze spade over his shoulder, and was on the way to dig a hole behind the house for a new latrine, more to pass the time than from urgent need. The junior wife, Foxglove, was thirty-seven, a graceful blonde woman widely admired for her kindness among a people where kindness was a universal habit. She was doing nothing more important than sitting on the fragrant ground cover, admiring the beauty of the tumbling creek. And the third person there was middle-aged Fox. His face was one no-one would forget, for it was stamped with a calm nobility. He had deep-set eyes, a straight, prominent nose and a square chin. Everyone in that part of the Forest turned to Fox of The Rapids for advice and leadership. Right now, he was on his hands and knees, unrolling a fishnet he was planning to repair.
The three of them looked up at the shout. "Mother help us, a monster from the depths of the earth!" Trout said with mock fright.
"Swallow! What happened to you, love?" Foxglove asked at the same time, alarm in her voice.
"Fire!" Swallow panted, "There’s a fire somewhere, I saw a smoke signal, couldn’t read all of it, but one word was ‘fire’, and..."
"And that got you covered in mud?" Trout asked, being just as irrepressible as his son.
Hearing their voices, Thyme put her grey head out the open door of the house. Her blue eyes opened wide and she spoke over the others, "Swallow, into the creek, now."
"But, but, there’s a fire somewhere."
Fox offered, "I’ll go and check for the signal. You’ve a wash, then you can tell us about it."
No smoke signal was visible as yet from where they stood, so Fox strode off towards the back of the house. He returned at speed long before Swallow was clean. "The boy’s right," he called. "Wildfire near the river, north of here. All help requested."
The adults were packed and ready to go by the time Swallow was clean and dry. Even sixty-eight-year-old Thyme was going. Vole, the senior partner, had come out too, with clean clothes for the child. He and Swallow were to stay behind.
"Before we go, love," Foxglove asked, "tell us how you got so muddy."
"I was doing my Responsibility. You know that swallow nest in a hole high up in the oldest oak by the swamp? I’d seen both parents flying off, so wanted to check how many of the eggs’d hatched. Then I saw the smoke balls, could read only two words, ‘calamity’ and ‘fire’, so came down fast..."
"Too fast?" Thyme interrupted.
"Too fast. And lost my hold and went tumbling. It was all right, if only I’d been over solid ground I could’ve landed right, I slowed myself all the way, but I went straight into the quicksand. Ugh!" He shuddered at the memory.
So did the adults. "You could’ve died," Foxglove said in a level tone of voice, for a hunter is trained to show no emotion, but her glistening eyes betrayed her distress.
"Fox’s taught me what to do, and I did it." Swallow looked proud. "Landed flat on my back with spread arms and legs, then eased off my shirt and used it as a scoop to pull myself to shore."
"Well, darling," Trout told him, "you’re a calamity like I always was. But don’t worry, the Mother looks after the likes of us!"
In turn, the adults kissed the ancient man and the little boy, and went off to fight a fire that had no business to threaten the Forest so early in summer.
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