The Beast slept fitfully these days, only a few decades at a time.
It had a pleasant cave, where it wound itself in webs and dirt, licking them together and settling down in the dark, sealed in. The cave was in the walls of the high places, in a cañon above the flat places. The Beast would sleep there for a long time, then wake and go on the heights where the air was thin, looking for others of its kind.
Sometimes it found them, and sometimes it did not. It had to travel farther than it used to, and it felt that the high places were emptier than they used to be. But it continued to go, every time it awoke, and roam a while.
The Beast did not think much, for there wasn’t much to think about, and its mind did not often ponder abstract things. It knew the smells of the cañon and the ancient trees growing there, it felt the minds of the barrel trees on the plains, it knew all the sounds and tastes and sensations, it knew the pattern of the winds, its many sharp eyes could see fine detail in the color of the sky where the quadrillions of singing voices drifted in rivers and streams and fine feathered patterns, taking stale exhalations in and making air that could be breathed.
It could feel the tense magnetism that sprang from the farthest north to the farthest south. It could feel the pattern sink through the metal core of the world. It used these arching spines to guide where its hooves took it, whether to the high lands, or sometimes to the low plains, or to the north ices, or, more rarely, to the south.
Always it came home, made its nest, and slumbered a long, long time in the dark.
There came a time when the Beast woke, and it smelled something different in the wind. It pushed its first two legs from its cocoon, and then its second two, and the last pair, wiped the dirt and age from its face, blinked its many eyes and opened and closed its many mouths, tasting whatever was in the wind. Then it left the cave, and hesitated for hours among the trees.
There were no new sounds, but there was undoubtedly a new scent. It smelled like mud, water, fire, and something else it could not place. The Beast let its fur blow in the breeze, sensing the long vibrations in the sky and through the world’s metal heart, and it felt … things passing over. A few here, a few there, and one much, much larger one, moving like a great shape in the dark. They passed quickly, and it knew they were in the sky, far beyond the Green Sky Singers. The tiny motions, like bits of the world’s metal heart, moved there and there, some in regular motions, others coming from beyond or returning from there. The biggest motion went through the sky in the far south, around the world’s belly, slow and regular, many times a day.
It felt them pass, it smelled the smells, and then the Beast went up, over many days into the Upper Lands, wandering for a long time. The new scents were faint there, but the presence in the sky continued, and the Beast was disturbed. The Upper Lands were empty of its kind, so it made its way toward the setting sun, for it felt that the smells came from that direction. Guiding itself by the force in the world’s heart, still feeling the spar of metal in the sky, it took old paths to the green waters it knew were there.
Coming down to the lower lands, it found the smells strong indeed, and it became cautious, moving only at night, for it found odd things whose origin and purpose it did not know. There were strange sounds as well, like rocks moving on rocks, or hums, or grates, or clicks, and in the air there were tremulous songs like the Green Sky Singers made, but it did not know the words. The Beast asked the barrel trees if they knew these songs, but they had not seen the singers, and so the Beast wandered on.
It finally saw the new singers. They were little creatures, and unlike the Beast they had only four legs, and two of them seldom touched the ground. The Beast had a panoply of eyes, and it did not think at first they had any, then it realized two tiny scores in their upper part must be eyes. And unlike the Beast’s many mouthparts, they had only a tiny narrow hole.
It watched from afar. They moved things, and made pits and filled them, and stacked things up, and it began to understand the mud smell for they needed water everywhere they went, and it understood the other smells as well, because they were made of different things than the Beast, and smelled odd, though not unpleasant. There were many of them, moving back and forth along the shore of the green waters. It had never seen so many moving creatures, not ever in its long life. It watched them for many seasons, and could not count the number of them, but it saw new plants it did not recognize, and coming close to the places the new beings went into at night, it smelled the dirt they made, and it smelled richer than regular dirt, like decay, and like singing life whose voices it did not know. The Beast wondered if things might change in the Lower Land and be different there forever.
In the depths of one dark night, the Beast felt something else cross overhead, and it knew a second huge piece of world’s heart had joined the first in the sky, and the songs in the air that were the voices it did not know sang a great deal now, many new voices, and things like fire descended from the sky, and the Beast decided to go home.
It had been awake for a long while, for some years. Seeing none of its kind, it was time to make its nest again. It sighed a long sigh. There would not be the making of new Beasts, not this time.