The Feast of the Moon
by
Brian Wapole
The Feast of the Moon
brian wapole
Copyright © 2012 by brian wapole
Smashwords Edition
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, locales or hamsters is entirely coincidental.
Cover illustration by Sarah Foster
dedicated to
pete, gloria and emmie
Prologue
I don’t remember much from my youth beyond that I liked clinging to my mother’s fur. I would push against her, belly-full, dizzy with lilac, dreaming of even more food, listening to the gentle roil behind her skin while she told us stories she heard as a youngster. But my memories are of lilac...more so of full bellies. How else?
If I hadn’t been snatched by humans I would’ve recalled more stories from my youth…maybe. I think the stories must’ve been lessons about how to live alone, how to make a burrow, what to do when your offspring leave, what to do when you are called by Death, what to expect when living with humans. Hawks. When I was on my own, I missed not hearing stories about hawks. I’m sure those were both exciting and useful.
Most of the animals I knew reserved their sharpest fear for hawks. I can see that. My story has a hawk in it, but cats and snakes make me forget I was born to seek honor and danger. My mate once asked why I feared snakes more than hawks.
“How often have you seen our hawk?’’
“More times than two.”
“Right. But you never see snakes. That’s why I fear them more,” I replied.
It’s not that I don’t fear hawks. It’s like saying one human is larger than the next; what is it to a hamster which human is larger? So to with snakes and hawks: they can both kill us faster than Death can call us.
I told my offspring stories about hawks, digging burrows, finding water in summer and of the adventures I unearthed while forging for seeds and nuts. But I didn’t tell them what to do when their offspring left. When it happened to me I learned something worthy of a real story: Living with snakes and hawks is not so hard.
Since I knew I was going to tell the tale of my life, I've chewed and stored, buried and burrowed down this vine of days, eyes closed, revisiting the stories of my life. My earliest memories, scattered like the choice Timothy seeds after a storm, are always the same: being warm, but wanting to be warmer; being full, but striving to feel my belly ache with fullness; being close to my mother, but wanting to be closer still. Inside her, if I could manage it. Maybe I was happiest in that first burrow!
After the humans snatched us, I wanted more than an endless cache of chestnuts to remember the stories of my youth. I vowed that I would recall everything that happened to me. My memory for stories, the stories of my life, was my mother’s greatest gift.
I lived with humans for more moons than two before escaping back to the prairie. It was there that I met my best friend, Shrew. He taught me the rhythms of the grassy knoll we shared, even though he considered hamsters useless; outside of nature, fit for humans. He was unimpressed with the marvels humans could create and rolled his eyes at the stories I told of them.
Shrew also did not know or care about winter. I told him that he’d prefer a hawk’s talons around his neck to the North Wind’s icy grip and he paused. When a shrew is still, it is as if the land and everything on it is still and the sky has stopped shifting. I fought the urge to look overhead for an owl, so open I felt there on our little knoll.
"But how does all this help me find Timothy seeds,” he asked.
I opened my mouth, but he continued,
"If we talk any longer the seeds will be gone. Perhaps hamsters with their winters and their what-not stuffed in pouches can talk about how the Sun might leave and never come back. Perhaps crows bring them acorns because hamsters ask such important questions. But shrews must gather them now."
Shrew had a poor memory (worse than mine!) for all his good sense. He would forage over the same ground more times than two before moving on. One time, Shrew came upon a filbert, which he prized like I did blackberries, but only the husk remained. Probably a squirrel or chipmunk got there first. He tossed it aside and began his frenetic jumping here/jumping there foraging, alighting on the filbert again. As excited as he was the first time, he scooped it up, and as crestfallen as before, cast it aside when it proved worthless. I got an idea.
I collected the filbert; waited a moment; then put it back in the same spot.
"Look there!" I said.
He performed the same hope and despair dance as before. I picked it up. Waited. Then repeated my fun. Again he sprang at the filbert, and again threw it down, dejected. I did this until it became more tiresome than picking nettles from my fur. Shrew never thought it was the same filbert – never tired of being happy and sad.
It occurred to me that hamsters are like shrews. Not with filberts, of course, but with stories. The stories that my mother loved so dearly…how do I know they were good? As far as I know, hamsters don't tell good stories. I've never heard one. Maybe my mother heard one good story when she was young and each day she woke up thinking, "I'm going to hear a story today!" And it never happened. Shrew probably found a filbert once – how else would he know to be excited about finding another one – and the memory became tastier than the nut. I think for a hamster a story is a filbert. I’ve been looking for the forgotten stories of my youth ever since.
Chapter One
We huddled close for warmth. We were full. There were more than two of us – my brothers and sisters. It was to be the last day when being warm was my only concern. From that day on I carried more thoughts than two. Like foraging. And hawks. And humans, burrows and bedding. And telling this story. But at that moment there was only being warm – and I was that.
Then the oddest thing happened: I felt my mother slide up. Hamsters don't go up. We are not frogs or grasshoppers who spring up faster than any animal I've ever seen. But that is what my mother was doing.
I remember like the scent of Dogwood blossoms each thought I had when my mother was rising into the air as fast as a grasshopper:
"She is rising to stretch…No, she is rising to groom...No, she is rising to disgorge her pouches...No, an owl has her…No, there is a giant mole pushing her from underneath...No, she is flying!"
And that is when I realized that I was flying, clinging to her belly fur like I held the last acorn before winter. A human had snared us with his soft talons.
I, a hamster, was flying. While my brothers and sisters scouted further each day, I knew nothing of the world beyond the ground surrounding our mother. I didn't see how risking my life would make me warmer or my belly tighter, so I stayed near our mother and our burrow.
I had a talk with my brother the evening before the humans appeared.
"But you must see the world," he said. "You won't believe what is out there."
He then described, pretty badly, I would learn later, what were rocks. He called them “hard, hairless, mother bellies.” Wet new leaves were "green bedding." Ants were “walking seeds.” He had snuffled along maybe the length of a fallen Sycamore and called it "seeing the world." I thought him reckless for doing it, but also a true hamster, living with honor and danger.
Did my brother live long enough to discover that the world ends in water and that not even a skylark has seen the end of the water? I doubt it; he was not clinging to my mother as I was, flying like a finch.
My mother and I were placed in a shadowed flying-burrow. Flying-burrows were the first remarkable human inventions I encountered. Unlike a hamster’s burrow, you can not dig out of them. They can't be made larger. They don't silt-up gradually. Humans can make them as dark as a hamster burrow or as clear as the wind. This one, with its high brown walls, blocked sunlight like a hamster burrow. The ceiling was impossible to reach, yet the humans covered it and uncovered it as fast as thought.
They gave us leaves and Pine chips to forage through, but I clung to my mother. Later, she told me that the sky cleaved the ceiling and gave us food, and I believed her. But it was the humans. They snatched us. They created the flying-burrow. They found the woodchips and the food. They opened the ceiling. When you live in the world, the sky gives you water; the trees and grass give you food. When you live with humans they give you both. That’s how it goes.
While we were in the flying-burrow heavy footsteps thudded around us, the bellows of humans filled our heads, and their odors hung in the air. When humans forage they rip up the prairie floor and then shake it to see what falls out. I pushed against my mother; although she stayed as still as possible, I could feel her trembling. She said nothing. A hamster will not – not ever – make a sound when in danger.
“If today is my last day,” a hamster thinks, “when Death leads me on my final forage, then I will go in silence, in honor.”
The ceiling parted, sunlight shocking us, and a familiar odor twitched my whiskers. I felt my mother bumped on her other flank. It was my sister! The humans closed the ceiling and I sensed the burrow flying with a swaying motion. I was happier than warmth to know my sister was with us, safe. I had already put aside the thought that we were trapped in a swirl of utter mystery and that my mother was more frightened than I'd ever seen her.
Instead, I thought, "We are with my mother, therefore we are safe." Perhaps that's how all youngsters think.
I do not know what happened to the rest of my brothers and sisters. I tried to recall their odors, but couldn’t. Yet, the happiness that my sister’s odor gave me made me curious.
“Why didn't not smelling my brothers make me sad?” I thought. “It's not as if my sister and I were close.”
That was the first time I realized there was more to living than being warm and fed. It was a surprising thought. But I have learned truths more than two down this vine of days that are more surprising still. They seem to drop on my head like walnuts whenever I think I have learned them all.
I thought that the burrow was flying, but a human carried it. It rocked against the waves in the sky like we were riding on the back of a giant goose. A goose that had lately learned to fly...and then forgot once we were airborne. I was glad of the total darkness, although the smell of fear from my sister and mother was making me nauseous.
I told myself a story about a goose and hamster. All I remember of it was the hamster scolding the goose,
“You fly through the sky like a squirrel roots through a burrow.”
I laughed out-loud until my sister and mother hissed at me. I concentrated on imagining what the world looked like from the sky – that was the other part of the story.
“What is it to fly like a hawk?” I thought.
They have wings to soar higher than the wind itself. Eyes to see the world entire or the red of a fallen leaf in summer’s twilight. While hamsters forage for honor, hawks use these wings, these eyes, to hunt for hamsters – the wonders of the world scudding by unseen, like dull clouds.
Like a hawk alighting, our burrow came to rest amidst a riot of acrid human odors; they were more upsetting than feeling my mother’s trembling through my skin.
And then the sound surrounded us, penetrating our bodies. Ask an animal who has lived with humans and he will tell you where he was the first time he heard the human roar.
It was deep and rumbling yet rose in pitch like a kestrel in pursuit – falling like an immense slab of frozen water crumbling down a waterfall.
The roar was louder than any predator’s. It filled my head and then my body. It was teeth-rattling.
I've heard a fox bark into my burrow. I've heard the wind howl in the night so near I thought the ground had erupted and the voice of the first wolf had pushed its way into the crisp air. Yet, these human odors and numbing roars were more terrifying still.
We huddled together in the night-black of the little flying-burrow when loud claps, like branches heavy with ice cracking off a tree, startled us. We began flying, but not as before. I didn’t learn until later, but we were gliding across the world in a human invention (smooth, but loud as a falling wall of ice) amid smelly humans who now decided if we should live or die.
Hunkering next to my mother in the dark flying-burrow, surrounded by fear and humans, I wanted it to be said that I was a hamster of old. A hamster born to danger. Like my brothers and sisters.
"I am a hamster," I said aloud. "How long do you want me to stay afraid? They may think they control my fate, but they are wrong.”
My mother stayed silent: the hamster way. My sister hissed at me. We started quarreling as if we were back in our father’s burrow.
"Be quiet, or I will tell the humans to eat you first," she said.
"Why, when I am not afraid to die, would I be afraid of humans?"
"Ohh," she said, with no patience for me. "The rest of us know so much more about the world than you do. You've never been away from the burrow without clinging to Mother...not once. I've smelled humans before. All of us have. But not Mother's Second Belly. You wouldn't know a human from a vole."
She paused and then added in a whisper,
“They smell like skunks and coyotes and foxes; they eat hamsters...and they will eat you first."
Remember how elated I was to recognize my sister's odor? That it made be happier than a full belly? Full bellies do not last and neither did that feeling. No happiness lasts. Not warmth. Not happy to be running. Not happy to be groomed. And not happy to see another hamster. Even the Moon gets eaten before long.
To keep my courage in my pouch, as my father would say, I told a story about the humans letting us run free again. Death summoned them. The humans cowered and cried. They gave us more food than we could stuff inside our pouches and bellies. Then they brought us back to my father’s burrow. Then they hunted down all the predators in the prairie hoping that Death would forgive them for offending his favorite hamster.
Then Death said,
"It is not up to me to decide your fate; find an animal who lives with honor and danger and ask him."
And then the humans were really frightened because, of course, they know nothing of animals, less about danger...less still of honor. But in their moment of panic I showed them how a hamster lives his last day.
"Here I am," I said, stepping forward, whiskers twitching the wind.
And they shouted,
“Here is the most honorable of animals! Please help us. Please tell us we have done enough to prevent Death from taking us.”
"Poor wretches," I replied, "You live forever, yet learn so little. You ought to be asking, Have we done enough so Death will want to take us? But I take pity on you: Be free of your guilt."
Turning to Death I added,
"Let the humans keep their noisy lives which they cling to like mother's fur. Take me in their stead if a life is required. And to show there are no bad feelings...allow them to eat my sister."
That was what I was thinking as the flying burrow scudded through the dark before the dawn of my new life.
Chapter Two
Trapped in the flying-burrow, unable to track the shadows, I couldn't tell if it was twilight for the world or just for me. The ceaseless drone of their flying invention dulled my senses until I thought I was dreaming I was asleep waking to a dream. Within this fog I yet knew to prepare myself for death: I told myself a story.
As I started talking, words flew to me from beyond the endless waters – a likely place for stories to live. Although I had no idea which word would appear, one always did. Soon, words stopped appearing and the story itself sprouted as if it were happening right then. All I needed to do was describe what I saw. By the time the story was over I believed it myself. It would be the first story I told my own offspring:
The Feast of the Moon
More days than two ago when the world was as young as you are now, when mountains where hills and hills were mounds and trees were tall grass, hamsters played in the bright sunlight. Neither did they forage, nor dig. So joyful and fierce were they that all of the animals created by the Sun competed for their company. The Sun grew envious of hamsters and sent Hawk to teach them to never steal the attention that was His.
Bluejay and Sparrow saw Hawk first and sang the alarm, but the hamsters paid no heed.
“Why should we scatter like mice? We are the favorites of the Sun; He will protect us.”
But Hawk swooped in among the frolicking hamsters and speared one with his talons, then reached down and tore the hamster’s flesh with his hooked beak. The hamster’s torn body released a hideous cry – as if the Hawk’s talons were scraping across the white rocks by the river. The cry flew into Hawk’s open maw, down his gullet, and into his belly.
Whenever you hear the screech of a hawk you hear the cry of the first hamster to be killed by one. And from that time forth hamsters stayed as far away from the Sun – and hawks – as possible.
As summers melted away, hamsters more than two died, joining First Hamster to forage in the night sky, finding little to eat. He promised them he would find an endless cache of food.
Hamster visited the Sun while he was bathing in the waters beyond the edge of the world. Hamster congratulated him on being the creator of so many honorable animals.
“But it is a shame you are not capable of making a child yourself, since even the crawlies can do so.”
"What!? I can make a child anytime I want."
“Oh, well, maybe you are afraid she will be brighter than yourself and steal your honor.”
“Nonsense! I will make a child and place her in the night sky. She will keep watch over the animals for me while I am sleeping.”
The Sun gave birth to the Moon and set her in the night sky to ripen. And when the Moon had grown big enough, the hamsters of old began nibbling on her. Never, while alive, had they eaten so well and slept with so full a belly. Every night they ate a little more, and by day they enjoyed the sleep of peaceful wonder, until the Moon shone in their bellies.
Enraged that the Moon had disappeared, but not knowing how, the Sun gave birth to another one, and put him in the night sky. And once again, the hamsters waited until he had grown suitably plump and then ate him.
Each time the hamsters of old eat a moon the Sun gives birth to a new one, only to have the hamsters eat it again.
So, live with honor and danger and you shall fly with Death on winds that blow from beyond the endless waters to feast forever with the hamsters of old. You will gather with old friends and nibble the Moon as the deathless stars dust your fur with sparkles.
After the story was over I felt like a hamster of old, like my father and brothers, like I was meeting danger with honor; Death with valor. But then the human roar filled my head and a terrifying story crossed my eyes, making me forget the lovely story of the hamsters eating the Moon. I pictured the flying-burrow coming to a stop, a human tearing off the ceiling and Death coming to collect me.
"Are you ready to be led trembling, little one?”
"What? No, not me,” I replied. “I'm not supposed to die! Take my sister…take my mother…It's the humans...they made a mistake…I should be back in my father's burrow...please!"
Death's disgusted face, twisted in contempt, would be the last image to flicker across my eyes. The last sound I heard would not be my bones cracking, or a feeble final breath escaping my chest – it would be my sister’s laughter. And then I would be hurled to the cold ground and the human who spit me out of his mouth would say,
"Uggh! A chipmunk; I hate chipmunks."
Having never learned to live with honor and danger, I was no better than a chipmunk.
“Anything but that,” I thought.
So, I began to prepare myself as best I could. I decided to talk to Death. He was near.
"Please forgive me; I am not a hamster of old who says, I'm prepared and then I am. If you were to show me how, I promise I will practice and then the next time you come I will be ready...I promise."
The roaring ceased and the burrow stopped flying. A human gathered it in his soft paws, and I thought, “The end is near.”
Here was real danger; what a hamster is born to confront; a chance to earn honor.
The ceiling flew away. My eyes sealed themselves against the light. Truly, the Sun is no friend to hamsters. I scrambled under the thin scattering of woodchips the humans had tossed into the burrow; I pushed under my mother. My sister did the same on her other side. I felt my mother rise into the sky again; this time I was not clinging to her. My sister and I tumbled over each other looking for our mother like Shrew looking for a filbert. I knew the humans had taken her, but at the same time I knew nothing. We called for her while crawling in the same pathetic little circles, whimpering our disbelief that the laws of the world could be reduced to dust.
"Mother, come back...Mother…Don’t let them take me…I'm not ready...Come back...I'm not a chipmunk...Wait, I am a chipmunk; don't take me!"
If Death had told me that he would spare me, but I would live the rest of my days in the dark and gathering cool of an empty flying burrow, I would've agreed.
Had he offered to spare my life in exchange for my mother's and sister's lives, I would've agreed.
I dislodged honor from my memory. I embraced the life of a mouse, squealing my last breath into a wind that neither cares, nor recalls which animal is adding its life to its cache.
My sister and I were grabbed by the scruff of our necks and lofted into the sky. Her eyes were shut. Mine were open, staring at her passive face. She seemed calm although she had been as frantic as I only a moment earlier. I was so deep in the burrow of fear that I couldn’t envy her serenity. Instead, as the human paw swung us through the sky, I thought,
"Good, maybe Death will take her first, and I'll have more time to live."
Instead of being eaten we were placed on soft bedding. Really soft. Like new Pine needles.
You can not forage far living with humans and their burrows can be dug no further. Ours was made from twigs that they fashioned into a sort of nest. The twigs were arranged perfectly straight, up and down. They were frozen solid into the floor and ceiling of the burrow, yet were not cold.
The twigs came from a tree far beyond the waters that rock against the edge of the world.
Much later, when I left my human family to return to the prairie, I described the hard, straight twigs to two of my best friends, Sparrow and Bluejay. They assured me no tree in the world produces such twigs.
I enjoyed talking to Sparrow at dawn and Bluejay at twilight. Bluejay would explain why a world filled with ravens and foxes was still beautiful beyond telling. And no sadness could withstand the velvet force of Sparrow’s song.
Unlike burrowers, birds love and respect the Sun, yet they seem unaware of His great gift to them. I’ve asked birds more than two to describe the feeling of flying. Without fail they took to wing without answering me – as if the question was a Hawk.
Even Sparrow couldn’t help me.
“It is like foraging for hazelnuts, I suppose...only up, more,” she said.
It was Bluejay who knew.
“Ohhh, don’t mind the other birds, Hamster. We all know what a matchless treasure we’ve been given; we praise the Sun every morning for it. But whenever we think about it, really think about it, it becomes clear that flying is impossible. And we begin to fall.”
Chapter Three
The perfectly straight twigs of our burrow were positioned a paws-width apart and rooted in its floor like thin, deathless Oaks – never to be moved. Had they been Pine or Maple…or even Ash, I could've easily snapped them apart and chewed them to dust. But they were unbreakable. I pulled them, pushed them...gnawing only hurt my teeth.
As I gnawed on the twigs I wondered about the humans’ home far away beyond the endless waters, where a single blade of grass must contain more wonder than a river does water. I think they were chased here by an animal of ruthless cunning, bringing their wonders with them.
I hope when I join the Feast of the Moon one of the hamsters of old will answer my questions about humans and their far-away home. Knowing hamsters, they'll say, "Don't you know there is no such thing as the Land Beyond the Endless Waters?"
The day’s adventures had burned off my fear of foraging. I was now like my siblings – needing to explore. The humans lined the burrow with long strips of soft, dingy-white bedding, mottled with black splotches. Perhaps it came from the same tree as the twigs. I pushed through the flimsy bedding, hitting the floor. The bedding piled, but would not pack. I accepted that I would not be digging my own burrow and sought a sheltered place to sleep.
As soon as the idea came to me I saw a shelter. When living with humans, a hamster doesn't notice what is staring him in the eye, calling, "Hamster!" until he looks for it.
A tiny hillock made of wood was calling me – about the size of a large adult hamster. It reeked of human odors. They pared it from the hard belly of a Pine tree. The walls of my hillock were solid, blocking the sunlight. They were also perfectly straight, flat and smooth.
“Humans like perfectly straight,” I thought.
I crawled inside and turned around.
"This will be my sleeping chamber.”
Finding my hillock was a successful end to a bad day. I spent the rest of the fading evening dragging mottled, gray bedding inside my chamber and arranging it.
At twilight, the humans displayed another of their astounding feats. They keep slivers of stolen sunshine inside their immense burrows. By deep-night the stolen sunshine flickered out, bathing us in serene black.
My sister had migrated back to Mother on the far side of our straight-twig burrow. Mother had pushed the dingy bedding into a cozy bed, exposing the hard-as-ice floor. They were exhausted from the day’s adventures and fell asleep when they should have been stirring. I was too excited to sleep having just awakened to a world younger than myself. I, a hamster of no fierceness, had overcome perils to impress the hamsters of old.
I was hungry, but didn’t want to eat. I was thirsty, but didn't care. The humans had gone. The world was as still as frozen water…and I was awake, awaiting adventure.
I rested in my tiny hillock. I didn't notice the human odors anymore. By morning I convinced myself that I had dug the straight-twig burrow.
During that still moment in the middle of the first night of my new life I said to myself,
"I have faced what no other hamster has and lived (I was quite young, remember)."
“I am in mortal danger right now, yet I am not afraid.”
“Am I hungry? Yes. Am I concerned? No. I will forage and find food.”
“Am I thirsty? Yes. Am I concerned? No. I will forage and find water.”
“If the humans place another hamster in the burrow, I will defend my hillock.”
“I must remember everything."
I couldn't wait to begin.
Strange rumblings filled the human burrow then faded. Stolen slivers of sunshine of varying hues flickered on and off. A human showed his immense head next to the twig wall and then vanished. I made eye contact with him; I didn't get the feeling that he knew he was seeing with it.
My thirst became too strong to ignore. I applied the lesson I had learned with the hillock: When living with humans a hamster must know what he wants before finding it.
I foraged along the walls of our burrow tracking the clear scent of fresh water. I climbed over and around my sister and mother, who were getting restless and starting to stir – it was moon-time after all. Where was the water? Perhaps I was wrong to be excited. Perhaps I should've been preparing myself to meet Death instead of making my hillock just so. I was beginning to fatigue and thirst was driving out all other thoughts.
A hamster likes to eat, a full belly being his most prized possession. But he can live without a full belly; he will die today without water.
"What a chipmunk!” I said, feeling dizzy and sleepy. “Had you thought of finding water before now you wouldn’t be so fatigued. Now you must prepare to die and hope you are worthy."
I slumped down against the twig wall, my breathing rapid and shallow. I willed myself to picture being led by Death, and I said, "I am ready. Come, take me."
Thirst drifted away and I felt the warmth of the Sun upon me. In the distance, I saw a large hamster snuffling towards me. It was my father coming to lead me to the Feast of the Moon.
I felt a ping on my head. I jerked away, my nostrils filled with the scent of water. I tipped my snout to the stars and felt a tiny crawlie roll off my head and down my back. It was water! I breathed in; its scent grew sharper. And then a ping. It made me jump as if a fox had tapped my nose. Another drop of water. This one rolled into my mouth.
“Ahhh….”
Let Hummingbird have his nectar; it cannot taste as sweet as that drop of water.
I stood on my hind legs following the scent, wrapped my jaws around a reed and nibbled. Out tumbled drop after drop of water. My teeth clattered on the reed – a reed as hard as the floor of the burrow. It must have grown in a marsh in their far-away land.
I’ve found a few kernels in my life…as my father would say. One of them is that all water falls...except when humans are present. For humans, water pools in mid-air puddles. The puddle in our burrow had a hollow marsh reed growing from it – a hard, silver reed growing upside down! Of course, right? How else with humans? Perhaps the rivers in their old lands flow through the sky into hovering ponds. Maybe they walked on clouds – what is so ridiculous that it can’t be true about them?
“Are you sure hamsters weren’t invented by humans?” asked my friend Shrew when I told him this story much later in my life.
Standing on one’s haunches, nibbling and bobbing on the end of an ice-hard reed extending up into a puddle of suspended water, one's head craned over one’s back – this is how a hamster drinks water?
When I told Shrew, he said, “Good for you they didn't guess how you liked to pass pellets."
Their home beyond the endless waters, which lap against the edge of the world, must be so different from ours that rivers flow through skies and suns rise at their command. I've often wondered why they don’t return.
I finished drinking my fill as my sister stirred awake, frantic…having had nothing to drink since leaving our father’s burrow.
Mother awoke thirsty, too.
"Water, water. I smell water," she said
"It's over here, Mother! Come this way," I gestured.
The two of them rooted through the mottled bedding, pushing clumps of it with their snouts.
"No; it's here; look up."
"Look up?" questioned my sister. "It's not raining, you chipmunk!"
My mother said, "The puddles will be on the ground if they are anywhere."
They kept snuffling; growing more frantic as their thirst grew. I knew from experience that the smell of water – near, yet nowhere – would drive them mad before a shadow crawls.
So what did I do?
I decided to have some fun.
"Here is the water,” I announced again.
But their thirst was cawing like a nest of mockingbirds and they couldn’t hear me. The smell of water added to their agitation. I gnawed at the reed that extended into the mid-air puddle. Click, click click, click…my teeth clattered on the reed until my mouth filled with water. I scurried to a bare spot on the floor behind my sister's rear paws and emptied my pouches, creating a puddle.
"Here! Here!" I cried.
"I was just there," she said. "Stop pestering me and find the water."
"You missed it;” I said. "Turn around.
My mother rushed to the puddle. By the time my sister turned around it was in my mother’s belly. Sister had a pained look on her face – she was halfway between wondering how she missed the puddle and begging me to find some more.
"Who thinks I can find more?" I said.
"If you could've, you would've; Hamster Knows Everything."
"I think you can find water,” said our mother.
Having a little water is worse than having none; it makes you more frantic for it.
"Okay, Mother, let's see if I am your favorite offspring."
I waited until they started scouring the ground for more puddles, which was right away. I waddled to the reed and click, click, click, click...filled my mouth again.
"Here is some water for you, Mother; turn around."
She turned and drank it up.
"You are being rewarded by Death for your honorable behavior," I said.
I heard my father say that once. Seldom had my mother been so pleased with me. It was like when I was small and she thought only of keeping me warm and safe...with a full belly.
My sister looked beaten now. She wanted to ask for water, but she was too proud. She might have been too exhausted. My mother asked me to find more. This time I went to the reed with both of them watching me; it was on the other side of the burrow, which meant they couldn't see what I was doing. I came back with water and spilled it in front of mother again and once again she drank all of it.
My mother was like the hamsters of old – she was not going to waste time and energy on things that did not concern her. No questions from her. The other side of the leaf, however:
"What is that you did? Where did the water come from? How did you get it?"
My sister was Pouches Full of Questions Hamster. She rushed over to the mid-air puddle and stared at it, whiskers twitching like a hummingbird’s wings, understanding only that it held water.
"Maybe if you had not angered Death by treating me with disrespect, he would've shown you how to get the water."
She sniffed at it; stared at it; nosed it and backed away when it shifted, sloshing the water. I guess I had been thirstier than she was – I started gnawing at it as soon as I knew it was there, hoping something good would happen, not caring about caution. I think I was trying to crack it open at first. But she was still dismayed by it, and jealous that I had accomplished what she – far braver than I – could not.
Jealousy is almost as dangerous as an owl. An owl can keep a hamster in her burrow; jealousy keeps her holed-up behind her own eyes. My sister was thinking of her old life. She couldn't see that she had been given a new one. I could, though, and I kept playing my game.
"Apologize for calling me a chipmunk and I will ask Death if you are worthy of a sip of water."
"I will not! You are a chipmunk!"
"That is not the hamster way," I said, trying to sound like our father.
"Please find me some more water," pleaded Mother.
I stopped the game and nibbled on the reed, this time drinking a good amount for myself, then spilled the rest on the ground for Mother.
My sister mimicked me and soon was drinking cool, calming water. When she finished she said,
“Come here, Mother; this is how you do it; I won’t play tricks on you like Chipmunk Thinks He’s Father.”
They took turns at the reed until their thirst was gone. My happiness had flown; resentment hunkered down.
I had been eager to start a new life where I was not the last hamster, but rather the first hamster. As long as my sister was here that could not happen. Then I said something I regretted.
“You have angered Death and he will take you when you are not ready – and you won’t be, because you have no honor.”
My sister and mother ignored me. They had already shuffled to where a cache of food was piled and began stuffing their pouches. I retreated to my hillock to think of nothing; however, old thoughts, like tiny black crawlies, pestered me.
Like hamsters, humans are active in the evening. They burn the slivers of sun, sometimes as bright as day. The variety and volume of sounds they create are beyond reckoning. I learned to ignore most of their clamor, except the sudden bursts. But that first night I tracked each one as best I could. It kept me from thinking about my sister and that maybe this was not a new life but an old one, where I was Nothing Special Hamster, again.
Humans stop stirring inside their burrow long before the night is over. The sunshine slivers burn down and the noises cease – except for the strange, low hums whose origins are unknowable.
Where do the humans go when the Moon is highest and the stars are coldest? To other chambers within their wide and deep burrow? Outside the burrow? To ride night winds to the land beyond the endless waters?
I discovered that unlike animals they distrust rhythms. Whenever they create a rhythm to the day they break it. The Sun commands us to obey his rhythms. Humans, who fear the Sun as much as they fear hamsters, follow whatever rhythm – or none – that they desire.
I rooted through the bedding, groomed and then prepared my hollow hillock. By gauzy dawn-light I felt better about myself and my sister. I decided that all three of us could live together in this small burrow. I would have my little place, here; and they would be over there. We would meet at the mid-air puddle and at the pile of food, and we would make the best of whatever the humans called our lives.
•
I woke mid-morning to a commotion. I poked my head out of my warm den and was greeted by human faces with their bulbous eyes. I recognized one as the human who snatched us from our burrow; the other faces were new: one big face and one smaller. Their voices filled the burrow. I heard a clashing sound and a hole appeared in the side of the burrow. One of the humans had broken the twigs. I pulled back inside my hillock.
I felt the hillock rise away from me. I searched for a hole underneath me, trying to go to ground. Then the human picked me up with his giant soft paw and I was flying – it was yesterday once more. I struggled, biting the air, hoping to draw blood, but I was too frantic and much too small. I learned later that if you bite their paws, they will leave you in peace; they understand that much. And they never bite back.
He flipped me on my back, easily pinning me with my legs open and my belly exposed, defenseless, but unafraid.
“I will show them Hamster Dies With Honor.”
The humans looked at my belly, then, like a hickory leaf settling, the paw lowered me back to the mottled bedding, replacing the hillock over me as if no time had passed.
A commotion swirled on the other side of our burrow. I needn’t poke my head out to know the details – they were doing the same to my mother and sister as they did to me.
“Relax,” I said, when I heard scuffling. “They won’t hurt you. They’re just curious about hamsters. Be brave; they’ll return you soon enough.”
I wasn’t brave enough to say it aloud, though.
I stuck my head though the hole of the hillock and saw a human paw holding my sister – again, belly up.
What is it with humans and bellies?
Then the big human placed my sister in the paws of the smaller human. The small human seemed frightened, even though she was the size of an adult coyote.
Why would she be afraid of my sister?
My sister couldn’t even remain standing on her paws – the small human kept tipping her paws, making my sister lose her balance.
"Try biting," I said.
Reminding my sister to bite was like reminding the rain to fall.
Fear finally flooded the small human’s other vibrations and she reached over our burrow to pour my sister back to us. The large human caught her in his paw as she fell through the air. He was not afraid of being bitten, holding her so she could not move.
The small human began chirping wildly, which one of the larger ones also found unintelligible, because the two of them chattered at each other, creating nothing but noise. Humans often find each other as frustrating as hamsters find them.
They squawked like this awhile. Once again, the first human gave my sister to the small human. She held her the way the big human had and seemed less frightened. The big human returned with the flying-burrow and the small human placed my sister inside it. He pushed at the ceiling and it collapsed shut. The flying burrow looked like my little hillock made from a tree, but without any entrances. Once the ceiling closed it was like being underground for my sister.
He handed the flying-burrow to the little human. The two big humans chattered like squirrels and then, like a chestnut falling, the humans were gone. I heard the muffled human roar of their gliding invention fading along with my life with Sister. I never saw her again.
Chapter Four
What did I learn about humans in that short-shadow's crawl? They reveal their intentions through their odors, through the vibrations their paws emit, and by their grating warbles.
They can be communicated with (biting); are curious about hamsters (watching us through twig walls); and they fear things they don't yet know (as do hamsters).
Then I thought of sleep; I could not remember the last time I slept through the morning. As I arranged my bedding my head jerked up in alarm.
It was because of me that my sister was taken!
I remembered that I wanted the humans to take her. Did Death listen to me and obey? The thought seemed impossible.
“Listen to Hamster Thinks His Pellets Are Chestnuts,” I said, dismissing the thought. Yet, there was no denying that I wished her gone and the humans took her.
I had acted like a crow, mocking her when she needed my help. If I had shown her how to find water and said nothing, the humans would still have taken her – we couldn’t stop them – but I would not now feel responsible for it.
Why did the small human take her and not me? It had to do with bellies. The small human liked her belly more than mine. Once again, my sister was better than I. Once again, I was Last in Line Hamster…Clings To His Mother Hamster...Forage's To The End Of His Snout Hamster.
Always, when humans are near, a hamster's peace is scattered like Maple seeds. The flurry of activity catches us in a sudden gust spinning, spinning, until it dies and all is still again, as if stillness was the only mood of the world. So it was when the humans left the burrow with my sister. She was gone. I was here. Yet, the day called to me, "This is our last visit together; will you squander it?”
When night came to the human burrow with its hums and soft slivers of sunshine inhabiting lonely corners of the chamber like runts of the litter, I woke and began stretching. And I told myself this story:
Why does a hamster live with honor and danger? I will tell you. Hamsters used to be fierce. As fierce as coyotes. As fierce as the Hawk. And we were strong, with paws that could break a Hickory branch in half. All the animals of the world respected us because hamsters rarely ate animals – preferring watermelons.
But there was one animal who despised Hamster, burning with cold jealousy. Ice-hard on the outside but ember-hot on the inside – such was the envy Cat carried for Hamster. When a hamster lets her jealousy speak for her, it turns her into a chipmunk and then turns her dead. But a cat's jealousy gives her the cleverness of a human.
"Hamster," Cat said, "How is it that you still live in a hole in the ground when you can live like the Sun himself in a brilliant lair?"
"I love my burrow."
"It's a hole. In the ground. Infested with crawlies. Dank during rainy days. Stifling in summer. Cold in winter. It's a hole, my friend. No different than Vole's or Shrew's. And, yet, it needn't be that way. An animal of your fierceness could take any home she desired. Fox's den, for example. Or Coyote’s lair. Or Squirrel's nest in the oak tree. They are all cozier than a hole."
"Or I could take your home," responded Hamster.
"You could do that, sure. In fact, why don't you?"
Hamster did not know where Cat lived, since Cat was careful to keep her distance from Hamster.
"Come, I'll show you my lair," said Cat.
Cat took Hamster on a long-shadow's walk to a large human burrow standing sharp against the sky. Hamster did not believe Cat lived there.
"Ahh, but I do," She said. "Ask Squirrel sometime or any mouse. They visit my lair. They know my servants.”
Cat trotted toward the human burrow. Hamster watched Cat stand outside an entrance. A human opened the entrance and escorted Cat inside.
"She really does have servants," exclaimed Hamster.
Trusting in her fierceness, Hamster approached the entrance and announced herself. Cat showed Hamster her soft bed. Fresh water flowed in gentle rills from the walls; sunshine streamed from the ceiling; food, piled in caches, waited to be tasted in every corner. Such was the splendor of Cat’s lair that Hamster was seized with envy. She told Cat that the lair was now hers.
"Of course," said Cat. "Let me gather the servants and introduce you as their new master.”
But when the humans saw Hamster they were terrified by her fierceness and drove her from their burrow. Hamster was insulted. She journeyed west to plead her case to Sun while He was taking His evening bath in the endless waters beyond the edge of the world.
“It appears that the source of your problem is your fierceness. You animals are forever bickering. You have no idea how many animals beg me to give them your ferocity; and here you are begging to made as meek as a chipmunk.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I didn’t say I wanted…”
“Never Happy Hamster, is that who you are?’
“No, it’s not like that; I don’t want to be diff…”
“Okay, fine. You want me to take away your ferocity so these gangly coyotes will let you live in their den?”
“Just enough fierceness. Not all of it. It’s not like I’m...”
But the Sun had heard all He needed and with a great draw of breath sucked away Hamster’s fierceness.
Not wanting it to fall to the other animals, lest it cause Him even more trouble, the Sun dispersed Hamster’s great fierceness to the winds...then resumed His bath.
The West Wind uses Hamster’s fierceness when he wants to unleash a thunderstorm on the animals of the world. When the wind slashes from the North like a Hawk’s talons, killing the gentle summer, that is Hamster’s long gone fierceness. The tornados that careen across the wide fields from the East are gifts from Hamster. And the South Wind relies on Hamster’s lost fierceness to send scalding air to the prairie in high summer.
But what of poor Hamster? How does an animal survive without a bit of ferocity? In the evening, upon arising, a hamster begins her daily rhythm stretching her limbs to the winds. With each stretch she is able to snatch a tiny bit of fierceness. If she is lucky; if she lives with honor; it might be enough to see her through the night...and if not, then she will at least have prepared herself for her final forage
After my sister was taken from us I settled on a rhythm. I stretched to the four winds. I arranged the bedding around my hillock, pushing it until I was hidden from owls...and humans. I smile at this thought now.
Safe from owls and humans, huh? I didn’t hide my food-well from the humans, did I?
After tending to my burrow, I groomed. I licked my claws and paws and haunches and belly. I rubbed my face until it was clean as a river stone. Then I started to forage for food.
Again, I smile thinking about the hamster I was. How hard is it to find a cache of food in a straight-twig burrow?
That evening I discovered that my cozy hillock could be gnawed. I spent the remainder of the night gnawing it. I forgot about my sister. I forgot about my mother. I forgot about our burrow that Father dug. This straight-twig burrow with the gnaw-able hillock was becoming the only home I ever knew. When the clay-gray light of dawn revealed the black splotches on the dingy strips of bedding, I padded off to bed, sure I wouldn’t rise again until night. Such was the rhythm of my day and how I imagined it would always be.
Chapter Five
The clanging of the straight-twig fence jarred me awake. This time I did not lift my head. I thought I was back in our cricket-loud meadow, inside my father’s burrow, in the tiny chamber that would one day be mine...should I ever stop clinging to Mother. As fast as a robin strikes a worm my hillock was whisked into the wind; a human paw lifted me into the sky. I kept my eyes shut, twitching my nose to pick up the odors. There were more humans than two, again. The owner of the burrow held me in his large paw. I felt another paw touch me. I reared my head to bite it, but it moved away. I felt the paw brush the fur behind my ears and craned my neck to see. The paw disappeared. Again, this smaller paw with a light scent tried to touch me, and again I tried to bite it. Throughout this ordeal I heard the smaller human chattering like a chipmunk.
Poked at, held captive in the hollow of a giant paw, listening to grating chipmunk chatter: this is not how a hamster wakes up. Then he put his other paw over the first one, trapping me in a paw-chamber. I knew I should be careful, but honor called to me.
I bit him, so he held me by the nape of my neck, hind legs running in the air. Then he put me down, but not in my burrow with my mother. No, no, no. He put me in a flying-burrow, and closed the ceiling. I guessed what the next sensation would be. The burrow began to fly like a forgetful goose – the chipmunk-chatter human was carrying it.
I could neither see nor sense where I was headed. The only odors I detected were from the walls of the burrow and my urine. Locked in darkness, I focused on the sounds. Muted and fleeting, they told a story whose meaning was clear: I would not grow old to build my own burrow and raise my own family.
I heard creaking, like a tree in stiff winds, loud claps, vague sweeps of human rustling…serving no other purpose than to create noise.
“Where am I headed? Will she eat me? Is this the day I will meet Death?”
I wanted to face danger with honor. Not urinating on myself would’ve been a good start, but I hoped Death would overlook that if I bit the chatter-human before she ate me,
“Please give me that chance,” I said aloud.
And since it was still morning, I decided that I shouldn't waste the present darkness, and drifted off to sleep, proud of my courage.
I awoke as usual – still needing more sleep – to the commotion of humans. Their voices competed to see who could make the most racket. They are clever enough to make the impossible, possible, yet, they are unaware that the world outside their burrows obeys a daily rhythm. They must have fled some distant land beyond the waters, beyond the world – like squawking geese frightened by a heron.
I waited for the spears of sunshine to announce my sudden end. The ceiling opened; the little human reached for me. I did not forget my plan. I reared back to bite, and she withdrew. This happened more times than two.
A new paw grabbed me. I managed to graze her with my teeth as I glided across the sky again, but she was undisturbed. I was reminded of my mother who ignored the tiny crawlies who lived on our bodies. I would panic as if a fox was digging at our burrow when they jumped on me, but my mother just bit them off and continued her work.
The smells of these two humans were so similar, and she seemed so confident that I guessed she was the chattering human’s mother.
Humans live in families!
I thought they had arrived from wherever, fully grown, ready to cause maximum mayhem.
The chipmunk-human touched me again, snapping her soft paw away whenever I turned to bite her.
“Not this silly game.”
Her loud chattering filled my head; I wanted to bite her now more than I wanted a full belly.
Her mother put a carrot in front of my eyes, drawing my attention. I picked up the orange chunk and began nibbling, turning it in my paws for the perfect angle. Halfway through the carrot I noticed the Little Aggravation touching my head and back. Hers was a light touch for so lumbering a creature. It reminded me of my mother and how much I missed her. I had not been groomed by Mother in days more than two. I dropped the carrot and tried to bite her, missing again. I found the carrot in the well of her mother’s paw and resumed eating. But I was more interested in letting the chipmunk-human groom me than I was in finishing the carrot. She wasn't doing it properly, but it was a good feeling.
I think it was her way of asking, Will you join our family?
A moment later I turned around and bit her soft paw. She pulled it away, emitting a string of grating squawks. Her mother put me back in the flying burrow with the straight brown walls and closed the ceiling.