necessity he once again led his flock of puhlets far, far from home. The storm-devastated land was stripped almost bare of life. His flock was greatly reduced in numbers, so many of the pukas had died from the extreme weather changes, despite all that human help and care could provide. The fields couldn't produce grain, the trees weren't allowed to blossom into fruit with so many winds to tear the limbs from the trunks. Now puhlet meat became the staple diet, and soon they too would be gone--if things continued on as they were.
The twisted, gnarled black burran trees grew more profusely (if anything could be said to grow profusely ) than any other type of tree on the borderlands. These strong valiant trees were as bare of fringes as any other. Far-Awn felt a deeper sinking of his heart on seeing this. If the burran trees could lose their long, thin crimson fringes, then what other tree could hope to hold its own? Never before had he seen these trees so exposed, without one single rippling fringe to disguise the ugliness of their knobby limbs.
The hide-covered farm homes he passed were leveled to the ground. The once-cultivated fields were now as hard and dry as the crusty, wild and arid countryside. Not one spot of growing green could he see when he looked out over the meadows, plains, and hills. Only in the sheltered places between the high boulders and smaller rocks, and in some of the low ravines, could he find wild grasses for the puhlets to eat, and very meager grazing it was.
Sadly, Far-Awn watched his beloved flock crowd and shove against the rocks, seeking more, as if they could move what even the windstorms couldn't budge. In the underground bins at home, most of the grain was gone. What now would the puhlets eat? What now would any of them eat, except the very animals that were his charges?
But somewhere, someplace there had to be food for the puhlets, for all of them. So on and on Far-Awn led his flock. A little was found growing between this rock and that. His puhlets even ate some of the dark, bitter greens which grew under the red rocks. The same grasses which in better times had caused them to turn aside their plush-purple noses in disdain.
The flock consisted of only twenty, including the six that had glowed luminously bluish at birth. Their inner glow had faded shortly afterward, but it seemed to Far-Awn that these six were different in many small ways from the others. He was certain it was more than just imagination that these six were quicker, stronger, more intelligent. What food that was found now was found by them.
As the puhlets grazed on the dark bitter green they disliked, rilling from time to time in discontent, Far-Awn slowly nibbled on the food his mother had packed for him in a small bag. He ate the little sparingly, knowing this was the only food he could be assured of for a long, long time. For he wasn't going home, not tonight, or tomorrow night.
He was running away, taking with him the last remaining flock of puhlets left alive on El Sod-a-Por!
The Setting of the
Second Sun
T he day before his decision to leave, Far-Awn overheard his father explain to his mother the reasons that the puhlets would all have to be killed, all but one male, and two females to perpetuate the line for the future: "People are starving. There is no grain to feed the puhlets. The land doesn't yield wild grasses anymore. The meat is needed. Soon the puhlets would be too thin to be of any use."
"But Baka," his mother had asked, "how can seventeen puhlets feed the hundreds that are starving? After they are eaten, they will demand the last three as well--and what will we do when all puhlets are gone?"
For that monumental question, Baka had no answer, except to say, "The flock is starving anyway. Better kill them while there is still some flesh on their bones. Lee-La, are we to stand by and let our neighbors die, while we have meat?"
Horribly distressed, and quite disbelieving, Far-Awn had peeked from his hidden