by Lin Oliver
“Pretty much what you’d think. Diana told her mom about you, she got furious, and they followed your trail. When they came across me and Singh, Dr. Reed asked if I wanted to go with them to the village. And since it turns out Old Man Singh isn’t such great company, and all his cane does is just help him limp around, I said, ‘Sure.’”
“What about the guys with the weapons?”
“I’m getting to that. After we crossed the bridge, we were swarmed by guys with axes and spears, but Dr. Reed played it so cool. I think she even speaks some of their language!”
“Where are Klevko and Dmitri?”
“Didn’t see them — I thought they were with you.”
“What is this, Crane?” Dr. Reed was saying to him, practically screaming, as she picked through the pile. “You gave them processed sugar?! Are you out of your mind? Some trinkets as gifts are one thing, but this pile of bribery is grotesque, Crane. Processed sugar? Really? Get out of here at once. I’m taking over this expedition.”
“No, Margaret, this is my expedition. You miserable woman, you’re nothing but a moocher. If it wasn’t for men like me, you’d be a bum. A bum! I generate the wealth in this world, and that gives pointy-headed snobs like you the luxury to spend their lives studying worthless nonsense. This is my mission.”
“Crane, really,” Dr. Reed said, her face turning almost purple and veins popping out in her forehead. “Just like your mother, you know nothing about the field of anthropology. You’re an amateur.” She looked like she was about to erupt, but suddenly she became aware that the villagers were watching her. She checked herself and smiled at them, giving an elegant curtsy to the chief, who had resumed his place at the head of the longhouse.
“How’d Diana do with all this?” I asked Hollis. “Was she scared?”
“She’s totally fine, except she hates your guts, bro.”
“Oh well, can’t win ’em all,” I said, and gave Diana a wave. She acknowledged me by raising her eyebrows, but didn’t wave back.
“Looks like it’s Diana’s turn to give you the silent treatment,” Hollis said. “You’re on a roll today, Leo.”
I sauntered over to Diana, approaching her and her group of admirers sideways, until I had managed to become part of the group. Diana gave me another one of those eyebrow-raising non-smiles and turned away.
“Diana, listen …” I started, and tugged at my hair. “Everything … it all just spiraled out of control, and —”
“Stop, Leo,” she interrupted, finally turning to me. I saw there was something gone from her eyes. She wasn’t the same person I’d gotten to know over the past few days, and I knew she wasn’t going to show me that person anymore.
“Can I just talk to you, Diana?”
“No, you can’t. I thought it was such an amazing stroke of luck that we wound up here together,” she said. “Almost written in the stars. I’d get to see this kid from my childhood who had grown up into an awesome person, someone I wanted to get to know. Someone who broke into warehouses, stole military experiments, and traveled around the world rescuing dolphins.”
“But I am that guy.”
“Oh really? Then why are you working for a bald creep who bribes these innocent people with candy bars and knives? Who are you, Leo? Wait — I don’t want to know, so just leave me alone, okay? Will you do me that one favor?”
“Okay,” I said, and walked back toward Hollis, my head hanging down on my chest.
“Didn’t look like it went well,” he said.
“Not at all, chief,” I said, feeling my chest start to really hurt.
“Probably went better than them,” he said, pointing to Dr. Reed and Crane, who were arguing nose to nose in hushed tones.
“So we’re at a stalemate, Margaret,” he said. “You’re not leaving, and I’m not leaving.”
“Fine,” she answered. “I’ve already accepted an invitation from the chief to stay for dinner and spend the night, so you won’t be getting rid of me any time soon.”
“Nor you I,” Crane said.
Suddenly, I felt someone grab my wrist, fingernails digging into my skin. The old medicine woman was back, but this time she held a long tube of bamboo to her lips and pointed it right at my head. She chanted a few words, made a spitting sound, and blew a huge puff of smoke right into my mouth.
“Hey! Stop it.”
But she was in another world. Her eyes were rolled almost all the way back in her head, and she was chanting, trembling, and rubbing her other hand vigorously against my scalp, all the while covering my chest with spit. It felt like there was a little pebble or hard piece of rock in her hand, because it hurt.
I tore myself free. By then, the longhouse had grown completely chaotic. Crane and Dr. Reed were arguing; Diana was surrounded by her gang of little kids; adults were eating all the candy bars and freaking out on sugar; Dr. Haga was standing there stunned and cleaning his glasses. Squawking chickens had even barged in and were being chased by gangs of kids.
The chief was sitting at the head of the longhouse, as relaxed as ever. Just when I felt like my head was about to explode, he made several tst, tst, tst whispering noises, and everyone froze. One of his men hit the gong, and when it faded out, there was silence.
The chief motioned with his arms for everyone to calm down, then spoke in his steady voice. Dr. Reed started to translate for Diana.
“You speak their language?” Crane said, suddenly Dr. Reed’s new best friend.
“I speak a similar dialect. They’ve transposed many of the vowel sounds and have a peculiar accent.”
“I don’t care about your linguistic gibberish,” he said. “I just want to know what he’s saying.”
“Shut up and let me listen, Crane.”
Hollis and I sidled up to Dr. Reed as well.
“The chief says he apologizes for the commotion,” she translated. “His village is not used to guests, and his people are very excitable.”
Then Dr. Reed began speaking directly to the chief in his language. Crane called over Dr. Haga and Kavi to translate her.
“She says she is happy to be here in Byong Ku,” Dr. Haga told us. “She says she is a wise woman from far away, and she traveled here because she loves to meet and learn from other people. She does not bring gifts or other such items to disrupt the harmony, but brings friendship and smooth water. She says the hairless man has brought poisonous food. She asks permission to take the poisonous food and destroy it.”
“That two-faced pig …” Crane muttered.
The chief paused and thought for a long time, tapping his lip and watching Dr. Reed’s face. She didn’t look him directly in the eye, just stood quietly and waited for him to speak. When he answered her in his steady voice, I asked Dr. Reed to translate — she was better than the two-man team of Kavi and Haga.
“The chief knows that the hairless man has brought rotten foodstuffs,” she said. “He sees how his people tremble and act crazy after they have eaten it.”
She paused and waited for the chief to go on. He was looking at Crane now and seemed to be addressing him.
“The chief thanks the hairless man for bringing the son of an old friend,” she said, “and for returning a special … some kind of item … I’m not familiar with the word. For this, he is grateful. But the hairless man has also brought many gifts with black magic.” At this point, she turned to Crane. “He is considering whether or not he will allow you to stay here until the river waters are less turbulent.”
“Well, tell him this from me,” Crane said. “I’m staying whether he invites me or not. I’m staying until he gives me what he owes me.”
“I’ll tell him no such thing.”
The chief sat silently for several minutes, deep in thought. At last, he spoke again.
“The chief says it is getting dark and is almost time to eat the evening meal,” she translated. “He has decided that we will have no more fighting but will all eat together, drink rice wine, tell stories, and enjoy our new fri
ends. Tomorrow, our new friends will go back to their lands. The foreign woman will take the rotten food with her. To destroy.”
He stopped talking, got up, and left. Just like that, he was done.
After that, the villagers went back to their normal routines — the women prepared rice and sweet potatoes and other food over open fires in the longhouse. The men went to the river to bathe and catch a few fish. The kids just chased the chickens around. Crane sat down with Dr. Haga by his pile of bribes and showed some of the villagers how to work the tools. Diana and Dr. Reed went on a tour of the longhouse and the surrounding area with one of the women. And Hollis and I threw on our backpacks and went out to explore on our own.
“So what happened to Mr. Singh?” I asked Hollis as we balanced on the amazing bamboo bridge over the stagnant river. Twilight was approaching, and the bugs were coming out.
“I left him back there with the stool,” he said, slapping at a mosquito on his forearm.
“Think he’s still there?”
“He said he’d be fine,” Hollis shrugged. “He said he was going to meditate and then boom, he just started chanting. He’s an odd dude.” Hollis shrugged and slapped another bug. “We should go back now, bro. Too many mosquitoes out here …”
“You go,” I said to Hollis. “I’ll meet you back there in five.”
“Make it three, Leo.”
After Hollis left, I pulled out the mini-cassette recorder from my pocket. It was an odd thing for my dad to leave behind. I tried to play it, but the batteries had been dead for years. Luckily, I had a few spare ones in my backpack. I was really excited when I put them in, hoping to hear something, some sort of special message from my dad, but the tape was completely blank — it had never even moved one rotation on its reel. Not to waste two perfectly good batteries, I made a quick recording of the frogs as they started to croak out their twilight songs, then hightailed back to the longhouse.
The whole house smelled of fresh chicken and pork, and rich aromatic spices. Along the central bamboo mat, the women had laid out dozens and dozens of bowls in a line on the ground, along with cloth napkins and jugs of juice. The villagers streamed in, sitting down in rows, as if the bamboo mat were a long dining-room table. They dug in as soon as bowls of food were brought to the table.
I found Hollis quickly.
“Better find a seat before there’s none left,” I said.
But the chief had other plans for us. He’d already reserved a bunch of seats surrounding him for all the foreigners. There was no arguing. Hollis, Crane, Dr. Haga, and I sat on one side of him. Dr. Reed, Diana, Kavi, and Cyril sat on the other.
“Allow me, Dr. Reed,” Crane said, taking her cup and pouring some rice wine into it. “No reason why we can’t be civil for one night, eh? If two enemies can’t enjoy a good meal and a strong drink after a hard-fought battle, who can?”
“I don’t like military metaphors, Crane,” she said. “But I’ll toast to a night of peace.”
They clinked glasses and each took a sip.
“Blech,” Crane grunted, and spit it out. “I could brew better rotgut in a toilet.”
Dr. Reed drained her glass in one swig, and Crane quickly refilled it. Hollis reached for the rice wine and started to pour some in his glass.
“I like your nerve, Hollis,” Crane said. “But this juice is for grown-ups. Can I top you off, Margaret?”
“Oh no, two’s my limit,” she said.
While the villagers chattered and had a great time, we ate in silence. The food was tasty, but my stomach was killing me. Diana was polite, ate with good manners, smiled at everyone, but didn’t even look at me.
After the meal, the women cleared the plates, set up their beds on the far side of the longhouse, and put their children to sleep. The chief invited us to gather in a circle around him, and one of his men brought him a huge ceramic jug. He took a big swig, poured a little out into a crevice in the floor, and then handed the jug around the circle, asking each of us to taste it. Crane made an exception for Hollis and me this time, as Dr. Reed did for Diana. The jug then circled back to the chief who took many more drinks and rose to his feet to speak, very talkative. Dr. Reed translated.
“It gives me great pleasure to have you in my house. I am a wise and just chief. I am a father to four, a grandfather to nine, and a great-grandfather to three. I am an expert hunter, and have killed many bears and wild cats. I am the fiercest warrior in my village; grown men tremble before me. I am Laki Jau. I have been chief for thirty-four years.”
The chief walked to the skulls on top of the ceremonial jars, rubbing the scalp of one, then after another sip of the rice wine, continued talking.
“Before me, my father was the chief, Urip Lao. Before him, Urip Liko. Before him, Urip Kila. Before him …”
The chief listed off about forty chiefs who had come before him, touching all the skulls atop the jars.
“… and before him, was the beginning of time. So you see, I am a proud chief.”
Dr. Reed spoke to him in his tongue, then reported to us what she’d said.
“I told the chief that where we come from, we have forgotten our story of how the world was made. I’ve asked him to share his, and he agrees.”
“Tell him to make it short,” Crane yawned. “I’ve had a long day.”
The chief took another tremendous swig from the jug, then Dr. Reed translated more.
“Before he begins the story, the chief apologizes for its telling. In long ago times, he says, the story used to be told in a more … pleasing voice … like birds. I think he means they used to sing the story. But many years ago, they forgot the melody to their story.”
“What a loss,” Crane snickered, but Dr. Reed ignored him.
“In the beginning of the world,” she translated from the chief, “when there was only water, there were two gods, Laki Tenangan and Doh Tenangan. They were twins, twins of one flesh. Conjoined. The twins created all the lands, the trees, the winds, the animals. They also created humans.”
At the mention of the conjoined-twin gods, I saw Crane’s eyes light up. He shot me a knowing glance, raising his eyebrow as if to say, See, what’d I tell you, that mask is worth a fortune. Dr. Reed didn’t notice. She was too busy concentrating on telling the chief’s story.
“The twins saw that the world was good, but that it was also filled with monsters, evil beings and subhumans who spread chaos and violence and destruction. So they roamed the lands, taming the chaos and destroying every subhuman their four eyes beheld. They brought order and harmony to the world, and the men and women lived in peace and knew immortality.
“Over time, the twins grew restless and longed for blood. They were too powerful and warlike for the peaceful world, so using a blade of gold, they split themselves in two. Laki Tenangan rose above the clouds, to dwell on the highest mountaintops, and Doh Tenangan went below the Earth, to rule the netherworld. They left the middle Earth for humans to rule, and soon the humans no longer knew immortality, and death came to our land.
“And so it was that after their vital spark went out, all humans of middle Earth had to travel to Doh Tenangan’s underworld, to the Land of the Dead. But they were unruly and would escape to disturb middle Earth’s peace. To punish them, Doh Tenangan forced them to dig tunnels underground. My great-grandfather told me that in his day, if a man stayed out too late hunting, he might chance to hear the dead in their underworld, hear the rumbling from beneath the ground, as the dead built their tunnels and toiled away for all of eternity.”
The chief paused and took another sip from the cup. From the other side of the longhouse, I heard the kids crying and settling into bed, and from outside, the croaking frogs and the shriek of insects.
“Will you ask him, Dr. Reed, where the Land of the Dead is?” I said. It had occurred to me that the other half of the mask just might reside there, if there was such a place.
Dr. Reed gave me a puzzled look.
“Excellent question, Leo,” Crane
said. “I like a boy with curiosity.”
Dr. Reed put my question to the chief and translated his answer.
“Byong Ku is near the center of the world, so it is near the Land of the Dead. After they split, each of the twins felt that he should be the one to rule middle Earth, and they have been fighting, like two brothers, for ten thousand years. The dead want to rule. The warriors of Byong Ku have sworn to keep the dead underground, and for that we are cursed.”
“And will you ask him, Dr. Reed,” Crane said, “if he would lead us to the Land of the Dead?”
“I most certainly will not.”
“Dr. Haga and Kavi, please step in.”
Kavi put the question to the chief, and immediately the chief’s face turned stern, and he waved his arms, saying no with all the force of his body.
“It is absolutely taboo,” Dr. Reed interpreted. “Under no circumstances is any foreigner allowed to visit the Land of the Dead. I won’t let you break their taboos, Crane, absolutely not. You cannot come here and simply —”
Suddenly, Dr. Reed stopped speaking and grabbed her throat. The color drained from her face, but she tried to go on.
“That’s not for me to decide. They have their rules … and … oh …”
She rubbed her forearm across her brow. Beads of sweat had suddenly broken out on her forehead. She put her head down and seemed to be struggling for breath.
“Mom, are you okay?” Diana said, taking her hand.
“I’m all right, sweetie … just a little …”
“Margaret, you’re pale as a ghost,” Crane observed, his voice detached and calm.
“I’m okay….” She swallowed hard. “Must have been that river fish … I think I’m gonna be sick.”
She bolted to her feet and clutching her stomach, dashed for the window, throwing up everything she’d eaten and then some.
“Charming,” Crane said. “That’s always a lovely way to impress your hosts.”
I know where the Land of the Dead is,” I whispered to Crane as we all waited in the longhouse for Dr. Reed’s attack of nausea to subside. Diana was at her mother’s side, trying to help by putting a cold cloth on her forehead.
