I look, and true! It is a warm forest killed to stone.
"Once it — was warm here. Once it was like the valleys. But the cold has grown stronger. The winter grows. Do you see? And the warm grows less and less."
"But the warm is life! The warm is Me-Myself!"
"Yes. In the warm we think, we learn. In the cold is only the Plan. In the cold we are blind… Waiting here, I thought, was there a time when it was warm here once? Did we come here, we blacks, in the warm to speak, to share? Oh young one, a fearful thinking. Does our time of learning grow shorter, shorter? Where will it end? Will the winters grow until we can learn nothing but only live blindly in the Plan, like the silly fatclimbers who sing but do not speak?" His words fill me with cold fear. Such a terrible learning! I feel anger.
"No! We will not! We must-we must hold the warm!"
"Hold the warm?" He twists painfully to stare at me. "Hold the warm… A great thinking. Yes. But how? How? Soon it will be too cold to think, even here!"
"The warm will come again," I tell him. "Then we must learn a way to hold it, you and I!"
His head lolls.
"No… When the warm comes I will not be here… and you will be too busy for thinking, young one."
"I will help you! I will carry you to the Caves!"
"In the Caves," he gasps. "In each Cave there are two black ones like yourself. One is living, waiting mindless for the winter to pass… And while he waits, he eats. He eats the other, that is how he lives. That is the Plan. As you will eat me, my youngling."
"No!" I cry in horror. "I will never harm you!"
"When the cold comes you will see," he whispers. "Great is the Plan!"
"No! You are wrong! I will break the Plan," I shout. A cold wind is blowing from the summit; the sun dies.
"Never will I harm you," I bellow. "You are wrong to say so!"
My scaleplates are rising, my tail begins to pound. Through the mists I hear his gasps.
I recall dragging a heavy black thing to my Cave.
Chill cold, kill cold… In the cold 1 killed you.
Leelyloo. He did not resist.
Great is the Plan. He accepted all, perhaps he even felt a strange joy, as I feel it now. In the Plan is joy. But if the Plan is wrong? The winters grow. Do the fatclimbers have their Plan too?
Oh, a hard thinking! How we tried, my redling, my joy. All the long warm days I explained it to you, over and over. How the winter would come and change
us if we did not hold the warm. You understood! You share, you understand me now, my precious fiame though you can't speak I feel your sharing love. Softly…
Oh, yes, we made our preparations, our own Plan. Even in the highest heat we made our Plan against the cold. Have other lovers done so? How I searched, carrying you my cherry bud, I crossed whole mountain ranges, following the sun until we found this warmest of warm valleys on the sunward side. Surely the cold would be weak here, I thought. How could they reach us here, the cold fogs, the icy winds that froze my inner Me and drew me up the Trails into the dead Caves of Winter?
This time I would defy!
This time I have you.
"Don't take me there, my Moggadeet!" You begged, fearful of the strangeness. "Don't take me to the cold!"
"Never, my Leeliloo! Never, I vow it. Am I not your Mother, little redness?"
"But you will change! The cold will make you forget. Is it not the Plan?"
"We will break the Plan, Lili. See you are growing larger, heavier, my fireberry-and always more beautiful! Soon I will not be able to carry you so easily, I could never carry you to the cold Trails. And I will never leave you!"
"But you are so big, Moggadeet! When the change comes you will forget and drag me to the cold."
"Never! Your Moggadeet has a deeper Plan! When the mists start I will take you to the farthest, warmest cranny of this cave, and there I will spin a wall so you ` can never never be pulled out. And I will never never leave you. Even the Plan cannot draw Moggadeet from Leelyloo!"
"But you will have to go hunting for food and the cold will take you then! You will forget me and follow the cold love of winter and leave me there to die! Perhaps that is the Plan!"
"Oh, no, my precious, my redling! Don't grieve, don't cry! Hear your Moggadeet's Plan! From now on I'll hunt twice as hard. I'll fill this cave to the top, my fat little blushbud, I will fill it with food now so I can stay by you all the winter through!"
And so I did, didn't I my Lilli? Silly Moggadeet, how I hunted, how I brought lizards, hoppers, fatclimbers and banlings by the score. What a fool! For of course they rotted, there in the heat, and the heaps turned green and slimy-but still tasting good, eh, my berry? so that we had to eat them then, gorging ourselves like babies. And how you grew!
Oh, beautiful you became, my jewel of redness! — So bursting fat and shiny-full, but still my tiny one, my sunspark. Each night after I fed you I would- part the silk, fondling your head, your eyes, your tender ears, trembling with excitement for the delicious moment when I would release your first scarlet limb to caress and exercise it and press it to my pulsing throat-sacs. Sometimes I would unbind two together for the sheer joy of seeing you move. And each night it took longer, each morning I had to make more silk to bind you up. How proud I was, my Leely, Lilliloo!
That was when my greatest thinking came.
As I was weaving you so tenderly into your shining cocoon, my joyberry, I thought, why not bind up living fatclimbers? Pen them alive so their flesh will stay sweet and they will serve us through the winter!
That was a great thinking, Lilliloo, and I did this, and it was good. Fatclimbers in plenty I walled in a little tunnel, and many, many other things as well, while the sun walked back towards winter and the shadows grew and grew. Fatclimbers and banlings and all tasty creatures and even-Oh, clever Mo.19g — all manner of leaves and bark and stuffs for them to eat! Oh, we had broken the Plan for sure now!
"We have broken the Plan for sure, my Lilli-red. The fatclimbers are eating the twigs and bark, the ban
lings are eating juice from the wood, the great runners are munching grass, and we will eat them all!"
"Oh, Moggadeet, you are brave! Do you think we can really break the Plan? I am frightened! Give me a hauling, I think it grows cold."
"You have eaten fifteen banlings, my minikin!" I teased you. "How fat you grow! Let me look at you again, yes, you must let your Moggadeet caress you while you eat. Ah, how adorable you are!"
And of course-Oh, you remember how it began then, our deepest love. For when I uncovered you one night with the first hint of cold in the air, I saw that you had changed.
Shall I say it? Your secret fur. Your Mother-fur.
Always I had cleaned you there tenderly, but without difficulty to restrain myself. But on this night when I parted the silk strands with my huge hunting claws, what new delights met my eyes! No longer pink and pale but fiery red! Red! Scarlet blaze like the reddest sunrise, gold-tipped! And swollen, curling, dewy-Oh! Commanding me to expose you, all of you. Oh, how your tender eyes melted me and your breath musky-sweet and your limbs warm and heavy in my grasp!
Wildly I ripped away the last strands, dazed with bliss as you slowly stretched your whole blazing redness before my eyes. I knew then-we knew! — that the love we felt before was only a beginning. My hunting limbs fell at my sides and my special hands, my weaving hands grew, filled with new, almost painful life. I could not speak, my throat-sacs filling, filling! And my love-hands rose up by themselves, pressing ecstatically, while my eyes bent closer, closer to your glorious red!
But suddenly the Me-Myself, Moggadeet awoke! I jumped back!
"Lilli! What's happening to us?"
"Oh, Moggadeet, I love you! Don't go away!"