Wolf Light

by Yaba Badoe

  I watched, petrified, a prisoner captured in the haze of my grey, unblinking gaze, as Pa, leading his friends, skidded down the mountainside. I tried to call out but couldn’t. Tried to point out a path to safety though none existed.

  Twisting and turning this way and that, diving to one side, then the other, Pa and his men scrambled for their lives till the moment came when the tiger leaped and, opening its jaws, devoured them in the crush.

  *

  I sank to my knees, dazed.

  ‘Pa, Pa,’ I kept saying, unable to believe what my eyes had seen or conceive of a world without him. Through summers spent grazing our animals on the steppes, over winters that froze the ground we trod on and chilled our bones, Pa guided us up to the mountains and back again. Who would lead us now?

  My brothers Chinua and Gan were ten and seven, still young. Could Ma shoulder Pa’s mantle?

  The uncertainty I felt about life without Pa hitched onto a caravan on a trail to nowhere. Most unsettling was my doubt. Even though Grandma had forewarned me of the events I’d witnessed; even though she’d cautioned that one after the other our teachers would be taken from us, when truth spoke to me in the voice of an old woman, I was too fond of her face to hear clearly.

  Straight away distrust ensnared me, separating me from Pa. What was the purpose of being a shaman if he couldn’t foresee his own fate? More to the point, why have a presentiment of disaster when there was no chance of stopping it?

  Incandescent, I stretched my arms to Father Sky and wailed. Where were my sisters now that they too were in mourning? And Little Linet? Alone, what would become of her? What would become of us all? I thought of my sisters and yet sobbed for myself, thrashing Mother Earth first with my fists, clawing at her with my nails.

  My horse nuzzled me gently while a southerly wind stirred, rustling the long grasses of the steppes. Above me, the hawk was still whirling, and when her shadow grazed me a second time, the heat in my tears cooled. Somehow, hawk, wind and horse combined to ease my distress and despite the insults I’d flung at them, earth and sky conspired to help me.

  Once I’d stopped crying, Altan nipped me, urging me to sit up. Bit by bit he persuaded me to stroke him. I was sitting on the ground caressing his forehead, when Ma appeared. She’d been out since late afternoon, scavenging for herbs to season our evening meal. One look at my tear-stained face and she knew something was gravely amiss.

  ‘Are you hurt, Zula?’ she asked.

  I shook my head.

  Her face grew pale. Her fingers tensed, gripping the pouch at her side as her eyes darted, glancing at the dirt on my clothes, my hands and nails blackened from the thrashing I’d given Mother Earth.

  ‘What is it, Zula?’

  The bite of tears stung me once again. Unwilling to say the words she had to hear, I covered my face.

  Ma looked on and absorbing the fold of my body, the tussle between pain and fury on my face, she asked: ‘Has something happened to your father?’

  I gagged and my soul sobbed as Ma stifled a scream in her throat. Even so, she sat down, and as she held me, stroking locks of my hair that fell like smatterings of snow over her hand, I howled like a lost wolf cub.

  *

  On the day that Pa’s body was due to come home, the faint grumblings of a storm hung in the air. Our animals sensed it: the horses were skittish, the sheep unable to graze, while our camels, usually docile, refused to settle. I sniffed the wind and felt prickles of dust in my nose. A fork of lightning flashed across a pale afternoon sky that darkened as thunder rumbled. Then, all at once, a cold wind swirled from the mountains. Whistling over the steppes, it stirred grass this way and that, like a giant’s hand would a mighty cauldron. I turned to look at the horizon and saw billows of black clouds. Clouds laden with dust. I called my brothers, Ma as well.

  We were dressed in our best clothes in readiness for Pa’s arrival: long-sleeved tunics in yellow, folded at the chest over trousers. We quickly took the tunics off, put on our work clothes, and set to.

  Thankfully, we each knew what to do. You don’t spend years breeding livestock without understanding the hazards involved: drought, ferocious dust storms and freezing cold winters that few creatures survive. Pa once told me that the times we were living through were confused. Nothing was as it should be because the earth was changing; and as it changed it behaved with the unpredictability of an angry child: weeping one moment, sullen the next. A child that spits and rages, stamping its foot at every turn. Wind magic was futile in the situation we found ourselves in. Nothing would soothe the child’s lament; nothing could ease its frenzy. And now that Father Sky had taken to hoarding rain high above the clouds, the frequency of dust storms carried over the mountains from China was intensifying.

  My little brother, Gan, named for the boldness of his spirit, helped me open the gates of the corral as we started moving our animals behind our gers to shelter them from the storm. Pa’s youngest brother, Batu, had joined us the day before. He’d arrived on our pastureland with the ease of a late summer breeze, behaving as if he’d never been away. Struck by how warmly Ma had embraced him, how readily he praised Pa for helping him find a bolthole in the city, I hushed Grandma’s whispers in my ear.

  My uncle had left that morning with family members of the other men killed in the rock fall to retrieve their bodies. Batu had brought with him a ger and three mouths to feed – his wife, Knenbish, and two small daughters. His ger gave us a second windbreak in the gathering storm, another pair of hands, another set of feet and the quick wits of Knenbish, could make the difference between life and death.

  ‘Hurry, Chinua!’ Ma cried.

  Chinua, on horseback, hooted at our sheep. He rounded them up and whooping, forced them behind the two gers, where Knenbish and I tried to calm them.

  In front of us sinister clouds of dust, rolling in from the mountains, crept closer.

  When the sheep were safely in place, I returned to our corralled animals and called Altan. In the throng of horses, I heard his whinny. As soon as he was within range, l jumped on him and, steering him with my knees, drove our horses to where the sheep lay, heads down, eyes closed to the wind.

  By now flurries of air blew in blasts, battering the earth flat, rattling at the doors of our homes. And with every gust came the pinch of tiny splinters of grime. They nipped at my ears and crept up my nose, half-blinding and throttling me at the same time. I tore the strip of cloth I wore around my neck in half. A quick flip and roll and it became a muffler protecting my nose and mouth, and a dust mask for Altan as well. My eyes I kept half-shut.

  The storm was almost upon us when the wind rammed the gate shut and slammed little Gan to the ground.

  Ma hauled him up and handing him over to Knenbish, said: ‘You two, go inside.’

  Gan protested but Ma insisted: ‘I’ve no time to argue, son. But if you’re as bold as you’re supposed to be, make your father proud of you today and do exactly as I say.’

  Knenbish dragged him into our ger.

  To me, Ma yelled: ‘Faster, Zula, we’re just about out of time. The camels.’

  I galloped back to the corral to round up the last of our livestock. Chinua opened the gate and riding on opposite sides we steered the camels behind our gers. We secured them in a way that created an outer ring with their bodies to shelter the rest of the animals. The reason being that the nostrils, eye-lashes and eyelids of a camel are so wonderfully made, they’re better able to filter dust than almost any other creature in the world.

  We were nearly done, about to rope them in and run indoors, when a young calf broke loose. Its adopted mother scrambled up, clambering to reclaim him. Chinua managed to calm the mother and hold her in place. Not so the calf. Indeed, the sight of him lurching in the direction of the storm brought Pa’s absence closer. In one of the last rituals he’d performed, Pa had coaxed the camel and calf to bond. One had lost its mother, the other a calf, so Pa sang a song to encourage the cow to suckle the waif.

  Min
dful of Pa’s song, its sweetness and lilt, I yearned to hear his voice once again. My heart ached as memory flamed into grief: those low notes of his, the steady beat of his drum. If it hadn’t been for the sturdiness of Altan, I would have keeled over and wandered into the storm as distraught as the agitated calf. But Altan steadied me, and I heard Pa speak to me for the first time since his death.

  ‘Don’t chase the calf, Zula, if you chase it you will frighten it even more. Sing to him instead.’

  Despite the clamour, I dismounted and standing resolute, eyes half-closed, I allowed Pa’s song to fill me. Then I sang about the love between mothers and their children, about ties that bind and continue down the ages from one generation to the next. Timid to begin with, faltering at times, I almost stopped. But as Pa’s presence grew within me, he swept me along and giving my voice wings, it soared. Before I knew it, I was singing a song Pa hadn’t had time to teach me: the song that makes camels weep.

  The wind must have carried the tune, for by the time I’d finished, through my half-closed eyes, I saw the runaway calf coming towards me. Behind him, shepherding him home before the curse of dust-laden wind overwhelmed us, was Pa’s horse, Takhi.

  21

  Zula

  As the storm was reaching its peak, wind battered our ger determined to bludgeon everything in its path. Usually when the elements assailed us, once our animals were safe, Pa would tell us stories. Without him around, I felt as awkward as I imagined Linet and Adoma were feeling. Awkward because grief makes you heavy; so heavy that from waking to sleeping is like wading through a swamp that swallows you whole. Mindful of every step you take, every word you say, it sucks you in, until you’re forced to face the fact that nothing will be the same again.

  Mired in pain our pride of three didn’t behave as we normally did. How could we when we hadn’t had a chance to reconnect, to take stock and plan for our circle. Linet, in particular, troubled me. Suspiciously calm, she was evasive, distracted, while Adoma spent morning, noon and night consoling her grandmother or trying to find the culprit behind Okomfo Gran-pa’s murder. I was distraught yet busy at the same time seeing to Ma and my brothers. Out in the pasture, without Pa to supervise us, I made sure our animals were milked and watered. Every day I tried to compensate for Pa’s absence by doing more than I usually did.

  Outwardly, my hands on Altan’s mane and my legs around his girth were constantly in motion. Inwardly, I was drowning. I ached for Pa’s steadying hand on my shoulder, his warm gaze and easy praise. Yet much as I yearned for him to be with us again, I was angry and confused as well. How could he and Grandma leave when there was so much I still needed to learn from them, so many questions I needed answers to?

  The raging wind rattled the columns that held up the ceiling of our home, tipping it to the left. Huddled by the stove sipping noodle soup we looked up: Knenbish and her daughters, my brothers, Ma and me. Knenbish’s youngest, still a toddler, started mewling. Knenbish stroked the child’s hair, rocking her gently as the girl shivered, expressing what each of us, in our different ways, was feeling: fear that in this our first storm without Pa, our home was about to collapse.

  Ma caught my eye and chased fear away: ‘See us through this storm, Zula,’ she said. ‘Tell us one of those stories your grandmother used to tell you.’

  I was not in the mood for story-telling. I was about to shake my head and shrug when I heard Pa’s voice. ‘Go on, Zula,’ he whispered. ‘Give it a try.’

  I did what Pa asked. My lips twitched in a smile that kindled the shine in my eyes. Then, with my brothers seated either side of me and Knenbish and her daughters opposite, I started a tale of how the wind when it rages is not the wind as such, but shrieking warriors of the Great Khan, warriors hurling war cries as they gallop into battle.

  I was halfway through the story, naming the whoosh and swoop of the elements; halfway through giving wind, dust and lightning familiar faces to help us tame them, when a mighty thump sounded at our door. After a second thump, the door opened.

  In came my Uncle Batu. A small, stocky man with a weatherworn face, he was followed by three skin-walkers. Two were tall and bony. The third, broad as a bear with a shaggy mane of brown hair, entered our home with a swagger. Beside Broad Bear was a Mongolian, a city man from Ulaanbaatar, by the look of his coat. My uncle introduced them to Ma, naming the men one after the other: Mr Anderson, Mr Lee, Mr Clements and Mr Atagan, their interpreter.

  I watched the strangers closely: watched how they walked, how they talked. Watched as Ma bowed and with arms outstretched welcomed them by placing her hands around theirs. She didn’t smile. She looked on them favourably with kindness in her eyes, as is our custom; and in doing so, found a seat for each of them, before I served them tea with milk and a dash of salt.

  Tea dispensed, I arranged a plate of dried meat and boortsog biscuits, and holding it aloft, my eyes devoured the foreigners while my nose filtered their aroma.

  What surprised me was that they stank of sweat the same as we did. But there was something more: of the tall, bony ones, the taller of the two had downy hair white as an egret; the other the eyes of a vulture and hair every bit as black as those scavengers I’d seen feasting on the carcases of rabbits. Both, I noticed, were highly-strung, as skittish as the most nervous of our horses. Their bodies shook before they thanked me, their hands trembled lifting bowls of tea to their lips, and seeping from their flesh was the sour musky scent of deep unease.

  The Broad Bear of a man was different. The more I looked at him, the more my heart raced. He reminded me of the enormous brown bear I’d encountered in my soul journey before Grandma fell ill after she’d shouldered a blow intended for me. Seemingly relaxed, the man’s sallow eyes hinted at a cold, steely will, while the interpreter, sitting beside him, gave the impression of a sleek, self-satisfied cat; a cat with a tongue adept at lying, whose clothes still held a whiff of city dust. What I saw with my wolf’s eyes was that the one thing they had in common were hearts as unforgiving as rock. It was then my mind stirred, hissing and spitting because of Pa and Grandma.

  And how they stared, those men! I forget, sometimes, how odd I must look to outsiders with my thunder-snow hair and grey eyes. Unlike our fellow herding families who knew me as Pa’s daughter, the skin-walkers seemed astonished by me. Their eyes followed me everywhere. And to be honest, I was tempted to finish them off there and then, to use my gift to dazzle-blind them with a blink of an eye. It would have been easy; too easy and inhospitable. So I bided my time in the hope that soon, I would pick them off one after the other.

  Another roar of wind and the columns of our ger creaked again. I had to bite my tongue not to chuckle at the tall strangers, for they flinched, looking around nervously. My eyes locked with theirs and it dawned on me that they were as frightened of the storm as Knenbish’s toddler.

  Pa would have told them that they were foolish to travel in such weather: dust and wind can bring death to the home of the richest of princes. Pa would have said that it’s safer to travel when the wind is with you, not fighting you. Perhaps the storm hadn’t started when they’d set off from their camp. Perhaps they were halfway through their journey before the wind began to stir, lashing their vehicle with dust.

  What I observed was this: the tall strangers shivering, then pulling up their collars before downing their tea. And while they trembled the Broad Brown Bear and the Cat man gently mocked them. When they’d finished and I’d cleared their bowls away, my uncle invited them to drink some of Pa’s vodka with him. They agreed.

  That’s when they explained to us, through Cat man, how they had happened to arrive late in the middle of the storm. They were on the way back to their camp having delivered the bodies of two of the men killed in the avalanche of rocks. Pa’s body was not with them.

  Ma’s head dropped. She rubbed a sleeve over her eyes to clear them of tears. When she was able to raise her head once again, she asked: ‘Why? Why have you not returned my husband to us? His body is all we hav
e left of him and we need to see him one last time.’

  ‘Wife of my brother,’ my uncle replied, ‘there is a reason for this.’

  A flush of anger reddened Ma’s cheeks: ‘Then tell me!’

  ‘It is what my brother wanted. He instructed those who went with him to the mountains that if any danger befell him they should take his remains to the Giant’s mouth and leave him for the eagles there. These men here,’ said my uncle referring to the skin-walkers, ‘with your permission, are willing to transport my brother, your husband, to his final resting place. Say the word and they will help you fulfil his wishes.’

  ‘I do not know where the Giant’s mouth is,’ said Ma.

  A glint of surprise flitted over Batu’s face: ‘One of you must know, surely!’

  Ma shrugged: ‘If it’s the place I think it is, it’s a dwelling place for shamans. Only they may set foot there: shamans and, at times, their relatives.’

  ‘Well this is such a time,’ my uncle replied. ‘Zula, do you know where it is?’

  My thoughts were far away weaving a story around Pa: his final wishes, his instructions to his friends. So he’d known, after all, of the danger he was in. Why didn’t he tell me? Warn me at least? The answer hit me like a slap on the cheek and my weaving ceased. Grandma had warned me, so why should he, especially if he wanted to protect me? I heard my uncle call my name again: ‘Zula!’

  ‘Yes, Uncle?’

  ‘Do you know the place where your father wants to be laid to rest?’

  I nodded. But as I did, I sensed waves of excitement radiating from Broad Bear and his accomplices. They shifted their stools, inching closer. They came so close I smelled the sulphur on their breath; I saw sparks of delight in their eyes and greed in my uncle’s.