‘There is no use. I am no good to anyone any more,’ he whispered. ‘I have lost my courage.’
Kinyo grabbed his hand, but he pushed my brother away. ‘There are only enemy spirits here now. I can feel them. They are walking alongside us.’
Chuka nuzzled Father’s knee, and Father gathered the dog close to him, burying his face in her neck for a long moment.
Father looked at me, smiling sadly. ‘She’s a good dog,’ he said. ‘A fierce dog.’
He ran his hands down Chuka’s flanks and she arched with pleasure.
‘You love my son, don’t you, dog?’ Father said.
Chuka smiled as if she understood.
‘You would do anything for him, wouldn’t you? You would chase away the evil spirits that plague us, if you could.’ Father’s voice was sing song, as if he was chanting a prayer.
He turned Chuka round to face us, his arm circling the dog’s body.
‘Will you do this for us?’ he whispered into her ear. ‘Will you help us? We need allies in the world of the spirits. My dog, Asin, will meet you and he will help you fight the spirits of our enemies.’
He wrapped a hand around Chuka’s snout and, clamping her mouth shut, pinned her wriggling body with his elbow and drew his axe.
38
We send the souls of beasts to the spirits all the time. To learn the portents, to thank our ancestors for a good harvest, to look after the souls of the newly dead, to chase away the wicked spirits – Chuka’s fierce soul would have called our ancestors back and defended us from the enemy spirits that had overwhelmed the village.
And yet, I couldn’t let Father kill her.
I found myself lunging across the void, throwing myself between the warm, wriggling body of my dog and Father’s axe.
‘Sam!’ Father looked strange with tears carving wet trails down his brown cheeks. The axe wavered above our heads. ‘I beg you, let me do this. It’s the only way. We are helpless here in the land of the living. We must fight the Mangili from the land of the dead. The dog is our only hope.’
‘No!’ I had my arms around Chuka now. I tried to free her from Father’s grip – or at least put myself between her and his axe. ‘Go, dog. Run.’
Chuka wriggled, trying to flee, but Father’s fist was tight around her leg. He pushed me to the ground with his elbow and pulled her close. ‘I’m sorry, son.’
But the axe was snatched from Father’s hand.
Kinyo ran down the embankment and swung his arm in a wide arc. The axe sailed into the shadows below us. There was a distant splash.
‘Foolish boy,’ Father cried, fists clenched. Chuka threw herself away from him and scurried down the embankment, disappearing off into the lower terraces.
‘Run, Kinyo, to the cave!’ I cried, finding my feet. ‘Father, please, come with us!’
But Father didn’t seem to hear – he stood, staring blindly across the valley. He looked like he was dream walking again.
We could not wait for Father to wake himself. I hurried after Kinyo. The narrow twisting paths on top of the embankment were slippery under our running feet. ‘Hurry,’ I gasped. ‘Hurry.’ The light fell away rapidly as we left the village behind us.
Soon it became so dark we had to slow down. I had walked the terraces often enough to remember the turns of the embankment path, but Kinyo had never done it before. I took his hand and we crept along, feeling our way.
‘The ridge between the valleys is up these steps,’ I called.
‘What steps? It’s too dark.’
‘This way, when we get to the top, we’ll be in the next rice valley where the cave is.’
But we had not yet reached the top when a hand clamped over my mouth.
A fist closed painfully on my wrist.
‘Don’t go into the valley, Samkad, it’s too dangerous,’ Little Luki breathed into my ear. ‘You’ll be totally useless without your head.’
39
The paddy water lay still over my shoulders like a funeral shawl. I could see smoke seething in the sky above us, lit red by fire, but the paddy water was bone cold and I heard Kinyo gasp as Luki urged him lower into the water. ‘Hush,’ Luki whispered. ‘They will hear you.’
I could feel coarse, stalky things under my toes and my elbow sank deep in mud. Something wriggled over my arm. I closed my eyes, trying not to think of snakes.
‘Down, down,’ Luki said quietly. ‘Get as low as you can.’
We planted ourselves deep in the paddy. I tilted my head back so that it was just my nostrils and my mouth showing above the black water.
Where had Luki been all this time? How had she come to be here? I looked across at my friend. There was nothing to see, of course, just black things against black in the black water.
When we were small, running naked in the dirt alleys of the village, it was always Luki I had wanted to play with. Always Luki I had preferred over the other children as we copied the grown-ups, banging on gangsas made of sticks and stones, hunting the chickens and dogs as if they were wild boar, taking the heads of our make-believe enemies with our make-believe axes. There was no reason to change the way we played when our elders declared it time for me to wear a breechcloth and Luki to wear a skirt. It had not occurred to me that our paths would have to change, even when it came time for the Cut and I was about to become someone else forever. I had not known how to be a friend to Luki the way she had been a friend to me. The realization brought such an ache to my breast that I gasped.
‘Shut up,’ Luki whispered. ‘They’re coming.’
I leaned my cheek on some bracken and allowed a slice of ear above the water to listen. I could hear someone groaning. And the soft thud of feet on the packed dirt on top of the paddy wall.
I rolled over onto my belly and eased my head carefully over the embankment to look. The glow from the burning village lit three men above us on the ridge.
One was Mister William. Even by the wavering light I could see that his face was bruised – one eye was swollen shut.
I stared hungrily at the two Mangili who were with him. All my life I had imagined what our blood enemy would look like. Father told me the Mangili had bright red lips, they spoke in an alien tongue and they washed the bones of their dead. But these were ordinary men, golden-skinned, muscled and black-haired. Dressed in breechcloths like any man from Bontok, with tattoos across their chests.
There was a rough shout – one of the Mangili pulled Mister William down to his knees. The other grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head back with a savage jerk. They were going to take Mister William’s head.
But then one of the shadows gathering beside them lunged, head-butting the Mangili who was about to relieve the American of his head. The Mangili toppled into the water.
My heart was pounding. It was Father who had struck the Mangili … but it was a clumsy attack because Father fell into the water too and, what with the mud and the flailing axe of the Mangili in the water next to him, Father could not get back on his feet, slipping and sliding and falling over in the paddy.
By the time the other Mangili thought to swing his axe at Mister William and finish what they had set out to do, the American had rolled out of reach and into the two other men’s watery struggle.
‘Stones!’ I yelled to Luki and Kinyo, clambering out of our hiding place to grope for missiles on the path. I lobbed a stone at the Mangili still hovering on the embankment, but I got my aim wrong and it struck Mister William, who dropped into the water.
The Mangili pushed Father against the paddy wall. He was too close to swing the axe so he pushed his body against Father, using elbow and shoulder to batter him. As he moved back to make room to swing his axe, the other man hurried over to help. Out of the water shot Father’s arm, grabbing the end of the Mangili’s breechcloth. With one yank, he was lying across Father like a shield, taking his friend’s axe blade deep between his shoulders.
I was trying to get closer, throwing stones as I crossed the mud wall to the paddy wh
ere the battle was taking place. But in the dark my stones flew in wrong directions, flying wide and low and then striking Mister William on the forehead as he got back on his feet. The American fell like a tree.
‘Stop! Stop!’ I heard Luki cry, close behind me.
Father had seen us. ‘Get out!’ he roared. ‘Get away from here!’
And allow you to be killed, Father? It would be wrong. If only I had an axe.
There was an axe on the paddy wall. For a heartbeat, I wondered if some helpful spirit had granted my wish. Then I remembered. The dead Mangili had dropped it when Father pulled him into the water.
I grabbed it and jumped into the paddy, vaguely hearing Luki scream, ‘No, Samkad, don’t!’
A thud. A gasp. I was too late. I stared down to find Father looking up at me. His face a spatter of blood. His eyes fixed on mine. Pleading, loving, afraid. His lips moved. What was he saying? What was he trying to tell me? His eyes began to glaze, the lids fluttering down, closing. The waters rolled over his face as he sank into the paddy water.
The Mangili was fishing Father out of the water, straddling him. He pushed Father’s chin up, baring his neck. He glanced sideways at me. He must have been about Tambul’s age, with a similar sinewy build. He was handsome, with a straight nose, full lips and thick dark brows over dark brown eyes. He was a young man like any other.
He laughed at the sight of me. Perhaps he thought it funny, a small boy like me coming to the rescue. Perhaps it was the way I struggled to lift the axe.
It was heavy. But I could lift it.
I closed my eyes and swung the axe as hard as I could.
40
The ancients are always saying they can’t wait to die. When they die, they say their souls are going to join the world of the spirits. No more aches and pains, no more wrinkles, no more mashing your rice because your teeth have fallen out. And once they had become part of the invisible world, they could watch over the rice valleys, whispering to the green shoots to grow fat and tall. In the invisible world, they could protect their families from illness and danger. In the invisible world, they could live forever.
When Corporal Quinlan forced Luki back into the mossy forest, it was the spirits who led her to climb a tree, to hide her shame, to weep her disappointment. It was the spirits who made sure she saw the two Mangili creeping through the forest so that she could hurry back to the village to tell the ancients.
When Kinyo, Father and I fled, leaving the men behind with the Americans, it was the spirits who gave them courage to ignore the gun Private Smith’s trembling hands pointed at them. It was the spirits who told them to lay down their tools, leave the Americans, and make their way home.
There were wicked spirits about as well, whispering into Dipa and Lamang’s ears so that they laughed and turned their backs on Luki. It was the wicked spirits who told them their new guns could protect them from any Mangili.
But where were the spirits now? Was Father right? Had the fire driven all the spirits away? Were we now orphaned and powerless against our enemies?
It was difficult not to think so.
It was hard, trudging into the smoking ruins of the village, every building a mangled, smouldering black thing, shelter and hope and safety long evaporated into the stinking air. This was what enemies did. They destroyed homes. The Americans had destroyed the homes of the lowlanders. And now the Mangili had done the same to us.
The village was already on fire when Little Luki realized that Mister William was missing. And so there was no spirit to guide her when she stole out of the cave. No spirit led her through the burning houses where she found the American cowering behind one of the buildings. No spirit to warn her that the Mangili were following as she led Mister William across the First Valley. And when she realized this, there was no spirit to help when Mister William panicked and was easily caught by the enemy, while Luki quickly melted into the waters of a rice paddy.
We roamed the village in silence, staring hopelessly at the wreckage. Agkus stood silently with her arms around Kinyo. They had fled to the mountains to escape the horrors in the lowlands only to find more death and devastation.
‘It is not houses that make a village, but the hearts that beat within it,’ Salluyud declared, as he shuffled slowly with us.
But when the ancients saw the pile of ashes that used to be the House for Men, they could think of no more wise words. Suddenly they had no comfort to give us, no ritual to make.
How could they offer up pleas to the spirits if there was nobody there to listen?
‘Look, Sam,’ Little Luki said. ‘What is Chuka doing?’
Chuka’s head was poking out from under the charred beams of a ruined hut. I waited for her to bound up to me, plant her paws on my chest. But she leaped out of the hut, barked, then jumped back in again, looking over her shoulder to check if I was following.
‘What is it?’ I followed slowly.
She grabbed a fallen piece of wood and pulled it aside.
Deep in its stone pen, safe and unburned, was a pig. It stared up at me with its little eyes and coughed.
One pig. Alive.
The entire village descended to the mossy forest. Luki walked with her mother, Chochon, and Kinyo with his aunt, Agkus. Mister William trudged behind them, his head bound where my stones had accidentally struck.
Kinyo was right – this American was not the enemy. That strange, burning night, I had dragged Father out of the paddy. My hands had pressed at the gash in his shoulder, trying to stop his soul from soaking into the shadows of the paddy wall. Too late again, Samkad, I had told myself. Father was dying and soon would become one of the Uninvited.
But then Mister William was there, tearing strips from his own clothes to bind Father’s shoulder. He stopped the bleeding and Father did not die and Mister William was constantly at Father’s side now, at the rough encampment that would have to be home until we rebuilt our houses.
I looked around me like I was seeing the woods for the first time. Every leaf, every dripping strand of moss, every branch seemed aglow with the new sun’s light.
Everything was alive.
The Tree of Bones called loudly. One pig, alive, the voices hummed. And men, women and children. All alive.
We stood under the tree, and joined the ancients in calling up to the spirit figures that gazed benevolently upon us with their white pebble eyes.
It is not houses that make a village, but the hearts that beat within it. This was the thing to celebrate.
41
Father lived to see the village celebrate the three of us children as heroes. He lived to see Kinyo and me safely ensconced in the new House for Men, our foreskins cut.
He lived to see Salluyud take his buffalo horn with the three lemon thorns on it and tap a fine tattoo of a caterpillar across my chest, to show that I had defeated my enemy. He lived to see the ancients grant Luki special tattoos on both shoulders that acknowledged her as a fighter. They did offer Kinyo a tattoo as well, for his courage, but he didn’t want one.
He lived to see the village rebuilt. He lived to see Mister William’s house, with its wide porch and a blackboard on the wall. He lived to attend three lessons on how to speak Mister William’s tongue. But he said he was too old and too ill to learn the new words.
He lived … and then he died, because even Mister William’s potions could not heal his festering wounds. Perhaps Mother had become tired of waiting and beckoned his spirit away to join her in the invisible world. Father had a good death. A natural death.
We mourned Father correctly. We sat him in his death chair. We covered his shoulders with a funeral shawl. We spoke to his corpse. We addressed the spirits politely and sang the correct songs. And then we buried him next to the house we built after the fire, the house where someday I will live with my wife, when I decide to marry.
The Tree of Bones calls.
See, see, it whispers. See how Bontok glows in the morning sun, the green of the terraces, the swirling blue of th
e Chico River, the jungles that nestle in every crook and elbow of the mountains. See the tiny village, that once sat unnoticed on the mountain’s knee. Now discovered. See the new road, a white ribbon cutting its way through the old forest. See the new houses springing up along the road. See the new people, moving in from everywhere.
See the soldiers, the Tree of Bones whispers. Our warriors now march about in smart American hats and smart American shirts and smart American belts with American guns on their shoulders. The only thing that reminds us of who they once were are the breechcloths that swing between their bare legs.
See Mister William’s house, where the villagers sit and listen to him talk about America, a land that is bigger than the whole of Bontok, than the mountains, than the lowlands. Where people live in clean boxes made of neat blocks of stone. Where they wear clothing on their backs and shoes on their feet.
Father told me Lumawig once took a clay pot and smashed it on the ground. It splintered into many shards. One of the shards was Bontok.
But Mister William has a map. And on his map, America is a giant cabbage-coloured shape in the middle. And Bontok is … not even on the map.
We thought the ancients could teach us everything we needed to know about our world. How to carve a rice field into a mountain. How to hunt deer and trap boar. How to fight our blood enemy, the Mangili.
But now the ancients nod and say the Mangili are no longer our enemy and we must all learn the ways of the American.
This pleases Mister William and he carefully unpacks his box and plays music for us. The ancients close their eyes and listen.
Look, whispers the Tree of Bones. Mister William is showing the ancients how to measure time. A day is made of hours. A month is made of days. A year is made of months. And a man is made of years.
Look, look, the Tree of Bones whispers. See your brother, Kinyo. Kinyo wears white trousers and a white shirt. On his head is a straw hat. He works for an American and his wife who live in the lower village, near the river. They go from village to village exchanging squares of fabric they bought in the lowlands for everyday things. Pots. Bowls. Wooden stools. Spears. Shields. Earrings. Baskets. One day the wife tries to exchange a square of blue cloth for Chochon’s snake-bone headband. The one Luki made for her. Chochon walks away.
Bone Talk Page 15
