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Miro heard all this, and wanted to speak, wanted to say, What good is all this, now? But he knew that the pequeninos could not be stopped. They were too angry now. They were angry partly because of grief at Quim's death, but also in large part because they were ashamed. Warmaker had shamed them all by breaking their treaty. Humans would never trust the pequeninos again, unless they destroyed Warmaker and his tribe utterly.
The decision was made. Tomorrow morning all the brothers would begin the journey toward Warmaker's forest. They would spend many days gathering, because this had to be an action of all the forests of the world together. When they were ready, with Warmaker's forest utterly surrounded, then they would destroy it so thoroughly that no one would ever guess that there had once been a forest there.
The humans would see it. Their satellites would show them how the pequeninos dealt with treaty-breakers and cowardly murderers. Then the humans would trust the pequeninos again. Then the pequeninos could lift up their heads without shame in the presence of a human.
Gradually Miro realized that they were not just letting him overhear their conversations and deliberations. They were making sure he heard and understood all they were doing. They expect me to take the word back to the city. They expect me to explain to the humans of Lusitania exactly how the pequeninos plan to punish Quim's murderers.
Don't they realize that I'm a stranger here now? Who would listen to me, among the humans of Lusitania--me, a crippled boy out of the past, whose speech is so slow and hard to follow. I have no influence over other humans. I barely have influence over my own body.
Still, it was Miro's duty. He got up slowly, unknotting himself from his place amid Human's roots. He would try. He would go to Bishop Peregrino and tell him what the pequeninos were planning. Bishop Peregrino would spread the word, and then the people could all feel better knowing that thousands of innocent pequenino infants would be killed to make up for the death of one man.
What are pequenino babies, after all? Just worms living in the dark belly of a mothertree. It would never occur to these people that there was scant moral difference between this mass murder of pequenino babies and King Herod's slaughter of the innocents at the time of Jesus' birth. This was justice they were pursuing. What is the complete obliteration of a tribe of pequeninos compared with that?
Grego: standing in the middle of the grassy square, the crowd alert around me, each of them connected to me by a taut invisible wire so that my will is their will, my mouth speaks their words, their hearts beat to my rhythm. I have never felt this before, this kind of life, to be part of a group like this, and not just part of it, but the mind of it, the center, so that my self includes all of them, hundreds of them, my rage is their rage, their hands are my hands, their eyes see only what I show them.
The music of it, the cadence of invocation, answer, invocation, answer:
"The Bishop says that we'll pray for justice, but is that enough for us?"
"No!"
"The pequeninos say that they'll destroy the forest that murdered my brother, but do we believe them?"
"No!"
They complete my phrases; when I have to stop to breathe in, they shout for me, so that my voice is never stilled, but rises out of the throats of five hundred men and women. The Bishop came to me, full of peace and patience. The Mayor came to me with his warnings of police and riot and his hints of prison. Valentine came to me, all icy intellect, speaking of my responsibility. All of them know my power, power I never even knew I had, power that began only when I stopped obeying them and finally spoke what was in my heart to the people themselves. Truth is my power. I stopped deceiving the people and gave them the truth and now see what I've become, what we've become together.
"If anybody punishes the swine for killing Quim, it should be us. A human life should be avenged by human hands! They say that the sentence for the murderers is death--but we're the only ones who have the right to appoint the executioner! We're the ones who have to make sure the sentence is carried out!"
"Yes! Yes!"
"They let my brother die in the agony of the descolada! They watched his body burn from the inside out! Now we'll burn that forest to the ground!"
"Burn them! Fire! Fire!"
See how they strike matches, how they tear up tufts of grass and light them. The flame we'll light together!
"Tomorrow we'll leave on the punitive expedition--"
"Tonight! Tonight! Now!"
"Tomorrow--we can't go tonight--we have to collect water and supplies--"
"Now! Tonight! Burn!"
"I tell you we can't get there in a single night, it's hundreds of kilometers away, it'll take days to get there--"
"The piggies are right over the fence!"
"Not the ones that killed Quim--"
"They're all murdering little bastards!"
"These are the ones that killed Libo, aren't they?"
"They killed Pipo and Libo!"
"They're all murderers!"
