To Capture the Turtle

Hunting the Great Ones was a rite of passage in her world. They had smeared blood over her cheekbones, over her collarbones, over her chest; they had cut away the long dark bangs which had hid her eyes ever since she was a babe, because catching a Great One required nothing less than the keenest eyesight. The breeze that morning had bit hard into her exposed forehead, but she gritted her teeth and ignored the unfamiliar pain. If she was successful in slaying one of these cthonic beasts, she would become an adult, and the wind would be on her face for the rest of her life.

There was no wind underground, though. The belly of the mountain was vast and airless, lit by strange mossy growths that glowed like moonlight. Her younger brother gazed at them with fascination as she led him ever onwards and downwards, deeper into the caverns where they said the Great Ones fed. "They'll be easier to kill if they're fed," she reasoned.

"But why do we have to kill it?" he whined, trailing behind her to pat the mossy walls. He had hinted at the subject ever since they entered the cave, but it was only now that he had voiced it so directly. She cast an irritated glance over her shoulder.

"Because it shows that you're brave. Stop touching those; they might be poisonous."

"You don't need to be brave to kill something. Momma kills bugs all the time and she's not brave." He paused to place a piece of moss on his tongue, made a face, and spat it out. "Besides, couldn't we just find one and take it back alive? You'd need to be brave to capture it, I reckon."

"That wouldn't be practical."

"It'd be kind."

"Brave people aren't kind." She knelt to the floor of the cavern and brushed her fingers across a seam of disturbed rock.

"But Papa was brave and kind. Don't you wanna be like Papa?"

"Shh, not right now." She straightened up, listening intently to the echoes.

"I won't shh. I don't wanna help you anymore. If you're going to kill it, I'm not going to move." He folded his arms stubbornly, but she ignored him. The echoes were becoming louder and more—real, somehow. Acting on instict, she pressed her palm to the rock walls. A defining pounding rhythm shook her to the very bones.

"Be quiet," she said again, sounding very distant.

"Why?"

She lost her temper. "Because I said so! Now be quiet!"

"You can't just—"

"I said be quiet!"

That was when the Great One exploded out of the rock.

In the years to come she would relive this moment over and over again, but to her eternal shame she could never remember what exactly had happened—only that she had been enraged, and that her father's spear had been light and strong in her hands, and that the Great One had gone down before the dust of its entrance had even had time to settle down. Her brother sobbed as she dragged its carcass all the way to the tunnel entrance, where it was light enough to cut away the pieces that she needed in order to prove she had become an adult, but she ignored him as the Great One's long, silken ears fell to the ground, followed by its luxuriant bob of a tail; the fur on these was thick and tawny, though caked with dirt.

When her brother screamed suddenly she surged to her feet, blood trickling down her legs as she ran out to join him. "What's wrong? What's wrong?" she cried. Trembling, he pointed a single hand skywards. She followed it with her eyes and felt her heart jump into her throat.

It was majestic. Immense. The whole of it seemed to dwarf the very sky it hung in. Weak sunlight glittered off its jewelled carapace, seemingly built of great boulders of gems far brighter and more beautiful than any she had seen before. Its underbelly rolled with mist and fog and the suggestion of summer thunder. Its flippers—hard, flat, cloud-encrusted things—looked to be made entirely of mottled glass in all the shades of the ocean. In contrast to its glittering body, the head was plain; the wrinkled neck and bald pate were a simple earthy clay, as though they had been patted from the riverbanks and fired in the kiln along with the pots and beads of the clan. Its eyes were dull, and seemed to take no notice of the enthralled children far below.

As they watched, it opened its birdlike beak and swallowed a passing cloud.

"What is that?" she breathed, hardly daring to take her eyes off it.

"I don't know," her brother mumbled, likewise entranced. "They never told me about it before."

It was a long time before she returned to the grisly work of sawing off the Great One's foot, but behind her eyes swam strange visions of jewels and clay and clouds brought to earth, and of strange blood across her hands, and of being hailed the greatest hunter in the land...

"You're not allowed to kill it," her brother said suddenly, and she glanced at him in surprise.

"How did you—?"

"Because that's you. You want to kill everything." His forehead creased. "You killed the Great One, and now you'll want to kill this too. What if there aren't any more?" His voice rose, cracked. "What if it's the last one?"

She stared at him for a long while, and then she reached out—"Come here"—and drew him into her arms. When his sobs subsided, she murmured into his hair, "Don't worry. I won't kill it."

He blew his nose noisily on her cape. "You won't?"

"I won't."

"What'll you do, then?"

"I'll capture it. Like you said."

He broke away from her. "Really?"

She smiled at him. The Great One's foot felt soft and heavy against her own. "Really," she said.