Other Worlds Were Possible, page 29
Hope thought it was a joke:
“You’re freezing our piss!... We might’ve believed you, had you told us you’d escaped. We might’ve believed you, had you told us you’d evaded capture. But do you really expect us to believe that they seized you, and then they freed you, and they didn’t even perform one of their protections… Their punishments? Eh? They thought you were Mister Too Ugly To Fuck? Mister Too Worthless To Sell?
“Humph! You’re taking us all for goats.”
Aura also thought that the story was too good to be true:
“I don’t know what they’re up to, but I don’t like it a bit. They’ve got something hidden up their loincloths, that’s for sure. Something gruesome. No, it all smells rabbity to me. I’d rather trust a horny cuckoo than one of those no-faced ghouls.”
Serenity, however, was prepared to give Hunter a chance:
“Sistren: What more could you possibly want? This brother warned us. He gave us guns. He offered us blankets. And now he’s rescued Sunny from the bowels of the earth.
“In the name of our sweet ancestral mothers: He was a friend and an ally all along. Are we really so blind, that we refuse to see? Or so stubborn, that we refuse to acknowledge the error of our ways?”
Serenity’s remarks were well received. Serenity's remarks were always well received. And he had only stated the facts.
His speech appeared to sway the group; inspiring a murmur of consent and a rumbling of nods.
But Harmony was unconvinced:
“He offered us blankets? Blankets?... Aunties and uncles, sisters and brothers: Don’t you remember what Sunny told us?... No?... Come on, think a while… Yes? You remember it now? Those blankets were riddled with plague. Plague! The clans who took them, no longer exist in the mortal realm. The clans-folk who survived, had to approach the Wogies and beg them for the cure. They’ve been slaves in that frown, that clown, that town ever since.”
Almost everyone reacted in the same manner: They shuffled backwards, away from Sunny.
Sunny had never felt so shunned in his life.
“Err…” he replied. He felt compelled to supply an answer, even though no question had been asked. “Yes, I suppose our sister has a point.”
But if he had thought his modesty would endear him to the group, he was about to be disappointed.
“They gave Sunny Bon Bango a disease!” Harmony continued, whilst bulging her eyes and chomping her teeth. “They gave him the lurgy. Then they sent him here to infect us.”
Everyone turned to face Sunny, who lifted his shoulders and replied in a tepid tone:
“I don’t feel ill… They didn’t touch me, once they’d put me in that hell… That cell… They didn’t give me any of our food or water.”
“It’s the blankets, Sunny Bon Bango! The blankets in the… In the whatever you called that place.”
“I’m telling you, sister: There weren’t any blankets.”
“Then whatever. I don’t know. You do look rather ugly.”
“You think I always look ugly.”
“As ugly as a warthog’s scrotum. But still, your nose is covering half your face. And it normally only takes up a quarter.”
Sunny grabbed his nose; attempting to squeeze it back into position, even though it felt the same as normal.
Serenity cleared his throat:
“Ahum.”
He rose to his feet, waited to see if Harmony had anything to add, and then turned to address the group:
“I understand your fears, about Hunter and Sunny. These are emotional times… If you’re worried, we can always ask Sunny to quarantine himself on the fringes of our camp. Although he’s already shared a meal, and nuzzled our cheeks…”
Serenity was about to propose a vote.
But Sunny had already begun to speak:
“I’ll quarantine myself! If it’ll set your minds at ease, then I’d be happy to oblige... At the end of the sunset, when all is hunted and gathered, I think we could do with a sentry. Yes, that’s it: I’ll take a spear and magic spear, and I’ll go be a meerkat over there.”
***
His peers had been awaiting Sunny’s arrival…
When Buffalo and Butterfly returned, their clans-folk had run to greet them. Seeing their friends, and seeing their haul, they did not suppose that anything was amiss.
But by the time the sun had reached its zenith, they were hit by a sense of discomfort, which became more bilious, and tasted more of grapefruit, the longer Sunny was away.
They performed ghost dances, imploring the ancestors to deliver him to safety.
Sunny’s mother chewed her nails, which was unusual, since she never chewed her nails. But, then again, her son had never gone missing, amongst a strange and frightful people. Desperate times, inspired desperate reactions.
She was not alone. A few of the youngsters followed her lead; attempting to chew their toenails, once they had finished with their fingers and thumbs. Serenity paced around in circles and squares. Hope twirled her hair; braiding it, un-braiding it, twisting it one way, and then twisting it back the other.
When Sunny did finally appear, his peers’ relief was so evident, it manifested itself in physical form. They exhaled as one; producing a breathy cloud, which lingered, solid and white; scrambling their vision, before dissipating into translucence.
The clans-folk froze, unfroze, bolted, and squeezed their brother tight. They sat him down, fed him, encouraged him to speak, bombarded him with questions, spoke of their worries, and aired their doubts.
It was the briefest of interludes. He had arrived, Harmony had suggested that he might be carrying a disease, and then he had departed; subjecting himself to a quarantine, in what felt like a blink of an eye. His mind was giddy. But he was safe. The clan had food. And that was what mattered.
***
Bang!
Sunny had not fired a gun for the better part of ten lunar-cycles. He had not heard a gunshot since Serenity had shot a goat, back at the tribal camp. The sheer noise of that thing was enough to make him jump.
Sunny landed with a thud. His head stopped shaking, and his vision stopped spinning.
He could not help feeling that the gunshot had not been particularly loud. Yet it had felt far noisier than it sounded. It was a bizarre sensation. His ears had betrayed his emotions.
Then again, he was not really responding to the shot itself. He was responding to the ghastliness of his action. He had fired a shot, intending to kill another person; someone who might have had feelings; someone who probably had a mother.
How could he do such a thing?
To protect his people! That was how.
Yet despite such logic, his behaviour still evaded his comprehension. The first time Sunny had killed an animal, a rabbit he had caught in a trap, he had cried and cried and cried. He had hesitated before wringing its neck, closing his eyes so hard they began to blister. He had been so devastated by the mortality of that act, he had refused to eat meat for twenty-seven days.
The residue of that sensation had drained away. He had not experienced anything like it, until now...
His ribs felt like they were being crushed. His lungs felt like they were being squeezed. He might have frozen, had duty not been calling his name.
His shot had missed his target; whistling past that man’s shoulder, and disappearing into the unseeable beyond. But that Woggy, who Sunny thought he recognised, remained a threat. That man had been spying on the clan from behind a pile of boulders. Sunny did not know what he intended to do; why he was neither advancing nor retreating. But he was clearly a menace. Why else would he be holding a gun?
Sunny selected another shot, wrapped it in cloth, added powder, rammed it down the barrel, and cocked the hammer. He had only brought three shots in total. If he missed a second time, the pressure would be immense. There was no way he would be able to return to his peers. The intruder would shoot him down.
Whoosh!
A metallic ball thwacked the branch above Sunny’s head, embedding itself in the bark. Splinters fell like weightless rain; glistening in the sepia light, sparkling, meandering left, floating right, not really falling at all.
If Sunny had any doubts, they vanished with that shot. This was war. One of them was going to die.
Sunny was hiding inside a small cluster of trees. But this place was far from a fortress. The mature trees had been felled, and only the smaller trees remained. Their leaves were large, but their branches were sparse.
Sunny had been squatting. Now he was on the ground; floored by the asphyxiation he felt when he pulled the trigger, and flattened by the fear which had overcome him when his adversary fired back.
He was better off down here, he supposed; belly to the earth, camouflaged by pebbles and sand.
He steadied his arm, and gazed down the length of the barrel. He looked left and right, up and down, but he could not locate his target.
Whoosh!
Sunny could not see where that shot had landed, but he presumed it was nowhere near. This settled his nerves. Yes, it implied that the man had plenty of shots. Why else would he waste them so freely? But he was a terrible marksman. Or he was unaware of Sunny’s position.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
The first two shots missed by a distance. But the third hit the earth, a few body lengths in front of the trees; puffing up dust, and skimming a pebble towards Sunny’s head.
He batted that projectile away, exhaled with relief, and then panicked. What if the man had seen him? What if he adjusted his aim?
There was no time to waste. The intruder had also given himself away, whilst standing to shoot. He had ducked back down. But Sunny could still see some wisps of his hair, which were billowing in the breeze, and his shoulder, which was plugging the V-shaped gap between two boulders.
Sunny fired.
Ouch!
The man’s cry muted the sound of the shot. It was a piercing yowl, which silenced the wind. And it was a crestfallen cry, which spoke more of disappointment, than any actual pain.
His body slunk to the side.
Sunny almost rose. He almost bounded forwards; compelled by an urge to stand above that man, lift their clan’s spear, and strike a fatal blow. If he had shot an animal, he would not have shown such restraint. He would be looming above it already. The spear would be crashing down.
But this man was not an animal. He had a gun. Who knew what other weapons he might be hiding behind those rocks?
Sunny reloaded the rifle, took aim, steadied his hand, shuddered, and placed the gun back down on the ground. He allowed his face to caress the earth, took the smallest of breaths, composed himself, took aim again, and squeezed the trigger.
The Woggy rolled onto his side.
***
“CHICK-I-LICK! SUNNY, CHICK-I-LICK!”
His mother’s screams came as quite a surprise.
Sunny’s kinfolk had been known to argue for days. They mocked their peers on a regular basis. But they did this in the calmest of fashions; controlling their breathing, and speaking at a steady rate. They almost never screamed. And this was no ordinary scream. It was piercing enough to set fire to Sunny’s blood.
“Oh, I am sorry, chick-i-lick… We thought you’d been shot. We thought a Woggy had... Oh ancestral spirits! I can’t even bring myself to say it.”
Sunny did not respond with words.
He walked, then skipped, then bounded towards his mother; jumping into her arms, hugging her, and accepting the barrage of nose-rubs which came his way.
He checked his nose. Then he explained the situation, concluding:
“That man must’ve followed me here. But as for why he loitered behind those boulders? Well, I’m as lost as a fish in a jungle.”
Serenity scrunched his lips.
“This intruder is over there?”
Sunny nodded.
“Dead?”
Sunny shrugged.
“Let’s investigate.”
***
Serenity led by example; distributing the spears, before walking ahead of the group. Not everyone followed. Some were too young, old or weak. Others were paralysed by fear. But eight people did heed Serenity’s call, of their own volition, and nobody attempted to stop them.
They leaned over the stranger, forming a pyramid which muffled the light.
One shot had struck the man’s shoulder, and the other had hit the top of his opposite bicep, all but paralysing his arms. But Sunny had missed the vital organs. The man was a shivering mess; unmistakably conscious, and unavoidably subdued. His crotch was moist. His eyes were perturbingly hard.
Judging it safe, they beckoned towards their peers.
Health came running. She removed her loincloth, strapped it around the man’s shoulder, and pulled it tight.
The response was mixed. Some people smiled or nodded. Others began to tut. A couple of people did not react at all.
Butterfly spoke as modestly as she could, doing her best to disguise her shock:
“Dear Auntie: What… What are you doing?”
“I’m stemming the bleeding.”
“But if he recovers, he’ll devour us all. Why do you wish to save him?”
Aura and Health replied together:
“So we can kill him again as a clan.”
“So we can hurt him when he can feel it.”
Individually, these comments made sense. But Aura’s words piled upon Health’s, jumbling them up, and rendering them incoherent.
The clans-folk had to scratch the insides of their ears, to make sense of what they had heard. And even then, they struggled to decipher these remarks.
Sunny had no idea what either Aura or Health had said. But he was almost certain that Butterfly was correct. No good would come of this act.
“Dearest Aunties, I don’t think you understand. I’m telling you: If we heal this man, he’ll commit a ‘Punishment’.”
Neither Health nor Aura replied. And yet they demanded an explanation; with their brows, which furrowed beyond recognition; and with their eyes, which vibrated with curiosity.
“I recognise him… I didn’t wish to say anything before, until I was certain… But there can be no mistaking the truth: This one… He’s one of the men who did the punishment on Songbird’s daughter. He did unspeakable things. He… Do you want him to do that to us?”
Serenity closed his eyes.
“Sunshine: This is the reason we must save him. We must bring him back to life, so that we can kill him again together. Then we must revive him a second time, so we can kill him a third time, and then a fourth.”
Serenity’s words soothed a few of the people who had been astonished by Health’s behaviour.
But it did little to placate Dusk.
“I’d rather eat the thing! I’d rather drink down all its fat.”
Everyone turned to face that elder, supposing he might recount a story, from a time of war and famine, when his peers had been forced to perform such a gruesome act.
But Dusk just shrugged; raising his shoulders, and parking them aside his head.
“It wouldn’t be like eating a human. These people aren’t human. I’m not even sure they’re real. And its meat would last us a day.”
The group turned to face Dawn, expecting him to argue. Compelled by the force of habit, Dawn did open his mouth. He was about to say “No”. He almost launched a verbal tirade; claiming this was a trap, that this man had been poisoned, and that eating him would kill them all.
He restrained himself, allowed his face to soften, and suggested a compromise:
“Why not raise him to life, to please Aura? And then eat him to death?”
“You mean… Eat him whilst he’s still alive?”
“One part at a time.”
“That’s macabre.”
“It is.”
They lifted the spy and carried him towards the fire.
***
It did not take long to finish the job…
Aura used a spare loincloth to bind the second wound, before using a third one to dress herself. It was still not enough. Her patient, who had lost a copious amount of blood, was flitting between consciousness and the abyss.
The group had left their sniffing salts with the Dog Clan. So they were forced to improvise; lifting their victim above the fire, holding him in place, and waiting for him to inhale the smoke.
He coughed himself awake, producing a greenish kind of snot, which had the consistency of mashed bananas.
His eyes flickered with the advent of recognition; able to understand that he had been saved, but unable to figure out why. When he looked left, he did so with curiosity; keen to discover what might be about to happen. But when he looked right, towards Sunny, he was overcome by a colourless shade of fear.
Bluebird, Hope’s mother, had already filled their pot with water and placed it above the fire. It had not begun to boil. But Kitten was in no mood to dally. She took the stranger’s hand, which was too limp to resist, and plunged it into the pan.
“Aaagh…”
The stranger attempted to stifle his scream. This was not because the water was still cool. He could no longer tell hot from cold. It was because he wished to disguise his pain; to appear defiant in the face of his tormentors.
In this, he failed. He lacked the strength to censor himself; screaming for much longer, and with far more devilment, than he had intended.
Even if he had not made such a racket, he would have been betrayed by his façade. The man had become a mirage; so pale, and so gaunt, that it was easier to look through him, than to distinguish his actual shape.
Kitten donned a twisted smile, puckered her lips, and nodded at a small girl; who took a handful of chillies, and rubbed them across his skin.
“For flavour,” she explained.
The man gulped.
Kitten looked him in the eyes, winked, and then smiled with passive violence; fixing her eyes in place, whilst Bluebird added the chillies to the broth.
The children formed a circle around them all, locked arms and performed a dance, singing:
