Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Toward evening we were reminded that a person must also eat and that by nightfall it would be wise to seek some other dwelling place than a little boat, because you cannot always know the sea, and if a storm should suddenly arise, sleeping in a little boat is no fun at all. I put on my trousers and cape and took up the oars. After a couple of hours we reached the island.

“Interesting — are there people living here?” asked Hiie. “I hope not. Most of all I’d like to live here with just you, the two of us.”

“Me too,” I replied. I was no longer worried at all that Mother was waiting for me at home, not knowing anything about our fate. In the end it was she who advised me to go and rescue Hiie, my own bride, and I did, although at that moment I didn’t yet believe that Hiie was my bride. Mother would have to be happy, because Hiie was indeed rescued and had become my bride, so all her little baby clothes had not been made in vain at all. I had to admit that Mother was in the end wiser than I as I trudged hand in hand with Hiie around the island, looking for a suitable cave, because we didn’t care to start building a shack as evening fell. A large hare hopped across our path. I called it with Snakish words, it stopped, and I killed it.

After a little while we found a suitable overnight spot. I lit a fire and Hiie set about cooking the hare, while I lined the cave with skins and tried in every way to make it pleasanter. Sometimes life moves terribly quickly: only that morning had I fallen in love with Hiie; now we already had our own home, and my wife was preparing our first evening meal together. I had become a husband and a homeowner, maybe even the ruler of a whole island, because so far we hadn’t encountered a single human. We thought we were alone on the island, just the two of us.

But that wasn’t the case. I was just coming with a new load of branches to our brand-new cave when I was grabbed by the leg, so hard that I screamed and fell to my knees. It was already quite dim and I saw to my amazement only two burning eyes, which almost leapt into my face, and I heard a hoarse voice demanding, “Who’s your father? Tell me, who’s your father?”

“My …” I stammered. “He died long ago.” I saw a nose, which stuck out from a gray thicket of hair covering the whole face like a mushroom out of moss.

“Was his name Vootele?” demanded the voice. “Tell me, was his name Vootele?”

“No,” I said with a groan, for my leg was still in an iron grip. I imagined one might have a feeling like this when a wolf gnaws at your shinbone. “You’re hurting me. Vootele was my uncle, but he’s dead too.”

“Ah, uncle!” cried the hairy creature with the burning eyes. “So you’re Linda’s child!”

Linda really was my mother’s name and I said so. The grip slackened immediately, and instead I felt something very hairy and piercing sinking into my face, as if I were being forced headlong into the spruce branches. I was kissed on the mouth and shaken by the ears.

“That’s what I thought; a stink doesn’t lie!” said the stranger. “I always recognize the smell of my own blood. What’s your name, grandson?”

“Grandson?” I repeated in amazement. “My name is Leemet, but are you then …”

“Your grandfather!” announced the hairy old man, hugging me with terrible force. “Your mother, Linda, and your uncle Vootele are my children. Ah, so Vootele has died then! What a shame! My dear son! What happened to him then? Did he die in battle?”

I was too surprised to reply. My grandfather! Apparently then the same one that Uncle Vootele had told me about long ago, the crazy man with fangs, whose legs were chopped off and who was then thrown into the sea to drown. But he hadn’t drowned; he was alive. Indeed only his legs were missing; below the knees his trousers were tied up, so that his empty trouser legs wouldn’t drag along the ground. The old man followed my gaze and declared, “They chopped off my legs, the bastards. But never mind. I’ll still get them in the necks for it. You’ve come at the right time, nephew. I need help. But we’ll talk about that later. Is that girl who’s roasting a hare there yours? I didn’t try to bite her. I thought I’d bump the man off first, but then suddenly I got a whiff of my own blood. What are you doing here, Leemet? Are you on a crusade?”

I told my grandfather the whole story in brief. The old man listened with interest. His face was covered in a bush of fur, and from inside this bush two very large and very white eyes stared out, glowing in the dark. Grandfather’s arms, on which he supported himself, were of huge size and terribly bony, like an eagle’s claws. When they pressed into the moss, as he looked at me unblinkingly, he looked like an owl. He didn’t like the end of my story and shook his head disapprovingly.

“A man doesn’t run away!” he said sternly. “I would have attacked those shitty wolves and crushed them to death like rats. I’d have yanked the guts out of the sage with my teeth, and Tambet I’d have taken by the dick and ripped it out with his innards up to the chin. Open your mouth, nephew!”

I obediently opened my mouth. Grandfather looked inside and sighed in disappointment. “You don’t have fangs,” he said. “A shame. I don’t know why it is that I wasn’t able to pass them on to my descendants. My son didn’t have them, nor did my daughter … I hoped they might appear in the third generation, but in vain. Yes, so it’s of course harder to go into battle with wolves without fangs, but you always have to try. Fleeing is not what a man does! I’m a legless cripple, but do I hide in a burrow for that? No, I attack every stranger by the leg. This is my island and I defend it.”

“How did you get here in the first place, Grandfather?” I asked. “Uncle Vootele said you were thrown into the sea.”

“The seals brought me,” he replied. “They understand Snakish too. They carried me here and I took control of this island. Over the years all sorts of shit has barged in here; a whole shipload of knights came ashore here ten years ago and a little later a troop of monks with their farmhands, who had a plan to start building something here. I bumped them all off. I crawled in the grass like a snake and bit them in the thighs with my fangs, pulled them down and cut their throats. Then I flayed them and boiled them until their bones were clean of flesh, and for amusement I made drinking mugs out of their skulls. There’s not much to do here in the evenings, so to scare away the boredom I carved on their skulls.”

“Why did you boil them?” I asked, with some abhorrence. “Surely you don’t eat human flesh?”

“I don’t,” replied Grandfather. “I’ve got plenty of hares and goats here. But I need the bones. You see I’m building wings for myself out of them! Human bones are the best for that. You drill a hole in them, to take out the marrow, so the bone will be lighter, and then you put them together properly. The only thing is you need a lot of those bones. You have to chop up at least a hundred people to get proper wings that will carry a man. I’m not intending to die on this island! I’ll give those iron men a bitter battle yet! I’ll descend on them from the sky like lightning and I’ll bash their brains out. They cut my legs off and threw me in the sea! To hell with it, they won’t get rid of me with childish tricks like that! I’ll never give in!”

Grandfather opened his mouth and roared hoarsely, to reveal two blackened but still sharp fangs. I looked at them with wonderment. Here before me sat a real ancestral person, wild and full of strength, in his own way a little Frog of the North, whose mad life force radiated out, scorching his enemies to ash. You chopped his legs off, but he will build himself wings and attack from the air! When had he disappeared? Many years before my birth, and all that time he had prowled this island, hatching his plan of revenge, never giving up hope, still warlike and as tough as a tree branch that when it bends down straightens up again and strikes you when you least expect it.