The import of this whole picture was inescapable. Here were the shaggy folk, here was a guardian of my own people, and here was a representation of one of ...
The Nameless!
For long minutes I stared at my new friend Dy-lee, while the thoughts churned in my brain. At last I shook myself, as a bear does on coming out of a cold stream, and I began to try him with questions, partly in gestures and partly in words which I hoped he might understand. First I pointed to the shaggy folk. Yes, they were his people, he signed. Then I indicated the guardian. He pointed at me. I shook my head. Indicating my rough loincloth of cave cat fur, I showed him the rich black and white apparel of the little figure, and then touched my bow and quiver, my hatchet, my knife. No guardian carries a weapon of any sort, as the beasts will never molest one of their craft. Dy-lee seemed to know this, for he nodded vigorously, but then showed me where we were similar—the brown furless face and body. I said, Yes, that this man was of my people, but differing from me in profession. He understood this. I asked him, after several tries, whether he had often seen such men as this; and he signed to me, Yes, that there was a place of meeting on the plain. I then asked if he had thought I was a guardian when he first found me the afternoon before, and he answered, No, pointing to my bow and hatchet.
These folk having no weapons, I was at a loss to know how he had recognized what mine were for; because the instant I had thrown up my bow he had seen I meant to shoot, first him and then his tame dogwolves. But after a moment's thought I remembered that in two or three of the old pictures there were depictions of the bow and arrow. I went back down the wall and found them. Evidently these people had once known the use of such things, for here they were, rather hairy but not yet covered with the thick shag, stalking a deer with bows. Somewhere in their evolving they had either lost the art or found a better. Here, in a later picture, they were hunting a great knifetooth bear. Ah, that was it; they had domesticated the dogwolves, and given up the bow. I imagined that it might have come in handy to protect themselves, for surely they could not always travel amongst a howling pack of their canine friends; but obviously they had discarded it entirely.
I returned to the startling picture of the guardian, and pointing to the horrid figure of The Nameless, I bent my head in pantomime and gave an exaggerated shudder.
Dy-lee repeated my motions exactly, and pointed away to where I imagined they dwelt. He said something, apparently his name for the beings. I said, "The Nameless." Again he shivered—it was a real reaction this time—and pointed east.
East? But that was the direction in which lay the Fearful Forest, the three brooks, Sunset Fields, and my own glen. I had not realized this at his first motion, being somewhat confused by the underground cavern. I shook my head, pointing west. There dwelt The Nameless.
He would have none of that. No, they lived to the east. I pointed west, he pointed stubbornly east.