by Karen Lord
She mixed the millet with water, spices, and a touch of honey and cooked up a huge amount, platters full of dumplings, enough for twenty. When she brought them to Ansige, he was so ecstatic over this treat that she was able to go home, content and at peace, knowing that she could have a moment's well-deserved rest.
Ansige was indeed happy. To have food is always pleasant, but to have one's favourite dish, and to have it after watching it being prepared by the hands of someone who cares about you, that must surely be the greatest culinary delight. He ate and ate and ate until the sad moment arrived when he was holding the last dumpling in his hand. He popped it into his mouth and swallowed it down. Still hungry! Heaving a deep sigh, he looked around sadly and saw Paama's mortar still standing in the court.
'Good dumplings,’ muttered a tiny voice by his foot.
He looked down, and there was a beetle, green and gold in the dusty brown soil of the court, worrying a large crumb of dumpling with its mandibles.
It looked up at him and, impossibly, winked. ‘Bet you wish there was more where this came from, eh?'
Ansige's bottom lip pushed out in one of his variations on ‘Woe is me!’ Then he paused, struck by the beetle's words. Perhaps there was a bit of millet left at the bottom. There was only one way to find out. He went to the mortar and scraped a finger around the bottom, coming up with a tiny scoop of precious millet meal. Licking the finger clean, he again reached in and drew out another fingerful, but the small portions were more annoying than satisfying. There had to be a better way to get to the bottom of the mortar. Of course! He could put in his head and lick what he wanted straight from the sides and bottom.
It was one of his most brilliant ideas yet. He soon cleaned down the walls of the mortar and was heading for the remnants at the bottom when something disastrous happened. He could not get any closer! Frantically he extended his tongue as far as it could reach and strained to achieve the last few millimetres to his goal, but soon he had to admit defeat. He tried to pull his head out into the open.
Horrors! His ears, which had slid in so easily, refused to slide back up!
He tried a corkscrewing motion, turning his neck while his hands braced the edges of the mortar. If anything, it only made matters worse. Utterly chagrined, he scrambled blindly away to the side of a building and started to knock his wood-helmeted head against the wall.
Paama, he screamed in silent desperation, if you come and get me out of this, I promise I will never take you for granted again!
Paama sat up with a twitch. She had been relaxing, reclining, sipping coconut water and mulling over ways to convince Ansige to seek professional help for his problem. Then came this spasm, like a warning. It had been too quiet for too long. Ansige was not hanging around, begging for his between-meals snack. Something was wrong.
She ran to the fields, because that was where he had ended up during the previous two crises. No Ansige. She rushed back into the village and went towards the guest lodge.
Bup bup bup.
Paama wondered who could be pounding meal in such an odd fashion. Rather than the subdued, deep tone of wood on wood, it sounded like wood on stone.
Bup bup bup.
She came into the court and there was no-one there, but still there was this sound. There lay her own pestle, which she had left and forgotten after her morning's work??ut where was the mortar? A knowledge of something, she knew not what, made her run to the alley by the guest lodge, the direction of the sound. What she saw there made her stop still for a moment in shock.
'Ansige? Ansige, is that you?’ she asked incredulously.
'Don't act as if you don't know me!’ he said, his voice muffled from the depths of the mortar and choked with tears of frustration. ‘You had to go and leave a bit of millet at the bottom of the mortar, and my head got stuck when I tried to reach it. I can scarcely breathe!'
'Don't panic,’ said Paama, a bit breathless herself with the strangeness of this scrape.
She ran to the court, muttering to herself, ‘Now what do I do? I am running out of bright ideas.'
She began to yell. ‘Help! Help! It is all my fault! It is all my fault!'
With such a good line, people could not resist coming to see who was blaming herself so freely. ‘What is all your fault? What is the matter?'
'Ansige is stuck in my mortar! I told him he had a big head, and he said no, he didn't have a big head, and I said, “I bet you can't get it into my mortar. If I put my wedding ring into the mortar, could you get it out again using only your mouth?” And he said, “Just you wait, I'll show you,” and then he put his head into my mortar, and now it's stuck and I'm to blame!'
The villagers looked at Ansige, listened to Paama's story, and burst out laughing. ‘Never mind, Paama. We'll get him out somehow,’ they said soothingly.
Perhaps it was unkind for them to laugh at him while he was in such a predicament, but no matter how you turned it about, who was the one at fault, the person who made the dare, or the person who took it up and came to grief? And wasn't this the third time in three days that they were running to rescue this man from some mishap?
Tasi and Semwe stepped out of the crowd and came up to their daughter. Tasi gave Paama a consoling hug and spoke quietly in her ear. ‘A good story, but you are still wearing your wedding ring. Take it off and drop it on the other side of me, where no-one can see.'
Paama quickly obeyed while all eyes were still fixed on the strange sight of Ansige cowering in the alley with his head encased in a mortar. As the ring fell to the ground, Tasi immediately covered it with her foot, all the while patting Paama's shoulder comfortingly.
After some of the villagers had stopped laughing long enough to consider the problem, it was decided to use an axe to get Ansige out, and this had him so frantic with worry that he embarrassed himself further by whimpering and flinching. Finally they struck off only the very bottom of the mortar, quite a distance from his head, and then gently split the round open using a chisel and a crowbar. Every hammer and chop had been magnified a hundredfold by the wood pressing on his ears, and Ansige was quite traumatised when they finally got him loose.
Semwe took hold of his son-in-law with a grip that was sympathetic yet surprisingly firm. ‘What a frightful experience! You must visit a doctor to ensure that there has been no permanent damage. Let me take you to the lodge and help you pack. The Makendha Infirmary is far too small to treat your case. We must get you to Ahani as soon as possible.'
Ansige followed Semwe without protest. In a bewilderingly brisk few minutes, he found that his belongings were packed, his bills settled, and a small crowd of villagers—some solicitous, some inquisitive, and some still frankly laughing at him—was escorting him to await the next omnibus to Ahani.
Paama watched him go, her arms folded and her lips folded as she listened to those who were quietly laughing and poking fun at Ansige. A wasp flew a time or two around her head, and certain ears would have heard it say:
'Look at him go! A fool to the last. No-one would think any less of you if you laughed at him, too, Paama. Go on, Paama! Beat the man down!'
Paama continued to stare at Ansige's retreating back. Behind her, half-hidden in the dust of the court, lay her discarded wedding ring. Tasi quickly stooped and picked it up, opening her mouth as if about to voice some reassurance, but Paama immediately turned away and walked homewards, not once looking at her parents, not once glancing up at the jeering insect.
Just outside the village, a pair of unseen observers exulted.
'Did you see that? She didn't hear it!'
'Or she heard it and ignored it.'
'Either way, she must indeed be the one to hold the Chaos Stick. They cannot influence her!'
'I'm glad you agree with me at last. Go arrange for it to be given to her as soon as possible.'
* * * *
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5
paama receives an unusual gift,
and a little girl visits dre
amland
* * * *
In the days after Ansige's departure, people were actually rather kind to Paama. When a woman leaves her husband and returns home for no apparent reason, there will be speculation, but after Ansige's display of gluttony-induced idiocy, no-one speculated any further. If anything, Paama was congratulated on having got rid of a burdensome spouse, and she was further respected because of her discretion and tact. Any other woman would have made a big fuss, or at the very least added her voice to the general mocking and ridiculing of the man and his deeds, but Paama seemed above all that.
'She will find a better husband some day,’ was the verdict, and with that, the gossips moved on in search of more scandalous meat.
Paama, who had never cared very much what other people thought, still occasionally added to the saltwater lake under the river stone, but now there was more of the sweetness of relief than the bitterness of failure in her tears.
She accepted that her life with Ansige was over, so much so that when someone came knocking at the door claiming to bear a message from Ansige, her first reaction was bewilderment.
'A message? Why? Did he forget something when he left?'
The messenger was travelling light, with only a small courier's satchel over his shoulder. He did not look equipped to return with anything of significant size, so she discarded the thought even as she voiced it.
He bowed and said, ‘Mister Ansige has sent me to ask you to return home.'
'Ask?’ Paama repeated, stunned.
Still inclined in that respectful half bow, the messenger raised his downcast eyes and met the flash of not-quite-humour in Paama's eyes with a irreverent glint of his own.
'Do you have an answer for him, mistress?'
'Do I??h?’ Paama strangled for a moment as her words tripped over themselves while the messenger straightened and eyed her with compassion. She took hold of herself and spoke with strained calm. ‘I am not going back. I am never going back, and he should know that. How dare he act as if??s if I didn't know him! Let him find another wife. I am no longer interested in the position,’ she concluded with dignity.
The messenger bowed his head, a slow nod of acknowledgement. ‘We expected as much. Well then, on to my second duty. The old servants remember how pleasant you made Mister Ansige's household for those who had to work there. You have been missed.'
He paused to dip his hand into his satchel and withdrew an object carefully wrapped in silk. ‘We hope that you will accept from us this token of our thanks, and a remembrance of our sincere prayers that in the future you shall gain a better husband and a more blessed household.'
Paama took the narrow bundle, touched by the gift and the words that came with it. For courtesy, she unwrapped it there and then, so that he could carry back the tale of her delight and gratitude to the givers. When she saw what lay in the folds of ivory silk, she did not have to pretend to be awed. It was a stick such as one might find in any kitchen, the broad, flat kind made for turning meal to creamy smoothness. However, this one was made of ebony, and its handle was banded with etched gold. It was a trophy for her years of endurance with Ansige, and immediately she was very proud of it.
'Take it up, hold it,’ insisted the messenger as she hesitantly extended her fingers over the gleaming finish of the handle.
Paama took the gift into her hand, and her eyes were so focused on admiring the workmanship that she missed the somewhat inappropriate expression of happy relief on the messenger's face.
'It is the most beautiful stirring stick I have ever seen,’ she said.
'Yes,’ the messenger murmured, constrained by the habit of truth. ‘It is certainly a Stick for stirring things up.'
'I shall have to have it mounted on a plaque,’ she mused aloud, turning it under the sunlight and wondering where she should hang it. ‘Or perhaps a stand or rack of some sort might show it off better.'
'Why not hang it at your waist for now?’ suggested the messenger. ‘It has a loop for just that purpose.'
Paama stared at him. That was odd! Hanging it on her belt as if it were a guard's truncheon or a tradesman's tool. She started to tell him so, but the words evaporated. Shrugging at her own eccentricity, she did exactly as he said and hooked it onto her belt.
He smiled. ‘Thank you. I will go take your answer back to Mister Ansige.'
Paama waved farewell as he trotted away from her front door. 'Thank you'? Why is he thanking me? She watched him, slightly suspicious, to make sure that he did indeed head for the road leading out of the village. When he did just that, she laughed quietly at herself and her foolish thoughts and went back into the house.
Meanwhile, out of sight of the village, the messenger stepped quickly along the country trail until he was a day's journey out of Makendha. There was a sleeping heap huddled around the bole of a shak-shak tree, awaiting his return.
'Wake up,’ he told it, giving it a friendly nudge with his foot. ‘Go back and tell your Mister Ansige that Paama's words are, “Don't act as if I don't know you.” She said some other things, too, but the general idea is that she's not coming back. Understood?'
The heap sat up and stretched. It was a man, the twin of the messenger in every way—features, figure, clothing, even the courier's satchel. He looked strangely fuzzy around the edges.
'Have I slept long?’ he asked. It was the messenger's voice, too.
'Two days.'
The man was still stretching, making noises of pleased surprise. ‘I cannot believe it. I have no stiffness, no pain?'
'Do you think I would steal two days of your life? To the world you slept for two days. To yourself mere minutes have passed since I left you.'
'What did she think of your gift?'
The faux messenger smiled. ‘She likes it very much. When she learns what it is, she will love it even more. But no more questions. We will have an exchange—my memory of delivering the message to Paama for your memory of my existence. You promised,’ he added as the man began to look downcast.
'I know. Will I see you again?’ he asked hopefully.
'Me or someone like me,’ came the cheerful reassurance. ‘Now, hold still.'
He pressed a palm lightly on the man's forehead, and as he slowly faded into air, the real messenger grew solid and substantial. The man got to his feet, looked around with a slightly puzzled expression, and then set off with determination down the trail away from Makendha.
* * * *
'Mission accomplished.’ There was a certain amount of self-satisfaction in this communication.
'Are you back already?'
'I presented her with the Chaos Stick. Even as I speak, it is hanging from her belt.'
'Well done! And what else?'
'What??hat else?'
'You did show her how to use it, of course?'
'I?? was supposed to show her how to use it? Oh. Dear. Um.'
'Exactly. You have to go back.'
* * * *
The life of the undying is quite busy, either through dedication or desperation. The benevolent ones are the most diligent and the most overlooked, because they work with willing people and take their images as their shadows. The person who looks and in an instant reads your soul, the ordinary type who suddenly declares a profound and wise truth—I do not mean to take anything away from these people, for they are willing collaborators in a great work, but in many such cases they have lent their shadows for that pivotal moment.
Alas, there are others, not quite so benevolent, who entertain themselves by tormenting the lesser beings, namely humans. Co-operation is not a word that you will find in their lexicon, which is why they often find it simpler to snag a ride with a passing insect or any small creature whose brain can be easily overpowered.
Some are but tricksters, turning the tiniest of choices into a dire misstep or a trigger for catastrophe. Even very powerful ones, those who have learned to make their own shadows, sometimes do nothing more than tease and tweak fates a little, just for a good laugh
. I am sure that the spider of Ahani was one of that sort, wreaking minor havoc in the form of his own whimsically-crafted shadow.
Others are more malicious, turning their powers to greater degradation than mere mockery. Many of those are powerful, for such work requires an amazing level of skill in its own warped way. Why, you may ask. Simple. Not one of them, no matter how powerful, can sway a body from its chosen course. The most they can do is help it along—grease the slope, as it were.
Carefully removing memories for generations still could not erase the collective awareness that there was something out there, going bump in the night or whatever. Thus several names had come to be attached to these immortal beings as they wrought both mystery and mischief through all countries, cultures, and centuries of humanity. Since the story is about Paama, we will use her country's name for them—the djombi.
This particular djombi, who was of the benevolent but not very powerful type, was experiencing a special kind of difficulty. For reasons that we cannot go into right now, a more powerful djombi was using his services. Unfortunately, his superior, who had long ago forged a shadow for herself, often appeared to forget the limitations of her weaker kin. By ending his errand and giving up his shadow too early, the junior was, in a manner of speaking, stranded, like a man who has neglected to ask the cab to wait for just a moment. He had to find another willing person to help him get back into Makendha so he could teach Paama the purpose of the Stick.
He was already too embarrassed by his earlier slip to ask directly for his superior's assistance, so he slunk to the fringes of Makendha and prayed for a small miracle.
His prayer was answered??ery accurately, very precisely.
A little girl was playing at the edge of a pasture, dramatising some inner daydream with dance and song. She turned in midwhirl, caught sight of him, and tumbled over in surprise.
'What are you doing there?’ she asked, peeking up through the grass stems.