The Scorpion God: Three Short Novels (10 page)

Yet he was safe though he had no way of knowing it. He brought with him the menace of a whole line of light brown creatures that struck from afar; and to those with little thought or no thought at all, his mere appearance was enough. So safely he stole forward and upward into the shade of rocks and trees, and presently, the shadow of a high cliff. It was not vertical and he laboured up it from knot to crevice, where the indignant birds squawked and beat their wings at an intruder; or admitting inequality, dropped from their eyries and flapped heavily into the light.

The settlement stayed as wide awake as the animals on the plain. It was not merely that the children had had a sleep in the middle of the day and now played on into the sunset, for they always did that. It was rather that Palm knew, and the women with her, what shape the Sky Woman would be in when she rose. It was a later rising than for the Leopard Men, for the Hot Springs were in the shadow of the mountain. So the women strolled for a while in blue twilight. They did not talk much, though they moved in groups. Every now and then, there would come a sudden burst of laughter in the twilight. The woman with child hooted more regularly and with abandon, in her shelter.

Palm stood once more by the topmost pan where the water boiled and the vapour hung. She watched one part of the mountain outlined darkly against the deepening blue of the evening sky. Below her, by the river, the women had their arms about each other’s waists and necks, or waited in groups from which the bursts of laughter or giggles rose, but she paid no attention to them. A fire burned brightly before one shelter where the woman was in labour, but she ignored it and the hooting of the woman. She stood there, not her own length from the boiling water. Her fists were clenched, and she yearned up at the dark outline.

Children began to scream by the river. They had passed to the state where they did not know how tired they were. They fought and howled. She heard how the women went to them and tried to quieten them. Somewhere, a baby was whining and some booby of a boy crying his eyes out. Suddenly there was no more laughter from the women but firm words. She heard how they shoo’d the children, collected them, brought them to the rocks; and the children quietened, with the occasional spat from sheer exhaustion. Presently there was no human sound at all except the regular hooting. In a dozen huts or shelters or lean-tos the children were being told how this night of nights they must not come out till sunup, because of the dreams that walked. Palm yearned at the mountain, and panted, her mouth wide open.

There was a change in the sky. Just over the dark outline and in the expected place, the blue of the sky was lightening. She watched, until the water in her eyes blurred everything so that she swung on her heel and blinked them clear. Half the plain and the mountains that surrounded it were drenched in milky light that moved closer and closer to the river and the settlement. The women were coming out into the open from their homes again. She saw flashes and glossy loops wake as the light moved across the river, fast as girls could wade in line with a net. The light touched the nearer bank. The trees round the Place of Women grew a foliage of pale shells and ivory sprays. Down there, the women stood, silent, and waiting for their shadows. Palm turned and stared up. A tiny grain of white pushed up over the rim of the mountain, the curve of a white shoulder. She lifted her hands high and cried out again and again. The white washed her, the shells were startling white against her brown skin, her eyes flashed like ice. Below her the women stood, the light pale on their faces. The Sky Woman swung free of the mountain.

Palm lowered her hands to her sides. The moon fell into the boiling water and danced there, broke up, reformed, then broke again, as if the water were cool as the river. The women were laughing and chattering. She heard a high giggle, near to hysteria, a little scream, then a squeak and more giggles. She thought to herself—they believe everything is settled! They can start licking their lips——

At once, the necessity was back. She saw it more clearly than the light dancing in the water, a shell full of the dark, compelling drink. She smelt it and caught her breath. It was there, nowhere, everywhere, close; and there was darkness behind it. She shut her eyes and her mouth, clenched her fists. She was trembling. The woman in labour hooted again.

When Palm opened her eyes, she no longer trembled, and the shell of drink had gone somewhere else with its smell. She stared at the Sky Woman and a kind of bleak certainty fell over her like a cold wind. She moistened her lips and she spoke to herself as she always did when the cold wind came.

“The Sky Woman is just the Sky Woman. That is all. To think anything else is to be young—is to think like a man——”

She turned round. The light had reached the Lodge of the Leopard Men below her and some of the leopard skulls gleamed with light. She saw only the front row of them but knew where the others lay, the older skulls, yellowed and falling apart, those at the very back, little more than two rows of fangs and teeth. All at once, as if the cold wind that had fallen on her had done something to her eyes, she saw the Lodge for what it was, without the distortion of contempt or humour or caution. It was a pan like all the others but empty of water. The pan had grown and grown as pans did, the water leaving layer after layer of the yellow and white stony substance at the lips; and then by some necessity of the earth—a cooling of the water, perhaps—the water had cut an escape—there, at the narrow entrance where the curtain of leopard skin closed it. Nor had that ended the business; for at the inner end of the pan another had started to grow but stopped, when the water had abandoned the whole place in favour of a string of pans higher up. Her moment of seeing was as clear and precise as if she had woken from a dream and found nothing but the factual straws by her cheek.

The woman hooted. Palm made herself graceful and smiling. She swayed down from the boiling water. Hands up for balance, her long hair moving gently in the wind of her descent, she came down to the level space. The women ran to her.

“Palm! Palm! When shall we begin?”

Gracefully she walked between them towards the Woman’s Place and smiled on this girl and that.

“When there is a naming.”

The girls broke into passionate speech but she paid no heed. The older women said nothing, but watched her as she paced towards the trees and entered in. She reached the curtains of hide that were sewn everywhere with shells, the mere sight of which would send a man crouching away in dread. She lifted the curtain and went in. The place was dark because of the trees that stood so close round it, but there was light enough on the open side from the moonlit waters of the river. Two women stood by the river’s edge, outlined against it and working at the contraption that stood between them. The scent of what it held reeked into the air. It was a full-bellied skin, held in a tripod of strong boughs. The women were stirring this and singing softly. When they saw her, they stood back. She came close, leaned down and sniffed so that the reek took her in the throat and she started trembling again. The Brewing Woman handed her a stick.

“It is ready.”

Throatily, Palm muttered in the reek.

“We will wait.”

The Bee Woman looked up.

“Wait? Till when?”

Throatily again, heart beating fast, darkness all around.

“Till there is a name.”

The women glanced at each other but said nothing. Do I try to stop myself, she said, inside her head. Do I grasp at anything? And do I—would I rather there were—than—I must! Oh I must!

She stirred the liquid with the stick, moved aside the bubbles and cream and yearned down at the dark stuff, the stuff so like the darkness behind the shell. The Bee Woman hiccuped then sniggered. Palm glanced up at her.

“Try it, Palm. You have to try it!”

The Brewing Woman reached down, scooped up a coconut shell full of reeking stuff and held it out.

“Try it.”

After all, she thought, I have to. It is my duty. Nothing can be plainer than that. Even if there is no naming, still I have to try it, to make sure——

She put the shell to her lips and sipped elegantly. At once, the necessity was clear, was there, was kind, even.

“It’s good.”

The two women were laughing with her. They had shells.

“It
is
good. Very good!”

She lifted her face with the shell and drained it down. She was full of warmth and quiet happiness. She heard a great cry from the shelter and she knew suddenly that though the Sky Woman was just the Sky Woman, it did not matter and there would be a naming, yes, a naming, then a midnight feast. The cry had hardly died away when she had begun to move towards the curtains, knowing that it was the birth cry and all would be well. She went quickly from the trees and again the women watched her but this time they said nothing. Quickly she hurried to the shelter, ducked her head and went in. The woman was lying back, her damp face collapsed and moved only by the light of the fire. A helper was by her on one side, wiping her forehead and on the other side another helper was working at the bitten and knotted string, and the child. She heard the Namer enter, turned and held it out. Palm took it, a girl, turned it, held it up by the legs, poked, pried, counted. She knelt and laid it in her lap. The child squirmed with all its body and made mewing sounds. The helper handed her a splinter of wood. She thrust it into the fire until it burst into flame, moved the flame to and fro in front of the dark, unfocused eyes till she saw them try to follow. She threw the stick in the fire and cradled the baby. Her breasts throbbed and hurt. Laughing, she put her face on the downy head. A hand closed round her little finger and held it hard. She laughed again in the face of the mother.

“She has a name! Do you hear me, Windflower? Your daughter has a name! She is Little Palm!”

She leaned forward and placed the child in the mother’s arms and they moved to receive it. Windflower managed a smile with her damp lips. She Who Names The Women squatted back, then ducked out under the hanging skins. The women were there in a crowd. They said nothing but waited.

“Little Palm!” she cried, understanding how the name had chosen the child. “She is Little Palm!”

After that, there was nothing but laughter and singing. Some of the women hurried away to the place by the river, others drifted upward to the hot pans, some crowded to the mother and new baby.

Palm walked breathlessly among them, back to the Place of Women, where the drink reeked before the happy darkness. Her breasts ached, and she laughed. She spoke aloud.

“I am not too old to bear another child.”

In the moon-drenched hunting country, the business of the animals was in full swing. But in the forested foothills there was little to be done, and nothing to be done at all on the bare cliffs. Life went on noisily in the tree tops, among birds and apes. But the cliffs seemed to hold no life at all, for the birds had either returned to their eyries, or had flown out in the light air across the plain to mingle with the bird societies by the waterholes. There was only one place of visible life—two sparks that appeared every now and then, when Chimp shifted his head. He squatted high up on a ledge where only the birds could get at him; and they did not want to. His spear stood against the rocks at his right hand and his bone flute lay on the ledge beside the spear where he had put it down as if it were no more to him than a stick. Every now and then, he stroked his ankle as he looked this way or that. He was still unaware that he had a problem to solve. He felt nothing but anger and grief. Instinct had bidden him remedy this by eating. So at first he had squatted, gnawing the dried fish that the women had provided for him. Yet this was not proper food but only stuff to be eaten in extremity. In itself, it was advertisement of the fact that the eater had somehow failed to be a man. It added humiliation to what he felt already. He got no good of it and he had given up the attempt to eat so that he was at a loss again. The hunting group drew him and repelled him at the same time. He shouted aloud.

“Fish men! The girls take you in their nets!” Because anger was so much easier to bear than humiliation he dwelt on them, sneering at the plain. They would, his mind said, in its man’s way, have grown the fireflower and set a necklace of hunters round it. He saw them in his mind with a sudden precision that brought back a wave of grief. He moaned and writhed his body as if the grief were a physical pain. Yet there was nothing else to think of; and his mind, once turned that way would go nowhere else. It examined the fire, the broken, toasted meat, the laughter, the singing. He saw Furious Lion beat at his little drum, he watched Stooping Eagle strum his three-stringed bow. He saw Chimp there too, happily tootling away on his bone flute. At that, the mixture of Chimp being there and here too, satisfactorily there and unsatisfactorily here, turned the pain to gross anguish, so that he wailed aloud and a nearby roosting bird flapped and squawked. He saw them singing, heard them singing.

The Chimp that was here, turned his head to the left and searched the farther plain, the forest, the slopes of the foothills for a spark of fire or a wisp of smoke. He snatched up his flute, put it to his lips, then threw it down again. The whole world under the Sky Woman was swimming in the water of his eyes. He heard the Elder of Elders singing in his deep, happy voice as Chimp tootled with him. They were all singing and clapping, bawling the song of the Sky Woman in triumph——

And then again they sang——

And now, fullfed, they were turning towards sleep and each other. Dragonfly, who had been a boy so little time ago—Ripe Apple—Beautiful Bird and Charging Elephant Fell On His Face Before An Antelope—the calm authority of the Elder of Elders—the two other elders who were never apart——

Chimp that was here moaned and again the tears spilled down his face. Chimp that was there reached out a hand to Dragonfly who smiled back; but Furious Lion seized the lovely boy by the ankle. Beautiful Bird stood up clumsily, walked like the Boss Chimp and the Elder of Elders laughed. Chimp beat his fists on his knees. All at once, it was like the bursting of a storm cloud in his head, mighty wind, flash of fire. He sang out of the pain inside him.

“I am Leopard Who Struck With His Water Paw!”

He was the Leopard of all Leopards, huge and lithe. He was made of moonlight and fire. He stalked through the forest with writhing tail, teeth bared and eyes like the lightning. He came towards them out of the darkness and they howled with fear. They fell on their knees begging for mercy, but saw there was none, and ran. Dragonfly knelt pitiably, he was too afraid to run. He had become a boy again, tender and delicate and fearful. The Leopard of all Leopards seized him in its teeth and he shrieked with fear. The leopard left the hunters to cower behind the trees and bore the boy away into the darkness——

Charging Elephant was the mightiest elephant there ever was. His herd spread far and wide over the plain. They acknowledged him. He was Boss Elephant. Among the males he was as a man among boys, as an Elder of Elders among women. His head was above all the herd. His ears gave them shade, with his tusks he uprooted huge trees. When he trumpeted the mountains answered but all else was silent. His feet were the terror of things with teeth and claws. Even the Leopard of all Leopards, the Leopard With The Water Paw, stole away when he heard those feet on the hard earth. Charging Elephant went forward to clear the world. He came to the forest’s edge. He tore aside the boughs and his eyes flashed fire at what he saw within. They were hunters, little men, and they had killed, for Charging Elephant saw the hacked feet of his cow beside their fire. He trumpeted and the mountains answered. He tore whole trees out of the way, he made a path of crushed rock. The Elder of Elders leapt into a tree and yelled with terror, but Charging Elephant tore up the tree by the roots and hurled tree and Elder over the mountains together. He knelt on Beautiful Bird and Furious Lion! Dragonfly lay on his face, shaking and weeping. Charging Elephant left him till last. He knelt with his oaken knees on Firefly and Rutting Rhino—he knelt on the last of the hunters, a man with a calloused ankle and a bone flute in his hand! Blood burst out of the man’s mouth——

Chimp that was here leapt to his feet and yelled as if he had been struck with a whole bunch of thorns. Then he was falling, falling, down, down, scraping and bumping. He grabbed at rocks with his hands and felt his skin tear. His feet found lodgment and he stayed, his face sideways against stone. The birds were swirling and crying round him.

Gradually the birds went and there was nothing but a silent place, made of stone and milky light. He licked his torn fingers and inspected the dark blood on his knees. Below him, his spear and his bone flute lay in a bush where his involuntary movement had knocked them. He climbed down, thrust the bone flute through his belt and took the spear in his left hand. He waited, staring round him over the forest and the plain. The Sky Woman sat in the very top of her tree. All at once, he knew that the hunting group was there somewhere, far off and indifferent. He knew that he was one thing by itself, Chimp That Is Here. Feelings swelled in his belly as if he were with child of them. They overwhelmed. He lifted up his voice and howled at the mountains and the Sky Woman, at the forests and the plain, as if he were not a Leopard Man but a dog. He was careless of danger and the tears dropped off his face. He howled again and again and the cliff mocked him with its voice. He beat his head with his fist and felt nothing. Even the birds accepted his grief, at the end, without the comment of voice or wing. They did no more than stir in their nests as the dog voice howled and the cliff howled back.

At last he could howl no more. He whimpered instead and the whimper lay on the surface of a grief that was deep as ever. Then, as if something had come to be born, the feelings were clear in their message. They gave him a knowledge, a certainty. He began to run clumsily along below the cliffs; and as he ran, he whimpered.

“Ma! Ma!”