Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“There you are,” said Hiie, when I crawled into Grandfather’s cave.

“You’re not asleep?” I asked, throwing myself down beside her.

“No, I’ve woken up already,” replied Hiie. “What are we going to do? Are we going home? Now we can.”

I hadn’t even thought about that, but when Hiie put it that way, I understood that indeed we could go home now! Grandfather had solved all our problems with a couple of bites. How simple it actually was! How ridiculous our plans now seemed — to convince Tambet to leave us in peace, and agree that we would move somewhere far away and never disturb one another again. How stupid! It was only necessary to get rid of Hiie’s father and everything was all right.

Grandfather was aware of this, and that is how he ruled over the whole island and was seething with vitality even in old age. He really was the root in which flowed all the juices that give a tree its strength. We were the crown, only rustling at a whisper while Grandfather roared. Maybe in the final analysis there was no more use in this roaring than in our modest rustling, but at least his roar resounded over the forests and hills, giving gooseflesh to the skin. His roar contained life and rage; it was haughty and heedless of all consequences. Grandfather had the force and fire of the Frog of the North; in us it had extinguished. But perhaps it could be rekindled?

Lying next to Hiie in Grandfather’s cave, I started to feel a force bubbling inside me, the force that had filled me the night I saved Hiie from Ülgas’s knife. I’d go back to the forest with Hiie, set up home there, and live as I want to, a man who knows Snakish and is capable of chopping someone to pieces, with the wolves, all the iron men, monks, and villagers. For the first time I truly understood this power given to me by the Snakish words in a world where all other humans have forgotten them. I could send the snakes to bite them and could still save them even after death by asking the snakes to suck the poison out. I could do anything I liked, just as my grandfather did what pleased him. True, I didn’t have fangs, but I could grow them.

Of course I would love to go back to the forest! I hugged Hiie, laughed in her ear, and whispered, “Let’s go home tomorrow and you’ll be my wife!”

Hiie pressed her nose against my chin.

“That’s wonderful!” she said. “The only thing that worries me is Ülgas. He’s still in the forest and he might still want to sacrifice me. Of course now that Father isn’t …”

“And soon Ülgas won’t be a problem either,” I declared. “If he dares to show me his face, I’ll knock his head off, boil his corpse, and send the bones to Grandfather. Ülgas is very old and rotten, but perhaps there’s still a healthy bone left in him that can be used. We won’t be making a drinking cup from his head, because it’s certainly decayed with stupidity, everything would just drip through.”

“Leemet, what’s wrong with you?” asked Hiie, taken aback. “You’ve never talked like that!”

“Today I received my grandfather’s inheritance,” I said, grabbing Hiie firmly by the waist and rolling with her across the cave floor, sending the animal skins flying.

“What are you doing?” shrieked Hiie. “You’ve gone mad!”

“I love you,” I announced, kissing her navel.

“That’s good,” replied Hiie. “But still you’re somehow crazy. I hope it’ll pass.”

“I hope it won’t,” I answered. “I feel that I’ve only understood today how I should live.”

he next morning we set off for home. Grandfather accompanied us to the shore, and assured us that he’d follow us soon, when the last bones were in place and the wings ready.

“Greetings to your mother and my daughter!” he said to me. “I haven’t seen her for so long and I miss her very much.”

“Maybe you could start right away by coming with us, visiting, and coming back to the island afterward,” suggested Hiie, but Grandfather shook his head.

“What nonsense! There’s no time! The most important thing still is to get the wings ready. Women have to wait when a man’s on a crusade.”

For our provisions he had roasted a few hares, and we also had to take with us a great number of skull beakers.

“Share them between yourselves,” he instructed. “Give your mother and your sister some, and keep some for yourself too. Don’t worry. One day when I fly in, I’ll bring some more.”

When we were already sitting in the boat and rowing away from the shore, Grandfather waved to us and shouted, “Don’t go on the attack on your own, boy! Wait for me too! Then you can mash from below and I can hack from above, like two jaws. Ahoy!”

He had almost faded from view. I rowed with swift strokes homeward and the water was again calm, almost without a single wave, as it had been all these days. It really seemed that on our visit to Grandfather we had gone back into the past, to some mysterious waters where time stood still and no wind blew. Or was it all a dream — starting from the evening when we were fleeing from the deaf wolves and jumped into the boat and drifted out to sea? Could it be that I simply dreamed up my fanged grandfather, the giant fish, the roped winds of Möigas, and even how I completely unexpectedly fell in love with Hiie? Maybe this was Dream-Hiie, who was quite different to the quiet and shy girl whom I’d known before I went to sleep?

In that sense, anyway, the dream hadn’t come to an end, for Hiie was sitting right here beside me in the boat and her eyes were as radiant as before, so I simply put the oars aside to embrace her.

“You’re my dream,” I said. “And I plan to sleep forever.”

“Horrible sleepyhead,” said Hiie and pulled me down, but one skull with a sharp jaw lay beside me, and we sat up straight.

“There are too many skulls here in the boat for lovemaking,” I said, and Hiie showed me her hip, into which the two eye sockets of a skull had pressed two rings.

“He’s been peeping into you,” I said.

“I won’t allow that, for some filthy iron man to stare at me like that,” declared Hiie, tossing the offending skull into the sea. “Let him look at the fishes for a change.”

But there were still an enormous number of skulls in the boat, so it wasn’t possible to lie down, and we had no choice but to row on.

The first thing we noticed on the home shore was the louse. It was scampering back and forth on the shoreline and gesturing with its legs excitedly.

“What’s wrong with him?” wondered Hiie. “He doesn’t usually run away from Pirre and Rääk. But they’re always up in their tree. Maybe something has happened?”

It was soon clear to us, though, that it had not left its masters at all, because the Primates were stumbling between the trees. Endlessly sitting in a tall tree had had some effect on their ability to walk; when walking on two legs they wobbled noticeably and from time to time they had to support themselves on their palms to keep their balance. I had not seen them come down from a tree in a long time, and such an unusual sight worried me.

“What has happened?” I cried, trying to row even faster.

“We saw you from the tree,” replied Pirre. “And the louse got so restless. We decided to come and meet you. Wonderful that you’ve come back alive and well.”

“We were afraid for you,” added Rääk. “From our treetop we can see everything that goes on in the forest. We saw you being chased by the wolves and how you managed to escape in the boat. We sighed with relief. But the very next day Tambet went off in search of you and again we were worried, because even we can’t see over the sea from the tree, no matter how high we climb. This morning Pirre spotted your boat and we were so glad that we climbed down and came to welcome you.”