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plateaus. The shoal dangled from Bu like an umbilical cord of the dragon islands, exposed to mild breeze and choppy seas. A handful of curious spectators sat scattered along the beach.
Yot raised her hand and waited for the tension and attention to shift to her. She had a short blast of white hair and roseate cheeks.
‘Is it time to deploy a second trio?’ Her face remained friendly and calm; the archipelago had wrestled with the same issue many times before.
Yerek judged it timely to redirect the discussion; she chose to ignore Yot’s recommendation. She started to explain about the visit she and Yerku had had from a member of the Bhavata House, which had itself been gaining attention throughout the islands. But suddenly all eyes turned to look at Posel, a local messenger, who splashed toward them through the rising sea. The Eleven seated on the sand in a circle left scant space for even a lean messenger. Posel stood awkwardly at the circle’s edge and with an anxious tremor in his hands announced, ‘Iniquity has been discovered on the island of Lurruna.’
Mek’s head hung forward on its jaw in disbelief but his eyes remained focused on Posel.
At first the only movement on the sandy islet was a shy easterly wind, out from somewhere nigh the belly of the archipelagic beast. Abruptly they stood, all in as rush, and most of their twenty-two hands moved all at once. An electric murmur pervaded the air. Eyes sought other’s eyes in an effort to interject. Some, like Vets and Yerek, sat quietly in thought.
Prime Minister Varchapet locked onto the messenger’s field of view.
‘Posel, please get their attention and give us more details.’
Chivors concurred, unquestionably.
‘Gara, control the assembly!’ Mek said.
After a great effort, the messenger gathered attention and announced that a woman would bare twins possibly before the last quarter—a woman who already had one child. Eyes came to rest on Mek instead of Prime Minister Varchapet, for it was again an island under his domain that suffered the infraction. The same island, indeed, that the Ishi, Ammit, and scrawny Kawani were at that moment returning from.
Mek inhaled sharply and with purpose. His anger bubbled and popped with his minimal and explosive signs.
‘Summon a second trio and send them to Magulo at once. I will go myself to intercept the trio from the north and return to Lurruna with them directly.’
He left the shoal, splashing furiously along the soft, submerged sand. As he went, he turned back to Posel and signed, ‘Come!’ with ferocity. Though Posel delivered his message and was officially relieved unless it merited reply, Mek still bullied him to buttress his minimal authority. Indignant, he directed Posel to gather the secondary designates for Magulo. He added, ‘Be sure Vets goes with them.’ He decided new infractions must be dealt with hyper-vigilance.
Mek’s brows thickened even more seriously as he prepared for immediate departure to the bright skies of the north.
Aron shares what Ravno missed from the seventh historia forum
‘Looks good, looks good.’ Tap-tap. Aron closely examined Ravno’s new mark of the noh. ‘Not sure it was worth you missing another fun day with Mister.’
Ravno grinned in the face of his friend’s tight-lipped smile.
‘Though, I do admit, that old rascal is growing on me,’ Aron said.
‘Really?’ Ravno said, unconvinced. He was already surprised that Aron had bothered going to the forum alone while Ravno had been recovering from the Bhavata’s custom batsu omhaal. Though Aron had the same mark on his neck, he hadn’t suffered from an infection like Ravno had. Perhaps Aron’s sole reason was to go on his behalf.
Ravno studied the boyish mien that swathed his friend’s face behind black frames: Short hair that lined his forehead like rock-top seaweed, and the almost permanent smile, never wide enough to open his lips. I wonder what his reaction would be if he switched with me? Ravno mused. I wonder what he would feel….
‘Rav, Mister finally set the foundation for us to have a whole-hearted conversation yesterday.’ Aron paused to catch his breath and continued, ‘And he didn’t prohibit it with senseless commentary. He told us about the ancient seed banks and historians, and we somehow got into a discussion of people living underground.’
Ravno’s attention strung a line above his eyes. He tilted his head, which prompted his tutor to continue.
‘Yeah that’s how we all looked. Apparently the ancients were forced down into caves,’ Aron paused again for a breath, ‘for generations at a time. You know the Ada Era that Mister’s mentioned a few times, when all that stuff was happening on the surface of the earth? Well, that’s when they had to hide away. Then Mister got on a tangent about an evolving cave-human species—’
‘Yes!’ Ravno cried out.
It was Aron’s turn to look up in surprise as he wearily sat down outside Ravno’s pack. Ravno remembered Chichi’s slender arms and hairless face and head, which almost dripped with coconut milk, and knew that Mr. Sunshine must have been speaking the truth. There might be hundreds of the cave-humans still living under the surface of other lands. What about Wawasen islands? We must have caves too, Ravno thought, excitedly, as he looked at his friend and laughed.
‘Sorry to interrupt, Aron, but Mister is on to something.’
‘I know. He spoke in more tangible concepts, though he ended weakly, I thought, when he tried to re-emphasize the need for these forums as a way…,’ and another brief pause, ‘as a way for us to keep making improvements on the past.’ Aron shut his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Obviously.’
‘Mhm.’ Ravno’s mind was a rushing, turbulent estuary. He had stopped listening once Aron mentioned the cave-humans. He speculated whether all humans had evolved to the cave-stage and devolved back to what they were now. Or there could have been a separation at some decisive moment when the species split ways.
Aron interrupted his reverie. ‘Rav, I’m heading out. I’ll catch up with you for the Bhavata.’
‘Hey? Oh, sure.’
‘Not tomorrow but the next day?’ Aron said.
‘Yeah, wind’s in your hair. See you at the Duat.’
Aron slowly stood up and painfully made his way down the avenue. Ravno shut his eyes tightly as he strained to see the possibilities with clarity. What if we’re the only group of our species that lives above ground? In a world full of cave-peoples—what a world that would be. He envisioned a hairless and white-skinned, underground populace. He pictured their ability to see in the darkness, like Chichi scrutinizing the villages at night. Ravno imagined groups of Chichi-like creatures, loping under low ceilings or convening in spacious caverns. Ravno’s hand came up to gingerly touch the inflamed mark on his neck. He laughed to himself while he pictured Aron and his toothless smile.
Life begins, life changes, life ends
Two days later, Ravno did not see Aron at the Duat Canal because Aron was dead. His condition worsened quickly after he had left Ravno’s pack, and he had barely made it back to his own pack in Phoyara. Persistent vomiting and fever kept him up all night and, after the paralyses took over, he died quickly. Others in the pack kept their distance but still tried to comfort him. Tzeko, as he witnessed the fast deterioration, had gone to alert Vesta late that evening, but she had been tending to a child with a raspy cough near the end of the Olive Fork Canal. She arrived with Tzeko after the small sliver of the old moon pulled dawn across the sky and the hemp blanket was drawn over Aron’s rigid body.
They made preparations to carefully clean the pack that Aron had lived in and for the sky burial. Vesta led the small group up Vorra Mound that afternoon to a gently angled rock abutment at the base of the mountain’s needle. Aron’s body lay in deference of the towering gneiss as Tzeko, Vesta, Ravno, Keba, and Sebastian started the journey down. This left only the Mayataran and his tools to prepare Aron to be consumed by the birds.
The following day Ravno occupied himself zealously with the Bhavata’s new goal of branding the entire island. He went with Keba, from
pack to pack, to engage the populace in discussion and debate about how the Group of Eleven could succumb to their new approach. They lowered their capas and showed the noh proudly. Noh shinboru ini naisetsu—the words still clung heavily in Ravno’s ear, like wax, from when he stood with the Kawani in the black and yellow meadow. He involuntarily sniffed, good and long and loud, in through the nose and out through the chest, and set to dispel the discomforts of the individuals before him.
That night, the day after the pieces of Aron’s body were spread with the flight of the crows, Helena and Sebastian brought two girls into the world, healthy and full of life. Their names were Laila and Amoretta, which meant ‘born at night’ and ‘little love’. The bashful moon gave no extra light to help with the birth.
The branding trio returned to the island eleven days later to hold Helena’s family’s batsu omhaal on the first day of the first quarter of the new moon of bulanost. The inter-island boto, on which they traveled, neared the mouth of the Lurruna Branch. Mek, from the Group of Eleven, sat eagerly on the forward-most sugar pine bench. The cloudy vapor cloaked his body as the boto shifted up and down with the waves. The returning Ishi, Ammit, and Kawani sat at his flanks.
7/ santulita
The red and the purple
A few days before the Eleven’s designates returned with Mek at the helm, Keba and Ravno