Concerning Books #008: Review of "Dune"

   The following is an official book review of the Most-Discerning League of Distinguished Literary Gentlemen, as published by Magistrate Norton.

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”

 

 

   And you thought Lord of the Rings was complex. Dune is an award-winning science fiction novel published in 1965 by Frank Herbert, and it is a sprawling tale. Dune concerns itself with the titular planet, also known as Arrakis, wherein and only wherein the universe's most precious substance can be found: the spice, melange. Not only does this magical material help Guildmasters navigate the vastness of galaxies by folding space, not only is it dangerously addictive, not only is it the foundation of mankind's space-economy, but it also plays into the plot. Neat, huh?

 

   Dune is unusual in its storytelling in that it can't make up its mind about points of view. The narrative will jump from one character's thoughts to another's and to another's all in the same scene. Considering the "plans within plans" that thrust on the book's heavy plot, this may have been necesssary for Hebert to include in his work; we may need to hear the Baron's, the Duke's, Paul's, his Mother's and the Fremen's own thoughts in order to understand what the hey is happening, but it doesn't make it that much easier of a read. Let's face it, we're used to reading from one point of view per scene, mostly. Dune breaks those rules.

 

   Another rule of literature which Dune demolishes is the need, or tendency, for authors to simplify. This is especially true of modern writers. A clean, curt, concise narrative will have only enough detail to hold up the story and move everything along. In contrast, Dune is a bloated monster. On page one, you're practically assaulted with all kinds of foreign ideas, names, concepts and places. Luckily, there's no aliens in Dune, so the fact that at least you'll be dealing with humans helps ground Dune a little. But there's no help for fumbling over all the nitty-gritty of ths galactic, monolithic space-novel, with words like gom jabbar, Lisan-alGaib, Bene Gesserit and Kwisatz Haderach. More than once I had to stop and wonder how to say it all, and more than once I had to stop and ask what it all means.

 

   With themes like politics, religion, power, prophecy, racism, economics, subterfuge and eugenics, it's no wonder Dune is as big as it is and that it spawned so many sequels and spin-offs.

 

   The Dune novel breaks down into three books: dune, muad'dib, and the prophet. Each "chapter" in each book begins with some kind of quotation from various fictional documents that come off as historical. This gives Dune the flavor of a historical novel, albeit a fictional one, obviously. Of the three books, I felt dune to be by far the most interesting and engaging. I'll shortly explain why.

 

   In the first book, dune, House Atreides, led by the stern Duke Leto Atreides, has been called to take up leadership over the planet Arrakis and thereby the spice. But the Duke' son, Paul Atreides has misgivings about Arrakis and the fate of his father there, misgivings which are only deepened by the appearance of the Reverend Mother on Paul's home planet of Caladan.

 

   Turns out there's an elaborate (and I mean elaborate) plot set in motion by the Emperor Shaddam IV and the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, himself a sworn enemy of House Atreides. The villain describes his plan as "a feint within a feint within a feint", in reference to the delicate knife-style fightin which seems to dominate hand-to-hand combat in the Dune universe.

 

   Most of the first book concerns itself with the playing out of the plot against Atreides, though we're told very early on that Dr. Yueh is the traitor who would bring down the Duke. Thus robbed of the suspense, we have only to see the characters putter around like blind mice in the corridors of a tiny labyrinth from which there can be no escape.

 

   The Duke dies thanks to the traitor, the Baron survives a failed assassination and House Harkonnen resumes control of Arrakis. Paul Atreides, now Duke, flees with his mother, the Lady Jessica, into the desert.

 

   The first book seemed to me to be the most human, as its characters portray the most emotion and suffer their worst failures. This first part is the best and most engaging. What follows somehow grows colder.

 

   The second book, muad'dib, is concerned with Paul and Jessica encountering the Fremen, the indiginous peoples of Arrakis, who, they discover, are capable of surviving any hazard the desert can throw at them. The Fremen have mastered water-conservation and rationing. They are a warrior race. They can even harness the great sandworms of the desert and ride them where they wish.

 

   Paul and Jessica find entrance into one of the Fremen groups, wherein Paul quickly learns the ways of Fremen life, complete with the prophecies they have a coming messiah who will liberate them. During this time, Paul becomes less and less human, and less and less interesting. He develops a kind of prescience, the ability to see dimly into the future, where a far off holy war rages in his name. He attributes this new ability to the spice saturating the desert. His mother, a member of the Bene Gesserit, a conniving school of religious women who are trying to bring into being a superhuman called the Kwisatz Haderach through manipulating bloodlines... whew... she plays Paul and herself into the prophecies of the Fremen, only to find out that they are startlingly accurate of her son.

 

   Paul learns more stuff and finds a woman, Jessica becomes Reverend Mother of the Fremen, Paul's sister Alia is born, the Baron plots for the Imperial throne, the reader is affronted by countless rituals, ceremonies and jargon out of Fremen history and culture, yadda yadda and... book three.

 

   In book three, the prophet, Paul, now assuming the title of Duke of Arrakis and Muad'Dib of the Fremen, puts plans into motion to retake the planet and oust the rulership of the Harkonnens. Somehow, book three is even less interesting than book two. Paul is now the Kwisatz Haderach, a super-being, but he comes off as cold and uncaring, even hateful. By this time, the book feels positively apocalyptic and dystopian.

 

   Once the too-hasty climax has burnt itself out and the war is over in a few minutes and the last Harkonnen heir defeated in single combat (Paul versus Feyd Rautha), there's not much left other then delegation of duties and positions. This is actually how the book ends. Paul chooses to marry the Emperor's daughter by force, holding up the destruction of the spice economy as a threat over the whole universe, even over the Emperor. By marrying Princess Irulan, he is guaranteed the Imperial throne. But he takes a moment to confess his love to his Fremen woman, Chani, who is now destined to be his concubine, even as his mother was his father's concubine. The book ends with the Lady Jessica exulting this apparently much coveted position beside a male ruler.

 

   And that's it.

 

   When it was all said and done, it seemed like there was so much being laid down and built up and for what? For a war we never really got to see beyond a few paragraphs? For a lack-luster assumption by Paul of some mystical superhuman messiah-figure? Because there was so little emotion and so little meaning (shall I say moral to the story?), so little beyond "this character said this" and "this character said that", I felt a little let down by Dune.

   It certainly was huge and complex, but I felt that the hugeness and the complexity belied a hollow interior. The poetry was not stirring, the dialogue wa robotic and the quips of wisdom were too mystical to have any identification. Beneath the plans and the subterfuge, the espionage, the war, the culture, the economics, the politics and the religion, there were no characters I could love or root for or find interest in. My human unconsciousness may need a logical universe that makes sense, but it also needs a great deal more than just a universe that makes sense. God Himself made a universe that not only makes sense but has meaning in it which makes the sense.

 

   Sorry, Mr. Herbert, rest in peace, but I give Dune:

 

       3.5 out of 10 sandworms!

 

   Dune harkens from an era of early sci-fi when the books were positively over-laden with detail. See Isaac Asimov for more of that. I think Dune suffered from it. It's redeeming quality is the sheer fantasticality-slash-realism of the world which Herbert thought up.

 

I can't recommend Dune, though. It maybe belongs in a museum with other exciting reads: historical documents. Sure it's considered a classic, but one may ask the question: Why?

 

  ~norton

 

 

 

 

 

1k views!

   Sweet Jimmeny-goodness!

   I've hit 1000 views. The shock came like 1000 cactuars hitting me with 1000 needles, though I feel like celebrating with 1000 pieces of sushi while a 1000 member choir sings 1000 Hallelujah choruses in 1000 cathedrals of 1000 cities... But instead I'll just publish this lousy post.


  -norton

Learn a new word: Truism

Try to use it in a sentence today!

Truism



tru·ism [troo-i-zem]
first known use: 1708

adjective

1. An obvious or self-evident truth, such as hardly needs mention.
(It's a truism that you should never mix sleeping pills and laxatives)

Farewell to Arms

   This past week, my Great-Aunt June went home to be with our Lord.

   Auntie June was mentally handicapped. This made her a gentler person than many who have their whole minds, though in her life she never got to experience the many things we take for granted: marriage and children, education, financial stability and independence. It seems a terrible cruelty that she lived so long, yet knew so little. But I know that she was loved by her family. I used to love it when she took my brother and I to the park as children. I remember her sitting on the bench, not really watching us play, the radio beside her playing the old Hawaiian songs she so enjoyed with simplicity.

   And now God has given her the blessing of new mind and an incorruptible body, and a true home so unlike the place where she died. She had her own unique troubles in this life, but her time came to lay down the arms of suffering and take up the mantle of eternal life.

   I only recently found out about Auntie June's death and as I was driving home a few nights ago, I remembered these old, old words:

 



I have heard of a land on a far away strand,
’Tis the beautiful home of the soul;
Built by Jesus on high, where we never shall die,
’Tis a land where we'll never grow old.

 

In that beautiful home where we’ll never more roam,
We shall be in the sweet by and by;
Happy praise to the King through eternity sing,
’Tis a land where we never shall die.

 

When our work here is done and our life crown is won,
And our troubles and trials are o’er;
All our sorrow will end, and our voices will blend,
With the loved ones who’ve gone on before.

 

Never grow old, never grow old,
In a land where we’ll never grow old;
Never grow old, where we'll never grow old,
In a land where we’ll never grow old.

 

   I wish that I could be with my family in Hawaii, but distances separate. Oh for the Day when nothing will separate us from our loved ones, from those who have gone on before, anymore.

 

   Rest well, Auntie June. We'll meet again some sunny Day.

 

   ~norton

 

Concerning Books #007: "the Bamboo Man" act III

...act I
 ...act II

            ...And as he went along he tried to strike up a tune out of memory to drown out the complaints his back put to him. But he couldn’t remember the words to any song. He could barely remember a melody to whistle. Still, as he passed the viper and the fox, the stag and the flying squirrel—who each stood wide-eyed and aghast with wonder at the gray-beard with ten babies—and as he passed through the forest down the Mountain, he came up with his own words and his own melody:

As I walked out on the Mountain one morning

I came to the pool that I came to each day

I there heard a sound that startled me strangely

A sound out of memory, out of youth far away

I stumbled in darkness for a day at a time

I crossed the ol’ pit with my ol’ bamboo pole

Deep ‘neath the Mountain I found them in slumber

Ten children sleeping in the dark and the cold

I batted the bat

I braved the pit

I’ll carry them home to raise as my own

They’ll thank me someday

I know that they will

They that cried out of the depths

Of the cave cold as death

So moan on, you winds!

Groan on, you old Mountain!

Roll on, you Clouds, in the deep of the night

Come knock at my door

You goblins and monsters

I’m guarding these babies

And I’ll put up a fight

             By this time, the old man arrived at his home, hardly feeling his injuries for his joy. His door closed behind him just as the Clouds rolled up to his step.      The happiest years of his life followed, the happiest that he could remember at least. He spent his time building cribs for each of them and finding feathers to stuff their pillows with. None came from Peco, you can rest assured.

The Bamboo Man built them ten rocking horses and ten hiking sticks. He made them ten fishing poles and ten butterfly nets and ten little hats. He raised the babies as his own, feeding them, changing them, cleaning, clothing, guarding them and teaching them his language, his art and his grin. If he had only a little food, he fed them and went hungry. If they got sick—and they often got sick—he nurtured them back to health. If wolves came to his door, he went out and spent the whole night chasing them away.

          When the ten little babies had become ten little boys, he led them through the bamboo forest, showing them the heights of the Mountain where they could see the great valleys far below. He showed them the lake, clear and still as a mirror. He showed them the snow at the very peak. He showed them autumn when the leaves turn to red, and winter when all the forest is solemn, and spring when the sounds of life return. He even showed them the pool and the waterfall and the cave where he rescued them. He loved to see their eyes shine with wonder at his dear old Mountain.

          When they grew old enough, he showed them how to work his craft. To his immense happiness, they excelled at working with bamboo. On New Year’s Day, ten years after he had found them, when he had become a withered old man with no hair left, they made him a crown of twisted bamboo to cover his head. It was the only thing and the last thing they made him, and he wore it always, even when he slept. As far as wood crafting goes, the crown was no masterpiece. But to the old man, it couldn’t be worth more had it been made of gold.

          The Bamboo Man loved the children more than he remembered loving anyone. Even Peco was no longer grumpy. She too became happy and the ten children of the Bamboo Man taught her how to sing again. Her old and cracked voice echoed through the Mountain forest with melodies half-remembered out of the distant past and melodies invented all new.

          The Bamboo Man wished this happy life to last for eternity.

          But there came a time when the children bid him rest when he remained up to guard the house at night. Still the Bamboo Man, though he had grown old and weak and his children young and strong, refused.

          “I shall take care of you, my blessed ones,” the Bamboo Man told them more than once, “For it is I who found you in darkness and brought you into the light.”

          But one night the Bamboo Man slept. The Clouds came rolling up and knocked on the door, one, two, three times. The ten young men were awake and working at their craft. One of them got up and moved toward the door. His fingers began to turn the handle as he called out: “Who is it?”

          The Bamboo Man was just in time. The door was only open a crack before he slammed his body against it and shut it at once.

          “Don’t let in the Clouds, young men,” he whispered with severity, “For many years I walked this Mountain and have not looked into the darkness when the Clouds have come. Not yet. They come for men who have gone on waiting as long as I. If they come for me this night, then it should have been I that had opened the door. It must not be this night, then. Not yet.”

          And thus he bade them sleep the night through.

          In the morning, the Bamboo Man awoke at dawn. He saw his ten children, now ten men, standing at his bedside. He saw their faces in the blue-gray light. Their faces were those of adults now, serious, resolved. The pouches they had used to carry bamboo for their craft had been emptied and loaded instead with tools and clothing and food, the supplies of a journey.

          “It is time we go away, old Bamboo Man,” they said.

The Bamboo Man wept.

          “I’m going to the valley to grow food in the fields and never lack for hunger,” said the first man as he turned and walked out the door.

          “I’m going to find a city where I can become wealthy,” said the second man and he left.

          “I’m going to a far off country to see new things,” said the third, departing.

          “I’m going to the forest of another mountain to become a hunter,” said the fourth.

          “I’m going to the caverns to mine them for precious stones,” said the fifth.

          “I’m going to the temple to become a priest,” said the sixth.

          “I’m going to the hills to write poems for young ladies,” said the seventh.

          “I’m going to the ocean to sail away in a ship,” said the eighth.

          “I’m going to start a town and a family of my own far away,” said the ninth.

          And they all left the little hut and the little old man in his bed, one after the other. The Bamboo Man wept silently for each of them, as if each one was his only son, until they had all gone. Now he was lonely again, as in the beginning.

          But he opened his eyes when he heard his door creak. In came the tenth man. He came to the Bamboo Man and knelt, told him: “I am sorry, old Bamboo Man. I am sorry I left. I don’t know where I should go. Really, I don’t want to go. I would rather stay and learn what you have learned in all your long and lonesome years: contentment and happiness, selflessness and suffering. I want to work with my own hands like you taught me.”

          And the Bamboo Man said with a voice as weak as an old spider’s web: “Did I not pull ten babies from the dark cave? Where are the nine whose bellies I fed, whose sickness I healed, whose lives I saved? Did I not carry ten across the chasm? But where are the nine? Only one has returned to me, to give glory to the life of an old man. You live well, my son.”

          The Bamboo Man grinned. He bade his son open the window beside his bed and open the cage of his pet canary. An aged Peco spread her wings, white as a ghost, and slowly floated on the breeze out of the window. The Bamboo Man watched her go until she disappeared into sunlight. Her song faded. Then the Clouds crept in the door and the window, and the Bamboo Man lay still in his bed.

          His son bent down to straighten the bamboo crown that he had made for the old man years ago. He kissed the wrinkled forehead.

          And that one child of the Bamboo Man, of the nine that went away, lived in that little wooden hut and buried his father beside the cave and the waterfall in the forest. There he placed a marker which stands to this day. There he goes often to reflect upon the long life of his father and his memory. There the son of the Bamboo Man brings his own children and the wife he met in the forest. And there he reads the words on the marker which says what the nine forgot to say before they left to live lives their father had nurtured and healed and rescued. It said, ‘Thank you’.

THE END

 

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

   Thanks for reading! Any thoughts? Leave me a comment!

 ~norton

 

 

Concerning Books #006: "the Bamboo Man" act II

...act I

           ...The sudden, strange noise echoed through the bamboo forest and through the Bamboo Man, shaking and shattering him like the broken jug at his feet. He began to tremble like the trees trembled in the Mountain wind. The sound was so alien to him, so out of place and out of distant memory that at first he could not recognize it. It had been a long time since last he heard another human voice, not to mention a baby’s cry.

          But once he understood the sound, he knew that only one thing had to be done. Yet once he realized where the sound came from, he turned reluctantly toward the dark cave. Without doubt, the cries of the child came from that yawning mouth of the earth.

          He suddenly suffered a mix of unaccustomed and very un-Bamboo-Man-like emotions: first, he became angry that someone had abandoned a baby in the cave, but then he grew afraid of the darkness there. A moment later he became frustrated with himself that he felt afraid at all and before he knew it, he felt a white-hot courage well up inside him. His wiry old legs marched his bent old body across the slippery, pebbled threshold at the entrance to the cave.

          He stuck his head inside. The cries of the child grew louder, echoing in the blackness. If the Bamboo Man had been in there before, he did not remember how dark it was. This place had never known summer or lanterns, stars or sunlight. The cave only knew haunting darkness and despair and cold.

He had only gone a few paces behind the waterfall till the darkness immersed him and he went blind as death. He tripped and fell flat on the rough cave floor. He looked up and saw nothing. He looked ahead and saw nothing. He looked back and saw the bright circle of daylight and the waterfall.

          He listened and could tell from the noise—since the crying had dwindled into a faint sniffling—that the lost baby still lay abandoned at least a hundred paces ahead.

          “Hold on, child!” his sandpapery voice faded into the darkness as he got up and ran backward out of the cave. He squinted in the sunlight like a newborn but he didn’t stop running. He scampered down the pebbly threshold and he dashed past the waterfall. He might have run past the pool if he hadn’t fallen in to it. But he got up again in a flash and ran dripping wet through the forest, down the Mountain toward his little hut, holding his bamboo hat to his bald head and his bamboo cane under his arm.

          The animals looked at him with disbelief. The rabbits looked on with pride and the turtles with envy. The bamboo whistled as he rushed past as if cheering on a sprinter.

          The Bamboo Man puffed out the words: “Morning viper, fox n’ stag, flying forest squirrel Mountain!”

          Finally, he burst breathless through the door of his little hut and scrambled across the floor to rummage through his belongings. Peco squeaked with alarm.

          “No time! It’s a boy! A baby, Peco! Cave-baby! …Aha!” he laughed as he held aloft his bamboo lantern. He took it along with his best blanket—not the bamboo one—and the last of his matches, then ran back out the door. Peco thought briefly about following the adventure, then shook her head and fell asleep again.

          The Bamboo Man flew through the forest.

          “Forest, Mountain, good viper, flying-stag, foxy squirrel morning...!” he panted as he shambled on as fast as he could. Minutes later, the cave gaped before him. He struck up a match, lit his bamboo lantern and, with a deep breath, plunged into the darkness.

          The tiny light of his tiny lantern shone like an insignificant star in all the black emptiness of the night. He could barely see the reflection of the light on the rock wall of the cave. Nothing gleamed in the darkness. Nothing shone back to him.

          He began to descend down the hole in the earth. The Bamboo Man went some steps in and strained his aged ears to listen. Beyond the noise of the waterfall, he heard nothing. The sound of the baby crying had ceased. He might have gone back and given up. After all, maybe someone else had heard the child and rescued it. Maybe the poor creature had no need any more of a rescue or maybe it didn’t want to be saved. But the Bamboo Man didn’t stop. He went on, though the rough cave floor cut his bare feet.

          He kept his lantern before him, his eyes on the floor and one hand against a side of the cave. Soon even the roar of the waterfall faded to total silence, his old familiar dinner guest. His hair stood on end. The cave was quiet as a tomb. A heavy feeling of dread descended upon him. Sweat like ice slithered down his back. It became hard to breathe.

          His heart began to pound within him at the thought of how far into the cave he had come by now, stooping at times and even crawling on his belly like a worm through the dirt. Still he strained his ears. Still he heard nothing.

          At last, he stopped. He didn’t feel the white-hot courage in him anymore. Should he give up? He did not know the cave like he knew the Mountain. Here he feared he could lose himself in the close darkness and the numbing silence.

          He promised himself he would go on, through the dark and the dirt and the silence.  Finally, he came to a deep chasm in the cave floor. He crept cautiously to the edge and lifted his lantern out over it. He couldn’t hope to see the bottom with that tiny light, nor could he see the other side of the gap. His adventure had reached its end, the terribly ordinary kind of end where nothing happens at all.

          Feeling that it had all been worthless, the Bamboo Man set his lantern on the cave floor and threw himself down beside it. He was out of breath. Then he made himself think, the way he would sit and think in his little hut down the Mountain. Time passed.

          He suddenly raised his head and reached for the pouch of bamboo sticks he carried on his shoulder. He pulled out the strongest shoots and bound them together with threads he pulled from his shirt. He worked with difficulty in the darkness but nobody was more skilled at his craft than the Bamboo Man.

Soon, he had bound three strong stems together. These were bound to three others end to end, and those three end to end with another three and so he had a long pole almost three times his height. The Bamboo Man lifted the pole and got to his feet, then carefully lowered his invention across the chasm. The end of it disappeared into the darkness but as he let it fall, it stopped, level with his feet! He raised it and let it fall again. It stopped again. He shuffled it about until he felt sure; he’d found the other ledge across the chasm.

Success! But now came the really horrible part of his plan. He took his pouch and dumped the rest of the bamboo out. He frowned to see the finest bits touch the dirty floor as he left them behind. Next, he twisted the empty pouch around his wrist and then tied his wrist to the bamboo pole, the pole that lay across the chasm. Finally, he took up his feeble lantern but realized he had to leave that behind too. This was the hardest choice. Leaving behind that tiny light was like leaving behind the greatest treasure of heaven. But the Bamboo Man was resolved to go on, light or no light.

Once more, he took a deep breath. Now came the time to leave behind the light and the old man, and to do what a man half his age might only dare to do. He lay himself down at the edge of the chasm. He gripped the pole as tightly as he could with his old hands and slowly, very slowly crept across the bamboo tight rope. The pole passed across his chest and belly and between his legs and knees. Once he had crept fully over the chasm, he did not look down into the dead drop. He knew that if he did, he would see nothing, but he would then certainly give up and turn back.

          “And, old man,” he told himself, “You cannot turn back.”

          His brow dripped with sweat and his aged body trembled. He was half way across. He looked and saw his tiny lantern sitting on the safety of the floor behind him, shining. He looked ahead and thought he could dimly see the other side. He crept further still. Now he was sure he could see the edge.

          He had crept almost to an arm’s reach from the other side when something hot and hairy blasted past his face. He shrieked and started, causing the bamboo pole to creak and bounce. When he finally dared to open his eyes, he saw perched before him the fattest, ugliest bat he had ever seen. It had a gnarled face and a nose like the roots of trees, and ears like the horns of the devil. Was that a trail of dark blood dripping from its fangs?

          “Move out of the way, bat!” the Bamboo Man shouted, “Away! Get out!”

          But the bat only spread its monstrous wings. A stench as of corpses hit the Bamboo Man in the face. He felt dizzy.

          “I’m not going to fall, bat. And I’m not going back,” the Bamboo Man said as firmly as he could for a man stretched out on his belly in mid-air, suspended by nothing more than a bundle of sticks. “Listen here, bat. You are going to move out of my way!”

          But the bat only nestled its hideous head as if it was going to fall asleep. The Bamboo Man furiously reached for the creature with his fist and the bat swept into the air. It swooped toward him. He felt icy claws in the flesh of his face. The wooden pole rocked and bounced and creaked and snapped. The Bamboo Man held on tight. His heart felt like it would burst.

          When he had caught his breath and opened his eyes, and when the bamboo pole had stopped swaying, the Bamboo Man found that the bat had disappeared into the darkness. He mustered his last strength and climbed across the last length of the pole. He grabbed hold of the edge of the chasm and slowly and clumsily hauled his body onto solid earth.

          He lay there for some minutes on his back, breathing in and out long breaths of the stale cave air. Then he sat up and looked back across the chasm. He could see his lantern on the other side.

          Then he heard a small noise like a very small voice. Not the voice of the wind or of silence, but of a living soul. But where did it come from? Could a voice come from the dust?

He turned and felt around in the darkness. All of a sudden, his gnarled fingers touched the tender fingers of what could only be a little baby. The old man laughed in triumph, a sound that had never been heard in that dark cave. The darkness shivered, but the Bamboo Man gently picked up the infant and cradled it for a moment in his arms.

          “What a silly old Bamboo Man,” he quietly chuckled at himself, “You gave yourself breakfast, but brought none for the child.”

          Just then, he heard another small noise like a very small voice off to his left. He reached out a knobby hand and touched the soft foot of a second baby! Then he heard a whimper to his right and a sniffle to his left, two more babies! The Bamboo Man spent the greater part of an hour searching that far side of the chasm until he knew every space of it and had run up against every wall. He found a total of ten little children in all.

          “Ten children!” the Bamboo Man gasped, “And how did they get here, naked and cold and hungry?

          He never found another tunnel leading elsewhere on that side of the chasm. It was just the cliff: a dead-end. But he put down his curiosity at once. He knew the thing to do was get the babies out of the cave, all of them, safely and quickly. But he knew there could only be one way to carry them out of the darkness. He would have to carry them one by one back across the bamboo pole he had made, back across the deep chasm.

          The Bamboo Man acted with the utmost care. First, he re-counted all the children in the dark and laid them in a row as far away from the edge as possible. Then he removed the pouch he had tied around his wrist and wrapped the first little baby inside of it. Then he strapped the pouch around his neck, making certain this knot was the greatest knot ever tied in history. And finally, without a moment’s hesitation, he began to crawl back along the pole, swifter than ever, the first baby dangling from the pouch around his neck

          He arrived at his lantern in a little more than a minute and there carefully unwrapped the little child. It was asleep. He set it as far away from the edge as possible. Then he took up his pouch and went back for the second. Soon he crawled back for the third and then the fourth, then the fifth and the sixth. Drenched in sweat, he crept back for the seventh. Tired and shaking, he crossed over for the eighth. His hands were pierced and bleeding from the wood by the time he headed back to the ninth. Finally, he bent down to wrap up the tenth child for his tenth journey across the gap.

But as he carried it across the pit, an all too familiar creature flapped across his face. He smelled the stink of filth and felt the hot breath of the creature. The bat settled down in front of him again and hissed a challenge, unfolding its black wings. The pole was swaying beneath the Bamboo Man. He heard the wood creaking and snapping. He did not shut his eyes. He did not despair.

          He looked the hideous creature right in the eyes and screamed: “Out of my way! You can’t keep what isn’t yours!” And then he punched it right in its ugly face. The thing plummeted into the pit.

          At long last, the Bamboo Man carried the tenth child across the chasm to the safety of the other side. He knew what to do at once. He pulled the bamboo pole over the chasm to himself and then carefully wove both his pouch and his shirt around the pole in such a way that he made ten little pouches in a row. He carefully placed one child in each spot, checking and re-checking his knots and binding and threads, until all the children sat in place. Then he grunted and wheezed, and his legs groaned and his elbows ached as he hefted the pole up over his shoulder. Then he straightened himself, one hand balancing the pole and the other carrying the lantern.

          In this manner, he began to walk up out of the cave. As he ascended, he felt his grin creeping back to his face. Soon he could hear the dull roar of the waterfall. A hundred paces later he burst from the darkness of the cave into the red afternoon upon the Mountain. There at the pool, he let down the pole and checked on the children.

          Still they slept, ignorant of his sufferings, unaware of the bleeding hands and feet, the face torn by the bat’s claws, the aching bones and pains of their savior. In the fading light of the afternoon, he saw that each of them were boys, probably no older than their first year. He patted their heads with his wrinkled old hands and then lifted the pole once more upon his body.

          “Just one more path, silly old Bamboo Man,” he said aloud, “And then you shall be home to rest.”

 

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...act III

   ~norton