Daygo's Fury (10 page)

Niisa took his advice. Panting and out of breath, he let his head fall to the ground as he lay down and took it all in, slowly starting to process what had happened, starting to slow back down into normality, even as everything was still racing within his skin.

The rest of the tribesmen started to come into view, those that were closest first. They stood about him as his uncle explained what had happened.

“What happened?” his father cried, a little frantic as he rushed to his knees beside Niisa. He placed a hand on Niisa’s shoulder and clasped his hand with the other as he looked at him. “Are you alright?” he asked, looking hard at him. “What happened?” he looked to Nuru again.

“The boar clipped him,” said Nuru. He placed a hand on Dikeledi’s shoulder. “But I think he’s okay.”

His father looked down at him again. “You alright? Can you move? Niisa?”

Niisa looked up into his father’s eyes, reliving the whole experience again. He started to smile. Then he was laughing. His father looked concerned for a moment until Nuru started to laugh as well, shaking his head. Then the rest of the tribesmen joined in, and his father was looking around and smiling.

“He’s a hunter, alright,” said Nuru, helping his father to haul him back to his feet. Niisa took a few steps and everything seemed to be working fine, except that he ached and everything was stiff.

The hunters all piled around. Soon the clearing was full of excited chatter as they all demanded to hear the story. Nuru repeated it with glee, reliving events for them step by step, even doing impressions and playing it out to large guffaws, whistles and laughter, many of them stepping forward to slap Niisa on the back and smile. His father chuckled along with them, his hand on his shoulder the whole time. Niisa thought he was shaking but then he realised that the tremor came from his father’s hand. He looked at him, wondering if he was hurt in some way, but he seemed to be glowing as he followed the conversation with his eyes. Niisa wondered if it was what was called pride shining through him. He thought that it was.

******

The forest often reflected the activity of the small village. When they were very active and loud, the creatures, and sometimes it seemed the trees themselves, echoed those lively vibrations. Like an extended family, they took part in anything the humans did.

There was excitement from the moment they woke that morning, knowing that they would be leaving for the annual gathering of the tribes; where the sun was celebrated, where new life was welcomed and presented to family members that had not met in a year’s time, where they chanted and danced to Daygo and new unions were made that would last a lifetime. It was the most important week of the year.

Niisa walked around their hut, checking for any frailties in its exterior with his eyes and hands, while his mother spread extra Tulsip juice across the entrance and even went so far as to spread some across the interior, hoping there would be enough to keep all invading insects out for the seven days the hut would lie empty.

“Chiko,” his mother called, laughing. “It’s nearly time to go.”

Chiko turned her head from where she sat cross-legged in the grass. “Just a second,” she called back. Fumnaya shook her head happily and glanced at Dikeledi where he stood eyeing the ceremonial cloak that he had draped over the side of their hut.

“All year she has been working on that wreath, getting flowers of all seasons, collecting, drying, and now still, moments from leaving, she’s still making changes.” She laughed softly and Niisa knew she was proud or happy about it in some way. She heard no response, and she looked to her husband, eyeing him sceptically with a raised eyebrow.

“Just a second for you too, I guess, is it?” she asked.

“Hmm?” said Dikeledi, glancing at her.

“You’re worse than our daughter.”

“Our daughter?” Dikeledi turned to where his daughter sat stooped over the wreath of flowers laid gently over her feet. “Oh.” He blushed, then turned a smile on Fumnaya. “How do you think I got my daughters?” he winked. This time his mother blushed, a small smile creeping across her face even as she snorted in derision. She slapped him on the ass as she walked away, mumbling something that Niisa didn’t hear.

“What do you think?” his father asked him, stepping back from the cloak proudly. Niisa stepped up beside him. The cloak was made of the skins of all the animals that his father had caught on the hunt over the previous year sewed together in some random pattern that he thought appealing to the eye. It seemed unnatural and strange to Niisa, and he found it hard to decipher between what was a good-looking cloak compared to a bad one, as the rest of the people in the village seemed capable of doing. All the men of the tribes would wear a similar cloak, bearing witness to all their triumphs in the hunt over the previous year, at the great Ijo dance that would take place around the great fire twice over the gathering.

Niisa reached out and felt the dead skin of it. It still must be alive in some way, if Daygo was in all things visible, but it was hard to see how.

“It looks good,” he said.

“Really?” his father asked, raising an eyebrow to him.

Niisa nodded. “Yes.”

His father clasped his shoulder. “That’s my boy!” he smiled, with a short laugh and winked at Niisa. “Tell the old man what he wants to hear.” He looked back at the cloak with admiration. “It’s the picking for you this year,” he said, eyes on the cloak and hand still on his shoulder. “How do you feel about it?”

Niisa gave a small shrug. “I guess it is the next step … in life.”

His father gave a small nod. “It is. I guess it is that.” He pursed his lips, still looking ahead of him in apparent study. “Are you nervous?”

“No.”

“Not even a little?”

Niisa thought for a moment, still trapped by his father’s hand. “I don’t see what there is to be nervous about.”

His father seemed to have taken a great big breath. “Okay,” he said eventually, letting it out in a great rush. He turned towards Niisa, smiling. “It’s looking good.” He patted Niisa on the chest. “You’ll do well. Now go on. Get your stuff. We must be near ready to go.” He let go of Niisa and turned back towards Chiko. “Chiko! Let’s go!” he called.

“A little moment,” she chirped back, head buried in concentration over her flowers.

“No more little moments,” he said. Then he laughed. “You’ve got one more little moment, then if you’re not ready to go, I’m coming over there and carrying you away without those flowers!”

“Nope,” he heard her mutter.

He laughed again, raising his eyebrows. “What?” he demanded in mock seriousness.

“Done!” she exclaimed and twisted to her feet, allowing her wreath of flowers to unfold from her upraised hands. Unlike the cloak, Niisa could appreciate the full beauty of the wreath of flowers. All the flowers of the forest were displayed in perfect harmony, most dried, some fresh, their colours vibrant with life and joy.

“Beautiful!” said Fumnaya, walking back to them and standing before Chiko for a moment as her daughter skipped forward to give her a closer look. She placed her hand softly on the back of Chiko’s neck. “It’s lovely,” she said and Dikeledi echoed it.

“The chief has called it. We’re off,” she said in a louder voice as she turned to address the rest of them.

They set off through the trees with furtive glances backwards at their huts, as though they would disappear or come to some harm in their absence instead of simply sitting idly as they had sat full for all of the year before. But soon they were forgotten in the excitement and buzz of the upcoming gathering.

They walked through the trees, chatting freely and for once not trying to disguise their progress. They moved places on occasion, as jokes were shouted between the families and conversations started. Some of the women started to pair off, dragging their younger children with them as the men did the same. Boys followed their fathers, looking up with a little bit of wonder at the older men; girls followed their mothers and tried to decipher the meaning of the jokes and laughter between the women; for a while at least, until they gave up and became distracted in play. All were relaxed and jovial.

Niisa, as usual, walked apart from the rest, trailing the other adolescents who chatted animatedly ahead of him. He wanted to watch the forest as he passed it, not as a thousand separate parts but as something together, a growing, thriving, moving, living thing. He wanted to see the connection, the unity, the path of Daygo as he had sometimes managed to see before. On occasion he watched the activities of his peers or the rest of the tribe, but mostly he focussed on the forest. After a time he locked his gaze in the middle distance, hoping to see the peripheral as much as the focal as he walked.

He used to be often teased or jeered by the other children, but what their purpose was he didn’t know, and it made no difference to him. He simply watched them with interest until eventually they let up. Now they tended to ignore him unless they had reason not to. For years his parents had tried to encourage him to spend more time at play or to take part in whatever repetitive, mindless activities the other children played at, but slowly they too had started to accept his behaviour, as most of the tribe now did.

He knew all of the behaviours of the tribe. He understood them at a distance. He could adopt them and take part in them if he so chose. But he could not feel them as they did. And so it remained a sort of mystery to him. He tried to find comparative experiences that made him feel what they discussed, but he could not. He found it difficult to understand their perspective or to create it before his own eyes. Everything they talked about and everything they did was based upon this and he could never really grasp it, and so could not with any satisfaction engage in their behaviours.

He knew he was different, but it was a puzzle to him why or how they could all differ from him, especially as he understood that all creatures and life stemmed from Daygo, that all were unified and complete together, that all were connected and inseparable in movement that was called life and time. Even as he understood this, as he felt this deeply, emotionally and completely, he sensed that they in turn were reversed, that they knew of it, had learned of it and understood it at a distance as he had human behaviour, but they could never truly become fully engaged with it, never deep down understand the truth of what life was, or what they were within it. They could not see clearly. They were caught up in their own notion of self that they could not escape. Despite being able to talk as though they knew all things were of the same, that they all stemmed as small flows of the one Daygo stream, they lived and behaved as though they knew the opposite, that they and every other person they met were separate and complete and individual apart from all other life. That they in fact were not Daygo but their own confined self that would forever be apart from all else.

And so he often found himself apart from them, alone in the woods. Isolated, as they might see it. But there was no such thing as isolation in the world that he knew.

It took them almost nine hours of marching through the woods to get to the gathering space. Niisa broke from the forest into the clearing separately to the rest. The huts of their own village were built underneath the canopy of branches, leaves and plants overhead, but the gathering space was clear of all forest and was blinding bright from the yellow heat that shone down from the far distant sun. It was filled with hundreds of huts. The sky was a clear dome of blue above them.

All along the line of the forest, the Abashabi had stopped and stood blinking at the brilliance before them. The forest rose and fell in all directions as far as the eye could see. It made Niisa wonder at the vastness of the world. Could the great forest extend into infinity in all directions, did it ever come to an end? It was told by the chiefs that it ended somewhere in the distant north and south, and beyond that were open plains of lands with no trees to be seen for hours all around, and eventually there were great masses of water that extended into oblivion. The giant rivers at the end of the world. But to east and west it was said that the forests travelled as far as these great rivers, countless hours away. He imagined making that great trek. He wondered if it were true, or if he could walk forever, just walk, for a lifetime, and die, without ever coming anywhere. Just more forest, more creatures, more of the same. What was the life that energised all of this? Did it never tire?

He knew it was a human frailty to want for understanding, to look for the wisdom behind all things, to search to understand Daygo. He knew it was the loneliness of the human spirit, separated from the stream, from unconscious knowing for the brief extent of its life. And yet it seemed that he possessed some of that same strange arrogance that the rest of them did; the arrogance to want to strive to know as Niisa, as this strange entity that he found self within. He could not explain … but it felt like his destiny to know. And he could not escape its calling.

The clearing was alive with weeds, brush, flowers, vines and any one of a hundred plants that grew in the forest that had taken advantage of the lack of tree cover to become lush and full in the passing year. An occasional small tree still grew amongst the huts, offering some shade from the sun. It would take a full day’s work from the nine tribes the next day to clear it all and make it habitable for the week. But it was late in the evening and their main task that night was to make their chosen hut safe to sleep in.