Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

He cut the piper’s head from the body and stuffed it in his pouch.

“The head for me, the body for you,” he said cheerily. “Enjoy it!”

The bears stepped slowly up to the piper’s dead body. They nudged it with their snouts. One of the bears took the red cap with the golden bells in its teeth and put it on the corpse’s chest. They licked the little man’s hands. They wept.

“Eat up quickly, you fools!” shouted Grandfather from up in the air. “We’re going to set fire to this heap of lumber now! Boy, come down. I’m putting fire under the eaves!”

A little while later the conquered fortress was blazing and a cloud of sparks rose to the moon. I strode along the road, lit up by the firelight, Grandfather flapping overhead, and I heard him saying, “It’s good that they built their house in the middle of a wide clearing, so there’s no danger of the forest catching fire.”

I was just then wondering whether the bears had left the fortress or stayed to lick their teacher, who was able to play the pipe with his mouth and his arse. But then — what did it matter to me? Let them get scorched and perish if they wanted, together with their hunchback of the golden bells and his pipe.

Who would pity this new world?

“Grandfather, there’s another fortress!” I shouted, pointing ahead. “Now it’s its turn!”

“Exactly!” replied Grandfather. “Let’s attack it now, while we’re still warm from the last commotion!”

“Are there any bears here?” I asked.

“Can’t smell them,” answered Grandfather. “But what the hell, we can do it ourselves.”

“Yes we can!” I agreed, feeling the blood rushing to my head. “Let’s go, Grandfather! Lift me up over the walls again like last time!”

I grabbed hold of Grandfather and we flew. The fortress, which had seemed in the dark to be a fuzzy dark lump, was right here. I was ready to get into the thick of the iron men’s spears and swords, to struggle for my life, and if necessary even to perish. It was all the same to me, but looking at the building from above I suddenly realized that this wasn’t a knights’ castle but a monastery.

“Grandfather, we’re in luck!” I yelled. “There aren’t any iron men here, only monks! Grandfather, this will be just like going mushrooming; just cut with your knife!”

One monk was staring at me from down in the monastery yard. He raised his hands and shouted something in his incomprehensible language. The monastery bells started ringing. Not half an hour passed before they were silent again.

e took off our clothes and dried them by the fire, because capes wet with blood would get cold at night. Grandfather fiddled with his skulls, and when he’d got one mug ready, he threw it over his shoulder and started to make a new one. Chalices made from skulls were strewn across the forest floor like pinecones.

I went to sleep, and when I awoke to the first rays of the sun, Grandfather was still awake, still occupied with his skulls.

“Grandfather, you haven’t slept at all,” I said drowsily as I sat up yawning.

“I don’t have time for that,” replied Grandfather. “I’ve been squatting too long on the island; if I wasted my time sleeping now, I wouldn’t get anything done. Boy, eat your fill and get dressed. I’ll soon finish off the last mug and then we’ll keep on going and give the iron men another thrashing.”

“Yes, Grandfather,” I said. “We’ll keep on going.”

Yet it so happened that as we moved ever onward, so we were also moving backward, for the forest roads were circuitous, and we didn’t even try to keep moving in a certain direction, but wandered wherever our feet took us and where there was a chance of meeting iron men or monks. And so I discovered on one such evening that the surroundings were somehow familiar, and having walked a while longer I recognized the place where the wolves had killed the villagers’ sheep, the place where I had met Magdaleena, and fallen in love with her for the first time.

“Grandfather, we’ve come back home,” I said. “Our old shack isn’t far away.”

“Do you want to call in there?” asked Grandfather.

I didn’t.

What would be the point. Mother wasn’t there anymore. Then it occurred to me that Salme should still be in her own cave with Mõmmi. I hadn’t seen my sister for ages. When Grandfather and I last set off from here, I didn’t have the time or the desire to say farewell to her. To tell the truth I hadn’t even thought of her, for in the terrible avalanche that had buried everyone dear to me in the course of one night, I had quite forgotten that Salme was still alive. “Grandfather, how would it be if we went and visited my sister?” I suggested. “You could get to know your other grandchild.”

“The one who married a bear?” asked Grandfather. “Let’s go; you have to be close to your relatives. They’re your own flesh and blood after all.”

We turned off the road into the forest. It wasn’t comfortable at all for Grandfather to fly there, for his wings were too wide and tended to get caught on branches. So he rose higher and hovered over the treetops like an eagle.

“Give me a shout when you get there and I’ll come down!” he called from above.

“I’ll do that,” I yelled back. “We don’t have much farther to go, that is if Salme’s still living in her old cave. Let’s hope she hasn’t moved out.”

Grandfather didn’t reply; he was circling over the forest, swooping down and then rising up again with powerful strokes of his wings.

“Boy!” he shouted. “There are iron men in the forest! I can see them! What do you think? Shall we give them a little flogging? Then you’ll have a few nice skulls as gifts to take, and a couple of shanks for the bear.”

“Why not, Grandfather!” I shouted back. “Where are they?”

“Over there!” he yelled, and in the next instant he was roaring in a terrifying voice, because from “over there” an arrow had come flying from a bow, and pierced his shoulder. Grandfather howled, grabbed the tail of the arrow in his teeth to pull it out, but only bit the arrow in two and fell tumbling out of the sky, catching his wings against the tree branches and ending up lying in the middle of a pile of bones formed from the wings.

“Grandfather, are you alive?” I screamed and rushed over to him, but at the same time the horsemen galloped out from behind the trees, together with their bowmen. They had been hunting in the forest, and their hunt had succeeded, because although they hadn’t found a single deer or goat, they had hit my grandfather. It had been a really good shot, and I had to admit that the iron men’s weapons were effective. At that moment, of course, I had no time to admire their bows; I had to protect my helpless grandfather lying on the ground, and myself, because the iron men were already attacking. I hissed, and the horses started to bolt as always, and iron men tumbled from the saddle. I rushed at them, and in a few moments my knife was red with blood. But there were too many of them and Grandfather was no help to me. I killed at least half of them, but they were all around me, and at one moment I felt something terribly heavy and sharp falling on my head, my skull crackled, and before I lost consciousness I had time to think that my skull would not make a good chalice, because now it had a hole in it. I fell spread-eagled and didn’t remember anything more.

My head hurt terribly. It was the only thing I was aware of. I would have liked to faint again, to be rid of this pain, but I wasn’t allowed to. Someone hurled cold water on my face. I opened my eyes with difficulty and saw the grimacing face of an iron man before me. He said something and laughed.