Sixth Day of Creation, and his irritation at being reminded of this negligence prompted him to climb into a tree. From this vantage he hurled a fusillade of fruit at the ugly creature lumbering up the wooded draw toward his dwelling.
“The reem endured the Creator’s fit of pique. Eventually he stopped flinging missiles and asked her in an aggrieved tone what she wanted of him. The reem was glad to be asked. She explained her predicament—the shame of her defenselessness—and demanded a boon to offset the handicaps with which he had so pitilessly encumbered her life.
“ ‘Very well,’ said Ngai. ‘Go back down to the plain and practice your running.’
“The reem did so. She discovered that the Creator had given her speed of a kind. In short bursts she could run as fast as the antelope. However, she tired easily, and it struck her that animals with more endurance would still be able to trifle with her, to treat her as meanly as they liked. She returned to Mount Tharaka and bearded Ngai in a garden of fragrant succulents.
“ ‘It is a help,’ she said, ‘but it is not enough.’
“ ‘Not enough?’ the Creator demanded, scandalized. ‘Not enough?’
“ ‘No, Your Godship. And I do not intend to leave until you have made it possible for me to do so without fearing for my safety among the other animals of your creation.’
“Scowling, the arrogant little blue monkey picked a pair of nearby palm leaves, shaped them into funnels, daubed them with silt from his sacred stream, and stuck them into the reem’s open ear holes. What a difference! Full of wonder, the reem listened to the wind, the lyric babbling of the water, and the plangent cries of tiny, cloistered birds. She rotated her ears to catch every quiver and frequency of sound. Her augmented hearing pleased her greatly. Nevertheless, another objection took shape in her mind, and she hurried to intercept Ngai, who was busy climbing to a nest of woven twigs and colobus fur.
“ ‘Wait!’ she cried. ‘Wait! Some of those who torment me are as silent as the stars. The leopard and the dog still have power over me. Please, O Mighty One, have pity on my helplessness.’
“The Creator was so angered that he took his own name in vain, but his exasperation did not alter the fact that the reem had spoken truthfully. Ngai calmed himself down by degrees.
“Night had fallen by this time, and a horned moon floated above Mount Tharaka like a weapon. Seeing it, the Creator gathered so much air into his monkey lungs that the reem was left gasping for breath. He thereupon grew into his primordial incarnation as Big Gorilla Ngai. In this awe-inspiring form he strode to the top of Mount Tharaka and ripped the gleaming moon from the sky.
“This was not easy, however. The moon did not want to come down from the sky and so put up a struggle. Gorilla Ngai nearly had to herniate himself to achieve his goal. When the moon finally came unstuck from the heavens, his anger was such that he snapped the horned moon across his hairy thigh and carried the halves down the mountain in heavy-footed disgust. As he descended Mount Tharaka, he grew smaller and smaller. By the time he reached the astonished reem, he was no bigger than an adult baboon and still shrinking.
“ ‘Here,’ he said peremptorily, and he fixed the halves of the moon to her snout, one behind the other. ‘Now, my impertinent bicorn, I beg you to leave me—so that I may sleep and, sleeping, recover my godly strength.’
“He had dwindled to the size of a tree mouse.
“This display, besides literally taking her breath away, thoroughly impressed and chastened the reem. Indeed, she forgot to petition the Creator for better eyesight. Considering his current disposition, though, that was probably just as well.
“Down the mountainside she galloped, scything her head this way and that. Her heart, like a gemsbok melon, was brimming with sweetness, and the world seemed altogether lovely, one glorious, balmy wallow.
“Alas, several hours from home the reem found herself face to face with the pestilent dog. After circumnavigating her great bulk and gazing scornfully at her snout, he began to snigger.
“ ‘Horny toad will be envious,’ he declared. Then, disdainfully, he trotted past the reem. Once behind her, however, he whirled and nipped at her backside. The reem also whirled, so quickly that the dog was dumfounded. His snout was inches from her warty face.
“