The Elder Gods. David Eddings
‘With my compliments, my beloved sister,’ he said extravagantly, handing her the bundle.
Zelana eagerly took the bundle and turned back the edge of the fur robe to see what her brother had given her. She gaped in obvious disbelief at the newborn pet drowsing in the warm fur robe. ‘What am I supposed to do with this thing?’ she demanded in a shrill voice.
He shrugged. ‘Take care of it, Zelana. It shouldn’t be much more difficult to care for than a young dolphin.’
‘But it’s one of those man-creatures!’ she protested.
‘Why, so it is,’ Dahlaine replied in mock astonishment. ‘How strange that I didn’t notice that myself. You’re very perceptive, Zelana.’ He paused. ‘It’s not an ordinary man-creature, dear sister,’ he added gravely. ‘It’s very special. There are only a few of them, but they’ll change the world. Care for it and protect it, Zelana. I think you’ll have to feed it, because I don’t think it can live on light alone, as we do. You might have to experiment a bit to find something it can digest, but I’m sure that you’re clever enough to solve that problem. You’ll need to keep it clean as well. Infant man-creatures tend to be messy. Then, after a few years, you might want to teach it to talk. There are things it’s going to need to tell us, and if it can’t talk, it won’t be able to pass them on to us.’
‘What could one of these creatures tell us that we don’t already know?’
‘Dreams, Zelana, dreams. We don’t sleep, so we don’t dream. That baby in your arms is a Dreamer. That’s why I brought her to you.’
‘It’s a girl, then?’ Zelana’s voice softened.
‘Naturally. I didn’t think you’d get along very well with a boy. Care for her, Zelana, and I’ll drop by in a few years to see how she’s coming along.’
The baby in Zelana’s arms made a cooing sound and reached out one tiny hand to touch Zelana’s face.
‘Oh,’ Zelana said in a trembling, almost stricken voice, clasping the infant more closely to her.
Dahlaine smiled. It had turned out rather well, he congratulated himself. All it had taken to totally enslave his brother and both of his sisters had been a few peeps and coos and one soft touch from an infant hand. He might have gloated a bit more, but his own baby Dreamer was home alone, and it was almost feeding time, so he really should get on back.
He swam out of Zelana’s grotto and remounted his well-trained lightning bolt. Lightning bolts are noisy steeds, there’s no question about that, but they can cover vast distances in the blink of an eye.
Zelana’s first problem with her new charge was finding something to feed it. She rather hoped that Dahlaine had been mistaken. If the infant could live on light alone, as Zelana herself did, feeding it would be no problem. The vein of pink quartz in the ceiling of the grotto concentrated the sunlight into a glowing pink pool which was presently centered on the bed of moss where Zelana occasionally rested. Hopefully, she laid the fur-robed bundle on that moss bed and turned the robe back to allow the sunlight to touch the child.
The infant began to fuss a bit. Maybe the little creature didn’t like the color. Zelana had discovered that a steady diet of pink light took a bit of getting used to. Pink, it appeared, was an acquired taste.
Zelana snapped her fingers, and the quartz obediently turned blue. The baby didn’t stop fussing, though, and her discontent was growing louder.
Zelana tried green, but that didn’t work either. Then she tried plain white. It was a little bland, but perhaps the baby wasn’t ready for advanced colors yet.
The sounds the infant was making grew louder and more insistent.
Zelana quickly gathered the squalling infant in her arms and hurried down to the edge of the shallow pool at the mouth of the grotto. ‘Meeleamee!’ she called in the piping language of the dolphins, ‘I need your help! Soon! Please!’
Now Meeleamee had mothered many, many young, so she had great wisdom and much experience in such matters. ‘Milk,’ she advised.
‘What is milk?’ Zelana asked. ‘And where can I find some?’
Meeleamee explained in some detail, and for the very first time in her endless life, Zelana blushed. ‘What a strange sort of thing,’ she said, blushing even harder. She looked down at herself. ‘Do you think I might be able to…She left it hanging.
‘Probably not,’ Meeleamee replied. ‘There are some things involved that are just a little complicated. Can the young one swim?’
‘I don’t really know,’ Zelana admitted.
‘Unwrap her and put her down in the shallow water here. I should be able to nurse her without too much trouble.’
It was a bit awkward at first, but between them Zelana and Meeleamee managed to feed the infant. Zelana felt a real sense of accomplishment – which lasted for nearly four hours.
Then they had to feed the child again. It seemed that there was great deal of inconvenience involved in caring for infants.
The seasons turned, as seasons always do, and summer drifted on into autumn, and winter followed shortly after. Zelana had never really paid much attention to the seasons. Heat or cold had little meaning for her, and she could create light whenever she grew hungry.
The female dolphins were taking turns feeding the infant, and Zelana noticed that the child seemed to be very affectionate. The dolphins were a bit startled by kisses at first, but after a while they enjoyed being kissed by the grateful child, and sometimes there were even arguments about whose turn it was to nurse. The arguments broke off abruptly when the child sprouted teeth and began chewing on whatever was handy, though. Her diet changed at that point, and the dolphins offered her fish instead of milk. She still kissed them by way of thanks, so everything seemed all right again.
Since the child had always been fed in the shallow pool at the grotto’s mouth, she was swimming even before she began to grow teeth, but she started walking – and running – not long after her diet changed, and she was soon toddling about the grotto, squeaking dolphin words as she went. She returned to the water whenever she grew hungry, however. The dolphins were careful to keep her more or less confined to the water at the mouth of the grotto, but they took to chasing fish in from the deeper waters of Mother Sea to give the child some experience in the business of catching her own food.
When the summer of the child’s third year arrived, she ventured out of the grotto to join the younger dolphins in their forays along the coast of the Isle of Thurn. She spent her days now frolicking with the young dolphins and eating the bounty of Mother Sea.
Zelana approved of that. The child’s independence freed her mistress at last so that she could return to poetry and music.
The young dolphins called the child ‘Beeweeabee,’ but Zelana didn’t really think that was appropriate, since it approximately translated into ‘Short-Fin-With-No-Tail.’ Despite her habits and her companions, the little girl was still a land animal, so Zelana unleashed her poetic talents and ultimately arrived at ‘Eleria.’ It had a nice musical sound to it, and it rhymed with several very pleasant words.
The little girl didn’t seem to care for the name, but after a while she would answer to it when Zelana called her, so the name more or less did what it was supposed to.
The seasons continued to turn, but Zelana had long since realized that they could do that on their own, so she didn’t have to prompt them.
Then in the autumn of Eleria’s fifth year, Dahlaine came by again. ‘How are things progressing with your child, dear sister?’ he asked Zelana.
‘It’s a bit hard to say,’ Zelana replied. ‘I haven’t had any contact with the man-creatures for more than ten eons, and I’m sure they’ve changed in that many years. I can’t really be sure what’s normal for them at Eleria’s age. She spends most of her time in the water, though, so she doesn’t stink the way