Manak-na's Story, 75,000 BC

by Bonnye Matthews

  When Wisdom began to suck color from the land and sea, the boat continued on. Rokuk called half the boatmen to sleep. The other half of the boatmen would sail through the night. Manak-na and Yomuk were called for the first sleep, as were Piman and Ralm. Different men took the rudder. The winds were calm and all was well.

  Just before Wisdom raised the sun above the horizon, restoring color with an arc of brilliant rays of sunlight, the men were called to wake up to eat. When they finished eating, the other half of the group went to sleep. Manak-na found it unnatural that men could sleep when there was sunlight. He really hadn’t thought about travel on a ship. In some ways, he supposed he’d thought that they would stop and all would sleep at night. It fascinated him that the boat could sail at night and Rokuk or someone else would know where they were going. He definitely felt untrained and incapable of understanding much of what was happening. He didn’t feel comfortable in the role of a virtual child in knowledge of boat travel, so he began to ask questions. Most people, he found, were more than willing to share. They found sharing their information with someone who really wanted to know to be refreshing.

  At night it was cold on the boat. Wind off the water carrying moisture made it feel as if cold penetrated right through clothing. Many times, Manak-na was grateful that his sleeping time came at night. He could wrap his skins around him to keep off the chill. A few times he’d resort to putting on his season-of-cold-days pants and jacket just to sleep. Yomuk did so a bit more often. Sleeping wasn’t exactly comfortable. With all the ropes coiled up, it wasn’t possible to lie down straight anywhere. But, Manak-na would remind himself—this was part of the adventure.

  One night after being on the water for many days, Yomuk awoke to the sound of thunder and raindrops falling on the woven roof. He could hear them hit but no water seemed to come into the hut. The boat, instead of gently rocking on the water, was tilting wildly from one side to the other. The creaking was intensified. Yomuk was frightened. He could see light through a few holes in the matting. Lightning was flashing, followed by more booms of thunder. He noticed that the others were sleeping and he didn’t want to waken them. He took one of his skins and put it over his head, hoping to cut out some of the noise and flashing light. It didn’t really help, and it removed some of the warmth from his legs. He fought the skins in the cramped space, finally getting his bedding into the form that normally helped him sleep, but he was too frightened for slumber. He did lie down and try to be quiet. With his fear and the rocking of the boat he felt a little nausea rising up. He curled up pulling his legs to his chest, but that still didn’t help much. He listened to the sound of the thunder and noticed that it sounded farther and farther away. That gave him a sense of relief. Looking toward Manak-na, he wondered how anyone could sleep through the noise. Even the rocking seemed to decrease somewhat. He felt a little better, so he tried hard to return to sleep. After quite some time, he fell into a troubled sleep.

  When Wisdom returned color to the land and sea with a clear sky, Yomuk asked Manak-na if he heard the storm during the night. Manak-na smiled. “I heard nothing,” he replied. “I had a wonderful sleep and dreamed of going to places far away.”

  “Well, it scared me,” Yomuk admitted. “The boat was moving up and down in large waves and I found that frightening. I almost rolled over on top of you but caught myself” he said looking at Manak-na. “You could see the sky light up through tiny holes in the matting over the hut. Thunder roared. The boat creaked louder.”

  “I guess, then, that you learned that a storm at sea rolls the boat around, makes it creak louder, and yet the storm abates, just like on land, and goes away. It’s not something to fear.”

  “I wish I could calm myself as you seem to do. I am still stirred up about it.”

  When the men left the hut they had the morning meal and then relieved the men who had spent the night through the storm. Rokuk came over to the two of them and told them to sit. They sat and Rokuk handed each one a short piece of thin rope.

  “Watch me tie this knot and then you tie one just like it,” Rokuk said.

  Each tried to tie the knot, but it seemed complicated and neither could do it on the first try. Rokuk demonstrated each step and had them follow. They were able to tie the knot correctly that time. Rokuk told them to try to do it by themselves and they were able to do it.

  “Why this particular knot?” Manak-na asked.

  “If we have a storm just a little stronger than last night, you will be told to tie up. When you hear that, you get a rope from the hut by your things and tie the rope around your waist. Then tie it to wherever you are working or sleeping on the boat. Tie it to the bamboo of the boat. If the sea becomes really rough—and last night was not really rough—you need to stay tied so you don’t fall off the boat. In stormy weather it is not likely that if you fell off the boat anyone would know it happened. Even on a nice day, if you fell off the boat, it’s unlikely we could find and save you. This boat doesn’t really turn around. You must tie up if told, and you must use this knot. It won’t come untied.”

  “Thank you,” Manak-na said.

  Immediately Yomuk followed with, “Yes, thank you.”

  “Did the storm wake either of you?” Rokuk asked.

  “It waked me,” Yomuk answered. “Everyone else was asleep and stayed asleep. I was frightened.”

  “Brace yourself, Yomuk,” Rokuk said. “Out on the sea we can have lovely calm weather. Then the weather can cause a raging sea with high waves pounding the boat and winds that scream and blow so you can hear nothing else, as if they’d rip the very hut off the boat. It can be frightening, but realize the boat is built well and as long as you’re tied on, when the storm abates, you’ll be fine. Just don’t tie yourself to the hut. Sometimes they do blow off. Tie yourself to the bamboo boat. Just realize that you are getting acquainted with the sea. It’s not like land. The sea, however, is a wonderful place full of surprises. Look each day for the surprises and realize that you’re as safe as you can be on this boat. Instead of letting yourself get frightened, pay attention to all around you all the time you’re awake. You wanted an adventure, so Pah said. Enjoy all that happens as that—adventure.”

  Yomuk said, “Thank you Rokuk. I will put your words in my mind web and think on them. I will try, when I become frightened, to calm the fear and look around at what’s happening, so I can enjoy this adventure and learn from it.”

  “Good,” Rokuk responded. “Yomuk, how old are you?”

  Yomuk was surprised. Nobody had asked his age. “I am,” he showed ten fingers.

  Rokuk grinned. “I thought so,” he said. “You look older than you are and your behavior is mature for your age, but your fear was that of a boy. Be who you are, Yomuk. But you’ll enjoy this adventure a lot more if you don’t give in to fear, but rather look at what is happening and realize each time that you lived through what you feared. It will help you grow into a man.”

  Yomuk looked at the man. “Do you never become frightened on the boat?” he asked Rokuk.

  “You remember how tall the boatbuilders’ camp structure is?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Not often, but sometimes we have waves much more than four times that high. When that happens and the wind screams like a wild animal bigger than anything that grows on land, and the wave tops crash on the boat, sometimes, then, I get a little frightened. I’ve never been on a boat that a storm turned upside down. But I’ve always come out alive, so I have some fear, but it’s not something that will paralyze me into a scared monkey. I have responsibilities and I see to them regardless of the weather—or my own fear.”

  “That’s what you mean about being a man?”

  “Exactly, Yomuk. Work through your fears and keep your mind web working well. Focus on responsibility. Do your work. In big storms your job is to make the rudder point us into the oncoming waves. That keeps us from flipping over. Piman will show you.”

  “I will do my best, Rokuk. Thank you.”<
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  Rokuk walked past him and touched his shoulder. Manak-na went to the area of the back sail and Yomuk went to the back of the hut near the rudder. Rain was gone and the sea was filled with waves and some wind, but it made the boat move more rapidly through the water. The creaking noises didn’t seem so frightening to Yomuk. There was no longer any land to their right. Ahead there was a large piece of land in the far distance. The sky was clear enough for them to see well.

  Rokuk told Piman to change the direction of the rudder so the boat would begin to make a very slight right turn. Only one peg difference from where the peg was currently set would do. Yomuk came over to help and found that with the wave action and the wind the rudders were a little harder to move, but two of them could still do it. He returned to his place behind the hut to sit. He thought over and over the words of Rokuk. He had been frightened as a little child the night before. He was not ridiculed for his fear, but instead Rokuk had shown him a different way to approach fear. That was a new thought to him. Then he realized there was a story that he couldn’t remember, but he seemed to think that the same subject was in one of his mother’s stories. Was there a story for everything? he wondered.

  Manak-na had listened to Rokuk. He was grateful that the man treated Yomuk so well. He could have been angered that he didn’t know he had a youth on the boat, but that was not how he handled Yomuk. He handled the boy’s fear very well. Manak-na thought Yomuk should have remembered a story that dealt with fear, but he realized that Yomuk was yet young and the stories probably hadn’t made a big difference to him yet. There were several stories that dealt with fear. The story of Comargh-na and Elmindrid-na was one. They had just talked about that one. Of course, they were looking at a different aspect of the story when they talked about it. When they had time together he’d try to get Yomuk to organize the stories in his mind web, so when fear arose, he could look through his mind web and find the stories that dealt with fear and see what they’d tell him about the way to be wise. Suddenly, a sharp chill ran through Manak-na. He was thinking in terms of the mind web of the People. Perhaps, since Yomuk was part Mol, he had their scattered way of using his mind web. If that were the case, maybe he could help Yomuk organize some of his mind web and learn how to do it, so the information from the generations would be available to him. Manak-na couldn’t imagine living safely without the stored information of the generations quickly available for guidance. He wondered whether the Mol who sailed to far lands were like the People, the inland Mol, or whether they used their mind webs differently yet. It would give him something to think about while he sat waiting to be available, if the sail were to be furled.

  Two young men came through with food and water. Men all over the boat were ready for both. The boat sped toward the large land but it was clear they wouldn’t stop there. They were heading out to sea where they could see no other land.

  Once they moved away from land, the sea became somewhat more filled with waves a little higher and lower than what they’d experienced. They sped along. About high sun Manak-na was looking out at the horizon when a great spout of water rose off to the right side of the boat. It stank. Yomuk jumped up so he could see what caused the noise. Both saw the back of a huge creature in the water as it submerged leaving a great tail upright for a few moments. Manak-na and Yomuk looked at each other. No one else on the boat seemed surprised. Ralm, a man with skin colored a little darker than Pah’s, explained to Manak-na that they had seen a whale. It was not a fish, because it had no gills. It breathed through nostrils on its head and that’s what caused the spray. He told of encounters with the animals that sounded strange. The stories were of how these large animals occasionally helped people when their boats failed. He said whales sang. He told of dark colored whales, bluish ones, and white ones. The white ones were small. There was also a black and white whale, some of which had huge fins on their backs. They also had big teeth. Sometimes whales would hang in the water as if curious to observe the people on the boat.

  Manak-na listened carefully. This Mol seemed to have a well organized mind web. He spoke in a coherent, sequential way. His description of the animals was well ordered. What, he wondered, made the difference between the way he thought and used his mind web and the inland Mol, some of whom lived with his People now, used theirs? He just couldn’t understand. Or was it that this man was not Mol or People or Minguat, but yet a different people.

  The animal they’d seen stayed around only briefly. Later a large number of fish literally flew by. Yomuk found the flying fish hilarious, and it caused him to giggle. Sometimes they’d land on the boat and the men on the boat would toss them back to the water. They were colorful and were so unlike anything they’d seen that Manak-na and Yomuk were fascinated. Manak-na got up and leaned over one of the hulls to stare into the salt water. Rokuk was beside him quickly.

  “Any time you chose to lean over the side of the boat, Manak-na, you need to tie up. If you fell, it would be unlikely that we could rescue you. Safety is critical on the boat.”

  “I will remember,” Manak-na said. “Thank you.”

  Realizing that he hadn’t told Yomuk, Rokuk went to Yomuk and told him the same thing.

  Manak-na thought a while about the information and how it had been delivered. He would have thought that information of a safety nature would be given before they put the boat in the water. He considered that this might be an example of how their mind webs differed. But then he thought about how children of the People were expected to watch to learn, not depend on direct teaching. But then no one had leaned over the side of the boat, so Manak-na couldn’t learn that way. He thought of the style of hunting the People used. Direct teaching at the beginning of a hunt was an essential part of the way of learning for the young. It was designed to keep the young safe and avoid interference with hunters in an active hunt.

  Ralm looked over at Manak-na. “Is it hard to learn what is required to sail in a boat? I’ve done it since I was a child. It seems to be part of me.”

  “I don’t know the expectations like tying up before leaning over the edge of a boat. Are there other things I should know?”

  Ralm thought for quite some time. “All I can think of right now is, if you are fishing, be sure not to hook a person on the boat.”

  “You fish from the boat?”

  “Yes, when we tire of dried meat or just get bored. Sometimes we fish with hooks on lines and sometimes just with our hands. Sometimes as you saw with the flying fish, they join us. Flying fish provide many a serendipitous evening meal. We only gather fish when it looks as if we can cook the fish before the weather gets too bad for a fire on the boat. If the weather is nice, that doesn’t mean we’ll gather the flying fish for food. It’s only if we decide they’d be good. Sometimes the flying fish are so small it’s just too much work for a small amount of fish.”

  Manak-na found the idea of fishing and eating cooked fish on the boat convenient. This boat was wonderful in his eyes.

  Behind the hut in the sunshine, Yomuk was drowsy. There was monotony about the boat ride. He hardly heard the boat creaking anymore, the sound joined other sounds he screened out. He still had edges of nausea when he remembered the storm he experienced that one night. Somehow he could not look at that as a great adventure. He realized that if storms arose with the same frequency at sea as they did on land, there would be many more, and Rokuk had made it clear that the storm he feared was but a small storm. He carried a seed of panic with him when he considered the larger storms. He hoped they wouldn’t have one.

  Wind picked up toward the time Wisdom would suck color from the land and sea. Ahead they could just make out a tiny island. Rokuk told Piman to make a change on the rudder and he did. They wanted to keep land to their left now. Yomuk helped Piman change the rudder. Yomuk considered the rudder. Whoever planned that part of the boat was clever, he was convinced. It was not something that anyone would have imagined easily. At least, he felt, he could not have. It would take a certain mind web to cr
aft something like a rudder with the woven matting and the pegs in the pole along with the pegs in the stone holes to hold the rudder stick. Yomuk wished he had a mind web that could craft the ideas from which rudders sprang. He was thinking that these boatbuilders were on a level with superior hunters. He never thought there would be anyone other than hunters at that level of superiority. A flying fish landed beside his leg. Yomuk got up, picked up the fish, and tossed it behind the boat. He wanted to wash the fish slime off his hands. He didn’t know how, so he wiped his hands on his leather tunic.

  “Yomuk,” Piman shouted, “There is a water bag hooked to that part of the hut.” He pointed to the forward part of the hut.

  Yomuk looked and saw it. He went over to the bag and lifted it down. He untied the neck and ran cold water over his hands. That felt a lot better. He shouted back to Piman, “Thank you!” Yomuk didn’t mind meat from animals on his hands but fish slime bothered him.

  The drum beat told the men that for the day boatmen it was time to sleep. Manak-na and Yomuk waited for their relief to arrive and then went to the hut. They had quite a bent over climb to reach the back of the hut. They made their beds, settled in, and prepared for sleep. With the rocking of the boat, both drifted off soon after finding a comfortable position.

  When Manak-na arose the next day he emerged from the hut to see Rokuk, Piman, Ralm, Kipotuilak, and Skuku, the man who looked after the front sail in the day, looking to the east and then to the west, pointing, and discussing something very seriously. Manak-na was curious, but he said nothing. When the small group broke up, Ralm joined Manak-na.