Rites of Passage (20 page)

So Old Old Old Marla had been right – she
had
come upon small black creatures no longer human.

When they moved, they were a blur. Three of the six vanished in a smudge of motion, and reappeared beside the cooking corpse of the crab.

The remaining three regarded me with tiny black eyes. I pushed myself away from them, pressing up against the wall at my back.

One of the creatures reached out. Its fingers flickered towards my bound wrists and the knotted strap fell away. I reached up and tugged the gag from my mouth. “Who are you?” I asked. “What do you want?”

They were silent, regarding me with their heads tipped to one side.

Then a second figure reached out and passed me something – a tubular black column as thick as my arm and half as long. I took the object and stared at it.

Across from us, the other three beings were dismembering the crab. In seconds they had sliced its shell in two and scooped the meat from its innards. They piled the flesh on the ground, where it cooked in the sunlight with an aroma that set me salivating.

I stared from the black column to the being that had passed it to me. “But what is it?” I asked.

The creatures looked at me, and then stared at each other. One being reached out, took the column from me, and tipped it up while holding it to his mouth. I saw a droplet of liquid form upon the column’s rim and slip into the being’s slit of a mouth.

He passed me the column and indicated that I should copy the action.

I tipped the column to my mouth, and liquid slid into my mouth – sweeter than water, and much thicker, which quenched my thirst immediately.

The three remaining creatures picked up the crab’s shell and vanished, reappearing at my side. They tipped the shell on to its side and worked it into the earth so that it effected an efficient shield between the sun and myself.

Next, one of the tiny black beings knelt and lifted my leg, while another reached out and, faster than I could discern, wrapped something around my gashed thigh. I stared, incredulous. I could still see my leg through the dressing, but the wound had closed and the pain had abated to no more than a dull throb.

Now all six stood before me, staring with their tiny eyes.

And then, instantly, they were gone – but not before piling before me the cooked flesh of the crab.

I called out, sobbing, “Thank you. Thank you, whoever you are!”

It was as if the liquid had revitalised me – though how a simple fluid had done this was a mystery. I touched the invisible dressing that bound my injured thigh; I could feel something there, a smooth substance that resisted my fingers. Through the dressing I could see the line of the gash, which already appeared to be healing.

I picked up a gobbet of succulent flesh and tore at it with my teeth, then took another drink of fluid, feeling its cool sweetness fill me with life and energy.

I laughed aloud at my luck and marvelled at the fact of my salvation. I tried to imagine the expression on Kenda’s face when I apprehended him, when I came back from the dead and exposed his lie to Nohma.

I ate and drank and rested, relatively cool in the shade of the crab shell. Experimentally I flexed my injured leg. I could feel no pain now, and even the ache was diminishing. Perhaps an hour later I felt sufficiently recovered to attempt to stand, and did so fully expecting my leg to collapse beneath my weight. To my astonishment it held firm, without a tremor or spasm of pain. I sat down again quickly, as the sun was burning my face.

I collected the straps that had bound and gagged me, and fashioned them into a harness which I affixed to the crab shell. As I worked I thought ahead, to the time when I would locate Kenda and exact my sweet revenge.

I filled my pack with crab meat and hung it around my neck, then stood and lifted the shell onto my back. It was heavier than my old shell, as it had not been scraped thin, but not so heavy that I was unable to bear its weight. I slipped the liquid column into the band of my loincloth and stared up at the sloping face before me.

Then, taking a deep breath, I began my ascent, using the same protuberances that Kenda had employed. It was a long climb and hard, but the thought of Kenda’s reaction to my resurrection spurred me on.

Once at the top I rested and took a swallow of sweet fluid. I flexed my injured leg, feeling nothing, and climbed through the horizontal slit and down the hanging chain.

There, I knelt and examined the ground. I made out the scuffed marks of footprints, ascending the slope to the escarpment. I looked down the slope, noting the tracks we had made on our ascent but seeing no evidence of footprints heading in the other direction. So Nohma and Kenda were still above me, on the escarpment.

Smiling to myself in anticipation, I stood and began the climb.

~

O
ne hour later I reached the lip of the escarpment and scrambled over its sandy, crumbling lip. Panting, I climbed to my feet and stared out across the sun-blasted plane.

There was nothing but bare earth for twenty man-lengths ahead of me, but then...

Dwellings
, Old Old Old Marla had called them – but I had never seen their like before. They were grouped together before me, similar in shape to the domes of a crab but transparent, each one as high and as broad as a cavern. I counted twenty of these vast dwellings, where our ancestors had lived long ago when the sun was small in the sky and water filled the valleys. Now these domes were cracked like bloodshot eyeballs and scoured opaque by centuries of wind-borne sand.

I wondered at what marvels might be found inside, and for a time all thoughts of revenge were forgotten.

Then I saw the double trail of footprints leading from the lip of the escarpment towards the closest dome, and I set off in eagerness to tell Nohma of my wellbeing and assure Kenda that his crime would not go unpunished.

I slowed as I approached the dome, not wanting Kenda to be aware of my arrival. Their footprints made for a triangular rent in the fabric of the dome. Cautiously, my heart beating fast, I approached the accidental entrance and peered inside.

Sand had drifted through the gap and formed a dune, hiding the interior from view. I ducked through the rent and approached the sliding sands, aware by the divots in the slope before me that Nohma and Kenda had passed this way.

I climbed the drift, wondering what I might find on the other side.

I neared the crest and fell on my belly, advancing cautiously and peering over.

The dome was empty, or almost so. Around the edge of the dome were strewn the blanched skeletons of human beings, some complete while others consisted of scattered, disconnected bones. I stared in wonder at the closest, not a man’s-length from where I lay.

And tears came to my eyes, then, as I felt a strange emotion. I was not mourning the passing of these wondrous ancestors who had created things beyond the dreams of puny beings like myself; no, I was mourning the people we had become – for the skeletons of these humans, identical to our own remains in every respect but one, were fully three times the height of those of my own people.

Truly, these people had been giants.

I wondered at the dramas played out in this dome, at the enactment of the tragedy that had ended in the extinction of these people.

And now, in the amphitheatre before me, another drama – on a smaller scale but no less imbued with heartfelt emotion – was being played out between two tiny, puny creatures.

Nohma faced Kenda and cried, her words echoing around the hollow dome, “But I want to go back, find his body and return with it to the valley. He deserves that much.”

I listened to her and wept.

Kenda said, “It’s too dangerous! It was all I could do to climb out of there myself. We’d never manage it with a body.”

“But... But I loved Par! I can’t go back without him!”

My heart swelled, and before Kenda could reply I climbed to my feet and stepped over the edge of the dune, sliding silently down the other side towards them.

Kenda, facing me, looked up and stared. His mouth hung open, and fear entered his eyes.

Alerted, Nohma spun around and saw me, her expression one of utter disbelief.

I moved slowly through the scattered bones of our long dead ancestors and halted a man’s-length from where Nohma stood, staring as if at a ghost.

“Par?” she whispered, tearful. “Par?”

I looked past Nohma at Kenda. “He lied, Nohma. I was not dead when he found me, but he left me for dead, and lied to you.”

Kenda appeared frozen in shock. “You,” was all he could manage. “But how...?”

I said, “I was saved, Kenda, saved by beings with more compassion and more...
humanity
... than you will ever possess.”

“Beings?”

“The creatures Old Old Old Marla met on her journey here.”

“No,” he screamed, and launched himself at me.

His attack took me by surprise; he knocked me off my feet. I fell onto my back and he dropped on me. We rolled, fighting like maniacs. I was filled with the fuel of the righteous, Kenda with the fear of the damned.

He hit me in the face and I almost blacked out, and he dived upon me and pinned me to the ground. He stared around him, searching for a weapon with which to finish me off for good. He reached out for an old human bone, grabbed it and raised it above his head. He stared at me in hatred and swung his improvised club. I raised a hand in hopeless defence, and the bone cracked painfully against my forearm.

I gasped and saw movement behind him as Nohma approached, lifting something high above her head. Kenda raised the club again, aiming for my head – then screamed, his mouth wide in pain. I stared as a length of splintered bone erupted through his chest and drenched me with his lifeblood.

I tipped him off me, climbed to my feet and approached Nohma, who stood wide-eyed and staring down at what she had done. I pulled her to me as Kenda’s eyes glazed over in death.

“I... I killed him,” Nohma said, staring at his corpse.

“You saved my life,” I told her.

I led her from the amphitheatre, aware of flickering movement on the periphery of my vision. I wondered what the blackened beings had made of this, the latest human drama to be played out in this ancient, ruined venue.

“I see them,” Nohma murmured. “I saw them earlier, but I thought I was hallucinating.”

We huddled in the shade of the excoriated dome and held each other, and I described what had happened in the V-shaped dwelling down the slope, and how the tiny blackened beings had helped me. We ate crab meat and drank from the black column, and as twilight descended and the sun sank, we left the dome without a backward glance at Kenda’s corpse or a single word to commemorate his passing.

We made our way out into the cooling night and set off on the journey home.

~

O
ur return trek was not without drama.

That dawn, as we approached the cave on the far side of the ravine, we were attacked by two giant crabs. I despatched the first by tipping it from a high rock with my own shell, but in doing so I fell and twisted my ankle. I was entirely at the mercy of the second crab until Nohma, screaming in rage, attacked the advancing crab with a rock the size of her head and managed to crush its mandibles; then together we beat it off and retreated to the cave.

We slept the day and at twilight hurried outside and sliced the cooked meat of the dead crab and stored it in our backpacks. Now we would have sufficient food for the journey home, and the sweet water from the black column.

The following evening passed without incident, and at sunrise Nohma marvelled at the qualities of the black column. We were sitting in the entrance of a high cave, watching the dawn light creep across the valley far below.

“This is miraculous,” she said, tipping the column at her lips and taking a mouthful of the fluid. “It feels, Par, like drink and food combined.” She stared at the column. “And another thing. Think about it, Par – if it were water in here, then it would be empty by now, wouldn’t it? I mean, A gourd holds far more water than this thing, and still it’s not yet empty.”

I shook my head. “It’s magical,” I said, and thought of the dressing on my thigh, and the idea of these wondrous things possessed by the blackened beings made me, for some reason, very sad.

The following day we came across a tall green plant growing in the sand, which I was sure had not been there on our outward journey. From its thin branches hung small blue berries. I tried one, and found it succulent and sweet. We gathered more, filling our packs; we would dry the seeds and plant them when we returned home.

On the day before we reached our valley, we encountered crabs again – but these were no more than half my size, not the giants we had fought earlier, and they kept a respectful distance as we passed.

That twilight, as we set out on the last leg of our journey, I became aware of increased motion on the periphery of my vision. Nohma noticed it too. “Par?” she said, looking around her with a frown.

We were passing down a narrow valley, with high banks to right and left. As we stared, a strange thing happened. The flickering motion to right and left ceased suddenly, and the midnight blurs of activity became corporate. Nohma gasped, and I laughed aloud. A hundred silent, blackened beings looked down at us, utterly motionless.

I lifted a hand in farewell.

And then suddenly they were gone in a swarm of motion, flowing like liquid midnight up the valley and away from us.

That day we slept, and as twilight descended that evening we set off again, eager to reach home now and tell the tale of our Initiation.

Hours later we passed through the high plain, and came to the cutting and stopped on the crest, staring down. Tears came to my eyes as we beheld our home valley, with its stepped terraces rising on either side, and the orderly rows of app and pearly trees. Our people toiled on the terraces, and as we made our way down into the valley they looked up, and then stopped work and called to others in the caverns, and then hurried up the valley to meet us with embraces and a thousand questions.