The Carpet People

PROLOGUE

They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.

It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other people, and gives them a name like The Other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on.

Not that the Munrungs were in any way primitive. Pismire said they had a rich native cultural inheritance. He meant stories.

Pismire knew all the old stories and many new ones and used to tell them while the whole tribe listened, enthralled, and the nighttime fires crumbled to ashes.

Sometimes it seemed that even the mighty hairs that grew outside the village stockade listened, too. They seemed to crowd in closer.

The oldest story was the shortest. He did not tell it often, but the tribe knew it by heart. It was a story told in many languages, all over the Carpet.

"In the beginning," said Pismire, "there was nothing but endless flatness. Then came the Carpet, which covered the flatness. It was young in those days. There was no dust among the hairs. They were slim and straight, not bent and crusty like they are today. And the Carpet was empty."

"Then came the dust, which fell upon the Carpet, drifting among the hairs, taking root in the deep shadows. More came, tumbling slowly and with silence among the waiting hairs, until the dust was thick in the Carpet."

"From the dust the Carpet wove us all. First came the little crawling creatures that make their dwellings in burrows and high in the hairs. Then came the soraths, and the weft borers, tromps, goats, gromepipers and the snargs."

"Now the Carpet had life and noise. Yes, and death and silence. But there was a thread missing from the weave on the loom of life."

"The Carpet was full of life, but it did not know it was alive. It could be, but it could not think. It did not even know what it was."

"And so from the dust came us, the Carpet People. We gave the Carpet its name, and named the creatures, and the weaving was complete. We were the first to give the Carpet a name. Now it knew about itself."

"Though Fray, who hates life in the Carpet, may tread upon us, though shadows grow over us, we are the soul of the Carpet, and that is a mighty thing. We are the fruit of the loom."

"Of course, this is all metaphorical but I think it's important, don't you?""