Foragers

by Charles Oberndorf

  “It’s not a first soul,” said Wisdom. She told the story about the first soul who became a woman and the first soul who became a man and why the man grew larger than a woman. I could see the impatience on each woman’s face, but each one gave the story the respect it deserved. When it was over, I said, “I will find the animal. If it harms anyone, then each of us can notch an arrow and find it.”

  Without further thought or words, I stepped away from the women and onto the hard, dark ground. She approached the boulder. There was the opening. She could go into the boulder and see how the animal lived. Fear made her want to stop, but each woman watched her back. She crouched low to the burnt ground, which carried as many tracks as a rock.

  She walked to the creek and followed it upstream to where the water fell through the clefts in the hillside. She knelt here, worked her eyes, and found the animal’s footprints. She placed her fingertip along the rim of one and traced it, its contours so much like a person’s foot and yet not at all like a person’s foot. She reached forward to trace the next one, to examine the depth of it. The soil here was soft, yielding easily to the animal’s weight, and I guessed from the indentation that the animal weighed about the same as a woman the size of Crooked. I stepped forward to look at the next track, then the one after that. The stride was uneven, not the measured, purposeful stride of a healthy creature.

  I rose and followed the spoor into the forest, stopping and squatting each time the trail changed. At one point the prints edged into the ground at an angle, suggesting the animal had been leaning against a nearby sapling. If the animal was tired, why had she walked out into the forest? What would she have done if one and another woman had followed her?

  Two well-used trails met, and the prints stopped, shifted, then chose a path. After several places where paths met, I noticed something. The spoor approached a tree, and there was a weight upon the balls of the feet as if the animal had been squatting. But the area was clean; there was no sign of vomit or stool.

  Up ahead the tracks found their way into an area of tall brush that should have been burned away this spring. Several sunset fruit trees grew here, and with all the brush and prickers, it would be difficult to get at the fruit when it ripened late in the summer. Squawker had been asked to burn this area away, but she had refused. She had told I that she was always asked to do too much because her mother had been born near Three Ponds and not along Winding River.

  Through the brush I heard the animal say something. It didn’t sound like the hiss of a nightskin or the growl of a sunskin; it sounded like the animal had said one or two words no one else had ever heard. The sounds frightened I, and she stood rooted for a moment, before crouching and toe-stepping forward as if she were hunting a nearby lightfoot. She found one thin path through the brush, and parting stalks and leaves with her hands, she stepped forward.

  Within the brush someone had cleared enough land for hut and hearth. Who would want a hidden hut and hearth that one could stumble onto by accident? And who would build it right beneath a sunset fruit tree? No one would come and ask to gather fruit here with a hut so close by. She wanted to get closer, to look at the thatching, to see what man might have helped this rude, greedy woman. She would tell Flatface and Crooked and Wisdom and Wisdom’s daughter with daughters, and, of course, she would tell Squawker, and no woman would hunt for such a man, nor would any mate with him.

  But I couldn’t get any closer to the hut, because the animal who had spoken the odd words was inside it, and she listened intently to the sounds of the forest and hoped to hear any sound coming from within the hut. The animal soon emerged. She was wearing the kaross, but she was also wearing a carry bag made from the same kind of skin as her kaross. In her hand was something round and smooth as a water-worn rock the color of night. The animal looked at the dark thing, then looked at the brush before finding another thin path that led back to the normal path where the brush had been burned away.

  A sound whispered through the grass. Then forests sounds. Then another whisper. The animal was moving slowly, as if tracking something. Had the animal seen I? She crouched closer to the ground and held herself perfectly still. A third whisper, then the animal was standing on the cleared path. She looked in all directions, but a bit too quickly, as if she didn’t expect to see anything there. Old Sour Plum’s distant call caught her attention for a moment: she looked in the direction of the noise, but before the echo had faded, the animal had knelt down by the root of the tree, its useless teats hanging free. The animal reached into her leather bag and pulled out a piece of wood, a finely whittled stick with a pointed tip. She placed the tip against the ground; there was the noise of insects, and the stick slipped right out of her hand into the dirt. It either did that or it disappeared into thin air—it happened too fast to tell. The animal stood up, looked at the thing the color of night that she held in her hand, and walked off in the direction of the boulder.

  I remained as still as if she were stalking a lightfoot who might turn around and see her. She waited until she could no longer see or hear the animal. Then she walked over to the spot of ground between the tree roots and searched for the stick, first with her eyes then with the tips of her fingers. She found something stranger. Poking up from the ground was something round and tiny. It looked like a nighttime drop of water made visible by moonlight. She held it between two fingers and pulled. The thing came right out of the ground. The stick underneath the water drop had been the color of a stick, but the minute it was out of the ground, the color changed to the color of leaves and bark mixed together.

  I couldn’t help but drop it, and she couldn’t help but step back several times and watch it from a distance. I looked at the hand that had touched the stick. Her fingers and thumb still could curl one by one to fold within her palm. Her skin was the same color as before. Her heart was beating faster, but that was fear. The stick was now the color of the ground, and if the dark droplet hadn’t been attached, she wouldn’t have been able to find it.

  With thumb and forefinger, she picked it up and held it against a leaf. The stick changed color. She held it against a tree trunk. The stick changed color. She placed the point of the stick against the tree trunk, and it made the sound of insects and slipped right through her fingers and into the tree, Only the tiny waterdrop‚ pressed against the bark, remained visible. The rest was in the tree. She wanted to pull the stick back out, but each time she pulled on the waterdrop‚ her fingers slipped off.

  She was going to look for a rock when she heard a girl’s voice in the distance. It was Huggable’s daughter, and Huggable said something in reply. The voices were coming from the direction of the hidden hut and hearth. So Huggable was the hut’s owner. Who had built it for her? The voices were getting closer, and she didn’t want to be seen. So she followed after the animal’s spoor to see what she was doing now.

  The animal had double-backed on its tracks, and soon I found herself wondering how the animal managed to follow the exact same trails. Except for the uneven stride, and the prints that edged into the dirt whenever she leaned against a tree, there was no sign that the animal stopped and crouched to re-examine its own prints. Unless she was a first soul, she had never been in these woods before, and the woods must have changed much since the first souls had left for their rightful solitude. So how could the animal make its way back to the boulder with such ease? What kind of magic did she have to go along with those tiny sticks that changed color?

  The animal walked slowly, stopping to rest often enough that it was easy to catch up. Then I stayed off the paths, keeping herself behind trees and the occasional bush, moving forward almost as if she were tracking an animal she wished to shoot.

  The animal stopped though, and turned, and looked right in I’s direction. I crouched there, uncertain what to do. She had hunted these woods often enough to know she had been quiet. How could the animal have known where she was? The animal grabbed at the leather bag, and now I wished she had brought her quiver and bow, e
ven though an arrow might not be enough against the animal’s magic. But all the animal did was turn away and stride off at a faster pace, breaking into a run.

  It wasn’t difficult to keep up with her. The animal couldn’t run very fast, and after many steps she would stop, turn, look back, right at I, then walk on, stumble forward, and start to run again. How could an animal with so much magic run frightened, the leather bag slapping at her side, her teats bouncing? If I had wanted to drive the animal to exhaustion, she couldn’t have thought of a better way.

  The animal ran into the clearing, and the sudden light must have disoriented her because she spun, tripped, and fell. I looked toward the boulder and the opening. Maybe the animal would remain on the ground and sleep; maybe I would get the chance to go in and see exactly how this creature lived. But the animal was up on hands and feet, then regaining enough poise to walk into her smoothly shaped hut. The opening disappeared.

  Each woman sat on the hillside, close enough to listen to the healer, each trying to remain at a respectable distance from another. Squawker did not believe the story of the stick. She asked Chest Scars if such sticks had ever been seen near the river’s mouth. She asked Arm Scars if such an animal had been seen near the river’s mouth. Arm Scars, whose chest-high son had joined the knee-high son at her side, told about the small rock with legs and about the man who destroyed it. One woman or another had questions, but Squawker wanted to talk more about the sticks. She asked Lightfoot Watcher if any woman who lived near Small Lake had seen such sticks. Squawker said the healer was making up the story about the stick. “You want us to think it was dangerous to follow the animal.”

  “You,” said Flatface, never looking at Squawker, “can follow the animal tomorrow.”

  “Maybe,” said Arm Scars, “someone should hunt the animal.”

  “You mean,” said Lightfoot Watcher, “someone should kill it?”

  “It is an animal,” said Squawker.

  “You say that,” said Flatface, “because Hugger touched its teats.”

  “Watches Everything,” which is what Squawker called Hugger, “was brave enough to see what her teats were like. The teats are not used to suckle any child. There is something very wrong about this animal.”

  “But you said it wasn’t dangerous,” said Wisdom. “You said the healer made up the story about the sticks to make it look dangerous.”

  Squawker said nothing. She looked at Arm Scars, then Chest Scars. They looked away. Lightfoot Watcher was already staring at the ground. There were no words for a long time. Roofer’s long call was easy to hear. The light was fading, and he announced that he was walking to his nest. Each woman who lived near the river soon got up to leave, and each woman from another place gifted them with some fish they had pulled from the river or tubers they had gathered with Squawker’s permission.

  Night came. Chest Scars and Arm Scars shared a mother, and so they shared a fire. From their hearth each one answered Lightfoot Watcher’s questions about the rock with legs. I just listened respectfully even though she wanted to know why a man, and not a woman, had destroyed it. Later, when each child had fallen asleep and the hillside was quiet, Lightfoot Watcher looked over to I as if she were waiting to offer a word, but I sat motionless by her own fire and looked away. Later I tried to sleep, but couldn’t. She thought about the rock in the clearing and about the animal inside. She thought about what Lightfoot Watcher had asked her to do.

  She was only half-asleep, and the familiar hum woke her instantly. She sat up. She was the only one awake. Arm Scars was lying with her children on one side of the fire; Chest Scars was alone on the other. Lightfoot Watcher’s daughter was learning her solitude, and she slept on the opposite side of her mother’s fire. It was the time of night after one moon had set and the other was just rising, so it was hard to make out the shape of the animal as it stepped out into the clearing. I took several steps down the hill so that the distracting light of the fires was behind her. The animal ignored any sound she might have made. She was staring up into the night sky. I walked forward, out of the trees, and looked up to see what the animal might see.

  In the sky a true body had turned the color of sunset and had started to grow larger. A second one did the same. Then another. The first had turned the color of the sky and was shrinking. The light hurt her eyes even though it wasn’t bright, and she had to look away. When she looked up again, the true bodies were gone. Shafts of light, the color of the other true bodies in the sky, cut across the night.

  The animal fell to her knees and screamed out at the sky. The sounds it made caused a chill cooler than the night air. The sunskin would roar so each would know to stay away, that it would kill anything that came near, but these loud screams were more like those of a mother whose breathing child had died. Behind her, each woman was roused to see what it was. Arm Scars gave suck to her knee-high son to quiet his concern and hushed her chest-high son. Lightfoot Watcher must have thought the screams were a death wail, because like any pregnant woman who hears a death wail, she left the area, the terror of the sound worse than the terror of meeting a nightskin out on a dark path.

  The animal did not seem to hear a sound from the hillside. She screamed and she pounded her fists upon the ground, and then she lifted her fists toward the sky and screamed even louder. Finally the screams stopped, and the animal curled up on the ground and made sounds like sobs and fell asleep. The opening to the boulder was darker than the night, forbidding. And the animal was lying there with no fire to ward off a nightskin, so I watched the animal, knowing she should feel fearful of a creature who had appeared in a hut that had fallen from the sky, that had brought lights in the sky no one had ever seen before. But curled up and lying there, she looked no more harmful than a sleeping pointed-ears. A sleeping nightskin never looked harmless.

  The following is excerpted from a draft of Pauline Dikobe’s memoirs‚ a project she started and abandoned while The Way of God made its return trip to E-donya E-talta. This is the last section she wrote before she abandoned the project and decided to write the novel, Foragers. The Ju/wa soldier featured in this section was the basis for the character of Esoch al-Schouki‚ His name, and all the names of the Way of God’s crew, have been changed to match their counterparts in the novel.

  On board the military space station, I know I am bound to become an alien.

  Wadi al-Uyoun traces its heritage back to a rich time, to a Golden Age, when Muslim, Jew, and Christian lived together, when the great works of Greece and Rome and Persia were translated into Arabic (and from Arabic into Latin for a few interested minds in the north), when music as well as medicine were sciences, when great treatises were written about the relationship of man to man and of man to God while at the same time Shahrazad prolonged her wedding night, the last night of her life, into one thousand and one nights as she told the jealous caliph her wondrous stories of djinns and barbers and kings.

  With the notion of efficiency through harmony, this orbital is populated by Arabs, who relive these same past glories and see only Arab faces, not the white-faced Iberian, the dark-faced Indian, or the deep-hued African, all who played their roles in the world medieval Arabs knew. I look nothing like an Arab.

  * * * * *

  Ibn Haj escorts me aboard the orbital, proud of the itinerary, of the things he will show me. I am to meet the captain of the warship that will take me on the mission we planned within a week, and later I will dine with the General who approved the mission. But I don’t meet the captain. She is busy. Everything is behind schedule. The warship’s engines are still being overhauled in preparation, officially, for a return to the war zone. The revisions of the shuttle have at least another day to go. The new programming for the shuttle’s intelligence has not arrived, nor has the ordered shipment of antelope skins.

  Ibn Haj is all kindness and wit. He leads me around the orbital, impresses me with its efficient layout, the devotion of its design to the sanity of those who live there. He shows me the large
mosque and the smaller church and the even smaller synagogue. We walk the insides of the spider legs, long, hollow tubes that connect the orbital to various spacecraft. We look in on the expansive dining halls where the enlisted eat, the more intimate dining room for officers, and the small gorgeous room where we will dine with the General. We walk through the dormitories, and he leaves me in a tiny cabin where I can wash and change for dinner.

  The General does not look like a general. He looks like my youngest sister’s husband, and after a few moments it Becomes clear that the General, like my brother-in-law, lost his charm at an early age. He pats my hand rather than shaking it and tells me how glad he is to meet the anthropologist who will bring peace. He is happy to hear that I am a Muslim and not some pagan. He wants to hear about life as a forager, but once I use the word “egalitarian,” he interrupts. “I dread that word, Professor Dikobe,” he says. “Egalitarianism can be such a destructive idea. No society can survive it. Accomplishment needs hierarchy. We’d lose this war if we had to fight it by consensus. Great buildings would never be finished. The poor would never be fed. Great masses of people couldn’t be moved from one planet to another. The betters must rule over the lessers. I presume even a good hunter must lord it over a poor hunter.”

  “Among the people I studied, sir, it’s exactly the opposite. A good hunter will always talk like he’s a poor hunter. He will always come back after a large kill and say he’s found nothing. And then he’ll admit to having killed something worthless. And when others go to help him butcher the meat, they’ll all say that the animal’s nothing but skin and bones, hardly worth the effort to butcher it.”

  The General’s eyes widen. “They do this with a large kill? They have no respect for an individual’s abilities and accomplishments?”

  “Oh, they do. One Ju/wa explained it to me like this. He said, ‘When a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse the one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle.’”