The Man Who Spoke Snakish Read Online Free PDF Page B

about the weather and things like that, that you might have with a passing adder. Stronger words hadn’t come in for much use for a long time, because to hiss the strongest words—to get any result out of them—would need several thousand men at once, and there hadn’t been that many in the forest for ages. And so many Snakish words had fallen into desuetude, and recently no one had bothered to learn even the simplest ones, because as I say they didn’t stick in your mind easily—and why go to the trouble, when you could get behind a plow and work your muscles?
    So I was in quite an extraordinary situation, as Uncle Vootele knew all the Snakish words—no doubt the only person in the forest who did. Only from him could I learn all the subtleties of this language. And Uncle Vootele was a merciless teacher. My otherwise so kindly uncle suddenly became very gruff when it came to a lesson in Snakish. “You simply have to learn them!” he declared curtly, and forced me over and over again to repeat the most complex hisses, so that by the evening my tongue ached as if someone had been twisting it all day. When Mother came with a haunch of venison, my head shook in fear. Just the thought that my poor tongue had to chew and swallow, in addition to all the twistings of the day, filled my mouth with ahorrible pain. Mother was in despair, and asked Uncle Vootele not to exhaust me so much and to start by teaching me just the simplest hisses, but Uncle Vootele wouldn’t agree.
    “No, Linda,” he told my mother. “I’ll teach Leemet the Snakish words so well that he won’t know anymore whether he’s a human or a snake. Only I speak this language as well as our people have from the dawn of time, and one day, when I die, Leemet will be the one who won’t let the Snakish words fade into oblivion. Maybe he’ll manage to train up his own successor, like his own son, and so this language won’t die out.”
    “Oh, you’re as stubborn and cruel as our father!” sighed Mother, and made a chamomile compress for my injured tongue.
    “Was Granddad cruel, then?” I mumbled, with the compress between my teeth.
    “Terribly cruel,” replied Mother. “Of course, not to us—he loved us. At least I think so—but many years have passed since he died, and I was only a little girl then.”
    “So why did he die?” I persisted. I had never heard anything about my grandfather before, and only now I came to the surprising conclusion that quite naturally my father and mother couldn’t have just fallen out of the sky; they must have had parents. But why had they never talked about them?
    “The iron men killed him,” said Mother. And Uncle Vootele added, “They drowned him. They chopped his legs off and threw him in the sea.”
    “What about my other grandfather?” I demanded. “I must have had two grandfathers!”
    “The iron men killed him too,” said Uncle Vootele. It was in a big battle, which happened long before you were born. Our men went out bravely to fight with the iron men, but theywere smashed to smithereens. Their swords were too short and their spears too weak. But of course that shouldn’t have mattered, because our people’s weapons have never been swords and spears, but the Frog of the North. If we’d managed to wake the Frog of the North, he would have swallowed up the iron men at a stroke. But there were too few of us; many of our people had gone to live in the village and didn’t come to our aid when they were asked. And even if they had come, they wouldn’t have been of help, because they no longer remembered the Snakish words, and the Frog of the North only rises up when thousands call on him. So there was nothing left for our men but to try to fight against the iron men with their own weapons, but that has always been a hopeless task. Foreign things never bring anyone good fortune. The men were cut down and the women, including your grandmothers, brought up their children and died of