Ki'ti's Story, 75,000 BC

by Bonnye Matthews

  At the sound of Onesto, Wamumur was startled. He blanched. Emaea noticed but remained silent. Ki’ti accurately brought up something his mind web had forgotten. She was right. That was the name of the place where he first lived. He could see the place beside a small river where the land gently rose in soft hills behind. On the hills hardwood forests grew with plenty of bamboo and shrubs. It was warmer there.

  Ki’ti continued, “The owl has not sung since the stone worker died. It recognized the owl that Wamumur has, and it began to sing. The owl I have belonged to Torkiz, and the owl Wamumur has belonged to the woman Torkiz loved, Ilea.

  “The people where Torkiz lived feared him for creating animals from stone because the animals were so real. They drove him away. After he was gone, they found he had carved,” she flashed 100, “owls from yellow stone that seemed to have a light inside. The people didn’t like Torkiz but they came to love the yellow owls. Eventually, the people who drove Torkiz away became the Band of the Owl and they carried the little owls in pouches around their necks like the stone worker did. Only he carried three of the owls. The third owl is broken.

  “The stone worker traveled to a far country. Here he lived beside the People called Kotukna. They were People like us. They lived in our caves. The old stone worker lived alone in the cave of the animals. Later, a few of the Kotukna including Ilea lived with him there. It was the happiest time of his life. There were more of the Kotukna living in the area. They used the ancient path for visiting. It was the main path. There are other paths, too. They go west. The main path was there when they came to this area. The owl doesn’t know who built the path.

  “Other humans came. They looked like a mix of the People and the Others. They lived on both sides of the big river. They were the Mol. They lived all over this area in small groups, and they wanted to visit without traveling to the source of the big river, so they made the bridge. Some of the Mol died making the bridge. They were very tall people. The man with the green bag was Mol. They built the bridge and used it for a long time. When lesser ropes gave out, they repaired them.

  “Then two things happened. Big giant hairy human-like apes moved into the area on the other side of the big river. And a group of the Others moved up from the south. The Others were determined to kill the People. The People never knew why.

  “Once, it got so bad that even during the season of cold days in the white rain, the People moved north on the ancient path. They left things behind just to get out before the Others killed them. One of them, a woman, left the owl that is around your neck, Wise One. The leather band holding the pouch broke and she didn’t know it.”

  “At the same time, the man-like apes were frightening the Mol near the bridge. The Mol and the Kotukna fled west into the tall mountains. The stone worker hid from the Others in a well-concealed cave. He was too old to flee.

  “It is said that a hawk fed him until he died. It was not just a single hawk but generations of hawks. While concealed and alone, the old man would come down from time to time to the cave of the animals where he worked the fire breathing flying snake with legs.

  “It is said that one day the Others found that cave and they lit a firebrand and explored it. They saw the fire breathing flying snake with legs. It matched one of their legends and frightened them so badly that they left the area following the lesser river to the south all the way to the sea.

  “It is said that it is not wise to build bridges for they will be used for good and for evil. Things are divided for a reason according to Wisdom. The river divides the two lands.”

  Wamumur and Emaea were dumbfounded. Ki’ti was a conduit for information that none of the others really accessed. Her ways of knowing were vastly more expansive than theirs. They could not build enough barriers to keep her from the information. Wamumur tried to determine whether this information was dangerous. He also wondered whether the information came from Wisdom to be helpful to the People. He could not compare it to the mind web trap, but he had no experience with this buzzing owl. He felt caution was imperative.

  “Little Girl, why did you fail to report this until now?”

  “Wise One, I feared more punishment and I reasoned that it had not urged me to do anything at all, so I listened. It sings only one song, the song I just told you.”

  “Little Girl, concealing things is like lying. Do you understand that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I am telling you it is. You are forbidden from this day to conceal anything else. You are also forbidden to participate even as a listener to these other sources that others don’t hear or understand. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Wise One, I do understand.”

  “Didn’t you have unsettling feelings about listening to the song?”

  “Yes.”

  “What am I going to do with you, Little Girl?”

  “Please spare me, Wise One. I promise to report anything that is not normal that communicates from this moment for forever.”

  “Can you make the owl stop buzzing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Take my owl. Does it buzz?”

  Ki’ti put the owl to her ear. “Your owl is silent.”

  “Then,” Wamumur said, “trade owls with me.”

  Ki’ti surrendered her owl and kept his. She put it in her pouch and put the pouch around her neck.

  “Little Girl, you are not to speak of any of this. I cannot verify what you’ve said. Right now, I don’t want Emaea to get into this stuff. So you will remain totally silent on this. Is that clear?”

  Emaea felt invisible somehow.

  “Yes, Wise One. I shall speak to no one about this.”

  “That includes your dog and sticks or any other . . . .”

  Ki’ti broke in, “I will obey unequivocally.”

  “I will not punish you this time. I want you to realize that I could have because you knew what you did was wrong. I’m getting to understand you at this point. You now have a burden. By not punishing you, I have given you no outlet for what you did wrong. You are not freed from it. Do you understand?”

  Ki’ti tried very hard to understand what the Wise One had said. She would get the fringes of it and then it would dissolve in lack of understanding.

  “No.”

  “Let me say this. If I punish you, then you have made sacrifice for your disobedience. You understand that?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I fail to punish you, you have not made sacrifice for your disobedience.”

  “You mean there is no way to get away free without sacrifice?”

  “That is exactly what I mean. It means you have yet to give me the sacrifice for which your disobedience obligated you.”

  “Oh, that is not good.”

  “I want you to feel that. I want you to understand that. I want you to live with that. I want you to reason it.”

  “So many people, when they get away with wrongdoing, are sure they have gotten away free of punishment. Children call it getting away free,” Ki’ti said, still struggling with what her few years of life had shown her.

  “They have done nothing but lie to themselves. It’s bad enough to lie, but to believe your own lie is nothing but irretrievably tangled mind web. Ki’ti,” he continued, “why would you seek answers from the words of children?”

  Ki’ti was tired. She had believed that some lucky people got off free of punishment when they did things wrong. Now she was told that they had believed a lie. Such freedom was not true. The wrongdoing stuck to you if you were not punished. She had begged for mercy. That meant she had to carry her own wrongdoing forever? Was that mercy? Was there such a thing as mercy? Did mercy mean unpunished but obligated? She wanted to sleep. She had to deal with the idea that getting by with something was a lie that led to irretrievably tangled mind web. She had so much to learn. She felt foolish, having sought answers from the words of children. Now she had an obligation to the Wise One. She wondered whether there was any way to remove the obligation.


  Emaea had listened. She knew what Wamumur was saying but he would take small points and talk to her about them as if she were older than her years. She realized that Ki’ti was picking up wisdom fast, but sometimes she felt that Wamumur went too fast. Then she had a horrible thought. She wondered whether he felt his years were coming to a close. She realized she must guard herself in what she said or whether she might interfere. She wondered why Wamumur did not hand her the owl long enough for her to verify what Ki’ti said, and then she realized that he probably already was convinced that she had the story straight. She had named his place of origin and apparently she was correct. There was something else. And then she had a spark of enlightenment. Was it the huge man-like ape? Why wouldn’t People talk about it?

  Accompanied by Emaea, Ki’ti returned to the cave and her stories. She needed to submerge herself in her work so she didn’t think too much about what had taken place. There would be time to sort it all out in the days to come. The season of cold days was here and she had to be prepared.

  Wamumur paced the rock walk. He was troubled about something that was in his mind web and he seemed incapable of pulling it up. When Ki’ti said Onesto, he had a memory that he could not retrieve. And embedded in the memory was a visual memory of a huge man-like ape. Instead of fear, what he felt for the creature was overwhelming sympathy. What was his mind web telling him? Ki’ti’s story made it seem that the Mol were frightened by the creature. But nothing in the story said the man-like ape did anything to them. Even when Chamul-na and Nanichak-na saw the one they saw, it was not threatening, but they were frightened. Why? Just because it was larger than they were? Wamumur continued pacing. The People gave him great space when he paced like this. He was Wise One and he was thinking. He stopped and touched the rock wall. His fingers traced a small fracture. He strained his mind web.

  Wamumur wondered whether he needed to go where the man-like ape had been seen. He really didn’t want to make that trip, but he could not bring the old into focus. He returned to the cave.

  “Little Girl,” he called.

  Ki’ti came to the Wise One quickly. Ahriku trotted behind her like a shadow. She wondered whether the Wise One had changed his mind.

  “Come walk with me.”

  She took his hand and they walked outside.

  Finally he said, “What else can you tell me about the man-like ape?”

  “I don’t know, Wise One.”

  “Hold my owl and think into the story. When you get to the man-like ape, look at the images in your mind web and tell me what you see.”

  They sat on the rock walk ledge. Ki’ti held the buzzing owl and shut her eyes. She began to go through the story. When she saw the man-like ape, she studied.

  “Are you there?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “Then look carefully and tell me what are the surroundings of the manlike ape.”

  “He is in a forest of bamboo. He eats bamboo with the black and white bears. They get along well. He also eats other plants. He does not eat meat like we do. Oh, sometimes they might eat little animals.”

  “Are there many of them?”

  “No, Wise One. People fear them so they try to kill them off. There were few when Torkiz lived here. There are fewer now.”

  Wamumur had his answer. His memory that he had not been able to see was clear. He could hear the shouting. He could see the slaughter. His Band of the Owl had killed a man-like ape. It was female. It had a baby. The baby cried just like People cried when someone died. The Band of the Owl killed the baby. They ate the meat from both animals. He had felt it was so wrong. The ape was not something they killed for food. It had not harmed them. He felt that his People had done something very wrong. He ate the meat and then, feeling guilty, he had vomited it up. He retched for hours. When he spoke to his parents about it, he was punished severely for his thoughts. It was just before he had been taken. Being punished for what he thought was right had made it easier to learn to love the People who took him away from the killing. The Band of the Owl had been killing the large man-like apes trying to get rid of all of them. As big as they were, the apes had not fought back.

  “Did the Mol kill the man-like apes?” he asked.

  “No, they just feared them. Once they saw the creatures, the Mol came over on the bridge to live on this side of the big river. One of the apes walked out on the bridge one day and the Mol got so frightened that they cut one of the sides of the bridge. The creature on the bridge fell into the river. No more of the creatures tried to cross the bridge, but the Mol decided to leave the area and move west. The People knew the Mol and they left with them partly because of the creatures and partly because the Others were killing People.”

  She wiggled to find a more comfortable place. Ahriku stood, walked around in a single circle, and curled into a ball next to her leg, tucking his tail around his legs.

  Wamumur was in a spiral of time and fear and space. The People, the Mol, the Others, and the man-like ape could not all live in the same place. They would kill to avoid it. They would flee to avoid it. Why? Wamumur was no closer to an answer than when he was a child himself. That the apes did not compete with his People for food was something he either never knew or it didn’t get stored in his mind web. But here in this place, all four had found that they could not co-exist. Then it appeared that all fled and they had come into a place where only they and some man-like apes lived separated by a big river at great distance. Wisdom must have it right, barriers are there for a purpose and to build bridges might not be wise. There must be a story in there somewhere, but what was the story?

  Wamumur sat there for a very long time. Ki’ti didn’t know what to do so she began to review the stories and remove her mind web from the things of the past. The man-like ape did not frighten her because it was not a predator and it did not seem warlike. She tried to understand the emphasis on the man-like ape but she could find nothing on which to base understanding. She began to feel that all this talk about what Chamul-na and Nanichak-na found at the big river was getting far more attention than it deserved.

  Wamumur was overpowered by thoughts of how small the world seemed to be. He had not thought of his original People for a very, very long time. Now suddenly he was confronted with yellow owls that he remembered, someone named Torkiz who carved the yellow owls, the name of his People, the huge man-like ape, the people of the man with the green bag called the Mol, and how impossible it seemed for various humans to live together. He had traveled many miles and came right back to where he’d been as a child figuratively, not in space. Somehow, he still felt protective of the man-like apes. He decided that he would try to prevent his People from approaching the big river. He would not make a story of the man-like apes because that would simply draw his People with curiosity to confront the creatures and that could lead to fear and bloodshed.

  Wamumur then began to think of his own behavior earlier that day. He reasoned that he was a poor parent. What had he done? Here he was, having been so sure that he was right in having sympathy for the man-like ape. He’d been severely punished for it. Then when Ki’ti did the same thing with the man with the green bag, she was severely punished. What manner of terrible spiral was he in? He was as awful a parent as his father had been. Had he become what his father was? He had to put an end to that now. He told Ki’ti to bring Emaea. The girl ran to do his bidding with Ahriku right on her heels.

  Emaea came and the three of them walked to the north end of the rock walk where they sat.

  “I want to apologize to Ki’ti, Emaea, but I want to do it in front of you. I have been poor at parenting. I have demanded much of her while demanding little of myself. I have not as great a sensitivity to ways of knowing as she has. I have tried to tie her into a pouch so that I can control what she learns. I cannot be prepared for her ways of knowing because she is more sensitive than I am. Wisdom seems to have poured a lot of ways of knowing into her. Who would have thought that a yellow owl would sing a
story? I have put fear into her so that she does not come when she should to discuss what has occurred. I have made her feel guilty for doing what she sees as perfectly normal to do.”

  “Many years ago, my People killed a man-like ape and her baby. They ate them. I felt wretched so I vomited. I told my parents of my sympathy for the man-like ape and that I didn’t think we should kill them. I was punished severely. Ki’ti felt sympathy for the man with the green bag and his family. She was punished severely. I am the worst of my first father. I feel much failure. I ask, should we return her to her first parents?”

  Ki’ti turned to the Wise One and kneeled beside him, not waiting for Emaea to speak. She put her hand on his chest “Wise One, you have taught me so much. You may not be the best parent ever, but you are not a bad parent. I know that you love me and more than that, you love the People. I know that you are trying to build me to be as good a Wise One as you are, so the People have a good Wise One in the future. My first parents told me they have no understanding of how to raise a Wise One. So of all the People here, you and Emaea are the best.”

  “I hoped you’d be better than I, Little Girl.”

  “Wise One, Wisdom made me and you of dirt. Wisdom didn’t make People perfect, or there would be no need for Wisdom.”

  Emaea laughed a light lovely laugh. It came out before she could catch it. A little girl had taken what Emaea knew to Wamumur was an enormous issue and trimmed it down to the right size. She had done it so that Wamumur never lost authority. Truly, Ki’ti’s days as a child had passed.

  “Little Girl, I forgive you for earlier. To forgive doesn’t get you away free from what we discussed, but it means I no longer hold it against you. I do still insist that any communication that you have that is nor normal People-to-People communication, you tell me or Emaea about immediately. Is that clear? I may not have as wide a range of ways of knowing as you have, but I have more Wisdom than you.”

  “Yes. I promise, Wise One. I promise unequivocally.”