Tikkipala (48 page)

The woman moved through the pews, approaching the altar where Father Gomez stood waiting to say the Mass. She held the child tightly against her body, as though otherwise it would get away. The child was struggling and trying to cry out, but the woman kept one hand across its mouth.

Father Gomez waited patiently, thinking perhaps that she was bringing the child for blessing, but when the woman opened the gates leading onto the altar and started to come inside, Father Gomez told her, ‘You must not come any further for only males are permitted to go past here.'

The woman pushed him aside and climbed the two wood steps up to the altar. The naked painted child was trussed like a captured piglet. When she took her hand off its mouth it started screaming.

‘Stop this at once,' cried Father Gomez, waving his hands.

Turning to the congregation, as though she and not Father Gomez was the priest, she asked, ‘Who is offering this sacrifice?' The sound was barely audible over the screams of the child.

‘Be silent, go, stop this at once,' the priest cried.

‘I, your Maw,' said Maw, rising from where he sat in the darkest corner.

The people stirred very slightly as the tall figure of their king strode through the aisles. Pushing the babbling priest aside Maw took the child from Pala's sister's hands and held him high.

Tikkipala still sobbing said, ‘I want my mummy, Maw.' He tried to writhe out of his bonds and get his arms round Maw, but the ligaments would not permit it.

‘Hush,' said Maw in the language of the Coarseones.

‘This won't do at all,' said Father Gomez.

‘It's hurting me, Maw. I hurt,' cried Tikkipala. ‘Undo it, Maw. The strings are hurting. Take them off. I want my mummy.'

‘Hush, hush, it will not be for long,' soothed Maw and he stroked the child's damp hair away from its forehead with his hand. To the people of the tribe he said in their language, ‘The Maw offers Tikkipala so that Pala may be avenged and the people saved.' Then, ignoring the jabbering priest, he pushed aside the monstrance and the chalice and laid Tikkipala on the altar.

Tikkipala's screams redoubled in desperation. ‘Don't leave me here, Maw. I don't like it here. I'm frightened. I want my mummy.'

‘Remove this child so I can say the Mass,' cried the priest. ‘And who has done this to the poor child. Have the strings removed at once. Can you not see the child is suffering?' The priest reached out to try to remove the strings himself but at once men from the tribe rose silently and held his arms.

‘We celebrate Jesus,' the priest cried wildly. ‘And let go of me. Take your hands off this instant.'

‘Who is Jesus?' asked Maw, still not glancing in the priest's direction.

‘He is the son of God, who laid down his life to save his people,' said the priest in a swiftly softened tone. He saw a glorious opportunity. All the while, tied up on the altar, Tikkipala kept screaming, ‘Maw, Maw, Maw, take me to my mummy.' But the priest ignored that now, for this was the sort of moment of which he had often dreamt, converting an unbeliever in a moment of great crisis.

‘Then this is what we are doing here,' said Maw. ‘This child is my son, and he lays down his life.'

‘But you are not God,' shouted the priest.

‘I am,' said Maw. ‘I and all my people. There is no other God but us.'

‘Then what about this Tikki that you worship?' said the priest. He felt he was being clever now.

‘We created Tikki,' said Maw. ‘And now my people do what you have asked of them. You wanted an infant as a sacrifice so I offer this child of mine.'

‘This is blasphemy,' cried the priest. ‘This is murder,' screamed the priest.

The child's screams had now become enormous, filling the little church with sounds of misery. ‘Maw, Maw, Maw, I don't like it here. Maw, Maw, Maw, I am frightened.'

‘It is Tikkipala,' gasped Devi hearing the sound and she started running. ‘Oh my God what are they doing to him?' She raced wildly through the night in the direction of the sound.

The light was half a mile away and the child's shrieks were very distant at first. She struggled up the hill, scrambling over stumps of trees, falling against rocks in the blackness, frightening a wild boar that ran off squealing.

‘Tikkipala, Tikkipala, Mummy is coming,' Devi yelled.

‘Coming, coming, coming,' echoed through the hills, and reverberated among the rocks. The night birds went screaming, monkeys woke and scrambled away, imagining a leopard. The people in the church heard her screaming.

Maw said to the priest, ‘We must go now, Father Gomez,' And to his people, ‘Put out the candle.'

‘What are you talking about?' cried the priest. ‘You are not to leave that poor infant there. I will not have it.' The people were all rising and filing silently from the church.

‘Come back, come back,' cried Father Gomez. ‘And someone take this child…'

Sometimes Devi tripped and fell. Sometimes, scrambling to her feet again, she would lose her sense of direction and have to stand, listening, trying to hear the tiny distant voices. Sometimes an utter silence would fall and then she would not know which way to go. Sometimes she found herself running in the wrong direction. After ages she caught sight of a tiny, distant light, a little smudge in the darkness, and she began to make her way towards it, as though it was a signal and was guiding her. There were long minutes when she could only hear the wind singing against the rocks. No voices. No child. Then she would start screaming, ‘Where are you? Where are you?' and begin to run again.

As she came nearer, the light that she had been following went out. Frantically trying to keep herself still going in the direction that the light had been, she stumbled on. Her lungs went so tight in her chest that she could hardly breathe. She began to fear she might never get there.

She heard Tikkipala's voice again, far away. He is alive, she said. Dear God. Holy Mother. I thank you because he is still alive.' Tears streaming down her face, shouting love, Devi rushed on. ‘I'm coming, coming…' Then, very suddenly the screams stopped and there fell a terrible silence.

Devi, with her heart seeming to rattle in her throat with dread, came at last in sight of the dark silhouette of a little wooden church. Past her, though she hardly noticed them, the dark shadows of naked people were softly vanishing into the shadows. As
she burst into the church, her nostrils became assailed with the strange and awful smell that she recognised.

For a moment Devi thought the priest, lying sprawled on the floor, was dead. But when she called out, ‘Father Gomez,' he sat up groggily and let out a little shrill shriek. ‘Run, run… the monster… a child.' He was already scrambling to his feet and staring around wildly as though he had just encountered the devil.

It took Devi some long and frustrating moments to get vital information out of him but at last she understood that an ash white giant had come and taken her son. ‘They call it ‘The Tikki',' gasped the priest. Devi was already running, racing the direction to the place, higher up, where two years before she had smelled that same smell.

Like a bloodhound, sniffing her way, Devi struggled over stumps and past the log piles. She reached an area of scrub and, not caring if there were snakes in there or not, thrust her way through. It took her ten minutes to reach the rocks and by then she was scratched, breathless and bruised from a dozen falls.

She did not feel at all afraid. She did not feel anything except the desperate urgency to find her child. And as she shoved her way through sapling trees she knew she was on the right path for the smell was growing stronger. She must be quiet now, she thought. Go on tiptoe. Not alarm the creature, not shock it into harming or killing Tikkipala. The thought that Tikkipala might already be dead did not occur to her. Because she was his mother and though she heard no sound from him, her heart told her that he was still alive.

The smell was very strong now. The Tikki must be near, thought Devi. And then she heard sounds. A clicking and whirring as though metal wheels were turning. A moaning and mumbling like a senile person singing.

The Tikki held the human child against her body and a gigantic thirst rose, bubbling in her throat. She pressed the slender body, so smooth, smelling so sweet, and knew that she was being saved, that she was not facing destruction after all because she had the thing she needed now, human essence. When they had first made her they had supplied her with a plentiful stock, but ever since, she had only been supplied with animal. She was filled with panther, deer and porcupine and the human in her was nearly gone. That was why her brain was muddled. But now they have given her the right thing. This human infant would start her up again. Once she had absorbed its substance, it would enable her to think again and rid her of her pain. It would make her clever once more. She would become beautiful and beloved as she had been in the days when she was small enough to snuggle between the testicles or into the penis covers of the resting hunters.

Devi thrust her hands among thorny bushes, feeling for an entrance. There must be one in here for the smell was so strong now that it made her choke. And it must be a big hole because the priest had said the albino creature was enormous. But all she found was a hole only just large enough to thrust her head through.

Inside she could hear the sounds, much louder. A creaking as of stiff joints. A groaning as of a giant in pain. It was completely dark inside the hole. Devi had to struggle to get her shoulders in, then found herself jammed, head and shoulders tight in marble hole with the rest of her body outside and helpless. She gave one more violent heave and managed to push herself a little further forwards. Still no light. Terrible dark. No sound from her baby. The tunnel took a turn so that she had to bend herself around the corner. She saw some dim light ahead like phosphorescence. Softly
she went shoving, wriggling on, kicking her feet against the rough stone, clawing her fingers for purchase.

And then with a final heave, she found herself slithering out into an open space thick with the stench and glowing with a vast and sitting figure that had its back to her. It was rocking back and forth and making those groaning murmuring sounds she had been hearing earlier.

Tiptoeing, trying not to make a sound, Devi began to stealthily move forward.

A thousand years ago the Tikki had yearned for motherhood. Even when the elders told her, ‘We are all your children and you are here to look after us and do not need more,' she had not been satisfied but had kept questioning them. ‘How do women get children out of their bodies? How will I get children out of mine?'

The elders told her, ‘There is no husband big or grand enough to make children in our god.'

At first, when the child cried, the Tikki offered it her nipple, holding it against the infant lips but the child brushed her gift away as though not recognising the human woman in her. This offended her and for a moment she had been tempted to suck its essence out then and there, to rip its head off and gobble up its healing juices. But because it was still screaming, she needed to quiet it. She was so old that the acid of fear would be difficult to digest. She tried to murmur soothingly but did not know how.

‘You are a god,' she told the child, because those were the only human words she could remember.

After a while the child became still and the Tikki knew the time had come and that she should crush its head then suck away its substance. But it was so long since she
had held a human child. She wanted to cradle it a little longer. It had woken something inside her. It had made her remember the days she had desired motherhood. She let its little fingers stir against her nipples and inside her body she felt things moving as though milk and love were growing there. If she had not needed its substance inside her own so badly, she might have kept this infant here upon her lap for ever.

Devi came creeping round the Tikki and for a moment thought Tikkipala was dead because he lay so still on the monster's lap. But then she realised that he was sleeping. Sleeping, she told herself, as though this was an outrageous thing to do at such a terrifying moment.

The Tikki knew she must resist the temptation to sit like this any longer though it was a pleasure to have this human child sleeping on her knees. She looked down into its face and felt tenderness. This is good, she thought, because it means that some human feelings still reside in me and that when I have absorbed this child I will be capable of tender feelings all the time. Long long ago, when she had longed for motherhood they had given her a baby tiger. How tender she had been. How softly she had stroked it. How she had sobbed and suffered when it died. Perhaps soon she would be like that again, when the substance of this human child was mixed with hers.

Maw tightened his throat and with round lips let out the soft calls, and his people came slipping out of the dark, huddling round him. From the church came the sounds of the priest calling them.

They did not hear him, because already they were forgetting the language of the Coarseones.

‘She has taken our sacrifice,' whispered the people of the tribe. ‘Our Tikki is finding her humanness again. Soon, when the essence of the human child has filled her system, she will return to us. After all we are not lost and tomorrow or next month or year she will come out in the night and destroy the evil machines and houses of the Coarseones.'

But though happiness was starting to flow inside their veins again, they did not dance, or shout aloud with the happy cries of the jungle. They did not drink soma either, for the plants were gone and the people had been unable to grow more.

One man whispered, ‘We could welcome our Tikki back with the brandy of the Coarseones,' but the rest did not answer. The man fell silent.

They stood around the last tree.