Fortchee broke into a lurching, struggling gallop. He triggered me and I jumped forward into a gallop too, slipping on rocks, heaving my way up the slope. It was like a nightmare where something keeps pulling you back. I heaved myself up onto the summit and saw Leveza, sitting on the ground, Fortchee stretching down to breathe into her ears.
She was staring ahead. Fortchee looked up at me with such sadness.
Before he could speak, Leveza turned her heavy jaws, her great snout toward the sky and mourned, whinnying now a note for the dead.
"They got the Lump,” said the Head Man, and turned and rubbed her shoulders. Her saddle-pack was torn. The baby was gone. Leveza keened, rocking from side to side, her lips forming a circle, the sound coming from far back and down her throat.
"Leveza,” said Fortchee, looking forlornly at me.
"Leveza,” I agreed, for we knew that she would not forget Kaway soon.
The rest of us, we lose a child, we have another next year; we don't think about it; we can't afford to. We're not strong enough. They die, child after child, and the old beloved aunties, or the wise old men who can no longer leap away. We can hear them being eaten. “Remember me! I love you!” they call to us, heartbroken to be leaving life and leaving us. But we have to forget them.
So we go brittle and shallow, sweet and frightened, smart but dishonest.
Not Leveza. She suddenly snarled, snatched up her rifle, rocked to her feet, and galloped off, after the Cats.
"She can't think that she can get him back!” I said.
"I don't know what she can think,” said Fortchee.
The others joined us and we all stood haunches pressed together. None of us went to help, not even me, her beloved groom-mate. You do not chase prides of Cats to rescue anyone. You accept that they have been taken.
We heard distant shots, and the yelping of Cats. We heard hooves.
"She's coming back,” whispered Grama and glanced at me. It was as if the hills themselves had stood up to stretch to see if things looked any different. A Horse had been hunting Cats.
Leveza appeared again at the top of the hill and for a moment I thought she had wrought a miracle, for her child dangled from her mouth.
Then I saw the way she swayed when she walked, the dragging of her hooves. She baby-carried a tiny torn head and red bones hanging together by tendons and scraps of skin. Suddenly she just sat on the ground and renewed her wailing. She arched her head round and looked down at herself in despair. Her breasts were seeping milk.
She tried to make the bones drink. She pushed the fragments of child onto her dugs. I cantered to her, lost my footing, and collapsed next to her. “Leveza. Love. Let him be."
She shouted up into my face with unseeing eyes. “What am I supposed to do with him?"
"Oh Leveza,” I started to weep for her. “You feel things too much."
"I'm not leaving him!"
You're supposed to walk away. You're supposed to leave them to the birds and then to the sun and then to the rains until they wash back into the earth.
To come again as grass. We eat our grandmothers, in the grass. It shows acceptance, good will toward the world to forget quickly.
Leveza began to tear at the thin pelt of ground that covered the rocks. She gouged at it, skinning her forefingers, broke open the sod, and peeled it back. She laid the scraps on the bare rock, and gently covered what was left of him as if with a blanket. She tucked him in and began to sing a soft milklight song to him.
It simply was not bearable. If a child dies through sickness you take it away from camp, and let the birds and insects get to it. Then later you dance on the bones, to break them up into dust to show scorn for the body and the heart to accept fate.
The Head Man came back, and bumped her with his snout. “Up, Leveza. We must keep moving."
Leveza stroked the ground. “Good night Kaway. Sleep Kaway. Grow like a seed. Become beautiful Kaway grass."
We muttered and murmured. We'd all lost people we love like that. Why should she keen and carry on, why should she be different?
"I know it's hard,” said Lindalfa. Unspoken was the “but."
Love can't be that special. Love must not cost that much. You'll learn, Leveza, I thought, like all the others. You'll finally learn.
I was looking down at her in some kind of triumph, proved right, when Leveza stood up, and turned everything upside down again.
She shook the tears out of her eyes and then walked away from me, shouldering past Fortchee as if he were an encumbrance. Tamely we trooped after her. She went to a wagon and reloaded her gun. She started to troop back down the hill in the direction of the rock.
"That's the wrong way, isn't it?"
"What's she doing?"
Fortchee called after her, and when she didn't answer, he looked deeply at me and said. “Follow her."
I whinnied for her to wait and started to trot down the hill.
Her determined stomp became a canter, then, explosively a kind of leaping, runaway gallop, thundering slipshod over stones and grass, threatening to break a leg. I chortled the slow-down cry but that checked her only for a moment. At the foot of the Rock she slid to a halt, raising dust.
She leveled her gun at the head of the wounded Cat. A light breeze seemed to blow her words to me up the slope. “Why do we need predators?"
The Cat groaned, its eyes still shut. “The Ancestors destroyed the world."
I reached them. “Leveza, come away,” I nickered.
The Cat swallowed heavily. “They killed predators.” All her words seemed to start with a growl.
Leveza went very still, I flanked her, and kept saying, leave her, come away. Suddenly she pushed the gun at me. “Shoot her if she moves."
I hated guns. I thought they would explode in my hands, or knock me backward. I knew carrying a gun made you a target. I didn't want the gun; I wanted to get us back to safety. I whinnied in fear.
She pushed on back up the hill, “I'm coming back,” she said over her shoulder. I was alone with a Cat.
"Just kill me,” said the Cat. The air was black with her blood; everything in me buzzed and went numb. Overhead the scavengers spiraled and I was sure at any moment other Cats would come. Climb the Rock! I told myself, but I couldn't move. I looked up at the trail.
Finally, finally Leveza came back with another gun and a coil of rope.
"Don't you ever do that to me again!” I sobbed.
She looked ferocious, her mane bristling, teeth smiling to bite out flesh. “You want to live, you put up with this,” she said. I thought she said it to me.
"What are you fabricating now?” I hated her then, always having to surprise.
She bound the Cat's front paws together, and then the back, and then tied all four limbs to the animal's trunk. Leveza seized the mouth; I squealed and she began to wrap the snout round and round with rope. Blood seeped in woven patterns through the cord. The Cat groaned and rolled her eyes.
Then, oh then, Leveza sat on the ground and rolled the Cat onto her own back. She reached round and turned it so that it was folded sideways over her. Then she turned to me. “I don't suppose there's any chance of you giving me a hand?"
I said nothing. All of this was so unheard of that it triggered nothing, not even fear.
Slowly, forelegs first, Leveza stood up under the weight of the Cat. The Cat growled and dug in those great claws, but that just served to hold her in place. Burdened, Leveza began to climb the hill, her back beginning to streak with blood. I looked up. Everyone was bunched together on the brow of the ridge. I had no words, I forgot all words. I just climbed.
As we drew near, the entire herd, every last one of them including her groom-mother Alez formed a wall of lowered heads. Go back, get away. I think it was for the Cat, but it felt as if it were for us. Leveza kept coming. Hides started to twitch from the smell of Cat blood carried on the wind. Leveza ignored them and plodded on. The men had also come back with the carts. Old Pronto in harness tried
to move sideways in panic and couldn't.
"Think,” she told him. “For a change."
He whinnied and danced in place on the verge of bolting with one of our main wagons.
"Oh for heaven's sake!” She plucked out the pin of his yoke with her teeth and he darted away, the yoke still on his shoulders. He trotted to a halt, and then stood there looking sheepish.
Leveza rolled the Cat onto the wagon, tools clanking under the body. Brisk and business-like, she picked up pliers, and began to pull out, one by one, all of the Cat's claws.
The poor beast groaned, roared, and shivered, rocking her head and trying to bite despite her jaws being tied shut. The Cat flexed her bloodied hands and feet but she no longer had claws. It seemed to take forever as the air whispered about us.
Undirected, all of us just stared.
When it was over, the Cat lay flat, panting. Leveza then took more rope, tied it tight ‘round the predator's neck, lashing the other end to the yoke fittings. She then unwound the rope from her jaws. The Cat roared and rocked in place; her huge green fangs smelling of blood. Leveza took a hammer and chisel, and began to break all the Cat's teeth.
Fortchee stepped forward. “Leveza. Stop. This is cruel."
"But necessary or she'll eat us."
"Why are you doing this? It won't bring Kaway back."
She turned and looked at him, the half wheel of her lower jaw swollen. “To learn from her."
"Learn what?"
"What she knows."
"We have to get moving,” said the Head Man.
"Exactly,” she said, with flat certainty. “That's why she's in the cart."
"You're taking her with us?” Everything on Fortchee bristled, from his mane to his handsome goatee.
She stood there, and I think I remember her smiling. “You won't be able to stop me."
The entire herd made a noise in unison, a kind of horrified, wondering sigh.
She turned to me with airy unconcern and asked. “Do you think you could get me the yoke?"
Pronto tossed it at her with his head. “Here, have it, demented woman!"
I started to weep. “Leveza, this won't bring him back. Come, love, let it be, leave her alone and let's go."
She looked at me with pity. “Poor Akwa."
* * * *
Leveza pulled the wagon herself. Women are supposed to carry guns; men haul the wagon, two of them together if it is uphill.
I tried to walk with her. No one else could bear to go near the prickling stench of Cat. It made me weep and cough. “I can't stay."
"It's all right, love,” she said. “Go to the others, you'll feel safer."
"You'll be alone with that thing."
"She's preoccupied."
Unable to imagine what else to do, I left.
We migrated on. All through that long day, Fortchee did not let us sleep, and we could sometimes hear Leveza behind us, tormenting the poor animal with questions.
"No,” we heard her shout. “It's not instinct. You can choose not to eat other people!"
The Cat roared and groaned. “Sometimes there is nothing else to eat! Do you want us to let our children die?"
Leveza roared back. “Why take my baby then? There was no....” She whinnied loud in horror, and snorted in fury. “There was no meat on him!"
The Cat groaned. She was talking, but we couldn't hear what she said. Leveza went silent, plodding on alone, listening to the Cat. She fell far behind even the rear guard of afriradors who were supposed to protect stragglers. Already it was slightly as though she did not exist.
The light settled low and orange, the shadows grew long. I kept craning behind us but by then I could neither see nor hear Leveza.
"They'll attack her! She'll be taken!” I nickered constantly to Grama.
She laid her head on my neck as we walked. “If anyone can stand alone against Cats, it's her."
We found no outcropping. On top of a hill with a good view all around, Fortchee lifted himself up and trod the air, whinnying. The men in the carts turned left and circled. “Windbreaks!” called the Head Man. We all began to unload windbreak timbers, to slot down the sides of the carts, to make a fortress. I kept looking back for Leveza.
Finally she appeared in the smoky dusk hauling the Cat. Froth had dried on her neck. She looked exhausted; her head dipped as if chastened.
Fortchee stepped in front of her. “You can't come into the circle with that cart."
She halted. Burrs and bracken had got tangled in her mane. She stared at the ground. “She's tied up. She's very weak."
Fortchee snorted in anger and pawed the dirt. “Do you think anybody could sleep with a Cat stinking up the inside of the circle?"
She paused, blinked. “She says the other Cats will kill her."
"Let them!” said Fortchee.
Without answering, Leveza turned and hauled the cart away from the camp. Fortchee froze, looked at her, and then said, “Akwa, see to your groom-mate."
Something in that made Grama snort, and she came with me. As we walked toward the carts, we pressed together the whole length of our bodies from shoulder to haunch for comfort.
Grama said, “She's reliving what happened to Grassa."
"Grassa?"
"Her mother. She saw her eaten, remember?"
"Oh yes, sorry.” I did the giggle, the giggle you give to excuse forgetting, the forgetting of the dead out of embarrassment and the need to keep things light. “Anyway,” I said, “you made things hard enough for her when she was young."
Grama hung her head. “I know.” Grama had tried to bully Leveza until she'd head-butted her, though two years younger.
It's not good to remember.
Leveza had already climbed up into the cart, without having watered or grazed. Her eyes flicked back and forth between me and Grama. “Grama, of course, how sensible. Here.” She threw something at me and without thinking I caught it in my mouth. It was a bullet, thick with Cat blood and I spat it out.
"Fortchee wouldn't thank you for that. He's always telling us to save metal. Grama, love, do you think you could bring us bark-water, pain killers, thread?"
Grama's hide twitched, but she said, “Yes, of course."
Leveza reached around and tossed her a gun. “Watch yourself. I'll keep my gun ready too."
Grama picked up the bullet, then trotted back through the dusk. I felt undefended but I could not get up into the wagon with that thing. Leveza stood on hindquarters, scanning the camp, her gun leveled. As Grama came back with a pack, Leveza's nostrils moved as if about to speak.
"They're here,” she said.
Grama clambered up into the cart. I couldn't see the Cat behind the sideboards, but I could see Grama's eyes flare open, her mane bristle. Even so, she settled on her rear haunches and began to work, dabbing the wounds. I could hear the Cat groan, deep enough to shake the timber of the cart.
Leveza's tail began to flick. I could smell it now: Cat all around us, scent blowing up the hillside like ribbons. The sunset was full of fire, clouds the color of flowers. Calmly Grama sewed the wound. Leveza eased herself down, eyes still on the pasture, to feel if Grama's gun was loaded.
"Her name's Mai, by the way,” said Leveza. Mai meant Mother in both tongues.
The Cat made a noise like Rergurduh, Rigadoo. Thanks.
Leveza nickered a gentle safety call to me. I jumped forward, and then stopped. The smell of Cat was a wall.
"Get up into the cart,” said Leveza in a slow mothering voice.
It was the Terrible Time, when we can't see. Milklight fills the night, but when the sky blazes and the earth is black, the contrast means we can see nothing. Leveza reached down, bit my neck to help haul me up.
I was only halfway into the cart when out of that darkness a deep rumble formed words. “We will make the Horses eat you first."
Leveza let me go to shriek out the danger call, to tell the others. I tried to kick my way into the cart.
"Then while you cr
y we will take their delicious legs."
I felt claws rake the back of my calves. I screamed and scrambled. A blast right by my ears deafened me; I pulled myself in; I smelt dust in the air.
Leveza. How could she see? How could she walk upright all day?
She touched a tar lamp, opened its vent, and it gave light. “Aim for eyes,” she said.
We saw yellow eyes, narrow and glowing, pure evil, hypnotizing. Ten, fifteen, how many were there, trying to scramble into the wagon?
Grama shot. Leveza shot. I had no gun and yearned to run so stamped my feet and cried for help. Some of the eyes closed and spun away. I looked at Mother Cat. She had folded up, eyes closed, but I was maddened and began to kick her as if she threatened my child. The sun sank.
Finally we heard a battle cry and a thundering of hooves from the circle. Leveza bit my neck and threw me to the floor of the cart. My nostrils were pushed into a pool of Cat juices. I heard shots and metal singing through the air. Our mares were firing wildly at anything. Why couldn't they see?
"Put that lamp out!” shouted Fortchee. Leveza stretched forward and flicked it shut. Then in milklight, our afriradors took more careful aim. I felt rather than heard a kind of thumping rustle, bullets in flesh, feet through grass. I peered out over the sides of the wagon and in milklight, I saw the Cats pulling back, slipping up and over rocks, crouching behind them. I lay back down and looked at Mother Cat. She shivered, her eyes screwed shut. A Cat felt fear?
We could still smell them, we could still hear them.
Fortchee said, “All of you, back into the circle. You too, Leveza."
She snuffled from weariness. “Can't!"
I cried, “Leveza! Those are real Cats, they will come back! What you care about her?"
"I did this to her,” Leveza said.
Fortchee asked, “Why do other Cats want to kill her?"
A deep voice next to me purred through broken teeth. “Dissh-honour."
Chilled, everyone fell silent.
"Alsho, I talk too much,” said Mother Cat. Did she chuckle?
I pleaded. “Choova misses you; she wants her groom-mummy; I miss you; please, Leveza, come back!” Fortchee ordered the men to give her a third gun and some ammo.
FSF, October-November 2008 Page 8
