Tikkipala (15 page)

‘It is something you will learn about when you are older,' the hunter went on. ‘After ten months were up and she was strong enough and became able to move from one penis cover to another, all the men had theirs enlarged in case she needed to be fitted in.'

‘If I had a penis cover, would she have fitted there?'

‘No, because you are only a little boy.'

‘But when I am grown up?' the child persisted.

‘She is too big for any man, by now,' Pala said. ‘She is the biggest creature in the world.'

‘Ooo,' breathed Maw, suitably awed.

‘Let me go on. Don't keep interrupting. She would snuggle in there so comfy, but after a while, she would start to tickle till the penises stood up erect and the squeeze became so tight that she could hardly breathe and she had to be thrown out.'

‘She's silly,' said Maw.

‘You must not say things like that about the Tikki,' Pala reprimanded. ‘The people asked her, ‘Why do you do it, because if you lay there content and quiet, you would be able to stay inside all day?'

‘Why did she do it then?'

‘Because our baby Tikki liked things to be exciting,' explained Pala.

‘So do I,' cried Maw.

‘Quiet,' whispered Pala. The Animals started silently creeping away. ‘They have found something.' For a while Pala and Maw waited in silence and only when the Animals returned without any game, did Pala go on talking. ‘After a while she started getting inside the women's places too, lying between their breasts, till they stopped holding her there, needing the use of their hands and letting her fall out again. But
though some of them invited it, she did not make use of their vaginas which she found too wet and dark.'

Maw shivered.

‘She was so little that the people of the tribe could hold her in their cupped hands. They blew her gently with their whistling mouths when the weather was hot so that she felt their sandalwood perfumed breaths upon her face and in her hair.'

‘Do it to me,' said Maw, leaning over. Pala blew into his hair. ‘You don't smell of sandalwood,' Maw complained. ‘Your breath smells like tigers and wild pigs.'

‘When she was big enough, they allowed her to run across their heads and dance on their stomachs. And don't ask me to let you do that. I won't have you running over my head, little Maw.'

‘I wouldn't anyway,' Maw said. ‘In case I hurt you.'

‘The people laughed at Tiki's cleverness and gave her sweet fruits to eat.'

‘Can we get some sweet fruit?'

Ignoring this Pala went on, ‘They wreathed flowers around her legs and arms and stuck sparkling stones and crystals to her skin with resin. “See how glitteringly our god dances,” they said proudly as she spun among them on the ligament.'

‘Like this?' cried Maw, did a small twirl on the branch, lost his footing and toppled through the leaves with a scared yell.

Pala leant over, grabbed him by the leg and pulled him up again. ‘You must be more careful. You would have been killed if I hadn't caught you. You are not a Tikki so you don't have to do things like her.'

‘Then what happened?' asked Maw, settling back onto Pala's knee.

‘Sometimes they put her in the bird catching net and sent her swinging, sparkling through the sky while below she would hear their hiss hiss laughter and laugh herself,
a sound so deep and rich that is could have come from a tiger's throat. Or from the instruments of music that lay in the tribe people's throats. But that was long ago.'

‘How long ago?' asked Maw.

Pala taught Maw about the music of the tribe and how to play the instruments.

For the people of the tribe, all music was sacred. There was the waking in the morning, when the bones throbbed with the rustling of opening blossoms. The first food was accompanied by soft and rumbling thunders, like distant howler monkeys or the digestive juices working. At midday the music had the sound of water as people came down from gathering honey and fruit from the tree tops, or paused, as they pursued their prey through the jungle, to drink water from a pool or stream or the water skin they carried. There was the throbbing expectant music of the hunt, and the shouting of joy when the hunt had gone well. There was the soothing excited humming at the birth of a new child. Or the sad low keening when the hunters came home empty handed.

Their music was so sacred that, when young men tried to insert something wild and individual into the vertebrae of their grandfathers' clavicles, the elders would decide that the boys had grown too old to live among them anymore and drive them away to steal a spouse from another tribe.

The instruments, made from the bones of ancestors, were carved and pierced by women, for men were not allowed to touch the bones till they were sounded. Slowly, carefully, day by day the women rinsed and spun and grooved the thigh bones of their grandfathers, the pelvis of their fathers until they could spin sounds to make men and women weep or be aroused to fury, or sink down, lapped in love. Nearly all the sounds the tribal people made were the true sounds of the jungle and only when they
held sacred and important meetings of the subtle ones and elders, were they permitted to communicate with voices. All their names were jungle words so that one who had not been born among them would be unable to distinguish between sounds issuing from the throats of jungle plants and winds and creatures and those coming from the bones of their own people.

Pala taught Maw about the Ama stone, too. ‘Now repeat to me what you have learnt about it,' he commanded.

‘It is the holiest thing in the whole of the world,' chanted Maw.

‘Why?' said Pala.

‘Because without it there would be no life at all, anywhere.'

‘Shut your eyes and imagine a world without life,' Pala ordered.

Maw leant against Pala's chest and shut his eyes. Then started giggling. ‘I can hear your heart beating.'

Pala tried not to smile. ‘You must pretend, Maw.'

Maw tried again. Pala held his breath and stayed as still as if he was on the track of a nursing tiger. He felt awed by the beauty of this child that lay against his body and now, because Maw could not see, allowed himself to smile for no elders could see them here. A ray of golden light, filtered through the heavy leaves, illuminated the child's round cheek and Pala resisted the temptation to stroke it. The child's eyelids fluttered as though he was aware of the hunter's scrutiny. Then he opened his eyes suddenly as a gust of wind arose, shook the tree and tumbled him, laughing, out of Pala's lap.

‘Silence, behave,' ordered Pala sternly. ‘What were we talking about?'

‘The Ama,' said Maw, giggling.

‘The Ama is sacred and not for joking,' Pala reproved.

‘You joked,' accused Maw. ‘I saw you smiling.'

‘When?'

‘When my eyes were shut.'

‘How could you see, then?' Pala had to struggle hard with his lips to keep them from twitching.

‘I am the Maw,' said Maw cheerily. ‘So I can see everything everywhere.'

‘Well, I hope that you will also learn how to be truthful and modest,' said Pala firmly. ‘Now Maw, let's start again. How will you know the Ama?'

‘The Ama shines with a red heart,' chanted Maw.

‘What happens when it touches life?'

‘It heats up.'

‘What are the two functions of the Ama?'

‘To make life and to find it.'

‘Where is it found?'

‘Under the bulge of the mountain,' chanted the little king.

‘Why is it there?' asked Pala.

‘Because that is where the heart of the world spat it.'

‘Why did the world heart spit it there?'

‘Because that is where the hole is.'

‘What does the Ama do?'

‘It starts life.'

‘What does the Ama find?'

‘The life we have made.'

‘Why must we keep looking for it?'

‘Because it gives life to Tikki when she is black.'

‘What does it do when she is white?'

‘If she swallows it, it takes her life away again.'

‘Why is the Ama lost?'

‘It was stolen by the Coarseones. Why did the Tikki let them, Pala?'

Pala sighed sadly. ‘We put it in a place where she couldn't reach it, Maw.'

‘And then?' murmured Maw, snuggling lazily down in the hunter's arms. ‘Why did the Coarseone throw our Ama?'

‘Because it burnt her hands.'

‘Where is it now? When you talk, Pala, I can feel your voice rumbling inside your chest like a far away thunderstorm.'

Pala sighed. ‘We are still looking for it and sometimes the subtle ones can feel it stinging in their hearts. One day we will find it, and then our people will start to thrive again. Shall I go on?'

Maw did not reply. He had fallen asleep.

It was midday and hot. Nearly everything around them was asleep as well. The soft air was filled with dreamy odours. Pala's own eyelids began to droop. Perhaps they would lie up here till dusk, unless they were called down by Animals. The soft in-out breath of the little child and the stirring of leaves seemed to be the only sound. Pala felt filled with a wonderful contentment.

Suddenly there came a terrible sound. The child shot up, awake and screaming all in one moment. The whole jungle seemed to burst into horrified wakefulness. The Animals began to roar with menace, looking now this way and now that but unable to tell where the danger came from. Pala pressed his hands over the ears of the child, and shouted, above the sound, ‘It's all right, be calm, Pala is here.' All the same his own
heart was racing faster because, though he had never heard this sound before, he knew what it was. By the time he had soothed the child a little, the roar was right overhead. Peering up through the leaves he saw the thing which, till now he had only had described to him. A Coarseones' flying machine. It was so close that Pala could see the Coarseone's face looking down and, for perhaps the first time in his life, he felt fear for he knew that once the Coarseones look upon your jungle, they return to destroy you. Other tribes had already vanished in this way though, of course, these were people who had no protector and avenger Tikki to guard them.

When Pala got back to the tribal place, a trembling Maw in his arms, the children were screaming and the women weeping, saying ‘The Coarseones are coming to destroy us.'

For several days after that the people of the tribe waited, filled with fear in case the Coarseones returned, and when nothing more happened they started to feel safe again.

‘It is alright. We have been saved,' said the elders. ‘These Coarseones saw nothing they wanted and have gone away again.'

Pala, however, continued to be anxious.

Pala began returning to the tribe without meat and only the baby Maw on his back. The problem was the Animals. Instead of silently moving through the jungle and swiftly surrounding their prey, they had become disorganised and kept being separated from each other. And when Pala tried to instruct them and arrange their jumbled thoughts, his own thinking became mixed with Maw's and he found himself craving for a mouthful of honey or filled with the sudden urge to go chasing after a butterfly. Maw had grown old enough for his thoughts to be heard, Pala realised.

He told Maw, ‘Animals cannot keep their minds together because of you.'

‘I am sorry, Pala,' said Maw.

‘There is no point in being sorry,' said Pala. ‘Start trying to link your thinking with Animals. Keep quiet. Let your mind become one with theirs. Remember all the things I have taught you, for Animals must have no distraction.'

Maw closed his eyes. A hover fly landed on his nose and the child sneezed.

‘Maw, what did I tell you!' said Pala sternly.

‘But I can't help sneezing. It wasn't my fault,' complained the child. ‘My nose tickled.'

‘You must control it. You must control everything. You must even find a way to make the beating of your heart become silent. All your attention must be on communicating with Animals for if your mind makes a noise they will not hear you. Do you understand me?'

‘I'll try, Pala,' said Maw meekly.

Minutes later Pala touched Maw softly on the shoulder. It had worked. Animals had surrounded a back buck and her kid and were softly shouldering them to where Pala waited with Maw. The child smiled and nodded.

As he slipped the ligament over the head of the doe, Maw kept jumping up and down and shouting, ‘Let me do it. Let me do it,' and would not listen to Pala when he told the child, ‘You aren't strong enough. Wait till you are bigger.' Pala thought to himself, as he tied the creature down, I shall leave Maw behind with the mothers next time I go hunting. The people were right. It is not possible to hunt with a child on ones back.

‘No,' shouted Maw aloud, causing Animals to twitch and flinch.

‘See what you have done. You are disturbing them again.' The buck had nearly escaped in the moment of inattention. ‘No what?'

‘I won't be left behind. I am coming with you next time too.'

‘Ah, little king. You are learning.' So Maw had heard his mind. That was good.

After slitting the throat of the mother and tethering the kid to a tendril, so that it followed behind, he set off with the doe across his shoulders, saying, ‘Come on, Maw.' He could speak aloud for the Animals were relaxed again.

‘Where are you going?' said Maw.

‘Back to our people. Now hurry up.'

‘But you have to carry me,' cried Maw.

‘Don't be silly. Now that you can send your mind, it means you are nearly grown up. Also you are four years old and good at walking now.'

‘I'm tired,' wailed Maw. ‘I can't walk.' He sat down with a thump.

‘I can't carry you and the meat.' said Pala.

‘Then put down the meat and take me,' ordered the child, keeping his bottom firmly on the ground.