Human

by Hayley Camille

Each morning, she sat by the river with her macabre menagerie and drew symbols in the dirt, with what he had now realized, was a chimpanzee. Once, he had sought out those drawings after dusk, risking a burning torch to see them, only to find the geometric shapes and patterns made no sense. It wasn’t long after, the ape-men started copying her and the redhead had become agitated and left. A couple of days later though, she began to teach them willingly.

  It was infuriating. The woman was wasting her time, teaching shapes to imbeciles, while he suffered. But this was bigger than him. The civilised world had probably suffered at the hands of this conspiracy. And damn it, those hands could have been his.

  A niggling memory chewed at Neil’s brain and he tossed it around again, as he had all night. There was something he couldn’t quite place, his last memory of the lab, of her… A flash of black and a pulse of neon blue that burned white in his closed eyelids… Damn it! There was something about that moment, something that seemed significant that kept slipping away.

  Neil needed answers and the redhead was quickly becoming dispensable. If I could just get her alone.

  Justification was a beautiful thing.

  It was magic. Not the magic of spells and supernatural incantations, but real magic. The magic of storytelling.

  It was a trademark of all human societies, no matter the form it took. A story, a song, a folktale, a chant, a parable. A gift passed from generation to generation preserving history without pens or paper. The story embellished, reworded, broken and rebuilt like a string of Chinese whispers through time immemorial. But there was always meaning behind the words, Ivy knew, that had been saved for so long. There was always a truth, no matter how far buried, in the bones of the tale.

  Bright stars glittered in the night, almost close enough to touch. A cool wind swept the cave entrance where Ivy sat amongst the tribe. Trahg was curled in her lap and Kyah pressed against her side, the odd pair still inseparable. All eyes were on an old, bent woman standing to Ivy's right. The woman's name was Phren. Her wrinkled hand clutched Ivy’s, the amulet warm and pulsing between their palms. With a cry that cast the restless night into silence, Phren threw her free arm out theatrically and began her story.

  Ivy looked at Kyah, momentarily sad at the bonobo's inability to grasp the inherent spirituality of the situation. But the hobbits surrounding her were different. They not only grasped their oral history, they embraced it. How very human. Was it culture that defined humanity then? Ivy mused. She considered the elements of culture that each of the three species of ape represented here tonight, shared. Each species had the capacity to learn behaviour from its parents, to use that behaviour and teach others. Each species recognised its allies and foes and formed lifelong relationships based on kinship and rank. They all solved problems creatively, they cooperated and they empathized, they anticipated behaviour and the reactions of others. Culture was a concept shared, by that definition.

  But this - telling a story; this was different, Ivy knew. Using words as symbols to explain an idea that might be purely hypothetical, changeable or even completely ambiguous. Is this what defines us as human? Our driving instinct to understand where we came from and our ability to recount it over thousands of years? Story was a powerful tool for learning, where each word - each symbol - could possess multiple meanings and only through context and shared experience might become meaningful at all.

  “Baby. Hug.” Kyah signed and pulled at Trahg’s arm. The boy happily shifted into the bonobo’s lap and settled. Trahg was beginning to understand Kyah’s symbols, a realisation that left Ivy a little uneasy.

  Kyah shifted next to her and Ivy raked her fingers gently across the bonobo’s arm. So what was the very first story? Ivy wondered. What idea, what symbol, could have been powerful enough to throw the human species from an intelligence that already worked perfectly in its time and place, into a feedback loop of this new, different type of intelligence? The type that forced our lives and tools, our language and brains into increasing complexity. How had it begun, and how blurry were the lines between us really?

  There was a tranquillity about Kyah tonight which suggested that although she may not appreciate the meaning, she felt a certain reverence for the situation.

  Phren paused in her story and the tribe began their dusk song again. This time, Kyah listened to it, spellbound, with wide eyes. The bonobo’s face was still and her breathing deep and slow. For a moment, Ivy could see no sense of self in their depths. An interesting thought occurred to Ivy, as she watched the bonobo. Had Kyah lost herself in the beauty of the voices? Could she honestly feel the intensity that hung palpable in each note? How close to a spiritual epiphany might Kyah have come? How close to symbolic thought, might she be, if not there already? A tiny fantasy conceived and acted upon that led to another and another, so slowly, changing the way we learn, the way we think… Is this how it all began?

  The dusk song fell silent and Phren began another story. Ivy’s story.

  “Our ancients were travellers,” Phren said. “On rafts of bamboo, they crossed the broken sea to rest on the island of flowers, where Life touched them deepest. They grew to feel the Life within the land itself and became bound to it.”

  “They made their home where fire and water and wind boil together under the earth, by three great lakes.” Phren took a moment to seek the eyes of her audience. “Our first home, the sister lakes. One was bright blue, like the great sea that gives Life to the fish that swim. The second was green, like the forest that gives Life to the animals and plants that are born to earth. And the last lake was red, like the blood that moves within us and gives Life to our body.

  Phren raised her voice dramatically. “But the earth began to suffer. It cried in fire and rain and the great mountains shook. Dust filled the sky. The ancients knew they had to leave and search for new homes in the forest. So they sang their Dusk Song, calling for the protection of the earth.”

  “The earth answered. Blue lightning broke the night sky, and struck the top of the mountain, where the sister lakes meet. Only one elder, Natu, was brave enough to follow it. When she reached the Falling Place, she found a black stone, glowing blue.” Phren held Ivy's wrist in the air for all to see, exposing the amulet tied to it. “The Life Stone.” Phren turned her attention to Ivy only. “When Natu picked it up, she was struck by a vision that stayed with her until she died.”

  “What vision?” whispered Ivy.

  “The stone showed a cave toward the setting sun,” said Phren, “A new home where our people would be safe.” The crowd murmured. “And it showed a woman,” Phren continued. “A tall woman with strange hides covering her body and eyes that were green like the trees. Her skin was white like the moon and her hair - her hair was red like fire. They called the woman Hiranah. The ancients believed that when our people needed protection again, Hiranah would Fall to save us and reclaim the stone. We are connected, people and earth, earth and people.” Phren’s voice dropped to a whisper. “We have always known you would come when we had need of you.”

  “It’s not me,” Ivy said, failing to hide the tremor in her voice.

  Gihn stepped forward. “This is your stone, Hiranah, you said so yourself.”

  “No! I mean, yes, it’s mine, but I don’t know how to save you!”

  “We need you, Hiranah.” Gihn's eyes flashed. “The Life Stone answered us, just as the story told it would. Skin like the moon, hair like fire; the earth gave us you.”

  “But I’m not enough!” cried Ivy, forgetting her audience. “There must be more, Gihn, more knowledge or help or something! I can’t do this by myself! There must be more to the story!” Phren’s eyes darted to the left, catching those of Gihn. He shook his head faintly.

  “There is nothing else, Hiranah,” he stated.

  Phren took Ivy’s hand in both of her own. Her voice softened. “All we were is gone now. Many of us have become few. The Swift Death kills our hunters and the Slow Death kills our children.” She paused for a moment and Iv
y could see her lips were trembling with grief as the old woman took a deep breath. “But the earth still protects us. It gave us you, Hiranah, as it promised it would. You will help us survive.”

  “What you are asking me is impossible!” Ivy yelled again, the following morning. “I can’t save an entire species from extinction! Even if I knew how to, who am I to interfere? This is totally beyond my abilities, Gihn. I'm just a human, like you.” Ivy finished her tirade with an angry collapse on the ground, sitting cross legged in the bamboo thicket. A warm breeze whistled through the hollow stalks, leaving a chiming whisper in the air. Gihn sat gracefully beside her and covered the amulet again with his palm.

  He looked Ivy squarely in the eyes. “A human with power.”

  “No! I have no power. I don't know why the amulet brought me here,” the fact that she didn’t know how grated Ivy more than anything else, “but I honestly can’t help you! I have no medicine to save your hunters from the Swift Death and I haven't the first idea what is causing this Slow Death you speak of. Out there,” Ivy gestured to the uninviting jungle in the valley below, “I'm more vulnerable than you are. I have no power here.”

  “Then you must have knowledge.”

  At that Ivy refused to meet his gaze.

  Gihn's mouth turned down. “Show me.” His hand tightened around her wrist, locking the warm amulet between their skin.

  “What?”

  “Show me what you know. About my people. You recognized us the moment we found you in the forest. So let me see what you’ve seen.”

  “Absolutely not. You don’t know what you’re asking me, Gihn!” Ivy gritted her jaw and dropped her head into her free hand. “There are things you can’t understand…things you shouldn’t know!” Her skin flushed red with anger.

  “If you refuse to help us I need to know why!” Gihn argued.

  “I can’t show you why!”

  “You must show me!”

  “But knowing will hurt you more!” Ivy pleaded. She felt like an animal, cornered and tricked into performing.

  “We’re already hurt! We are dying and you know it!”

  Ivy tried to pry her hand away, but her strength was nothing to Gihn’s grip.

  “Show me what you know Hiranah,” Gihn repeated, his voice dangerously low.

  “Fine!” Ivy yelled at him. “Take it then, take everything I have!”

  Furiously, Ivy tugged memories from the recesses of her mind, uncovering and throwing them into light so that Gihn might share them. The explosion of colour behind her eyes nauseated her and she squeezed them shut, not knowing how to control the stream of thoughts spewing to the surface.

  Orrin, the university librarian, a politician, laboratory mice, the Chinese food deliveryman, a street performer in Federation square, a baby in a pink hat, Kyah, her father pushing her swing, Orrin, a homeless woman feeding birds, Jasper, her mother kissing her goodnight… on and on they came, faces she hadn’t seen for years, many she had forgotten, some she didn’t even know, all filed away in secret spaces. Loss. The faces overwhelmed her and she desperately wanted them locked safely away again. They were all irretrievable now. Orrin. Ivy choked back a sob as the memories drowned her.

  She felt violated by her own mind. But Gihn had forced this on himself. He’d stolen her life from her. He deserved the heartache of seeing what she had lost as well as the futility of what he sought.

  Ivy struggled to pull her memories in the direction Gihn was seeking. Cave paintings in Lascaux, a steaming jungle in Maya, shell middens, frigid Scottish moors, the crumbling pyramid of Mayapan, an African rifted valley, Emperor Qin Huang's broken terracotta warriors… on and on they came, so fast it made her dizzy and her free hand clawed the dirt blindly for support… the spider web rice fields of future Flores, photos of theodolites and trowels and strangely organized piles of dirt, the stratigraphic map of Liang Bua, clinical and cold – I don't want you to see anymore…Ivy tried desperately to pull her wrist away but Gihn held tight… please Gihn, no!… stone tools in a plastic tub, florescent laboratory lights, piles of broken bones plastered back together, NO! a clear display case with a tiny human skull, the letters EXTINCT across a textbook.

  Ivy wrenched her wrist from Gihn and fell forward burying her tears in her hands. The images faded from her mind slowly, leaving residual marks as if staring at the sun. There was no satisfaction now to giving Gihn what he wanted. Ivy felt hollow. Ashamed.

  Of course they’ll die, all of them, Ivy knew. Their future was in a box on a shelf. Nothing would remain of the warm, rich lives they’d built themselves. Evolution didn't work like that. Empathy played no part in selection; there was only struggle, and constant change. Survival of the fittest. Life wasn’t fair, Ivy knew that well enough.

  Gihn's eyes opened. They seemed dead already. His hand trembled as he reached hesitantly for the amulet. For a moment, he reminded her of old Tom. With a sigh, Ivy covered his hand with her own.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  Gihn said nothing for a long time.

  “Do you think we deserve to survive?” he finally asked.

  “Your mortality has nothing to do with what I think, Gihn,” said Ivy.

  “Perhaps not, but do you?”

  Ivy looked away. Kyah and Trahg had climbed a candlenut tree further uphill. Three other children shouted up at them from below. Laughing, Trahg leapt daringly onto Kyah's back as she swung higher. Kyah caught Trahg’s foot to balance him, screeching. Together they tore fistfuls of leaves from the branch, throwing them into the sky so that they fluttered and swirled onto the delighted little faces below. Peals of laughter erupted from the children as they jumped for the showering leaves.

  They’re beautiful, she thought. But they weren’t special, Ivy realized, no more or less than any other animal on the planet. And that was the very reason they deserved the right to survive. For the innate miracle of existing at all, despite the odds against them.

  “I think everybody deserves the right to fight for their own survival, Gihn,” she finally conceded. “But it’s not as easy as you think. Nature dictates your fate.” Ivy repressed the modern variation on that law - Homo sapiens dictate your fate. She dropped her head back into her hands. “If we can’t change with the world around us, then we die. But you cannot possibly understand how complicated that is.”

  Gihn looked at Ivy critically, as if seeing her for the first time.

  “But you do.”

  “I do what?”

  “You understand. You have the knowledge that could save us, which is why you chose to come.” He pre-emptively met her denial. “You did choose this.”

  Ivy’s heart sank. “Even if I were to help you….” She bit her lip. She wasn't seriously considering it, but Gihn needed to understand her reasons why. “I can’t guarantee you would be better off. The world where I came from can be cruel and dangerous. Much more dangerous than this jungle. It’s so cruel, I hide from it myself.” Her own admission surprised her. Ivy faltered, forgetting Gihn was there. I hid. And Orrin knew it.

  Rallying her train of thought again, Ivy shook her head. “And for a person like you, with your differences and vulnerability…” Ivy trailed off. How would Homo sapiens treat their hominid cousins, if they had to live side by side? She looked toward Kyah, remembering that first day she’d met her. Ivy shuddered. “No, Gihn. It's just not possible.”

  Gihn jutted his chinless jaw toward her defiantly. “But that’s our choice to make. We deserve the right to fight for our survival, you said that yourself.” He followed Ivy’s gaze over to the children playing under the rosewood tree. “If you can’t save us Hiranah, at least give us more time. So we can learn to save ourselves.”

  “Lahstri!” Later that afternoon, two young men ran into the cave. The older of the two boys carried a third, older man, cradled in his arms. He lowered the man as gently as possible at the medicine woman’s feet not far from the entrance. Lahstri dropped to a crouch beside the unconscious man’s body and l
ifted his eyelids, then swiftly surveyed his injuries as others crowded around. A single arrow pierced his chest where his heart lay underneath. The shorter boy collapsed beside them, clutching his own arm. There was an arrow in it.

  Without a word, Shahn dropped what she was doing and went to Lahstri’s hearth. She returned immediately with a hide bag. Ivy, who had been playing with Trahg, picked him up and walked closer to the gathering, desperate for the translation of events. She pressed the amulet to his arm and heard the words of the tribe through little Trahg’s thoughts as he watched the events unfold with a quivering lip.

  All around, there were cries of dismay as Lahstri closed the man’s eyes and looked grimly to Shahn. She pushed the medicine bag away.

  “It’s too late. Terap is dead.” She turned to the two young men that were still panting with exhaustion, slumped despondently from their ordeal. Only then Lahstri noticed the arrow in the younger one’s arm. She grabbed her bag from the dirt floor. “Chew these Kiran,” Lahstri instructed, giving him a clutch of betel leaves. “It will help dull your pain when I pull out the arrow.” She turned to the other boy as Kiran’s eyes fluttered closed. “Kari? What did you do?”

  “Nothing!” The remaining boy exclaimed, sitting straighter, with tears in his eyes. “Terap was teaching us how to make bird traps. We were nowhere near karathah territory! They just appeared and began casting arrows before we even knew they were there.” Kari’s mouth became a straight line and he blinked repeatedly, forcing away his tears. Lahstri nodded, indicating for Kiran’s father to carry the now unconscious boy back to her own hearth to tend. “It is best if I do it now, while he can’t feel it.”

  A small group fell into grief beside Terap’s body. From behind them, an old man stepped around the body and walked directly to Ivy, who stood shocked, holding Trahg in her arms.

  The man leant up close, twisting his mouth in a bitter grimace.

  “Karathah.”