The Gentlest Chant Of The Wind In The Willows, or Willow-Chant, as only Mothers were allowed to sing about him, stood bewildered. For days now, the world he walked through did not follow the Song. The tunes of the world were twisted into madness, into abomination.

  The abomination that resulted in him standing face to face with an Old Mother that could not be. An Old Mother among a tribe of the Songless, her face weird and other, and yet unmistakably touched by the Song. Even her hair was redder than his!

  The weird Old Mother waved a club at him, shielding Songless females. Pitiful Songless males tried to encircle him with a wall of spears, as if they could ever hope to contain him! But he was so overcome with disgust, that he did not even have the urge to strike them down.

  The pain of the numerous injuries the Worthy Songless males gave him was but a nuisance compared to the emotional pain caused by the wrongness around him.

  And to think, it all started so innocently, with a seemingly good and proper new tune to the Song!

  It was less than a senight that the New Mother sent him to investigate the inexplicable appearance of the numerous Songless. True, on occasion, new Songless would appear in the woods, naked and confused. This was known, and an old verse of the Song. But never before had the pitiful non-people appeared in such tremendous numbers. The People of the Womb-Song rejoiced at this inexplicable bounty of fresh meat and breeding slaves. True, the Songless wombs were weak, and their seed worthless poison, but added in moderation, they strengthened the People, or so the Mothers sang.

  Moderation however, soon flew past them like a flushed bushbird, because the Songless suddenly became as numerous as hail from the skies. Barely bloodied males could now bring home whole armfuls of heads, or more breeding slaves that they could have the strength to mount. The Womb trembled in warning, and the Mothers admonished the People for incaution. No clear solution appeared in the Song, so the New Mother, in her spirited wisdom, sang a tune urging Willow-Chant to go forth and see the heart of the thing.

  Most of the way, he steadfastly avoided distraction, but as soon as he saw evidence of a larger group of the Songless roaming the woods, he gave himself permission to waste time on an enjoyable amusement. After all, what is even the point of being the chosen mate of the New Mother, if one cannot be allowed some indulgences that come with the rank?

  On the sixth day, he encountered a pair of the Songless, a male and a female, both naked and confused as newborns. They were in their prime, honey-skinned and dark of hair, unlike the Womb-Singers. He thought of ambushing them and killing both in a span of a breath, so as to not alert the bigger tribe, but they were so clumsy and weak it seemed pointless.

  To amuse himself, he simply emerged from the woods in front of the pair, and smiled at them.

  The female uttered a meek yelp, and the male jumped in front of her protectively. Willow-Chant gave an appreciative hum at the male’s misguided bravery. Did the worthless creature think it could defend its mate from him? It was as if a deer challenged a tiger to combat!

  Willow-Chant cooed at the creatures to put them at ease. 'If the male wants to fight, let us fight', he thought. Seeing the male was unarmed, he dropped his spear and flint knife on the ground. Let nobody sing he was not fighting fair!

  He slowly approached the male, grinning. He remembered the Songless consider bared teeth to be a sign of friendship, what silly animals they are! But he must have grinned wrong, because the Songless male burst with a mumbled non-song of warning, and raised its fists defensively.

  Oh well.

  He lunged forward and slapped the Songless’ hands away. The creature bawled. He must have struck too hard, because it seems like he shattered one of the male’s wrists. At least, he thought the animal’s paw was at an odd angle now.

  The small male cried for its female to run, and, in some inexplicable bout of insanity, leaped at Willow-Chant, trying to grapple with him.

  Enough was enough.

  Willow-Chant grabbed the funny male by the throat, wrapped another hand over its head, and in a slow, deliberate motion twisted it all the way around, until he heard the neck snap.

  And then some, for good measure.

  The honey-hued female shrieked, a tuneless, grating noise, and only then tried to run. He acted on reflex, the old hunter’s instincts getting the better of him. His hand shot forward, grabbed the running female’s hair, and yanked her back.

  Too hard.

  Way too hard.

  He sang a throat-song of irritation. She would have made a fine breeding slave, at least for a while, if she was alive. Now all he had was two animals with snapped necks. Good enough for eating, he supposed, but uncooked Songless were gamey, and he would not dare start a fire. Not so close to his mark.

  Annoyed at his own skills getting rusty, he opened the Songless and ate their livers. Nothing better than a fresh liver, still hot and steaming. Though a pinch of sea-dust, or perhaps a handful of bear-garlic would improve it. He mused at that thought. Had he become spoiled by luxury and unaccustomed to life on the hunt, staying by the New Mother’s side for the last few years? Or was he just getting old?

  Invigorated by the meal, he stalked forward, following the scent trail of the Songless tribe. He smelled they were numerous. Far more numerous than he thought possible. Many dozens. Not even the oldest verses of the Song described their tribes this large. This was surely weirdness and abomination. The Song of the world was for the Womb-Singer people, not for these wretched creatures to populate.

  As the day passed, the tune became weirder still. He encountered the most distressing sight. A clearing stomped all over by the feet of the Songless, and a skinned, gutted, butchered corpse of a bobtail panther in the middle of it. He knew it was one, even though the head was missing.

  Songless was not supposed to be capable of killing a panther! What abomination was this? Even numerous as they were, they were supposed to flee from such a superior predator, not ambush it.

  This was as if the Song was sung backward.

  By the end of the day, he finally tracked down the Songless tribe.

  The impossible, panther-killing tribe.

  They were so different from regular Songless that for a heartbeat he thought that they must have been led by a Womb-Singer.

  Hidden in the bushes he waited and observed them.

  These were not terrified animals like the rest of their ilk.

  They were organized. They had fires. They had spears. Some of them tipped with flint. They even had sentries placed all over, blind and deaf as they were. In his younger days, Willow-Chant would have burst amidst them and scatter them like autumn leaves. But he was not a young, reckless male anymore. The New Mother gave him a task. And that task was more important than the drumbeat of bloodlust in his chest.

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  He was to come back with knowledge, not with severed heads. He observed the tribe for a while, before to his great amusement, the animals attempted to sing.

  It was a terrible noise, more akin to tortured geese than people, but if they try to sing, he thought to himself, then they must not be as stupid, as people consider them to be.

  Animals, still, but clever ones.

  He was about to put their cleverness to a test and see their true measure.

  He snuck upon the nearest sentry. The skinny male was armed with a spear, but not vigilant. Not truly listening and truly looking into the woods that surrounded it. The creature soon joined the song of its tribe, still oblivious to its surroundings and the danger rising behind it.

  Willow-Chant grabbed the little male by the scruff of the neck and pulled it into the bushes. It tried to fight but to no avail. With almost no effort, Willow-Chant managed to press the creature against a tree trunk and stabbed the flint knife into its groin. The Songless male uttered a cry, one with no melody to it, except pain.

  It gave him an idea.

  He muffled the bleating creature, and joined the tribal chorus.

  His song followed the same pattern but was infinitely superior to their meek mewling.

  The sound of his voice sent the animals into panic.

  They had bunched together brandishing spears and making sounds of distress.

  'And rightfully so', he taught. For their distress was completely justified.

  But he was not done playing with them. He let the captured sentry cry for help, while slowly gutting it from groin to nose. He made sure not to cut through any major blood vessels too soon, so that it would keep gurgling even with its windpipe and jaw bisected.

  And when it was no longer capable of making sounds, he mimicked its pleas instead. That was a difficult skill, trying to sing the choppy, barking sounds of the un-song of the Songless. To him, they always sounded like they were choking on a bone and trying to retch it out.

  Disgusting creatures.

  His false un-song made the Songless even more panicky and wide-eyed than they were.

  He saw two males disengage from the herd. One was the color of oaken bark and a true giant, towering even over Willow-Chant himself. It reminded him of a black bear, but only if black bears could hold a spear with deadly and proficient intent.

  He could not wait to fight this creature. That would be an interesting challenge for once.

  The other male was so meager in comparison that he nearly dismissed it. That was until he noticed that the little creature snuck into the woods with a fluid and deadly movement of a serpent. 'Ah', he taught, 'I should not focus on a bear and forget that a viper is nearby.'

  Suddenly, the dark-hued creature whipped a piece of thong at him and a projectile slammed into a tree trunk right next to his head.

  This both startled and angered him. He knew that Songless could throw things proficiently, but not with such a force. If that projectile hit his head, he would be dead before his body reached the ground. In one fluid motion, he grabbed a branch above his head, and pulled himself up into the shadows of the overhanging maple, right above the bleeding body of the sentry.

  A mere breath later, the big creature jumped through the bushes and whipped a spear through the spot where he just stood.

  And what a magnificent spear that was! Its tip was not mere flint but some other, even superior stone that looked like shiny gray ice rather than the dull brown chert he used. He wanted that spear for himself, even more than she wanted to fight the dark creature for it.

  The song of the day was getting more and more interesting with each heartbeat.

  The fight itself was a blur of confusion and irritation.

  The bear-male and the viper-male each proved to be a handful. Not mere challenges but a real threat.

  Or, again, was that just him getting old? It should not be possible for those wretched creatures to surprise him, or injure him so.

  But the true, hot anger mixed with icy fear came when a tiny spear embedded itself in his body, finger-width from his neck, only followed by another that tore his face open. Willow-Chant always knew the Songless had a knack for throwing weapons, a coward’s trick that was the only thing at which they were superior to the Womb-Singers. A true warrior of the People fought their foes up close. Their powerful shoulders and hands were fit for delivering mighty blows, but not for finicky and precise aiming. That was just worthless trickery for the weak to use.

  Well, maybe not entirely worthless. If that tiny flying spear hit his neck or eye, he would be dead.

  He wasted no time, and sprinted at the swarthy Songless male who stood atop of a rock, hurling sticks at him from a weird crooked piece of wood. The spear-shooter proved to not be a complete fool, both him and his female leaped out of his way and into the embrace of their tribe.

  No matter.

  He would chase them down and wrench their necks, and that of any animal that stood in his way. Even unarmed, he had complete advantage over them, and they knew it too, as was evident from their stooped, trembling postures. If New Mother wanted him to sing her a song of this abominable tribe, here was where he would find the melody.

  All those thoughts were flushed out of his head when he jumped off the rock, passed the cowed line of spear-holders, and stood eye to eye with what could only be a strange Old Mother.

  She had the red hair of the People, and the pale skin of the purest breed of the Womb. Her face was weirdly soft, and her brow flat like an animal’s but there was still strength and trueness to her bone, evident even through her plump and aged figure.

  For a dozen heartbeats, Willow-Chant was paralyzed with indecision, a predicament he never before encountered. He always knew what to do, and acted immediately.

  Until that day.

  Part of him wanted to take a step forward and end this impossible creature with a single punch. A different part of him wanted to fall to the ground and supplicate to a lost Old Mother he inexplicably found. How can one being be both so clearly of the Womb, and utterly Other at the same time? The revolting contradiction made bile rise in his throat, the barely digested livers threatening to escape his gullet.

  The Songless surrounding him froze in place, none brave enough to be the first to strike at him. Little they knew, that he was so distraught he would not even defend himself. Swallowing hard, he pulled his well-honed willpower together, and sang.

  He chanted about willows to introduce himself. He chanted about the endless grasslands where he was born, and the vast caves of the Womb. he sang the Song of his Mother, and her Mother, and all the Mothers before them, back to the day when great abomination plucked them from the old Song of the world and placed them in this one. He felt hot tears stream down his cheeks, as he hoped against all evidence that the Old Mother before him would turn out to be real, not a false abomination birthed by the Songless.

  Finally, his song ended, and he stared at her, waiting.

  And then, to his great joy, the weird Old Mother sang too.

  It was not a true Song, not even close.

  But it was a song of sorts, however ugly and dissonant it was. He could not understand what the melody truly meant, but he thought he could glance at the emotion within it. It was a song of a homeland long lost. Of sorrow and longing. Of faith, though faith in what, he could not guess. Whoever the ancestors of this Old Mother were, they must have had the blood of the People in them. Maybe just a tiny drop, but still. There was just no other sensible explanation.

  He bowed down, and bared his throat. She did not step in to cut it, or smack his skull open with her club. She must have not taken offense at his behavior. But still, he felt he was not welcome in her presence. Hunched with shame, he turned around and left. The Songless spear-males parted before him and let him pass.

  He would go back to the New Mother with what he learned. He would present the flying spear still embedded in his clavicle. We would sing a song of bear-males and viper-males. Of impossible Songless tribes. Of flying stones and flying sticks.

  And maybe, the final part of his song would be about the Old Mother that should not exist.

  Or maybe not.

  Maybe that song was not for the New Mother to hear, but only for the Old Mothers at the Womb. For the first time in his life, a life that drummed in him for twice more years than all the fingers and toes put together, he was unsure where his allegiance laid.