Chapter 10
Greeting people, Diwera moved leisurely down the mountain path. Near Farwe’s cave she climbed into a tree and sat among the branches to observe the girl, Meezzan. The girl sat with her knees near her face, her arms around her legs, rocking back and forth like a child in its mother’s lap. Back and forth. Back and forth. From her perch Diwera saw that the Ta was gone from the girl’s eyes. Diwera pulled at her lip. Everything about this girl made her belly tighten uncomfortably—her skin, the unpleasant way her body was covered, and most of all, those empty eyes. And what was that thing in her hand? Not a stone, as she had first thought, not anything she could name. Diwera’s heart quickened, for she knew there were people Beyond-the-Mountains who had their own ways, their own magic. She had heard of them in the stories of the Teller. She gazed for a long time at the strange brown object with the bright shining tongue that Meezzan held so tightly. Diwera did not like the way the shining tongue glittered and hurt her eyes. The skin on her arms tightened, and saliva gathered in her mouth.
When she left the tree at last she did not return to her cave, but went into the forest by a path known only to herself, letting her feet lead her. Diwera listened to the birds and the insects; she listened to the trees, the animals, and the stones. Each one spoke in its own voice to her. Their voices were part of her, as she was part of them. She knew how it was to be a rock, a bird, a tree. There were no secrets between her and all else. She belonged to all that she saw, all that she smelled and heard. She was the world and the world was her.
Now she sought a certain plant, the tiny, white Abena that, growing in the shade of the Mai bush, secreted a mysterious milky fluid. Only the Wai Wai knew its secret. She had not often sought the power that Abena granted; now she needed it to know the way with this stranger among them.
Yooria, the old Wai Wai, had taught Diwera the power and mystery of Abena. It could light the darkness of night with colors and rainbows, with soaring tongues of color that burst into fire and wisdom behind the eyes of the seeker. “But let the seeker beware,” old Yooria had instructed. “The power of Abena is great.”
Yooria, Night Woman, had taught Diwera this and all that she knew, the secrets of plants, and the language of animals. She had been as much to Diwera as her own mother. She had been wise and the People loved her. When she died, the Keeper beat the Death Drum for many days and nights. The People wept without stopping. They were bereft without Yooria, as children are without their mothers. For many moons after Yooria died, Diwera had been restless in her sleep. Her mother, her father, Yooria, all were gone to Place-of-Night-Sun. Her brothers lived with the mothers of their wives. She was alone. Yet she had not wanted a man.
Long before, when she had fasted and dreamed in the Sussuru hut with other girls of her age, she had already known that she would have a different life from her friends. She had dreamed of a huge bird flying around her head, its wings touching her hair. She had trembled and cried out. Then the bird had said to her, Do not cry, I come from the Bird People. You shall be our sister. You shall speak our language. You shall learn about birds, and herbs, and healing.
All that the dream said had come true, and learning from Yooria, Diwera had been satisfied. She had felt need of nothing and of no one else. Yooria had lived and died without a man, and so would she. “A man draws the power from the Wai Wai,” Yooria had told her. “When a woman has a man she does not want to leave him to search for roots and herbs. She thinks more of him than of the ones she must help.”
“I will not have a man,” the young Diwera had said. But after Yooria died, she was too much alone.
One night Yooria came to her in her dreams, chanting a song Diwera had never before heard. Waking up, she rolled close to her fire, hearing that song far away in her head and feeling great longing in her belly. The song called her out of the cave. Her feet led her into the forest. Night birds whistled and sang from all sides. Perhaps they were not birds at all, but spirits whistling, calling her? She had heard of those spirits in the shape of men who enticed women away from the paths, and only after seducing them revealed their true identities by snatching out their hair.
Thinking of this, Diwera faltered in her steps. Then, ahead of her on the path, she saw a black shadow, huge like a bear, but in the shape of a man. “Go!” she shouted bravely, although she trembled in fear. “You will not seduce me and pull out my hair! Do you hear me, you with the shape of a man?” She gathered saliva in her mouth to defend herself against the spirit. Then it spoke, and she knew the voice. But still she tested it. “If you are not a spirit or a bear in the shape of a man, then tell me at once why you are here.”
“I do not know,” he said. “I woke and left the cave to make my water, and then I felt the moon calling me.
Diwera’s belly throbbed strangely. She knew this man. She had often smiled at him. He had a woman; if not perhaps she would have thought differently about taking a man. Still, she tested him again. “Tell me now the name of your mother’s grandfather, he who is happy in Place-of-Night-Sun.”
The man answered at once, “His name is Tofu, Large Hand. He has visited me in my dreams often.”
And now she knew that he was himself, not a spirit. “I saw you from afar,” she said then. “I thought I was dying, but now I live again.” It was the greeting the People gave when they came upon one another far from the caves.
She reached out her hand and, clasping it, he returned the greeting. “Until I saw you, I felt thirsty and hungry. Now my thirst has been quenched, my hunger has been satisfied.”
So they spoke together, and as day always follows night so did one thing follow another, and they lay together beneath the trees. They parted before Sun came back.
Diwera never spoke of that night to another, but soon she knew her belly was full with child. The spirits ceased calling to her, and her sleep was deep.
Diwera had made her birth bed near the river. Her daughter came easily into the world, sliding into the waiting hands of the women attending her. “Look at this child,” they cried. “Look at her, she is so beautiful.” Her skin was the color of honey, she had lips like fresh fruit. Diwera named her Akawa, Gift of the Forest.
The women pressed down on Diwera’s stomach to bring out the afterbirth. Instead her son came screaming into the world. The women cried out joyfully at this bounty, then their cries turned to lamentations. “Aii! Aiii!” Old Mahu, into whose arms the newborn son had slid, dropped him to the ground, moaning fearfully through her teeth. “Do not look at him,” she warned Diwera.
Diwera raised herself on her elbow. “Let me see my son.” There was blood on her thighs. The child screamed on the ground. Diwera gazed at him, saying nothing. One side of his face was perfect with the closed eye of the newborn. The other side of his face was crushed, as if a foot had stepped upon the fragile flesh, crumpling it like a dry leaf. Deep within that crumpled side, a tiny eye, open and lidless, peered at the world. On both hands, the fingers were joined by a web, like a duck’s foot.
“Do not take the child into your arms,” old Mahu said. “Turn away your eyes! Close your ears to his cries! We will take him to the forest and do what must be done.”
There they would lay the child on the ground and put a log on his neck. All would stand upon the log till he was still. They would shed their tears upon the tiny body and lay it in the branches of a tree where an animal would soon find it and consume it. Only the bones would be left, and these would become part of the forest.
Diwera understood. Perhaps if she had already felt the joy of the infant girl pulling at her breast, she would have listened to the words of old Mahu. But the other women were passing the beautiful girl baby from arm to arm. “Give my son to me,” she said, but as no one wanted to touch him she gathered him up herself from the ground. The child stopped screaming. His tiny eye looked directly into Diwera’s face. Leaving the girl to the others, she bit off the birth cord and washed away the slime and blood on the child. She examined her son minutely.
Her flesh did not shrink from the infant, from his strange face and webbed hands.
She opened his fingers, spreading them wide, and cut between the webbing with a sharp stone. Then she put bits of wood between the fingers, tying the wood firmly with strong grass so the fingers would remain separated and not grow together again. She named him Hiffaru, Duck’s Hand.
When the children were infants, there were always women who would help her with the girl, but the boy was left to her. After she took away the bits of wood, his hands grew normally, but nothing could be done for his face. Diwera soon grew used to it. Even when he was tiny, he had a way of looking at her with that small, deepset eye, as if he and she were forever linked. She loved him intensely, perhaps more than her daughter. If he had been a girl, she would not have hesitated to teach him the ways of the Wai Wai. He was alert, willing, clever. From one side, he was quite beautiful. She had made sure that he would have a woman.
But as for Akawa, the girl refused to think about a man. “You did not, Mother, why must I?”
“But I am the Wai Wai,” Diwera answered each time, and each time she hoped her daughter would say, “Well, then, I will be the Wai Wai, too. You must teach me everything.” But her daughter only looked at her from her long eyes and smiled her secret smile.
The girl was a sadness to Diwera. She longed for a girl to teach the secrets of the forest, the ways of the Wai Wai, the hidden paths, the herbs that could cure, the chants that were beautiful and sacred. She would not forever be strong and healthy. A Wai Wai must come after her. But who would it be? Bahii was too timid, Em’Fadi too quiet, Burrum must be her son’s woman, and Noomia and Naku, those two big girls, sisters, wanted to do nothing but paint in Cave-of-No-Name. Most useless of all was her own daughter, who cared only for ornaments and her own beauty.
Thinking of all this and of Yooria, the old Wai Wai, Diwera flung out her arms, calling as she had not called in many moons, “Yooria! Yooria! Here I am, doing the things you taught me, searching for the Abena plant.”
Her feet led her farther into the forest. She followed a shallow stream, then stopped abruptly by a tree, watching a group of Llachi drinking. They were called the Deer with Skins the Color of Morning Sun. Three times as large as the largest man of the People, they had great branching antlers jutting out from their heads. Taken by surprise, they had been known to be dangerous. One looked up, saw Diwera, and huffed uneasily. Diwera remained silent, still. In the way of the Wai Wai, she grew into the trunk of the tree, breathed with the tree, the juices of the tree rising in her body. Wind passed through the tree, passed through Diwera. A female Llachi shook her long head from side to side, glancing toward Diwera. Soon, the animals moved slowly away. After they had gone, just where they passed from Diwera’s sight, she found the Abena plant. Kneeling, with the sweet odors of the earth rising to her nostrils, she carefully snapped off several stalks, turning them upside down in order not to lose the precious fluid.
In her cave again, she gathered twigs and brush to build up her fire. The smoke curled upward, then drifted out, leaving a low film near the ceiling. She squeezed the precious drops of milky Abena juice into a large leaf, and when the fire was blazing brightly she placed a flat stone in the middle. Laying the leaf on the stone, she built the fire higher. Soon, the edges of the leaf blackened and curled inward. She fed the fire, staring into its depths. Sparks leaped over the stone, burning little holes in the green fabric of the leaf. Smoke poured from inside the leaf and then it burst into flame and was consumed, leaving only a small pile of ashes on the stone.
“Ahhh,” Diwera sighed softly. Wetting two fingers of her left hand on her tongue, she dipped them reverently into the ashes and brought them to her mouth. Soon she would have dreams and visions and be given much wisdom. She would learn what she had to fear from that daughter of Others, and what she must do to protect the People against her. Closing her eyes and throwing back her head, Diwera began to chant. She felt the ashes slide down her throat and enter her belly, and the mysteries began to flower in her blood.
Chapter 11
Zan, under the glass dome: eyes unfocused; breathing carefully; thoughts turning slowly, holding the knife. Important knife. Must not let it go. Safety.
Next to her, Burrum squatted, hands outstretched, rubbing Zan’s arms, rubbing Zan’s head. Something was on Zan’s head. It lay there lightly, so lightly perhaps she didn’t feel it at all? She considered this for a long time. Yes, something was on her head. She felt it, yet she didn’t feel it. Because of the glass dome. Inside the dome, no feelings. Only safety.
Carefully, she raised her eyes enough to see a large leaf on Burrum’s head. To keep off the sun? Was there a leaf on her head, too? The sun was high, hot. The morning mists were dissolved. The people were gone, like the mists. Perhaps the people had never existed? Untrue thought They existed. She existed. They were existing together, at the same time. Their time.
Phrases flitted through her mind like insects: their time, her time, the same time . . . time is a thief . . . beyond space and time . . . how many times do I have to tell you? . . . time and time again . . . don’t waste time . . . this time I mean it. . . time enough for that another day . . . what time is it? . . . time flies . . . not this time you don’t . . . the time has come . . .
She slept. Or did she simply go away, eyes open, mind frozen inside the glass dome? Focusing again, she saw Burrum to one side and, squatting in front of her, a woman with two thick braids hanging over broad shoulders. A woman with her nose flattened as if someone had pressed a thumb into the fleshy part. Zan remembered her. Earlier she had seen her sitting in a tree, staring. I saw you, sitting like a monkey in a tree. I saw you watching me. I remember you. The others had slipped into a blurred mass in her mind, but she remembered this brown-eyed woman who gazed at her straight on now, trying to tunnel into her mind. Stop that. Stop! The eyes were trying to shatter the glass dome. But Zan was smarter than any naked savage who lived in a cave like an animal. Her neck trembling under the impact of that brown gaze, she built up the glass dome, made it thicker, stronger. No one could get to her through it. No one.
Peering at Zan as if to pluck secrets from her heart, the woman spoke: “Meezzan. Meezzan.” Zan had to lower her eyes to defend herself. Go away. Leave me alone. The knife was solid in her sweating hand, the glass dome high, shiny tight around her, keeping her safe.
The woman began singing softly. “Hau . . . auu . . . hauu . . . auuuu . . . hau . . . hau . . . hau . . .” Gradually her voice grew louder, less varied, less melodic; louder and then louder still, till she was shouting, raving, crying out in a strangely thrilling voice, like a challenge, “Hau! Hau! Hau!” Sweat dripped down her face, her voice did battle with an unseen enemy. Zan, inside the shell of herself, trembled at the onslaught. She was unable to drag her eyes from the woman’s face, from the mouth, crying out that single sound that twanged and plucked at Zan’s gut. Moaning softly, Zan held her stomach. Burrum patted and rubbed her; but the woman said something, and Burrum drew away.
All at once the woman snatched a handful of hair from Zan’s head, yanked it straight from her scalp. “Uhhh!” Zan cried.
Rolling the hair in one hand, the woman turned and took a live ember from the fire. She dropped the ember into the nest of hair, which flared up, crackling, and burnt in her palm with a penetrating acrid odor. Spitting into her palm, she mixed the ashes and saliva with a forefinger. Still chanting, she rubbed the mixture of spit and ashes across Zan’s forehead and down both cheeks.
Stupefied, Zan strained to stay inside her glass dome. The woman’s voice fell away to a whisper, then stopped. The silence grew as the woman’s eyes held Zan’s steadily, unblinking. “Meezzan,” she whispered. She waited. “Meezzan.” Her voice rose. “Meezzan.” The call was louder, more demanding. “Meezzan!” Zan’s neck muscles strained with the effort not to respond. “Meezzan! MEEZZAN!” Still she didn’t respond, and inside the glass dome she felt her victory. She was safe.
T
he woman blew up her cheeks, pursed her mouth and, craning her neck forward like a huge bird, spit straight into Zan’s face. Zan’s stomach lurched. Calmly, nodding, the woman smeared her saliva over Zan’s face and neck.
“You pig!” Zan cried, speaking for the first time.
The woman sat back on her haunches. She touched her left breast. “Diwera,” she said. She touched Zan’s left breast. “Meezzan.” She waited.
Zan watched the woman warily, her body shuddering with revulsion. The shock of that wet slimy saliva smeared over her flesh had cracked the glass dome. Everything was coming through now. All right, your name is Dah-wara. So what? Go away. You spit on me. Animal! You’re all a bunch of animals.
The woman sat there, eyes as calm as water. No getting away from those eyes. She repeated, “Diwera—Meezzan,” and waited again, as if she had all the time in the world. Her eyes won’t leave me alone. Go away, Dahwara. If I say your name, will you go away? Barely opening her mouth, Zan muttered, “Dahwara.” The sound emerged sluggishly, but she had said it.
And Diwera had heard it. She slapped her knee. “Ahha!” She smiled, the merest lifting of the corners of her mouth, a tiny reward for Zan.
Now go away.
But Diwera had no intention of leaving. She began all over again. She named herself, then nodded at Zan, and waited for her to reply. She picked up a stone, said a word, a sound, waited. Zan stared, mulish. Go away. I don’t want to play. But the woman sat there like a rock and, holding out the stone, made the sound again. Then she put her hands to Zan’s mouth as if to coax the sound from her lips.
The touch of the hands that had smeared spit on her struck Zan with fury. “Don’t touch me,” she cried, pushing away Diwera’s hands. “Leave me alone! I don’t care about your stupid stone and your stupid words—” Aghast, she broke off. With each word she had widened the crack in her glass wall, splintering and shattering it. Now it was gone. She was no longer protected, safe, unfeeling. Her stomach clamored for food. Her tongue clicked dryly against the roof of her mouth.
Saturday, the Twelfth of October Page 7
