Bone Talk

by Candy Gourlay

  ‘Perhaps something fell on her,’ Father said.

  ‘Perhaps.’ My voice was squeaky with guilt. I glanced at Luki again and my lies caught in my throat.

  She was standing, the bushy baby, now lying in the ferns at her feet. Her face was rigid with horror, her fists clenched.

  ‘Luki …’ I stammered. ‘I … I …’

  She pointed. ‘Monster!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘MONSTER!’

  And I realized she wasn’t pointing at me but at something in the wood, behind me. Something so huge its head was caught in the matted foliage of the trees, wringing water from the wet beards of moss and vines that throttled every branch. It was a giant, looming taller and taller as it struggled towards us, bending to avoid the grabbing trees. It was clothed in the same strange style of clothing as Kinyo, with a large hat made of straw on its head. As it lumbered forward a gust of wind blew the hat off to reveal a face that was the sickly white of buffalo milk. Instead of hair, the top of its head prickled all over with dirty yellow hog bristles, as did its chin and the top of its lip. Over its eyes hung eyebrows like a bird’s nest, yellow, thick and tangled. Its nose was MASSIVE, speckled with orange spots, like the blemishes on overripe fruit. It had no lips. And its eyes! They were eerie, alien things: bright and blue like the sky.

  ‘Down, dog, down!’ Kinyo plucked Chuka off the giant’s leg. Then he turned to us, gesturing at the creature proudly.

  ‘Meet my friend, Mister William,’ he said. ‘Mister William is an American. Shake his hand, Samkad!’

  16

  Mister William’s enormous hand reached for mine.

  ‘NO!’ Suddenly Luki was between us, one shoulder dropped, head bent. She rammed into the American’s knees like a little goat. The giant toppled over into the dirt, sending up a cloud of pine needles. Without a pause, Luki leaped on top of him, one knee on the vast chest, the other pressing into its pink throat, making its eyes bulge. The American made strangled noises as it tried to move her knee away, but she only pushed harder.

  ‘He’s not a monster!’ Kinyo cried, grabbing Luki’s arm. ‘He’s my friend.’

  ‘LUKI! Stop it!’ Father peeled Luki off Mister William as if he was removing a blood-sucking tick from a dog. He tossed her aside and bent to help the creature to its feet.

  But Luki charged again, shouting, ‘Monster! Monster!’

  Father snatched Luki away. Her feet kicked in the air as he lifted her high.

  The American coughed, clutching its neck, as it sat up. Under the bird’s nest eyebrows, its blue eyes flicked from Luki to Kinyo. Its lipless mouth opened and it made a creaking noise.

  Father pinned Luki’s arms behind her back. She scowled, showing her teeth, tendons standing out in her neck and shoulders as she strained against Father.

  ‘Little Luki,’ Father soothed. ‘The American is a man, not a monster. This is no way to welcome an honoured guest.’

  An honoured guest? I thought, staring at the creature as it slowly rose to its feet. It looked nothing like any man I’d ever seen.

  ‘What ignorant people you are! Of course he is a man!’ Kinyo ran to Mister William and grabbed his arm. ‘He’s just tall. All Americans are tall.’

  ‘All Americans are tall?’ Luki stared up at the American. ‘You mean, there are more of them?’ The thought of there being more than one made me feel sick.

  But Father smiled. ‘He is just from somewhere else. He is called American after the place where he came from, America.’

  ‘Where is that place?’ Luki demanded. ‘Where is America?’

  Kinyo tugged on Mister William’s arm. He opened his mouth and a stream of words I could not understand poured out. The American laughed. He understood! Kinyo could speak his words!

  But now Mister William was looking at me, the corners of his mouth twitching in a faint smile. He pulled something out of a pocket at his hip and held it out to me.

  I backed away.

  ‘Take it! Take it!’ Kinyo cried.

  Reluctantly, I held my hand out, wincing a little as the American dropped something in my hand.

  It was red. And sticky. And when I closed my fist over it, it felt like a small lump of clay from the bottom of the river.

  ‘It’s called a gumdrop!’ Kinyo chortled. ‘Taste it.’

  The American’s mouth was suddenly full of teeth. It took me a heartbeat to realize that the creature was smiling.

  ‘Put it in your mouth!’ Kinyo called.

  Father and Agkus were smiling, and Kinyo was waving his hands about and Luki was watching to see what I would do. I popped it into my mouth. Almost immediately, its flavour began to burn into my tongue. It was sweet – but not the sweetness of fruit or of sugar cane. It was an intense sweetness that coated my teeth and my tongue. It was a sweetness so shocking I spat it into the bushes.

  Kinyo looked disappointed. ‘You’re supposed to chew it.’

  The American’s great hand reached down and I recoiled. But he was only laying it on the top of my head. It was warm and strangely comforting. The sky-eyes blinked and he nodded at me, as if saying: no matter, everything is fine.

  Father laughed, releasing Luki’s arms at last and ruffling her hair.

  ‘It’s all right, children,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I’m just glad to be home.’ He turned to collect the bundle that Agkus had thrown on the floor. Kinyo’s aunt was on her knees now, crooning over the bushy baby, Baby Baba still in her arms.

  Luki edged close to me, thrusting her elbow hard into my side.

  ‘Ow!’ I grunted, not daring to protest too loudly and attract Father’s attention. ‘Stop that.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ she whispered. ‘Aren’t you going to tell him about the Mangili?’

  Kinyo leaned towards us.

  I made my voice as small as I could. ‘No. Not yet. Later maybe.’

  ‘We should tell.’ Luki glared at me fiercely. Kinyo was leaning out so much he was practically lying on the ground.

  ‘Later!’ I said again.

  ‘Tell what?’ Kinyo called.

  Luki made a face at me. She turned to Kinyo. ‘Who is he?’ She nodded towards the American, who was watching us quietly.

  But it was Father who replied. ‘Mister William is our friend. He saved me from harm and—’ Father touched the bandage on his side – ‘he cared for me when I was injured. We asked him to come with us.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kinyo broke in. ‘He had nowhere to go after our village burned down.’

  I stared at Kinyo. ‘Your village burned down?’

  Father opened his mouth to say something but Kinyo just talked over him. ‘Oh, we were going to leave anyway. My aunt thought it would be safer to stay in the mountains until the war is over.’

  ‘The war?’ Luki and I said at the same time. ‘What war?’

  17

  The lowlands had always been a distant place to me. Who would want to go where there were no mountains? Not me. My life belonged here, in the highlands, here where our ancestors lived, here with my village, with my people. Anywhere else belonged to strangers that I didn’t care to know.

  But now? Curiosity burned in my belly. What had happened to Father? There was a weariness sloping his shoulders even as he insisted on hoisting Agkus’s bundle up onto his head. His eyes seemed to flick everywhere, as if he was searching for hidden things behind every tree.

  ‘What does Kinyo mean about the lowlanders being at war?’ I asked as he led us along the edge of the mossy forest, following the line of the mountain. Chuka raced ahead. Luki plodded behind me with the bushy baby on her hip. I had reached for Baba but Kinyo’s aunt was too enchanted by him and would not hand him back to me. Kinyo followed at her heels and the American trailed behind.

  Father’s feet slowed. ‘They have been invaded by strangers who want the lowlands for their own.’

  ‘Who are the invaders?’ Luki had caught up with us. Her mango face peered at Father from behind the bushy baby’s head. ‘Who bu
rned down Kinyo’s village?’

  Father glanced over his shoulder at Kinyo and Mister William.

  ‘Why do you hesitate, Father?’ I said.

  ‘Samkad, I want you to understand that I owe Mister William my life …’

  ‘What does that have to do with the burning of the village, Father?’ I said, perplexed.

  Father adjusted the bundle on his head.

  Luki and I exchanged glances. Why was Father so reluctant to tell us?

  At last, he allowed his gaze to meet ours.

  ‘Americans,’ he said. ‘The village was burned down by Americans.’

  It was so confusing.

  How was it that we were walking amiably along with Mister William when his people were the very invaders that Kinyo and his aunt were fleeing? Why was Kinyo beaming up at Mister William like he was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened?

  ‘He is our friend.’ A quiet voice spoke up behind us. Agkus had been listening all along. ‘He was our friend long before the invasion.’

  Mister William had come to live in the village when Kinyo was just a toddler. Mister William had taken a liking to the boy, and perhaps he felt a little bit sorry for them too, because the lowlanders, just as the ancients had predicted, looked down on the woman and the boy from the mountains, and did not trouble to show them any kindness. The American was always kind to them, and over time taught Kinyo how to speak his tongue.

  When Agkus’s husband died, his family threw them out of their own hut, and Mister William took them in. When the Americans came and burned down the houses, their neighbours fled with no thought to warn them.

  It was Mister William who came to get Agkus and Kinyo, who found a place for them to hide until the danger was past, who foraged for provisions and kept them safe.

  No, Mister William was not an invader. He was a friend. Even if he was definitely an American.

  When Father had set off to find Kinyo, I had imagined the journey would be fraught with axe-wielding Mangili waiting for a chance to take Father’s head or vicious wild boar or unexpected cliffs to plummet from. But Father met no Mangili, and his journey was uneventful, even though it was long. It seemed to him the mountains would never dwindle, but then he climbed a final rise and at last saw vast stretches of flatter land spreading to the horizon. The lowlands.

  There was a broad river at the foot of the final mountain and it was on its stony shore that Father built a fire to thank the ancestors for his safe passage. He crossed the river easily, the current just a trickle and the sun warm on his back. But when he climbed up onto the opposite bank, a strange unease came over him. He felt a vague chill, as if some of the cold river water had seeped into his veins.

  The sun was beating down and Father was soon dry, even though a chill stayed inside him as he walked yet another day towards Kinyo’s village.

  The first sign that there was something wrong was long black threads of smoke curling lazily up into the sky. The second sign was a circle of large birds gliding in and out of the smoke. Carrion birds.

  Father approached the village with every sense tingling, his spear at the ready, his eyes looking everywhere.

  The village he had visited all those years ago had been a cluster of bamboo huts along a dirt road, each with a neat bamboo fence and a small garden of vegetables and fruit trees, with little shacks to keep chickens and livestock. The huts were surrounded by huge rice paddies – each capable of growing a hundred times more rice than any of our terraces in the mountains.

  But now there was nobody to be seen tilling the fields. There were no children playing in the dirt. The village reeked with the smell of burning. It was a wasteland of ruined, smouldering huts, bamboo fences smashed and gardens trampled. Even the trees were on fire.

  Father ran all the way to the hut where he had once handed baby Kinyo to Agkus and her husband. It was just like the others. A heap of wreckage, charred and slowly crumbling into ashes.

  ‘Where is everybody?’ he asked the dead house. ‘What happened here?’

  Then his arms were suddenly grabbed from behind, his spear wrenched from his fist. He was pinioned between two lowlanders, both roaring in their alien tongue as they wrestled him down to the ground.

  One struck him such a blow across the face that for a moment his vision darkened and the smoking landscape was plunged into night.

  The other lowlander held him steady with one hand and quickly jabbed Father’s own spear into his side. Father pressed his hand over the wound, willing his soul not to leave him.

  The lowlander drew the spear back for another thrust.

  ‘Suddenly we heard a noise,’ Father said. ‘It was like a whole mountain had suddenly exploded. It was louder than the loudest thunder. And much more awful.’

  The lowlanders had fled immediately, dropping Father’s spear so that its long handle struck him in the face.

  Father watched as they ran across the field. His hand over the spear wound was soaking with blood. His head felt detached from his body. Perhaps his soul had already seeped out into the dirt, he thought. He wanted to look down, to check, to see if it lay there in the wetness of blood gathering round him. But he found he was unable to do even that simple movement. And anyway, his vision had gone grey. He could barely see.

  And then shadows appeared in the cloud. Voices exclaimed. Was that a man’s voice or a child’s? What were they saying?

  Then …

  ‘Samkad? Is that you?’ A woman’s voice, speaking in a language he understood. Despite all the time that had passed, he recognized it. Agkus. He’d found her!

  He was lifted up and away and somehow, his soul clung on. He lived.

  It was a gun that had made the noise, Father explained. And it was Mister William who had fired it.

  The gun is a lethal weapon from America. It is like a spear in that you can kill your enemy from afar – but it is easy to miss with a spear. And if you miss, your enemy can pick it up and throw it back at you. But a gun ejects missiles called bullets that are deadlier than any spearhead, that can drill right through meat and bones to explode and kill you from inside your body.

  After Mister William fired his gun and frightened away Father’s attackers, the American carried him to the river where they camped until Father was well enough to travel.

  Mister William had knowledge of healing. He cleaned Father’s wound, sprinkling a stinging powder all over it before sewing the gash shut with a needle and thread. It was Mister William who had wrapped it in its bandage.

  When Father peeled the dressing back to show us, I winced. It was a deep slice, the kind men suffer accidentally while butchering meat – the gravest kind of injury. No matter how the ancients pray and beg our ancestors for help, the scent of blood always draws wicked spirits like flies to carrion. It is they who make such lesions weep pus and putrefy so that the sufferer’s soul flees his body, unable to bear the stink of rotting flesh.

  Father’s wound was clean, and the bandage was not yellow with pus. Clearly, the American knew powerful healing.

  The moon waned and ripened in the time that it took them to make their way up the mountains. All that time, Mister William had tended Father’s wound, cooling his fevers with mixtures that he produced from his pouch. And when Father became weak, he had carried Father on his back.

  As Father told me the story, gratitude surged in my chest and I glanced over my shoulder at the American. I had feared him when I first set eyes on him. But he had saved my Father from the worst of fates.

  Death is a gift – only the spirits can invite a soul to join the world of the dead, where life is eternal and the aches and pains of the physical world do not exist. When the ancients speak of death, their eyes glint with anticipation. Imagine, an eternal life without the cares of an aching back or a crumbling body! Imagine the mischief one could wreak upon one’s enemies as an invisible spirit!

  But only the spirits can lead a soul to the world of the dead. Accidents, illness, these are all the work of t
he spirits. Natural ways to die. But death by the hand of another man – or by your own hand – is unnatural and your soul becomes one of the Uninvited, banished from the world of the dead.

  So Mister William had saved not just Father’s life, but his soul.

  18

  We came to a swampy part of the forest, knotty tree roots scrawling in the dank, weedy wetness. We were suddenly wading, up to our calves in sludgy water, our feet skating on sliding mud. Father was so busy minding the bundle on his head that Luki and I soon left him and the others far behind.

  ‘You didn’t tell him! You didn’t!’ Luki hissed, her breath flattening the hair on the bushy baby’s head.

  I didn’t answer. The truth was, I had not thought anything through. I left the Mangili out of my story not because I had a plan, but because Father was looking at me like I was the only thing in the world. If I had told Father about my encounter, he would have raced back to the village to alert the ancients, and then he would have been organizing the young warriors, rushing around the forest with their spears, hunting the enemy, while I stayed in the village to help the women pack bundles in case we had to flee to the caves.

  ‘So are you going to tell him about the Mangili or shall I do it?’ Luki whispered.

  ‘Don’t you dare. I was the one who fought the Mangili,’ I whispered back, fiercely. ‘I’ll tell him.’

  ‘But when?’

  We had reached firmer ground. I rubbed the mud off my feet with some grass and inspected my ankles for leeches. ‘Maybe …’ I mumbled, ‘I’ll tell him after the ancients give me the Cut?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Samkad. Nobody is safe until that Mangili is captured.’ She shuddered, glancing around the trees dangling their moss over our heads. ‘This is not a game. What if he attacks the village? What if people get killed?’

  ‘All right, all right,’ I mumbled. ‘I’ll tell him.’

  ‘Tell him now.’

  ‘Not right now.’