The fire had become so dim that the fireflies surrounding them could be seen, winking green in the trees. There was a coolness on their backs and their calves that was only barely balanced by the heat lingering on their chests and their shins. There were no stars. The clouds hung low, rumbling with hot impotent thunder. There was no rain.
This was when the young ones asked Mahele to tell his story. The old ones protested.
"Mahele's stories are nonsense. You should not be filling your minds with these thoughts. The stories we must listen to are the stories of the past. No man can know the future. To pretend to know the future is an insult to the gods."
But their protests were feeble, made quiet by the corn alcohol and the late hour. They had to be made, for the sake of protesting. But none of the elders had the will anymore to let the hard edge come into his voice. Soon they would go to bed.
"Do you want to hear the story?" asked Mahele. He grinned, the winding tattoos turning his face ugly in the firelight. He was a tall snaking stork of a man, all knobby throat and elbows. His voice was quiet and rough.
"Yes, tell it, before the fire dies," said the young boys.
"It is two hundred and two hundred and two hundred years from today," Mahele said. "On this day, the turtle-men come from within the lake. Only on this day. They have slumbered in the lake for many lives of men. But this day they are awakened. On this day there are bad deeds in the world."
The air crackled with snaps of insects seeking each other in the dark. The clouds crowded heavily above. The children were silent.
"In the hundreds of years, man has changed. This is much time. Your grandchildren's grandchildren will be dust in the earth. No man that walks in this time so far from now will remember you. This is much time for evil to occur. In this time, men have forgotten their gods. They have forgotten the seasons. They plant the corn in the winter, and it rises in the spring with three ears on a stalk and hair that falls to the ground as if it is weeping. They slaughter the buffalo in the spring, and dry the meat for summer, but leave the hides and bones and the hides and bones get up and walk. The land has become flat where it was in hills and has grown hills where it was flat. The lakes have become black and thick like pitch.
"This is when the turtle-men come. They are slow and thick, and drag themselves over the ground like a turtle, the sun drying the caked mud on their backs. They speak a language that is the sound a man makes when his lungs are wet with death and he coughs. Our people of this future time do not know how to greet the turtle-men. They try to trade. They offer the turtle-men the three-eared corn, but the turtle-men tear down the corn plants and gnaw at the roots. They offer the turtle-men the dry and salted summer meat, but the turtle-men crawl into the camps of our people and gnaw upon the legs and arms of the old ones instead. Finally they offer the turtle-men the youngest children of the village, and the turtle-men take them back to the lake. But the turtle-men return.
"At last it is the last night of our people. The children have been given. The old have grown older and died. One elder is left who is planting the three-eared corn. It is autumn. He plants for hope, but he will sow none. Through the rustling of the orange leaves the turtle-men come, silent and slow, their backs thick and caked, and when the elder has no more strength and lies down, they are the last thing he sees. So comes the end of our people."
A wind set the branches high above them to lifting and sighing. The elders of the tribe had gone to their tents. Only Mahele and the young ones were left.
"Then what?" said one.
Mahele shrugged. The story was over. "I don't know," he said.
"Will this really happen to us?"
Mahele grinned again. They could barely see his face at all. The light of the fire had retired to red outlines among the charcoal. "What do you think?"
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