Tales in the sand

Neil Gaiman

Tales in the sand

Very slightly adapted to text only by Nicolai Langfeldt.

There are tales that are told many times. Some tales you tell children, stories that tell them the history of the tribe, what is good to eat, what is not. Cautionary tales. There are the tales the women tell, in the private tongue men-children are never taught and older men are too wise to learn, and these tales are not told to men.

There are tales men tell each other, in the men's hut at night; crude raucous tales of the lizard who lost his male member, or of the malabayo, the trickster, who sold ape dung to king lion, telling him it was the soul of the moon. There are tales the whole tribe tell each other, at the festivals, at feasts: The story of the Rook that jumped, of how fire came, a thousand others.

One tale is only ever told once.

The young one still feels sore from the circumcision, but he bears it with the pride of his newfound manhood. They have walked for two days. When he returns to the tribe he will truly be a man: he will have heard the tale. At night he will sleep in the young men's hut.

``Enough. This is the place'' the old man says. ``Give me the firewood. - Now you must go and find something, and bring it back to me. And when you have brought it to me I will tell you the tale. While you are looking, I will make the fire.''

``But grandfather... what must I find?

``You will know when you find it. Now go, hurry. Night is coming, and I must begin the tale before the sun sets.

``Hai! I have found it!'', the young man is returning holding a shard of molten glass up in his hand. ``But what is it?''

``Give it to me.'' The old man touches the glass. He remembers, fleetingly, the time his mother's brother took him to this place, sent him to find a similar shard. Then he begins to tell the tale.

``This glass was once part of a city. If you look around in this place you will find other shards like it. It is forbidden to take them from this place. I will tell you of that city, and of how it was lost to us ... and one day, if you live long enough, you will bring one other out here, and tell him the the tale. For this is the way it has always been. Each of us hears the tale once, in this place, and each of us tells the story once in this place ... if grandmother death spares us long enough to tell it... Listen.

This place was no desert then. Fertile it was, with many fruit trees, and fat slow animals everywhere, so that hunting was easy. If you simply closed your eyes and threw your spear, why, there would be something good to eat on the end of it.

And in this place, where we now sit, there was a city. It was a city built of glass, a city that spread out farther than a man could walk in a day. For this is the place that the first people began ... and the first people were of our tribe. That is our secret, and we never tell outsiders, for they would kills us if they knew. But it is the truth.

And in that city ruled a queen. She was called Nada. By the time she reached her sixteenth year she was the most beautiful woman the sun had ever seen in his travels across the sky. And she ruled wisely, and she ruled well, and when she said, do this, then it was done. But she had no man. For when the women of the tribe would say to her that she should take a husband, she would turn from them and say, ``Where, then, is the man for me?''. And all the women would all fall silent.

One day a stranger came to the city. Tall he was, and dressed in black; flames danced in the blackness of his robe, and his eyes were stars in deep pools of dark water. And he said nothing to any man. But that night he came to the foot of the queen's tower (for the houses of that city rose into the sky) and he looked up. And Nada looked out of her window, and she saw him below her, and her heart was stolen away.

That night the queen did not sleep.

When morning came she ordered that the stranger be brought to her, but the stranger was nowhere to be found in the city. The queen ordered that men go out and find the stranger. And they hunted in the forests and on the mountains, and in the deserts, but they could not find the man. And Nada wept inside, for she knew that she had found her love, and lost him.

She went into the forest, until she found the king of the birds. And she told the king of the birds her story.

``Be he man, or be he god...'', said the bird king, for in those days the gods still walked the earth, and wore flesh, and they made their homes in the hot lands of the north. ``...I will find him for you, Nada, for are we not kings and queens together? And the great bird summoned all the birds of the air to his throne, and he demanded of all of them: ``Have you seen this man?'' And each bird said ``no'', until it seemed that there were no birds left. But there was one more bird, a white weaver bird, so tiny they had overlooked it. ``Little weaver bird,'' said the bird king, ``Have you seen this man?''. The little bird nodded. She had seen the man, late one night, beneath the moon. He had smiled at her, and given her grain to eat. Then he had vanished. The bird king nodded.

``So, this is no man, no god, but something else. Forget him Nada. Find a breathing man made of blood and bone and flesh and skin. This other can never be yours'' said the bird king. And Nada lowered her head, and she left that place. But the weaver bird followed her. And the weaver bird said to her, ``I have heard that there is a tree that grows on the mountains of the sun. And on that tree grow berries of flame. And if a human were to swallow a berry from the tree, it would take them to the side of their true love.'' ``How am I to get a berry from that tree?'' Nada asked the weaver bird. And the little bird said, ``I will fetch it for you.''

The little bird flew up into the sky. If flew so high it vanished from sight, while the queen waited below. For a day she waited, and at the end of the day she saw a tiny spec in the sky above her. It was the weaver bird, but it had been burnt a deep brown by the heat of the sun, and in its beak it carried a berry from the trees that grow on the mountains of the sun. That is why to this day the weaver bird is brown. The weaver bird dropped the flaming berry for the sun-tree on the ground in front of Nada, and the queen picked up the weaver bird, and said to it, ``For what you have done, no one of this land will ever harm your kind, little bird.'' So it is forbidden to eat weaver bird flesh, or to harm a weaver bird, and that is why we let them weave their nests in out villages.

And Nada went back to her palace. And she went to her room, and she swallowed the fire-berry, though it seared her throat. And she fell down, as in in a deep sleep. And her soul wall pulled out of her, and her spirit went walking. It seemed to her that she was in a darkened world. And there she came close to two men, two brothers, and they were arguing about a sacrifice they had given, for one of the men had given meat, and the other had given fruit. And they began to fight. Presently one brother killed the other, and walked on down the road. Then she said the the brother who was dead, ``What is this place?'' ``This is the dream world lady'', he told her. ``This is the realm of sleep and dream, ruled by Kai'ckul, the load of dreams. That house is his house.''

She walked up to the house, and went in to it. The guardians let her pass, because they could feel the flaming berry inside her. In the throne room she saw Kai'ckul, the dream lord, on his throne, and his head was hidden. He said to her, ``Who are you? Why have you come here?'' ``I seek a stranger, for I love him. Flames dance in the blackness of his robe, and his eyes are stars in pools of deep water. He came to my tower one night, and looked up at me, but he said nothing.'' At this Kai'ckul removed his helmet, and she saw before her the stranger who had stood beneath her house in the city of glass. An her heard sank within her, for she had confessed her love to one of the endless, who are not gods, and will never die like gods. And in the twin stars of his eyes she saw he loved her too.