“Voice box, puffers, and tongue assembly do not fit on small parts,” said the willog. “I have them inside main trunk, issuing through new mouth parts!”
Somewhat reassured by its manner, I said, as calmly as I could manage, “I am told that willogs are good poets.”
“Some very good, yes,” said the willog.
Its words were completely clear, with only a hint of echo, though with that intriguingly wooden sound, like an old musical instrument…a marimba! That was it.
It said, “I do make poems, but it would be prideful of me to claim they are good ones.”
Gavi regarded it gravely, “Will you recite one for us?”
The willog extended two fronds, each with a set of seven words hanging from it.
“This is verse number one of my favorite own poem. It is a double seven.”
“A double seven,” Gavi repeated. “Which means?”
“Which means I have made it in moss words and in human words, one moss word to each line of the seven. In this way, we may say it, and see it, and hear it, and also smell it!” Its voice rose with enthusiasm. “How marvelous to have ears and eyes. How marvelous to have voices.”
With an exuberant gesture, it shook the foremost frond until the word at the end came loose. It tugged the other six after it, and, instead of dancing off as I had seen happen before, the group began to circle and enlarge. There was an audible crepitation as they swelled in size, dwindling to a slight rustle.
“Poets grow them so,” the willog whispered in a very stagy aside. “So they will recite for peoples, not go waltzing off to nowhere. First, hearing words!”
Taking a deep breath, the willog recited:
“Here
we stand
digging down
within the mold
of infinite leaves
budded, aged, fallen
sustaining each one of us.”
“That is sound speaking of first seven of poem,” said the willog, turning toward me. “Now smell! The first word has one smell, the second word two smells, and so on up to seven smells in the last word, conveying the entire verse.”
I looked helplessly at Gavi as the words began to circle. After one or two turns, she spoke, rather hesitantly:
“First word. The ambient scent of the world, meaning here. Second word: the scent of this willog, and of a healthy tree, with no separation, meaning we stand. Third word: Ah. What’s this? Surprising! I am understanding it though. The three smells are herbage, then sweat, then damp earth. To get that sequence, one would have to be digging down.
“Fourth word: A surface moss and wood smell, a smell from inside the moss, a smell of roots, a smell of rotted mosses. The combination takes one into the mold itself.
“Fifth word. A set of mixed leaves…I am not identifying. Another set, another, another, a fifth one. Ah. Far too many to distinguish or count, therefore of infinite leaves.
“Sixth word. Ah. Yes. Now that I am knowing how the sweat smell is used, word six is not being difficult. Bud smell, old sweat—meaning past tense—leaf smell, old sweat, and dead leaf smell, old sweat, Budded, aged, fallen, six smells in all.”
She looked at the willog with what seemed to me respectful admiration as she continued, “Seventh word, first smell: dawn smell. Second smell, same, and third smell, same, the third time with a moist soil and sweat scent added. Once is meaning once, of course, as twice means twice, but three times is meaning some or many. Just as many evenings is meaning the past, so is many dawns meaning the future. Soil and sweat smells are indicating a future with work in it. Sustaining. The fourth smell is of the drack tree…”
“The drack tree?” I croaked, totally lost.
“A resinous, thorny tree, very rare, which is always growing alone, a separate thing, an each. The fifth smell is of this willog, one; then a separation. The sixth smell is of many willogs, separation, then the seventh smell, a repeated one, again many willogs, the meaning of six and seven together, of us.”
She nodded, saying to the willog in an interested though rather judgmental voice, “Is being very…demanding. The word sustaining is requiring considerable reach of understanding.”
“Oh, yes,” the willog agreed. “Growing a seven poem is very demanding. How to get the talker roots to grow the last word correctly so it does seven different things before popping, that is difficult.” An ambient eye turned toward me. “A seven word must always use at least one smell more than once because the words have only six sets of emitters.”
“If you can grow it to do all that, why don’t you grow one with seven sides?” Ornel asked.
The willog shuddered all over, as though wracked by an icy wind. “Oh, do not say. Please, do not say. To say is…impropriety, unnatural, perverted. Even master poets who do eight- and ten-smell poems, do it with only six sets of emitters. Though,” the willog looked somehow thoughtful—“Sometimes such poems are so distantly allusive as to be barely possible of apprehension. Always before, the work smell has been very difficult to make and to recognize.”
“Moss’s beings don’t smell when they work?” I asked.
The willog shook the upper part of its largest trunk from side to side, disclosing as it did so several apertures high on the bole that might be its sound emitters. “We work slowly, effortfully but not strenuously, and our odors are extremely subtle. When men came, however, we learned the smell the humans give off when they struggle to do things, and that has given us many new doing words. Now we have also speak words, making many things easier to understand.”
“What I don’t understand,” I said, “is how you have acquired so many human words. This acquisition is recent, is it not? How did you come up with this vocabulary?”
“Ah. In bad-smell…ah, that is, in human place by Lake Stinks-of-Toothy-Things, one could see places called notice boards, one could hear humans reading of them. So, Walky is gaining some words. Attention and Personnel and Commissary and Language. Evidently, master person is making rule against bad language. Walky rejoiced in this. Bad language is ruinous to speaking creatures. Like fungus growing on spirit. Then, Walky is seeing human place labeled linguistics. I, Walking Sunshine, read this as similar to word for language, and watched through window as the human using machine brings forward a thing called Dictionary. At night, when the human is asleep, one ear tendril goes through the window, one eye tendril goes through the window, one more tendril to push the buttons. Walky pushes button, machine says word, says what word means. I am reading at same time. Soon, I have memorized it, some of it, well, a portion of it. It would take many nights to remember it all.”
“You must be very intelligent,” I said.
The willog drew itself up. “I am intelligent, of course, as willogs must be. Willogs have many responsibilities. You have heard only the first seven of my poem. It is a double seven, but the second verse is not quite ripe. Nonetheless, I will recite to you second verse:
“They
who lie
below us
deeply buried
have no knowledge of
our speaking thanks in words
for food drawn from their bodies.”
“Very true,” said Gavi. “There is much buried on Moss, and much going on above it that is mysterious. It is a good poem.”
The willog preened itself at her praise, leaves lifting and resettling into place with a silver shiver of pleasure. “No willog else has ever done a double-double seven in both smell and talk, with one sound of talk for each smell, the two meaning the same thing. No willog else has ever done a poem one could smell and say—in human words, of course, for they are the only sound words we have—and also hear and even see what it looks like when Walky’s own words dance it or when it is printed in human words with a stick in the bare mud of the river shore or in berry juice on a sheet of bark as Walky did with the message Walky made and left for the human people to find…”
It wheezed to a stop, having run out of air. It had obviously not
yet learned to breathe between words.
“I thank you, Walking Sunshine,” I said. “Particularly for telling us you left the ‘thankful, thankful’ message written on bark. The one that said you people wanted to know more people.”
“More peoples,” it corrected me. “Humans made no answer, but Walky understands. Poor human people cannot send words the World can hear, and human people did not think to write a message Walky could read. Oh, poor humans who cannot speak. Unless we prevent, World is going to do something dreadful to you because you are smell-less! I have been telling World you have no noses. I am praying World will heed!”
I heard a movement behind me, then Behemoth’s voice. “Noh, av ’mell.”
Every part of the willog heaved upward and made a clockwise flailing motion except for one sturdy root, on which it spun. A palpable pirouette. “Ah. Dog! We are hearing very much about dog.”
Behemoth stared his “nasty” stare at Scramble, who whined, deep in her throat, rather anxiously.
“Clare took the puppies back to the plateau,” I said firmly. “They are safer there. Even if your being here gets you all killed, they will still be safe!”
Behemoth turned toward me, a rumble deep in his chest. Scramble put herself between me and him, and I smelled…some sort of interchange between the two, so subtle a flow of scents that I was not even sure I had detected it. Whether it was real or I had only imagined it, Behemoth stopped glaring at her as the others came out of the woods, Veegee and Dapple, Wolf and Titan, the two pseudodog brothers behind them, packs on their backs.
“Many dogs,” said the willog, surprised. “I am Walking Sunshine.” He bowed to the assembled animals before I had a chance to say anything.
I moved forward and introduced the dogs, as each made a slight movement of acknowledgment along with, again, some very subtle odors. They were introducing themselves by smell! How did they do that? Scat and urine were the usual smell markings, but they were doing it some other way…
When it came to the trainers, I didn’t know quite what to say, and Walking Sunshine spoke before I said anything.
“These are not dogs. Smell is not right for dogs.”
I cast a sideways look at Sybil and Ornel. Well, it would do no good to try and keep the secret any longer. “No,” I said. “They are not dogs, not really. They are really humans whose names are Adam and Frank.”
Ornel’s jaw dropped open. Sybil merely opened her eyes very wide and stared first at them, then at me, in angry disbelief.
“False dogs,” the willog said. “But not made from redmoss. Something like redmoss. Something better, not so fibrous. Oh, how wonderful is such substance for making replicas!”
“Aren’t you the clever one,” Ornel said to me, in a hard, disapproving voice.
“There was a good reason,” I said. “One you would approve of. We were breeding dogs for a world of their own, and we had no role models for them. We had no mature dogs to show them how to hunt and how to dig dens, how to act as a pack. If they hadn’t had someone to show them, we’d never have been able to turn them loose on a world of their own.”
Ornel did not change his expression, but his stare shifted to the willog, which was continuing its exposition.
“Replication is most interesting. Out of thankfulness for eyes and ears, willogs have let humans alone, for humans do not like being replicated. At least,” it stopped momentarily and focused several eyes on Gavi, “not those humans who live high on the rock, where willogs do not go.” It turned its eyes toward me. “Other more recent humans, however, have been old ones who enjoyed going into the moss and being remade, though their people do not want them to return afterward, to remake others…”
“The people have been remade?” blurted Ornel. “They are still alive?”
“Oh, yes, very alive. Still with same thoughts, same memories, but no more pains in bones, no more sadness. Walking Sunshine long ago has sent message to all redmoss, ‘Do not remake humans to go back for others.’ Silly for replicas to go back, to offer remake to others, and get burned dead for their trouble.” At that point the blue eye stared at Gavi, letting her know it was her people who had committed this indecency, before it went on: “Humans would be far happier being remade as part of world instead of just sitting on top of world as they are now.”
“All the old people from PPI are still alive?” I asked. “They are still…functioning?”
“Function?” said the willog, in a thoughtful tone. “What is function? They are not interested in doing things they did before, writing on papers, putting things away, making reports, all those things. They are wandering, tasting, smelling, talking to one another. Is this function?”
I didn’t know how to reply. Ornel, however, said, “I would need to talk to one of them in order to know whether they still function or not.”
The willog nodded, an all-over up-down motion. “We have had messages for some time describing this new dog creature. So far, no replication of dog had happened, but forest is alive with anticipation.”
“No magh us,” said Behemoth, with a snarl. “No mahs.”
The willog actually recoiled at this. “Very well. You have only to say what you prefer. It isn’t necessary to be abusive!”
Behemoth subsided with a rumble, and I spoke quickly into the uncomfortable silence. “We’re forgetting why we’re here. We came to watch the battle over the key to Splendor. If we want to be on time, I suggest we don’t delay finding a place to watch from.”
Behemoth’s obvious truculence was more than a little disturbing, but I didn’t want to query it at the moment, not with this completely unknown creature in our midst and large numbers of warriors coming toward us from several directions.
Gavi said, “I think I am already finding a place big enough for all of us. On west side of battleground, I am seeing a stone outcropping on the high ground, high enough to be seeing over the trees.” She turned to the willog. “There is being room for you there, as well. Unless you want to try to get closer.”
“With you will be good,” it said, inclining several trunks in a bow. “Hearing conversation is good. Thank you for the invitation.”
With Gavi in the lead, our now augmented group plunged back into the forest, with the male dogs following Gavi, Frank, and Adam close behind, then Scramble, Veegee, and Dapple. Ornel, Clare, and I were at the end of the line, followed by the willog, who, or which, had stopped making martial music and was contenting itself with a pleasantly harmonic humming in its several voices. I spent the journey trying to catalog impressions and draw conclusions that might be useful. The willog did not seem dangerous It responded with annoyance only when its intelligence was questioned. It had a strong sense of personal worth, which ought not to be disparaged. As for Behemoth, I was at a loss. Adam’s subservience I could understand, it fit into the usual pattern for canine packs, but Behemoth’s sudden exercise of authority had me baffled. He knew this wasn’t the world we’d planned for them; he knew there was no prey here to keep them alive. Surely he wouldn’t risk the ultimate freedom of a world of their own for some interim display of curiosity? Since that’s exactly what he was doing, I could only assume something was going on that I knew nothing about.
We made a considerable loop away from the lakeshore, and by late afternoon, we had come to the back side of the outcrop Gavi had mentioned. There a long, bare slope stretched upward and eastward to a line of broken stone. The sun threw our shadows before us as we went up quietly, even the willog silent. The distance was greater than it had appeared from below, and we had gained a considerable height by the time we reached the top, a jagged cornice of fractured stone stretching widely to either side. The crevices we could see through appeared to lead out into the air. Nonetheless, the dogs threaded their way into the maze and very shortly found a sizable ledge where the shattered rimrock had fallen onto the scree below. When we all found our way through various cracks, we had an excellent view of the battleground below.
The mo
ss-carpeted saucer was just as Gavi’s informer had described it, though Gavi had not used words like mysterious or eerie, both of which applied. The moss was indeed blue because it was either fluorescing blue light or was bathed in blue light from some other source, a luminescence that most resembled a pool of shining, sapphire smoke. The paved center of the great dish lay like an island in this gleaming pond, no smoke obscuring its rocky surface, which reminded me of the roads on the Phain planet in being leveled by nature rather than art. The trees around the rim of the dish were also as described. Through my glasses I saw a perfectly uniform fringe: each twig repeating the pattern of each leaf; each branch reproducing each twig; each tree restating each branch.
In the center of the paved circle stood the hexagonal crystal of stone, tall and dark, with something extraneous mounted near the top of the southernmost face. I could see it only edge on, for we were almost due west of it. If I had had to label it from what I could see, I would have called it a medallion, perhaps, or a mask rather than a key. Though golden in color and appearing circular, I could not distinguish its details.
There was no sign of anyone approaching. Gavi murmured to me that the men from Night and Day Mountains might possibly arrive during the night. I conveyed her words to the group, and we all decided to get some sleep, including the dogs. The willog thrust some of its roots into crevices in the rock before arranging itself against the stone and becoming one with the landscape. When I had spread our sleeping mats, Scramble came to lie down beside me, with Gavi on the other side of her. As I dozed off, I heard Gixit’s tiny, tremulous voice talking of…something, interrupted occasionally by Scramble’s rumbling mutter.
AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER
The full moon was low in the west, its light blocked by the stones behind us, when I was awakened by a stink. We had slept away most of the night, though it was still quite dark. I could hear Gavi breathing, but Scramble was no longer curled against my body. I sat up, eyes gradually adjusting to the combination of reflected moonlight and the blue radiance that bled upward from the giant moss saucer below. Gavi was still there, as were Ornel and Sybil. All the dogs were gone, however, both real and pseudo, and something nearby was generating a feculent, powerful stench.