Free The White Ship by Chingiz Aitmatov Page A

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    The boy and the girl wept and sobbed. They neither heard nor understood the old woman's words. Just looking down from the height filled them with terror. And down below the wild waves raged, rolling over one another.
    "Embrace now, little children, for the last time, say good-bye to one another," said the Pockmarked Lame Old Woman. She folded up her sleeves to make it easier to push them down the cliff. And then she said: "Forgive me children. This must be your destiny—yet it is not of my own will that I shall do this deed, but for your own good. . . ."
    But just as she had spoken, a voice was heard:
    "Wait, big wise woman, do not kill the innocent children."
    The Pockmarked Lame Old Woman turned, looked, and wondered: before her stood a deer, a mother deer. Her eyes were huge and filled with sorrow and reproach. She was as white as the first milk of a young doe. Her belly was covered with soft brown fur like a young camel's. Her horns were of rare beauty, spreading wide like the branches of a tree in autumn. And her udders were as pure and smooth as the breasts of a nursing woman.
    "Who are you? Why do you speak in the human tongue?" asked the Pockmarked Lame Old Woman.
    "I am the Mother Deer," she answered. "And I speak in human words because you will not understand me and will not obey me otherwise."
    "What do you wish, Mother Deer?"
    "Let the children go, big wise woman. I beg you, give them to me."
    "What do you want them for?"
    "Men killed my twins, my two fawns. I am looking for children."
    'You wish to nurse and rear them?"
    'Yes, big wise woman.''
    "Have you thought properly about it, Mother Deer?" laughed the Pockmarked Lame Old Woman. "They are human children. They will grow up and kill your fawns."
    "When they grow up they will not kill my fawns," re-plied the Mother Deer. "I shall be their mother, and they, my children. Will they kill, then, their own sisters and brothers?"
    "Oh, you can't tell, Mother Deer, you do not know men." The Pockmarked Lame Old Woman shook her head. "They have no pity for one another, and you talk of forest animals. I would give you these orphans, so you might learn the truth of my words yourself, but even these children will be killed by people. Why do you need all that grief?"
    "I shall lead the children away into a distant land where nobody will find them. Spare the children, big wise woman, let them go. I shall be a faithful mother to them. My udder is full. My milk is crying out for children. It is begging for children."
    "Well, if that is so," said the Pockmarked Lame Old Woman after thinking a while, "take them, and lead them away from here as fast as you can go. Take the orphans to your distant land. But if they perish on the long journey, if robbers kill them, if your human children repay you with black ingratitude, blame it on yourself."
    The Mother Deer thanked the Pockmarked Lame Old Woman. And to the boy and the girl she said:
    "Now I am your mother, you are my children. I shall lead you to a distant land, where a hot sea, Issyk-Kul, lies in the midst of snowy mountains."
    Happily, the boy and the girl ran after the Horned Mother Deer. But soon they tired and weakened, and the way was long—from one end of the world to another. They would not have gone far but for the Horned Mother Deer: she fed them her milk and warmed them with her body at night. And so they walked and walked. Their old homeland, Enesai, was farther and farther behind them, but their new home, Issyk¬Kul, was still a long way off. A summer and a winter, a spring and a summer and an autumn, and yet another winter and another spring and summer and autumn they journeyed through dense forest and parched steppe, over shifting sands, across high mountains and rushing streams. They were pursued by packs of wolves, but the Horned Mother Deer would take the children on her back and carry them away from the ravening beasts. Hunters with bows and arrows galloped after them on their horses, shouting: "A deer has