Other Worlds Were Possible, page 2
Nothing.
Supposing he had little to lose, Sunny led the ox between the two rows of huts which gave shape to their Small Camp; the place they called home during the dry season. He had already jinked his way through the clan’s allotment; a hotchpotch of plants, which skirted around the southern end of this encampment, blurring the border between their home and the scrublands which lay beyond; an unnervingly flat expanse; dusty, dry, yellowish, amber and bronze. Now he was strolling down this avenue, which had formed organically over the course of a hundred generations. None of the tiny flowers, which filled the grasslands to the north, could be found on this earthen track. It was a perfect desert; hard-packed, impeccably smooth, without a crack or dent in sight. A visitor might have supposed it had been designed this way. But the clans-folk had never maintained this space, unlike the fire pit which took pride of place at the opposite end of the lane. A few of the elders did take care of that circle; the place where the clans-folk roasted their meat and held their parliaments. They swept that space every morning and most afternoons.
Sunny came to a stop in the shade of one of the twenty-six bulbous trees which lined this road. They were all alike; emerald spheres, which towered above their podgy trunks; balancing precariously, as though they might tumble at any moment. Those trees provided a certain symmetry to the camp. There were two of them between each hut. And they served a purpose; supplying the shade which cooled this place when the heat became too much to bear.
There were only two seasons in this region; a rainy season, and a slightly longer dry season. The rainy season was characterised by daily showers. They did not last for long, but they were intense; pounding the ground, churning the earth, and flooding the land. The dry season was oppressive. The air was so dry, it glistened. The heat could cook an egg. The tribes-folk had evolved to tolerate these temperatures. But they were still grateful for the shade these trees supplied.
Sunny took a breath, allowed the shadows to stroke his skin, and gazed along the lane.
Something caught him by surprise: There were people in almost every hut. They seemed to have stopped what they were doing, just to stare at him. Or at least, Sunny felt they were staring at him. In the days which were to follow, he would question if this had really been the case. But in that moment, he had no such doubts.
He led the ox a little further up the lane, reached the silent couple, stopped, and addressed the woman, who was called Aura:
“Dearest Auntie Aura: Feast your eyes upon this.”
Aura lifted her face, revealing a maze of tattooed lines; bluish, bruised and blurred. Every adult in their tribe had facial tattoos, but Aura had more than most. Her face was a leathery canvas, confused by a mishmash of patterns, which had been drawn by an array of different artists, over the course of hundreds of seasons. It took quite an effort to work out which line belonged to which pattern, and to focus on that design, whilst ignoring the surrounding fuzz.
Aura was wearing the type of loincloth which was worn by almost everyone in their tribe. It was made from two pieces of antelope hide, which had been stitched together with boar sinew, such that the front piece covered her genitalia, and the rear piece covered her buttocks. She wore her hair in the style which was common among a few of the local clans; tying it into plaits, before combining those plaits into a bun. Her neck was decorated with ivory pearls, and her wrists were adorned with eggshell beads. But the rest of her body remained as naked as the day she was born, covered in nothing but these bluish tattoos.
Whilst her attire made Aura look like any other member of her clan, her features marked her apart. Her face was longer and thinner than any other face Sunny had ever seen. Her teeth were skew-whiff. They pointed outwards in different directions, and met her gums at different angles; they were different shapes, shades and sizes. Time had not been kind to Aura’s body. But she still retained an unflinching femininity. People said that she had been a wondrous beauty in her youth. All the men had desired her body. And, since she was a generous person, she had shared it with anyone who had asked.
“Oh, that?” she finally replied, with an almost aggressive form of disinterest.
“Yes, Auntie.”
“That old bag of skin and bones?”
“Well… Auntie… Can’t you see? This is a fantabulous beast!”
“Beast? It’s beastly, that’s for sure. All I see is limp skin and withered bones. Its own mother must have been ashamed of the wretched thing.”
Sunny tried to suppress a frown. Surely Aura was mistaken. She was old. She was probably losing her sight.
He changed tack, turning to address Aura’s friend, a man named Sparrow.
Sparrow was also wearing a loincloth. His hair was also plaited, and his skin was also awash with tattoos. But despite these things, Sparrow and Aura could not have looked less alike. Though they were a similar age, time had been gentle with Sparrow. His teeth were still aligned, white, and well-proportioned. His face was neither too long nor too short, too wide nor too narrow. Yet it was hard to imagine that he had ever been handsome. There was nothing wrong with Sparrow’s appearance. Everything was where it was supposed to be. But it lacked character. It was scientific, not artistic; too average to catch one’s attention, too blurry to pique one’s interest, and too plain to inspire warmth or love.
“Beloved uncle: What do you say?”
“Bag of bones. Worthless. You must have burnt off more energy, dragging this creature home, than you’ll ever get from the crumbs of meat on its shrunken carcass.”
Sunny stalled:
“But… It’s just… Well, I wanted to share it. Won’t you do me the honour?”
“What would I want with that?”
“To eat it, uncle.”
“Eat what? I’d have to eat its horns, because there’s certainly no meat on its body.”
Sunny froze.
It was probably for the best. It would have been disrespectful to argue with his elders. And he could still share this gift with the other members of their clan.
He bowed his head, backed away, and continued down the lane.
But he could not let the matter rest.
Hungry for validation, he paused outside the next hut, waited for a person to appear, and boasted once again:
“Auntie! Feast your eyes upon this tremendous creature. It’ll fill our bellies for twenty dusks and twenty dawns!”
Sunny had been addressing Kitten.
Kitten was a similar age to Sunny’s mother. She had borne no fewer than fifteen children, although only three had survived past infancy. Her losses weighed heavily in Kitten’s eyes. Yet there was an inescapable sense of defiance in her demeanour. Kitten’s shoulders were aggressively square, and her breasts projected forwards, as though intent on poking anyone who approached.
Kitten scoffed, generating so much mucus, she was forced to spit it out:
“Tut, tutty-tut-tut, tutty-tut… That sack of guts will barely feed the members of a single hut. Don’t you know that we are many? What, have you forgotten your Auntie Aura, and the people with whom she shares a hut? Or your Auntie Butterfly, and the people with whom she shares a hut? What about that hut, where Health is the matriarch? Or that one, where Mountain lives with her children and grandchildren? So many huts, with so many people in each. And you have the gizzards to arrive here with such a tiny amount of meat? Huh?”
“But… I mean… Haven’t you seen this animal’s mountainous height? Just look at how far its body extends. Dearest auntie: Gaze your eyes upon its gargantuan, humongous, super-colossal chest.”
“Size? It’s big, but there’s no fat on the thing. It’s all carcass and air. Are you blind? Can’t you tell the difference between a proper animal and an old wreck like this?”
“Oh.”
“I’m surprised at you, Sunny Boy. For how many seasons has the sun shone upon your head? You should be old enough to hunt properly; to bring home real meat; to know the difference between a good animal and a bone-bucket like this.”
“Oh.”
“Of course, we’ll eat it. But it won’t fill us. It won’t give us the energy we need to hunt. We’ll traipse off to sleep, dejected, with hollow legs and rumbling bellies.”
Blown back by the savagery of Kitten’s response, Sunny opened his mouth to say “Sorry”. But he barely emitted a sound. He turned, paused, and tried to apologize again. He failed, accepted defeat, bowed his head, and trudged away; heading back to the hut in which he slept, where he greeted his mother:
“Mother kindest: Don’t you think we could feed just a few people with this ox? It’s just… Well, there’s got to be a bit of meat on these bones.”
Sunny’s mother took her time; pondering her son’s question, as though mulling over a mouthful of berries, some of which were sweet, and some of which were sour.
She eventually deigned to respond:
“You know our tastes, chick-i-lick. We love meat. In fact, we love fat. When we see a skinny animal like this, out there in the bush, we almost always let it go. We save our energy for a worthy creature. A creature who’s dripping in fat. You know the sort. The kind of animal whose meat is layered with white fat, which turns into a clear, thick oil when it’s cooked. The sort of fat that slides down your throat, lines your stomach, and gives you roaring diarrhoea.”
Sunny could not disagree. His people did like fatty meat. This was why he had selected this particular ox. It possessed more fat than any other animal they had captured since leaving their Big Camp, at the end of the rainy season. Why could his peers not see this?
“No doubt, its bones will be good for soup. But there’s no fat on the thing.”
Sunny pinched the ox’s belly.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a little fat, but not much. Lovely: I worry that this animal will cause a fight. You serve up something like that… There’d be so little to go around, one person is sure to accuse another of taking all the prime cuts. A few people will go hungry, whilst others will eat. And then what? Smoke in a beehive! You’ll have provoked a riot.”
Sunny thought better than to disagree. A single person might have been mistaken. But he had heard the same opinion from four different people. They could not all be wrong.
And yet, no! They could all be wrong. This was a fine creature. It was jacketed in layers of fat. He had done well to get it, and his kinfolk should have been grateful.
That was when it hit him…
That image of Uncle Crow appeared in his mind’s eye, replete with his mother’s unpredictable eyebrows. There it was, providing more meat than anyone else. And there it was again; cast into exile, chided and disparaged, in much the same way that Sunny was being chided himself.
No-one had called him “Uncle Crow”. At least, they had not done so out loud. But Sunny was almost certain that they were calling him an Uncle Crow, in the subtext of their speech; in the hidden meanings, which lurked between the lines; all the more powerful because they were left unspoken, and so remained unpolluted by the inadequacy of words.
Perhaps those people were envious. Sunny very much doubted that they had ever returned with such a majestic animal, back when they were as young as him. He doubted that they had ever returned with such a catch.
Did they know that he had been gifted this ox by another clan?
Surely not.
Then what?
Sunny could not be sure.
But of one thing he was certain: This image of Uncle Crow. This semi-mythical character had not just appeared to him once. It had appeared again and again, with increasing regularity; transforming in shape and appearance, until there could be no doubting the matter: Sunny was no longer seeing an abstract Uncle Crow. He was seeing an image of himself.
SHAMING THE MEAT
The ox moseyed around for an unspecified number of days, that no-one seemed inclined to count.
As though obeying an unspoken law, the animal never ventured beyond the camp’s invisible boundaries; remaining between the two rows of banana-leaf huts, stopping to eat the grass which surrounded the fire pit, and avoiding the windbreaks, made from reeds and grasses, which protected the clan’s possessions: Their stone-bladed hunting-spears, wooden thrusting-spears, and the barbed-points they used to spear fish. Their arrows, whose tips were covered in poison. Their bows, clubs, rabbit traps, fish traps, fishing nets, blades, and water vessels. The baskets and cords they had made by weaving plant fibres together, the stone anvils they used to crack nuts, the pot they had made from clay, the sewing needles they had made from animal bone, the digging-sticks they had made from antlers, and their burins; the stone flakes, with chisel-like tips, which they used to decorate these objects.
Whilst the members of the Eagle Clan did own a few personal possessions, such as their loincloths and beads, the items kept in this store were held in common. People borrowed them whenever they wished to use them. But they returned them once they had finished; treating this store as though it were a library of things.
The ox moseyed on; indifferent to Kitten, who had gathered some yams, which she was sharing with her hut-mates; and indifferent to Aura’s nephew, Buffalo, who had gathered some bananas, and left them for anyone to take.
Unseen and unheard, the ox observed a group of children, who were playing Grown Ups; pretending they were adults, and thereby learning to be adults. The younger children were hunting butterflies with bows and arrows they had made themselves. The older children were hunting small mammals. In time, they would join the adults; hunting alongside their elders, whilst maintaining this spirit of play.
None of this was organised. There were times when the children were content to do nothing. They were comfortable, living in the moment; unafraid of boredom, happy to daydream; to stare at the distant hills, or observe the dust motes as they danced between shafts of light. If they wished to do something, they did not nag their mothers. They invented a game; drawing shapes in the dirt, nursing the dolls they had made from sticks, and picking berries from nearby bushes; experiencing the world first-hand.
The ox meandered on, reaching a cluster of children who had just built a model camp, filled with replicas of the huts in which they lived. In building this camp, they had taught themselves how to build real huts.
Now they were playing inside that camp, re-enacting the events they had observed, and mimicking the adults’ behaviour; holding mock debates, deciding when to hunt, and where to gather wood.
It was an education…
Left unsupervised, these children could get hurt at any time. Harmony still had a scar which skirted around the ball of her thumb, because she had tried to catch a flame when she was still a toddler. But this painful experience had taught her to respect the power of fire. She had never been burnt again.
Most lessons were not nearly so harsh. The youngsters learned through a process of observation and exploration. They only ever asked for advice when it suited them, and they never had to endure a lesson which had been imposed upon them by an adult.
It worked. In the same way that toddlers learn to walk, and infants learn to talk; through a mixture of play, trial and error; so the members of the Eagle Clan learned to hunt, fish, gather, navigate, build, debate and negotiate...
They discovered the habits of hundreds of different mammals and birds. They worked out how to track game, by spotting the most elusory of clues. They learnt how to make spears, arrows, blowguns, darts, snares and nets. And they began to master these weapons; setting traps for small animals, hunting by themselves, and as members of a group.
They began to gather. There were tens-of-thousands of plants in their region, but most were inedible or poisonous. Only a few hundred were good for human consumption, and by the time they came of age, the clan’s children could identify them all. They could name twenty-nine different types of edible mushrooms. They knew where each one could be found, on what hosts they might grow, and when they would be ready to harvest. They knew which mushrooms not to eat. They knew which roots, tubers, nuts, seeds, fruits and leaves were the most nutritious, and which could be used as medicine. They knew how to dig, peel, roast, grind, mix and sift each of their favourite treats.
In time, these children would discover how to cook, make fires, predict the weather, treat injuries, care for the sick, raise babies, play music, tell stories, perform dances, perform rituals, and maintain diplomatic relations with other clans.
They were never cajoled into learning these things. It simply happened, just as soon as the moment was right.
***
The ox remained in a stationary position for most of its days, only setting its legs into motion when it felt it had no other option; begrudging the inconvenience, even though no-one had compelled it to move.
Nobody deigned to slaughter that animal, until it had been three days since the clans-folk had eaten any meat. Only then did an elder, named Serenity, take it upon himself to perform the fatal deed; slitting the ox’s throat with a blade they had fashioned themselves, using a hard cobble to strike flakes from a triangular rock. Unprompted, several of his peers emerged from their huts. Two youngsters, named Pilgrim and Blue, took the blade from Serenity, and used it to remove the ox’s leg. It took them a while to complete this task, although this was of little concern; they had all the time in the world. When they were done, Health, the group’s medicine woman, wandered over, blessed the meat, used the same blade to score its skin, turned that utensil around, and used the blunt end to pound some medicinal herbs. She rubbed those herbs into the flesh, and passed the joint over to Sparrow, who had already prepared a fire. Aura and Harmony took over. They turned the meat and managed the fire, whilst Mountain and Setting Sun, the clan’s eldest members, observed proceedings from afar; ready to offer their advice, should ever the need arise.
When their meal was almost ready, the community began to gather. They mixed the ox’s intestines with the contents of its stomach, took a dollop each, and used it to wash their hands. Then they turned their attention to the stomach itself; cutting its lining into tiny squares, and eating them raw.
