to forget it, and in the end did, just as the Clefts, when they did remember how they had tortured and tormented the Squirts, softened the tale and made it less, and then soon chose to believe there had been one monstrous babe they had hurt – just one.
We would not know about this murder if a very old dying man had not become obsessed with his memories, with this terrible day of rape and killing, so long ago – he had been a boy – and he could not stop repeating and repeating what he knew. Not possible to ignore what he was saying, and some young ones, hearing, shocked, distressed, preserved the tale, which they could not forget, and in their old age told it to the younger ones. This was, I believe, the beginning of the Squirts’ oral annals, their Memories, at first coming into being almost by accident, but then valued and preserved. The female kept records – and I cannot bring myself to write down all that is there; and the male kept records: and I do bring myself to write down what is there.
Over among the Clefts, they noticed the absence of one of their own, wondered, fretted, in their soft lazy way, mentioned her absence, looked to see if she had fallen into one of the near pools, wondered again …
When the Squirts’ distress had subsided, there remained a doubt which did not get less. Though the murdered girl had not been able to say much that was coherent, from the words she did say they knew that the language they used was poor compared with hers and, forced to worry over the question, find a reason, they at last understood that all they said had developed from the speech of small children who had made that first brave quest over the eagles’ mountain. Their language was a child’s, and it was even pitched high, like children’s talk. Yes, they had new words, for the tools and utensils they had invented, but they talked together like children.
How were they to learn more, and better? Their dread of the Clefts, their fear of themselves and what they had done, made it impossible to go back to the shore, and find another Cleft and learn from her.
What were they to do?
It was a Cleft who did something. We do have to ask why it happened. After a period of time so long it is not possible to measure it, when no Cleft had had the curiosity to leave their maternal shore, one did just that. She walked towards the mountain where she knew the eagles took the Monsters, climbed the mountain, passed the eagles’ nests, stood there on the height, and looked down and saw … we know what she saw, it is recorded.
Down there in the valley were a company of Monsters, moving about in activities she could not understand, or at the edge of the great river, and she had never seen a river, only the little rivulets that seeped down the cliffs. She was shocked into a fear that nearly took her running back to her shore. She could not see from where she stood the horrid bundles that made a Squirt what he was. They were at ease down there, those terrible creatures, and their voices floated up to her, talking as the Clefts did, but in high childish tones. Why was she there at all? We do not know. Something in the stuff and substance of life had been agitated – by what? For ages – we use this dubious definition of time – no one had wanted to walk to the place that she could see down there … Just as not so very long ago the Clefts had – for no reason they could conjecture – begun to give birth to these Monsters, so now a Cleft was doing what not once one of them had done before: left her kind, driven by something that was no part of old Cleft nature.
She walked further, down the side of the mountain, and stopped. What were those strange pointed shapes down there? She thought at first they were alive, a kind of creature. They were the reed shelters the Squirts had evolved, a kind of reed that grew thick in the marsh that was the mouth of a river not far from here. The reeds were pale, and shone in the sunlight, and she saw that in their entrances sat Squirts, at their ease.
She made herself go forward, but slowly, but did not know how to signal that she did not mean harm. These were the creatures the Clefts had tormented and tortured and even mutilated. She herself had taken part in the work. They had seen her now, and were crowding together, facing her; she could see their faces turned upwards, staring, frightened.
She went on down. Two enormous eagles were sitting apart from the crowding Squirts, and they were as tall as she was. Each was teasing at a great fish. As she watched, a boy came out of the river with a fish, which he deposited in front of the eagles, and he saw her and ran to his fellows.
They were not threatening her, but now they were smiling nervously, uncertain, as she was. She stood there in front of them, not knowing what to do, and they stood looking at her.
She was staring at their fronts, where the protuberances were. They did not seem so horrible now. She had seen baby Monsters, with their enormous swellings: out of proportion to the rest of them, as she realised.
She saw that some of the older ones were deformed, unlike the others, and did not at once know that these were the Cleft victims, grown and for ever disfigured.
A tree trunk had been dragged by them, or had fallen – and her tiredness, for it had been a long way for a Cleft, made her subside on it to rest. As she sat there, slowly they came crowding up, staring, and it was at her middle, which was naked, because this was halfway between full moon and full moon, and no blood flowed then.
She could see everything of their differences from her; they could see little of hers from them.
One, grown, sat by her on the trunk, staring always at her face, her breasts, the large loose lolling breasts, at her middle. Driven as she was, she put out a hand to touch his protuberance, the terrifying thing that for all her life had been horrible to her, and at once it rose up into her hand and she felt it throb and pulse. What had driven her here was an imperative, and in a moment she and this alien were together, and his tube was inside her and behaved as its name suggested.
They stared at each other, serious – and separated.
They resumed sitting near each other, looking. She curiously handled his new flaccid tube; and he was feeling and probing her.
Parents interested enough in their children’s development to drop in on nursery games will be able to say what was happening now: they will have seen it all.
Naked, because of an imminent bath, or change of clothes, the two little children are standing looking at each other. This is not of course the first time brother and sister have seen each other nude, but for some reason both have been alerted to the other’s differences.
‘Why have you got that thing,’ somewhat petulantly enquires the girl – but we have to imagine that what the tones of their voices suggest refers to far in the future adulthood.
‘Because I am a boy,’ announces the child, and what he is saying dictates a whole series of postures. He thrusts out his pelvis, and makes some jerky movements which he seems to associate with some game. He holds the tip of his penis down and releases it in a springing gesture. All the time he frowns belligerently, not at his sister, but probably at some imaginary male antagonist.
The little girl, seeing all these achievements, none of which are possible to her, frowns, looks down at her centre and says, ‘But I am nicer than you.’
The boy, frowning at her cleft, which no one could say is threatening or even assertive, now adds to his repertoire of cocky tricks with some others, rolling his balls about in their sac.
‘I like me much better than I like you,’ says the little girl, but she approaches her brother and says, ‘Let me feel.’
He shuts his eyes, holds his breath, endures her pulling and rolling, and says, ‘Now, let me feel you.’
At which he inexpertly
