‘Have a care for my feelings,’ the reem admonished him. ‘If you do not, I will be forced to deal harshly with you.’
“This warning, from such a notorious weakling and blunderer, infuriated the dog. Determined to put her in her place, he leapt for her throat. He did not come down alive. The reem impaled him on both her horns, shook him loose, and kicked him into a gully like a pancake pile of steaming dung. So much for the dog.
“Upon learning of his death, the other animals fell into a lengthy round of debate and recrimination. How had the reem become so powerful? All were outraged that the butt of their merciless merrymaking had suddenly acquired strengths comparable to, or greater than, their own. Who could be behind this heinous betrayal? Why, only the Creator, of course, and he must be made to pay.
“ ‘We must annihilate Ngai,’ the tusk-bearer told the behemoth and the other animals. ‘We must kill the Creator.’
“Soon everyone on the plain had taken up the cry ‘Kill the Creator!’ And so aroused, they shambled off in unruly ranks toward his dwelling on the mountain.
“The reem, alerted to their intentions by their cry, hurried to warn her unsuspecting benefactor of the mischief afoot. In his dwelling on the slope the reem found Ngai febrile and shrunken, no bigger than a dung beetle. Quickly apprised of his subjects’ intentions, he begged the reem to take him aboard (he would sit between her horns) and give him passage to the safety of an uninhabited southern desert. The reem readily acceded to this request.
“When the tusk-bearer, the behemoth, and the others found the gardens on Mount Tharaka bereft of Ngai and saw the dust clouds billowing from the southern plains, they deduced that the reem was assisting the fugitive. Still, a vigorous pursuit would accomplish their capture, for she had insufficient stamina to maintain her pace and the Creator himself could hardly be at his best if he had chosen this unorthodox method of escape.
“Indeed, the reem soon began to tire. She halted in the broad vacancy of the savannah to recover her wind. Instead she lost a little—for at that moment she felt the necessity of relieving herself and let fall several droppings. Almost at once a coprid beetle that had been sleeping nearby awakened and scurried over to make use of this unexpected windfall.
“ ‘Hurry,’ the Creator squeaked, peering over the reem’s brow at their pursuers. ‘They’re nearly upon us.’
“ ‘Yes, oh yes,’ the reem acknowledged, holding back tears. ‘And the next time I stop they will certainly overtake us. Even though I am willing to die with you, Ngai, I would far rather die for you—but I’m exhausted, almost at my limit, and whatever befalls us, befalls us.’ She tactfully did not mention that Ngai might have solved this problem by granting her stamina along with his other tardy favors, but she was sensible of the irony of their plight.
“The dung beetle, who was not blessed with a sense of the ironic, had overheard this exchange between Ngai and the reem. He forsook the reem’s droppings to circle the beast and address her from a point just below her drooping snout.
“ ‘I love the Creator well,’ he piped, ‘for he has provided for me abundantly. The world is full of manure. Tell the Sacred One to come down from your horns. I will then enclose him in a concealing brood ball.’
“ ‘A brood ball?’ exclaimed Ngai and the reem together.
“ ‘At your service, O Mighty One,’ replied the coprid. ‘By this expedient the reem may run ahead as decoy while you husband your strength and purchase enough time to reestablish your rightful rule.’
“The Creator, won over by the beetle’s sincerity, agreed. It was not pleasant being plastered up inside a dung ball, but it was preferable to being murdered.
“The reem, meanwhile, trotted off to the south, drawing the Creator’s enemies after. When next she stopped, they surrounded her—rather warily, she noted—and vilified her as both a traitor and a trollop. Surely, they implied, she had done beastly things to entice Ngai to bestow such lethal armament upon her. Where was he, anyway?
“ ‘I have no idea why he equipped me with these horrors,’ the reem asserted, craftily scything her snout this way and that. ‘I asked him only for the birthright withheld from me on the Sixth Day of Creation—better eyesight or more gracefully turned ankles. After killing the dog with these horns—accidentally, you understand—I