Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“I understand,” replied Ints.

Then I ran to the burned linden tree, by the straightest path and as fast as I could, paying no heed to the branches poking my face, and Ints stayed at my heels.

Ülgas was indeed there. If I hadn’t been blind with rage, his appearance would have moved me. The sage was naked and his skeletal body was covered by something like bark, formed of mud, with twigs and other rubbish that lay around the forest clinging to it. Half of his face was gone and the former wound was covered by a large scar, strikingly pink next to the brown skin, and somehow moist looking. To his fingers Ülgas had tied short whittled spikes; with these he was pulling wood sorrel from the ground and stuffing it, along with the soil, in his mouth, quietly mumbling to himself. Some of the wood sorrel had got tangled in the sage’s beard and hung from his chin like a green mold. This was not a human. This was a monstrous animal or even a plant, a tree from the grove come back to life, gobbling herbs and staring at me with a single crazed eye. He recognized me and screeched, “You! You chopped down the sacred grove! The dogs of the grove won’t forgive it. They’ll chew you to a pulp!”

He raised his hands threateningly, stretched out his wooden-clawed fingers, and barked.

“You see, the dogs of the grove know your scent!” he squealed. “They’ll come and bite you to death!”

I noticed that the wooden claws were brown with caked blood. No doubt this beast had ripped Magdaleena’s and little Toomas’s throats with these same spikes. I felt the world going hazy before my eyes. Hatred was choking me; I stepped closer and with a single stroke lopped Ülgas’s left hand off. The sage squealed shrilly, but didn’t retreat; he tried to grab me with his right hand. I jumped out of the way and the wooden claws groped at the air without hitting me. A moment later the other hand fell among the wood sorrel. I stepped on it and screamed, “These aren’t dogs, you son of a bitch! They’re your own hands, with which you killed two innocent people! You’re a beast, a beast!”

“I wanted to kill you!” screeched Ülgas, pressing his blood-dripping stumps against his belly. “I spied on you and lay in wait, but just that night when I came after you with my faithful dogs, you weren’t at home. But the dogs wanted to eat. The sprites had promised them blood, and so they quenched their thirst. No one can oppose the sprites; they are all-powerful!”

This tale was so horrifying that I pulled Ülgas upright, and with one stroke split his stomach open. He let out a whine and collapsed to the ground.

“Bastard!” I panted. “Understand once and for all that there are no sprites and no dogs of the grove; there’s just your sick brain. Why didn’t I kill you before? All this is my fault!”

I put my hand inside Ülgas’s wound and pulled out his intestines. The sage roared and howled. I tied the guts to the old linden tree and kicked the old man in the face.

“Now crawl around your own sacred tree, you villain!” I screamed. “Crawl until all your guts are twisted around it! Crawl, you hear me, crawl!”

And he did start to crawl! A bloody and loathsome trail formed behind him, the long slimy entrails hung out from his belly and stretched ever longer. The wood sorrel beneath the tree turned brown from Ülgas’s blood. His tongue, now blue, hung from his mouth, as he drew himself slowly forward, wheezing, his single eye bulging and lifeless. Having done two circuits around the linden, he was drained of blood.

“That is obscene,” said Ints, turning her head aside in disgust.

“Come and eat and enjoy your feast, honorable sprites and dogs of the grove,” I screamed at the top of my voice. “The table is set! Come and have a good taste; this dish should please you! Be sure to come, for today you’re being fed for the last time! Tomorrow no one will remember you. From tomorrow you’re condemned to oblivion and starvation! Last chance, respected sprites! Dogs, aoouu! Where are you? Come and gobble!”

Only flies flew there at my bidding, a great cloud, and soon Ülgas’s corpse was covered in a humming black crust.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Ints. “This is making me sick.”

I spat on the flies and the remains of the sage, turned around, and marched away.

“Where are you going now?” asked Ints, crawling along beside me.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to the village?”

“No.”

“Are you coming to our place?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

I would have liked to just keep going and fall off a precipice where the path met a cliff, just like that day when the wolf killed Hiie. Again it was all over, again it was all past, again everything had vanished.

“Come to our place first,” suggested Ints. “You should rest. You can lick some of the white stone and go to sleep.”

“And then?”

“Then what?”

“When I wake up?”

“I don’t know, Leemet. We’ll think about that later. Please, come with me.”

I didn’t argue with Ints. So be it, I would go to the snakes. Actually it didn’t really matter where I went or what I did.

We went back to the path that led to the snakes’ cave and went along for a while in silence. Then suddenly Ints hissed in alarm.

“I can smell smoke!” she hissed. “Hurry! Something strange is going on!”

I too could smell fire. I started running, and my self-confidence began to return. Smoke and flames blazing between the trees might mean that again I had the opportunity to fight, to bury my own dejection in blind rage for revenge. Who could be making a fire there? Maybe some monks and iron men? I took out my knife and fingered its handle greedily.

“That smoke is coming from our cave!” hissed Ints beside me, horrified.

We rushed onward and in a moment we were there. It was not iron men or monks at all. It was a group of villagers, with Johannes at their head, and Pärtel and fat Nigul and Jaakop and all the other men. They were standing in a circle around a huge fire that had been built right in front of the burrow leading to the snakes’ cave, and in the fire one could see several charred adders, which had evidently tried to get into the fresh air from the smoke invading the cave. The only thing they had achieved was to exchange death by choking for death by roasting.

My mother was in the cave too! And Ints’s father, the king of the snakes! And her children, whose crowns were only just starting to grow on their heads! They were all there and couldn’t get out.

Ints hissed in a horrifying voice and attacked the villagers from behind. One boy screamed and fell to the ground stung by Ints, then an old man roared, covered his face with his hand, and collapsed. Ints struck out to the right and the left, and fear and confusion reigned among the villagers.

“Help! Help!” they screamed. “A snake from hell has got out!”

I didn’t intend to let Ints fight alone. I summoned all the power in my lungs and rushed to help her. With my first blow I cut through fat Nigul’s throat and the greasy man fell down like a sack. I hit out heedlessly in all directions, and sometimes I had to close my eyes as the blood sprayed in my face and stung my eyes. There were too many people, and if I lunged in among them, I couldn’t defend my back. Someone flung a stone at my neck, my skull cracked, and I fell to my knees, spitting blood that came from I knew not where. The world revolved before my eyes, and before I had time to collect myself, I was bound up. Ints was lying beside me. She was still alive and moving slowly, but her backbone was broken.

I saw my old friend Pärtel bending over us, in his hand a heavy club.

“These snakes are actually not all that dangerous,” I heard him saying. “You just have to bash them in the middle of the back and they’re done for. It’s as delicate as a twig: one bash and the backbone is broken.”