by RB Schalin
Chapter 31
He watches the big centipede crawl over his hand while he is lying completely still. Just as it is about to crawl onto a leaf, it changes its mind and walks up his arm. The little feet tickle his skin as the insect moves up towards his shoulder and from there over and onto his back. It tickles something fierce, but he has to lie still. He looks to his left by only moving his eyes, and there is Taku, watching him. He turns his eyes back at what they were both watching before the insect showed up.
They are hidden in the foliage on a slope and below them there are two young Indian women washing and bathing in a small river. They are about two days march from the sunken town. Kerry has been with the tribe for more than two years now. He still thinks in English and dreams in the same language, but he now speaks their native language as well. It’s a very simple language, the pronunciation was hard to learn, but once he got it, it was easy to learn the words. He doesn’t miss Hogan or Julia, they are just an old memory, of a different time and a different Kerry.
When the wood structure broke under his weight the old man assumed the god was not pleased with his selection of sacrifices. Luckily for Kerry the old man decided he was a gift from the god and that he should be taken care off.
The first months were hard on Kerry. He still missed Hogan and Julia and hated the tribe for what they had done to them. He would sit in a dark corner just watching the little Indians scurrying around like roaches. No one approached him, and no one talked to him, it was like if he didn’t exist to them.
The old man would let him out into the sunlight once in a while, and the way he was kept under control was by binding one of his feet to a pole they drove into the ground, and then let him walk in circles. Kerry enjoyed the fresh air and the light, but one day he stepped on a snake and it bit him. When he screamed and fell down, one of the younger men happened to be close by and came running. He quickly killed the snake with a branch and then carried Kerry down underground. They were met by a couple of women who began screaming after the young man had told them what had happened. They quickly carried Kerry to a fire close by and one of the women disappeared, but came back with an old woman who knelt next to Kerry. She took his leg and put it over her's, and then she inspected the bite and said something to the young man who ran up to the surface again.
The pain was horrible, Kerry felt like someone had lit his blood on fire, and he screamed. When the young man came back, he was carrying several kinds of plants. The old woman quickly threw them into a clay pot with water which she placed over the fire. A few minutes later there was a sickening smell coming from the brew. She took the pot from the fire and poured half of the liquid along Kerry’s leg, from the knee downwards. He screamed again as the boiling br burned his skin. Then the old woman said something and the young man forced Kerry’s mouth open and the liquid was poured into his mouth, and that’s when he passed out.
When he woke up his throat was hurting, and he could hardly swallow. The burning pain in his leg was gone, but his skin felt like if he had been in the sun for hours. After a while a young Indian girl knelt beside him and with careful movements spread some salve on his leg. Then she gave him a clay cup with water, and when he drank it, he tasted something sweet in it. It must have been some sedative because she had hardly moved away before Kerry felt his eyes close and he drifted off to sleep.
He spent a week resting his leg and eventually he could stand up and move around. When he felt strong enough, he ventured up into the sun. One day he met the old man. He was sitting in the shade under a big leaf and waved him over. When Kerry sat down next to him, he began to talk, and didn’t stop for a long time. Kerry didn’t understand a word what he said, but he felt it was something important. When the old man stood up, he put a hand on Kerry’s head and looked him straight in the eyes, then said something and simply walked away.
After that, life changed drastically for Kerry, he was no longer teetered at a pole, but could walk around as he pleased. The hunters would watch him with respect in their eyes. One day one of the young men took Kerry by the arm and led him into the jungle. After walking a few yards the young man whose name was Taku held up a bamboo tube and a small dart. He showed Kerry how to use the weapon and gave it to him to try, and so began a close friendship that grew out of respect for each other. Taku taught him their language and customs, they spent hours practicing with the bamboo tubes and bow and arrow until Kerry was as good as any of the other hunters. During this time Kerry lost a lot of weight and after just a few months his skin was dark brown, tanned by the sun and muscled. He could run for extended periods of time, jumping from logs to branches and down on boulders, never stopping to catch his breath.
One evening Maguya, who Kerry learned was Taku’s grandfather, his own father had been killed a few years earlier during a raid, sat Kerry down by the wooden structure and began telling the story behind it.
The more he learned, the more amazed Kerry became. The tribe had been around since the time of the Conquistadors and that’s when they began their human sacrifice. It all began as a way to scare off the invaders. In the beginning they would catch a few invaders and skin one of them, and letting the others go to be a warning to others that may come after. This didn’t work so they just began to kill all of them. The Chief of the tribe at the time was old and very wise. He figured that if they could warn the invaders off before they even came close to their town, they might be left alone. He ordered mannequins to be built and on these they would put the skin of the soldiers they killed. The plan worked and they were left alone, but the people of the tribe thought that their god was the one who had helped them, and now he needed human sacrifice to keep the invaders away, and so began the constant hunt for new skins.
Kerry understood in the back of his mind that these people were primitive and could not be trusted. But at the same time he felt an enormous gratitude for them and even their evil god for letting him live. As time passed, he became increasingly sure that what had made the construction break and by doing so saved his life was a miracle granted by their god. Maybe he was meant to one day leave and return to his home to bring with him the knowledge he had and bring it into modern civilization.
