Free Ursus of Ultima Thule by Avram Davidson Page B

nature of mining was not strange. But it was all strange, strange and fell, to Arntat and his son. Only the unswerving friendship of the nains and the fact of his and his son’s being still together relieved the toil at all. And worse by far than the toil was the circumstance of bondage, of confinement, of life now being limited to a set series of motions within severely limited space. All thralldoms are one same thralldom. The unremitting labor of the toil, the unremitting oppression of the guards, the ill food, cramped space, uncleanliness, lack of hope, dull hatred, scanted sleep, infinite heaviness of spirit — are not these the features of all thralldoms?
    “It is harder, Bear, for thee than we,” the nains said. “The tunnel fits we as the hoodskin fits the pizzle.”
    “Then I stoop,” he said. Stooped, grunted. “I have stooped before.” But his eyes were sunken. And his forehead bruised and scabrous, for he did not always think to stoop, nor they to warn him.
    And the nains said, “It is harder, Bear, for thee than we. We be used to the smell of iron dust and fire and have forgot the smell of grass and waterflows.”
    “Then I shall grow used to this and shall forget that other, too,” he said. But he did not grow used to it, he often was coughing, and there was that in his eyes and on his face which seemed to show that he was not forgetting. And one night when the begrudged fire burned low and the older nains had begun to creep into their sleepy-holes and kick the crushed bracken-fern into a brief semblance of softness — at last, that night his voice burst loud with, “But I cannot forget! No! No! I cannot forget!”
    The older nains crept out from their sleepy-holes, greasy-sided, fetid, close. They laid their hands on his, and on his knees and arms and legs, their huge and calloused hands. And a few did so to Arnten, who had crept close to his father; and the heavy nain-hands were light and gentle. “Since thee cannot forget, Bear, cease to try,” they said. “And speak it out to we.” And the Bear spoke.
    Not — at first — of the free life of sun and stars, grass and waterflows, salmon hunts and honey thefts, of timeless days and world without walls. These all, it seemed, though well remembered in general, had become as it were a design bordered in dyed grasses around a basket rim — turn it, turn it, now faster, now slower, and see the same sequences following forever; man’s mind no longer holding in differentiating recollection any one sequence from any other like it — so it seemed, when by and by his talk took up those days.
    • • •
    But he began with other days, when he was a man’s child among other men’s children, he one and Orfas another and Orfas a little older. Not much difference in age and little if any in status, even after both presently realized that Orfas was in a way an uncle — that Orfas’ father was the other’s grandfather, the other’s father Orfas’ half-brother. Both playing and tumbling and chasing dogs in one familiar yard onto which opened (so it seemed) the doors of many houses, yet all of them family houses. In those days they were but two among many and each father had several sons and neither more of a rival to each other than either was to any others. All the sons and cousins and uncles of that age had cast their reed practice spears and awkwardly fletched their boy-arrows and went creeping and hunting in the mock forests of the great yard. The years had flown away like the wild swans fly away, yet never do the absent years return as do the absent swans.
    Boys had grown to men, passed through ordeal and initiation, learned which was their witchery-beast, dreamed medicine dreams, had found women and knew the milk of life to be within them. The hunt had ceased to be play and often man had fought with man, not for proving or for pleasure but for very life; and some had taken life and some had lost it. Some of all that company of boykin had died