Ancestors Advice
by Mary Healy (Co. Kilkenny, Ireland)
She always knew when they were coming; she would hear them first as vibrations, always the same, always from the sunrise. Gradually sound fills up the air, sweeping waves of dust that cover everything, then the landing, like a bird of prey and they wait yet again, for it all to begin.
They had been coming for many seasons now and she felt herself tense when the first sounds met her ears. She watched the shadows fall on the women’s faces, watched their eyes change.
There was no hiding, here in the wide open plain where everything dried to colour that had no memory, they stood out with their black skin. The only landmarks on this horizon were the bleak trees, even they dropped their leaves in defeat when the heat became too fierce. The cracks in the clay offered the only escape.
At first they tried to move away, the older people protested, saying this is where they had always lived, this is where their ancestors were buried and their spirits were near. Maya could understand that. For them the next journey was the one that mattered. For her the present was not bearable.
Others said they were near water, how far would they have to go before finding a reliable source? They talked about it and one time even went to find a new place, days of trudging, days of wandering in unfamiliar territory, facing new dangers, then waking to find themselves surrounded by strangers with menace on their faces. They were not welcome here, they were told.
They had gathered up quickly and bundled themselves into the morning cold, afraid to look back in case they changed their minds.
Now there was no question of going anywhere anymore. They all knew that. So they stayed and waited. And when it was over; there was a sense of relief that it would be a while before they came again.
But for that day, the day they left, the place was wounded, the women were quiet, and you imagined they were weeping but there were no tears. The men were dark and hidden in their eyes, the light hurt them but there was something else, something other than the pain of too much drink
She remembered the first night they took her. It was the summer she had grown tall, her legs like a gazelle.
You’re so like Elsa, her mother said and the shadow of pain darkened her face.
Elsa had been tall and graceful, proud and beautiful. The men said they would take her to see the city, where she could get work and have fine things. Maya remembered her face when she was leaving; her eyes bright and full of hope. Then the dust swallowed her.
At first when they land, set up camp, they pass around food, offer drink to the men. As the night rolls on their faces change and you can see the hunger in their eyes, the keen look of an animal on the prowl. She had always been told to steal away into the safety of the dark. She heard the fear and warning in the women’s voices. And she went, quickly, without looking back. There was madness in the air, she remembered the older ones taking the strangers liquor, and drinking it fast, too fast for pleasure, too fast for anything only to forget, and she wondered why.
That night the campfire was bright, wild flames burning dry twigs, the men had eaten. She had a place where she went, it was not safe there either.Wild animals hung on the rim of the dark, inside the threat was no smaller.
She began to move away, melt into the shadow, when she heard a foot fall behind her, she turned sharply and she saw him there, the large white one, with the golden tooth and eyes the colour of sky. For a moment he watched her and then he smiled, slowly crooked his finger, then extended his arm, a thick arm woven with muscle and pale coloured hair, she remembered the way the moonlight picked it up. And she felt terror spike her sharply. As she sprang away she felt herself stumble, the ground dusty and calm beneath her fleeing feet. She made distance between herself and him, she knew the scrubby thicket she was heading for and if she could get there…… instead another shape loomed out of the dark and caught her fleeing body, throwing her up in the air with ease. It was the other one, the one with the bandana and the writing on his skin. He held her easily, squirming, and writhing, laughing into her face,
“My, a wild cat,” he leered.
She remembered seeing a gazelle devoured by lions, the look in the animal’s eyes, of bleak dread, when it was silenced by pain, before it died, the crunch of fine bone, and tearing of flesh, young blood leaking away into the dust. It had stayed with her for a long time and now she knew that terror herself.
When they finished, they stood over her in silence, she was such a small little waif of a thing. She felt herself torn and bloodied, felt where the earth had ground and scratched away her skin. One of them caught the rag of her dress, and threw it toward her, the tail of it licked her leg, and she flinched, rolled into a small ball and lay there, the night claiming her skin. When her mother came to find her, Maya saw the expression on her face, the same one she knew from other times but now it was washed with fresh tears and she understood; now she knew.
And so it went on and in time she learned to drink like the other women, so that it didn’t hurt so much anymore when their big muscled bodies bore down on her light bones. Sometimes they cried out names in their sleep, softly, like they would to a lover, like they would to a child.
Finally the time came when she could bear it no longer.
She remembered the elders and how they went into themselves in times of trouble. She began her fast and slowly the world receded and she journeyed inwards, falling back into the world she had come from, to the place where her ancestors now lived. Day blended into night and she was surrounded by dark and silence. She had arrived in a place that was timeless. There she stayed until they came to her, the elders, and the ones who had journeyed on. The ones she had not seen for a long time. They were different now. Happy and strong. All their ailments and disease, all their pain and age fallen away, and they sat and spoke to her.
After that, she knew what she had to do.
She walked into the plain, all day, even in the heat, and then she gathered twigs from the yellow bark tree, a twisted, low tree that was rare and strange, she collected the pupae of small green beetles, some grasses that grew on the far horizon, bitter, sharp plants that no animal touched. Maya made this journey collecting, harvesting, into a small pouch of fine fabric, then she began the long trek back, in silence.
The spell already begun.
And so they arrived and Maya saw the men watching the young children and her heart set. That evening the wind grew high and wild, she threw a handful of the bark on the fire, the men were sitting down wind, watching the dancing, they cheered and laughed, their voices raucous and hard, the flames danced between them and the dancers. Soon the bark began to work, the men fell sleepy and stupid, and the women filled their drinks and kept smiling, throwing their own cups to the dark. After a while the men fell silent, asleep.
They bloodied the men with the blood of a kid goat, left a carcass of fresh flesh hanging in the breeze and then they doused the fire and left them to the darkness.
During the night the place was filled with the sounds of the wild. The sounds of splintering bone, the sounds of flesh being torn, the sound of teeth on skulls. And in the morning the dust had covered almost everything.