Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  A handful of tribesmen noticed her when she neared and met her at the edge of the village. She tried to explain what had happened, but none of them spoke her language well and she spoke not a lick of Ohokwa. She managed to make them understand Hochomi had been hurt, but they seemed to think she was to blame.

  A squat Ohokwa with a ragged scar across his broad face grabbed her shotgun and yanked her down from the wagon. They shouted at her in Ohokwa and stabbed the sky with their bone-handled knives, but all she could do was raise her hands and repeat that she had nothing to do with their brothers’ deaths.

  A young woman with piercing green eyes and a small mole above one of her thick eyebrows strode forward. Her black hair was tied into a tight bun, exposing her broad, handsome face. The moment she started speaking with the scar-faced warrior, the rest fell silent. Kallie heard Hochomi’s name spoken several times; each repetition lent more fury to the woman’s demeanor. The next thing Kallie knew the woman was grabbing a spear and stalking toward Kallie. Kallie threw her hands up in defense as the woman raised the spear high and brought the butt of it down hard.

  It was the last thing she remembered...

  ...before waking to the sound of a rushing river and the screaming pain on the crown of her head. She was trussed up, naked, three hundred feet over the Chedahoa River. Her breath came in heaving gasps. She began coughing horribly and had only enough time to spit and clear her throat before the next wave came. She was nearing the edge of hysteria, but the steady sound of the river coursing through the gorge below proved to be an elixir. She closed her eyes and focused on the sound, willing herself to be calm, and slowly... Slowly... The coughing subsided until she had regained some measure of control.

  She opened her eyes, keeping the sound of the rushing water present. The sun perched directly overhead, the heat of it nearly unbearable. Her hands, bound tight, were reddened and numb. The rope from which she hung was tied to a beam that was secured to a platform built at the very edge of the gorge. Kallie swayed with every stray breeze, and the beam bent with her.

  It was going to snap any moment. She knew it was.

  Kallie stopped looking at the beam before she could start coughing again. A lone Ohokwa warrior stood on the platform, his arms crossed over his bared chest, his eyes cruelly impassive as he regarded her. A crowd of Ohokwa watched a few dozen yards from the platform.

  The woman, the one who’d struck Kallie, must have been related to Hochomi, or perhaps they were husband and wife, or maybe she was the Ohokwa queen Kallie had heard so many stories about. Kallie had found only one man, a failed prospector, who’d ever met the queen, but apparently that mantle changed hands every twenty years or so, whenever a new dejda queen was birthed, so it was possible that the young, fierce woman had been her.

  As a hot breeze enveloped her, Kallie released a sarcastic snort at her own foolishness. The ceremony at which the kayeya would be unveiled was to be held on Spring Equinox, only a handful of days away now. She’d had, not high hopes, but middling that she could come and trade for a small bottle of the tonic. At worst she figured she’d be forced from their lands, no worse for the wear, but this...

  What had happened? The Ohokwa controlled the dejda, partly by their whistles, but it was said with more than that. The whistle was only a way to get their attention, so they’d be ready for what came next. It was the mental bond between the Ohokwa and the dejda that did the rest.

  Kallie had clearly connected with the dejda, just like the Ohokwa, but how? How could she, someone who’d never even seen one of the beetles, do such a thing?

  The crowd began murmuring and pointing as the sound of galloping horses traveled over the desert floor. A dozen horses approached. The two horses at the rear pulled litters, and in them were Hochomi and his fellow warrior. Whether they were alive or dead Kallie couldn’t tell. The Ohokwa woman who’d struck Kallie with the spear rode at the head. She was mounted just like the men, legs spread with only a blanket as padding, and when she neared the platform she slipped off her still-moving horse and bounded up the platform’s steps. She unwound the white folds of cloth from around her head to stare at Kallie unobstructed.

  “Tell me what you do.” Her words came slow and stilted. Her eyes were red, as though she’d been crying.

  “I did nothing.”

  The woman paused, an expression of resolve clear on her face. She held out her hand and barked a command at the warrior next to her. As soon as the warrior had pulled his wicked hunting knife from its sheath and placed the bone handle into her waiting hand, the woman stepped closer and grasped the rope holding Kallie secure.

  “Dear God, no! Stop!”

  “What you do?”

  “I came only to trade! I have much—”

  The woman placed the edge of the knife against the rope.

  “I felt something! Just before them beetles attacked! But I didn’t do anything!”

  “What you feel?”

  “E-everything! The desert around me, clear to the gorge, the heat and the wind, the cactus and the beetles, a few birds. Even the men a might bit.”

  “Then what?”

  “Nilawi!” a voice shouted.

  An older man and woman strode through the parting crowd. The man wore a wide headband made of tiny bones. The woman wore a delicate woolen shawl and an elaborate necklace of dejda casings, which glowed a furious red in the sunlight. They climbed up to the platform, where the man spoke sharply to Nilawi.

  Nilawi stared at him defiantly for long seconds, but then she allowed the knife to clatter to the platform’s wooden planks and strode down the stairs as if she had ordered Kallie’s release. The older man barked several commands to the warrior. A moment later, the warrior, who had never taken his eyes from Kallie, stepped forward and untied the rope securing the beam. Muscles rippling beneath his swarthy skin, he lowered Kallie and hauled her onto the sun-heated wood.

  “I am sorry,” the older woman said. She removed her shawl and draped it over Kallie to hide her nakedness.

  Kallie could do nothing for some time—the pain was too great—but soon she was well enough to stand.

  “I am Wattoha, queen of the Ohokwa, and this is my husband, Iye, an elder of our people. Please, we will take you to shelter.”

  Another Ohokwa who spoke her language fluently, whereas most settlers would be embarrassed to speak Ohokwa.

  With Nilawi forging ahead, the couple led Kallie to a slatted walkway which hugged the inside edge of the gorge. There were a hundred such walkways, two hundred, that zigzagged over the depth and breadth of the gorge. She’d never seen such a thing, and had she not been so frightened earlier she might have recognized the beautiful patterns they created over the frothing river and rust-colored stone.

  They led Kallie down a passageway into the rock. The temperature dropped. In fact, after not too long, she began to shiver. They stopped at a doorway and motioned Kallie to enter.

  “Your clothes are inside. We will wait while you dress.”

  Kallie entered the bare room without further word. In the center, folded horsehair blankets surrounded a squat table, upon which sat a large urn filled with water. Light came from two Ohokwa lanterns, their pink gems glowing softly.

  While Kallie was pulling on her clothes, a coughing fit snuck up on her, but thankfully it didn’t last long. Her fits were funny like that; she thought she’d be able to predict when they might come, but try as she might, they still seemed random.

  Kallie sat on one of the blankets and guzzled two mugs of the blessedly cold water before Nilawi, Wattoha, and Iye entered the room and sat across from her. They had changed into the buckskin she was more accustomed to seeing tribesmen wear. Wattoha had some of the same features as Nilawi—stark green eyes and a noble face—but she wore her hair straight, and it was sprinkled with grey.

  “We are sorry for my daughter,” Wattoha said.

  Iye bristled at these words. He was perhaps fifty, as was Wattoha, and the two sat close. They had the c
alm look of a couple who knew each other intimately, a knowledge that came not from mere years of familiarity, but decades.

  “She is young,” Wattoha continued, “and she thought her man had been murdered.”

  “Your daughter was only protecting her own,” Kallie replied carefully. “I might’ve done the same in her place.”

  Wattoha smiled. “You are being kind.”

  “Begging your pardon, but do the men live?” Kallie kept her gaze fixed on Wattoha. She daren’t meet Nilawi’s eyes. Not now, as angry as she was.

  “Hochomi lives, but the poison has traveled deep.”

  “And the other?”

  “Kime has passed to the fields beyond.” Wattoha raised one hand to Nilawi, forestalling any interjection. “Please, tell us how you came to be here.”

  Kallie did the best she could, telling them how she’d caught the consumption, how her husband had died from it, how she’d saved up enough to travel through tribal lands. They asked her to revisit the attack. The queen seemed unsatisfied with Kallie’s explanation, for her demeanor shifted from polite to intense.

  “You did nothing to provoke them?” Iye asked, cutting off the final bit of Kallie’s tale.

  “How could I?”

  Iye stood up straighter. “You told my daughter you felt the queen’s presence.”

  Kallie nearly recoiled. The reason for Wattoha’s tension was suddenly as clear as spring water. Wattoha would have been bonded years ago to the dejda queen, but unlike other members of the tribe, who could control a handful of beetles, the queen should have been able to feel the attack in the desert, and yet Wattoha had apparently sensed nothing. If she had she would have sent help immediately, and Nilawi and the others wouldn’t have been so confused and angry upon Kallie’s arrival.

  And they wouldn’t have trussed her up like a pig for the blooding.

  “See here,” Kallie said slowly. She glanced at Nilawi and suppressed the queasy feeling in her gut. “I don’t know what happened back there. You’d know better’n me... Maybe the queen didn’t like me, maybe she wanted to know more about settlers by digging in my mind, maybe she was just curious, but I can tell you I didn’t do anything to rile her up. Wouldn’t know how to. What happened out there must have been her doing, or maybe them beetles went rogue. All I know is I came in peace to trade for a flaskful of kayeya.”

  Before anyone could reply, the blanket over the doorway was swatted aside, and an old crone hobbled into the room.

  Iye rolled his eyes and stood. “Not now, Earth Mother. Please, leave us in peace.” He walked to her side and motioned to the doorway, but stopped short of actually touching her.

  The old woman ignored him and surveyed the room. She wore a tattered horsehair shawl over her shoulders. Her mouth smacked repeatedly, and her face seemed locked in a permanent scowl as if she had a horrible case of the cankers. Kallie shivered as a beetle crawled up to the woman’s shoulder and sat there, studying Kallie. Another dejda crawled up her leg and rattled. These beetles were smaller—the length of Kallie’s pinky—and their proportions were different than the warriors she’d seen in the desert.

  The old woman’s eyes opened so wide that Kallie thought for sure they would pop out. “Taking council without Paheka?”

  “It’s not council—” Iye began.

  “Bah!” Paheka smacked her lips and swatted Iye’s hands away. “You here conspiring.” She said this as she looked at Kallie, and it seemed directed at her instead of the group as a whole.

  The others turned to Kallie, apparently giving the old crone’s words some amount of weight.

  “I... I ain’t conspiring.”

  Paheka hobbled over to Kallie, her lips smacking loudly, and kneeled. She stared into Kallie’s eyes. The beetle on her shoulder seemed to do the same. “Conspiring? No, not yet. But she will, hmm? She will.”

  Iye shook his head, as if he’d hoped for something better. “Leave us in peace, Bone Mother. This doesn’t concern you.”

  Paheka stared at Iye with hard eyes and a mischievous grin. “Doesn’t concern me?”

  She cackled and left the room, leaving a cold silence in her wake.

  The second time I woke, I found fear in one, anger in another.

  Strange how closely the two are entwined.

  It became clear that Kallie would remain a prisoner until the Ohokwa were satisfied she posed no harm. She was confined to a small room deep within the warrens of the gorge, and several times each day, Wattoha would come with the village elders to question Kallie. They asked her about the reasons for Kallie’s journey, the battle in the desert, the things Kallie had felt. The elders clearly thought Kallie had purposefully done something—that she’d been sent by the settlers, perhaps, to infect their queen—but Wattoha thought otherwise and would quell the accusations after too long.

  On the second day, they spent a lot of time questioning Kallie about whether she’d done something to Nilawi. They brought all the liquids Kallie had brought to trade, her water supply, even the jars of strawberry preserves, and demanded to know what each of them was. Kallie could only wonder what had happened to Nilawi to make them ask such things. Perhaps she had become the latest victim of the beetles, and the elders suspected Kallie had had something to do with it.

  Kallie tried to ask questions of her own about Hochomi and why he might have been attacked, about kayeya, about when Kallie would be allowed to leave, but Wattoha, though not unkind, refused to answer a single question, and the more she remained steadfast in her refusal to give information the more Kallie suspected that they would simply kill her once they’d run out of questions.

  Several more days passed, and Spring Equinox approached. Kallie was allowed out twice per day, but only down to the river and always accompanied by a warrior. She was given food, though it was so spicy and foreign that Kallie could hardly eat it, and more often than not she heaved up some of the meal afterward. At least the water was drinkable, though the Ohokwa were not generous in this respect either. Once, just before falling asleep on the third day, Kallie experienced feelings of vertigo and a severe ringing in her ears, but as quickly as it had come it was gone, and she wrote it off to lack of a proper meal for nearly a week.

  The following morning Kallie traveled down to the river, hoping to clear her mind. She stood on the solid rock of the bank watching the churning water ten feet below when she realized she was being watched.

  Kallie had convinced herself that Nilawi had been attacked by the dejda, but here she stood, unharmed, at the head of the bridge. Nilawi shouted over Kallie to the warrior, who quickly bowed his head and left.

  Kallie tried to control her breathing. Clearly something terrible had happened. She hadn’t seen Nilawi since the day she’d arrived in the gorge, and now Nilawi had found her, far from Wattoha’s protection.

  It must be Hochomi, Kallie thought. He must have died, and now she’s come to murder me.

  The horror of hanging suspended over the river flashed through Kallie’s mind, and she coughed, once, the sound pathetic against the powerful backdrop of the Chedahoa. Kallie wanted to run, but she stifled the urge. If Nilawi had wanted her dead, she would have simply ordered the warrior to dump her into the river.

  “Come,” Nilawi said.

  The temperature plummeted as she led Kallie into a tunnel and down to the lowermost section of the Ohokwa village. The rock around them grew damp from time to time, and a deep sound Kallie thought was only the weight of the powerful river running its course soon proved itself to be the drone of the dejda, deeper and further ahead. The sound became clearer; she felt it resonate deep within her chest.

  They passed many tall doorways, several of which had warriors stationed at them. The hallway transitioned to a more natural tunnel, and the drone sound increased noticeably. Soon they reached an irregular room populated by a hewn altar and dozens of glowing crystals. Below the altar lay a man on a canvas cot. An old woman with a hump back leaned over him, carefully pouring liquid down his mou
th. It must be kayeya, Kallie thought. She wondered if there was more of it that she might smuggle away.

  When the old woman backed into a corner, Kallie started. The man’s face and neck were so swollen that she thought surely his skin would pop if it were touched with a pin. His eyes were so puffy that she doubted he could have opened them even if he could regain consciousness. Dozens of welts from the dejda stings were still red and angry. Even his fingers were little more than a collection of overstuffed sausages. That Hochomi still lived was a miracle in itself, but looking on him, Kallie wondered if it might not be more merciful to simply let him pass.

  Nilawi moved to Hochomi’s side. She smoothed his hair down and ran the back of her fingers along his cheek.

  Time passed in silence, and Kallie felt the awkwardness build. Why had Nilawi brought her here? Surely not just to look upon her man.

  “You have love?” Her words were soft and tender.

  “Once,” said Kallie, “yes.” She was surprised that such a simple and unexpected question brought memories of Becker springing from the recesses of her mind—the twinkle in his eye when he joked, the way spit flew from his mouth when he was riled, the way he’d pinch her backside at least twice a day—but she hesitated to tell Nilawi any of this, for it felt to Kallie like she was teetering on the edge of some momentous decision. “He’s been gone a while now, nearly four year.”

  “Hochomi gone almost. Maybe dead when sun rise.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Nilawi turned and regarded Kallie. Her hand motioned to Hochomi. “I think Hochomi make you bridge with dejda... You feel? Same as before?”

  Kallie shook her head, confused.

  “In desert,” Nilawi said, “when you come.”

  “You mean the way my mind was, before the attack?” Kallie felt nothing, but even if she had, she would have lied. “I’m sorry. I don’t feel a thing.”