The old man concentrates on his food as if it were his last. I make some slight comment of jest about this, and am carefully told that the rains and the old have a special relationship in this land. I had heard rumour of this before, but our isolation had kept most things at a distance; our contact with the neighbouring communities had been remote. But the spring rain ritual is true, and my host explains its necessity and the intricacies of its operation between mouthfuls of food and wine.
The old are a burden on their poor economy, becoming increasingly incapable of work. So, once past their useful stage, they are given to the mercy of the spring gods and placed outside their homes with food and drink for three days. At that time of year, the rains are soft and constant, very unlike the autumn deluge we had just suffered. They would sit in silence, knowing that conversation or pleading would not help their condition; better to save strength. After their allotted time, they are welcomed back inside and returned to their anxious beds. They understand that this was a more civilised and kinder test than those conducted by their forefathers. In those distant days of famine, the old had been taken to steep cliffs and forced to find their own way home, the Gods growing fat on their torn and fractured remains.
A quarter of the old will die during the coming weeks; night chills, influenza or phenomena being the divine intervention. The rest will be celebrated, fed and honoured for another year. The old father cleaning his plate with his last scrap of bread has survived six spring rains, and has the intention of surviving many more.
In the afternoon, I say my farewells and return to my cave, where I sleep a peaceful and dreamless journey.
Far to the south, twilight was tasting the air. Swallows darted and looped in the invisible fields of rising insects, restless arrowheads spinning in the amber sunlight. One moment, black silhouette, iron age. The next, tilting to catch the sun, flashing deep orange, bronze age. Dipping and rotating in giddying time: iron age, bronze age, iron age.
Watching them were the yellow eyes of a lone black man who sat on the mud parapet wall of a colonial stockade. He watched and attempted to gauge their distance and speed, making abstract calculations across the infinite depth of sky, a solemn assessment of range and trajectory for a shot that could never be made. Across his knees lay his Lee-Enfield rifle, a bolt-action firearm of legendary durability, in perfect working condition and untouched by any other hand since he was given it in his early manhood. He still remembered first grasping its solid weight and the smell of the brown, oiled paper it was wrapped in. The excitement of possession, matched by his pride at becoming a member of the bush police. That was forty-two years ago, and now Tsungali was beginning to feel the old rifle grow heavy again.
He and the gun bore cuneiform scars and indentations. They had been written into. Prophecies and charms marked his face, talismans against attack from animals, demons and men. The butt of the Enfield was inscribed against touch or loss, and for accuracy and courage; it also carried the tally of the twenty-three men and three demons it had officially dispatched. Tsungali had not worked for the police or the British army for many years. The Possession Wars had made him an outcast from the authorities, and far too much blood had been shed to divide the beliefs of both sides. So he was confused and disturbed at being called for, summoned to the enclosure he had known so well and loved as home, the same compound he had seen turned into the bitter kraal of his enemies.
They had come looking for him, not with troops, shackles and threats like before, but quietly, sending soft, curved words ahead that he was needed again. They wanted to talk and forget the crimes of before. He had smelt this as a trick and set about carving new protections, constructing cruel and vicious physical and psychic traps about his house and land. He spoke to his bullets and fed them until they were fat, ripe and impatient. He waited in docile cunning for their arrival, which had proved to be calm, dignified, and almost respectful. Now he sat and waited to be ushered into the fort’s headquarters, not knowing why he was there and surprised at his own obedience. He was shocked at the scent of homecoming which befuddled his warrior’s instinct. He gripped the Enfield to fence it off, and used the swallows to gain focus before, during and after the event. He bled their speed into his anticipation, as the fierceness of the stars took command of the darkening sky.
I set my path by the night and walk out of the village while the track remains luminous. Later, starlight will make it shine in a different way, polishing the miles ahead with a bright, invisible velocity.
I walk between banked walls of white stone as if in a riverbed, the road hollowed out by time, weather and the continual passage of humans, migratory as birds. Tribes crossing and re-crossing the same gulley, desperately trying to draw a line against extinction. It is with this herd of ghosts that I travel, alone.
After some hours, I am stopped by an anxiety of sight. I have been aware for some time of tiny movements in the edges of my vision, fish-like punctuations breaking the solid wave of stone on either side, catching the light in dim flashes for less than a blink. Every time I stop, the phenomenon ceases. When I continue, the glinting peripheral shoal follows me. There is wonder at first, but it had now turned to unease, and I fear sentience or hallucination. Neither is wanted at this time: I seek only loneliness and distance, not wanting association or introspection, it being necessary to seek one dimension to understand with clarity. I have been crippled by complexity before, and the healing from it had taken too many years. I will not go there again and share my being with all those others who would claim and squabble over my loyalty. I need only to breathe and walk, but at this time of night, in that albino artery, I hear fear tracking me.
The bow comes to my hand, wand-like and unstrung. She gives off musk into my grip, and her chemical blade reaches my pounding heart, which has also turned white, but away from stone. It touches my mind like her tongue, and I become calm and weightless, ready for the attack. Nothing happens. I stand, still as a post. After a time, I tilt my head slightly to see if anything moves. At first nothing, then a flicker, a single, tiny glimmer. I focus on this sprite, and move towards it in the manner of a cat stalking a sound. It is not in the air, but in the white stone. I can see it embedded in its cretaceous library. Starlight has ignited it, and a resonance of dim brilliance quivers about its edge. It is a fossilised shark’s tooth, a small, smooth dagger encrusted into the stone, its edges bitterly serrated and gnawing against the distant celestial light. There are hundreds of them stippling the rock.
It was my movement between them which had rattled their light to give the impression of motion. These teeth were once greatly prized and, as I recall, had offered a small industry to the local inhabitants, who dug them out and exported them to political cities where they were mounted in silver and hung in a cluster on a miniature baroque tree. It was called a credenza, a name that became synonymous with the side table that once held it. The Borgazis and the Medici owned rich and sumptuous versions. When a guest was given wine, he or she was shown to the tree, where they freely picked a tooth and placed it in their chalice, its delicate chain hooked over the rim. If the tooth turned black, the wine was poisoned; if it stayed unstained, the credence of the wine and the host was proven and business and friendship could commence.
I stand in the black night, musing on distant tables and forgotten aggressions, in a stone river of teeth, some of which I can use; their compact hardness and perfect jagged edges would make excellent arrowheads. In the approaching morning, I will dig them out and clean them, find straight wood for the shafts and hunt swallows; their wings will be my fletching. The wings are only perfect when cut from the bird alive, so I will have to make nets to trap their speed.