Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Magdaleena and I walked along, as I vacillated between a wish to touch her on the one hand and a fear of disturbing her on the other, but Magdaleena was thinking of different things entirely. Suddenly she stopped, pulled me behind a tree, and asked in an excited whisper: “Were you lying to Father when you said you don’t turn into a werewolf? Actually you do know how to do that, don’t you?”

“I don’t,” I said. “That sort of thing isn’t possible. One creature can’t change into another. An adder sheds its skin, but that doesn’t change it into a grass snake or a slowworm. No human has ever changed into a wolf. It’s completely stupid to believe such a thing.”

“I believe it!” said Magdaleena, and I was immediately terribly embarrassed that I hadn’t chosen my words better. “The monks talk about it too. Leemet, I understand that you don’t want to tell me about it. Father said it’s a terrible sin, and now you think I believe the same. But I don’t; I think it’s awfully exciting. I’d love to be able to change into a wolf!”

To this I could do nothing other than shrug my shoulders.

“Tell me, how is it done?” insisted Magdaleena.

“I really don’t know!” I replied. I would have liked to help Magdaleena; she was so beautiful that I would have done anything for her, but I couldn’t change her into a wolf, because that was impossible. But then I had a good idea.

“You want me to teach you Snakish words?” I offered.

“Can you change into a wolf with their help?” Magdaleena asked.

“No, you can’t. But with their help you can talk to all the animals. Of course I mean those that can speak themselves. Many of them can’t. But even they understand Snakish words and obey them. For example, without much trouble you can get food for yourself; you simply call a deer to you and kill it. You want me to teach you? It’s simple!”

“How does it go then?” asked Magdaleena. She didn’t seem to be particularly enthusiastic; Snakish words weren’t a good enough compensation against changing into a wolf.

I hissed to her one of the simplest sibilations and Magdaleena tried to repeat it after me, but her mouth managed only a sort of fizzling that didn’t sound anything like Snakish.

“Not bad,” I said. “It’s hard to start with; even I used to twist my tongue until it hurt. Try again. Listen carefully to how I do it, and try to repeat after me.”

I hissed again, very slowly and carefully, to make it easier for Magdaleena to catch the vibrations of the sound. She tried cautiously, tensely, so her face went red and mucus sprayed between her teeth. But it wasn’t Snakish.

“No, that’s not it,” I sighed.

“I did exactly the same thing as you,” said Magdaleena.

“Actually you didn’t,” I said, trying to offend her as little as possible. I wanted so much for Magdaleena to be my pupil. We could start having lessons in the most beautiful places in the forest that I could find, sitting together under a tree and hissing in competition with each other. And perhaps other things might happen under that tree too. I didn’t want to give up this wonderful future for any price, so I took up a new hiss and asked Magdaleena to try it.

“It’s just the same as the previous one,” said Magdaleena, when she had listened through my hiss.

“How do you mean? Didn’t you hear the difference? Those hisses are not alike at all. Listen again!”

I hissed the first word to her, and then the second.

“To me it’s all the same fizzle,” said Magdaleena, now a little peevishly. “And I said it the same way too.” She hissed again, but this hiss didn’t mean anything; if an adder had heard it, he would have said that the hisser had a dead rat in his mouth and he should swallow it first if he wanted to say anything.

I didn’t say that to Magdaleena, of course, and there was no rat in her mouth. The fault was in her tongue. Her pretty little pink tongue, which she was poking out of her mouth at my request so I could find out what was wrong with it, was surprisingly clumsy. Magdaleena’s tongue didn’t move; it was meant only for chewing bread and swallowing pap. I recalled the sad look that Pirre and Rääk always gave to my bottom when I went swimming in their presence; there was no trace of a tail. It had vanished, just as the muscles that made uttering Snakish words possible had vanished from Magdaleena’s tongue. Her tongue sat too deep; it was overgrown and weak. People were devolving before our very eyes: I no longer had my grandfather’s fangs; Magdaleena didn’t even have a proper tongue. Likewise her hearing was blunted; she really couldn’t tell one hiss from another. For her, Snakish was simply one endless sibilation, with no meaning, rather like the lapping of the waves of the sea.

I was forced to give in. It wasn’t possible for Magdaleena to learn Snakish; she was destined to live forever in the village, among the rakes and spinning wheels. True, that was how she wanted to live anyway. She had lost a priceless treasure, but she didn’t care about it.

“I can’t teach you Snakish,” I said awkwardly. “You’d never be able to pronounce it freely. Your tongue isn’t flexible.”

Magdaleena didn’t seem particularly concerned.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to snakes anyway. I’m afraid of them. Listen, let’s talk about something else. Have you seen sprites?”

“What sprites?” I asked reluctantly, because this subject immediately brought the Sage of the Grove to mind.

“Sprites live in the forest!” whispered Magdaleena. “Father believes that too, and he’s a very clever man after all, who has been in a foreign land and seen all the wonders of the world. He speaks the foreigners’ language and has talked with them. They also say that the forest is full of spirits, fairies, and little leprechauns who live under the ground. They’re all in the service of Satan, and that’s why it’s not good for a human to go into the forest. At least not deep into it, because then the spirits and the sprites lead them off the path and take them to their castle. You must have seen them!”

Wasn’t this dreadful? These people denied Snakish; everything worthwhile to be found in the forest was unknown and alien to them — but the sprites, those fairy-tale characters made up by Ülgas the Sage, had spread to the village and settled there! I was desperate. What was I supposed to say? If I assured her that the sprites didn’t exist, Magdaleena wouldn’t believe me anyway, and would think that I was hiding them from her, like the trick that allowed humans to change into wolves. But it was repulsive to me to spout the same drivel that droned on and on from the mouths of Ülgas and Tambet. I shrugged.

“I haven’t met many of them.”

“But you have met one or two? What are they like?”

“Ohh … Magdaleena, weren’t we supposed to be going to listen to some singing?”

“You don’t want to tell me about them!” whispered Magdaleena. “I understand. The sprites won’t let you reveal their secrets. But at least I know now that you’ve seen them. I can tell other people that — that I know a boy from the forest who’s seen fairies and spirits! Oh, they’ll be amazed!”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me quickly along the road, and I felt her warm palm and feared more than anything that my hands might get sweaty from the excitement. We passed several houses and finally arrived at the same place where Ints had killed a monk many years before. Near the place was a monastery. Magdaleena drew me over by a wall and signaled to me to sit down.

“Aren’t we going to go in?” I asked.

“Of course not! This is a monastery; no woman is allowed in there. Not you either, since you’re not a knight or a monk, but an ordinary peasant boy. The foreigners don’t allow peasants into their castles.”