The Strength of Bone

by Lucie Wilk

  Those who are afraid are the most susceptible, her grand-

  father once said to her as he prepared a remedy for someone. Her grandfather is a sing’anga, but not the most respected. He often refused to mediate an act of revenge, and people interpreted this as a sign of weakness.

  Iris stands and leaves the shrine, moves closer to the heat of the fire. People are dancing. The drumbeat throbs, low and guttural. A few men crouch around their drums, muscles taut, skin shiny in the firelight, beating down on the stretched skins with effort and in synchrony. Some people approach the fire, stare it down. And there, in the circle of bodies around the fire, she sees her grandfather.

  He immediately looks over to her. He mouths something. Iris shakes her head. He says it again: mzungu.

  Iris looks around for Dr. Bryce. Her immediate thought is that he must be here, participating, but she doesn’t see him. He isn’t here. She sees her grandfather again across the fire and he is looking somewhere else, looking up. He is looking at the mountain, or where she believes it is, as she can’t see it now in the darkness. She can’t see anything beyond the glow of the firelight. Her grandfather continues to stare at the mountain, wearing a grim expression.

  Bryce is on the mountain.

  Iris feels the beat on her ears, in her chest and fingertips. It is muffling everything, it is muffling her. She is having trouble thinking. She’d warned him. Weeks ago, in the hospital, she’d tried to warn him. And it seems to her that Bryce had turned strange immediately after that trip to the mountain with Ellison. And now the mountain is finishing what it has begun.

  Iris looks at the fire. It swims up the sky and licks at the mountain. She steps forward and feels the threat of it on her skin. She stands there until she does not feel it anymore.

  Chapter 19

  Henry wakes to the heat on his skin: morning sunlight already so strong. He hears the gurgle of the stream beside him and rolls over toward it, dips his hand in the water. He feels it rush over his fingers. The stones under the water are rough and sharp. He has cuts and scrapes on his knuckles from scooping up the water from the shallow stream the previous night and the cold water soothes them now.

  Something sharp stabs at the palm of his other hand. He peels open his fingers to see the object: the shell. The slit-like opening on the belly of the thing gapes open slightly like pursed lips and Henry runs his fingers along the corrugated edges. He moves onto his knees and crouches over the stream. The sun wavers on the surface of the water, flits between smooth curves of current.

  Henry takes the shell and dips it in the stream. He scoops water into it and then raises it to his lips and drinks. He pays close attention to the feel of the water moving down his throat, all the way to his stomach. He does this many times until he has no more room for water and then he lies down again, beside the stream, closes his eyes to the brightness above him. The undersides of his eyelids are red with transient, hazy spots.

  When he opens his eyes, he sees something up in the air. Something white. It has white wings. No. It couldn’t be a dove. His mother saved one, once. Or rather, tried to save it. They were on their way to a wedding, the three of them, when Henry was still quite young. He and his father dressed in their stiff collared shirts and jackets and his mother wore a thin, loose and fluid dress that lifted and billowed in the wind like a sail. It was pale green. When she saw the bird sitting in the grass beside the trunk of a tree, she went over to it and picked it up. She pulled it in, close to her body, cupped it in her two hands like a child holding a communion wafer. She went over to a bench and sat down and clucked at it softly. The thing was stunned. The pink-rimmed eye that Henry could see looked vague, not at all the sharp, quick gaze of all the rest of the birds he had ever seen. Eventually, it tucked its head down, looping its neck in, toward its chest. “He’s going,” his mother murmured, and he wondered what she was feeling in her hands. Did she feel the last flutter of the heart against her finger? Did she feel it shudder as the soul shook loose from the body, slipped out from between the wings?

  There were a lot of loose feathers, and some blood, and one of the wings had been broken. Probably from the jaws of a dog, or a fox. Henry could see a pale spear of bone among the blood and feathers, and he pointed to it. His mother didn’t let him touch it. “Some bird bones are hollow,” she said, “so they are light enough to fly. Just think, Henry, how close these birds are to the sky. They are mostly air, inside their bones and all around them, just air. Just empty space.” And how young he had been then, because at that age and at the time when she said it, he felt nothing but pity for the bird.

  Emma’s marrow had been depleted by the chemotherapy. Her bones emptied out. As hollow as a bird’s and she felt that way when he picked her up—as light as air.

  When Henry opens his eyes again, the white bird is gone, and the sky is vacant. He rolls over and listens to the flow of water over rock.

  He would prefer to stay here by the stream until he is found. But there is the risk—he may never be discovered here, so far off any path. He could last for days with water, but what’s the use if he remains lost?

  He knows that he will need to move on and continue his search for a rest hut and so he wills himself to get up. After some time, he reluctantly pulls himself to standing.

  He feels unsteady on his feet, despite the rest and the water. He wavers a little; patches flit across his visual fields. He steadies himself and then looks around, tries to locate Sapitwa: his compass point, his goal. He cannot see it now. Henry turns in a circle, scans the field around him but just sees the grassy plateau arching away from him in every direction as though he is on a parched, grass-covered ball. Nowhere to go but over the edge.

  *

  Iris wakes up and recognizes the smell of her grandfather’s hut: the fragrant scent of drying herbs. She brings her arms up to cover her face, to block out the bright stars of sunlight piercing the weaves of the roof and then smells the traces of fire on her skin—the salty smell of sweat and the sweet smoke of cedar wood embers.

  She recalls being pulled away from the fire. Arms gently tugged her backward and into the cool darkness of the surrounding village. All she is able to retrieve from before her dreamless sleep is a memory of a dry, yellow landscape. It was not a real landscape and she was not really there. She could see the rough brushstrokes of yellow ochre, layered on in thick sweeps. And then blue above the yellow. Meaningless.

  She sits up abruptly when she remembers Dr. Bryce. She gets up and leaves the hut. Her grandfather is there, he is just walking in through the fence. She goes to him, takes one of the heavy jugs of water out of his hand. He smiles briefly. The two of them walk across the yard, place the jugs near the cook hut.

  Iris pours some of the water into a pot. She coaxes a fire with twigs and one of the hot embers in the cook hut. She encourages it with waves of her hand until the flames are high enough for her to put the pot over them. She leans back on her heels and watches tiny bubbles rise.

  “How will we find him?” She says this into her arms that are crossed over her knees.

  Iris’s grandfather heaves the bag of maize closer to her. It is the same large rough weave with the same white script on it as the one in her mother’s home. He says, “We will let the village know. Ade will help.”

  When the water reaches a boil, Iris scoops out some maize and lets it drift into the pot from her cup. It spills like sand and congeals like mud in the water. She stirs quickly.

  “Ade knows.” Says Iris. Ade: headman and sing’anga. Of course he knows.

  “Yes.”

  “Bryce was driven out.” This comes out more as a statement than a question.

  “It is better to walk than curse the road. We will leave soon. After breakfast.” He eyes the nsima that is thickening in the pot, then stands and walks back into the hut where it is cool.

  When Iris and her grandfather leave his yard, it
is still early but the village bustles with activity. The energy is always greater the day before and after a ritual. People smile and nod at them as they walk the short distance to Ade’s hut. They enter through the fence. The yard is empty and so Iris and her grandfather go to the step in front of Ade’s hut where they sit in the shade and wait.

  Ade steps out a few minutes later. Iris and her grandfather rise. Ade eyes Iris’s new garment, borrowed from her aunt and then her hair so neatly cropped. This man had been present to negotiate her arrival in this world so many years ago. He was the sing’anga who chaperoned her from the spirit world into this one and he knew the purpose of her journey. Traditional names are given to reflect the individual’s purpose, the meaning that will propel them through the world. But Iris’s mother chose not to bestow this name upon her children. Instead, she chose her children’s names from a book left by white missionaries, a book left in the classroom that Iris attended. The place where all the Western books were kept. Iris had found this name book once, perched on the bookshelf among the storybooks. She’d flipped through it and found her name there. No meaning was given. (In nursing school she learned it meant the muscular coloured ring around the pupil of the eye and she’d cried over this—that her name was tied to something so anatomical and ordinary.)

  Her mother had done this with all her children—assigned them Western names. Grace. Samuel. Hope. As though she knew, even at the time of their birth, that they would be foreigners here. Now, standing here in front of her grandfather and Ade, she feels ashamed of what her mother did. She feels the sting of the insult.

  “The doctor is lost.” Her grandfather wastes no time.

  Ade looks at Iris. “You lost your guest?”

  Iris enjoys for a moment the implication: that she, Iris, is not a guest. “My guest lost himself.” She replies.

  Ade smiles.

  “Where shall we look for this mzungu?”

  “Mulanje.” Her grandfather says. “He is on the mountain.”

  Ade’s smile broadens. “Mulanje. A fine place for a mzungu to wander. How are you so certain?”

  “Alile’s daughter, Mkele,” says her grandfather and Iris looks at him sharply. He had not told her this. “Mkele told me yesterday that she saw him climbing the mountain. He was carrying no food or water.”

  “He’ll burn the whole thing down before he’s done with it.” Ade looks over at the mountain now, as if he expects to see a curl of smoke rising from it. Iris looks too, but it is the same. It always looks angry to her. It seems no more angry today than yesterday or the day before.

  Ade turns to her grandfather. “So we let him find his own way down. How about that?”

  Her grandfather stares back at him, his hand trembles on his walking stick.

  “We cannot leave him there.”

  Ade barks a laugh. “Why not?”

  “We cannot.”

  “He is a mzungu. What do we owe him?”

  “He is a doctor.”

  “So what?” He looks around, like there are other people to see. “Everyone running to him like he is a god. They enjoy that, you know? That is why they come here. To feel like gods.” He spits on the dirt and starts to walk away. Then he stops. “I think we should do nothing.”

  Iris’s grandfather walks to him. He raises a long, bent finger and points it at Ade’s face. “You will get him and bring him back here. You will do the decent thing.” He pauses. “I have been a sing’anga for a long time. Many years. And I have not dealt with the bad magic. But I can.” He lowers his finger slowly and Ade looks away, at the mountain, before spitting one more time then then stalking off, into his hut.

  Her grandfather stands beside her. She turns to the mountain and feels for an instant like she can see Bryce there, scaling its side, moving across it like an insect.

  Those who fear are the vulnerable ones, her grandfather has said. She has never seen Bryce afraid.

  *

  He sees Sapitwa for a moment, just a moment, and then it is gone. It could be the shifting clouds that rearrange themselves in the sky as it has been doing this, or he has been doing this, for hours, now. Seeing Sapitwa and then losing it again. Just those glimpses, though, keep him going, keep him thinking he must be getting nearer. So he keeps on, keeps at it, walking over the grass, trudging, at times stumbling. He has not found a path again, not since the prior evening and he curses himself for leaving it. It would have gone somewhere, eventually, wouldn’t it? Not necessarily. There were a lot of paths that criss-crossed the mountain, especially at the top. Henry remembers passing a number of them last time, when he was here with Ellison. They intersected the main path, and seemed to go nowhere but the horizon, although how to know? At least it was a path, a place people walk. Not this Godforsaken plain. Not even animals walk here. He still has not seen a creature more evolved than an insect. Things with exoskeletons. He could use one of those right about now, so that when he falls it doesn’t hurt so damn much.

  He has walked into countless webs, stretched across the grass waiting for him. Most of the spiders have been small and seemingly harmless. He has seen larger ones in the city, though. As large as his fist and ominous-looking. Carnivorous. All legs and eyes. Henry laughs and the sound is lost quickly. He thinks of Sarah: all legs and eyes and, come to think of it, not unlike a spider in many ways. Especially after Emma died—she withdrew, wove a tight web around herself. If she could see him right now, she would be skittering across her web to immobilize him with her words, inject him with another of her venomous looks. Why the hell did you decide to climb a mountain? She would say. Why alone, without food or water? What got into you? Guilt again? Then she would sigh, pierce him with one more look before slipping back to the edge of her web where she would wait for him to make another mistake.

  But God, she was beautiful. And she loved him, back then. Even when she was angry. And afterwards, after their fights she would wrap those legs around him and squeeze, squeeze him with all those long, smooth limbs and he would relax into it, relinquish himself to the pleasure of it. The pleasure of her.

  He knows how he and Sarah lost their way. Trust of all kinds was ruined by what happened. When a couple loses a child … It does not need to be figured or explained, does it? When a couple loses a child. That is all.

  *

  Ade has gone back into his hut. Iris and her grandfather wait outside, and Iris wanders over to look at Ade’s garden, lets her eyes rest on the soothing green of the plants. She spies the orange of ripening tomatoes among the green. Cassava leaves spring from the ground in robust clusters. There are other plants, many of which she does not recognize. She remembers Ade’s garden from childhood. It has always been larger, more fruitful and lush than the others’. What magic does this sing’anga employ, even in the garden, that allows him to do what others cannot?

  “These colours look nice on you,” says a woman’s voice beside her. Iris turns. It is Alile. She is smiling and reaching out to finger the cloth that Iris’s aunt had given her to wear. Iris looks at her, forces her gaze to the woman’s face, to those eyes. Unmistakable. Her mother’s eyes, and all her siblings. Iris looks away, down at the fabric draped across her body, where Alile’s fingers still linger.

  “Thank you,” says Iris, feeling simple. “My aunt lent it to me.”

  “What happened to your dress?” Alile keeps her golden eyes on her, moves her hand away. “It was so lovely.”

  “It fell apart in this heat.” Iris turns back to the garden, stares at a tomato plant.

  “I imagine the city is much more comfortable.” Alile says this softly. She turns to the garden, bends down and lifts a leaf with her long fingers. “Do you like my garden?”

  “Oh.” She says. “I thought it was Ade’s. Being here, in his yard, I just assumed … ”

  “Yes, it is Ade’s,” Alile smiles. “But he has let me tend it lately, so I am feeling mo
re and more like its mother.” She caresses another leaf, cradles a young tomato in her palm for a moment before she lets it slide off her hand and dip gently on the vine. “We are good, this garden and me.” Alile looks at Iris.

  “And you?”

  She says this and Iris is aware of her own barrenness. How incapable she is of producing anything.

  “I don’t garden.”

  Alile keeps her eyes on Iris’s face for a moment longer, then says, “That is a shame. Maybe I can teach you.”

  Before Iris can manage a response, Ade reappears. He goes to Iris’s grandfather who is sitting on the step of his hut, in the shade, with his eyes closed. When Ade returns, he stands and the two men talk in low voices, their hands on their hips. Alile watches the men for a moment, then turns her attention back to Iris.

  “So your mzungu is lost?”

  Iris nods.

  “He went to Mulanje?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  Alile looks over at the mountain. “So many mzungu go to the mountain now. They climb all over it. Like ants. So many of them.” She turns to Iris. “Why?” As if Iris understands, as if Iris could explain it.

  Iris sighs. “I warned him last time he went. He knows. But I can’t warn them all.” She toes the dirt under her foot. “Hopefully he will at least avoid Sapitwa.”

  Alile is quiet for a moment. “Maybe he should go to Sapitwa. Maybe he should finally understand.”

  Iris says nothing.

  Alile has been holding her hand over her brow to shade it as she looks out at the mountain. In the shade of her hand, her eyes have darkened and seem deeper set, more like Iris’s own. Alile continues.

  “Mkele saw him yesterday. She said he was running like a mafunso. He was all sweaty.”

  Iris tries to imagine this: Dr. Bryce looking crazed, running inexplicably, running into a certain threat. Completely illogical. She is beginning to assume that whatever changed when he first went to the mountain has progressed, set irrevocably in motion, something that will move forward despite anything anyone does, or tries to do. Including Bryce himself. In a way, this thought releases her. Knowing that something is beyond one’s control alleviates worry. And guilt. She smiles and looks at Alile.