The Fourth Circle Read Online Free PDF

imprint of their passing.
     
    7. THE SUN IN THE HOUSE
     
    THE FIRST MUFFLED echoes of distant thunder scattered his brethren through the jungle.
    He stayed where he was.
    This was not ordinary thunder followed by torrents that poured from the sky, penetrating the densest foliage, allowing no escape; his fur, though thick, would then be soaked, and in the night, though the monsoon rain was tepid, he would briefly feel the rare, unpleasant sensation of cold.
    The thunder now rapidly approaching brought no sky-water, nor did it dart fiery tongues capable of enveloping a giant tree trunk in a cloak of flame and extinguishing all animals, even the largest, sheltering under it.
    He differed from his brethren in possessing an unusually retentive memory.
    He remembered, though it had been a long time ago, when he was very young, that this same roar had heralded the arrival of an enormous bird with four whirling wings. Then he had scampered, panic-stricken like the others, into the thicket of the jungle, losing his mother along the way. When nothing happened after the huge fat bird had landed and the noise had died, the curiosity characteristic of his species prevailed. Along with a few others, he plucked up the courage to peep through a concealing curtain of leaves.
    Three creatures identical to the one who lived in the big stone house emerged from the bird, the wings of which now drooped. He knew there was nothing to be afraid of, because the one in the house had never harmed them. Not only did he not hunt them, he even let them enter the house and allowed them, too, to climb all over the boulder he revered as a pack does its leader.
    Recently the creature, who lived alone in the house without the rest of his brethren, had stopped coming out. This creature lay in a corner, breathing with difficulty and seeming not to notice them any more. He recognized the creature's plight, for there were a few aged members of the pack whose fur was quite gray and who were unable even to pick the fruit that grew plentifully everywhere, so that the other younger ones had to bring it to them. Just as he would have done for a member of his pack, he brought the old one some fruit, but the old one did not seem to care.
That was a sign that it was not safe to stay in the house for long, that big predators would come soon to take the old one, just as they came for his gray brethren when, because they no longer belonged, the pack carried them, rigid, down from the trees and left them in a clearing. Why they had decided to become old and leave the pack mystified him and, like any other unknown, filled him with fear and trepidation, perhaps more so than the others.
    Predators, however, did not take the old one. Three of his brethren arrived in the great noisy bird and took him up into the sky, none knew where. For a while the house remained empty. But the teeming life of the jungle filled every niche, so that it was not long before new residents moved in, mostly small creatures that posed no threat to his pack's dominance. He roamed with his brethren through the empty house, climbing the rough walls, squeezing through holes, scrambling over the vast stone leader of that other, mightier pack—a leader who might have no one to bow down before him now but whose absence of devotees could not last.
    The dry thunder, quite close, from which he alone did not run into the safety of the dense forest, was bringing, he divined, a new resident for the house. When the great bird landed in the clearing with a roar so loud that the nocturnal howling of predators seemed like morning twittering in the branches, several tall creatures walked out of its belly, carrying bulky, heavy things for which he had no terms of reference and thus could not recognize.
    They carried the things into the house, and soon he heard new, sharp sounds emerge from it, such as had never before resounded in the jungle. He stood at the edge of the clearing, not daring to approach. Time passed