A Glibertarians Exclusive:  Mog-ee, Part I

Late spring

Wolf awoke slowly.  His back hurt.  I’m only nine-and-ten summers old, he mused.  My back shouldn’t hurt.  It never hurt before I moved over to the Diggers. The bend-and-stoop daily work of the Diggers was wearing.

He lay quietly for a moment.  He could hear the even breathing of the Digger girl he had taken up with, Mog-ee, quiet and measured in sleep.

I’ve had about enough of this.  I think I’ll go back to the People.

He turned his head.  Beside him, Mog-ee still slept, her breaths soft, gentle, like the rest of her.  Leaning against the far wall of the bark and wattle hut, Wolf could see his three hunting spears and his spear-thrower, still where they had been, gathering dust for the past year.  He longed for the taste of real food – reindeer, red deer, even the little roebuck that lived in the thick forests.  The seeds, leaves and fish the Diggers ate grew very tiresome very quickly.

Wolf sat up and stretched.  Moving quietly, so as not to awaken the girl, he pulled on his hide boots and went outside, into a bright, warm spring morning.  A few people were already up and around, and Wolf could smell the normal breakfast meal of stewed grains being cooked at several fires nearby.  Spring was, apparently, a busy time of year for the Diggers.

These people don’t even eat well.  And to think, I’m here because of a girl.

Back in the shelter, Wolf heard Mog-ee stirring.  “Wol-ef,” she called.  It annoyed Wolf that, in a year, she still could not properly pronounce his name.  “Come in and clear off the floor.  You left crumbs all over again.  Morning song will begin soon.”  The previous evening’s meal had consisted of a few scraps of fish and a baked wheat cake which, as usual, left Wolf still hungry.

Wolf looked over his shoulder into the hut.  Mog-ee was sitting up in the rough bedding, woven from plant fibers – no finely worked, soft furs in this place.  “My name,” he said testily, “is not Wol-ef.  It’s Wolf.  Wolf.”  To emphasize, he raised his face to the sky and let out a long, bubbling howl.  Several children nearby let out squawks of fright.  A grubby little urchin peeked around the corner of another hut, looking for the source of the howl.  “Me,” Wolf said, pointing at his nose.  “Now run off, little one, or I’ll eat you!”  The urchin ran.

“Come in and help me clean the floor,” Mog-ee repeated.

Wolf stared grumpily at the rising sun.  The ‘morning song’ was meant to bring rain.  Rain was mostly an annoyance to Wolf’s people; it made the hunting unpleasant.  But the Diggers depended on rainfall and plenty of it, to make their plants grow.

Wolf found the ululating morning “song” unsettling.  That was one item on a long list of things he was coming to dislike about living among the Diggers.  Grunting, he went back into the hut.  He ignored Mog-ee’s stare.  He no longer noticed her eyes, the bright summer-sky blue eyes that had attracted his attention to her in the first place.

***

One year earlier

Wolf stood with his brother Blackbird and their father Clear Sky on the crest of a ridge.  The valley where their tribe was camped, where they did much of their hunting, lay behind them.  In the valley in front of them…

“The Diggers,” Clear Sky muttered.  “More of them every year.”

The Diggers didn’t move from place to place, like the People.  They settled in, built low huts, started digging in the dirt, and when they grew too numerous, a few would break off and start up somewhere new.  Always expanding, always taking up more hunting ground.

Below lay a typical Diggers settlement.  A few low huts made mostly of tree bark and woven branches.  Surrounding the huts were the typical round dug-up patches of dirt, now showing the green of spring growth.

“They reckon family lineages through the fathers,” Clear Sky said.  “Or they hope they do.”  The People reckoned lineage through the mother’s side.  “You can’t always be sure who a baby’s father is.  You always know who the mother is.”

Wolf grinned.  “Father, are you trying to tell us something?”

“I know you two are my sons,” Clear Sky replied.  “You’re both just as ugly as I am.”

The boys laughed.  They knew they, and their father, were considered handsome specimens among the People – tall, straight, broad-shouldered, with thick black hair and dark eyes.

Clear Sky went on.  “My father’s father, he used to tell stories that his father’s father told of the Old Ones, the Dwarves, that used to live here.  Short, heavy people, big heads, pale hair, no chins.  Now that sounds like an ugly people.  The Diggers don’t look that bad – just short, scrawny and dirty.”

“What would you expect?  Always grubbing in the dirt the way they are,” Blackbird sniffed.

“Well,” Clear Sky said.  “We should go talk to them.  Warn them against trying to move any farther.  We don’t want them in our valleys.”

“I thought this was one of our valleys,” Blackbird complained, pointing at the Diggers settlement before them.  “Father, they are already here.”

“So they are.  Well, come on.”  Clear Sky picked up his hunting gear where he’d leaned it against a boulder – spears, spear thrower – and strode off down the slope.  His sons shared a glance, then followed.

When they arrived at the Digger settlement, Clear Sky wasted no time; he strode right into the center of the group of low huts.  “Where is your leader?” he called out in a loud, clear voice.  “Who is your chief?!  I will speak to him.”

A typically short, grubby couple walked forward.  Wolf noted they seemed older than most of the others.  The man had gray scattered through his hair and beard.  When he spoke, his words were oddly distorted, as though he spoke the same tongue, but not in the same way.  “I am Yeeteep-ee,” the man announced.  “This is Ord-ee,” he added, indicating the woman.  “We are the Rain-Bringers.  We speak for this village.”

“I am Clear Sky, of the People,” Wolf’s father said.  Must observe the formalities, Wolf supposed.  My sons, Wolf, Blackbird.”

“You have words for us?”  Yeeteep-ee asked.

“You are on a valley that is in the hunting range of the People,” Clear Sky said.  “You built your huts here, you dug the earth here, without talking to us.  This is not right.”

“What is ‘right’?” Yeeteep-ee asked.  “This land was not tilled.  You were not using it.  Land belongs to those who take food from it.”

“The People take food from the land.  The game that roams the lands are our food.  The fruits of the forest and fields feed us.  We do not seek to change the earth and make it do our bidding, but that does not mean we do not take food from it.”

The argument went on for some time.  Slowly, the rest of the Digger village gathered around to listen, which Wolf would have found unsettling if they had borne any weapons; the most dangerous implement any of the short, dirty people seemed to own were digging sticks.  Even so, as the talk grew warmer, Wolf tightened his grip on his spears.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Blackbird was also nervous.

Then the girl appeared.

Wolf noticed her immediately.  Not because she was slightly less grubby than the others, although that was true; when he first saw her, she was walking up from a little stream that flowed near the Digger village, having obviously just washed her face.  Not because she stood out in any way from the other Diggers, being similarly short, skinny, and unremarkable.  But when she approached, she stopped just behind Yeeteep-ee, and looked up at Wolf.

Her eyes.  Like most humans, the People had eyes ranging in color from medium brown to almost black.  Everyone Wolf had ever seen, from the fisher-folk who lived near the southern sea to the mammoth hunters who ranged in the far north, had similar eyes.  Even the Diggers Wolf had seen had dark eyes.

But this girl, when she looked at Wolf, showed eyes the clear blue of a summer sky.

His attention did not go unnoticed.  Yeeteep-ee paused in a harangue about growing food to look keenly at Wolf, then over at the girl.  He suddenly smiled.  “Your son,” he said to Clear Sky, “has seen my daughter.  This is Mog-ee,” he said, indicating the girl.

Wolf smiled at the girl.  Yeeteep-ee smiled as well, a calculating look in his eyes.  Clear Sky looked at the girl, at his son, then back at the girl.  He frowned.  The boy’s thinking with his balls, as fast as that.  This won’t end well.

***

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

Well, I wake in the morning

Fold my hands and pray for rain

With a head full of ideas that are drivin’ me insane

It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor