Burrum sniffed happily at the girl’s skin. Had not Miiawa come to her in her dreams? Yes, Miiawa had wanted her to find this girl and keep her. Surely, if she did as Miiawa wanted, her blood would come down in time for the Sussuru. And she would sing and dance and become a woman.
Chapter 6
Trees. Everywhere, trees. Enormous, overwhelming, trunks rising straight into the air, huge columns, or twisting grotesquely. Surrounded on all sides by trees . . . living trees . . . dying trees . . . dead trees . . .
The whine of insects . . . sound of her own stumbling footsteps, crunching branches and leaves . . .
Underfoot, decaying logs . . . thick tangled roots . . . flowers, little pale things . . . a dead stump covered with orange mushrooms big as severed heads . . .
Zan shuddered and plodded on. Her thoughts came and went in abrupt spurts. Walking . . . following those two. Burrum? Sonte? Queer names. Everything so strange. Going where? No way out. Difficult to breathe . . . the air, thick . . . heavy . . . what if a tree fell?
Fall on me. Smash me. Where are they taking me? Hate this forest. Who are they?
Her eyes blurry with sweat. Stepping ankle deep into slime . . . scraping it off with leaves . . . pushing on . . . She was so tired. Ahead of her, the boy and girl leaping like deer over every obstacle . . . talking . . . jabbering . . . grubbing with sticks, digging up slugs, or twisted rooty things . . . eating them. Every time, Zan’s stomach lurched.
Her head swollen, throbbing.
Following them like a dumb sheep. Dumb sheep go to slaughter. Naked people are savages. Cannibals . . . What am I doing? Stop. Think.
She slumped against a tree.
Mistake following them. Too trusting. What then? Back to the meadow? Safe there . . . but—no food, no people. Okay, stay here, just stop, don’t follow them! Alone? Animals. No water. No food. I’ll die. Oh, Moml
Somewhere, an animal or bird tapped ferociously, a forest jackhammer. Zan’s heart beat in ferocious accompaniment.
Follow them. No choice.
Ahead, the boy and girl were fading out of sight, blending into the foliage, showing only patches of skin, like bits of sun on leaves.
Zan’s legs were leaden. Dwarfed by the trees, she felt insignificant, an insect easily crushed.
Tree coming down? I’ll run. Fall on me, anyway. Spatter me. Nothing left.
She moved a little faster, looking up, over her shoulder, to each side. Everywhere, dead, swaying trees waiting to fall and break her like an ant smeared underfoot.
Her heart was beating up into her throat. She ran. Sonte? Burrum? Gone! “Anhhhh!” Sweat filled her eyes. Shouting, crashing into trees, calling the girl’s name.
An answering shout. From behind her? She whirled, yelling again. The sound of her voice echoed, filled her ears. Which way had she come? Which way had they gone? She turned round and round helplessly. Then again, she heard her name. “Meezzan.” She followed the sound. They were perched on a rock, the boy chewing on something, talking casually to the girl as if nothing at all were wrong. She wanted to scream at them.
They must have gone ahead of her on purpose, thinking it funny that she was frightened sick. She hated them both.
They went on again. Not looking where she was going, only following the bare backs ahead of her, Zan stumbled against a pointed rock embedded in the earth. Her toe throbbed with pain. Now the way was steeply uphill, trees thinning, sun splattering on the face of the towering rock outcroppings. She was breathing with her mouth open . . too much effort to keep it closed . . . her heart pulsing in her throat . . .
Sonte and Burrum stopped, turned, sniffed the air with faces raised and noses wrinkled in concentration. What now? Too tired to care, Zan sank down on a log, arms and legs weighted. Her heart was beating in great heavy thumps—da-BUMP da-BUMP da-BUMP. Maybe I’ll die right here. Heart attack. Nobody will ever know. The worms and animals will eat me, just my skeleton left. Poor old white bones, white tones, singing off tune like always, Dad says I couldn’t keep a tune if my life depended . . .
“Meezzan.”
Go away. Don’t bother me. My eyes are closed, can’t you see? She flopped her head into her lap.
“Meezzan!”
Quit that! Stop shaking me. I’m not your prisoner. I’m resting.
Leave me alone . . . leave me a bone . . . what was that about bones?
Muscles in her legs twitched and jerked; her arm flew out. She sat up, dazed. She must have fallen asleep. Behind her, the sound of someone, something, snuffling or snorting, a heavy, wet sound. Then, crashing noises. She jumped up. She was alone. They had left her again.
The snuffling and crashing came closer. “Burrum!” she shouted, and at the same moment a huge animal completely covered with long shaggy yellow hair came into sight and slowly lumbered toward her. Her bones grew fragile. Not an elephant, but almost the size of an elephant. No tusks, no fangs, but monstrous, terrible, huge enough to crush her with one swipe of a foot She stared, horrified, at the long curving nails on its feet. Then her arms were grabbed, one from each side, and she was hauled into the air. For an instant, dangling painfully above the ground, she couldn’t understand what was happening. She was jerked upward, and her neck snapped back. Above her she saw Sonte and Burrum in the tree, both of them flat on their bellies, slung over branches, their faces reddening with the effort of lifting her. They hauled her into the tree and dropped her like a sack of potatoes into the crotch of two limbs.
She clung to the tree, trembling, as the animal, its head nearly on the level with her feet, gouged up great swathes of vegetation, passing leisurely through the spot where she had been standing only moments before. Sloth, she thought suddenly, like a coin going into a slot. Breathing in the ripe, sickening odor of the animal, she felt other words drop into her mind like bits of ice. Primeval . . . savage . . . extinct . . . Slowly the mammoth beast passed out of sight, leaving behind it a trail of crushed earth.
Burrum and Sonte climbed down out of the tree. In a daze, Zan followed, scraping her legs against the rough bark, slipping, and then thumping to the ground awkwardly. As they set off again, she stuck close to them, sniffing the air herself, eyeing each tree for the one that would be easiest to climb.
Stopping at a stream, they drank and washed their faces. Zan threw water over her hot head again and again. They crossed the stream on a broad log, overgrown with fungi. The trees were sparser now; tufts of grass grew underfoot, and sun splashed down in long fingers of light. When at last they broke into the open, leaving the forest behind, Zan felt as if a weight had been lifted from her head.
They were in a narrow field situated between a mountain and a valley that spread below as far as she could see. Hills, meadows, and a river flowed between dense green banks. She could see for miles. Everywhere was that thick green carpet over the earth, broken only by the broad shimmering blue band of the river. She thought surely they would go that way, down into that greenness, but they turned upward and climbed a well-worn path. Huge tumbles of gray and pink rock everywhere, like crumbled buildings that had once housed giants. Caves pocked the side of the mountain and the smoke of many small fires puffed into the air. Zan had never seen anything like it before. Miles and miles of nothing but trees and meadows, and then the river, like a piece of blue glass. It was all calm, peaceful, soothing, like quiet music on her jangled nerves.
Burrum pulled Zan toward a cave beneath an enormous overhanging shelf of rock. Nearby, a fire burned within a ring of stones. Zan shrank back. Burrum grasped both of Zan’s hands and pulled harder. Again, Zan resisted. The cave mouth yawned black, frightening, secret. She thought of bats and slugs, of white eyeless creatures, and a damp slimy darkness. She shuddered and dug in her heels. Burrum’s arms were wiry, strong, but Zan had the strength of desperation flowing through her. “Auuhmaa,” Burrum shouted. “Auuhmaa!” And Zan, thinking the girl was calling for help to drag her into the cave, resisted more fiercely.
An old woman appeared at th
e mouth of the cave and came slowly toward them. She wore nothing but the same sort of little apron flap that Burrum wore. Necklaces of shells and acoms hung on long breasts as flat as two pieces of leather. Her eyes were deeply sunk into her bony head; one was black and keen, the other covered with a white growth like a thick pearly shell.
“Auuhmaa!” Burrum cried, breaking into an excited stream of talk. The old woman, nodding, smiling, showing bare, toothless gums like a baby, patted Burrum’s arm and shoulder. Then she reached out suddenly and took Zan into her arms. She had a strong smell, dry and spicy. Zan felt as if she were suffocating as that ancient, leathery body pressed her and the pungent breath blew into her face.
When the old woman released her, a boy appeared, with a naked child sitting astride his shoulders. The boy stared unabashedly at Zan, his dark eyes large and wondering, but the child, screwing up his face, broke into loud fearful sobs and hid his eyes in the boy’s curly head. Other people began to appear, some climbing up the mountain, others coming out from caves higher up, calling to one another and running down the rocky slopes. Children of all sizes appeared as if conjured up from the air. More and more people, all half naked and babbling incomprehensibly, crowded around Zan.
Burrum kept a firm, possessive grip on her. “Meezzan,” Burrum said repeatedly, tapping Zan’s shoulder or touching her on the breast. “Meezzan. Meezzan.” People repeated the word, “Meezzan,” pulling their lips flat and wide, then slapping their thighs and roaring with laughter as if at the very finest joke.
“Meezzan,” a man said, reaching out and pinching Zan’s arm. A woman tugged at a strand of her hair. A child scratched her jeans with his fingernails, his forehead creased in concentration. Almost at once, others surged in, surrounding her, touching her, poking her hair and her face, probing and plucking and sniffing.
Hands were on her everywhere like insects. Zan’s hair was pulled, her arms smelled, her neck tasted, her fingers grabbed and stuffed into mouths. Her skin seemed to shrivel on her bones. She was afraid to move, afraid to slap away the hands, afraid to claim herself from the crowd. Afraid that they might become savage and turn from poking at her arms to poking out her eyes; turn from scratching her skin to clawing it off her bones.
She was grabbed, shoved, touched, her back and arms rubbed vigorously, then released, only to be grabbed again. “Leave me alone,” she moaned.
She threw her hands over her head, her arms before her face, and sank down on the ground, hunched and shaking among the forest of dusty bare legs. A cry stirred through the crowd and people sank down with her, sitting on their haunches, laughing and nodding their heads.
Go away. Go away. GO AWAY. Their faces, their voices, their teeth, white in alarming smiles, mocked her. Their jabber pierced her head like little knives. They wouldn’t leave her alone. They kept touching her, pressing her, breathing on her.
A fist was thrust in front of her face, a fist holding a mouse, its tail hanging out like a banner, its eyes bulging above the thumb. Then another fist appeared, holding another mouse with bulging eyes. Two small children, entirely naked, a little boy with dark curly hair and a girl a bit bigger, stood above her, laughingly pushing the imprisoned mice toward her. The shining, terrified eyes of the mice seemed ready to pop out of their heads and spill into Zan’s lap like wet marbles.
She struck out blindly, shoving the children away from her. She hunkered closer to the ground, her knees encircled by her arms. She felt her heart beating through her body like the ticking of a bomb and held herself tighter. She felt that she might fly into a thousand separate pieces. In her throat the ticking went on; her ears ticked, and in her arms bombs ticked. People began to drift away. She understood. They heard the bombs ticking in her body. Tick, tick, tick, TICK, TICK, TICK . . . She would ran from herself if she could.
After a while, after a thousand thousand ticks, they were all gone. All but Burrum, who squatted near, eyes fixed on Zan. Her watchdog? Run away, watchdog, run before I explode! Mad laughter swam into Zan’s throat Oh, what a joke had been played on Zan Ford! The laughter became a scream of protest fury, helplessness, that ought to have stopped worlds, reversed time, shattered the nightmare. But tendrils of smoke from the flie in the ring of stones still rose. And Burrum still watched Zan, her face stiffened with something unreadable. And Zan was still there.
She closed her eyes. Closed herself away from the noise, the smells, the sounds. Closed herself into her head. Away from everything. Unreachable. Untouchable. Closed.
Chapter 7
Throwing chunks of wood into his mother’s fire, Sonte whistled softly through his teeth. What a funny face Burrum had made earlier in the day when he asked if Meezzan was a girl or a woman. Did Burrum think he wanted someday to sit in the circle of stones with Meezzan? Sonte snickered in his throat like a frog, but his good humor faded quickly.
He and Burrum had been special friends since they were tiny children. She could always make him laugh. When he was with her, there was so much happiness in his belly. Even when he was a very small boy, not yet wearing the mingau, he had believed that they would be life mates. But this was not to be. No! That ugly Hiffaru would come to live with her in her mother’s cave. Sonte had known this for a long time, but he could never think of it calmly. He still remembered the day his mother had told him, saying, “Do not be sad, my son, my beautiful son. In time there will be a fine widow for you.” But his mother’s face had been dark like the sky when Thunder Beings spoke. Seeing her unhappiness and feeling his own misery, poison like toads’ eggs had hatched in his belly.
Though he wanted Burrum to be happy, he was secretly glad that her blood had not come down and that she was still a girl. Only women sat in the circle of stones and lay in the forest with their men.
“Why are you grunting?” his mother, N’ati, asked as he threw another chunk of wood onto the fire. “You sound so fierce, my son. Does he not sound fierce, Yano?” Sonte’s aunt smiled and spit on a shell, then rubbed it against her mingau to shine it.
“Perhaps you have bellyache?” his mother said solicitously.
Sonte scowled. “My belly is good, Mother!” He stared into the fire.
Farther down the mountain, Burrum sat near her family’s cave, her hand protectively on Meezzan’s back. It had been frightening when Meezzan screamed, but Burrum had not left the girl, though Auuhmaa had cried at her that she must come away. From a safe distance, the old woman had called out that the Anouch’i were surely burrowing into that daughter of Others like worms into fruit. Why else had she screamed? “Come away from her, my child,” the Auuhmaa urged. “Come sit with me.”
But Burrum hadn’t left Meezzan’s side. One must listen, of course, to the wisdom of the old ones. In this respect, as in others, Burrum was dutiful, but she did not believe that the Anouch’i had burrowed into Meezzan. Miiawa had sent her this girl; therefore, was not Miiawa protecting her? Burrum rubbed her belly thoughtfully. In the belly, one felt everything: all happiness, all sorrow, all fear, all joy. “Beware the times when the belly is hard.” That is what Burrum’s mother had taught her. She was a wise woman. In sorrow, fear, or anger, the belly must not stay hard for long, or else the bad spirits, the Anouch’i, come and drive out Ta, one’s soul. Aiii! If only one could see the Anouch’i. But they could shape themselves into anything—a puff of wind, a tree, a stone. One never knew where they were!
Again Burrum clasped her belly. If the Anouch’i had crawled into Meezzan, wouldn’t she feel the fear in her own belly? But her belly was quiet, her belly was happy.
She rubbed her hand up and down Meezzan’s arm. “Perhaps you come from people who don’t eat, but only drink water? Is that possible?” Burrum remembered how the girl had let the delicious beetle Sonte had found slip through her fingers, and how she had turned her face away from all the food they offered her. The girl blinked and blinked, but said nothing.
“Meezzan,” Burrum whispered to herself, making her mouth go all wide and tight to make the ugly sound
. There were so many queer things about the girl, including her name. Meezzan. What did that mean? Nothing. “Zzzz,” Burrum said, giggling softly. Again she felt the strange garments the girl wore. Mingaus on her legs and feet. No wonder she was so tired! How could one run, swim, or climb trees wearing extra feet? Or feel the earth and the waters of the river? Burrum wondered if all the people of this girl wore such things. Was it possible they thought their entire bodies, not just their genitals, vulnerable to the Anouch’i? Burrum considered this idea with astonishment that gradually turned to amusement. Snorting, she looked around for someone to share this rich joke, but only her little brother and one of her small cousins were nearby, racing back and forth with sticks in their hands.
“Why aren’t you out gathering the Bihaw berries?” she called out. They looked over at her a bit uneasily. Very good! One had to continually remind children in just this way that soon they, too, must do a bit more than play all the time. “Lishum! Are you ready to help build the stone dams?” she said to her little brother. He had a small round belly, which she often nuzzled playfully, driving him into fits of wild giggling. “You know those stone dams in the river to trap the big fish? That is what I mean, little brother.” His mouth fell open. He had thick black curls and eyes like little silver fish. “And you,” she said to her cousin Ai’ma, “you will have to pound the bark with heavy stones!”
“I won’t pound that bark till I can wear the mingau,” Ai’ma said spiritedly in her unusually deep voice. Whenever she spoke, the adults laughed. Still, she was only a small girl, not yet old enough to wear a tantua on the back of her head. Burrum hid a smile and continued to gaze at both children for several moments. Of course only the strongest men and women made the stone dams and pounded the bark to break down the fibers to make into a soft cloth. But it was her duty to her cousin and her little brother to put serious thoughts into their heads. They continued to stand there, staring at her, waiting for her to dismiss them.
Saturday, the Twelfth of October Page 5
