by Parris Match
Dacoh knew he could not move from the higher elevation of the un-curtained ledge, until the retiring light of day had become almost fused, into the charcoal-grey cloak of darkness; he dared not to be casually glimpsed, on the exposed brushless path along the descending steep slope of the hill, dropping down to the valley floor. Once on the very base of the beautiful valley, he hid himself in the thickened brush, to some sleep and wait, for the first morning’s new appearance. Before he slept Dacoh painfully remembered the story Ahcoo’ah had told of his two ancestral brothers who were brutally slaughtered, here in this valley, by the vicious River People. He would have to reinforce his purpose, against the creeping fearfulness welling up inside him, reminding himself of his staunch obligation to Ahcooah and his people, and his yearning desire to return to the safety and comfort of his homeland.
The ever commanding resonant ring in Dacoh’s ear; the habitual ballad of the tiny bowstring cicada, or the little warnings, repetitious voices of a metrical lyre. Critics of fault, doubt, and fear; would not easily take their leave. Willingly accept and use these overbearing constant companions, before they pass into their cold short slumberous sleep, for you will always know where they are, and wherever they reside, in this known world. Seek soothing solace in their droning uninterrupted chants, confused monotonous chirps, and the occasional close to screech; shrill sounds of harsh music, from that dark and disturbing pitch.
The following day; an eager Brave, cunning and swift as a darting red fox, snuffled and explored the flatter western boundary of the widest and deepest river. He had never seen nor could imagine the magnificence of so much water, yet Dacoh must keep hidden, staying away from the tempting murmurs of the lapping water’s edge. Dacoh unexpectedly perceived that the River People did not reside at all on this lower side of the river. The dense thickets of brambles scattered along a widened gravely-sand strip between the steep hill and the river, with patchy groves of drooping trees near the waters changeable chosen course, and the intermingled, broken and blown, brushy hard mounds of layered sand-silt, were the only visible occupants of this sandy unstable separate margin.
Then…, Dacoh sighted the humanlike animal, barely different from himself, just an ordinary man, planted on the opposing bank, toes wetly rooted beyond the contrary line, of the swiftly passing stream. Dacoh quickly crouched and warily peered through a peephole in these thick leafy bushes; this was the atrocious enemy, a vicious savage creature of the infamous River People. The animal easily sat on his haunches and scooped some water to his mouth, and then some more; suddenly stood, cocked his head and suspiciously sniffed the northerly air, as he glanced from side to side, across the gurgling flow of his river, in Dacoh’s direction. Once again the native beast tested the ushered air downstream and thoroughly searched the familiar terrain of the opposite shore. Satisfied he was mistaken in his lone primeval sense; he quickly turned, climbed the steep bank, and disappeared into the thicker raised growth along that side of the dividing river.
Dacoh crawled backward from his hiding place and began again to sneak-about the lay of the land; he then traveled down the general course of the stream. The river would soon spread into an ever widening delta, flowing less deep and nearly filled with several long narrow graveled sandbars, separating the clear burbling river into three somewhat shallower streams of low rippling water.
The overriding muffled babble of voices, through the tall dense greasewood brush and the lower thicker bramble, put Dacoh in a state of intense awareness to every other sound and smell; he threw the deerskin disguise over his head and shoulders, dropped to the soft sandy ground, and crawled very slowly forward through one low breach in the bushes. Dacoh so transformed himself into a slow plod-advancing hump-back desert tortoise, deliberately inching closer and closer to the luring community of the fluctuating cheery conversation. Drawn to the sound of their voices, the blurred noisy unobserved image of the like humans; until, peeking from his soft leathern shell, hollow hidden amongst a lone lowly scrub cluster, on the brink of, but still not touching, the much wider divided stream. He could see them, gathered separately, on the other side, over the low rise and fall, across the embankments of tapered sand isles and gravel ridges, just above the corrugated rippling waters course.
A sizeable number of alien people loosely occupied the boulder deposited, very gently sloped, sandy bank of the river; all of them were women and children. The naked laughing little children chased each other and romped and frolicked in the mid-day sun, while the drooping, large-breasted, bantering women sat on boulder stoops and bathed in the cold stream and rinsed their sack-like garments, hanging them on the nearby hedgerow bushes to dry. For Dacoh, they appeared before him as his own people. The lively giggling children, tagging and cavorting about, those settled women jabbering at distance back and forth; it was surprisingly familiar, no different than the women and children from his own village; Dacoh’s sunny home within the higher mountains’ valley.
The shorter days were not noticeably hot at this time of the year, but with the air clear of mist and particle, the last passionate intense rays of the Sun were very stimulating on the bare skin. However Dacoh baked harshly under his restraining brown pelt cloak of camouflage; he remaining absolutely still, and well hidden, in the thick insulated spiny cluster of the two-faced prickly bramble. The carefree activity of the cackling and clucking women, and unchecked darting children, lapsed into the slightly yellow fall of mid-afternoon across the rippling and monotonous babbling of the separated streams. Slyly, Dacoh searchedout their every trivial move, waiting as a panting salivating fox, for the wavering bonneted plumage and succulence of a tender ample quail; zealously looking for that essential single objective of his focused mission, to this dangerous distant place.
Time was suspended in uncertainty.
She appeared as a breezy sprite, quite light and blithely, a quiet swish and purposeful sashay, over the rounded crest of the rocky knoll, with another larger woman following closely behind; then she descended slowly strolling, curving down the inclined pathway to the sandy shore. The proud tawny doe, accentuated by the Sun, smoothly pranced before her stout female escort, self-assured and quite conspicuous in the fresh tight blush-bloom of her virginal status. The nymph sensually ambled over to the water’s edge, her flat-footed lumbering watchful guardian-bear in protective tow. Dacoh’s eyes were totally transfixed on the young soft-brown feminine fawn; who undressed leisurely and openly blossomed, pulling her adorned doeskin garment over her head, and casually handing it over to the other woman. Slightly-bending down, she slipped-off her ornamented moccasins, giving them to her waiting attendant, and fluidly waded in to the gently lapping… water set in a swirl, pausing when her higher than mid-thighs were covered in the dawdling lickerish flow. The surly ursine other woman clumsily retreated to a nearby boulder, sat with the young woman’s belongings spread on her lap, and kept a sober and ever vigilant eye on her cherished tender charge.
Dacoh was breathless and thunderstruck by the fawn’s innocent smooth-limbed perfect lithe body, to ignite his immediate increasing natural appetite for beauty and lust; pristine rounded breasts gently peaked, nipples sensations exposed and lightly kissed by the cool zeal of the invigorating air. Her black long shiny hair, pulled-back into a single knotted braid, draped forwards from the nape over her shoulder, adorned with many small colorful feathers, to with a bright-red beaded headband circles round her brow. The alluring sinuous golden-brown velvety hips and limbs of downy pubescence, she bowed towards the water, and soothingly bathed her forearms; her flanks and thighs; now raising, splashing over her shoulders to her dribbling breasts; and then the cool sparkling water glitter shown her raised upper body. Dacoh could not take his eyes away, as a multitude of flashing sun-flecks lark about in the background, for only she existed within his intimate vision. He was absolutely mesmerized by the graceful vivacious pixie image in front of him; his cramped body became uncomfortably swollen and rigid in natural, heart and breath is quickened, wet a
nticipation. The glistening fawn, naked but for the color-beaded, turquoise and coppery bells, bracelets on her wrists; fluidly stretched, to be-flatter her downy fur dew-dropt revelation, and began again; accustomed to the cool current of the fresh stream, she playfully splashed the water over her liquid self, lightly giggling as she smoothly re-rinsed her lissome body for the second time.
Time stood still, all sounds were silent, a breath of air forgotten; Dacoh laid in an arrested latent torpor, a charmed flushed-red chameleon, held in inflexible passion, totally subdued by the slight immediate enchanted whiff of a scarlet flower, and the intensive heat from the radiant Spirit of the Sun.
A derisive whooping yell loudly arose in the direction behind Dacoh; “Hoot!”, “Hoot!”, “Hoot!”
Repeated with a higher-pitched jocular howling; “Hoot!”, “Hoot”, “Hoot”.
The young golden-brown fawn immediately sprinted from the chilly stream, towards the defensive woman in wait; while the remaining gaggle of nested undisturbed women, and playful darting children, paid but little mind; she quickly grabbed and donned her slipped garment from anxious outstretched arms, to cover herself from several unknown leering eyes.
From his hiding place, Dacoh’s first startled response was to jump-up and run, but he flattened-down, wishing this false desert tortoise could be completely covered in a burrowed hole, and disappear into the sand. The intimidating sounds behind him came closer and closer; those slight coming louder vibrations, grains of sand falling within his vision, trembling surrounded this bushy location. Gravely peering to the left and then right, he could see the bare legs of the distracted enemy, pass by his small brushy patch; the thick tangled mesh, thorny waxen shrubs, where he lay hidden. Dacoh noted the lean backsides of eight near-naked focused men as they waded into the rippling stream. The men sloshed then plowed through the water, the depth not exceeding highest-thigh, then rising up on a sandbar, crossed it, ignoring the other first small island in the stream, and pushed through the remaining slightly deeper branch of the separated river.
The nervous skittish young woman coyly cuddled next to her plump guardian; the other firmly planted homely woman, looking at the group of men with slight discernible disgust, with barren hostility from twofold long extended bitterness. The men side-glanced the coveted quivering wary fawn, then arrogantly plodded apathetically, through the used women and little children, and marched up the hill, fading from view over the graveled alluvial summit, on their way back to their village.
The young maiden slipped into her beaded moccasins; the other woman and her lolled-about waiting for anyone else to leave the river bank, and then joining them, climbed up the path and walked over the hill, disappearing from her unknown heated suitor’s entranced stare. Dacoh hungered-after this lustful vision, the soft golden-bronze fantasy, that had stood before him. He knew that he must possess her, willing to accept any sacrifice to achieve that end result. At the first notice of longer shadows, what was left of the women and children withdrew from the sandy bank of the moderate burbling stream, and Dacoh remained, alone.
Dacoh’s body was stiff and aching after enduring this cramped stationary position for more than half the days-light, he hobbled in retreat to the denser brush, to stretch and regain his stopped circulation, and restore his vital muscular agility. With a short time of pallid light still available, Dacoh circumspectly plotted this lower side of the marginal river, knowing he must have a clear understanding of the enemies extended terrain, to provide himself any assurance for his eventual escape. He secreted his unwieldy useless bow, arrows, and spear alongside the rising path leading to the exit from the river valley, for Dacoh fully realized he would be hopelessly and inevitably doomed if he was ever detected.
In the reassuring equalizing dark of the sly unperceivable nightshades, Dacoh returned to the river bank, the moons clouded oversight eerily disguising the near distant opposite shore of the passing and wavering tide. He crouched amongst the partial lunar shadows of a clump of riparian brushwood and cautiously dipped and filled his water-gourds: searching… through squinted eyes by the banded-brow over the recurrent sheen into the nebulous dim blur. Straining to peer into the sinister vague border of the darker brush, lining the rising ground scene, across the muddled currents of the babbling stream. Dacoh could hardly see and could distinguish nothing clearly in the bluish filmy murkiness of the deep unfathomable dark. He entered the colder river before the sandbars, and slowly but surely, as quiet as possible, not causing an added audible ripple, slowly pushed and waded his way to the other side. Dacoh hurriedly crossed the sometimes moonlit, shadowed boulder covered beach, to the darkened edge of the rivers slightly higher boundary of blacker bushes; crawled under and through this profuse thick growth, refusing the open rising well-beaten path; then stooped to his knees, in his steeper advance to the top of the fully exposed small stone hillock, to wait on the moons clouded wink.
Standing erect in the shallow trough of the two-way pathway at the very top of the desolate rocky alluvial mound, one way to oblivion, the other to uncertainty; he could turn back, but he could never go back, his ultimate fate was accurately etched in the soft facets of un-tempered stone. The chosen direction of the active determinate Spirits could not be ignored; nature, in its pleasing harmony or apparent chaos, ruled the consequence; in man’s withering famine, or in man’s full harvest.
The variant revealing light of the half-deceitful moon, still clearly defined the mercurial deeply worn pathway; a winding illusive silvery thread, leading into the almost silent darkness, with overlay from intermittent bare branches, to provide the concealment of changeling-shadows, by some directly inclined twisted grey oak. Dacoh walked several steps up the inevitable well beaten course and stood still as a stone; listened and looked amidst the ghostly dark, then took several more steps and stopped again; listening and searching into the buzzzz… …ing murkiness, for some or any hint of impending danger. Dacoh continued to pace and stop, smell and listen; pace and stop, smell and listen; to include a furtive respite beneath an uncommitted very old gnarled tree, then stealthily tip-toeing his way towards his uncertain fate. It seemed to take forever, in spite of the anxious Dacoh, to move and arrive within visual proximity to some gathered shelters of the sinister River People. The upper flashing and flickering glows from the beacons fires, to perform sporadic light through the deceptive trees, and to show windblown waves onto the passing cloudy screen, display the first indications he was nearing their obscured isolated village.
The indented side path dropped into a tight gully, the offensive pungent odor of man’s defecation wafted down the expedient cut; Dacoh hurried up the path out of the small ravine quickly, leaving the trail once he reached the opposite rim, for he should not ever permit himself to be discovered by anyone being called to impure inherent nature. Dacoh shortly entered the harvested fields of maize and beans spreading out from the village; nothing remained but the dried crunching leaves and broken stubs, of the many corn stalks. He dropped to the ground and slowly crawled forward, inching in the direction of the firelight, the low murmurings of the people, and the smells of sweet-scented smoke and human habitation. A slow passing dense cloud temporarily covered the moon, thrusting Dacoh into pitch-black darkness; he crept towards the flickering light of the fires, when his hand touched the snake-like earth creeper of a plant. He jerked his hand back, but soon realizing his dim-witted reaction, Dacoh patted around and discovered he was in the midst of a late squash garden patch. Crawling between and through the low mounds of large leafy squash foliage, Dacoh arrived at the furthest point of intrusion he would chance at this time. The darker haloed cloud moved away from the curious eye of the moon, and Dacoh huddled underneath the beetled-deerskin, covertly keeping close limited glimpses, on the isolated activity of the fire lit creatures, between the backsides of the dwellings of those moving glooms. The gathered adobe huts, the surrounded intermittently lighted compound, that private well-structured village, of The mysterious and dangerous wicked
River People.
The village of the River People, that Dacoh was searching out, to determine its vulnerability, was one of several villages covering a large raised alluvial plain; situated on the broad delta of a liberal tributary, that emptied into a grand enormous muddled river, further, but not far, down-water from this secondary clear stream. The entire village enclosures were set far back, removed from the steep banks of the smaller river; because the very wide, deeply rutted, and heavily graveled in sand deposits of this rarely flooding stream, were unsuitable for any productive agriculture. The River People had diverted some required water upstream, supplying a series of controlled canals to a central plain, which served this formed sedimentary islands fertile loam, producing an unfailing annual prolific harvest, and all of the other needs of the possessive peoples of this near perfect green paradise. The extended certain clans of the River People had crossed the muddy river and occupied this valley for countless generations, and had staked their exclusive claim; were overtly hostile and addicted to viciousness, and protected their closed limit of land with a tenacious inflexible decree.
Dacoh laid in single focus, suffered impatience in the wait, as a tauten mountain lion, seeking that inattentive savory prey, the innocent straying skittish little deer. Piercing yellow reflective beady cats-eyes, hungrily staring from the outer dark, ready to pounce upon this fleeting moment’s opportunity. Slightest movement or aberrant changing shadows of risk, would not escape the gaunt hungry panthers quick immediate sidewise glance; that low calming guttural purr…, only heard from within. The daylight or nighttime’s errant tics and intentional clicks, keeping their constant vigilance; the vital or the terminal man will virtually stalk this inner craving, in the breath-taking must for his continued existence.