Wilida was very happy to see him because she had someone to talk to, to make love to, to keep her warm, to protect her from the leopards. She lost some of his company, however, when she mentioned how lonely the other girls were. Thereafter, he spent a night now and then with Fuwitha and Kamasa. At the same time, he was also meeting some of the women in the bushes or even sneaking into the village for meetings under the floors of the houses.
His parents were worried at this time about him because he was so pale, seemed to be losing some weight, and had dark bags under his eyes--"like little bats of weariness sleeping upside down, hanging onto his lower eyelids," as Yusufu said.
And so Ras found the six months of encagement for the girls a happy time for him. But when he was told by Wilida that this would soon be over, he became unhappy again. Moreover, Wilida would be married to Bigagi at the end of the year. Between now and then she would remain in her mother's house, continuing the work necessary for the household. Then she would be placed in the bridal cage on the islet just west of the village, and Bigagi would take up his vigil outside her cage. After two nights and a day, the wedding would be held.
Ras begged her to go off with him to his country. She would be happy there--he swore it.
She refused to go. Yes, she loved him, but she also loved her parents, her people, her village. She would die if she had to leave them.
But Ras could still see her and talk to her and now and then make love to her. That is, if he had time and energy to spare for her, she added sarcastically.
Ras replied that he did not want to see her under such conditions. He wanted to live freely with her. And if she would leave with him, he would promise never to visit any of the Wantso women.
Wilida continued to say no. The time came when he quit pleading. He also gave up his fantasies of carrying her off. She meant it when she said that she would die if she were cut off from the tribe.
Nevertheless, he was angry, and he could not quite surrender her. When Wilida had been put in the bridal cage and Bigagi had taken his post before her, Ras had been driven to come out into the open--although at a distance--to taunt the Wantso men. He had to do it; he was hoping that something would happen to cause him and Bigagi to tangle, so that he could kill Bigagi. At the same time, he did not want this.
He also wanted to kill Wilida, and he did not want to kill her.
Now he had been driven off and was hiding behind a bush and thinking about swimming to the islet when night came, subduing Bigagi, and making love to Wilida, whom he would kill afterward, he was so angry with her.
Nightfall came... The noise was a far-off, fluttering sound, like a bat's wings in the night. It quickly became louder and then became a chuttering, as of a spear being whirled around and around until the cutting of the head through the air chopped off the air in chunks. Chut-chut-chut. And beneath the chuttering was a deeper, roaring sound that presently became so loud that it almost smothered the chuttering.
It was the Bird of God, and the Bird would soon be above him.
4
BIRDS THAT BURN
The Bird of God had always been around. It nested on top of the black stone pillar soaring from the middle of the lake and reaching almost to the sky. Days would pass, sometimes months, and Ras would wonder if perhaps it would never come back. Then he would hear the faint chop-chop-chop of its rotating wings, and it would appear out of the sky. It would become larger, stop to hover above the pillar, and would sink out of sight to its hidden nest.
Days and sometimes months would pass. One day Ras would hear the chop-chop-chop. He would run down to the shore of the lake unless he happened to be swimming or in his dugout. Up the Bird of God would rise, high, higher, and it would fly over the cliffs, the edge of the world, and disappear into the sky.
Ras sometimes saw the Bird of God fly inland. If he were out in the open, he would see the Bird approach him. At first he used to run away into the forest to hide. Later, he would stand up, holding his spear, and wait for it to come nearer. He never did this, though, unless he had a good chance to run for shelter if he were to be forced to run.
Sometimes, the Bird of God hovered over him so close that he could see a man in its belly. Twice, he saw two men in its belly.
"Those are not men but angels," Mariyam, his mother, would reply to his questions. "Igziyabher sends his angels to ride in the belly of the Bird to observe you. They are to report on whether or not you have been a good boy."
Igziyabher was God, Allah, Dio, or Mungu, depending upon which language his parents were speaking at the time. Ras usually thought of God as Igziyabher, because that was the name his mother had first spoken and most often used.
"Mother, if Igziyabher wants to find out if I am good, why does He have to send angels to look for Him? I thought you said that He can see everything from where He sits on the Seat of Glory?"
Mariyam always had an answer, even when she contradicted herself, which was frequently.
"He sends angels to give them something to do, O son. They don't work but sit at God's feet and sing all day and night in praise of Him. But angels like to take a vacation now and then, and they are very happy to ride around in the belly of the Bird and watch over the creatures."
Once Mariyam had said that the angel inside the Bird was being punished for sassing God. The Bird had swallowed him up, and was slowly digesting him with the acids of its belly. The angel was being eaten alive by the acids and would suffer until he dissolved. Then Igziyabher would take the pieces of meat and bone of the angel and put them back together. The angel would be a new angel then and would no longer sass God.
This had been told shortly after Ras had snarled at his mother. She had beaten him with a whip made of hippo hide. Ras had stood silently, trying to keep from smiling at her. The whip had hurt somewhat, but she was tiny, with little strength. Besides, she had not been snapping it as hard as she could. Afterward, she had wept because she had drawn blood twice from his back.
She had smeared ointment over his back and then had wept some more.
"You have such a golden skin, son, it hurts me to mar it. When I first held you in my arms, you were a pink baby, beautiful, beautiful, with large, dark gray eyes, and with the smile of a newly born angel. Now, your skin is darker, kissed with the sun, smooth as the polished tusk of an elephant."
"Maybe so, maybe so, here and there," Ras had said. "But I would not worry about several more scars, especially such tiny ones. I have a hundred scars. This shoulder is puckered up because of the leopard that almost killed me before I killed him. The tip of this ear bears the tooth-mark of Wilida, who loves me so much she wants to eat me up."
Mariyam had screamed and grabbed the whip and begun laying it on him. Ras had run away, laughing, though she had threatened to stake him out on an ant hill if he did not come back and take his rightful punishment.
"I have told you and your father has told you, too, a thousand, thousand times, stay away from those Wantso girls! Igziyabher will catch you with them some day, and then He will plunge you forever into the fires of hell!"
Hell, according to one of her stories, was the cavern at the other end of the world. There was an opening to it where the river ran into it.
"But I thought you said that Igziyabher was at the end of the world?"
"And so I did, empty-head. But He sits on high beyond the cavern of hell, and a soul must go through hell first before he can get to heaven."
"And when is Igziyabher coming to see me, His favorite child, if I am to believe you? Is He afraid of me?"
"He is afraid of nothing! Why should He be afraid? Do you think He is stupid enough to create beings who would harm Him?"
"There are many stupid things in this world," Ras had said. "I think that he should have given more thought before He made this world."
"Do not blaspheme, O son! He may hear you and come down to face you, and the glory of His being would make you curl up and smoke away, like fat left too long on the pan."
"I would tell Him a few things and perhaps pull that long white beard of His."
Mariyam had put her hands to her ears and moaned and rocked back and forth. "Blasphemy! Blasphemy! Surely you will suffer the pains of hell!"
"The boy has great spirit," Yusufu said. "He is afraid of nothing."
Now, this morning, as Ras started to walk across the plain toward home, he saw the Bird of God for the first time in so many weeks he could not count them. The sun had risen above the mountains by the breadth of his hand. The bird was so far away that he could not hear its wings. Nor would he have seen it if it had not reflected the sun. Thereafter, by straining his eyes, he could catch it now and then, especially since it flashed three more times.
Suddenly, another great bird appeared. It was closer to him, so he could hear its roar and see its outline. It flew from the sky as if the sky were a blue skin with a blue pimple that had burst and shot out a black knot of corruption. It startled him and even sickened him. For a moment, he thought that Igziyabher had sent another bird out to finally punish him for his deeds and his loud, boastful words.
He murmured, "But why should He wait so long? I have done nothing that I have not been doing for a long time."
He hefted his spear. If this bird carried an angel, or Igziyabher Himself, the bird would have to settle down on the ground to let the passenger out. When the angel, or Igziyabher, stepped out to confront Ras, he had better be prepared to dodge quickly. If he didn't, he was going to get the iron point of the spear in his belly.
Mariyam had said that angels and their Maker were invulnerable to the weapons of men. Maybe so. But they had better have hides thicker than a hippo's. Ras had driven his spear into more than one hippo. And if the being in the bird truly had a hide of iron, he would still know he had been in a fight before he conquered Ras.
The second bird became larger and noisier. It was high above Ras and going past him. Ras sighed with relief. Evidently it had no designs on him.
Standing beneath it, he could see that it was different from the Bird that nested on the pillar. The wings extended stiffly out to both sides, as a fish-eagle's when it rides the currents of air. But these were not attached to the shoulders, but to the underside of the body, which in shape reminded him of the body of a fish.
Like a fish's also was the color: silvery gray. It bore markings, letters much like the letters in the books he had found in the old cabin by the lake when he was a boy.
This bird did not have the peculiar round claws that hung at the ends of the skinny legs beneath the Bird of God. It did not have any legs or claws. Perhaps these were folded up and held close to the body, hidden in the feathers, as they were with many of the small birds when they flew.
It shot above him at a height even above that of the pillar, which must rear a thousand feet. The Bird of God had changed its course now and was heading straight for the intruder. The two were on a level with each other and closing in swiftly. They were about to meet over the low hills just south of the lake when the stiff-winged bird lifted its left wing and veered to the right. It completed a half turn while climbing, continued to go up, and then turned back toward Ras. The Bird of God flew upward at a slant on the trail of the stiff-wings.
Sunlight flashed off the front of the intruder and of the front of the Bird of God. For a second, Ras saw two flashes of red from something dark sticking out of the side of the pursuer.
Then they were overhead, and the chop-chop-chop and the growl of the second bird mingled. Abruptly, flame gouted from the rear of the stiff-wings and smoke bannered out. The stiff-wings turned again and headed straight for the Bird of God. This whirled and went back to the north. Then it turned again as if pivoting on an invisible pin.
The flames leaped out from the stiff-wings. Its roar rose and fell as it climbed up above the Bird of God. It rose almost straight up and dived down away. The black things were sticking out of the other side now, but Ras could not see any red spurting from it. It dropped swiftly, then shot off at an angle. The flaming bird twisted with it, still coming fast. Something black fell from its side, turned over and over, then shot out a small black object. The small object unfolded as a flower unfolds and became a great white bloom. Below it hung the figure of a human being--or of an angel. The white flower and the body drifted southward, falling slowly, carried with the wind.
Ras had wanted to see where the angel hit the ground. At that moment, however, the change in sounds from the two birds made him turn to look at them. The stiff-wings, a bloom of fire with petals of dark smoke, had caught up with the Bird of God. It flashed by on its side, wings perpendicular to the ground, and one wing struck the whirling wings of the Bird of God. The stiff-wings flew into pieces; the Bird of God staggered and began to fall.
Immediately thereafter, the stiff-wings exploded. A ball of scarlet, it swelled. and enveloped the Bird of God. Then the ball had gone by and was falling. The Bird of God was falling also, but more slowly. A black figure hurtled from it, and presently it also bloomed and a human figure was swaying beneath the flower, which was a bright yellow.
Ras could see that there was still a man in the belly of the Bird of God. He rose from his seat and leaped through the opening in the side and out into the air. He flamed as he fell.
There were many small white objects floating from the wounded side of the bird. They streamed out like loose feathers and began to dance back and forth, coming down slowly. They floated out behind the Bird of God; they were rectangular beads strung on blue threads of air. The threads disintegrated and the beads were everywhere. And when the lowest came close enough to Ras for him to see them, he knew that they were sheets of paper, like the pages of the books in the old cabin.
The Bird of God gave birth to flame with a bellow of anguish. It passed overhead, still streaming paper now, but burning paper. The last man to jump from it struck the ground beyond a tree a hundred yards away from Ras.
The first to jump was about four hundred yards away to the southeast and near the jungle. Ras watched the figure and then shouted with surprise when long, yellow hair floated out from her.
Yellow hair?!
"Your wife will be white and perhaps she will have yellow hair," Mariyam had said.
Ras had thought this strange. He was not sure he would like yellow hair.
"It is written that you will have a wife," Yusufu had said. "But there is no promise that she will have yellow hair."
The Bird of God brushed against the tops of the trees to the southeast and blocked off his view of the yellow-haired person. It crashed with a great noise, and flames shot up, and screaming birds flew up, so numerous they were like specks of pepper. Pepper in the eyes they were, because if the yellow hair was still falling, she was curtained off by the birds. Smoke poured out from the trees then and obscured the birds also.
By now, the being beneath the yellow flower was also out of sight. Ras started toward the flames but stopped, his spear held before him. A leopard had burst out of the jungle and was bounding toward him. Its ears were laid back flat, and it was snarling.
"O beautiful with Death, you will have a mate today!" he shouted. "My spear!"
The leopard bounded past with not a glance at him. Behind it came three tiny, twist-horned antelope, a long-necked serval cat, and a mongoose, all running shoulder to shoulder and paying no attention to anything but the terror that had also driven the leopard. Ras laughed and ran on, though he still held his spear ready. The beasts were not going to heed him except as an obstacle to their flight.
He passed through the thick brush and under the branches of the vine-strangled trees. No more animals rushed out of the jungle. He smelled smoke and presently was crouched behind a bush near the bank of the river. The Bird of God had struck a dozen branches and broken them off and then had smashed into the soft mud. It burned not three yards from the water. The bushes near it blackened, and their leaves curled up. Some caught on fire, which would have made Ras very uneasy if this were the dry season. There was l
ittle chance that the bushes beyond would also catch fire.
The Bird certainly was not flesh and blood and feathers. It was made of unknown material and of iron. It would be too hot for a long time for him to investigate, so he decided to search for the yellow-haired person. She--he was thinking of the person as she because of what Yusufu had told him--must have fallen on the other side of the river. At this point, the river was two hundred yards wide. It was also so close to its origin in the lake that the waters would be too cold for the crocodiles. Besides, he doubted that any would have stayed in the neighborhood after the noise the Bird had made. A crocodile would have scooted on down the river like a fish, propelled by panic-shot excrement.
Ras walked down the sloping banks, noting in the mud the webbed imprints of a giant water shrew. The sun had not reached this side of the river yet, so the mud was cool as it squished between his toes. The water was cold when he dived into it; he swam on his side, kicking his feet and stroking with one hand while he held his spear, bow, and quiver up above the surface with his right hand.
On the other side, he walked straight westward but looked intently on both sides. The underbrush was not thick here because of the pale darkness cast down by the many vine-matted branches. A bush here seldom or almost never felt the kiss of the sun, lord of life; the growths that survived had to inch painfully and weakly up the trunks of the trees that were killing them until they reached the thin area, where the sun blessed. He could see about a hundred yards on either side of him, although the yellow-hair could be behind one of the huge trunks.
It would not be so easy for the great white bloom to be hidden.
He had gone several hundred yards from the river when he gave a low cry and leaped into the air. He slapped at his legs and feet to knock off the black ants biting into him. They were everywhere, merging with the shadows, swarming, intent on their drive toward an unknown goal. They formed a column that spread out between him and the interior. He retreated and then tried to walk parallel with the living blanket on the soil. He would get ahead of them and cut across them and try to come around the other side. But after he had covered a mile, he realized that the army might stretch for several more miles. Meantime, the yellow-haired angel must have been forced by the same ants to go westward.
Lord Tyger Page 6