Eritopia

Men Are Blessed

As the next grey, sulking dawn came, with a clatter of hooves horsemen gathered around them. Their breath misted in the still air as Bear opened sleepy eyes to the confusion.

'What are you doing here?' he asked the nearest.

'We work for them,' the horse replied, panting as if after a long journey.

'Who - these men?'

'Of course, who else?'

'But what reward do you get?' Bear asked.

'They feed us and shelter us. We train them.'

'To do what?'

'To let us carry them and their children.'

'But you could do that yourselves,' Bear said. He looked over to Van, who had slept through the whole thing. Then he looked across to Anya, who lay with her eyes open, watching him. Bear went to address the horse again but found himself instead talking to the lower branches of an elder tree.

'Dreaming?' Anya enquired.

'Oh dear,' he said. 'I think I'm going mad.' He shook his head to clear it. The dream had seemed so real. At length, he asked, 'You know Anya, in the old days, did animals work for men?'

'Yes, dear,' she replied, 'at least in the City. But the men ended up enslaving them.'

'I've heard that before. But I find it hard to understand,' Bear said. 'Why did we allow it to happen?'

'Because men were more powerful.'

Bear sat up, held out his powerful arms and puffed out his chest. 'But they are weak, puny things with hardly any teeth or claws.'

'True, but they imagine themselves bigger, and that is the key. When we imagined ourselves bigger as well, we freed ourselves from their slavery. That was after the Great Battle.'

'We are more powerful,' Bear said.

'Faster,' added Anya.

'Nimbler,' said Bear, looking across at Calypso, who slept next to Van, one arm thrown over the fox's snout.

Bear sighed. 'Sometimes I don't understand anything of the world. What seems obvious, isn't, and what seems unnatural, is.' He was as innocent as Not-Bear about most things. He had no real experience, had been wrong to try and teach Not-Bear anything on that first walk to the Occasion. How could he have been so stupid? He could see why it was Not-Bear the Elders had chosen, even the wisdom of not naming him. It was to make him inquisitive, and so force his adventure. The Elders showed there were intelligent men after all.

'The thing you should remember,' Van said to him later that morning as they set off again, 'is that men are blessed.'

Bear had been telling him of his dream and later thoughts. He decided to learn as much as he could about this new world.

'What is "blessed"?' he asked.

'They believe they have been chosen to rule the World.'

'Why do they think that?'

'I don't know why, it's something they are born with.'

'Chosen by whom?'

'Ah, that's it, they believe whatever made the World wants them to rule it. We animals call it Nature and link our lives with it. Men believe they are outside Nature and want to control it and all the creatures in it.'

'What do they think now then, surviving without the aid of the animals, stuck on the Outside.'

Van said. 'They still believe they are chosen. It is a matter of time before things get better, they think. Because of that belief, they are unpredictable.'