He stopped to point at the plain. Anana turned and saw that it was now covered with herds of animals, elephants, moosoids, antelopes, and many small creatures. The mountains were dark with birds that had settled on them. And the skies were black with millions of flying creatures.
"They migrate from near and far," Urthona said. "They come to enjoy the sea and the wooded lands while they can. Then, when the storms start, they leave."
Anana wandered away. As long as she didn't get very far from the camp, she was free to roam around. She approached the chief, who was sitting on the ground and striking the ground with the axe. She squatted down before him.
"When will the storms cease?" she said.
His eyes widened. "You have learned our language very quickly. Good. Now I can ask you some questions."
"I asked one first," she said.
He frowned. "The Lord should have ceased being angry and gone back to his palace before now. Usually, the lightning would have stopped two light-periods ago. For some reason, the Lord is very angry and he is still raging. I hope he gets tired of it and goes home soon. The beasts and the birds are piling up. It's a dangerous situation. If a stampede should start, we could be trampled to death. We would have to jump into the water to save ourselves, and that would be bad because our grewigg would be lost along with our supplies."
Grewigg was the plural ofgregg, the word for a moosoid.
Anana said, "I wondered why you weren't hunting when so many animals were close by."
The chief, Trenn, shuddered. "We're not stupid. Now, what tribe is yours? And is it near here?"
Anana wondered if he would accept the truth. After all, his tribe, the Wendow, might have a tradition of having come from another world.
"We are not natives of this ... place." She waved a hand to indicate the universe, and the flies, alarmed, rose and whirled around buzzing. They quickly settled back, however, lighting on her body, her face, and her arms. She brushed
them away from her face. The chief endured the insects crawling all over him and into his empty eye-socket. Possibly, he wasn't even aware of them.
"We came through a ..." She paused. She didn't know the word for gate. Maybe there wasn't any. "We came through a pass between two ... I don't know how to say it. We came from beyond the sky. From another place where the sky is ... the color of that bird there."
She pointed to a small blue bird which had landed by the channel.
The chiefs eye got even larger. "Ah, you came from the place where our ancestors lived. The place from which the Lord drove our forefathers countless light-periods ago because they had sinned. Tell me, why did the Lord drive you here, too? What did you do to anger him?"
While she was trying to think how to answer this, the chief bellowed for the shaman, Shakann, to join them. The little gray-bearded man, holding the gourd at the end of a stick to which feathers were tied, came running. Trenn spoke too rapidly for Anana to understand any but a few words. Shakann squatted down by the chief.
Anana considered telling them that they'd entered this world accidentally. But she didn't know their word for accident. In fact, she doubted there was such. From what she'd learned from Nurgo, these people believed that nothing happened accidentally. Events were caused by the Lord or by witchcraft.
She got an inspiration. At least, she hoped it was. Lying might get her into even worse trouble. Ignorant of the tribe's theology, she might offend some article of belief, break some tabu, say something contrary to dogma.
"The Lord was angry with us. He sent us here so that we might lead some deserving tribe, yours, for instance, out of this place. Back to the place where your ancestors lived before they were cast out."
There was a long silence. The chief looked as if he were entertaining joyful thoughts. The shaman was frowning.
Finally, the chief said, "And just how are we to do this? If the Lord wants us to return to sembart ..."
"What is sembart?"
The chief tried to define it. Anana got the idea that sembart could be translated as paradise or the garden of Eden. In any event, a place much preferable to this world.
Well, Earth was no paradise, but, given her choice, she wouldn't hesitate a second in making it.
"If the Lord wants us to return to sembart, then why didn't he come here and take us to there?"
"Because," Anana said, "he wanted me to test you. If you were worthy, then I would lead you from this world."
Trenn spoke so rapidly to Shakann that she could comprehend only half of his speech. The gist, however, was that the tribe had made a bad mistake in not treating the captives as honored guests. Everybody had better jump to straighten out matters.
Shakann, however, cautioned him not to act so swiftly. First, he would ask some questions.
"If you are indeed the Lord's representative, why didn't you come to us in his shelbett?"
A shelbett, it turned out, was a thing that flew. In the old days, according to legend, the Lord had traveled through the air in this.
Anana, thinking fast, said, "I only obey the Lord. I dare not ask him why he does or doesn't do this or that. No doubt, he had his reasons for not giving us a shelbett. One might be that if you had seen us in one, you would have known we were from him. And so you would have treated us well. But the Lord wants to know who is good and who isn't."
"But it is not bad to take captives and then kill them or adopt them into the tribe. So how could we know that we were doing a bad thing? All tribes would have treated you the same."
Anana said, "It's not how you treated us at first. How you treated us when you found out that we came from the Lord will determine whether you are found good or bad in his eyes."
Shakann said, "But any tribe that believed your story would honor you and take care of you as if you were a baby. How would you know whether a tribe was doing this because it is good or because it is pretending to be good from fear of you?"
Anana sighed. The shaman was an ignorant savage. But he was intelligent.
"The Lord has given me some powers. One of them is the ability to look into the ..."
She paused. What was the word for heart?
"To look inside people and see if they are good or bad. To tell when people are lying."
"Very well," Shakann said. "If you can indeed tell when a person lies, tell me this. I intend to take this sharp hard thing the chief took from you and split your head open. I will do it very shortly. Am I lying or am I telling the truth?"
The chief protested, but Shakann said, "Wait!
This is a matter for me, your priest, to decide. You rule the tribe in some things, but the business of the Lord is my concern."
Anana tried to appear cool, but she could feel the sweat pouring from her.
Judging from the chiefs expression, she doubted that he would let the shaman have the axe. Also, the shaman must be unsure of himself He might be a hypocrite, a charlatan, though she did not think so. Preliterate medicine men, witches, sorcerers, whatever their title was, really believed in their religion. Hyprocisy came with civilization. His only doubt was whether or not she did indeed represent the Lord of this wretched cosmos. If she were lying and he allowed her to get away with it, then the Lord might punish him.
He was in as desperate a situation as she. At least, he thought he was.
The issue was: was he lying or did he really intend to test her by trying to kill her? He knew that if she were what she said she was, he might be blasted with a bolt from the sky.
She said, "You don't know yourself whether you're lying or telling the truth. You haven't made up your mind yet what you'll do."