Victims of Nimbo (11 page)

Josh said, “This is a fine mess! I’m worried about Sarah.”

“We’ll just have to hope she’s all right,” Jake said quickly.

“Teanor doesn’t think so,” Josh said glumly. “These Earth Dwellers must be a vicious bunch.”

“Well, we can’t do anything tonight,” Wash said. “The best thing we can do is get a good night’s sleep.”

They were all exhausted from their long trip. Even Josh fell asleep almost at once.

The next morning, Abbey met them as they left their house. “Bad news,” she said. “A messenger just came back. King Celevorn sent someone to see if they could find any trace of his son and Sarah.”

“And did they find them?” Josh asked. But he saw Abbey’s face was filled with apprehension.

“They found them all right. He’s a good scout. The best among the Cloud People.”

“Well,
tell
us, Abbey! For crying out loud!” Wash cried. “What about them?”

“We’re not sure, but it looks like they are being held prisoner by the Earth Dwellers.”

“What does that mean?” Dave asked.

“It means,” Abbey said, “they’re liable to be sacrificed to the Earth Dwellers’ god. That’s what it means.”

Shock ran through Josh Adams. He was very close to Sarah Collingwood. He knew that their priority had to be to set her free. He also saw that if they could help the king’s son, it might give them better access to King Celevorn.

“We’ve got to do something quick,” he said.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Abbey said. “I’ve been listening a lot since Sarah and I came here, and the Earth Dwellers are under the power of a high priest named Nomus. The king there has absolute confidence in him, and I’m afraid for Sarah and for the king’s son.”

Josh Adam’s lips grew thin. “We’ll do something,” he promised. “I don’t know what yet, but we’ll do something.”

S
arah found herself becoming more and more attached to Lomeen, the daughter of Chief Maroni. Lomeen had no brothers or sisters and seemed to be a very lonely girl. The two of them spent much time together.

One day Sarah was helping Lomeen grind corn. It was a very primitive operation. The total machinery consisted of a large stone that had been hollowed out and a smaller, round stone that could be held in the hand. She watched Lomeen put a handful of corn in the hollow and then pound it with the small rock until she had made cornmeal.

“It would be nice if you had a mill, Lomeen.”

“What is a mill?”

“Oh, it’s a machine that grinds corn up into small bits. You can even make flour out of it.”

“What is flour?”

Sarah laughed and picked up some of the fragments. “This is what we’d call cornmeal, but if you kept grinding it, you’d get corn flour. Very good to cook with.”

Lomeen listened as Sarah described a grain mill. Then she sighed. “We don’t have anything like that.”

“I’ll tell you what would be good, if you’ve never tried it,” Sarah said.

“What is that, Sarah?”

“We’ll make hominy and then grits.”

Lomeen, of course, had no idea of what either hominy or grits was.

Sarah decided to teach her. She had learned on her uncle’s farm back in OldWorld. The first thing she did was to put a hole in the bottom of an old wooden churn and fill the churn with wood ashes. She then poured water on top of the ashes. When the fluid came out the bottom, she said, “This is what we call lye water, Lomeen.”

The girl was watching closely. “What do you do with it?”

“I will show you. It will take a while, though.”

Sarah took the lye water and poured it over grains of corn to soak them. The next day, she said, “See. The corn has swelled up.”

Lomeen looked at it. “It
is
big. What do you do now?”

“This is what is called hominy. What we’ll do is dry some of this, and we’ll eat the rest.”

The hominy dish was tested by the chief himself at his table where Lomeen served him. His eyes opened wide, and he said, “This new food is good!”

“Wait’ll you taste grits, Chief.” Sarah grinned. “I guarantee you’ll love them.”

When the hominy was dry enough, Sarah pounded it into smaller fragments. It broke apart easily. When she had a plentiful supply, she said, “Now, this is grits, Lomeen. You can boil it, put some butter and salt and pepper on it, and you’ve got something good to eat.”

“What’s pepper?” Lomeen asked innocently.

Sarah gaped at her. “Well, it’s something that adds flavor to food.”

The grits also proved to be a success, and soon Sarah had her hands full teaching all the women how to make the two delicacies. Apparently the villagers’ diet was so monotonous that anything new was a treat.

Lomeen seemed very curious about Jere. She asked Sarah innumerable questions about the young man, including one that Sarah expected.

“Does he have a wife, Sarah?”

“I don’t think so.”

“He is so handsome. It’s a shame our people are at war.”

Sarah shot a quick glance at her. “I don’t think
their
people are. I think
your
people are at war. The Cloud People are very gentle. I wish you could spend a few days with Jere’s people. You’d like them, Lomeen.”

“Really! Do you think they’d like me?”

“Who wouldn’t like you?” Sarah smiled. She proceeded to tell Lomeen as much as she could about the king’s son, including the fact that he and his father did not get along well. “King Celevorn is a practical sort of man. He thinks his son ought to be busy doing important things, but Jere only wants to write poetry. He has a great imagination.”

“I don’t think any of our people write poetry. They wouldn’t see any good in it. ‘You can’t eat it,’ they would say.”

“That’s true, but there are a lot of things in life that you can’t eat or use, and yet they are nice.”

Jere spent some time with the two girls. He always seemed jolly and could make up little poems as easily as other people could talk. It amazed Sarah and appeared to absolutely astound Lomeen, who said she’d never heard anything like this.

     The chief found the young stranger Jere quite interesting. One day the two of them went hunting, at which Jere said he was not the best in the world. He finally said, “I don’t wonder that your father is displeased
with you, Jere.” He had heard much of this from the young man himself. “A man has to go out and bring in game.”

“That’s true, Chief,” Jere said. “I feel ashamed of myself sometimes, but it gets so boring doing nothing but hunting—and taking care of things.”

“But would you let things take care of themselves?” Maroni asked sternly. He really liked Jere, but he thought he saw a character fault here. He had talked to the young man more than once about the need for men to take charge and do things and accomplish important feats. He himself was a mighty hunter and noted among his people. Yes, the young man needed to do something important.

     One evening the whole village came together for a feast. The women cooked all day, roasting pigs over glowing coals. Sarah helped by turning a spit, though she shuddered a little when she saw that the head had been left on.

The men did little but sit about and tell stories while the women hurried about doing all the cooking. They grilled fish over the coals and roasted a young deer, too, and it was quite a marvelous feast.

Jere sat beside the chief, while across from them sat Chan and the high priest. Sarah, standing with the women, noticed that Chan and Nomus were glowering.

     More than once, Chan and Nomus glanced across the table and whispered to each other.

“What does she see in that puppy, Nomus?” Chan once grumbled.

The priest grinned evilly. “More than she sees in you, I think.”

He knew that Chan was determined to have Lomeen for one of his wives. For some reason she seemed equally determined to have nothing to do with him.

“Let me catch him out alone sometime,” Chan said. “We’ll see what he can do.”

Nomus turned sour. He did not like the way things were going, either. Somehow Chief Maroni had softened and mellowed under the influence of the young man and the Sleeper they called Sarah. He felt that his power over the chief was slipping away from him. But he would regain it. His mind worked constantly, trying to think of a way.

     When most of the eating was over, and the men sat around drinking a brew that bit at Sarah’s throat so that she would not try it again, Chief Maroni said, “Now we will have entertainment.”

Jere turned to Lomeen, who was standing behind him. “Come and sit down, Lomeen. Let us watch the fun.”

Lomeen looked nervously toward her father. “Our women do not sit in the presence of men.”

Jere said. “It’s the same with us, but I don’t see why. I think that is rather silly.”

“Good for you, Jere,” Sarah whispered.

The chief had taken all this in. As the entertainment began, he questioned Jere about the customs of the Cloud People. He listened for a time, then said, “It is too bad that our tribes don’t get along better.”

“It is indeed a shame, Chief,” Sarah said quickly from behind him, seeing her opportunity. “The two tribes could share so many things. The Cloud People could learn from you how to hunt better.”

“Especially if we were allowed to get on the ground without getting killed,” Jere said.

The chief blinked thoughtfully, but he said, “It is the way things are.”

“It’s the way things are, but it is not the way things have to be,” Jere said. “See how well we’re getting along here.”

     From across the table, Nomus gave the young stranger a hard glance. Then the high priest muttered to Chan, “I’ll have to do something about this.”

“Let me take care of him. I’ll take him for a walk, and he’ll never come back.”

“No. That won’t do.” His eyes fell on the girl Sarah then, and an idea came to him. He said nothing more, but he stroked his cheek and let himself smile an evil smile.

     Sarah enjoyed the simple entertainment—it was graceful folk dancing.

Jere too watched with a smile. When it was finished, he applauded, saying, “Wonderful! I wish I could dance like that!”

“What can you do to entertain us, Prince Jere?” Chief Maroni asked.

“Not much. I can tell a story perhaps.”

“Good. We love stories here.”

What followed next was very interesting to Sarah, watching from the cooking fire.

Jere came to his feet and soon proved to have the natural gift of a storyteller. His words were smooth and flowing, and especially since he was talking to people who could not read—whose only entertainment was oral stories—he was well received. Everyone grew quiet as he told of a great hunt in which a noble chief slew a mighty monster.

Maroni leaned forward, his face solemn and filled with interest as he listened. When Jere ended, he applauded wildly. “That was a fine story! Do you know any more?”

“Oh, I could go on forever,” Jere said with a laugh. Then he told a funny story, which had all the villagers in an uproar.

Sarah went back to stand beside Lomeen. She saw that the girl’s eyes were fixed on the young man. “He’s a wonderful storyteller,” Sarah said.

“Yes, and my father loves stories. So do I.”

     When the hour grew late, the chief dismissed everyone. As he prepared to go back to his house, he said to Lomeen, “Walk with me, daughter. That was a fine feast.”

“Yes, it was.”

“That young man. Jere. If he had any ambition, he’d be a great leader. Anyone who can tell stories like that can get people to do things. I’ve noticed that before. He has quite an imagination.”

“Yes, he has.”

Maroni looked down at her and smiled. “I notice you watched him quite a bit.”

“He was very interesting.”

“Nice looking, isn’t he?”

“I hardly noticed.”

Maroni laughed and patted his daughter on the shoulder. “I saw how you didn’t notice. You didn’t take your eyes off him.”

“I wish,” Lomeen said suddenly, “that we didn’t have to slay any more of the Cloud People, Father. If they are all like Jere, to do so is a shame.”

Maroni was thoughtful as they continued their
walk over the bridges. “I remember when your mother was alive. She knew some of the Cloud People. She liked them very much. Those I met, I liked, too. In fact, I knew King Celevorn when we both were young. He’s a good man.”

“Then why do we have to keep on killing them?”

Maroni had no answer. Actually he was troubled every time a sacrifice took place. Finally he said, “Nomus says that Nimbo demands sacrifice. And you wouldn’t have us sacrifice our own people, would you?”

“I wouldn’t have us sacrifice anybody!”

“You are not afraid of Nimbo? Not afraid that we will offend the god?”

“I don’t think there is any Nimbo.”

The chief was absolutely shocked. He stopped walking and turned to his daughter. “What are you saying, Lomeen?”

“I think the high priest uses that story about Nimbo just to get what he wants from us. Suppose there were no Nimbo. Would you honor Nomus the way you do?”

He supposed she saw the answer in his face.

“No, you wouldn’t. You’ve never liked him, Father. But you’re afraid of him.”

Maroni did not like his daughter to think that he was afraid of anyone. “I am just afraid that bad things will happen to our people. That’s why I listen to him.”

“Another thing, Father,” she said. “I don’t want you to give me to Chan. He’s a brutal man. I hate him.”

“He wants you for his wife. He’s the strongest man in the tribe.”

“But he’s awful!”

Maroni was even more troubled. Chan had been asking him for some time for his daughter. Knowing
Lomeen’s feelings, he had refused so far. Now he saw the distress on her smooth face. He loved this daughter as he had loved her mother. He said, “Chan may change.”

     The day after the feast, the chief went on a hunt. He asked Jere and Sarah to go with him.

The three of them went far into the forest, and Sarah was amazed at the knowledge of Chief Maroni. He not only was an expert woodsman, but it seemed he knew every plant and every tree. He was also a very pleasant companion, something she had not imagined when she had first met him.