The Old Times were simple times. The world was big and its inhabitants were small; you found things to eat or something bigger ate you; and the biggest thing was Gronnkkt.
Gronnkkt knew this intimately, and took care to ensure it by battering to death anything It found that was nearly as big as Itself. And the small creatures down below witnessed this every day, and every evening, and sometimes heard it every night, and they worshipped Gronnkkt The Pummeler with great regularity – even more diligently than they did Spoolp, The One Who Collects Berries or Breeeez Who Finds Interesting Mushrooms, albeit for very different reasons.
They were not complicated forms of worship. A silent moment with brows lowered (a hard trick to pull off in the Old Times, when brows were at their lowest) and a soothing pat-pat gesture with the left hand gingerly extended; the forceful crushing of a small, harmless creature with a nearby hand axe; and of course – most common of all – the deep, satisfied grunt of exhaled air mixed with something rough in the back of the throat, done just after beating something to death.
Those were the manner and the custom with Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts was treated with in the Old Times before the Times After That, also called the New Times.
Their precise beginning is hard to pin down, but scholarly consensus is that it probably started with the sneeze.
***
It was a good big one. It tore the leaves off the trees and the trees off the ground; it deafened birds and killed small animals. It was a sneeze nearly worthy of emitting from the maw of Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, but instead it came from the maw of some big bear It was wrestling and it went right into Gronnkkt’s mouth and back out again through Its four nostrils.
Gronnkkt responded to this by beating the bear to death with greater force than was necessary or usual. And the small creatures saw this and they worshipped, and the day was normal again.
So was the day after that.
So was the day after that.
The day after THAT was when Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, let out a small sneeze of Its own that morning, and then by mid-afternoon Its four nostrils were a flood of mucus, and come sunset It couldn’t spare a limb to pummel because all of them were clutching at Its aching skull, and all night long all the small creatures couldn’t sleep a wink for the thunderous force of Its coughing: a deep harsh bark that made the pebbles dance and sent moles scurrying from their burrows.
“Will It be okay?” asked some of the younger and stupider of the small creatures.
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” said their older and wiser forebears. “Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, is an inescapable and inevitable fulcrum of the natural state of the world. You might as well ask if the seasons will be okay.”
The next morning Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, was found lying dead next to the big lake near the two hillsides by the morning water-carriers of the small creatures. This was a surprise to them, because they could still hear Its coughing. And it was an even greater surprise to them when the Cough of Gronnkkt came out of the trees and ran at them and began to violently pummel them until their lungs popped out. Some of the quicker ones got away and ran all the way uphill back home, crying out nonsense that their older and wiser forebears laughed at until the morning hunters of the small creatures returned and told a terrible tale of their own: they had been ready to capture a deer, when the crippling, inescapable Headache of Gronnkkt had come down at them all from above and laid half their number low so totally that their skulls had blown up. And while this tragic news had just been delivered, in came the fiber-pickers, who had only woven one and a half lengths of rope that day because the Runny Nose of Gronnkkt had sloshed through the forest and dissolved every scrap of low-hanging vegetative matter, along with half of the fiber-pickers.
“Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, is dead, but Its afflictions are not,” said some of the small creatures. “Should we do something about this?”
“We couldn’t do anything about Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, so we can’t do anything about this either,” said the old and wise small creatures. “That’s just how it is.” And it was indeed how it was, because the Cough and the Headache and the Runny Nose of Gronnkkt all did indeed remain, meaning ‘how it is’ now included many more small creatures having their lungs pop out, heads blow up, or bodies dissolved in mucus. Some of them were resentful of this, and some of them were consoled by this being the way it was, and some of the ones that weren’t consoled were resigned, and some of the ones that were neither consoled or resigned didn’t want to make a fuss.
This left a total of about three small creatures who were both young and stupid enough to think anything could be changed, which also made them young and stupid enough to think they should bother Grandma about it.
***
Grandma was not to be prayed to as Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, or Spoolp, The One Who Collects Berries, or Breeeez Who Finds Interesting Mushrooms, or even Brbit, The Really Big Hoppy One. Grandma was brought things that were left at the mouth of the cave she lurked inside – soft foods, water, the occasional interesting rock – and not prayed to or looked at or talked about or talked to. Otherwise there was a grave danger that she might speak to you.
“Grandma,” said the three smallest youngest stupidest creatures, “how do we make the afflictions of Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, go away?”
Grandma looked at them, probably. Her eyes were so deep in her skull’s sockets that they were almost invisible: just a hint of moisture at the bottom of a pit.
“You must say the words first,” she said in a voice as coarse and harsh as the Cough of Gronnkkt itself.
“What are the words?” asked the most exceptionally young and stupid of all three small creatures.
“’Please, Grandma,’” said Grandma.
“Please, Grandma,” chanted the three young and stupid small creatures in unison.
“Good. I will help you defeat all of these afflictions,” said Grandma. “But only if you do exactly as I say and don’t talk. Now go down to your family and friends and tell them to collect soft fresh leaves until the entire camp is knee-deep in them.”
“Whose knees?” asked the youngest and stupidest.
Grandma looked at them.
“Sorry,” said the youngest and stupidest.
Grandma didn’t stop looking at them.
The youngest and stupidest opened their mouth again, only to find it immediately covered by both hands of both their companions.
“Better,” said Grandma.
***
It was surprisingly simple for the three youngest and stupidest of all the small creatures to convince their older and wiser friends and family to spend all day picking soft, useless leaves in vast numbers. This was because nobody could go down to the lake or into the woods or do anything that wasn’t scampering up into the safety of the rocky hillside without being killed unexpectedly by the afflictions of Gronnkkt, and so they were almost all bored enough to do anything even if there wasn’t a good reason for it.
“Why should we do this?” demanded the few oldest and wisest.
“Grandma said we had to,” said the youngest and stupidest. And so everyone helped, and the day sped by until the leaves were at knee height of most of – if not quite all – the small creatures and the terrible, sniffling slurp of the Runny Nose of Gronnkkt echoed damply against the setting sun.
The small creatures ran to the rocks and watched with baited breath as the sludge dribbled through their home, sniffing up small pretty rocks, slurping down dried food, and slowly, inevitably, totally blotting itself into oblivion on the soft and absorbent surfaces of hundreds and hundreds of a day’s-worth of leaves until not even a smear was left on the ground.
The leaves, however, remained. It took until nearly the sunrise to change that, and the filling of two filth-pits.
“We may now sleep in peace without being washed away by the fearsome Runny Nose of Gronnkkt,” said the wiser and older small creatures. “However, the rest of them are definitely undefeatable and inalterable and we shouldn’t bother trying.”
“Grandma said we were going to get rid of them all,” said the small and stupid creatures. And so they were sent back to her, and they showed her one of the leaves as proof.
“Disgusting,” she said. “Good. Now go into the woods and chop down all the willow saplings you can find. Leave their bark on and take them down to the lakeshore, then go for a swim.”
***
This took longer, because even a sapling willow tree is a fierce opponent to a stone hand axe, but ‘Grandma said to” remained a great motivator, and so it was done and the lakeshore where the water was drawn and the fish were caught was so choked with fallen timber that even the very youngest and stupidest of the small creatures – who were also the smallest – could barely pick their way down to the water to splash and wade and swim. But they managed, and they did, and as time passed and nothing happened their boredom made them loud and careless and so onward came the Headache of Gronnkkt from the woods, armoured and spined and thorned and barbed and inexorable, taller than the trees of the forest and more implacable than the stones of the hills, dead-eyed and invincible.
It slipped on the logs and hurtled helplessly into the lake along with the majority of the willow saplings, which drummed it on the head every time it rose for breath until it rose no more.
The three youngest and stupidest of the small creatures were retrieved from the far side of the lake after some searching, coated in algae and small, dead fish, and were thus presented to Grandma without further persuading required – from a safe distance.
“Take these leaves,” said Grandma, holding out a handful of very dry and very small and very broken fragments of things that may have once been attached to trees. “Then take as much water as you can and fill the big pit in the rock in front of my cave with it. Put the leaves in that. Warm round solid stones in your fires until they’re hot, then put them in the pit too. Then wait.”
It was a long way to bring water. The stones took all day to warm, and carrying them was even trickier than the water and burned several fingers. The leaves made the steaming water stink and fume.
But just before sunset the harsh bark came from the woods, and as the sky turned red the Cough of Gronnkkt crawled its long, scale-coated belly up the scree to the mouth of Grandma’s home and dipped its narrow, wheezing mouth into the vapors of the vat of tea to inhale and wheeze and sip. Slowly. Very slowly. And as it sipped, it coughed less, and moved less, and relaxed, and at last it lay down to sleep right where it stood without so much as a cleared throat. It didn’t make a sound when Grandma walked up to it and shoved its whole head under the surface until the bubbles stopped, not once.
“This is how you deal with the afflictions of Gronnkkt,” said Grandma, “although I expect they will be smaller and less bold if they ever come back. Remember how it was done. And now you must speak the other words.”
“What are the other words?” asked the oldest and wisest remaining small creature.
“’Thank you, Grandma,’” said Grandma.
They chanted the words together and went to bed. And maybe it was the fumes from the tea, and maybe it was knowing the worst was behind them, but none of those small creatures had ever felt so happy to have a single, normal, restful night’s sleep ever before, and they vowed never to take it for granted again.
They were lying, of course. But wasn’t that just human of them?