His experienced hunter’s eye immediately pictured the drama that had been enacted there.
Avik had proved himself to be a true Faetian, although still a small boy. Judging by the traces of the fight, he had put up a desperate resistance.
But there had been many attackers and they had overpowered the little lad. Serpent found the route by which they had carried him off. For a long time he pursued the kidnappers until he realised that he had lost too much time and it would be impossible to overtake them.
Dusk had fallen on the forest as, stumbling over the tree-roots, Serpent made his way back home in utter despair. His arms dangled helplessly down by his sides, his head was bowed on his breast.
Thus he returned home alone on that tragic day and told his mother everything.
…Mada went crazy with grief and screamed that he had killed Avik. She meant that he was responsible for his brother’s death, but the proud Serpent flared up. Perhaps it was his grandfather’s blood in him, not just his mother’s. He was stung by the accusation she hurled at him. If his mother was capable of such a reproach, then he would go away to the caves and would live there on his own.
Mada was too crushed by grief to recollect herself and restrain her son.
She lay on the threshold with her hair unloosed and, through a veil of tears and the evening mist that reminded her of the lost Faena, she saw her beloved firstborn disappear behind the trees.
But she was threatened by yet another loss.
The lissom form of Ma, her elder daughter, slipped past her. Without a second thought, the girl had gone to follow Serpent.
When he came back that night from the hunt, Ave was shaken by the despondency with which he was met at home.
On learning about the double disaster— the loss of Avik and the departure of the elder children—Ave’s face darkened and he thrust his hand into his thick, greying beard.
“Even if I’m in the wrong, and I am in the wrong, of course,” said Mada to her husband, “how will Serpent and Ma be able to live on their own? You must bring them back.”
“That’s got to be done!” replied Ave. “On their own, they won’t be able to beat off attacks by the Faetoids, who have resumed the war with us. Their first catch, our poor Avik, will only make them even more fierce and determined.”
“I refuse to believe it!” protested Mada. “If Gor Terr lived for so long with them and taught them a thing or two, they could have kidnapped our Avik so that he could teach them too. But you’ve got to bring Serpent and Ma back.”
“I’ll find them,” promised Ave, and he added thoughtfully, “It’ll be a good thing if you’re right about Avik.”
Like a truly courageous Faetian, he was trying not to let his wife see how shattered he was by it all.
“I’m worried about that talking beast.”
“All my hopes are on him!” intervened Mada. “According to what Serpent told me, he talks like our beloved friend, Gor Terr.”
“That’s just what’s bothering me.”
“But I’m delighted. Even Dzin had a feeling of gratitude. The talking beast, whoever he may be, could save Avik.”
“He must be a pupil of Gor Terr’s. You were saying yourself that when Gor Terr became a leader, he hoped to teach the beasts a great deal.”
“But why have they come back? Perhaps Gor Terr isn’t alive… Either he wouldn’t have let them come here, or he would have come to us.”
“Who knows what’s happened to our friend after all these years?” sighed Ave Mar.
“Perhaps they need another leader and they came for a Faetian,” said Mada.
“I’ll find Serpent and we’ll look for the new lair of the Faetoids together. Perhaps we’ll meet Gor Terr or even find Avik still alive. Anyway, we’ll catch one of the talking beasts and question him.”
Ave did not manage to carry out his plan, however. Serpent and Ma had gone somewhere a long way away. They weren’t to be found in the nearby caves. He could only hope that they hadn’t fallen victim to the Faetoids.
Perhaps in another forest they had founded a new station for the descendants of the Faetians on Terr. The offended hunter hadn’t forgiven his mother for her reproach, although he had deserved it to some extent.
Nothing was known of Avik either.
Life continued for Ave and Mada with their family. As if to take over from the lost Avik and the runaway children, Mada gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, and their mother was fully occupied in caring for them. As if she hadn’t enough cares already.
She cooked for the whole family, treated hides with her younger daughters so as to sew, with the aid of tendons, primitive clothing and footwear for the growing children, herself and Ave. They had to gather medicinal herbs, about which Mada knew a great deal, and not just because she had once been a Sister of Health. She had been attending to all the members of her big family. She hadn’t time to help Ave with the hunting.
After the working day, when darkness had fallen, keeping the fire going in the hearth and grinding the day’s harvest of com in a stone mortar with a stone pestle, Mada would tell her children fairy tales.
She didn’t invent anything, she simply recalled her life on Faena. But for the little Terrans, living in the dense forest, stories about houses as high as the clouds, or about rooms that moved about and even went up into the air like birds, and even of the piloted star on which her parents landed on Terr, all sounded like an amazing, unattainable and incredible fairy tale.
Ave Mar also used to listen to these stories about the irrevocable past as he dozed on his couch after an exhausting day.
He would listen and could never understand whether he was having fantastic dreams or whether he was remembering long-forgotten pictures from the words of the now white-haired but still beautiful Mada.
And, to the rhythmic murmur of her infinitely beloved voice, the first Faetian on Terr wondered what lay in store for his children and grandchildren.
Would the Faetoids return? Surely the talking beast that Serpent had let go would feel duly grateful and would not only save Avik, but would lead the Faetoids away, as Gor Terr had done in his time? Or were neither Gor Terr nor Avik still alive, and was the war with the Faetoids about to begin again? And who would survive in that conflict? Who would settle the planet with a race of rational beings: the descendants of the Faetians or those of the Faetoids? In the process of development, they would begin to resemble the present-day Faetians. Otherwise the law of development of all living creatures would have to be seen in a wider perspective than had been thought of on Faena. It must be extended from one planet to all inhabited worlds! Rational beings could appear everywhere and could migrate to those planets where rational beings had not yet appeared. They would enter into conflict with the less developed. Was this not the meaning of the all-embracing law of the struggle for existence in which Reason must come out on top.
Ave decided to carve the history of his family on a cliff in the mountains where he went hunting.
One day, his rational descendants would read the inscription.
But what would they be like?