Bone Talk

by Candy Gourlay

  The air in the cave was a strange mixture – cold and clammy and warm a the same time.

  The babies wailed as if they would never find comfort again. I realized guiltily that they were hungry for a feed. We should have taken them to their mothers ages ago.

  But I sped up, jiggling Baby Baba on one arm while holding the torch high with the other. Luki cried out when a large gob of burning pitch dripped onto the stone floor, halving the brightness of the torch. ‘It’s not going to last! We should turn back!’

  ‘No!’ I snapped, hurrying forward in case she really did turn back. ‘Chuka needs us!’

  ‘But the torch!’ Luki cried.

  ‘Turn back if you wish,’ I growled, though I knew that we had already travelled too far. There was only utter blackness behind us.

  For all our haste, it was impossible to move quickly in the darkness. We groped our way, shouting for Chuka. But the dog did not reply. Instead the cave began to murmur, as if it was swearing under its breath.

  ‘What’s that?’ Luki whispered.

  There was an explosion of flapping and a cloud of bats flew over our heads, so low we could feel the brush of their wings and smell their odour. The floor of the cave, damp and slimy by turns, sucked on the soles of my feet. Baby Baba had stopped wailing to gnaw on my shoulder. He was hungry

  Our torch began to make a sizzling sound and more gobs of fire dripped on the ground as the last of the resin burned away. Luki had turned silent. When I peered over my shoulder, she was staggering a little, the bushy baby fast asleep on her shoulder, tired out from crying.

  The torch handle was burning in my hand and I clenched my teeth as I felt the wood scorching my fingers. I held on as long as I could, but soon dropped the torch.

  It flared high and hot for a brief moment. I could see the tall arch of the cavern ceiling, the boulders that lined the path and the long tunnel up ahead.

  And then it fizzled out.

  We were in total darkness. It was black, black, black. So black that Baby Baba stopped gnawing on my shoulder. The air was thick and still. Heavy, like a blanket thrown over our heads. It was so thick it was hard to breathe through my nose. Like inhaling warm soup.

  In the darkness, I had the strange feeling that everything around me was growing, slowly moving away. The cave walls were looming higher, the boulders stacked against them were expanding and the stone ceiling was rising. Up and up and up.

  I was suddenly aware of a thousand tiny sounds. The distant drip of the stream. Bat flutters in faraway corners. And the rough in and out of our breathing.

  I waited for Luki to blame me. I told you, Samkad. I told you there wasn’t enough pitch!

  But she didn’t say a word.

  I heard a small sniff.

  ‘Are you crying, Luki?’ I whispered. I was grateful that Luki couldn’t see me in the blackness because the thought brought tears to my own eyes.

  ‘Of course not – don’t be stupid, Samkad,’ she snapped. But she sniffed again.

  ‘We’re going to be all right, Luki.’ I made myself say it like I really believed it. ‘This passageway leads directly to the mossy forest on the other side. We just need to keep walking and it will take us out.’

  Tentatively, I reached my hand in Luki’s direction. My fingertips brushed against the wrinkly skin on the bend of her elbow. Her arm seemed to shrink from my touch.

  ‘Luki, will you take my hand? So that we don’t lose each other?’

  I heard her fumbling, shifting the bushy baby to her other arm.

  When my hand closed on hers, her fingertips were icy.

  ‘Which way?’ she whispered.

  ‘This way,’ I said, even though it was impossible to tell which way was what in the dark.

  14

  Father said if you stare hard into darkness, it will become embarrassed and melt away so that your eyes can begin to see. So I stared and stared as we trudged along. But the darkness only seemed to become even blacker.

  A terrible doubt began to niggle in my belly. I remembered Father taking me into the cave that time when I was small. I remembered walking out of the other side, into the mossy forest. But what if I had got it wrong? What if this wasn’t the same cave? What if these winding stone corridors led nowhere?

  To my relief, both babies were asleep. Perhaps babies know when there’s no point wanting something they cannot have.

  Luki gave my hand an angry tug. ‘We’re in so much trouble,’ she murmured. ‘We’ve just walked into danger with two babies. The ancients are going to put us on kindling duty for the rest of our lives!’

  If we are going to have any lives to live, I thought miserably. But aloud I replied, ‘You didn’t have to follow me into the cave, you know.’

  ‘Of course I did,’ Luki snapped. ‘How were you supposed to do this on your own?’

  ‘Did you come along to protect me then?’ I said, bristling. ‘What were you planning to do? Get that baby to pee on the Mangilis?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘You shut up.’

  I shifted Baby Baba higher on my hip and squeezed Luki’s hand. The sound of our quarrelling was comforting as we crept blindly onward.

  ‘Samkad!’ Luki’s fingernails dug into my palm. ‘Did you hear that?’

  I listened.

  ‘You’re imagining things.’

  ‘I’m not! Can’t you hear it? Someone’s shouting in the distance!’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘If I knew I would have told you already.’ She exhaled.

  ‘Eheh,’ I murmured. ‘You begin hearing things and soon you’ll be seeing monsters too. And then suddenly you find you’ve lost your mind.’ But I looked around nervously. What if the ancestors of our enemies were lurking in the dark, waiting to trip us up?

  The cold, musty air dug sharp fingernails into my back, tracing the tricklings of my sweat. There was a stink of decay. I shuddered, wondering what dead things lay entombed in the rocks.

  The blackness seemed to be thinning, though. I blinked, unsure if I was actually seeing the shapes looming ahead. I held my hand up. I could just see my fingers outlined in the murk.

  ‘Sam, look!’ Luki whispered.

  I peered into the darkness. Was I imagining it? That vague, creeping light? That puff of air blowing against my face?

  Luki pulled her hand from mine. ‘Did you hear that?’

  It was a voice carried on that tiny breeze – it was so distant the words had no shape. I couldn’t even tell if it was a woman or a man.

  Luki grabbed my elbow. ‘Someone’s waiting on the other side.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ I said. But I didn’t move.

  ‘We haven’t heard Chuka for a long time. What if it’s … what if it’s her killer?’ Luki edged closer to me. ‘What if that’s your Mangili, calling his friends? We got this far only to lose our heads to the enemy! We should never have come!’

  I swallowed. She was right. We had been foolish. We should’ve gone to get help instead of trying to rescue Chuka ourselves.

  ‘What’s that?’ Luki whispered.

  There was an odd scratching noise. Like someone was scraping a bone against the stone floor of the cave.

  Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

  In the glimmer ahead, a small shadow detached itself from the stones. It began to move towards us.

  I gasped. That scritching noise was just the sound of dog toenails against stone.

  Suddenly, Chuka was leaping around us crazily, lapping tongue and scratchy claws and wagging tail.

  ‘She’s not dead!’ Luki kept saying. ‘She’s not dead!’

  No, not dead. But when I caressed Chuka’s face, she yelped in pain. ‘Are you hurt, girl?’ I touched her face gently and she flinched. The Mangili had hurt her.

  ‘Show us the way out, Chuka,’ I breathed.

  She whirled about and we followed. Almost immediately, the atmosphere in the cave changed, the air freshening. We turned a corner and there it was, the fissure that l
ed into the forest. It was exactly as I remembered it. The bright green glow bleeding into the cave’s darkness. Chuka barked an encouraging bark and slipped through.

  I was about to follow when I felt Luki’s hand on my arm.

  ‘Is it safe?’ she whispered. ‘How do we know that the Mangili are not waiting outside?’

  Chuka’s head appeared in the fissure. She barked impatiently.

  ‘Chuka wouldn’t lead us into danger!’ I said, shaking Luki’s hand off and striding through the gap.

  The green of the forest hurt my eyes. Long yellow shafts of sunlight bathed the forest floor. Everything was burning with life. I could see now that one of Chuka’s eyes was half-shut and I could make out a mottling on the black fur where she had been struck.

  Little Luki staggered out of the cave, squinting in the bright light. The bushy baby stirred and she shifted it to her other hip. She tilted her head to one side, listening.

  It was that voice again. We could hear now that it was a child’s voice, speaking in a different tongue.

  ‘Definitely not Bontok,’ Luki said.

  Chuka skittered around, barking and nipping my breechcloth. She wanted us to follow. I bit my lip as we trudged after her into the trees. This part of the mossy forest was unfamiliar. I realized that my memory of the time Father and I had camped here was missing many parts. I did not remember the pockmarked stone leaning against one tree. Nor the giant banyan with a forest of aerial roots down to the ground.

  Chuka led us to a pit, the kind used to trap boars. The long branches piled on top to conceal the opening had collapsed inward.

  We peered in.

  What was at the bottom of the pit was definitely not a boar.

  It was a boy, skinny as the parched trees on the higher slopes. He was dressed in the most peculiar outfit I had ever seen. Dirty white cloth was sewn to the shape of his stick arms and stick legs.

  He had a strange haircut, short, cropped closely to his head, around his ears and at his nape.

  He planted his knuckles into his waist like someone inspecting chickens in their cages and his face stretched into a big smile.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said, now speaking in perfect Bontok. ‘Can you help me? I am looking for my brother, Samkad.’

  Part Two

  How to Know Nothing

  15

  The boy waited for us to reply, eyes moving from me to Luki, his foot tapping impatiently in the dried grass lining the boar pit.

  ‘Do you know him? Do you know Samkad?’ he demanded. ‘You are Bontok, are you not?’

  Was it me he was looking for? Could he be … I gazed down at his small, brown face, not daring to hope. At last some words managed to leave my throat. ‘Samkad?’ I mumbled. ‘Which Samkad do you mean? From which village? There are many Samkads in Bontok.’

  Somehow I couldn’t ask him his name. I felt Luki’s eyes on me. But she said nothing.

  Baby Baba suddenly woke up. He panicked and grabbed my neck, clinging like an oversized monkey, his toenails digging painfully into my hip.

  ‘Why are you dressed like that?’ Luki said.

  ‘Like what?’ the boy replied.

  ‘Like—’ Luki waved at the muddy fabric that encased him all over ‘– that!’

  The boy looked at himself and then at my breechcloth and Luki’s skirt. ‘Heh, I could ask you the same thing,’ he smirked.

  I turned to Luki. ‘Can you take Baby Baba so I can help him out?’

  ‘Do I have to?’ Little Luki mumbled, even though she was already sitting herself on the ground and allowing me to drop Baby Baba on one knee while the bushy baby lolled sleepily on the other.

  I selected a long branch from the pile covering the pit and slowly lowered one end into the hole. The boy grabbed it and, as I pulled, paddled his feet against the wall. He came up easily as a weed, the smell of boar urine and wet earth wafting up with him.

  He stared at Luki and the babies struggling on her lap. Then he turned to me, smoothing his short hair and brushing clods of mud off his clothes.

  ‘Thanks!’ he said, thrusting his right hand out at me, fingers tight against each other, his thumb poking straight up. It was so sudden I instinctively took a step back. Chuka stood on her hind legs and sniffed his fingers.

  ‘You must shake my hand,’ the boy said. ‘It’s what you do when you meet someone for the first time.’

  He snatched my hand and shook it up then down, then up then down again, so violently that Chuka barked a warning. I wanted to snatch my hand away but all I could do was watch my hand as he jerked it about.

  Then the boy turned and grabbed Luki’s hand so suddenly that Baby Baba tumbled into the dirt.

  ‘Ba! Ba!’ Baby Baba squealed happily, wriggling onto his front.

  I looked at my hand. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Eh heh!’ His chest puffed out and he peered down his broad nose at me. ‘It is how AMERICANS greet each other!’

  Luki scowled at him. ‘What’s an American?’

  ‘Is that what you are?’ I said. ‘Are you an American?’

  He gave us a patronizing look. ‘Ahh. Of course. You people would not know about Americans!’

  Before I could reply, Chuka slithered between my knees with a little yelp, then pelted towards the trees.

  A man stood under the banyan tree.

  Chuka scuttled towards him, fussing and leaping about like a fish. I stared, a great lump suddenly swelling in my throat.

  ‘Father, Father!’ I broke into a run, not caring that I was sobbing aloud.

  Father flung his arms around me.

  I revelled at the heat of his skin, the tightness of his arms, the soft sound of his heart beating against my ear. I was suddenly afraid Father would move away and I pulled him closer.

  Father flinched, grunting in pain. I let go, staring at him with concern. He exhaled and smiled through gritted teeth, backing gently away from me to reveal a cloth bandage strapped around his middle. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s just a small injury.’

  He gave me a reassuring smile. But I could see a welt fading on his cheekbone, dark shadows under his eyes, and a gauntness that only comes from a long illness. ‘What happened to you, Father?’

  ‘I’m much better now, don’t worry.’

  He looked across at the boy we had just rescued. ‘I see you’ve met Kinyo,’ Father murmured.

  The boy’s eyes grew so wide they filled his face. ‘You are Samkad?’

  Father smiled. ‘Sam, this is …’

  Kinyo gave a shrill whoop and threw his arms around me, picking me up easily with his twiggy arms to whirl me round. Chuka hopped about like an excited frog, her toenails catching on my leg.

  ‘Samkad! My BROTHER!’

  By the time Kinyo put me down, my head was spinning.

  ‘You’re Kinyo?’ Luki was frowning.

  Father looked at me. ‘This is a long way from the village. What are you doing in this part of the forest with these babies?’

  I felt like my head was full of river water. Here was Father. Here was Kinyo. The day had arrived. I was going to become a man at last. But if we told Father what had happened, if we told him there were Mangili about …

  Luki looked across at me as she replied. ‘We were minding the babies in Second Best when Sam ran into a—’

  But before she could say ‘Mangili’, Chuka was barking madly again and the babies simultaneously burst into wailing and Kinyo was shouting, ‘Quick, Aunt! This way! Look! Here is Samkad!’

  A small woman hurried through the trees with a massive bundle balanced on her head. She looked just like any Bontok woman – face brown, cheeks decorated with tiny tattoos, hair dressed with beads, and skirt hanging down to her knees. But unlike a Bontok woman, her upper body was concealed under a top garment.

  It could only be Agkus, Kinyo’s aunt.

  She threw her bundle on the ground and rushed towards us, smiling, her arms wide open. ‘Samkad!’

  But before she coul
d throw her arms around me, Kinyo grabbed my hand and thrust it at her. ‘Quick, shake hands!’

  Laughing, Agkus shook my hand. I stared up at her face. I had always imagined a lined forehead and hair streaked with grey. But here she was, smooth-skinned, with shiny black hair falling over her forehead. The eyes were made darker by a thick fringe of lashes. She bent down immediately and picked Baby Baba up.

  ‘Isn’t he sweet?’ she murmured.

  ‘Ba ba!’ Baby Baba gurgled.

  She stared at the huge baby with a puzzled look on her face. ‘Have the rules changed, Samkad?’ she asked Father. ‘I seem to remember that the ancients forbade children on this side of the forest.’

  ‘Yes,’ Father said, looking at me closely. ‘You were just about to tell us, weren’t you, Luki?’

  Luki began. ‘There was—’

  ‘Let me!’ I interrupted, tearing my hand away from Kinyo’s grasp. ‘We followed the dog into the cave, Father. We thought she was hurt.’

  Luki’s eyes widened. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her open her mouth, as if she was about to contradict me right there.

  ‘We could hear her and we didn’t think. We just entered the cave and the next thing we knew, we had emerged on this side of the mountain.’

  Father bent to examine the dog. Chuka was immediately overcome with ecstasy at the unexpected attention. She flipped over onto her back, her eyes begging him to rub her belly.

  ‘She looks like something struck her in the face,’ Father said.

  Kinyo bent to see. ‘Look, a lump is forming above her eye.’

  ‘We think she had an accident in the cave,’ I said, glancing guiltily at Luki. Her mouth was still open, but her eyebrows had descended over her forehead into a deep scowl. Her glare demanded to know why I was lying. In my head, I tried to explain. I just wanted time, that was all. There was going to be a big fuss, wasn’t there, when the ancients found out there was a Mangili in the valley. And my manhood would be over before it began. Again.

  ‘But we can’t be sure what exactly happened,’ I continued. ‘We didn’t see.’