Other Worlds Were Possible, page 15
He tipped his head towards Sunny:
“And this young man would like a loincloth.”
Tobacco nodded in a manner which verged on the sarcastic.
“Ah, yes. It’s you, boyo… Oh yes, I remember this one! He helped to tan the leather, so he feels he’s owed a piece. Upon Mother Nature’s face! Yes, sisters, I remember this one.”
Sunny felt an urge to protest; to deny the connection. He had tanned the hides to help the tribe, not for personal gain. He felt he should get a new loincloth, because his old one was wearing thin. The two things were unrelated.
He pinched his lips. It was not his place to speak. And he sensed that Tobacco was trying to incite a reaction. It was in his self-interest not to object; to stay humble, and accept whatever happened.
Tobacco turned to Serenity:
“You think this boyo deserves it?”
Serenity nodded.
Tobacco threw her hands in the air.
“I don’t know what things are coming to! Back when I was a tattoo-less girl, we’d have never gifted a loincloth to someone who was already wearing one. We’d have never ceded to a boyo with such bendy logic… Does a butterfly need two pairs of wings? Does a frog need to tweet? Would you gift daylight to the sun?... But, alas, I suppose it’s a measure of the times… Ho humph… If no-one has any objections, I suppose he can have that tatty old good-for-nothing cloth in the corner… Yes, that one there. The one no-one else would take… Yes, yes, I know. Everyone else said they’d rather traipse about naked, than wear that scuzzy thing. But it’s all he deserves. Force it upon the boyo, even if he protests. Let it be a lesson.”
Sunny hesitated, before extending his hand, tentatively; unsure if he should accept an item which had been described in such derogatory terms. If it was as bad as Tobacco suggested, he would stick with the loincloth he had.
It was only when Sunny gripped the cloth between his fingers, lifted it to his face, performed a double take, doubted himself, and checked it again; that he finally accepted the truth. This was the loincloth he had requested. The one which was the perfect fit.
He frowned.
Tobacco winked. She almost smiled. Then she scowled, and bid him depart with a violent swoosh of her hand.
THE URGE TO DESTROY IS A CREATIVE URGE
Sunny squandered a couple more opportunities to get Hope alone. Overcome by nerves, he had panicked, stalled, stuttered and traipsed away.
Perhaps it was for the best. He would see a lot more of his lover once they had left this seasonal city. There would be far less competition for her attention.
A trumpet-like sound filled the valley:
Hoooooo. Hoomph-hoomph-hoomph. Huk-huk-huk, huk-huk-huk, hoooomph!
That noise rebounded off the cliffs, accosting Sunny’s ears for a second time. It was joined by the sound of several other instruments, producing a cacophony that could only mean one thing: The Great Feast was underway.
Over in the Sacred Circle, the setting sun was perfectly aligned with the largest pillars. It shone through the biggest pair, and hit the central totem, creating a shadow which dissected the tallest pillars on the opposite side. The rising moon could be seen through that gap, as it peeped up over the horizon.
This was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. The rainy season was almost over. But before the clans could depart, they had to gift homage to Mother Nature.
A twinkle flickered in Sunny’s eye; the reflection of a flame, held aloft on a club-like torch. That beacon was probably located on the opposite side of the avenue. But it could have been a smaller flame, positioned nearby. It was impossible to tell.
A second flare appeared. Then, a third. They glistened in the half-light of dusk; kissing the sky, blurring its pastel shades, disappearing, reappearing, appearing to vanish, then returning to life.
Now there were a hundred flames. Now there were a thousand. The camp glistened, as though awash with fireflies and stars.
The longer you looked at those splashes of light, the blacker everything else became. There was only lightness and darkness, the fire and the abyss.
Still the horns rang loud:
Hoomph-hoomph-hoomph. Huk-huk-huk.
Only now, they were met with a beat: The chuck-a-chuck rhythm of a thousand stomping feet. Sunny had already joined in, without realising what he was doing; pounding his soles as hard as he could, keeping immaculate time.
His arms were raised above his head, flaying like branches in a breeze.
If he had looked out at the camp, he would have seen the reflections of a thousand other limbs, each moving like his own; catching the light, succumbing to the shadows, and reappearing in different positions. But Sunny was not looking outwards. He was looking inwards; melting into the beat, swaying; trance-like, rhythmic and free.
Now he was amidst the teepees. Now he was in the central avenue. Now he was aside the Sacred Circle; marching around and around and around.
He could not recall how he had arrived in this place. He could not recall how he had found himself with a piece of meat in one hand, and a pipe in the other. He did not particularly care. He had given himself to the moment; eating as others ate, smoking as others smoked, stomping in time with their feet; flowing rather than moving.
The aroma of melted fat wafted above their heads. Still, the horns rang loud. Only now, they were accompanied by the ding of clapping hands.
A young girl perched atop the central totem. Adorned in the finest pelts, she would have looked like a mythical creature, had she not also been wearing beads.
Unelected, small and feeble; that girl was controlling the crowd with a bison’s skull. Whenever she raised that object, the people beneath it parted. Whenever she jabbed it in a certain direction, the adults rushed that way.
This was the upside-down world of the feast: The first were last, and the last were first.
The young girl was not alone. Almost every child was wearing a pair of antlers. The smallest children were wearing the largest ones. The woman who had Down syndrome was inside the Sacred Circle; running about, setting the pace for the others to follow. The man with dwarfism was skipping a different path.
Those two seemed different. The man flashed red, then yellow, then white. The woman grew taller and taller, until her head had pierced the clouds. Sunny might have questioned the evidence of his eyes. He might have deduced that their food had been laced with magic mushrooms. But Sunny was not questioning or deducing. He was feeling; allowing a warmth to bubble up within him, as the pillars grew feet, and marched alongside the crowd.
Those pillars were jogging. They were running. They were launching themselves towards the sky, returning to their original positions, hooting and clapping along.
More food appeared in Sunny’s hands.
Protectress, the priestess who had challenged Father Ralph, began to rub herself against the totem. She was naked, purple and green.
She was chanting a traditional prayer:
“Ancestors, oh ancestors: We thank you for your protection.
“Mother Nature, our mother: We thank you for your fruit.”
These words could be heard long after Protectress was done. Perhaps they were repeated by the crowd. Or perhaps they were echoes, which were reverberating off the blare of claps and horns.
“Protect us when we leave, leave, leave. Feed us forever more.
“Skip-bop, da doo-bop. Screech!”
***
On they marched. Around and around and around. The sky was yellow. It was amber, magenta and cerise; a different colour each time you looked.
Sunny found himself atop the tallest cliff…
Beneath him lay the image of a woolly mammoth, which had been cut into the chalk beneath the earth. That image was so large, it had to be viewed from up high; a gift to the ancestors above.
Sunny could believe his eyes. This was no hallucination. And now it made sense: Hope had left early each morning, to help create this art.
There was more…
Beyond the distant mounds and pyramids, stood two giant figurines: A woman and a man, both made of wicker, and both dressed in a coat of flames. Several spirits were dancing by their feet. Their bodies were formed of fire, and their faces were made of smoke.
At first, Sunny supposed they could not be real. They were double the height of most people. But then he saw someone he recognised: His dead uncle. He spotted someone else: A woman who had died during childbirth. And now he understood. Their ancestors had returned for this special occasion, when Mother Nature was allowed to break her rules.
Sunny blinked. When he reopened his eyes, he was back at the Sacred Circle, marching around and around. Only now, a torch was in his hand. He was setting fire to the pillars; stepping back, watching on as they succumbed to the flames; rushing forwards, and pushing them over.
The camp’s refuse was thrown on top of the fire. Everything had to go.
Sunny was eating.
He came to his senses. The man with dwarfism was no longer flashing in different colours. The woman with Down syndrome had returned to her normal height. Sunny’s mind was clear. But his body longed for completion.
He ran free from the crowd, and the crowd ran free from him. Everyone turned together, at the same time, as though compelled by a collective urge.
Sunny headed towards the camp.
He launched himself feet-first at one of the larger tents, rebounded off its side, and crashed down upon his elbow. Cringing with pain, he watched on as someone else performed a remarkably similar act.
Now they were jumping together; hugging onto the pole, as it tumbled to the ground.
Now they were trampling the tarpaulin.
As the Sacred Circle burnt in the distance, consumed by fire and flame; so the tents came down around them. Everyone was acting together, destroying everything they had built.
Tomorrow, this camp would be little more than dust. But tonight was about this moment; killing this city, so the clans could be reborn anew. For nothing was permanent. No social order was ever fixed. Every system had its time; a time to grow, a time to rule, and a time to be destroyed.
THE MORNINGS AFTER THE NIGHTS BEFORE
The next world had usurped the last...
Those tents which had not been toppled, were dismantled the following morning. Their tarpaulins were bundled into packets, and their poles were stored in the caves. Several clans had already departed. Several more were about to leave.
Sunny wiped the sleep from his eyes, dazzled by the sweetness of sadness; melancholic at the thought of leaving, but excited for the adventures which lay ahead.
The sky was cloudless, which made the air feel dry, and allowed the sunrise to spill across the vista; eggshell, vanilla, plum and baby pink.
It all seemed so ephemeral. If a great city could vanish overnight, then why not the stars and the moon? Why not the earth beneath their feet?
These thoughts evaporated from Sunny’s mind the moment he spotted Hope.
She almost smiled. She almost winked. As though playing a game; as though she knew how Sunny felt, and was happy to exploit it; she neither smiled nor winked. She stopped short on the cusp of a greeting, allowed her face to freeze between emotions, and allowed her feet to come to a rest. She stood still for half a moment, before retreating into a cave.
Sunny laughed. He was happy to play along; certain he would have Hope to himself, shortly after they had departed.
A bird tweeted a single note, the elders descended the cliff, and the others followed. They passed through the remains of the camp, traversed the valley, and arrived at the riverbank; where they rested, built some rafts, and readied themselves for the day.
***
It would not have made sense to come this way whilst making their outbound journey. It would have required an almighty effort to paddle against the current. But things were easier now they were heading downstream. They could board their rafts, sit back, and go with the flow; covering a distance which would have taken several days to walk.
Come nightfall on the third day, they reached their ancestral forest. It had been their intention to deposit the corpse of an elder named Delight; the only member of their clan who had died at the Big Camp. Delight’s body had been preserved and stored in an empty cave, in anticipation of this moment.
The clan’s ritual had not changed for as long as anyone could remember: They bound the cadaver’s wrists on either side of a branch, leaving their body to dangle. They prayed. And they waited for the eagles to arrive, consume the person’s flesh, and free their spirits; enabling them to return to the ancestral realm, here in this holy forest.
This was sacred ground. The other clans were well aware of this fact. Even the neighbouring tribes respected this place.
It came as a ghastly surprise, therefore, to discover that this vast space was now barren. Stumps pockmarked the landscape for as far as the eye could see. Even the bushes and plants appeared to be withdrawing. It smelled all wrong; a little of sap, and a little of sawdust. Small birds were hopping from stump to stump, disorientated; vainly attempting to find their former homes, or their young, or anything which might guide them.
As if of one mind, everyone followed Landscape, their de facto leader; tiptoeing forwards; inspecting the scene with their fingers, noses and eyes.
Their soundlessness swallowed the hum of the wild.
Sunny squatted down beside a stump, ran his finger along the cusp, and was surprised to find a series of jagged marks. This forest had not succumbed to Mother Nature; to a storm, or flood, or fire. Each tree had been felled by a peculiar type of blade.
His stomach contracted.
Sunny had been struck by something so obvious, he was embarrassed not to have noticed it before: The trunks and branches had all disappeared! Only the stumps and leaves remained. But why? Surely no human would have deliberately destroyed an entire forest, just to use its wood. Why would anyone need so much? The members of their clan had been known to fell a single tree. They had used the wood from a few trees at a time. But a whole forest? How could a person fall victim to such a debilitating bout of greed?
Spotting his kinfolk, who were disappearing into the distance, Sunny sprang to his feet and gave chase. But as he made his way, he noticed something new: Several saplings had been planted in the spaces between the stumps. They were aligned in an almost perfect grid. And there was something else. Sunny did not realise it at first. But the more he looked, the more he could not help but notice a peculiar thing: These saplings were all the same!
What sort of monster would cut down a beautiful forest, and attempt to replace it with such an abomination? Did the people who planted these saplings not understand that trees grew best when surrounded by different trees? That the decaying leaves from some plants, provided nutrients for others? That different plants attracted different insects? That these insects ate each other; ensuring that there were never too many pests, and that no individual species was attacked by all the pests? Forests were a varied and wonderful ecosystem, in which every agent played its part. But this? This desert of identical saplings was an aberration. Mother Nature was bound to reject it.
Sunny reached his mother, who was shaking her head.
“Rubber.”
Sunny frowned.
“Rubber? Mother kindest: Rubber?”
“Rubber… All rubber… Rubbery, rubber trees. They’re not even that great. Too sappy. No fruit… Rubber… All rubbery, rubbery rubber.”
Sunny paused to think. But his mind drew a blank.
“I don’t understand.”
“Rubber.”
“Rubber?”
“Rubber… Sappy, sappy rubber.”
The other members of their clan were reacting in different ways. Some were also muttering. Only they were stumbling over the tops of different words: “Gone”. “War”. “Obscene”. Others were smacking their lips, tutting, grinding their teeth, or clutching their ears. Some were going from stump to stump, trying to make sense of it all. A few were crying. One person was on her knees, running her fingers through the soil.
Sunny fell into a slow, trance-like state; swaying in figures-of-eight, despite his ongoing attempts to stand still. It was all he could do. Their clan had a fable for almost every calamity they could imagine; for ambushes, raids, murders, abductions and war. But Sunny had never heard a tale about anything quite so perverted as this. It could only mean one thing: Nothing like this had ever happened before.
How were they supposed to react?
***
By the time Sunny came to his senses, the sun had already set. His peers had gathered, and Serenity was breaking the silence:
“Sistren: We must make a decision. We can hang Delight here. Or we can take his body to another wooded area. A new ancestral forest.”
Sparrow replied with violent words, but a passive voice; as though he felt a need to speak, but lacked the energy to fight.
“Don’t get too big for your feet, you old power prigger. You jelly-lipped tyrant. You authority whore and stealer of words.”
Kitten echoed her companion:
“Brigand! Tut, tutty-tut-tut, tutty-tut… Don’t you think we can’t see your inverted spirits; inside-out and attempting to flee? Oh yes, Serenity Boy. Your wooden neck and golden tongue are as visible as the sun, now we’ve emerged from the city smog.”
Such comments were not a slight on Serenity himself. It was the clan’s custom to ridicule their former representative, whoever it happened to be, soon after they left the Big Camp. This served a purpose: It humbled that individual, reminding them that they were just a regular member of the clan, without any special powers.
Yet Sparrow’s and Kitten’s insults were missing the pizzazz of days-gone-by. They were going through the motions; mocking Serenity out of a sense of duty, without the jovial spite which usually accompanied their words.
