Bone Talk

by Candy Gourlay

  In loving memory of Dad

  Orlando L. Quimpo

  And also (with no disrespect to Dad) remembering my beloved Chuka.

  Good dog.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One: How to Be a Boy

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part Two: How to Know Nothing

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Part Three: How to Be a Man

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  A Note from the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Candy Gourlay

  Copyright

  Bontok, 1899

  Part One

  How to Be a Boy

  1

  Little Luki and I were tossing pebbles into the eye socket of a water buffalo skull when Father came to fetch me.

  He didn’t scold or shoo us away. He just looked at me with an odd crumple in his mouth that was almost a smile.

  ‘Samkad, the ancients want you,’ he murmured.

  Then he swung around and began marching back to the House for Men, so briskly that the axe at his waist slapped a little rhythm on his bare thigh.

  ‘Do I have to?’ I complained – although, of course, I didn’t say it loud enough for Father to hear.

  Little Luki spun gracefully on one toe and flicked another pebble at the skull fixed up high on the blackened tree fern that marked the entrance to our village. Her pebble rattled noisily inside the skull before dropping out of its long bony snout.

  ‘Yah!’ Little Luki cried. ‘I win!’

  ‘No you don’t!’ I snapped.

  ‘You can’t win if you’re leaving!’ she retorted. Under its great curling horns, the skull stared at me with sad, empty eyes.

  ‘Samkad!’ Father called from several houses up the path.

  ‘Heh!’ Luki tossed another pebble, expertly kneeling on one scabby knee at just the right moment to catch it as it shot out of the snout. ‘Old Dugas probably needs someone to scratch the soles of his feet so he can sleep. Or maybe Salluyud needs you to pick up the dog droppings in the courtyard!’

  I lunged and Luki dodged, but not before I managed to grab her arm and wrestle her down into the dirt, giggling hysterically.

  But then she pushed me away, her face suddenly serious. ‘Wait, Samkad! What if it’s about the snake?’

  I sat back on my heels. I had not thought of that.

  The day before, Luki and I had found a dead snake between the toes of an old banyan tree. Who could resist? We tied the snake to the end of a string and lay it across the path to the rice valley, carefully covering it with leaves before hiding out of sight behind a large boulder.

  Soon enough, along came one of the ancients: Old Pito, whose hair remained long and black despite his wizened little face.

  Luki let out a loud hissssssss and I tugged the string so that the snake gave a realistic wiggle as it slid across Old Pito’s toes.

  Pito’s long hair puffed up into a wild tangle as he screamed. His lined forehead screwed into such a twist I thought it would splinter into many pieces. Everyone knows a snake crossing one’s path is a warning from Lumawig that evil is about to happen.

  ‘Ah! Ah! Ah!’ he cried, whirling about and tottering back to the House for Men. We followed him into the courtyard, struggling to keep our faces serious and straight as we watched Pito and the other ancients pray loudly to our ancestors for help.

  I stared at Luki. ‘Do you think they found out?’ I whispered, thinking of all the horrible punishments the ancients could order upon my head.

  ‘Sam!’ Father roared from up the path. ‘The old ones are waiting!’

  Chickens and dogs scattered as Father strode across the courtyard to the meeting circle where the ancients sat on their heels, each leaning his back against his own stone slab. All four old men were there: Salluyud, Dugas, Pito, Blind Maklan – who stared at me intently with his sightless white eyes bulging between his lids like boiled eggs.

  In the rafters above their heads, the skulls of our enemies sneered as if they knew I was in trouble. My belly was aching so hard now that I was bent in the middle. I could already feel a stinging in one palm, as if someone had given it a good hard smack.

  ‘You called me, old ones?’ I croaked, forcing my lips to show my teeth.

  ‘Young Samkad,’ began Salluyud in a high querulous voice, as if he was about to begin a long chant. ‘How many harvests has it been since you were born?’

  ‘Uh …’ I looked at Father.

  ‘It has been ten harvests since he was born, old one,’ Father said. I peered at him more closely. He looked peculiar; his lips were wobbling like worms.

  ‘Are you all right, Father?’

  ‘Of course I’m all right,’ he replied. Wobble.

  ‘Samkad,’ Salluyud said. ‘It is time.’

  Time? Time to punish me for being naughty? I stared hard at my feet as if a grain of rice had suddenly sprouted between my toes.

  ‘Son,’ I heard Father say. ‘I congratulate you.’

  My head snapped up.

  All the ancients were grinning so widely, I could see the gums at the backs of their jaws.

  ‘Young Samkad,’ Salluyud declared. ‘The time has come for you to become a man!’

  From somewhere behind me, I heard Little Luki gasp aloud.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but no sound came out. I shook my head, which suddenly felt like it was full of air.

  ‘Samkad.’ It was Dugas speaking now. ‘Are you ready to become a man?’

  Pito glared at me solemnly. ‘And are you ready for the Cut?’

  The Cut. I swallowed.

  ‘Don’t be afraid.’ I felt Father’s elbow nudge me gently on the shoulder.

  ‘Why should I be afraid?’ I tried to sound scornful, but then my belly groaned so loudly it startled a small bird nearby into flight.

  ‘The Cut will hurt,’ Father said. ‘But only for a day or two. Don’t worry, Salluyud will give you chew leaves to relieve the pain.’

  When, years ago, my friend Tambul was given the Cut, we could all hear him howling so that Father had to go behind the House for Men and hold him down. When Tambul waddled out at last with his legs wide apart, I had called: ‘What’s it like, Tambul? What’s it like to get the Cut?’

  Tambul didn’t answer, making his way to the House for Men where he hid for the rest of the day, as well as the day after that. And the day after that.

  Now you are ready to become a man, Sam, I told myself. And if you’re ready to become a man, you are ready to have the Cut.

  ‘I am ready,’ I said aloud, squaring my shoulders and puffing out my chest. ‘Lumawig be praised.’

  ‘Lumawig be praised,’ Salluyud replied. ‘That is good! Tomorrow morning, you a
nd your father will offer a chicken at the Tree of Bones. When you return, I shall take my bamboo knife and—’ He clenched his bony fist and gave it a quick flick as if he had the knife in his hand.

  I flinched. But I was dying to turn around and look at the expression on Luki’s face. How many times had Luki said the ancients would not be calling me to become a man soon? She was so wrong! But I had to force myself to stand still and thank the ancients leaning towards me, their old bones snapping like dried twigs, and say, yes, I am ready for the honour and thank you, thank you, thank you a thousand times.

  When the ancients turned away at last to mutter about some other thing, I spun round. Luki was scowling so hard her face looked like a wrinkled old mango.

  She began to scold. ‘What were the ancients thinking? You’re too young! You’re too short to carry a shield. You’re smaller even than a wild boar – how are you supposed to spear one? And look at your arms! They’re like twigs. How are you going to chop off the heads of our blood enemy, the Mangili?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. I will grow. I am growing right now,’ I said. ‘And once I’m a man, I will grow faster and become stronger. I’m already stronger than you.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘Yes I am.’

  ‘And you will be allowed to marry. What woman will have you?’

  ‘I will become more handsome, like Tambul,’ I said.

  Luki’s sceptical eyes roamed my face as if she was making a survey of all my unattractive qualities. My cheeks warmed.

  ‘Even if I don’t become handsome, someone will want me eventually,’ I continued. ‘Look at all the husbands in the village. Bagta has smelly armpits. Pulo is half the size of his wife. Ginubo is triple the width of his! And none of them are much to look at.’

  ‘Hah!’ Luki’s nose curled into a little knot. ‘Bet you’re going to squeal like a baby when you get the Cut.’

  ‘You’re just jealous.’ Fury was swelling up inside me now, filling my belly and puffing out of my nostrils. ‘Because you’re never going to be a warrior. You will always be a girl!’

  Luki’s mango face twisted hard and her fist connected painfully with my shoulder.

  As we wrestled in the dirt, I thought regretfully that this was the very last time I could allow myself to enjoy a good brawl with Luki. Tomorrow I was going to become a man … and no self-respecting man in Bontok would fight a girl – even a girl like Little Luki.

  2

  The next morning I snapped awake before the roosters had even begun to crow. I stared up into the thatch, feeling the tiny imprints of Luki’s knuckles on my body from yesterday.

  Father was standing over me, as if he’d been waiting by the side of my bed all night. In his hands was a bunch of enormous boar tusks.

  I opened my throat to speak, my voice coming out in a croak. ‘Are those for—’

  ‘They’re for you,’ he said, holding up an arm band made of the long, hooked tusks of wild boar. It shone in the quivering light of the fire in the room next door. Father smiled at me so fondly I almost looked away. ‘Heh, you’re so skinny you might as well wear it around your waist.’

  He was right. The band was made for an arm far more muscly than mine. I helped Father put it on. It promptly slipped down to my elbow and, to my shame, Father had to secure it to my stick arm with a piece of string.

  When I was small, I had thought that on the day of the Cut, I would suddenly grow tall like a giant bamboo, my voice would deepen and my jaw would prickle with stubble, hair sprouting out of nostrils and armpits – just like my friend Tambul, who had changed quickly after he got the Cut. One moment he was bony and small. The next, he was tall as a banana tree with feet, big as crocodiles.

  Father made me take off the rough dirt-coloured breechcloth made of tree bark I had worn since I was little and handed me a red one made out of cotton. I buried my face in it.

  ‘You’re supposed to wear it between your legs, boy!’ Father laughed. ‘I swapped it with a trader I met in the next village. He’d just returned from the lowlands with a basket full of cotton.’

  ‘What did you swap for it?’ I asked as Father helped me put it on.

  ‘Salt,’ Father said, tossing my old one into the kitchen fire.

  Salt! The thought of Father squandering precious salt on me filled me with guilt.

  ‘Come on, Sam,’ Father said. ‘Let us get to the Tree of Bones before the sun wakes up.’

  The boar-tooth armband jangled noisily on my arm as I followed Father out of the hut’s low wooden door. Father didn’t linger, marching quickly down the narrow stone lane that meandered between our neighbours’ houses. He grabbed one of the chickens by the House for Men and tucked it under his armpit. It glared at me angrily.

  Don’t look at me like that, chicken, I thought. Soon you’ll be enjoying a new life in the world of the spirits.

  The morning mist was thick around the sleeping village, the tall conical thatched roofs of our huts poking out of the swirling white like so many floating mountains. Our little village was draped like a cat over the mountain’s knee. To the east lay deep, sloping valleys that our long-ago ancestors chopped into giant steps for growing rice. To the west, the trail plunged deep into a mossy forest, in the heart of which stood the Tree of Bones.

  Father turned to look at me. There was enough light now in the dim, misty swirl to see him clearly. I could see the bright red beak of the hornbill skull fixed above his brow, the tall rooster feathers arching at the back of his head, the axe hanging from his waist. The tattoos all over his torso gleamed in the muted light. Lizards writhed on both shoulders. A caterpillar undulated across his breast. Snake scales were etched on his belly. Around his neck, he wore a necklace made of crocodile teeth.

  He looked dangerous and amazing.

  We walked down, down, down to the mossy forest. As we marched into its deep shadow, the scents of the wood – of pine, of night beasts, of blossoming flowers – seemed to sharpen even as visibility waned. I could see nothing now. Where were all the trees? Where were the boulders that flanked the trail? I spread my toes like a monkey and flattened the souls of my feet, feeling my way via the prickle of stone and the soft squelch of mud.

  Father spoke suddenly, making me jump. ‘Don’t worry – the sun will awaken soon.’ It sounded like he was talking right into my ear, even though he was several lengths ahead of me.

  The kindness in Father’s voice filled me with guilt. Yesterday, I had come to the ancients fearing that they would punish me for my prank on Old Pito. And now here I was, accepting the greatest honour a boy was entitled to receive.

  ‘Father,’ I said softly. ‘I have to tell you something.’

  And I told him how we had laid the dead snake out, how we had made it wriggle in front of Pito, how Luki had made a loud hissing noise and how the ancient had turned right round and hobbled straight back to the House for Men to pray.

  When I’d finished, Father was silent.

  ‘Pito believed that it was Lumawig who sent him the snake, but it was only us,’ I whispered. ‘I am sorry, Father.’

  Father’s shadow began to shudder. ‘Father, are you all right?’ I cried out, alarmed.

  And then I realized that he was chuckling.

  And then he was laughing out loud, so hard he began to gasp, unable to draw a breath between each chortle. The chicken squawked and clucked.

  ‘Did you really do that?’ he laughed. ‘You and that Little Luki are impossible! Come here, son.’

  In the darkness his strong, hard arm wrapped around my shoulder, pulling me close. The chicken’s feathers scratched against my chest.

  ‘The snake was dead when you found it. Its spirit was already gone. You did it no harm,’ Father whispered softly. ‘And the ancients? They would have been praying to the spirits anyway. As for Lumawig … Lumawig created the earth. He gives us day and night, heat and cold, rain and drought. Why would such a powerful ancestor become upset over such a little prank?’

 
I wanted to throw my arms around Father’s neck like a baby. Instead I straightened my back and squared my shoulders. Father ruffled my hair.

  ‘Let’s keep moving,’ he said. ‘Heh, look, Lumawig has roused the sun at last. It’s beginning to get light.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ I murmured, tripping over a tree root.

  Father was right, though. The sun had begun to edge up the mountain behind us, outlining everything in a warm yellow halo. The dark greys of the forest below us turned a vivid green.

  My stomach began to ache. It was not the kind of ache you got from belly gas, but from waiting for something momentous to happen. Soon, I too was going to be carrying a spear, an axe and a shield! Soon, I too would have tattoos carved on my body!

  We walked into the trees and immediately a deep silence wrapped itself around us. The steady trill of the crickets, the fumblings of creatures in the bushes, the whisper of the breeze, the rustle of leaves – all sound soaked up by the moss that oozed over everything, coating every stone and trickling from the forest canopy in long green beards.

  Shining shafts of sunlight were spearing through the leaves now so that pine needles glowed red in the dirt and towering ferns burned yellow. Moss and vine dripped in hot, glowing tangles. Everything was on fire.

  A small black dog uncurled from behind a bush.

  ‘Away!’ Father cried, waving the chicken by its feet. ‘Away!’

  But the dog remained where she was, gazing beyond Father at me, dark eyes shimmering.

  ‘Pah!’ Father stepped around her, beckoning me to hurry.

  I followed Father and the dog followed me.

  ‘Away!’ I called, even though I liked the way her hot panting breath warmed the backs of my legs.

  A breeze blew and suddenly there was a faint tinkling.

  Father smiled. ‘Hear our ancestors calling to you! They are saying: Welcome, Samkad.’

  He waved me on and together we walked into a clearing. Waiting in the middle was the Tree of Bones.

  It was a crooked monster of a tree, shaggy with moss, its back a mass of knots and scars, with a waist wide enough to hide ten men. Some branches were thick enough to be trees themselves, sinking down to the earth under their own weight, pulling at the tree so that its spine was in a permanent curve and it hunched over the ground as if it was trying to touch its toes. You could climb up on one of those dragging, fat branches and walk from the bottom of the tree to its tangled crown the way you could walk up a mountain.