Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“Why don’t you come?” asked Hiie from the boat. She must have wept and cried herself out by now, for now she was sitting very quietly and looking at me with sad eyes. The first wave of terror had passed, Tambet had not appeared yet, and Hiie wearily awaited developments.

“We’re not leaving,” I said. “We’ll look for Grandfather. I have to give him the windbag, and then we’ll ask him to talk to your father himself.”

“Father won’t listen to anyone,” said Hiie.

“Well, my grandfather will force him to listen,” I said boldly, trying to encourage Hiie. I took the girl by the hand and dragged her up.

“Come on now. The most important thing is to get to Grandfather’s house. Once we’re there, your father can’t do anything more.”

Hiie didn’t protest, but only sighed, kissed me unexpectedly and very hard, and stood up next to me.

We sneaked through the bushes, and every time a branch cracked or leaves rustled, we had the feeling that Tambet was just behind us, ready to grab us by the elbows and drag us to his boat like a couple of hares. However, that didn’t happen. We didn’t encounter Hiie’s father and perspiring with fear we made it to Grandfather’s house.

Grandfather was sprawled in the middle of the grass and was boiling something in a big pot.

“Grandfather!” I cried, rushing up to the fire. “We’re back!”

“I know,” said Grandfather. “I heard you sneaking through the forest. Did you get the windbag?”

“We did,” I replied, handing Möigas’s bag to Grandfather. “But—”

“Aha!” interrupted Grandfather with a triumphant roar. “The windbag! At last! Now just a few more bones to collect and a suitable spot to find, then look out, iron men and monkish rubbish! I’ll be flying on top of you, as if the moon had fallen from the sky, to flatten you to a pulp!”

“Grandfather, my father is here on the island,” said Hiie. “Remember, we said he was chasing us? Now he’s come here.”

“Yes, he did have that misfortune,” replied Grandfather, fishing from the pot a huge skull. “This will make the biggest drinking bowl I’ve ever had,” he added proudly. “I would otherwise give this bowl to you, girl, since it’s your father’s head, but what would a woman do with such a big beaker? A woman can’t drink that much at once.”

We were dumbstruck. Tambet, whom we had feared so much and from whom we were almost ready to flee back to Saaremaa, was boiling here in a big pot, chopped to pieces like a goat. His skull really was enormous and thick; no wonder that new ideas had such trouble getting into it, and that every idea that did finally enter that hard shell stayed forever like a bird caught in a trap.

I looked at Hiie, because I wanted to see her expression when shown the skull of her father in the flesh, which was almost ready to be a splendid drinking bowl. She eyed the skull, bit her lip, and finally covered her face between her knees.

“Are you crying?” I asked quietly.

“No,” replied Hiie without raising her head. “Why should I? He wanted to kill me; he was mad. I simply feel exhausted. The fear has worn me out. I was so horribly afraid when I saw Father’s boat I thought that, that now I’d be taken back home, and even if I wasn’t sacrificed to the sprites, everything would be just as before, so cruel, so sad, so bleak. But now I know that nothing will ever be the same again. He no longer exists; he’s been turned into a beaker. I’m now so peaceful that I feel sleepy. You won’t be offended if I go off and sleep for a while?”

“Why would we be against that, dear child?” replied Grandfather. “Go and have a doze as much as you like! We’ll be getting you up by suppertime.”

Hiie got up, smiled at us, and disappeared into Grandfather’s cave. Grandfather accompanied her with a friendly look, while stirring her father’s remains with a big ladle.

“She’s a good girl,” he said. “Doesn’t make a quarrel about nothing. I really needed a lot of bones; I just couldn’t let that thickset bloke walk away. Anyway I recognized him and I knew straight away that he was on your tail, so it made sense to strike him right down. I didn’t attack him without warning, though, because after all he was a human being, not some shitty iron man who’s worth nothing more than an insect. I hissed at him: “Careful! I’m going to bite you!” so he’d have a chance to defend himself. But he didn’t take any notice, as if he hadn’t understood; he just kept on wading forward through the hay, with a grim expression on his face. Well, there was nothing to do about it. I crawled on his heels and when there was a suitable moment, I bit him through the left knee. When he fell down screaming, I bit into his throat, and the thing was done. I flayed him, cleaned the meat off the skeleton, and got rid of most of the offal, and now I’m boiling the bones so they’ll be white and clattering when you strike them together. By the way, Hiie’s father had splendid shinbones; I’ve been looking for ones like these for ages, but you don’t get ones like them from iron men. Their legs are curved, because they sit on horseback all the time.”

Grandfather turned Tambet’s head bone around in his hand. “But best of all is this skull,” he said. “I don’t get tired of admiring it. This will be my victory mug; from this I’ll start drinking the blood of my slain enemies in war. To ancient freedom!”

Tambet could not have wanted a better fate for his bones, I thought, smirking bitterly. His bones would bring wings to carry my warlike grandfather to the land of the iron men, while his huge skull would be used as a victory chalice. In his blindness Tambet wanted to sacrifice Hiie to the sprites, but it was he that was sacrificed. His strong skeleton could now carry the last army of the Estonians into battle. True, it consisted of only one old man with fangs, but it was still better than nothing.

Tambet had always hoped that one day people would live in the forest in the ancient way again, and now he had happened on an island where undoubtedly the most ancient living Estonian was crawling around. Tambet should have been happy here, but it turned out that he too had become too modern. He had forgotten Snakish! Or he simply didn’t care about it, regarding Grandfather’s warning as just an annoying hiss, and believing, no doubt under Ülgas’s influence, that his fate was directed by the sprites, not the adders. Tambet did not get a foothold in his primeval world; he didn’t understand its language: that is why he was killed and boiled and had his skull made into a drinking bowl.

“Come, I’ll show you my wings,” said Grandfather and wriggled behind the bushes. I followed him and saw two big white lattices, carefully put together out of larger and smaller sets of bones. They were like two bushes in hoarfrost — dense, yet so thin that you could look through them. Building wings like these was undoubtedly complicated work; Grandfather had not been lazy all these years. To me these wings seemed perfect, but Grandfather assured me that some important bones were still missing.

“Here and here and of course here,” he declared, pointing with a finger. “Everything has to be precise; otherwise I’ll fall from the sky like a dead crow. I don’t need many more bones, but a couple of iron men will come in handy, to be on the safe side. Just let them come soon!”

He stroked his handiwork tenderly.

“And once I’ve risen into the sky,” he said, “then I’ll make up for all those years I’ve spent squatting like a badger stuck in its burrow.”

His head turned up to the moon, which had risen in the sky, and he cackled from the base of his throat, which sent cold shivers up my spine.

“I’m going to bed,” I said to Grandfather, but at that moment he wasn’t listening to me.