4
Mawei didn’t stop moving until the afternoon. The little human had been making whining noises for some time and Mawei thought it might be thirsty or hungry so she stopped at a creek and set the child down. The child looked around like it wanted to run, but instead watched Mawei bend down to the creek and scoop some water up to her mouth. “Have a drink.” She said.
The human frowned and crouched down by the creek, putting a hand in the water and then pulling it back quickly. “It’s too cold! It hurts my hand.”
“Sorry little one.” Mawei said. She dipped her hand back into the creek and brought some water to the child’s lips and was relieved when it drank. Mawei repeated the process three more times before the child had had enough. “Are you hungry?” Mawei asked.
“I’ll have some Graham crackers.” The child said, knowing the monster wouldn’t understand.
Mawei lifted and held the child so they could see each other better. “I think I smell some berries not too far away.”
“French fries.” The child said.
“You’re welcome.” Mawei answered.
She found the bush about a half-mile away, at the edge of a muddy scrubland. She pulled a few berries off and gave them to the child, who just held them and frowned. Mawei took a couple back and ate them herself. “We’re lucky to have found berries so late in the season.” She said.
The child reluctantly put a berry in its mouth and bit into it making a sour face, and then opened its mouth and let the chewed-up berry fall out. “Yuck,” the child said, “that’s not food.”
“Of course it is.” Mawei said, popping a few more into her mouth.
The child threw the remaining berries on the ground. “Rocks in there!”
“Well if you won’t eat berries, what do you want?” Mawei asked.
“I want pie.” The child said.
Mawei was about to ask what ‘pie’ was, but she heard a noise that startled her. She scooped up the child and prepared to run before she saw that it was just her uncle Rei. He was upwind, making his way toward them in a posture of confused concern. He had a strange lump on his back with two straps over his shoulders.
“Hi uncle.” Mawei said.
Rei stood and stared at them. “Mawei, what dream have you brought me into? Why are you holding a human child?”
“It’s sort of complicated.” She said.
“When I caught wind of it I said to myself, is my niece covered in human urine? This can’t be. I had to investigate and here you are, holding a human child.”
“Not just any human child, a very unusual one.” Mawei said.
Rei looked at the child up close and sniffed its hair, provoking a shudder. “Aside from the fact that my niece is holding it, I don’t see anything unusual.” He said. “Do you know how much trouble you could get in for this?”
“I’ll put it down so you can see what I mean.” Mawei said.
The child stood there and looked up at Mawei and then Rei. “What?” The child asked. “What are you staring at? I’m not your pet, so you can both point your ugly eyes somewhere else.”
“Did this human just speak?” Rei asked.
“Not only does it speak,” Mawei said, “it hurls insults.”
The little human turned and ran off into the forest, so Mawei took the opportunity to explain to Rei what had happened to the child’s parents. She told him all about the smashed windshield, the blood and the spinning wheels. “The child seems to have no idea that its parents were killed. It couldn’t see them from where it was strapped in, and the accident must’ve happened very suddenly.” They both began walking after the child. “And then this morning the human started speaking to me. Do other humans speak yeti? Is it normal?”
“No,” Rei said, “humans communicate through noises made with their mouths, grunting and burbling at each other. It’s a brute sort of language, but they manage all right. They don’t even acknowledge body posture as a form of communication. If a human spoke kindness with his mouth while holding a hostile body posture, the kindness would be believed and the hostility ignored. It’s just their way.”
The child saw them following and began moving faster. The two yetis could easily keep up and continue their conversation. “But uncle, what if two humans were talking and there were other humans nearby –wouldn’t they also hear the conversation, whether they wanted to or not?”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Rei said.
“And what if two humans wanted to talk but they were too far away from each other to hear?”
“In that case they would just shout their conversation.” Rei said.
Mawei laughed and thought for a moment. “Are their names sounds too?”
“Yes, yes,” Rei said, “each human has a sound that they identify as their name.”
Mawei reached down and stopped the child, turning it around to face them. “What is your name little bird?”
“Helena.” The child told Mawei for the second time. Mawei tried to imitate the sound but could only manage ‘Lala’. The child frowned at Mawei and her uncle. “No more monsters. I want to go home. I’m hungry.”
“It won’t eat berries uncle. I don’t know what to do.”
At this her uncle seemed delighted. He pulled the lump off of his back, and Mawei saw that it was made out of a similar substance to the coverings that the child wore. “I brought some human food to show the council of elders at the Gather.” Rei said.
“What is that thing uncle?”
“It is a human device for transporting objects.” He reached into it and pulled out a strange smelling little cylinder. “There’s human food in this. Human beings love to put things inside of other things. They would never just carry food, they’d carry a container with food inside it, and put that inside another container like the one that was strapped to my back.” He bit into the edge of the can and ripped the top open with his teeth. “She will eat this.” He said.
“She? The child is female?”
“Yes.” Rei said. “A girl like you Mawei. Lan-hah, come.” He said, trying to say the girl’s name in human sound language. “Come eat.”
Helena felt like screaming as loud as she could. In all her six years she had never been as hungry as she was then, and she didn’t like being cold either. She wasn’t like some of the kids in her class that would cry in any new situation, she was tough. Sometimes she would even laugh when she took a fall that would’ve made most girls her age cry. But now she was on the verge of having what her Nana would call a ‘major meltdown.’
Rei poured some beige goop from the ripped open can onto his hand. He held it down near Helena’s face and she sniffed at it suspiciously. After the berries she knew she had to be careful of food offered by the monsters. It smelled sweet so she scooped some into her mouth. “Pie!” She said to Mawei.
She was right. Rei had brought twelve cans of pumpkin pie filling, stolen in the pre-dawn hours from a palette on the loading dock behind a supermarket in the town of West Fork.
Little Helena scooped the rest of the pie filling out of Rei’s giant hand and slurped it down, getting a good portion on her face in the process. Rei poured more into his hand and held it down for the little girl. As she ate he turned to his niece. “There are two possibilities,” he said as Helena happily gobbled down the sweet sludge, “either this child is somehow special, and you happened on the only child in the world who could speak yeti, or all humans can speak yeti but they just don’t. The second option seems more likely. I’d say small children can do it, but then they forget as they learn the crude human sound language.”
“Maybe so.” Mawei said. “What do you think we should do with her?”
“Children her age might speak yeti to each other and the adult humans just never notice.” He poured the rest of the can into his hand and held it down for her. “When I was in the village I often saw young humans playing near where I lived, but I never recognized any yeti language.”
“What should we do uncle?”<
br />
“Well, she can speak,” Rei said, “let’s ask her.” He leaned down to the child. “Do you speak to other children in the same way you speak to us?”
“Where’s the bathroom?” Helena asked.
“The what?”
“I have to poop.”
“Oh.” Rei said. “You can go behind that bush if you’d like some privacy.” She groaned and went around the bush to do her business. “Interesting fact about humans,” Rei said to Mawei, “they poop into bowls of fresh water. It’s all sucked down into tubes that run underneath their villages. The village itself is like a living creature with guts, it’s all in my report.”
“What report?”
“Why do you think I’ve lived among the humans for the last five years? The council of elders sent me to find out as much as I could about them. It’s strange that the most interesting fact that I’ve discovered comes from my young niece and not from my own observations.” He frowned at his hand, still messy from the pie filling. “Why should a human be able to speak yeti? This might give some clue as to the true nature of their origin. It’s very puzzling.”
“Please uncle, we have a long way to go, we’ll be late for the Gather if we don’t hurry. Let’s take the little bird to a human village and be done with it.”
“This child could teach us so much about humans.” Rei said. He found a few flat leaves on the ground, shook the snow off them, and handed them over the bush to the child. “Humans are very fastidious.” He said to Mawei.
“Uncle, please- if I don’t leave now and travel as fast as I can through the night, I’ll be late and my mother will be angry. I can’t miss the grand call or the first cycle of the Chronicle.”
“Yes you’re right,” Rei said, “Mawei, I always forget how young you are. Go, don’t be late for the Gather. I’ll see that the child remains safe.”
“You’ll take it to a human village?”
“Mawei, you did the right thing bringing this child to me.” Rei said. “Don’t tell a soul about her, she’s my responsibility now. Go before any more time passes.”
Helena came back around the bushes, looking annoyed that Mawei and her uncle were still there. The child seemed like a helpless little bald chick, and Mawei hated to part with her, but she thought her uncle had things under control. After all, she told herself, he’s my elder. He knows what he’s doing. She didn’t want to confuse the child with a long goodbye, so she bent down and touched her nose to Helena’s and was on her way.
She’d only gone a few miles before she stopped, realizing that she would probably never see the human again. She thought about running back, but she didn’t do it. She looked up at the clouds for awhile. You did everything you could for her, she told herself, you saved her life, and now that the adventure is over it’s time to put it in the past.