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Matera
gatherer
Username: Matera
Post Number: 157
Registered: 5-2007
| | Posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 - 11:12 pm: |     |
I've been having problems communicating with a minor character. This would not be bad, normally, but she is an IMPORTANT minor character. One of the main characters is neck-deep in love with her, and the other one . . . um, never mind for now.
Anyhoo, I sat us down together and made her give me a bit of backstory. Since it will never be a part of the novel(s), I offer it as a spot of recreational reading on its own.
K. and I may come up with a few more little vignettes like this. That's all they will be, don't be hollerin' fer more.
She is rather shy about speaking out like this, so please excuse her awkwardness. After a while she warms up to it some. I'm just glad I finally got her to talk to me!
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Kewarratiwa's Story
I am Kewarratiwa. I was born to Bine!twara of the Ulenga-makira Clan of the Wa!ilerrima. The ulenga-makira is an animal that does not live in this land, but in the land of the Sun, where my peple lived in my grandmother's grandmother's time.
This is how it happened that I came to be lost to my own folk and found a new way to be happy.
It was a night of late summer. We slept in our tents, with a guard watching. But either he was not attentive or the raiders were more skilled than we thought. Topadowaga was killed before he could rouse us and we were awakened by the screaming of those who were speared through their tents.
There was no order or meaning to what anyone did. I came out of my family's tent with the deerskin from my bed in one hand and a digging stick in the other. Everyone slept like that, the men with a spear or club in hand, trying to be ready. There was light aplenty, the raiders had put fast-burning fuel into the coals of our cooking fire. I saw men die. One of the raiders grabbed me by an arm. My mother hit him with something and he let go. I hit him in the face with my digging stick.
"Run! Run!" my mother yelled at me. I ran.
I did not run far at first. I had to stop to let my eyes wake to the darkness. Away from the firelight, the raiders could not see me if I lay flat in the grass. I could hear the screaming. I know that my mother died that night. Maybe everyone. When I could see well enough by the light of stars, I went farther. I could not fight with any hope of living, and I wanted to live.
Dawn came and I stopped to rest a short time. Then I walked on in another direction, to the side of the way I had taken in the night. All was quiet, there was no smoke anywhere. I rested again and ate some berries. There was no water in the small streambeds I crossed. That night I slept a little, wrapped in the hide I had grabbed half-asleep, with a big rock at my back.
When the next day came, I tried to circle back toward our camp. It was the plan if we were separated to find one another by staying as near as possible without being found by the raiders, if they were still about. The sun was hot and I was very thirsty. I found more berries, but they were not enough. My grandmother had told me of ways to find water that her grandmother had learned as a child. In this Land of Walking Stones, her lore is of no use. Only by watching the animals or following the watercourses can one hope to find water in the late summer.
I was hungry, but I knew that I would die first from lack of water. At the next dry streambed, I read the signs of the water's direction and turned downstream. All day I followed the trail of water that was long gone. One after another the dry streams joined and led on. My head swam and my feet hurt. There were more berries, I remember that.
My digging stick might have got me some water if I could have dug deep enough, but I was not thinking very well. It was not until the next morning that I came upon some water. I nearly hurt myself getting to it. The small pool was beneath an undercut stone dropoff--there would have been a waterfall in spring. I climbed around and down over broken stone and got to it with difficulty. It was cool in the shadow of the dry falls. The water tasted like life itself. I tried not to drink too much.
For a while I lay there on a cool slab of stone from which I could reach the water. I fell asleep. A roe deer's bark awoke me. It was dangerous to stay in a place where animals must come to drink. The sun-foolishness was clearing from my head a little. I drank as much water as I could, and headed downstream again.
I hoped that if any of my clan survived they might come the same way. It was our second plan, since all rivers come together. It was also dangerous, of course, because the Big Folk have their camps near rivers.
So far luck had certainly smiled upon me. No bears or wolves had eaten me, I had not broken a leg running in the dark. Some of my people might still live and we would be together again. I had scratches and bruises, but I found healing herbs along the banks to soothe them.
There were edible roots too, so I did not go altogether without food. If I had had a waterskin, I might have been very well off. Better, I am sure, if I had been a man and had a spear.
I know how to catch birds and small animals with nets and snares, but without tools I could not cut a thong for a snare, and with no children for beaters, a net is of little use. I had not yet come to any water great enough to support fish. One can eat snails and crawling things, and I did.
But I had to keep moving too. It was a long time before I found water again.
My sleep was so full dreams that I had little rest. Many times I watched my grandmother leave us. I could see a little now how it might have been for her when she was cast out. Only a little, though, because I still had hope of life. She had none.
Grandmother was not a bad woman, but she did what a woman must not do. The spirits might have punished all of us for what she did, if she had been allowed to stay. I don't know. It seems as though we were punished anyway. I do not want to deal with the spirits. They are strong, and do what they will. It is safer to avoid their attention.
The craft of healing is already too close to the domain of the spirits, but it is necessary for our people to survive. My grandmother was a noted healer. It gave her more power than other women--perhaps too much. She trained me, as she had trained my mother, and she said that I was like her in my way of knowing. Because of that, I was afraid that I would anger the great ones some day too.
Having power and status does not mean that one can do as one pleases--or at least it does not please everyone. My mother and Nacharwek and even my brother, Ba!arri, were angry with me for refusing to go with that man of the Lembri!a clan--but he had beaten his other mate so much that she died giving birth, that was what the women of that clan said. I knew that he would beat me too, because of my grandmother. I did not want to be cast out, or even to be a dry bone--a woman with no mate and no children--but I did not want to be beaten either.
Besides, just to look at him made my heart shrink. I believe that I saw his spirit looking through his eyes. I could not tell anyone that. It mattered little to me that he had high status in the eyes of men. I could not live with such a beast.
#
I do not know how many days I wandered alone. Being a woman, I didn't know the counting-words, and I had nothing to mark. All I know is that I had no hope left. Now I was truly as my grandmother had been, or so I thought.
I sat near the muddy edge of a trampled waterhole in the otherwise dry bed of a small river. My thoughts were nearly blank. I think I wanted to die, to get it over with. My family and everyone I knew were dead, they must be. We Wa!ilerrima have a way to know. In my dreams I had seen them die, those that I had seen with my eyes and those I had left when I ran into the night. I knew, and I wanted to be with them. I could not live much longer by myself. When the wind blew cold again, I would die. Maybe sooner. It was hard to wait.
Wind sang in the dying leaves of the low trees that grew on either side of the streambed. In my mind, it was a song of mourning. With my eyes closed I listened, and without thinking I joined my own voice to the wind's.
An eagle cried overhead. My song faltered. I opened my eyes. Shock stiffened my body--a man stood watching me, one of the Big Folk.
He had one foot up on a boulder, leaning forward with his hands on his knee. I stared at him, unable to move. Now I would die. I thought to pull the hide, now wrapped and tucked as a crude garment, closer around me, but concealing my body further would serve no purpose.
The man said something. He slowly straightened his back and moved his hands out and away, open palms to the sky. I did not move. Then he behaved very strangely, or so I thought. He sat on the boulder.
For what felt like half a day, we sat facing each other across the waterhole in silence. I had stopped staring, only glancing up through my eyelashes. He did not stare either. His hands were clasped together, and he kept his gaze on them most of the time. I watched his face. He seemed to be thinking hard, his lips drawn in, jaws tensing, brows moving downward. When he looked directly at me, I saw that his eyes were a very dark gray. He seemed quite young, though since he was one of them, it was hard for me to judge his age. His beard was slight, boyish, but he gave an impression of greater maturity.
Why did he just sit there, when I knew he must be going to rape and kill me? I was tired of waiting. "Get on with it," I said.
His head jerked up. He spoke; it sounded like a question. I frowned back. He began to move. I lowered my head. He would do what he would do, my fate was not my own to claim. I heard him step around the waterhole. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his feet. He stopped a few paces from me and hunkered down. I wished he would just--
His hand came toward me, holding something small. It looked like dried meat. He said something, his voice quiet, not like any Big Folk I had ever heard. I raised my head. He repeated one word--it sounded like "meat". He set the piece of meat on a flat stone, rose, and walked away.
For a few breaths I watched him. I looked at the food he had left. My stomach clenched at the thought of it. Meat!
I stretched out my arm and took it.
The man sat on the boulder again, watching me gnaw the meat. The taste of it brought tears to my eyes. I looked straight at him a few times. He smiled.
It was that smile that caught me, not the meat.
#
When I had finished eating, I got a drink, kneeling in the mud and scooping water in my hands. I straightened up and folded my hands over my dirty wrap, waiting for the man to do or say something.
He seemed to be thinking hard. his expression reminded me of my brother...I could have laughed--or cried. Finally he held a hand to his chest and said, "Ottavar." He waited, watching me.
"Aw-ta...bar," I said, the strange sounds coming awkwardly from my mouth. But he smiled, patting his chest and repeating the name. I tried again, a little better. Then I did as he had, touching myself and saying my name.
"Ke-wa-rra-ti-wa," he said, with great seriousness. "Kewarratiwa." He smiled, and said something in his own tongue, and then my name once more. I nodded.
He stood and stepped away from the boulder. With his right hand he beckoned to me. He took a few more steps and beckoned again. I thought, he wants me to follow him. All right, I will. He knows I am here, helpless, alone. There is no point in trying to run and hide.
I was too tired, and tired of waiting to die. I rose, straightened the filthy hide that was my only possession besides my digging stick, and walked toward him. He nodded, smiled, and with another motion of his hand he led me onward out of the riverbed.
We walked for some time. He would stop to look back, see that I was still there, and go on. I saw smoke ahead, and at last we came in sight of a small group of tents.
There were men, women, and children, all calling and waving their hands. The man who had led me here stopped. He called out something to the others. There was some shouting back and forth, and then a woman came toward us. She and the young man embraced. Then she took a step toward me.
"Hai, Kewarratiwa," she said. "My name Tevina."
I was taken by surprise once more. Even though her pronunciation was muddy, she could speak a little of our tongue. Blinking stupidly, I essayed her name. "Teh-bee-na," I said, knowing I had done poorly. But she smiled, so warmly that my heart fell over and my eyes were blinded with tears.
I felt Tevina's arms encircling me. I leaned against her and gave in to my grief altogether.
"A drum is empty always, and when the skin is rightly taut it gives right noise, right sound. Attention is like that."
~ Krishnamurti |
Annie
storyteller
Username: Annie
Post Number: 2303
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2008 - 12:07 am: | |
Congrats, Matera! Well done. 
Chess is the purest form of debate, unadulterated by a topic. |
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