"Angels have wings," his mother had said.
"Why doesn't the angel in the Bird's belly have wings?" Ras had said.
"Because angels often go down among men to find out what's going on or to deliver a message from Igziyabher. When they do that, they take off their wings and hang them on a hook."
"Yes, but the angel in the Bird's belly isn't pretending to be a man. Why doesn't he wear his wings?"
"How do you know he isn't? Have you been close enough to see if he has wings?"
What would an angel do when stranded on earth without wings? Would Igziyabher come after her Himself, or would He send some winged angels, or another bird, to lift her up and take her back to Heaven?
He prowled on, unwilling to give up and hoping to come to the head of the army. Another thing about angels occurred to him. Sometimes, his mother and father spoke of them as if they had no sex.
"They are as smooth between the legs as your forehead," Yusufu had said. "When Igziyabher wants more angels, He creates them."
"Out of the fire of the stars," Mariyam had said, eager to explain the workings of the world and of God. "He keeps making new angels from starfire, and so, some day, He'll use up all the stars and then the skies will be black, and the End of the World will be near. Pray then, son, pray, because the God of Wrath..."
"Shut up, Mariyam! You know better than that!" Yusufu had said. "There are ears that hear and hands that take vengeance because of what some liars say."
Ras had had many questions that day, one of which was about Mariyam's earlier story of the angels coming down and mating with the daughters of men. If the angels had no sex, then...
He stopped walking. A sound like the snapping off of a large branch had come from his right. It was not quite like a branch breaking, so he had no way of knowing how far away the origin of the sound was. There was something sinister in it.
The cracking was repeated, though this time it was not so loud. It did come from the same direction.
A woman screamed. Another cracking, followed by a man screaming. Then there was silence.
Ras hesitated, shrugged, and ran as swiftly as he could through the ants. He traveled a hundred yards before the first of the ants closed their pincers on his feet. He gritted his teeth and ran on. If he stopped to scrape them off, he would just be attacked by a greater number. Now that he had made his decision, he could not change his mind. Rather, he would not. He would keep running, no matter what the agony, until he reached whoever was screaming. He was not fool enough to run directly up to the people who were making the noise; for all he knew, they might not be the angels but Wantso. He doubted that the Wantso would dare come this close to their Land of the Ghosts, but he also knew that their actions could not be predicted. The Wantso, like his parents, were always doing unexpected things, some of them stupid.
Moreover, the angels might be dangerous in some unknown manner. There were the cracking sounds, which for some reason prickled him.
When he thought he could no longer endure the little fires on his feet and legs, he saw the first angel. He lay on his back, arms outstretched, his jaw dropped. He was black with ants, but when Ras, hopping around him, brushed some ants off his face, his face was red. The skin was eaten away, and the red muscles stared at Ras. The hair, however, knocked free of ants, was brown and straight. A peculiar object of metal lay beside the right hand of the corpse.
Ras could not tarry to investigate. If he did not get going, and swiftly, he would be as dead as the angel--if it was an angel. The corpse looked too human. Also, could angels die? If they could, who could kill one besides another angel, a fallen angel, Satan's legionnaire?
There was no more thinking about that then. The agony of the stings burned away all thoughts. There was only the frantic desire to get away.
He ran for two hundred yards, dodging around the bushes, leaping over fallen trunks, until he decided that he could no longer withstand the urge to scream. He was already making so much noise that he could be heard half a mile away. Moreover, he doubted that anybody would be hidden in ambush with the ants swarming over him.
He screamed, and then he saw the creek ahead of him, and he spurted forward and dived headlong into the waters. He rolled over and over in the mud of the bottom while he scraped away at his feet and legs. Mud rose to dirty the water, mingled with the tiny crushed bodies. He lay still for a while after that, watching the stream clear itself, and grateful for the relief given by the cold waters.
When he left the creek, he picked up his spear and bow, which he had thrown on the opposite bank just before dropping into the creek. His quiver had to be taken off and upended to dump the water out. The feathers were soaked and muddied.
There were no army ants on this side of the creek. He cast back and forth, looking for tracks in the damp soil, but found none. After two hours' search, he decided that the other angel had run off in a different direction or perhaps was also dead and being stripped of flesh.
Which of the two was the angel? Igziyabher's angels did not fight each other, so one must be a devil. Was the dead one the devil? Mariyam had said that Good always triumphs over Evil, at which Yusufu had snorted and replied, "Would we be here, living this life, if that were true? The devil rules this world, and you know it, Grandmother of Lies."
Yusufu was always making remarks that he would not explain when Ras asked for light. "I open my mouth and the words fly out before I can catch them, my son. But a man has to say something once in a while; otherwise he goes mad."
Ras searched for another hour or more before deciding that he would find the angel--if she were one--only by accident. By then he was beginning to think that neither of the two might be devils or angels. The corpse had looked so human and was so dead that there seemed to be nothing of divinity about it. The only thing that caused him doubt was that he had seen no wound on the corpse. If he had had a chance to investigate, he might have found one. But what kind of a weapon was it that left no evidence of its passage?
On the other hand, if the yellow-haired being were an angel, why had it allowed its bird to be killed?
It was all very puzzling, as so many things were. There were answers to all his questions, but there were so many different answers. Mariyam never stuck to the same story: Yusufu's did not vary; the Wantso girls all had the same story but theirs differed from his parents'.
And then there was Gilluk, king of the Sharrikt, whom he had sneaked out of the Wantso village where he had been held prisoner. Ras had kept Gilluk in a cage in the jungle for six months while he learned the Sharrikt language, and then questioned him. Gilluk's answers had little resemblance to anybody else's.
5
A LETTER FROM GOD TO THE MOON
While the inward eyes were concentrated upon the past, the outward missed nothing of the present. As he walked to the north, he saw something white far off to the northeast, and he approached it cautiously. Now and then he stood motionless behind a tree and listened. Monkeys chattered or screamed; a tiny bird with a huge head and long, straight beak rawked as it flew over him. He became more careful the closer he got, but finally satisfied himself that the yellow-haired angel was not around. The white object was the flower below which she had descended from the bird. It had lost its shape and hung drooping, as if drained of juice, from a branch. He climbed up to touch it, and found that it was of some smooth material. There were cords of another unknown stuff hanging from it and straps attached to these.
Ras worked the dead flower--or whatever it was--for a while before he got it untangled and folded into a bundle. He located a huge hole in a dead tree and cached the bundle in it. Though he was eager to take it home and look it over more carefully, he did not want to be burdened with it at present.
The tracks leading from beneath the tree were small and made with coverings such as he had seen on the dead being's feet. They led to one of the many streams in this area; there were none on the other bank. Ras crisscrossed the stream for several miles southeastward,
then returned to the place where the tracks entered the stream and zigzagged from bank to bank northwestward.
His belly rumbled with hunger, but he did not want to stop for a long time to hunt. He could have shot a monkey at any time now that the feathers of his arrows were dried.
There was no time to skin and cook a monkey. Although he preferred cooked food, he could have carried the monkey along while he ate it raw. There was a time when his parents had encouraged him to eat raw meat, although they would not eat anything unless it was cooked; and when he asked why, they replied that he was to learn to enjoy raw meat. It was written that he should.
Then he had become very sick after eating uncooked guinea fowl. He rolled and sweated in a fever and had many wild and terrifying dreams. His parents stayed with him every minute then, except when Yusufu had to hunt. Mariyam wept and cradled him in her arms, though he was bigger than she then, and she crooned to him and called him her beautiful baby. Yusufu muttered oaths and swore vengeance against somebody, but would not answer when Ras asked him of whom he was speaking.
When Ras recovered, he found that his parents now demanded that he never eat raw flesh again. There were many deadly poisons and little deadly creatures in uncooked flesh. He must never touch it again. It was too late then. He had a taste for it. Although he did prefer meat cooked a little bit, he sometimes had no time to prepare it when he was out alone. So he would tear away at flesh still warm with departed life. Or, as now, he would pause briefly to lift a rock and munch on the blind, white, legless creatures under it.
The sun was dropping toward the mountains when he decided that the angel had left the stream without leaving tracks. By then he was far to the northwest and in the steep, rugged hills and dense undergrowth. He came across an abandoned gorilla site and once heard the muffled beat of hands against a huge chest.
He did not try to find the band. The gorillas here would have nothing to do with him; they either fled when he made an appearance or sometimes a male would stand his ground and try to outbluff him. Only the band in the hills to the east of Ras's home knew him and accepted his presence. And even then he had to approach slowly if he had been away a long time. That group had known him from his infanthood, when Yusufu had carried him up and introduced him.
Later, when Ras could talk, he was told that Yusufu had spent two years in the slow and cautious integration with them.
Why had he done this? Because it was written that he should, so Ras could play with the gorillas and become one of them. Why was he supposed to do this? Because it was written.
At that time Ras did not know what writing was. Later, when Yusufu permitted him to enter the old log cabin on the lake shore, Ras found the books. He looked through the books and was especially interested in the pictures. There was writing--printing, rather--under the pictures. When Ras became older, he was to try to learn what the printing said. Yusufu insisted on that.
Then Yusufu had taken him out of the cabin and locked it up, saying that when Ras got older, he could look through the books again. Ras had asked him if the books contained the "It is written." Yusufu had said no. That book was elsewhere. He made a vague gesture and then said, "It is in Igziyabher's hands. I myself have never seen The Book."
Ras decided to spend the night in the jungle instead of going the six circuitous miles home. He would resume the search in the morning and spend all day looking. If he did not find the yellow-haired angel by the following sunset, he would quit. No one could escape him in this area; of that he was sure. The only thing to be said if he did not find her was that she had somehow grown wings and flown away.
He looked for a place where a nest could be built. It would have to be high enough so that a leopard coming up after him would make enough noise to wake him. It had to be a meeting-place of trunk and branch broad enough to lay a platform of broken limbs, twigs, and leaves. He would get rained on and be cold, but he could endure that.
He found the place and built the nest and, just before dusk, shot a monkey. After taking it about a half mile from his nest, he skinned it, cut the head and hands, feet and tail off. He disemboweled the monkey, making sure he did not cut the entrails open. Then he built a small fire quickly and stuck the body out over the fire on a green stick. It was very rare meat, still bloody. The leopards were prowling now, and while they were not likely to attack him under ordinary circumstances, the odor of monkey blood might be too much for them. Moreover, there were man-eating leopards in the area of the Wantso village. It was possible they were hunting this area, although again it was not likely. The big cats had their own territories, their own circuits, and the maneaters usually did not come up this way.
They were creatures of habit, like human beings, but, also like human beings, they could not always be relied upon to follow their habits.
He ate quickly, tearing off big chunks, chewing them a few times, and swallowing them with loud gulps. He returned to the nest, stopping every few steps to listen and look intently. Once something moved in the shadows, causing him to freeze with his spear ready. Then the bulk grunted, after which something squealed. It was a river hog with some young.
He fell asleep quickly enough and dreamed of a leopard pacing back and forth beneath the tree and rearing up now and then to sharpen its claws on the bark. It glared up at him with yellow-green eyes so fierce and bright they looked as if they had once seen God and now carried some memory of the glory. The leopard, fluid rosettes and a long thick tail, prowled back and forth, and looked up at him and pulled its lips back to show sharp, yellow teeth.
He shivered with excitement and the beauty of the animal.
Smooth, tawny beast with black rosettes and furry, white belly. Dressed to kill. Glory come to rip you apart, to lick your flesh and blood with that red, rasping tongue.
Suddenly, the leopard was on a branch above him and crouching before it leaped. He raised his spear and thrust at the fang-filled yawn. The flint tip went through the spotted head without harming it, and then the beast drew in on itself, like shadows before light, the flesh disappearing. The skull of the leopard, hanging in the air, became a human skull. It grinned at him. Its sockets were not empty; pale blue eyes glared from them at him. Where had he seen those eyes before?
He did not know, but they angered him. He raised a fist--the spear was gone--and he struck out. The skull faded. And Ras saw on the ground the carcass of a goat. It was the same goat he had seen several days before. It had been half-hidden in a bush, where a large male leopard hunched over it and ate the entrails he had ripped out from the belly.
Now, as Ras watched the goat, it swelled with the gas of putrefaction. Worms crawled out of it, and then little things, hopping things. These were tiny black men with four crocodile legs and with heads as big as their bodies. The heads were hideous; the mouths ran all the way to the back of the neck and were filled with many rows of sharp, white teeth.
The heads were those of Guluba, the spirit who brings death to the Wantso.
The blue-eyed skull had returned. "Out of death, more life," it chanted in Wantso.
The heads of the tiny hopping things also chanted. "And out of life, more death."
They swarmed over Ras; their little paws were cold.
Ras knew they were going to eat him. He sprang upward to shake them off.
Now he was awake, the dream flowing off him as if it were water draining away as he walked out of the lake after swimming. But the many tiny cold paws were no dream. On every side of him, above and below--and on him--were hundreds of tree frogs. A river of flesh, they poured over the tree, over his nest, over him.
Ras was neither frightened nor repulsed. He endured their passage until the last of the horde had hopped onto and then off him. The night sky was cloudless and moonful. Light seemed to fall like a cataract through the leaves or like a cloud of shiny, gray-yellow butterflies. The light bounced off the minute creatures, soundless in their intent progress on a goal only they--and perhaps not they--knew. The only noise they ma
de was the rustling of the leaves disturbed by their hopping. In the daylight, Ras knew, the tree frogs would have been a pale green except for their suckered paws, which were bark brown.
Finally the rustling was gone. He was alone. He lay back down and tried to sleep but could not. He sat up and fished around in the antelope-hide bag and brought out flint chisels, gougers, and a block of fine-textured, light-pink wood of a medium hardness. He worked on the block until it brought forth what he had conceived. When the wolf's-tail, the false dawn, grayed the night, he was done. The block had become his compression of the nightmare. It was a leopard's skull with flowers growing out of the eye sockets.
He turned it over and over and back and forth and finally said, "Not bad, but not good." He rose, stretched, and looked out, and there, caught in the branches of a bush about fifty yards away, almost hidden by the trunk of a tree, was a piece of paper. It had not been there when he had first climbed the tree; it must have blown there during the night. No, there had been no wind; he had just not seen it, because it had been too dark.
After scrutinizing the area to make sure that nothing dangerous was close--nothing large and dangerous, anyway; the small dangers would have to be chanced--he climbed down and cautiously approached the paper. He had seen paper before, and this seemed harmless, but the fact that it came from the Bird of God gave it a possibility of something dreadful.
Slowly, he extended his hand to it, touched it, withdrew the hand, and then, after looking quickly upward to make sure that God had not been summoned by this touching of His possession and was about to catch him off guard, he pulled the paper loose from the barky embrace.