This makes him happy, and he tucks the dead spider into one of the small pockets sewn into his sash.
Later that afternoon, we have a good scare when a cheetah bolts from the high grass not far from where we are walking, but the sleek spotted cat flashes past us without so much as glancing in our direction. We watch as the predator runs down a baby antelope. I look at Onani with a shaky smile, and he laughs. “Come,” he says, gesturing with his spear, and I follow close behind him, watching the grass and low, tangly bushes with a wary eye the rest of the afternoon.
That night, I cook the spider for him, searing it the way my mother cooked them for my father. Onani nods in approval as he devours it. He does not share it with me, but I do not mind. I have gathered some berries and edible roots along the way. Besides, I’ve never cared much for the taste of borosaabudoros-- the hairy eight-legs.
9
The days that follow are a numbing monotony. We continue north shortly after rising, and make camp as the sun dives toward the hills in the west. If Onani is lucky enough to make a kill, we have meat, but most days we dine on the berries and roots and vegetation I have foraged along the way. Always, before we retire for the night, Onani couples with me from behind, sliding his pele back and forth between my thighs. I begin to feel embarrassed that I cannot couple with him in the normal way. He seems satisfied with our compromise, however, and only treats me unkindly when I am disobedient or foolish. Every night, he pulls me against his chest, and we sleep in one another’s embrace. I no longer plot to murder him in his sleep. Sometimes I think that his smell is pleasant, or take comfort in the warmth of his skin beneath my cheek. Still, when I awaken, I always expect to find myself home, my brothers and sisters sleeping beside me, Father snoring softly on the other side of the hut. If I wake before Onani has risen, I indulge myself with fantasies of home.
I do not know how long we have been traveling together. I have lost track of the days, but Onani says we have passed into the territory of the Zul.
“We are almost home,” he says, as if the home he speaks of is my home as well.
It is not my home. It is his home.
The day before we arrive at the village of the Zul, I almost die.
Onani has left to hunt while I gather wood for our fire. It is late in the afternoon, the sun bloated and red on the distant hills. It is not as hot as it has been recently. A cool breeze is blowing across the open grasslands. Low gray clouds are massing in the south. Every now and then, the belly of those plump dark clouds flicker with light, and I wonder if the rainy season has finally come around again.
After gathering wood, I wander to the far side of the acacia grove where we have decided to stop and camp for the night. I need to squat and make water. As I am voiding my bladder, I hear the dry grass rustle softly behind me. My skin prickles, but before I can turn around, I am bowled over as something powerful and hairy pounces on me from behind. I cry out as hot jaws seize ahold of my wrist and jerk me back and forth. I roll around, using my free hand to beat the creature that has attacked me. I shout at the beast as it snarls and drags me through the dirt and grass. I scream in fear and pain. I twist my body around and try to kick the creature with my feet. My thrashing raises a small cloud of dust.
It is a jackal! An old mangy one, its ribs standing out like slats. It is starved, its eyes bleary and red and crazed.
Blood seeps down my arm from the animal’s fangs. I feel the bones inside my forearm twisting, straining under the pressure of its jaws. They will snap any moment. I rise to my knees and pull, tears squeezing out of my eyes. The jackal snarls and heaves back on my arm, and I tumble forward onto my belly. It drags me across the dusty earth.
“Yahhh!” Onani cries. I see him running to my rescue, spear in hand.
The jackal releases me, turning to snarl at my savior. The mangy old beast crouches down, the hair on its back standing up. It must be starved to stand its ground like that!
“Kill it!” I sob, cradling my bloody arm.
Onani pokes at the jackal with his spear, and the old dog snaps at the shaft of the weapon. Its eyes roll madly, and flecks of foam spray from its muzzle. With a shout, Onani lunges forward and stabs the beast in the chest. The jackal goes down on its hind quarters with a yelp, and Onani stabs it again, piercing the beast through the ribs.
The jackal dies, its hind legs twitching. Onani stabs it one more time to be sure, then comes to me and kneels. He leaves his spear thrust through the animal’s neck.
“Is it broken?” he asks, inspecting my injury.
“I do not think so,” I answer. My forearm is bleeding, already swelling, but I can move it. I can bend my wrist and flex my fingers.
“You are lucky,” he says. “You should be more careful.”
I nod shakily.
But I do not feel so lucky later. By the time the light has failed the sky, my forearm is swollen nearly double. The skin is tight and hot and painful to the touch. I am feverish and woozy.
Onani gives me his share of our food and water, his eyes large and moist with concern. “Rest here by the fire. I’ll be right back,” he says, and then he vanishes into the darkness.
The stars overhead seem to spin without moving. I fall into a dreamless stupor. Onani returns and rouses me. “Here, Zenzele. Open your mouth,” he says, and when I obey, he shoves a wad of tree bark between my lips. “Chew on this, but do not swallow it.”
The fibrous tree bark has a terrible bitter taste. I spit it out with a grimace, but he retrieves it from my chest and stuffs it back in my mouth.
“Chew it!” he demands.
I shake my head.
“Yes!”
“Ugh!”
“It will make the infection go away.”
I spit it out and he stuffs it back into my mouth, then clamps his hand over my lips. I have no choice. Sobbing, I chew.
The taste makes me shudder and retch, but shortly after, my fever and the throbbing in my arm diminishes. Sometime later, I am able to sleep.
I am too weak in the morning to walk. Onani sweeps me into his arms and carries me. I put my good arm around his neck, my burning cheek against his chest, and retreat back into my feverish dreams as my captor lopes across the savannah.
“We are almost home,” he pants into my ear. “My mother knows powerful medicine. She will make you well.”
I only rouse a little when he speaks. I understand his words, but I do not believe that his mother will be able to cure my sickness. My forearm has swelled so much that it looks as if my skin will split open at any moment. Pain bolts through my body at every tiny movement. I tell him to lie me down somewhere-- somewhere in the shade-- and let me die. I just want to die, it hurts so much! But he ignores my pleading. All he will say is that we are almost home.
I look up at his stern scarred face. His lips are curled down in a grim, angry expression. His skin-- so dark it is almost blue-- glistens with sweat.
Past his face, the sky is full of fat gray lumpy clouds. Father says that our spirits fly up to the heavens when we die. He says that the Great Sky Spirit, who has no name, fell in love with First Woman. He loved her so much he put the spirit of a hawk inside her, so that when she died her spirit could soar up and join him in the heavens.
Does Mtundu’s spirit follow us up there? I wonder. Does he wait for my spirit to soar up and be with him, and with First Woman and Great Sky Spirit?
I hope so.
I close my eyes and will my spirit to fly free of this pain, and it seems as though it obeys. I imagine I rise up out of my flesh and soar upon the wind, my arms outstretched like the wings of a hawk, the grassy hills tilting far below as I swoop and circle, but it is only a fever dream. It is not real.
10
I am only dimly aware of our arrival at the village of the Zul. I drift in and out of strange dreams, tormented by pain and fever so that even my waking moments seem unreal and dreamlike. The faces that swim in and out of my vision are the faces of demonic creatures, summoned by
my suffering like hungry flies after sweat. They are like masks, with empty sockets where the eyes should be. When I see them, I scream and thrash in Onani’s arms. “They have no eyes!” I cry. “They have no eyes!”
Onani tries to tame my flailing limbs, but I am like a wild animal. He hisses as my nails rake across his cheek. “Stop it, Zenzele!” he demands, but his voice has no authority. He is exhausted. For all his brutality, he is frightened for me. Afraid that I will die. “Mother!” he wails as he stumbles through the village. “Where is my mother?” The eyeless people run away from him. One of them points.
“Onani?” a voice calls out. “Is that my son? Is that Onani?”
“Mother!” Onani gasps, stumbling toward the voice.
A face looms out of a dark doorway, but it is no eyeless mask. It is a woman. She has a kind round face with full lips and soft brown eyes. “What is this, Onani?” the woman asks. “Who is this child?”
“She is my woman,” he says hoarsely. “I stole her from the Msanaa.”
“Oh, Onani! This is no woman. This is a baby!” the woman says scoldingly.
Hope shines through my misery like sunlight through storm-darkened clouds. I hold my arms out to her, and she scoops me from Onani’s grasp. She is a big woman with close-cropped hair. She folds me into the cleft of two enormous dugs and carries me into her dimly lit hut.
“Get the medicine woman,” she says as she lays me on a bed of soft furs. She swabs the sweat from my brow and examines my swollen arm. Her touch is light and careful, but I howl anyway. I cannot help myself. The pain is so bad I lose my grip on the waking world and slide back into the boiling darkness.
I do not know how long I lie here, only that days pass. The medicine woman comes and tends to me. She is old, the flesh of her face furrowed like the bark of a tree, her hair a white cloud around her head. She gives me a bitter infusion to drink, and wraps my swollen arm in an acrid-smelling poultice. The kind woman with the round face cares for me when the medicine woman is gone. I dream of my family, my little brother Mtundu, and then I wake, and Onani is watching over me. He pats my hand-- my good hand-- and smiles at me. I smile back at him as I drift away. It is like floating in warm water. Onani must have many sisters, I think later, when I wake again, because I am constantly surrounded by grave young women. They stare at me with round eyes and whisper to one another behind their hands. They bring me food and drink and clean me when I soil myself. Finally, in the middle of the night, the fever breaks. I wake, thinking my bladder has let go, but it is only sweat. The big woman soothes me when I try to rise.
“Shhh... lie back, little one. You are not well yet,” she says to me. The way she speaks is strange, but I understand her words, and I lie back as she has said.
“What is your name?” I ask. The words scrape through my throat like sharp stones, and I wince.
“I am Bula, Onani’s mother,” she says.
“My name is Zenzele.”
“I know. Onani has took you for his wife.”
I nod.
“You are a pretty thing, but too young to be married just yet.” She smiles at my worried expression. “Don’t fret, little one. I will look out for you until you are of age. Onani will just have to be patient.”
But Onani has already had intercourse with me, I think. We are already married. Nevertheless, I am comforted by the woman’s kindness. She has a gentle soul, like my father.
11
True to her word, Bula intercedes on my behalf. Onani objects, quite loudly, and I hide from his anger behind her thighs. But Bula is unafraid, and he relents. The medicine woman visits and pronounces me cured of my fever. My arm is scarred where the jackal gored me, but it is no longer swollen or painful.
When I am well enough to venture out, Onani’s mother allows me to roam the village freely. I explore. I play with the other Zul children. I miss my real home, my real family, but the company of Bula and her daughters helps to ease my homesickness. They treat me kindly, and I even form a friendship with one of Onani’s younger sisters, a girl named Atswaan. Onani departs. He does not say where he is going or why he is leaving, but he is absent from the village for nearly the full length of the rainy season. In his absence, I grow closer to his mother and sisters. I even begin to address them as if they are my own family. Mother Bula. Sister Atswaan. One night, I realize I can no longer remember the face of my real mother and I weep inconsolably.
As I explore my new surroundings, I notice a peculiar thing. There are very few men loitering about the village. Most of the eyes who follow me through the alleys when I leave Mother Bula’s hut each morning are female eyes. There are some very young boys, a few males who are old and gray-headed, but no men. I ask Mother Bula where all the men have gone, and she spares me a curious expression.
“Our men do not cohabit with us, as the men do in other tribes, Zenzele,” she answers. The expression she makes is proud and wistful, both at the same time. “They only visit when they wish to copulate, or to provide meat for the bellies of their children.”
“But who protects us?” I ask.
“We protect ourselves!” Bula laughs. “We do not need men to protect us!” She sighs, setting aside the basket she is weaving. “Let me tell you about men, little one. They are only good for two things: hunting and putting babies in your belly. Aside from that, all they do is fight and lie around giving orders to women, and we do not have the time or energy to put up with such foolishness. We have enough to do as it is. No... ours is the better way, my child. Let them visit, and be on their way when morning comes. Life is more pleasant that way.”
I am also intrigued by the Zul practice of scarring their flesh. All the adult women in Bula’s household have unique designs etched into their skin. Mother Bula’s cheeks and chin are inscribed with wavy lines. She says the markings represent water. She has always had an affinity with the element, she says, when I ask her about the markings. Even her name, Bula, is a symbol of her kinship with the element of life. It is the Zul word for hippopotamus.
“What is the symbol for air?” I ask, thinking of First Woman, whose spirit was a hawk, and the big woman takes up a stick and draws in the dirt. She makes a series of V shapes, one sitting inside another. It makes me think of birds, or clouds.
“Can I be marked with this symbol?” I ask.
Bula nods. “When you are older, child,” she says. “You are still two-natured. After you have had your womanhood rite, you can ask one of the elder men to put the symbol in your flesh.”
A few weeks later, I wake to find my sleeping furs soiled with blood. My thighs, too. The blood, I realize, is coming from my uke, and I wake Atswaan excitedly. “Look, Atswaan! I am bleeding!”
My adopted sister is just as excited as I am.
“You have become a woman, Zenzele!” Atswaan exclaims. “Now you can be wed to Onani, and we shall truly be sisters!” Overjoyed, we hug one another. I do not think of my real sisters at all.
Onani, who has returned, hears the good news from one of the old men in the village. He comes to visit. He thinks he comes to claim me for his wife, but Mother Bula disappoints him again.
“You know it is bad luck to lie with a woman who is two-natured,” she intones sternly. “The spirits will make her barren.”
I have never told Bula that Onani and I have already coupled, though we could not do it as a man and woman do it. I see from the expression on his face, when he peeks sideways at me, that this was a wise decision. He looks ashamed. His embarrassment makes me feel ashamed.
“Then let us summon the medicine woman,” he says. “She can perform the rite on Zenzele and Atswaan. They are both ready. You know Gungi wishes to be mated with Atswaan. He asks about her every time I see him.”
Bula sighs at her son’s impatience, but she does not object.
“What is this ritual?” I ask Atswaan later. “What does Mother Bula mean by ‘two-natured’?”
Looking amused, Atswaan explains, “Men and woman are born into this wor
ld with both sexes, Zenzele. Don’t you know this?”
I frown. I saw my younger brothers and sisters when they were born. They did not have two sexes. I say this to Atswaan and she shakes her head. “You do not understand. Boy’s are born with their male organ enfolded in flesh, which is female in nature. Girls are born with little peles secreted in theirs, which is male in nature.” When I am no more enlightened, Atswaan pulls up her skirt and says, “Look!” She spreads the lips of her uke and exposes a little bulb of flesh. “See my little pele?”
I peer closely. It does resemble a tiny pele... somewhat.
“And they cut it off?” I ask, laughing nervously.
Atswaan nods.
“This is done so that men and women are single-natured. When they are single-natured, men and women are drawn together, so that they may be whole. If they remained two-natured, they would not feel so compelled to marry. The desire would not be as powerful, or so the old ones say. Also, it is said that childbirth is easier when a woman is single-natured.”
It all sounds pretty dubious to me, but I desire many children, even if it is to be Onani who fathers them. At least the men and women here live separately. The longer I stay with the Zul, the more I like their living arrangement. It is peaceful.
“Does it hurt?” I ask.
Atswaan flaps her hand and says, “The boys endure it without complaint.”
So that is why Onani’s organ looks so strange! I think.
The day of the ritual is set. The men arrive early in the morning. They come in large groups and singly, and from every direction. After they greet their wives and play with all their children, there is a celebratory feast and then the old men get out shells filled with tinted ochre mixed with animal fat and spend several hours painting everyone’s faces. There is much chanting and dancing, and the younger girls adorn our hair with flowers. Atswaan and I-- and one other village girl, a young woman named Ghinini-- are escorted, finally, to the place where the ritual is to be conducted. Onani, his face painted with yellow and red horizontal bands, grins at me as I pass, and I smile back at him, my heart racing with anticipation and fear. I hate him, and yet I love him, too. I wonder: can a person’s heart be two-natured as well?
The Oldest Living Vampire In Love (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 3) Page 30
