Hath No Fury

by Melanie R. Meadors

  And so, the Long War went on.

  CRAFT

  LIAN HEARN

  This story is set in a world based on the Coorong in South Australia and I would like to express my gratitude and respect to the traditional owners, the Ngarrindjeri. Nothing in the story represents traditional Ngarrindjeri beliefs or culture. Only the landscape is the same.

  THE WAVES BROUGHT IN MANY strange objects which was one of the reasons why men were not allowed on the ocean beach. The ocean and its tides followed the rule of the moon and therefore belonged to the realm of women. The men were confined to the lake the river made behind the sandhills and its quieter waters, to the home strand where they plucked each other’s body hair, rubbed their muscles with fish oil to make them shine, danced and gossiped, and prepared the craft we used to navigate that flat world of reeds and inlets, mud flats, and sandbanks where the river spread into a hundred different channels in its quest for the sea.

  Some women, and I was one, were lenient and would allow a favorite to accompany us when we went out in the craft, though our grandmothers would never have countenanced it, saying men scared the fish away and brought other forms of bad luck. I enjoyed having one or other of my men with me, liked watching the ripple of muscle beneath the oiled skin as they swam my craft home.

  Illustration by NICOLÁS R. GIACONDINO

  Craft had two meanings: the boats we made from reeds and bark, and the knowledge of how to make them and how to live between the ocean and the river. Our mothers taught us craft and we would hand it on to our daughters, for its forms were as many as the branches of the river, and only women had the subtlety and selflessness to master them.

  Men were beautiful to look at, their strength was useful, and of course joining with them was highly enjoyable and necessary for children to be born, but their violent emotions and petty rivalries made them unsuitable for leadership. So while we were happy enough when a male child was born—boys were adorable after all—we celebrated the birth of a girl with true gratitude and joy for we knew she would be a new receptacle for craft.

  She would know each morning before she opened her eyes what the weather would be, from the feel of the wind on her body and the smell of earth and sea. Her skin would be attuned to the slightest changes in temperature and to the weight in the air that forecast storms. Out on the water she would notice the tiny minnow ripples that broke the surface of a calm summer lake and the loudening of the lapping waves on the farther shore, and be home in shelter long before the changing wind could pin her craft down for days. She would know the cries of birds: the terns, cormorants, ducks and swans of the lake, the doves, nectar eaters, and shrike thrushes of the sandhills. She would follow the gulls’ screams to schools of fish, dig for cockles where the oyster catchers strutted, and know how kite and eagle hovered under the midday sun. Every spring she would welcome back the waders in flocks of thousands, and in autumn she would hear their mournful farewells and feel lonely.

  Each woman had her own stretch of beach entrusted to her to tend and harvest. On the lake, everything was shared, but the beach was a series of separate places, maybe a dozen on our stretch of shore. Breaks in the sandhill provided entrance points, all alike: the sea framed as if in a bowl, the blue, green, and gray above, the white surf below, purple flowered plants straggling underfoot, tracks of small creatures in the soft sand. The waves deafened everything. Sight took over from hearing. Motion and vibration sent reptiles slithering away. The sand was almost pure white and dazzling. On those rare times when the surf died down I could hear it squeak beneath my feet.

  When I went to the ocean beach it was alone. It was my custom to go after big storms and huge tides to see what the waves had brought in: spars of wood, strange nuts as large as a head, drowned birds, beached fish, unusual shells. I also went then to check and see if my shelter was still standing. We called those high tides whale tides. Many years ago, when I was a child, a whale washed up on the beach. I can still remember the smell as it rotted. Its bones remained, half buried in the sand and I had the idea to make a shelter from them. I used driftwood spars and planks, tree branches for the roof, and had my men weave a floor covering, though I did not tell them what it was for.

  The other women envied me my luck and it set me apart from them. I was marked as fortunate and received their respect, tinged with fear.

  I SAW THE SHAPE FROM the top of the hill. The wind still blew strongly, raking my face and legs with sand. The surf roared, sighed, sucked, and roared again. In a pile of dark seaweed lay a darker lump. I thought it might be a seal, which was exciting. Seal skins made warm coverings for winter and their teeth were pretty. I wore a necklace of them that day, hanging between my breasts, and a skirt woven from the tough slender grass stems that grew at the lake’s edge. On my wrist was a bag, also woven from reeds, in which was the stone blade I used to open shells and gut fish, and a small wooden bowl, to carry berries or drink from.

  The seal lay motionless. I kept one eye on it while I checked my shelter. Wet sand had blown through it, piling up against each arched bone. I pulled out the mat and shook it, weighed it down with a rock at each corner, and left it to dry. Then, I went to look at the seal.

  Through the clinging kelp I could see, splayed like a pale starfish, the fingers of a hand, and the shape of the cleft legs. I cleared away the slick brown straps and saw the face of a man. Intense curiosity seized me. The wind howled, the waves crashed, the gulls screamed, but I hardly noticed them. I picked off the seaweed piece by piece, brushed away the sand, dug him out with my hands, gazing at my discovery in wonder, almost awe.

  He lay half on his side, one leg bent under him, one hand gripping into the sand, the other open at his side. I realized later he had crawled from the waves at some time in the night and they, receding, had washed away all trace. I rolled him onto his back. Not yet stiffened, not yet bloated, though his skin was as cold as a dead fish, and as clammy, his cheeks and eyes encrusted with salt. I thought he was dead and was already wondering where and how to bury him.

  His hair was long and black, and had been shaved or plucked out across his forehead. There was a slight stubble on his cheeks and a wisp of beard. His clothes were not like anything I had ever seen: some animal skin, like seal but not seal, cut into strips and laced together to form a carapace around the chest, like a beetle or a shellfish. Attached to one side, the north, was a long rigid case, like the spiny feelers of a crayfish. A handle covered in woven cord protruded from it. Very gently I put my fingers round it and drew it out half way. It looked sharper than my shell blade and it glinted in the sun like the surface of the lake or a snake’s eye. I slid it back and started unlacing the garment. In all my life I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted these things: the garment, the blade, and a second shorter blade I found almost buried beneath him. My heart was pounding in my throat, my hands were trembling, my desire was close to sexual. I couldn’t believe my luck. This was a thousand times better than the whale.

  Under the animal skin plates was another garment, much softer and more closely woven than my skirt, and a long cloth wound around his buttocks and genitals. His lower limbs were covered in trousers not unlike those we wear in winter. I tugged and pulled at all these layers, putting my spoils in a pile beside me, until he lay on his back, naked.

  One of the sweet things about men is the way their knobs swell in death. I stared at the stranger’s pale, blue-veined engorged knob, thinking with fondness of my own dear men, sad for him that he would never know pleasure again, and my own sex began to ache in sympathy. I spread my legs and touched myself and when I was wet, straddled him and put him inside me. At once, I felt a huge gush of ecstasy and I shouted, knowing no one would hear me, and at that moment his eyes flew open and salt water burst in a stream from his mouth. He coughed and spluttered and I felt his knob contract and then expand. His eyes met mine, astonishment flooding into them, but his body had taken over, bucking and thrusting in its joy at being alive, and none of my men
had ever given me such intense pleasure.

  He cried out as loudly as I had as his salty essence spurted into me and I wanted deeply to make a child from it, as I never had done yet with any of my men. I consented with every fiber of my being to the spirit child waiting for a womb, yes, yes, yes, throbbing through me.

  His eyes rolled back in his head, filling me with terror that I had found him only to lose him. I leant forward and placed my mouth on his, tasted the crusted salt and sensing the soreness. He moaned and his tongue met mine as if he would suck moisture from me. He needed water.

  When I moved away from him, his eyes opened and I saw the plea in them. I patted the air, saying, “Stay here, I am coming back.” I made one hand into a bowl and mimed drinking water.

  The sun was starting to burn and flies to gather. His pale, naked skin looked vulnerable so I fetched the mat and placed it over him, making a little tent above his face so he could breathe. I gathered up the pile of spoils I’d taken from him and put them in the shelter. Then I went back over the sandhills to the spring.

  The sandhills looked dry and the river was tidal and salty, yet there are places where you can dig down into the sand with your hands and, in a few moments, the hole fills with fresh water. There was one of these not far from my ocean entrance.

  It was part of craft, knowing where to find hidden water and men are not allowed to approach the springs in case the smell of their sweat turns the water sour. Sweat smells foul: my men shave their armpits with sharp shells and stone blades and rub crushed myrtle leaves into their skin. If I can smell sweat on them I can’t bear them near me.

  As I dug the hole and waited for it to fill I tried to remember if my seal man had smelled disgusting, but all I could recall was his taste of salt. He had certainly left a faint pollen scent of semen on me and I didn’t want my men to notice it. It would only unsettle them and make them jealous. I used the first rise of water, scooped up in my bowl, to wash myself, wondering why I should feel guilty, realizing I was concealing something from my men and would continue to do so.

  When I look back, I realized that was the moment when I made the decision that would change my life and my people’s. I didn’t know it then, I just felt uneasy and excited at the same time.

  As I stood with the filled bowl in my hand, I heard a faint hushing noise overhead, the beat of thousands of wings and a thousand faint cries. The water birds were returning, which meant it was the first day of spring.

  It was always a thrilling sound. No matter how often I heard it I never got used to it. The Northern people killed and ate birds; they traded ornaments and head dresses made from feathers which they wore at the ceremonial dances that ended each year’s meeting. But we never killed birds and if we found a dead one we mourned over it. Our people became birds when we died, and these spirit birds could not be distinguished from real ones. When we walked among flocks of birds we were with our mothers and grandmothers. Sometimes they warned of events, a death or a storm. We could not kill and eat any bird in case we killed one of our ancestors. Consequently, they had no fear of us.

  I had no idea where the birds went to in winter, how they reappeared like magic. Sometimes I wondered if they dived into the ocean once they were out of sight over the horizon, changing into the great shoals of fish that turned the sea dark in autumn. I liked to think of them bursting back through the surface when the days began to lengthen and the ocean warmed, their scales drying into feathers, their wings fluttering in joy.

  I felt suddenly happy, seized by some spirit that made me want to sing and dance. I thought it might be the child, waiting to know if it was to come to me or not, waiting for me to sing it into being. I didn’t want to spill the water so I walked back calmly, singing in a quiet voice, dancing inwardly.

  Back on the beach, my new man had pushed away the mat and was staring upwards at the birds. As he listened to their cries, an expression of desolation came over his face and tears sprang into his eyes. He jumped up, gestured at them and then spoke in a way that was completely unknown to me, repeating certain words urgently. I patted his arm to calm him, made him sit again, and gave him the bowl of water.

  I studied him while he drank: his long muscled legs, his flat belly, the tufts of hair in his armpits that both repelled and excited me.

  He sipped the water steadily, then spat out the last drops, rinsing his mouth. He spoke again to me and when he saw I did not understand, he smoothed out the sand and with his finger drew something that was not really a picture like the Northern traders used, or like the magic fish we women drew to entice them into our nets. When he pointed at the picture and then pointed upwards and cried like a bird, I saw the bird shape in it. It was a sign that meant bird in his speech. It enchanted me. He enchanted me. How strange and clever and delightful he was!

  My face showed him I understood; he smiled, smoothed another patch of sand and drew another sign. Looking around, he pointed at my shelter and I saw it in the sign, its roof and walls. He touched his own nose and indicated the shelter and the bird.

  I understood perfectly. His home was where the birds came from. They went to him in winter, they came to me in spring. Maybe they had brought him to me.

  He patted his stomach and mimed putting food in his mouth. I was a bit shocked that he would indicate so directly that I should serve him. It seemed very bold and unmanly. Again, I felt that heady mixture of disgust and desire.

  The tide which had washed him up in the night and then receded, was once more on the turn, which is when the surf clams waken. I went down to the water’s edge and began to dig with my hands. I felt the smooth shell under my fingers, hooked it up, saw the little red tongue flicker before the clam snapped shut, and dropped it into my bag. When I had ten or so I took them back to him, opened them with my stone blade and gave them to him one by one, saving the last two for myself. They were meaty, a little gritty, and quivered as we swallowed them.

  I saw his knob had stiffened again, with life, not death as before, so we joined out parts once more with the same extraordinary intensity.

  Afterwards, there was something about his behavior that disturbed me. He did not thank me as my men would have done or ask if I needed anything. Well, of course, he could not for he did not know my speech, but there are many ways to show gratitude and affection and he did not use any of them. I waited to see if he would make another drawing, but when he sat up, he looked around, stood, and went through a long movement with his hands, his eyes never leaving my face, his feet gripping the sand.

  I could see as clearly as if it were real the invisible blade in his hands. The sun was dancing on the waves, dazzling me. I realized how all the muscles and sinews in his body had been strengthened for this end, to wield his blade.

  When he had finished he knelt again and drew in the sand and said, “Ka ta na.”

  Picking up the mat, I led him to the shelter. I spread the mat down inside, then gestured to him to come in and showed him the pile I had made of the things I had taken from him.

  His eyes lit up when he saw the blades and a look of relief crossed his face. He made a sort of bob with his head and in it I finally saw gratitude. He would not thank me for water or food or the joining, but he would thank me for the blade.

  I’d been aware for a while of a high keening and now he heard it too. He looked questioningly at me.

  “It’s my men,” I said. “I have to go. Stay here.” Then I mimed all this as best I could, and he nodded as if he understood. He gave me a look that was not at all respectful or submissive, but insolent, almost mocking.

  MY MEN HAD NOT SEEN me since dawn. The storm in the night had unsettled them and now they feared I had been washed away by a giant wave or eaten by a sea monster. Men jumped to conclusions very quickly and as a result acted impulsively and recklessly.

  I had three at that time: my first, and if I were honest, my favorite, was Wing, a boy I had grown up with, from a family who lived two sea entrances down from mine. All girls held in th
eir head the linked system that told us where our men might be taken from. We wove its loops and spirals into decorations or drew them on flat wet sand. Children played together from all families on the lake shore—I could hear their shouts and laughter now—and Wing and I had always been good friends. He was very beautiful, everyone agreed on that, and I forgave him his vanity for he had plenty to be vain about.

  My second was an older man on whom I had taken pity after his woman, my cousin, and her child died. Such deaths were considered very bad luck, and many men threw themselves into the river and drowned rather than live on shunned and alone, but my cousin had made me promise I would look after Talon, and because I knew she had truly loved him, I did.

  Wing had light brown hair and sea gray eyes, but Talon was dark-eyed and black-haired. My third man, Fin, was also black-haired but had light eyes like Wing. He was younger than me, still very slight, with little facial hair. I was waiting for him to become a little older before I joined with him, though I liked petting him, and the others spoiled him, braiding his hair, plucking the tiny fluff from his armpits, and little by little showing him how to please a woman.

  When I appeared over the sandhills, my men cried out like plovers and ran to me, taking my hands, asking me where I had been and if I was all right. Talon had tears in his eyes—he had been abandoned once and knew the reality of a man left without a woman, without craft.

  I reassured them and let them carry me to the lake shore where they had grilled the morning fish. It was well past the time when we usually ate the first meal of the day and I was glad to see they had obediently not eaten without me. The fish were the ones we call round bones, for they had tiny patterned bones like pebbles in their heads which we women liked and the men collected and polished for us. I had caught them the previous day, so they were still fresh, and there were still some live ones swimming in the submerged nets.