The Judging of the Priestess
Out of future Mexico the Japcans came,
invading Jinnia. And Meg, the priestess,
faced dual judgment as she brought Daiv,
her man, back to the tribe.
In these latter years of the 35th Century, Mount Rushmore, with its colossal statues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt was known to the superstitious tribeswomen as “the Place of the Gods.” From a pilgrimage to this holy spot (where she had met Daiv and learned the great secret that the Ancient Ones were Men) Meg was returning. (“The Priestess Who Rebelled,” Amazing Stories, October, 1939.)—Ed.
Behind them the sun sank lazily, a huge, lop-sided ball of fire too-bright-to-be-looked-at, and the gathering fingers of dusk stole softly through the trees, casting wan shadows where they touched. The air was thin and cold with the breath of approaching night; imps of darkness lurked in the tree-roots and hollows.
But Meg felt no fear. She was alive with warmth, light, happiness. The hills about her were soft-bosomed and gay with autumn’s garments; no longer was the landscape salt and drear as it had been back there in the ‘Kota territory, in the Place of the Gods. This was her homeland, her native Jinnia. Beyond that turn was a rill, a half day’s march beyond the rill lay the village of her own tribeswomen....
From her seat astride Nessa, she looked down upon Daiv, her Man, and her voice was vibrant with happiness.
“We are almost there, Daiv! Soon you will meet my people, talk with them, learn to love them as I do.”
Daiv smiled at her dubiously.
“That I am prepared to do, Golden One. I can’t help wondering, though, how they will accept me. After what you’ve told me about the Men of your tribe—” He shook his head.
Meg made a happy-sound deep in her throat; slipped from Nessa’s back and covered Daiv’s lips with her hands.
“There is nothing to fear, Daiv. The Men of my Clan—pah!—they are not like you. They are weak things, meant only for breeding. The Mother will know, the moment she sees you, that you are one like the Gods. She too made the pilgrimage. She will rejoice and be glad. And—” Meg moved closer into the circle of his arms. “She will be gladder still when she sees our happiness.”
“I hope so,” said Daiv soberly. His lips met hers in the touching-of-mouths that he had taught her. Then, “But it is too late for us to finish our journey today,” he said. “We must find a place to make camp.”
“Just beyond the turn,” Meg told him excitedly. “I know every inch of this country, Daiv. When I was young, and studying under the Mother to become a Priestess of the Clan, I used to ride out here to seek solitude and the guidance of the Gods. Just beyond the turn there is forest and a small stream. This is an ancient land, my lover; the trees are mighty and strong. But—” Her eyes found his adoringly. “But not so mighty and strong as you.”
Daiv said, “Now, Golden One!” reprovingly, but Meg felt happy-crinkles in her heart as she saw the way he drew back his shoulders to lead the way into the forest. She did not mount Nessa again, but walked behind Daiv, leading the tamed and captive doe by its bridle.
Nessa had been Daiv’s gift to her, a mount to take the place of the horse Meg had lost on her way to the Place of the Gods when the Wild One had attacked her. “A wedding gift,” Daiv had called it—which did not make sense. But, then, Daiv was always saying strange things. That was, Meg thought, a trifle awefully, because he came from Kirki, which was a holy place far to the southland, near the Land of the Escape. His tribespeople were direct descendants of those Ancient Ones who, long ages ago, had fled from Earth to the evening star in the bowels of a metal bird that spat fire.1
Daiv’s skill had captured Nessa, wild woodland doe, but Meg’s gentleness had tamed her. She had borne Meg across all these foreign territories; through Braska and Zurrie, to the blue-shining fields of Tucky; now, at last, back to Meg’s beloved Jinnia.
It had been a long journey and a strange one. Many things had Meg seen; curiosities that would thrill the Women of her Clan to startled, “Aiees!” of astonishment when she told of them. She had seen the long, straight roads built by the Ancient Ones; their smooth creet now cracked and worn but still easier to travel than the tortuous woodland paths. She had seen the remnants of a gigantic hoam called Sinnaty, where once had lived a great folk called “the Reds.” She and Daiv had lingered for three days with the tribeswomen of Loovil (whose Mother knew the Mother of Meg’s Clan, and had sent greetings and gifts of ripe, fragrant bacca); there had they seen an antique statue of a horse-god named Manowah.
They had even—Meg thrilled at the recollection—slept in one of the traditional oaken hoams peculiar to the Tucky folk; dwellings immortalized in the Tucky tribal song, “—sing one song of my oaken Tucky hoam—”
And, “It is such a great land, Daiv!” Meg had said one night, lying sleepless and excited over the wonders she had seen that day. “Such a great land, this Tizathy! How I wish I had lived in it when the Ancient Ones had welded it all together.”
“A great land, indeed,” was Daiv’s answer. “But what did you call it? Tizathy?”
“Yes,” explained Meg. “That was its name. One of the ancient songs tells of it. ‘My country, Tizathy; sweet land of liberty—’”
Daiv looked at her with vast respect. “Someday we must visit my people, Golden One. The elders of my tribe will want to talk to you. You have such great learning....”
But now, at last, their journey was over. Jinnia’s sweet green hills cradled them; tomorrow they would join and touch hands with Meg’s sisters. Tonight they would sleep in the little forest Meg knew so well....
Daiv turned, an unfamiliar wrinkle-look on his forehead. “Golden One, didn’t you say we were coming to forest land?”
“Yes, Daiv. Right before you. There—”
Then Meg was at his side, and her eyes were round with wonderment. “But—but this is not right!” she cried.
It was no forest that confronted them. Where Meg’s memory had told her would be a riotous jungle of intertwining green, great trees that brushed the heavens, high archways of leaves and thick-boled woodland monarchs, there was nothing but a vast and desolate plain, strewn with bristling twigs!
Stark and severe was that glade, swept bare of all vegetation save these thousands upon countless thousands of twigs. No grass, no shrubs, no flowers. Rough, bare hillside, and ankle-deep—the host of stunted branches.
“I—I don’t understand!” said Meg bewilderedly. She looked at Daiv, fear suddenly cold in her heart, and she made a magic sign over her breast to ward away the evil wood ghosts. “This is not as it should be, Daiv! Something—”
The plain echoed Daiv’s boisterous happy-sound.
“Something tells me,” he chuckled, “you’ve made a mistake, Golden One. So you know every inch of this country, eh? Well—” He shrugged. “It is a cloudless night. And plain or forest, this is as good a place as any to make camp. Get water, Meg, for the cawfee, and I will build a fire.”
Silently, with a sun-heat burning her cheeks, Meg moved to the rill and got water. Then, as silently again, she returned to the spot Daiv had designated. By this time she expected he would have made fire-sparks with a rock and the bit of flame-metal he carried in his pouch—but to her great surprise, no crackling blaze awaited her.
Instead, Daiv was standing upright beside one of the branched twigs that festooned the plain. There was an angry-look on his face; perspiration dripped from his forehead and his throat. The look he turned to her was red with shame.
“Meg,” he began, “Meg—a magic is upon me. I am weak. I have no strength!”
“Strength, Daiv?”
“Yes. Look!” He bent to the broken branch before him. His strong thighs tensed; the muscles of his back and shoulders corded with strain. Fresh perspiration broke from his pores as he strained to lift the tiny twig. Then his hands, white-knuckled and trembling, lifted clear; he looked at her again.
“It is so small,” he said in a faint, hurt voice. “Yet I cannot lift it!”
Meg sprang to his side; bent to the twig. She was slim, a pale, golden shadow beside Daiv, but she was strong. Her hands grasped the rough bark; she lifted—
And fell forward, thrown completely off balance by that weight imponderable. Coarse soil rasped her knees, but she did not feel the pain. All lesser emotions were lost in the swift, superstitious fear that engulfed her.
“The forest is accursed, Daiv! We must flee!”
Hand in hand they raced wildly across the plain to the shelter of the woodland at its farther rim. The rays of the dying sun cast their shadows long before them, and a dry rattle of mirth seemed to rise from the tangle of unyielding twigs that bruised their feet....
Meg dreamed fear-dreams that night. She was lost in a jungle of trees hard as bone; as she fled beneath them, these trees groaned and toppled toward her, their motionless branches clutching like skeletal fingers. She moaned, cried Daiv’s name—then wakened to find him leaning over her anxiously.
“Meg! Listen!”
In the cool morning the sound carried clearly to Meg’s ears. A human voice, high-pitched in hideous screaming. A hoarse, grating voice. Meg shuddered.
“A Wild One, Daiv! He has fallen into one of our traps.”
“Wild One? Trap?”2
“I’ll show you.” Meg rose swiftly, instantly awake as any forest animal. Bright morning sun cascaded down upon her, wakening a sister gleam of gold on her arms and thighs, touching to warm life the tawny down between her high, proud breasts. Save for the white girdle of flesh beneath her fur breech-clout, Meg was all gold; her hair, piled in a loose knot upon her head, was like a shining crown. It was not all Women, Daiv thought briefly, whose charm withstood the early morning sun. He was lucky to have found as a mate this slim lance of loveliness.
He hungered for her lips. But he was Daiv—“He-who-would-learn”—and here was a new mystery. He followed Meg. Meg followed the plaintive cries.
They stopped, at length, at the lip of a cleft in the earth. It had formerly been covered over with a webbing of boughs and ferns, but now that cover was broken, and from the bottom of the pit came the howls of pain that had drawn them.
Meg’s lips were grim, white lines.
“He is in there,” she said—and as she spoke she unslung her hunting bow, slipped a bone-tipped arrow from her quiver. She stepped to the mouth of the crevice, drew aim. Then—
“Wait, Golden One!”
Daiv swept the weapon from her hands. He looked down into the pit, cried out sharply, then, ignoring Meg’s warning, lowered himself into it. A moment later he was back again, slipping his burden from his shoulder. His burden was, as Meg had guessed, a brutish, hairy Man-thing; foul with the stench of unwashed sweat and grease, grimy with blood and dirt.
“You were going to kill him!” Daiv accused sternly. “He is a Man, wounded, and you were going to kill him!”
The priestess said haughtily, “He is not a Man, he is one of the Wild Ones. Of course I was going to kill him. That is the Law.”
“It is a poor Law,” grunted Daiv. He was bending over the Wild One now, cleaning his wounds with handfuls of clean, dried grass. “If the Women of your tribe build traps like these for Men, I’m not sure I want to meet them. Aagh! False tops, and sharpened sticks beneath!”
Meg the Priestess disappeared, and in her place stood Meg the wife, a look of bafflement in her eyes.
“But, Daiv—” Faintly. “You killed one of the Wild Ones yourself. The first time we met.”
“That,” said Daiv curtly, “was because he tried to linber you. I wanted you for myself. There—he’s coming around now. How do you feel, Man? Are you all right?”
The Wild One’s eyes were uncomprehending as they saw the golden-limbed priestess and this strange, hairless Man before him. His bearded lips parted in a strangled fragment of speech.
“I am... all right.” Then, to Daiv alone, “You... saved my life!”
Daiv nodded. Thoughts crawled slowly behind the Wild One’s eyes; he reached a decision. From his filthy loin cloth he drew a chipped and rusted blade; this he offered to Daiv. With the other hand he smoothed flat the verminous tangle of hair above his heart.
“My life is yours, stranger,” he said humbly.
Meg’s eyes were wide with astonishment. From infancy she had been taught that the Wild Ones were mad creatures without mercy, without human sentiments; beasts that prowled the forests with but two thoughts in their minds: to satisfy the hungers of their bellies and to kill. Yet here was a Wild One displaying the civilized emotion of gratitude. To Daiv she said querulously,
“He must be crazed, Daiv! Let us take him with us to the village. The tribe Mother will want to see this marvel—a Wild One with a Woman’s instincts.”
“He goes free!” said Daiv. He was still curt. He lifted the Wild One to his feet. “Can you find your fellows, Wild One?” he asked.
The Wild One nodded mutely.
“Then, go!” ordered Daiv. “And be more careful of traps in the future. Begone!”
But the Wild One hesitated an instant longer. The words came haltingly from his lips—but they sprang from his heart. “My life is still yours, Hairless One. Should ever you decide to claim it, you will find me north of this spot. In a hillside cave by the waterfall....”
Then he was gone; a brutish, gnarled, hairy shadow sliding through the matted jungle. And to Meg, “Come. Let us find your people,” said Daiv. “I am minded to see what folk would harm poor brutes like that one.”
Meg pondered for hours, as they marched those last few miles to her native village, but she could not quite discover why it was that her cheeks and throat felt so hot. It was as though the fever-god was within her, but she knew she was not ill....
And so, finally, she riding upon Nessa’s back, Daiv striding before her on swift, sure feet, they came to Meg’s home. To the village of the Jinnia Clan that was her own.
And again the remembrance of the massive twig and the strange forest returned, bringing with it a half-fear. It lay uneasily in their minds like the brooding residue of a dream....