Saturday, the Twelfth of October

by Norma Fox Mazer

  She waved her hand. “Go. Go back to your playing, children.” She herself went back to contemplating Meezzan, who sat slumped with her head down on her knees. Her eyes were dull, almost like that bad eye of the Auuhmaa. Thinking of this, Burrum held her belly protectively. She loved her Auuhmaa and dreaded seeing her other eye get lost behind a milky shell. When the eyes left, then the soul, the Ta, soon followed. Burrum’s mother, Farwe, had told her that her own mother died this way. It had been so sad! Farwe still talked nearly every day of her mother, and how she would someday see her in Place-of-Night-Sun.

  “Aii, Aii,” Burrum sighed, just as her mother often did. Then her natural gaiety drove away the sad thoughts, and she smiled hopefully at Meezzan. “Soon you’ll feel better, my sister.” She leaned toward the girl, nuzzling her neck as she would nuzzle Lishum, or any of the little children, or her mother and father when she was feeling sleepy and tender, but Meezzan didn’t respond. “One doesn’t know where you came from or how long your journey was, but surely it was long and tiring,” Burrum said.

  As if in answer, the girl’s eyes closed heavily. In moments, she was sleeping deeply, her eyelids twitching. Burrum gently pushed her over onto the ground so that she lay more comfortably on her side. The girl moaned, but continued sleeping.

  Dusk was falling. Burrum sniffed. Up and down the mountain and across the plateau, fires were being fed. That was a good smell, the smell of warmth, comfort, safety. That was a smell as good as the smell of her mother’s milky breasts. People passed, going to their hearths, calling greetings, and asking after the strange girl. Burmm’s family, too, were gathering round the hearth in front of the cave. When Sun went to sleep, one wanted always to be near one’s own blazing fire. Her mother threw sticks of wood into the hungry fire.

  “Come over here, daughter,” her father called. “Leave that girl now, don’t stay so long with her. She is not one of the People. Come over here and sit with your father.”

  Her father’s hair was turning gray, his face was heavily lined. He had seen many moons come and go. He had seen many things. He would soon be an old man, Burrum thought, and standing by him as he knelt before the stone-lined cooking pit, she put her hand on his head. He blew on the fire in the pit, threw in some more sticks, and squatted back on his haunches, his arm affectionately around her legs.

  Lishum came running up and threw himself onto his mother’s lap. His mouth was smeared with red juice. Burrum’s aunts and uncles and their children also gathered around the fire.

  “Daughter, I have here those white ants you like so much,” her father said, pointing to several packets of leaves on the ground. “They were just about to grow wings, so you know they are very good.” When the stones in the cooking pit were red hot, he would place the packets of leaves on them, cover them with more stones, and then cover all with earth, allowing no smoke or steam to escape. When he judged enough time had passed, he would rake aside the earth, pry out the top stones, and take the packet of cooked ants from the pit. “Sit down and share these ants with me,” he said. “I have here salt from the ashes of the Gimba tree, so those ants will taste truly delicious.”

  “Sonte and I found butterfly grubs today,” Burrum told her father. “Those long smooth ones with no hair. But they were not ready to eat. When they’re no longer green, Sonte and I—”

  “Sonte, Sonte, Sonte,” her aunt Ainu interrupted, throwing down an armful of wood next to the fire. “After your Sussuru, you will not be with that boy Sonte all the time. You won’t go alone into the forest with him then!” The adults laughed, Aunt Ainu louder than all. Sitting down, she put her hands beneath her belly as if she carried something very heavy there, although it was only a little belly, round like a Tamasini melon. It would be many more moons before the child dropped from her.

  Burrum could feel her face getting hot like fire. Everyone looked at her and laughed. Even her father laughed at her discomfort, as Ainu teased her again about Sonte. That was the only bad thing about Miiawa’s Festival. After that, although she and Sonte could be together with others, she would be a woman and to go alone into the forest with a man would not be seemly. Those who had sat in the circle of stones went into the forest and lay together beneath the trees. Her mother and father went into the forest together still, and Aunt Ainu went with her man. That was right. But Burrum would not go alone again with Sonte and would no longer be free to be with him whenever she wished.

  Of course they would always be friends! He was her dear friend and companion, yet it was Hiffaru who was promised her, and Sonte who would have no woman. It was so sad! Someday he might sit in the circle of stones with a widow, but what if she could no longer give him children? Would he get children from one of the younger families? Or perhaps Burrum could give him one of her babies! There was something so pleasing in this thought that Burrum decided she would tell Sonte the moment she saw him. Then his face might not get dark like a storm sky every time he was near Hiffaru.

  She sighed. Someday when the time was right, when at last she had had her Sussuru and had grown altogether out of her child’s bones, she and Hiffaru would sit in the circle of stones. Their parents, holding blossoming Desabi branches, would chant over them: You who sit here in the middle of the world, you who will bring new life, you who are sister and brother to the wind, the stones, the trees, and the fish, you who honor your mother, you who honor your father and your father’s mother, you who feel the winds of life blowing through you, you the children of Olima and the children of Miiawa . . .

  Yes, someday she would lie with Hiffaru and he would honor her when babies dropped from her body like new little moons. She thought of Hiffaru with his one large normal eye and one tiny eye, which was buried so deeply in his skull, yet seemed to see everything. A ripple of distress crossed Burrum’s mind. Then she was cheerful again, for she could never stay unhappy for long. One side of Hiffaru’s face was ugly, creased; therefore, when he came to her mother’s cave to live, Burrum would try to look always at the other side of his face, the side that was normal and pleasant. Yes, that is what she would do. And when she had babies, she would have many of them, enough for herself and for Sonte, too.

  Chapter 8

  A thin white curve of moon was rising slowly in the night sky. Up and down the mountain, fires had been banked and people had gone into their caves. Zan was on the plateau, alone. Holding her jackknife, she sat against a stone, her head flung back, staring at the dark clouded sky pierced here and there with pale stars. She looked up, searching for the Big Dipper, the only constellation she had ever known even vaguely. Once, on a clear night, long ago, her father had taken her up on the roof of their building and pointed out the Dipper to her. “You see the cup,” he said. “Follow the last star in the cup with your eye and you’ll come to the first star in the handle of the Little Dipper. See it there? See that one? That’s the North Star. It’s a good thing to know the North Star. Do you see it, Zan?” Yes, she had said, although she wasn’t sure, but she had seen the Big Dipper, seven clear, large, sparkling stars. And her father had put his hand briefly on her shoulder, saying, “If you can pick out the Big Dipper, and then the North Star, well, you’ll never be lost.”

  Now she thought that if she could only see the Dipper again, it would be something to hold on to. It might, somehow, make bearable all that was happening to her. But dark clouds passing slowly across the sky obscured most of the stars. She couldn’t find the Dipper. Was it the clouds? Or was everything, even the sky, unrecognizable?

  Far away, an animal howled. The call was answered, then taken up in every direction. Long tremulous howls shattered the air, and an answering howl of terror blazed in Zan. No, nothing was the same. It was all strangeness and horror.

  As abruptly as it started, the howling ended. Shivering, Zan pushed herself closer to the rock behind her. She stared toward the cave, at the little flicker of firelight from within that only made the darkness around her deeper. They were in there, together, while she was out here,
alone. Her hand was sweaty on the knife handle. The blade was open, sharp, dangerous. She peered into the night. She felt her lips drawn back in a snarl of fear. Then, for an instant, she saw herself as she would appear to a civilized person, and she pried her fingers loose from the knife, letting it fall to the ground. But instantly fear seized her and she fumbled frantically for it in the dark. The knife, the knife, she needed the knife! She found it and held it as before, jerking around at the smallest sound.

  She tried to remember how things had been for her only twenty-four hours before, but it was hard to make anything seem real except the terror and sadness that came over her in waves. What was she doing here? She wanted to be home. Home. If she thought of home hard enough, long enough, would all this turn out to be only a dream, a nightmare? Would she wake up and find herself where she belonged, in her own time, her own real life? Home. She let the word repeat itself in her mind, home home homehome homehomehome . . . chiming like a demented clock, homehomehomehomehome . . . till it became a single tone chant: ome ome ome omeome oohhmm ooohhhmmm ooohhhmmm . . . and she slept for a few minutes.

  She opened her eyes. Above her, the dark sky. Beneath her, the cooling ground. Home, she thought again, dully now, and the word seemed to be only a thick, meaningless sound. Her hand was cramped around the knife, her knees and thighs ached. She lay down, curling herself into a tight comma, knees bent to her chest.

  Through the night she lay there, the cold ground seeping into her bones, sometimes overcome by a silence so profound that she thought only she existed in the universe. Other times she found herself trembling uncontrollably at the secret whispers, cries and calls of night creatures. Tigers with burning eyes, bears with muffled sinister roars, shapeless creatures of evil prowled her mind, while the real creatures rustled around her. She heard the tac . . . tac . . . tac . . . felt them breathing in the dark night air and expelling it to turn the night inkier; whispering, breathing, scuttling, tac . . . tac . . . tac . . .

  She was certain her eyes never closed against the dangerous darkness, but suddenly she was rigidly awake, aware of time having passed. In the dark she heard the splash of urine on earth, smelled its pungent odor. Then she heard the bare whisper of unshod feet as someone shuffled past her toward the cave.

  She slept again, moaning, dreaming that her bones were cracking, that animals crawled into her mouth, that she excreted a camera, a tape recorder, records, all of them flattened, white, colorless, yet still looking like animals.

  When she woke it was not quite dawn. Her dreams were sour in her mind. Her mouth was pressed against the ground, her arms bent beneath her. She was cramped in every limb, chilled, aching. The knife lay nearby. Below her, the valley was covered with mist like thick white fur. All that had happened to her passed through her mind in a moment. She sat up, her heart pumping in tenor behind her ribs, her teeth grinding like stones against each other. She was lost, abandoned; she would die here, and no one would ever know. She threw her hands over her head in despair.

  The sun came up, blurrily splendid, burning away the mist, splashing onto trees and stones, warming the earth. But nothing could ever again warm her chilled bones.

  A man came out of the cave, yawned, and glanced at Zan. She shrank back, breath hissing between her teeth. He raised his arm and slowly, thoughtfully, scratched his armpit, then squatted in front of the stone hearth, his naked back and buttocks to her. Blowing on the ashes, he raked scattered leaves and bits of sticks and bark with his fingers into the fire. Thin tendrils of smoke curled along his arms. Burrum appeared and hurried to Zan, patting her hair and her back. Another woman came over, squatting down to stare into Zan’s face and to poke at her arms. It was starting again—the poking, the prodding, all of it. No! she screamed in her mind, and she began to build a wall against them. She saw the wall in her mind, beautiful, curving, solid, a glass dome thick and unbreachable, guarding and protecting her from Burrum’s voice, from the woman’s fingers, from noise and smells, and from the unbearable thought of where she was.

  A child left the cave, peeing in a golden arc. For a moment, something familiar touched her. He was little, like Buddy, with curly hair and a round potbelly. Then she pulled the wall around her again. Soon, others came out, yawning and scratching, chewing on bark or leaves, talking softly, squatting around the fire. A little girl, sniffling, hands clasping her shoulders, chin cradled on crossed wrists, stared at Zan. But Zan was safe inside the glass dome, safe from all of them. She could see out, but no one could touch her. No one could reach her. And the screams of terror that kept crawling into her throat like worms—she was safe from them, too. Safe. Safe from everything.

  Chapter 9

  Farwe, whose name meant Place-of-Night-Sun, toiled up the mountain toward the cave of Diwera, the Wai Wai of the People. It was a fresh clear morning. Farwe had been awake for a long time, even before Sun, going over the amazing events of the previous day. In all her life she had never seen anything like that girl her daughter had found in Meadow-with-Watering-Hole. Had the girl come from Beyond-the-Mountains? In Farwe’s mind, Beyond-the-Mountains was a vague unknown space, vast, misty, fearful. All that was good, all that was safe, lay within the mountains, here in the caves, and in the forest, and in the fold of the river, the world of the People.

  The day before, she had gone forward eagerly to see that girl, to touch her, to smell her hair, and taste her skin. Had no one else noticed the taste of fear like sour fruit on the girl’s skin? As she moved steadily up the mountain, Farwe remembered that taste and spittle collected in her mouth. And thinking of that taste and of her man’s mother, the Auuhmaa, she turned her head and spit delicately.

  The moment she woke up, Farwe had begun thinking of Meezzan—how strange her eyes were, how Burrum had talked in her sleep about Meezzan. She had still been thinking when the Auuhmaa prodded her in the buttocks with a bony finger and told her to go to Diwera. The Old Mother could not wait for anything. Of course, she had no choice but to go at once. For when the old ones speak, one has to listen and obey.

  Diwera was the wisest of all the People. She saw what others did not see, she heard voices no one else heard, she knew how to cure the sick and bury the dead. Everyone respected her, even the First Old Ones who were, themselves, so respected. And yet Farwe did not care to have much to do with Diwera. Before Diwera’s steady gaze, Farwe always felt her belly tremble, as if she were a child again! Yet it was the Wai Wai’s own son, Hiffaru, who would one day come to live in Farwe’s cave, to be her daughter’s man, to share fire and food. He would be Farwe’s new-son, and she and Diwera would address each other as sisters. Yes, she and the Wai Wai!

  “Aii, Aiii,” Farwe sighed, picking a bit of grass from between her teeth. She would have preferred a perfect new-son, not one with but one good eye. After he and Burrum sat in the circle of stones, that other eye, that sunken unblinking little eye, would always be watching Farwe, peering out from deep inside his skull.

  Stopping near Diwera’s cave, Farwe looked back down the mountain, her eyes unerringly picking out the tiny figure that was Meezzan. The other tiny figure was her daughter, Burrum, who had gone to that girl as soon as she woke, not even going first to the river to bathe. If, as the Auuhmaa said, the Anouch’i had entered into Meezzan, then it was they who were telling her not to eat, not to drink; it was they who made her eyes look without seeing. Farwe breathed in sharply. Her belly was hard. Might not the Anouch’i slip from the breath and skin of that girl to the breath and skin of her daughter?

  “Aii! Aiii!” Diwera must come to see that girl. She must drive away the Anouch’i, or drive away the girl! Farwe knew this was so. This was what she had been thinking since she woke. This was why she had come to the cave of the Wai Wai. She fingered the necklace of Curzon seeds she wore. It had taken many days to collect these seeds. To make such a necklace was not a thing for a child! It was fine and beautiful, and Farwe hoped Diwera would admire it. Then she would take it from her neck and lay it over Diwera’s head, sa
ying, “It’s yours, it’s nothing, only a trifle. Keep it you will make my belly happy. It means nothing to me unless you receive happiness from it.”

  When she gave the necklace to Diwera, she would tell her first what the Old Mother said about Meezzan. And then about her bad dream. Aii, what a bad dream that had been. Farwe spit vigorously once more. Ppfuu! In her dream she had seen her mouth stuffed with poisonous toads’ eggs. Long ago she had seen a child thrashing and screaming with pain after eating those eggs. The poor little thing had died. In her dream those poison eggs had filled her mouth and were spilling out of a hole in her chest. Waking, she had felt such fear in her belly! She had been shivering and her man, Raaniu, had put his arms around her and breathed his warm breath on her. She knew the dream had something to do with that daughter of Others, that Meezzan. All alone, the girl had stayed outside in the darkness! Night was the time when the souls of the lost dead wandered, calling and knocking on trees! Tariana, with eyes of fire!

  Kneading her belly thoughtfully, Farwe turned her feet into Diwera’s cave. Entering, she waited a moment just inside, and called out, “Farwe has come. I have come from my hearth to your hearth. Do you want something of mine? Tell me what you want, I am here to give you something.”

  As she finished speaking, her eyes found Diwera sitting cross-legged in front of her fire. Her hair, in two thick plaits, hung over her shoulders, swaying as she ground a plant between two stones. Little bunches of herbs and plants were scattered all around on the floor and were drying on ledges on the walls. Farwe stared respectfully at all this as she waited for Diwera to return her greeting. Now that she was looking into the steady brown eyes of the Wai Wai, she no longer felt that fear in her belly. She knew that Diwera would make everything right again.