Maternal Instinct, The Tradition, Short Story, Part I

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Maternal Instinct

In caves of night and forests dark

They watch and wait till time departs

In timeless old traditions die

In love of youth with us they lie

(Wayne Wilks)

Part I

Tallute’s short stubby fingers, thick yet nimble, dug deeply into the grainy firm earth as he knelt upon spring’s first fresh blades of green grass. Foraging amid the soil, he sought sustenance from the roots, mushrooms, tubers and corms he knew to be there. His highly developed sense of smell easily detected them, just a few inches beneath the soil. Their scent belied their presence as did the shy early shoots and timid flowers that dared to sprout and grow so boldly in the often frosty, mist shrouded mornings of early spring.

He was hungry after the long hard winter and the long exhausting day on the trails. His body had used much of his reserves of fat and stored energy keeping warm through the icy winter and cold chilled nights. Fortunately, he had the knowledge of his ancestors, the knowledge of many and of many years. He knew of the underground shelters that lay dotted across the land, nestled and hidden beside the trails and he possessed further knowledge of the immense far-reaching network of caves and tunnels that crisscrossed the land like so many arteries through an anthill.

Underground the cold failed to reach him like it did those above, which for him was a saving grace, for unlike the bear, the ground squirrel and the bat he neither possessed the knowledge nor the metabolic mechanism or chemistry to hibernate or den through the bitter alpine winters. He spent the season of cold and ice awake and aware, snug and content within his subterranean world, only venturing out when the weather and the harsh biting wind, warmed by the sun’s rays, bid him peace and welcome. Water and shelter were no issue during the winter and as for food, there were bats, snakes and what he could forage when at the surface. As well, there were his stores of fat gathered and stored during falls abundance and the collected nuts, seeds and berries to see him through the long sunless nights and windswept days.

He was comfortable and at ease in the darkened world beneath the rocks, far removed from the drifting snow and frosty death of the surface. He felt secure alone with the interminable darkness and oppressive silence surrounded by nothing but stone and rock. Yet his world, like the world of those with four legs and fur, was on the surface. His time below ground was only temporary. To him the caves and tunnels within the rock and stone were merely a place of refuge, a place to hide and lay his head, a place to escape. He thought nothing of the protruding jewels and gems of every color that grew alongside the rich yellow veins of gold and shimmering silver that were so abundant beneath the land. They meant nothing to him or to any of his kind, yet were often useful, when trading with the Others, Those of smooth skin.

What Tallute lacked was companionship, friendship and love. He was lonely and forlorn after so many years alone in the wilderness, the forests and the hills. He was mature now, having passed the age of instruction long ago and had been on his own for thirty five to forty years now. He lost count of the number, as each year seemed to somehow blend with the last, indistinguishable, stretching backwards in a long unbroken procession, with but few, if any, memorable or marked and even fewer remarkable or outstanding.

The protruding nails of his fingers, lengthy and discolored, arched slightly downwards like the curved painted nails of an old Asian widow. Their long sharply pointed tips grew thick and strong, ideal for rooting among the blackened humus and roots that lay thick amid the forest floor. Stained, weathered and cracked they proved more useful as tools than as claws or weapons yet could still rip easily through the soft skins of fish, snakes, soft shelled turtles or the flesh of mammals.

Berries, fruits, fungi and root crops were his primary sources of nutrition supplemented by occasional additions of fish, small reptiles, wild grains and insects.

In spring and into early summer, he sought the fresh greens, roots and the fresh new growth of leafy vegetation. There were May Apples and Ground Cherries. Mull Berries of red, purple and white stained his teeth and the fingers of his hands as they filled his belly with tart sweet juice. There were also flowers, seeds and nuts from last fall’s flush of produce hidden and chilled beneath the snows, awaiting springs thaw. Pecans and acorns, Chestnuts and Pine nuts were only a few of the hard shelled delights, horded and stored by the creatures of the forests, prairies, valleys and peaks, easily available after the melting of the ice.

Summer gave him fish, reptiles and amphibians, a wealth of flowers and greens, not to mention a cornucopia of mushrooms, toadstools and fungi. Fat juicy tadpoles and oil rich Crawfish filled the creeks, lined the shores and hid under rocks. Grasshoppers the size of fingers and delicious buzzing cicadas dipped in raw honey were a crunchy sweet joy. There were water plants, Duckweed and Lilies, Rushes, Cattails and Arrowheads with thick starchy roots and immature grains full of pollens and sweetness. There were Jerusalem Artichokes growing in thick sunny yellow patches beside the creeks and streams, wherever the sun struck direct and bright, their potato like roots a common favorite of his. There were Paw Paws in the southern hills, tiny diminutive Bananas so uncommon in his world and latitude. Up north grew the Cranberries, Blueberries and other more plentiful treats and the west gave up its glut of Salmon and roe to any who would take it.

Late summer, fall and early winter, offered an overabundance of fare of every description and variety. Sunflowers, Dock and Amaranth offered their seeds by the tens of thousands, grainy, chewy and nutritious, filled with summers goodness and the life giving energy of the sun. Nuts of all kinds filled the branches of the trees and fell to the ground. Crab Apples, Chickasaw Plums and Hawthorns coated the earth below with soft rotting fruit while their branches, heavy with sugar-filled gifts hung low to the ground, easy to grasp. Bulging persimmons of tan and light pinks, leaking thick, brown, sticky sweetness grew in profusion, lining the riverbeds with reddish leaves and tawny delights. Vast meadows filled with tall grain topped grasses offered themselves to the world, mature, tasty and full of health. Bushes, brambles, vines and shrubs filled with every color, size and flavor of berry grew in profusion both high and low, all sweet, all delectable, and all free for the taking.

Tallute led a solitary life, a lone existence of self-sufficiency, taking only that which he needed. This was their way, as it was for his father before him and his fathers, father and on and on. They built no cities nor gathered in numbers large, seeking only solitude and quite leading peaceful lives amid small matriarchal groups of close-knit family. Males of his kind had always been lone wanderers save for their times of must when they joined together for procreation and fulfillment and the first years, their time of instruction, first with the mother of their birth then after as lone companions of their genetic male fathers or blood related uncles in the event of a fathers premature death. Yet after their time of instruction was past, they lived singly and alone, until the time of must and the Tradition.

He lived and walked freely in his world of earth and cave, forest and meadow, sun and rain. He went where he wanted, where he pleased and when he chose, following the cycles of the earth, the forests and the traditions of those who came before.

His world was a world of life, a natural world filled with every variety of living creatures in an abundant, self-sustaining and overflowing web of creation. Sustenance, food, water and shelter, the earth provided, all freely given, with no expectation of return.

What Tallute lacked, nature no longer provided, the earth no longer birthed. What Tallute longed for, that for which he yearned and most needed was a companion, a lover, intimacy, passion and love. Yet that was never to be for his was a dead race, a dried, dying branch of the tree of life. All he had was the Tradition and the hope of renewal that it provided and now, this spring, this summer, was his time.

He knelt quietly at the edge of a small clearing in the trees atop a high, thickly forested ridge, as the light of dawn spread its warming tendrils over the peaks and into the low valley below.

Morning had just sprung and the valley still basked in the sullen shade of the growing daylight as the moon anxiously bid its leave, hurriedly trailing across the ebony sky before cowardly diving beyond the horizon. The valley lay beyond and beneath him, basking in the silence and calm of the morning.

Thin trails of smoke rose from afar, riding with the wind up to the higher meadows and verdant peaks. He watched as the tiny gray tendrils of smoke rose from their homes of stone and wood far below him then faded invisibly into the winds. Talutte could smell the scent of wood burning in their fireplaces and stoves, taste the food cooking in their pots and roasting on open pits. He could smell their children, their women and their dreaded pet dogs. Talutte feared no man and little else but he feared the dogs, he feared their fangs and their jaws but most of all he feared their noses and their hunger. A bear, a cougar or the terrible lions of the high cliffs killed its prey before it fed, yet the dogs of men would eat one alive. In his world, even the wolves of the forest feared his strength and his anger yet the dogs of man had no such instinct, no inherited memory and therefore no fear of him or his kind. The dogs of men and the men themselves killed for sport, killed for blood.

In the personal memory of his life, they had always been there, those men, The Others, The Spoilers, The New Ones, living in the valleys, beside the rivers, even into the high hills and the deep of the woods. Yet his generic memory knew little of them, a memory stretching beyond epochs of time into the distant past. Even it contained only a few hundred years of memories past that included them. So it was and so had it always been, for him. Turning away, looking back into the thick woods, he sought comfort from the presence of the trees, the escape and hidden safety that they offered.

The thickly packed pines and lofty oaks behind him stretched covetously upwards, seeking the heavens, greedily capturing the light and depriving the shade darkened earth below. Only here, in the openness of the clearing, did the impenetrable darkness within the forest give way to the fullness of the sun and the rain. Only here, where the trees stopped, checked by wildfire, disease or ancient landslide was the ground warmed daily by the sun and openly caressed with its life-giving rays. Only here was he exposed to the peering murderous eyes of the New Ones.

In the depths of the hardwood forest only seasonally did the sun find its way to the forest floor, only when the frosts of winter filled the air with bitterness and stripped the leaves from the trees. Only in winter and spring did the sun have an opening through which to pass yet only briefly, only until springs impatient flush of new growth reclaimed the dense canopy of green, shading and darkening the floors acidic loam covered face.

This was Tallutes forest, Tallutes home, a place of deep dark and deeper shade, cool, damp and hidden from daylights harsh bitter whiteness; a place where daytimes brightness diffused and broke, where the day remained deeply shadowed, the night, total blackness.

This was morning, a glorious spring morning and all the world was right. The petite blooms surrounding him thickly filled the space of the meadow, coloring the ground with their youthful blush of yellows, whites and blues. The tiny pink and white Spring Beauty blossoms spread generously about the meadow, delicate and abundant, providing him plentiful evidence of the crisp starchy corms only inches beneath the soil. Clinging close to the ground, they avoided the remnants of winters chill and the killing spring frosts while taking advantage of the season’s first warming rays. They grew quickly, filled with hope and the eternal optimism that is within all of nature. Not yet overcome by summers flush of tall opulent growth and heady grasses, they thrived in the rich dark soil blanketing the meadow. Struggling against time, they rushed to bloom and multiply, soon to drop their minute black seeds back into the molding wetness of the compost from which they sprang.

Plucking the roundish soil covered globes from the earth he popped them into his mouth, chewing easily and methodically, gratefully savoring the delicate lightly sweet flavor of the starch-filled corms. Their coatings of damp earth and sandy grit only added to their musty appeal, filled with tart wildness, full with the freedom of life. He supped on the tender sweetness of white clover blossoms mixed with the lemony tartness of Oxalis leaves with its elongated and sharply pointed fruits filled with sour juice and tiny tart seeds.

Moving cautiously about the meadow, Talutte continued his feeding as the morning aged, carefully edging his way around the clearing, always at its edges, never open and exposed, caught in the middle. While feeding he remained in constant awareness, purposefully keeping his backside towards the safety of the tacky briar filled forest. He fed this day on Spring Beauty corms, tender wild onion shoots, Coltsfoot tubers and his favorite, Dandelion greens and flowers, delighting in the crisp bitter pleasure of the new green shoots.

Dandelions, while among his favorites, were foreign to him and his collective genetic memory. They were not a part of his vast inherited knowledge. Nor were they a natural part of the vast web of life that so totally enveloped him. They were neither known nor native to his home, his kind or the long spindly thread of social memory connecting him to those of his genetic past. Those simple yellow flowers he so savored, so plain to the eyes yet so complex in design, were neither of his kindred’s land nor of their time. They were foreigners, travelers in space and in time.

Dandelions, like so many other things in his world, were but immigrants from across the great waters. He had himself never seen the great waters but he knew of them as he knew of many things from the memories of others that came before him. He knew of them as the endless great waters of salt that had for ages completely isolated him and his race, keeping them secluded and isolated, undiscovered, undisturbed and for generations unknown to the races of men. He knew of them as the same waters that had carried the ships of others races, races of men, with their plans for conquest, fortunes and fame, those with an eye to end the days and the ways of those of his clan.

The lowly flowers of gold had first begun to appear well within the limits of his inherited perception, long centuries ago when his world first encountered the cause of its end, when the change first began, when the New Ones first arrived.

The change, once begun, continued ceaselessly, even unto this day, with his ancient once unending wilderness, now virtually extinct, going the way of his kind into obsolescence and obscurity, dissolving back into the dusts from whence they came. The strange beings from across the big waters were the instrument of this change as well as the vehicle for the yellow flowers dispersion.

The first of their kind, The Noble Ones, those of Smooth Skin, were the first of the new settlers, the first of the ‘Others. They arrived on foot, in small bands, crossing the great frozen land bridge, now also extinct and lost beneath the sea. They were hunters who followed the great herds, witness to the great migrations and even greater extinctions. What they found was a continent, two, vast and endless, rich dark and covered with green. They found a world filled with immeasurable hordes, herds in the millions ranging freely across half the length of a world. They found a world of gigantic fur covered beasts of tusk and of hoof and the great packs of sharp-toothed predators and lone giant monsters that followed them. They found a world filled with those of his race, those they called The Old Ones, living free and content, like the animals before them, sustained and nurtured by the earth and the full bounty of creation, taking little and destroying less.

For millennia the New Ones, those of smooth skin, lived in peace and unison with the elders, the Old Ones, those like him, and all seemed well. The Tradition assured their existence and profited both. Then the ships of tall sails with their terrible weapons, arrived with fearsome canines and tall powerful horses of war. The New Ones, a thousand times more fierce and destructive than the first of their kind eager for gold and for riches, lumber and furs to feed their dying cultures came to subjugate, capture and to kill those who lived in peace with the Old Ones. While the New Ones died, the Old Ones, unable to compete, slipped silently into the darkness and the forests, the mountains and jungles, fading away forever into the legends of men.

It was they, the New Ones, who brought the Dandelion, the timid yellow flower to his land, they with their ships, nurturing it as they nurtured their own immense powers of death and desolation and the look of certain ownership that shown clear within their eyes. They transported the white cottony tufts of seeds in their clothes and their beddings, on their ships and wagons and within the bowels of their beasts.

The seeds first germinated along the coasts and beside the rivers. They sprouted lush and thick about the New Ones camps, beside their odd-looking lodgings of wood and of stone. They spread about their expansive farms fenced in iron, and their strange foraging animals, spreading quickly outward from within each new area that the New Ones acquired. Soon, as is the way of nature, the first few plants soon committed their fluffy progeny to the fickle fate of the winds and the unknown soils of a foreign world, a world now besieged by strangely evil people with immutable powers and their stage was set, domination assured.

The seeds sown, the die cast, a lowly yellow flower journeyed across vast new continents and to all of its lands. As they spread, so spread the strangers, the New Ones, from the cool seas of the north and west to those of warmer clime in the south and east. They spread and sprawled across the whole vastness of two once secret continents, continents now overran with plain yellow flowers and the new men of smooth skin. Sadly, only the flowers were good to eat.

Tallutes people, his tribe or clan were a shy and secretive breed, scattered thinly among the vast endless stretches of primeval forests, valleys and forested peaks. Yet they were a curious race, keenly interested in the world around them, constantly observant and alert, often capable of great strides of abstraction and improvisation closely akin to original thought. Therefore, it took them little time to discover, accept and adopt the newly abundant Dandelion to their needs. This innate ability to adapt and to use change gave his people a great inherent advantage in the struggle to survive and adapt in an often cruel and ever changing environment.

Deep within his consciousness, Talutte knew these things, felt them, and even saw them in an unbroken string of knowledge that emanated from far within his being. They formed a thread, a string that continued to grow in content, meaning and certainty with each successive generation, a string now woven into tight intricate patterns and designs, a latch work lattice of memories, complex clockworks of consciousness and a spidery web of collective experience.

His mind as well as his spirit resounded with the thoughts and passions of all who came before him. Subtly, yet beautifully intermixed with his own experiences, thoughts and desires, were those of his ancestors, giving him and all of his kind knowledge of things never seen, of thoughts never thought and of lusts never tasted.

As Talutte searched the meadow, he drew upon that inner source of understanding, primitive, vast and complete. So encompassing was his knowledge of the natural world that he saw not a single plant, berry or blade of grass without knowing its habits, history and uses. So complete was his inborn wisdom that not a single species existed in his world of which he did not possess an intimate knowledge.

Many of those species were new to his kind, only seen and known since the arrival of the New Ones. Many others had passed from existence into the deep forgotten recesses of extinction hundreds of eons before, yet he knew them still.

His inherited communal memory still knew the tough musty flavor of mastodon and giant glacial elk. He shook with fear at the chilling shrieks of the saber tooth tigers, fifteen foot tall giant bears or dagger clawed sloths. He trembled as they fought over fresh bloody kills, their howls and growls disturbed his nights. Terrible sounds and harsh shrill cries rose in the night as his kind, slain and torn with vice like jaws and polished fangs died in horrors grasp

He knew of nights upon the frozen Arctic landscape, huddling together, edging ever closer to the warmth and mystic persuasions of an ever-dwindling fire as beasts of claw and fang stalked and watched. He knew the cries, calls and hoots of the jungle and the rustling and slithering of serpents in the trees and amid the litter upon the forests floor. He knew the scent of decay in moss covered swamps and the touch of smooth skinned reptiles waiting in silent ambush. He felt the sweltering heat of the day and muggy moist nights where insect crawled and winged monsters buzzed, where legs of eight with webbed nets of silk did prey and wait. The sights and sounds of night within primeval antediluvian forest, clinging tightly to the branches of trees and bedding amongst their trunks and forks was knowledge not unknown to him. Yet none of this was born of himself or of his own experience, his time or his world. It came from a source deep within, profound and unfathomable.

As the sun rose higher, dissolving the morning’s misty fog and dispelling the long shadows that had filled the meadow, Talutte moved noiselessly back into the comforting folds of the forest. During the day, he fed well within the safety of the trees. Meadows and clearings were not safe places, not for those of his kind, best exploited under cover of dawn’s damp mists or the silvery beams of nights white orb.

He followed well-known routes and timetables older then he himself, older than the trees save the oldest and grandest. These routes were long and circular and of these routes, there were many, each with its own timetable, and each with its own sequence of importance. Different seasons found him in different locations, relying exclusively on natures varied resources. Each new year found him embarked again on one selection of routes or another, each in its turn, each at its own time, obeying an age old system of utilization known only to those like himself. He seldom repeated the pattern or timing of his travels, working them with certain knowledge born of centuries of constants and certainty of renewal.

He knew the location of each clearing, each fruited bramble, every creek and brook, every stand of willow or fruited tree, and each source of nuts or roots. He knew well the location of his resources and hundreds more he had never seen. He knew his world as an infant knows its mother, never unsure of where to find suckle. Yet this spring was different, unlike all springs that had passed before.

This spring he moved with a newfound urgency, a fresh compelling drive urged him forward, silently and relentlessly. His heart beat a bit faster, pumped a bit stronger. Sleep eluded him, his dreams now filled with visions and images before unknown. He moved quicker and stood a bit taller as he meshed more intensely with the ebb and flow of life that encircled him. This spring was to be his spring, the spring of his seed. This was his fiftieth year, his time of maturity and the time of his joining.

This would be his first joining, his first encounter and all that that encompassed the fulfillment of his destiny and the satiation of his newfound desires. It was a duty, his duty, as it was for the other few that remained scattered about the land and it was a sacred responsibility. It would insure that the circle remained constant and whole, that his kind would continue and his clan, live on.

Within his groin and amid his genes there remained the essence of his people, the life of his tribe and the sacred trust of his ancient knowledge. He knew what he must do, what it entailed, he was excited and eager, yet he was also afraid. He knew of the danger the New Ones posed to one like himself who ventured too close or lingered too long. He also knew that the Old Ones must not perish from the face of the earth, would not, for the Father of all life would not allow it and neither would he.

Talutte felt the yearning rising within him. He felt it in his blood, as the energy and the desire surged. He felt it in is gut, in his bowels and his loins. He felt the want and the need, smelt it and tasted it with savor.

The years, the decades he had spent merely surviving, living utterly alone with no one to comfort him, none to sooth him, was now extracting its inevitable toll. He had lived a quarter of his natural life span, and now, mature and adult he was changing. New hormones flowed through his blood as the production of others simply increased. The hair of his face, arm and legs began to fall out, to be absent for a season as his must grew and the change began. He grew leaner and thinner and loomed a bit taller, stood a bit straighter.

The desire begun dully at first, growing steadily in pitch, ceaselessly increasing in intensity and power with each successive moon. Finally, as is common with his kind, it built into a deafening crescendo, pounding out its demands with fresh and powerful outpourings, excretions both hormonal and psychological, both genetic and historic. This ever-increasing flood of hormones and emotions was even now triggering long held needs and deeply recessed desires desperate for fruition, destined to surface, find silence and solace the only way in which they could and for that, he needed a mate.

Continued:

© 2009 Tim Wilkinson/Wayne Wilks