by Tad Williams
"I'm thinking. I have a couple of ideas, but I need to let them cook."
The Bushman was quiet, staring at the floor. At last he looked up. His eyes were troubled, his forehead wrinkled. Renie suddenly realized that a quite uncharacteristic gloom had been hanging over him since he had arrived.
"You said you wanted to talk to me about what happened."
He nodded his head. "I am very confused, Renie, and I need to speak. You are my friend. You have saved my life, I think."
"And you saved mine, and I know that for certain. If you had waited too long before getting help for me. . . ."
"It was not hard to see that your spirit was very weak, that you were very ill." He shrugged as though embarrassed.
"So talk to me. Tell me why your spirit is weak, if that's what is wrong."
He nodded, his expression solemn. "Since we came back from that place, I do not hear the sun ringing. That is what my people say. When you can no longer hear the sound the sun makes, your spirit is in danger. I have felt that way many days now.
"First I must tell you things about me you do not know—some of the story that is my life. I told you that my father is dead, that my mother and my sisters live with my people. You know that I have been to city schools. I am of my people, but I also have the language, the ideas of city-people. Sometimes these things feel like a poison inside of me, something cold that might stop my heart."
He stopped, drawing a deep, ragged breath. Whatever he was about to tell clearly pained him. Renie found that she was clenching her fists tightly, as though watching someone she loved perform a dangerous feat in a high place.
"There are very few of my people left," he began. "The old blood is mostly gone. We have married the taller people, or sometimes our women have been taken against their wishes, but there are fewer and fewer who look like me.
"There are fewer still who live in the old way. Even those who are of the true Bushman kind, of the pure blood, are almost all raising sheep or working in cattle stations along the edges of the Kalahari or in the Okavango Delta. That was my mother's family, a delta family. They had sheep, a few goats, they took fish from the delta and traded in the nearest town for things that they felt they needed—things our ancestors would have laughed at. How they would have laughed! Radios, someone even had an old television that worked on batteries—what are those things but the voices of the white man, and the black man who lives like the white man? Our ancestors would not have understood. The voices of the city drown out the sounds of the life my people once lived, just as they make it hard to hear the ringing of the sun.
"So my mother's family lived a life like many of Africa's poor black people, haunting the outside places of what had been their own lands. The whites do not rule in Africa now, at least they no longer sit in the offices of the Government, but the things they brought here rule Africa in their place. This you know, even living in the city."
Renie nodded. "I know."
"But there are still some of our people who live the old way—the way of the Early Races, the way of Mantis and Porcupine and Kwammanga the Rainbow. My father and his people lived this way. They were hunters, traveling in the desert where neither the white man nor the black man go, following the lightning, the rains, and the antelope herds. They still lived the life that my people have lived since the very first days of Creation, but only because there is nothing the city-folk want from the desert. I learned in school that there are still a few such places left in this world, a few places where no radios play, where no rolling wheels leave their tracks, but these places are shrinking away like water spilled on a flat rock that dries beneath the sun.
"But the only way my father's people could keep their life and hold on to the old ways was to stay far away from everyone, even those of our blood who had left the desert and the sacred hills. Once all Africa was ours, and we roamed it with the other first peoples, with the eland and the lion, the springbok and the baboon—we call baboons 'the people who sit on their heels'—and all the others. But the last remnants of our kind can live only by hiding. To them, the city-world is true poison. They cannot survive its touch.
"Many years ago now, before you or I were born, a terrible drought began. It hurt all the land, but most of all the dry places, the places where only my father's people lived. It lasted three full years. The great springbok herds deserted the land, the kudu and the hartebeest, too, they all died or moved away. And my father's family suffered. Even the sipping wells, the places where only the Bushmen can find water, ran dry. The old people had already given themselves up to the desert that the younger ones might live, but now the young and strong were dying also. The children already born were weak and sickly, and no new children had come, since in a time of great drought our women are no longer fertile.
"My father was a hunter, in the early prime of his life. He traveled far across the desert, walking for days in search of anything that might help keep his family, his brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, alive.
"But each time he went out he had to go farther in search of same, and each time there was less food to keep him alive as he hunted. The ostrich shells in which my people carry water were always nearly empty. The other hunters had no better luck, and the women worked all day long every day, digging for any roots that might have survived the terrible drought, collecting what few insects remained so that the children would have something to eat. At night they all prayed that the rains would finally come back. They had no happiness. They did not sing, and after a while they did not even tell stories. The misery was so great that some of my father's family suspected that the rain had finally left the earth and gone away forever to some other place, that life itself was ending.
"One day, when my father was on a hunting trip and had already been away from his people for seven days, he saw an impossible vision—a great eland, the most wonderful of all creatures, standing at the edge of a desert pan, nibbling at the bark of a thorn tree. An eland, he knew, would provide days of food for his family, and even the water in the grass remaining in its stomach would help to keep the children alive a little longer. But he knew it was also a strange thing to see this single solitary beast. The eland does not travel in vast herds like the other antelope, but where he goes, his family goes, just as with our own people. Also, this eland was not sick, its ribs did not show, despite the terrible drought. He could not help wondering if perhaps this animal was a special gift from Grandfather Mantis, who had made the very first eland from the leather of Kwammanga's sandal.
"As he wondered, the eland saw him and darted away. My father gave chase.
"All of one day he followed the eland, and when at last it stopped to rest, he crept as close as he could, then daubed an arrow with his strongest poison and let it fly. He saw the arrow strike before the eland ran away. When he went to the place it had been, the arrow was not there, so his heart was full. He had struck what he shot at. He began to track it, waiting for the poison to take effect.
"But the eland did not slow or show any sign of weakness. All the next day he tracked it, but never came close enough to shoot another arrow. The eland moved quickly. My father's ostrich shells were empty and there was no more dried meat in his pack, but he had no time to search for water or hunt for food.
"Two more days he tracked the animal across the sands, by hot sun and cold moon. The eland ran ever southeast, toward the place where the desert ended in what had been a great swamp around a river delta. My father had never in his life been half so close to the Okavango—his people, who had once traveled a thousand miles every season, now kept to the most inaccessible inner reaches of the desert for their own safety. But he had become a little mad with hunger and weariness and fear, or perhaps a spirit was in him. He was determined that he would catch the eland. He now felt sure that it was a gift from Mantis, and that if he brought it back to his people, the rains would come.
"At last, on the fourth day after he had shot at the eland, he stumbled across the fringes of the
desert, through the hills into the outer edges of the Okavango Swamp. But of course the swamp had also dried in the great drought, and so he found nothing but cracked mud and dead trees. But still he saw the eland running before him, as faint as a dream, and saw its track in the dust, so he went on.
"He walked all night through that unfamiliar place, the bones of crocodiles and fish showing white beneath the moon. My father's people lived in the old way—they knew every rock and mound of sand, every tree and thornbush of the desert in the way that city-people know the habits of their children or the furnishings of their houses. But now he was in a place that he did not know, and chasing a great eland that he believed was a spirit. He was weak and afraid, but he was a hunter and his people were in terrible need. He prayed to the grandmother stars for wisdom. When the Morning Star, who is the greatest hunter of all, at last appeared in the sky, my father prayed to him as well. 'Make my heart as your heart,' he asked the star. He was begging for the courage to survive, for he had grown very weak.
"As the sun rose up into the sky and began to burn the land again, my father saw the shape of the eland beside a stream of running water. The sight of so much water, and the spirit-beast so close at last, made my father's head hurt and so he fell to the ground. He crawled toward the eland, but his arms and legs grew weak and he could not crawl any farther. But as his senses fled from him, he saw that the eland had become a beautiful girl—a girl of our people, but with an unfamiliar face.
"It was my mother, who had gotten up early in the morning to walk to the water. The drought meant that even the great river delta was nearly dry, and she and her family had to travel a long way from their tiny village beside the road to draw water. My mother saw this hunter come from the desert and fall down in a swoon at her feet, and she saw that he was dying. She gave him to drink. He emptied her jug, then nearly drank the little stream dry. When he could walk, she took him back to her family.
"The older ones still spoke his language. While my mother's parents fed him, the grandparents asked him many questions, clucking to themselves in wonder at seeing a man of their own early memories. He ate, but did not say much. Although these people looked much like him, their ways were strange, but he hardly noticed what they did. He had eyes only for my mother. She, who had never seen a man of the old ways, had eyes only for him.
"He could not stay. He had lost the eland, but he would at least take water back to his family and people. He was also uneasy with the strangers, with their box-that-spoke, with their strange clothes and strange language. My mother, who did not like or respect her own father because he beat her, ran away with my father, preferring to go to his people than to remain with her own.
"Although he did not urge her to leave her family, he was very happy when she came with him, for she was beautiful in his eye from their first meeting. He called her Eland's Daughter, and they laughed together, although at first they could not understand each other's speech. When at last, after a journey of many days, they found his people again, the rest of his family was amazed by his story and welcomed her and made much of her. That night thunder rang out over the desert and lightning walked. The rains had come back. The drought was ended."
!Xabbu fell silent. Renie waited as long as she could before speaking.
"And then what happened?"
He looked up, a small, sad smile playing about his lips. "Am I not tiring you with this long story, Renie? It is only my story, the story of how I came to be, and how I came here."
"Tiring me? It's . . . it's wonderful. Like a fairy tale."
The smile flickered. "I stopped because that was the happiest moment for them, I think. When the rains came. My father's family thought he had brought back the Eland's Daughter in truth, that he had brought luck back to them. But if I go on, the story grows more sad."
"If you want to tell me, I want to listen, !Xabbu. Please."
"So." He spread his hands. "For a time after that, things were good. With the rain's return came the animals, and soon things were growing again—trees were making new leaves, flowers were springing up. Even the bees returned and began to make their wonderful honey and hide it away in the rocks. This was truly a sign that life was strong in that place—there is nothing the Bushmen like so much as honey, and that is why we love the little bird called the Honey-Guide. So things were good. Soon after, my mother and father conceived a child. That was me, and they named me !Xabbu, which means 'Dream.' The Bushmen believe that life is a dream which itself is dreaming us, and my parents wanted to mark the good fortune that the dream had sent them. Others in the family also bore children, so my first few years were spent among companions of my own age.
"Then a terrible thing happened. My father and his nephew were out hunting. It had been a successful day—they had killed a fine big hartebeest. They were happy because they knew that there would be a feast when they returned, and that the meat would feed their families well for several days.
"On their way back they came across a jeep. They had heard of such things but had never seen one before, and at first they were reluctant to go near it. But the men in it—three black men and one white, all tall, all dressed in city-clothes—were clearly in danger. They had the look of people who would die soon if they did not get water, so my father and his nephew went to them and helped them.
"These men were desert scientists from one of the universities—I would guess that they were geologists searching for oil or something else of value to city-people. Their jeep had been struck by lightning, so that both engine and radio were useless. Without help they would doubtless have died. My father and his nephew led them to the outskirts of the desert, to a small trading village. This they would not have dared to do, except that my father remembered he had left the desert once before without harm. My father planned to take them to the edge of the town and send them on their way, but as they all walked—very slowly, since that was as fast as the city-folk could go—another jeep came. This one belonged to government rangers, and although they used their radio to summon help for the men my father had rescued, they also arrested my father and his nephew for having killed a hartebeest. The hartebeest, you see, is protected by the government. The Bushman is not"
The uncharacteristic bitterness in his words made Renie flinch. "They arrested them? After they'd just saved those men? That's horrible!"
!Xabbu nodded. "The scientists argued against it, but the rangers were the kind of men who fear that they will get in trouble if they are seen to let some small thing pass, so they arrested my father and his relative and took them away. Just like that. They even took the hartebeest as evidence. By the time my father and his nephew reached the town, it was a rotting carcass unfit to eat and was thrown away.
"The scientists were so ashamed that they borrowed another vehicle and went to tell my father's people what had happened. They did not find them, but they found another group of Bushmen, and soon my mother and the rest of the family heard what had happened.
"My mother, who if she had not lived in the city-world at least knew something of it, determined that she would go and argue with the government, which she thought of as a wise man with a white beard in a big village, and tell them they must let my father go. Although the rest of the family warned her not to do it, she took me and set out for the town.
"But, of course, my father had already been sent on to the city, far away, and by the time my mother could make her way there, he had already been convicted and sentenced for poaching. Both he and my cousin were put in prison, caged with men who had committed terrible crimes, who had shot their own families dead, had tortured and killed children or old people.
"Every day my mother went to beg for my father's freedom, taking me with her, and every day she was driven away from the court, and later the prison, with harsh words and blows. She found us a shack on the edge of the city, two walls of plywood and a piece of tin for a roof, and she scavenged in the rubbish heaps for food and clothing with the other poor people, determined that
she would not leave until my father was free.
"I cannot even imagine what it felt like for her. I was so young that I did not really understand. Even now I have only the faintest memories of that time—a vision of the bright lights of a truck shining through the cracks between the boards, the sound of people arguing and singing loudly in other shacks. But it must have been a terrible time for her, alone and so far from her people. She would not give up. She was certain that if she could only find the right man—'the real Government,' as she thought of it—then eventually the mistake would be made right and my father allowed to go free.
"My father, who had even less knowledge of the city-world than she, grew sick. After a few visits he was not allowed to see my mother any more, although she continued to go to the prison every day. My father did not even know she was still in the city, only a few hundred yards from him. He and his nephew lost their happiness, lost their stories. Their spirits became very weak and they stopped eating. Soon, after only a few months in the prison, my father died. His nephew lasted longer. I am told that he was killed in a fight some months later."
"Oh, !Xabbu, how terrible!"
He raised his hand, as if Renie's cry of sympathy was a gift he could not accept. "My mother could not even take my father's body back to the desert. He was buried instead in a cemetery beside the shantytown. My mother hung his ostrich-shell beads on a wooden stick for a marker. I have gone there, but I could not find his grave.
"My mother took me and started the long trip back. She could not bear to go to the desert again, to the place that meant my father to her, so she stayed with her own family instead, and that is where I was raised. Before too many more years she found another man, a good man. He was Bushman, but his people had left the desert long ago. He did not know the old ways and barely spoke the language. He and my mother had two daughters, my sisters. We were all sent to school. My mother demanded that we learn the city-ways, so that we could protect ourselves as my father could not do.