The Elder Gods Read online

  “We should have destroyed that hideous creature as soon as we realized just exactly where its instincts would send it.”

  “We can talk about all this some other time, dear sister,” Dahlaine smoothly changed the subject. “What I really came here for was to give you something I thought you might like.”

  “A gift—for me?” Zelana’s irritated humor seemed to vanish. “What is it?” she demanded eagerly.

  Dahlaine smiled. Somehow the magic word “gift” always seemed to bring his brother and his sisters around to his way of thinking. Zelana in particular always responded in exactly the way he wanted her to. A gift wasn’t really a form of coercion, but it served the same purpose, and it was a nicer approach. “Oh,” he said in an offhand manner, “it’s not really very much, sister dear. It’s just a little something I thought you might enjoy. How would you like a new pet? It occurred to me that you might be getting a little tired of your dolphins after all these eons, since they can’t really come out of the water to play with you here in your lovely grotto, so I brought you a pet that should be able to share your home.”

  “A puppy, maybe?” Zelana asked eagerly. “I’ve never owned a puppy, but I’ve heard that they’re very affectionate.”

  “Not exactly a puppy, no.”

  “Oh . . .” Zelana sounded disappointed. “A kitten, then?” she said, her eyes brightening once more. “I’ve heard that the purring sound kittens make is very relaxing.”

  “Well, not quite a kitten either.”

  “What is it, Dahlaine?” Zelana demanded impatiently. “Show me.”

  “Of course,” Dahlaine replied, concealing his sly smile. He reached both hands into the unseen emptiness he always carried along behind him and took a fur-wrapped bundle out of the air. “With my compliments, my beloved sister,” he said extravagantly, handing her the bundle.

  Zelana eagerly took the bundle and turned back the edge of the fur robe to see what her brother had given her. She gaped in obvious disbelief at the newborn pet drowsing in the warm fur robe. “What am I supposed to do with this thing?” she demanded in a shrill voice.

  He shrugged. “Take care of it, Zelana. It shouldn’t be much more difficult to care for than a young dolphin.”

  “But it’s one of those man-creatures!” she protested.

  “Why, so it is,” Dahlaine replied in mock astonishment. “How strange that I didn’t notice that myself. You’re very perceptive, Zelana.” He paused. “It’s not an ordinary man-creature, dear sister,” he added gravely. “It’s very special. There are only a few of them, but they’ll change the world. Care for it and protect it, Zelana. I think you’ll have to feed it, because I don’t think it can live on light alone as we do. You might have to experiment a bit to find something it can digest, but I’m sure that you’re clever enough to solve that problem. You’ll need to keep it clean as well. Infant man-creatures tend to be messy. Then, after a few years, you might want to teach it to talk. There are things it’s going to need to tell us, and if it can’t talk, it won’t be able to pass them on to us.”

  “What could one of these creatures tell us that we don’t already know?”

  “Dreams, Zelana, dreams. We don’t sleep, so we don’t dream. That baby in your arms is a Dreamer. That’s why I brought her to you.”

  “It’s a girl, then?” Zelana’s voice softened.

  “Naturally. I didn’t think you’d get along very well with a boy. Care for her, Zelana, and I’ll come by in a few years to see how she’s coming along.”

  The baby in Zelana’s arms made a cooing sound and reached out one tiny hand to touch Zelana’s face.

  “Oh,” Zelana said in a trembling, almost stricken voice, clasping the infant more closely to her.

  Dahlaine smiled. It had turned out rather well, he congratulated himself. All it had taken to totally enslave his brother and both of his sisters had been a few peeps and coos and one soft touch from an infant hand. He might have gloated a bit more, but his own baby Dreamer was home alone, and it was almost feeding time, so he really should get on back.

  He swam out of Zelana’s grotto and remounted his well-trained lightning bolt. Lightning bolts are noisy steeds—there’s no question about that—but they can cover vast distances in the blink of an eye.

  Zelana’s first problem with her newfound charge was finding something to feed it. She rather hoped that Dahlaine had been mistaken. If the infant could live on light alone, as Zelana herself did, feeding it would be no problem. The vein of pink quartz in the ceiling of the grotto concentrated the sunlight into a glowing pink pool, which was presently centered on the bed of moss where Zelana occasionally rested. Hopefully she laid the fur-robed bundle on that moss bed and turned the robe back to allow the sunlight to touch the child.

  The infant began to fuss a bit. Maybe the little creature didn’t like the color. Zelana had discovered that a steady diet of pink light took a bit of getting used to. Pink, it appeared, was an acquired taste.

  Zelana snapped her fingers, and the quartz obediently turned blue. The baby didn’t stop fussing, though, and her discontent was growing louder.

  Zelana tried green, but that didn’t work either. Then she tried plain white. It was a little bland, but perhaps the baby wasn’t ready for advanced colors yet.

  The sounds the infant was making grew louder and more insistent.

  Zelana quickly gathered the squalling infant in her arms and hurried down to the edge of the shallow pool at the mouth of the grotto. “Meeleamee!” she called in the piping language of the dolphins, “I need your help! Right now! Please!”

  Now, Meeleamee had mothered many, many young, so she had great wisdom and much experience in such matters. “Milk,” she advised.

  “What is milk?” Zelana asked, “and where can I find some?”

  Meeleamee explained in some detail, and for the very first time in her endless life, Zelana blushed. “What a strange sort of thing,” she said, blushing even harder. She looked down at herself. “Do you think I might be able to . . .” She left it hanging.

  “Probably not,” Meeleamee replied. “There are some things involved that are just a little complicated. Can the young one swim?”

  “I don’t really know,” Zelana admitted.

  “Unwrap her and put her down in the shallow water here. I should be able to nurse her without too much trouble.”

  It was a bit awkward at first, but they found that if Meeleamee laid on her side and Zelana held the infant, things went quite well. Zelana felt a real sense of accomplishment—which lasted for nearly four hours.

  Then they had to feed the child again. It seemed that there was a great deal of inconvenience involved in caring for infants.

  The seasons turned, as seasons always do, and summer drifted on into autumn, and winter followed shortly after. Zelana had never really paid much attention to the seasons. Heat or cold had little meaning for her, and she could create light whenever she grew hungry.

  The female dolphins were taking turns feeding the infant, and Zelana noticed that the child seemed to be very affectionate. The dolphins were a bit startled by kisses at first, but after a while they even enjoyed being kissed by the grateful child, and sometimes there were even arguments about whose turn it was to nurse. The arguments broke off abruptly when the child sprouted teeth and began chewing on whatever was handy, though. Her diet changed at that point, and the dolphins offered her fish instead of milk. She still kissed them by way of thanks, so everything seemed all right again.

  Since the child had always been fed in the shallow pool at the grotto’s mouth, she was swimming even before she began to grow teeth, but she started walking—and running—not long after her diet changed, and she was soon toddling about the grotto, squeaking dolphin words as she went. She returned to the water whenever she grew hungry, however. The dolphins were careful to keep her more or less confined to the water at the mouth of the grotto, but they took to chasing fish in from the deeper waters of Mother Sea to give th
e child some experience in the business of catching her own food.

  When the summer of the child’s third year arrived, she ventured out of the grotto to join the younger dolphins in their forays along the coast of the Isle of Thurn. She spent her days now frolicking with the young dolphins and eating the bounty of Mother Sea.

  Zelana approved of that. The child’s independence freed her mistress at last so that she could return to poetry and music.

  The young dolphins called the child “Beeweeabee,” but Zelana didn’t really think that was appropriate, since it approximately translated into “Short-Fin-With-No-Tail.” Despite her habits and her companions, the little girl was still a land animal, so Zelana unleashed her poetic talents and ultimately arrived at “Eleria.” It had a nice musical sound to it, and it rhymed with several very pleasant words.

  The little girl didn’t really seem to care for the name, but after a while she would answer to it when Zelana called her, so the name more or less did what it was supposed to.

  The seasons continued to turn, but Zelana had long since realized that they could do that on their own, so she didn’t have to prompt them.

  Then, in the autumn of Eleria’s fifth year, Dahlaine came by again. “How are things progressing with your child, dear sister?” he asked Zelana.

  “It’s a bit hard to say,” Zelana replied. “I haven’t had any contact with the man-creatures for more than ten eons, and I’m sure they’ve changed in that many years. I can’t really be sure what’s normal for them at Eleria’s age. She spends most of her time in the water, though, so she doesn’t stink the way most of her kind did when I turned my back on them.”

  “Where is she?” Dahlaine asked, looking around the grotto.

  “Probably out playing with her friends,” Zelana said, “most likely somewhere along the coast of the Isle.”

  “She has friends?” Dahlaine seemed a bit surprised. “I didn’t know there were any people here on the Isle.”

  “There aren’t, and even if there were, I wouldn’t permit her to associate with them.”

  “You’re going to have to get over that, sister. Eventually she will be required to have dealings with her own kind.”

  “What for?”

  “She’ll have to tell them what they’re supposed to do, Zelana. If her playmates aren’t people, what exactly are they?”

  “Dolphins, of course. She and the young dolphins get along very well.”

  “I didn’t know that dolphins can move around on dry land.”

  “They can’t. Eleria swims with them.”

  “Are you mad?” Dahlaine almost screamed. “She’s only five years old! You can’t just turn her loose in Mother Sea like that!”

  “Stop worrying so much, Dahlaine. She swims almost as well as her playmates do, and she finds most of her food out there in deep water. It saves me all sorts of time. She feeds herself, so I don’t have to bother. She does seem to like berries—when they’re in season—but most of the time she eats fish.”

  “How does she cook them if she’s out there in the water?”

  “What is ‘cook’?” Zelana asked curiously.

  “Just a custom, really,” Dahlaine replied evasively. “You ought to try to keep her out of deep water, though.”

  “Why? She swims mostly along the surface, so what difference does it make how much water’s down below her?”

  Dahlaine gave up. There was just no talking with Zelana.

  2

  Though Zelana would not have admitted it even to herself, her life was much more pleasant now that she had Eleria to love and to care for. Since Eleria was able to find her own food and she had playmates enough to keep her occupied, her presence in the grotto in the evenings was hardly any inconvenience at all. Zelana was still able to create poetry and compose music, and Eleria served as a ready-made audience. She loved to have Zelana sing to her, and she seemed to enjoy listening to the recitation of Zelana’s poems—even though she didn’t understand a single word. She was now well into her sixth year, but she continued to speak exclusively in the squeaky, piping language of the dolphins.

  Zelana considered that. It wasn’t really all that much of a problem, since she herself was also fluent in that language. She decided, though, that perhaps one of these days she might teach the young one the rudiments of the language she spoke and shared with her sister and her brothers. It shouldn’t be too difficult. Zelana had discovered that Eleria was very quick.

  As it turned out, however, Eleria was about two jumps ahead of her. Zelana had been reciting poetry to the child since Eleria’s infancy, and one day in the early autumn of Eleria’s sixth year Zelana happened to overhear the child reciting one of the poems to her playmates, translating each line into their own language as she went along. Zelana’s poetry took on whole new dimensions when delivered in the squeaks and burbles of the dolphin language. Zelana was fairly sure that the young dolphins weren’t really all that interested in poetry, but Eleria’s habit of rewarding their attention with kisses and embraces kept them obediently in place. Zelana was very fond of dolphins herself, but the notion of kissing them had never occurred to her. Eleria, however, seemed to have discovered early in her life that dolphins would do almost anything for kisses.

  Zelana decided at that point that it might not be a bad idea to start paying closer attention to the progress of the young child. Lately it seemed that every time she turned around, Eleria had a new surprise for her.

  “Eleria,” she said a bit later, when the two of them were alone in the grotto.

  Eleria responded with a squeaky little dolphin sound.

  “Speak in words, child,” Zelana commanded.

  Eleria stared at her in astonishment. “It is not proper that I should, Beloved,” she replied quite formally. “Thy speech is not to be used for mundane purposes or ordinary times. It is reserved for stately utterances. I would not for all this world profane it by reducing its stature to the commonplace.”

  Zelana immediately realized where she had blundered. In a peculiar sort of way she’d treated Eleria in much the same way the child was now treating her dolphin playmates. Eleria had been something on the order of a captive audience—but not quite completely captive. The child had drawn her own conclusions. There was a certain logic behind Eleria’s conviction that Zelana’s language was reserved for poetry alone, since the only times when Zelana had spoken that language to her had been during those recitations. Ordinary conversations between them had been in the language of the dolphins.

  “Come here, child,” Zelana said. “I think it’s time for us to get to know each other a bit better.”

  Eleria seemed apprehensive. “Have I done something wrong, Beloved?” she asked. “Are you angry with me because I told your poems to the finned ones? You didn’t want me to do that, did you? Your poems were love, and they were for me alone. Now I have spoiled them.” Eleria’s eyes filled with tears. “Please don’t make me go away, Beloved!” she wailed. “I promise that I won’t do it again!”

  A wave of emotion swept over Zelana, and she felt her own eyes clouding over. She held out her arms to the child. “Come to me,” she said.

  Eleria rushed to her, and they clung to each other. Both of them were weeping now, yet they were filled with a kind of joy.

  Zelana and Eleria spent all of their time together in the grotto after that. The dolphins brought fish for Eleria to eat, and the trickling spring provided water, so there was no real need for the child to go out into Mother Sea. Her playmates were a bit sulky at first, but that soon passed.

  Zelana spent many happy hours teaching Eleria how to create poetry and how to sing. Zelana’s poetry was stately and formal, and her songs were complex. Eleria’s poetry was still of a more ancient form, but much more passionate, and her songs were simple and pure. Zelana was painfully aware that the child’s voice, clear and reaching upward without effort, was more beautiful than her own.

  Eleria eventually came to realize that the language she h
ad come to know as the language of poetry had a more colloquial form which they could use for everyday communication. She still insisted on calling Zelana “Beloved,” however.

  It was in the autumn of Eleria’s seventh year when the child went out to play with her pink friends again. Zelana had suggested that Eleria had been neglecting them of late, and it was not really polite to do that.

  Late that day Eleria returned to the grotto with a strange glowing object.

  “What is that pretty thing, child?” Zelana asked.

  “It’s called a ‘pearl,’ Beloved,” Eleria replied, “and a very old friend of the dolphins gave it to me—well, she didn’t exactly give it to me. She showed me where it was, though.”

  “I didn’t know that pearls could grow so large,” Zelana marveled. “It must have been an enormous oyster.”

  “It was huge, Beloved.”

  “Who is this friend of the dolphins?”

  “A whale,” Eleria replied. “She’s very old, and she lives near that islet off the south coast. She joined us this morning and told me that she wanted to show me something. Then she led me to the islet and took me down to where this enormous oyster was attached to a reef. The oyster’s shell was almost as wide across as I am tall.”

  “How did you pry it open if it was that big?”

  “I didn’t have to, Beloved. The old whale touched the shell with her fin, and the oyster opened itself for us.”

  “How very peculiar,” Zelana said.

  “The old whale told me that the oyster wanted me to have the pearl, so I took it. I did thank the oyster, but I’m not sure it could understand me. It was a little hard to swim and hold my pearl at the same time, but the old whale offered to carry me back home.”

  “Carry?”

  “Well, not exactly. I rode on her back. That is so much fun.” Eleria held the pearl up. “See how it glows pink, Beloved? It’s even prettier than the ceiling of our grotto.” She nestled her pearl, which was about the size of an apple, against her cheek. “I love it!” she declared.