A NOVEL SET IN PREHISTORY
The Oak People
Chapter 20: Koru gives Hua a gift
Ansa
Ansa’s heart is beating fast. Koru motions to her to sit down under the rock overhang and takes hold of her hand. The old woman’s fingers are clammy. For some days, Ansa has been waiting, hoping that Koru will ask her to go again to the hawthorns. But to be here with Koru, alone, is even better. Perhaps she will tell another story and cradle me, as if she were my own mother. If only Koru would settle, but instead she keeps peering over Ansa’s shoulder.
‘Come, Hua,’ the old woman calls. ‘Come and sit in your mother’s lap.’
Ansa turns in surprise to see the little girl, quiet for once, her thumb in her mouth. She had forgotten about Hua. What does Koru want with her? She moves closer, trying to block the old woman’s view of the child.
Koru is reaching for something in the bedding beside her. She gives Ansa the tortoiseshell bowl and Ansa holds it up to the light, where the intricate design is revealed. It is beautiful and Ansa’s eyes fill with tears. Now Koru takes it back and drops in a handful of tiny things that roll about, click-clacking against the sides of the bowl. Rummaging around in the bedding has made her cough again. When the spasm is over, she pulls Ansa close and whispers in her ear.
‘It’s for Hua.’
Hua? Koru beckons and the little girl goes to sit in her grandmother’s lap but Koru directs her to Ansa. ‘Go to your Ama — she’s got a present for you.’
Hua hesitates but then curiosity overcomes her. She takes her thumb out of her mouth.
‘What is it?’ she asks, clambering over her mother’s legs. She has seen the bowl in Ansa’s hand.
‘Close your eyes! Sit with Ama and you can have it,’ Koru says, her drawn face alive with pleasure. Hua settles herself in the space between Ansa’s legs. ‘That’s it! Now close your eyes!’
Hua screws up her face and covers it with her hands. She begins to giggle.
‘Ready? Now open!’
Hua grabs at the bowl. She flashes a look at Ansa — eyes wide with excitement.
‘Look inside!’ Koru chants.
Hua tips the contents of the bowl onto the floor. She bends low over them and picks one up. ‘Shells!’
Ansa takes one of the shells and holds it up to catch the best of the dim light. It has the shape and the dotted markings of a tiny coiled snake. Fascinated, she picks up another and sees that it is like a flower with layers of star-shaped petals. Hua hands her another, with a pointed tip, like a spear head. This one is round and smooth and it reflects the light, just like the Balqa stone. Ansa starts putting them back into the bowl, but Hua insists on emptying them out again.
‘Take them outside,’ Ansa says sharply, an urge to be rid of the child squirming inside her.
But Koru intervenes. ‘No — let her play here.’
Ansa tries once more to collect the shells and, this time, Hua thinks it’s a game. She tips them all out of the bowl and fixes her eyes on Ansa’s face, laughing, waiting. Ansa stares hard at the little girl. Why is she laughing at me? Could it be that she wants to play? The tight places inside Ansa begin to relax. As quickly as she can pick the shells up and put them back in the bowl, Hua tips them out again. Koru is laughing and so is Hua and now Ansa finds herself joining in. Hua grabs her mother’s hands to stop her picking up the shells. Her fingers are tiny but they are strong.
At last, Hua turns the bowl upside down and begins to play a game on her own, chattering to the shells and hiding them inside the tortoiseshell mountain.
‘Didn’t you play with your Ama, when you were small?’ Koru asks.
Ansa tries to picture Ama’s face but it seems so long ago and so far away. All she can remember are hard, cold eyes.
‘My mother was too busy to play,’ she says at last.
‘Did she have many other children?’
Ansa shifts uncomfortably on the rock floor. Hua looks up but then returns to her game.
‘She had a boy. His name was Zeru,’ she manages to say. Koru returns her look steadily.
‘So you have a brother.’
‘No. He died.’
Koru takes Ansa’s hand. ‘Your mother must have been glad that you were strong,’ she says, so gently that tears begin to form at the back of Ansa’s eyes.
‘No — she wasn’t glad!’ The words run from Ansa’s mouth. ‘She was angry.’
‘Angry? Why?’
Ansa forces herself to remember the look that was always on Ama’s face after her brother died: the terrible questions she couldn’t answer.
‘I don’t know.’
Koru leans back against the wall and closes her eyes for a while.
‘I’m going to tell you another story from the time of the old ones,’ she says. ‘This one is from the days before our people began to wander, when the Skyfather would appear to men in the shape of animals. It is the story of the mantis and his son.’
Koru takes a few deep breaths that seem to cause her pain but when she begins to speak, her voice is strong enough.
‘The mantis knew that soon he must fight with the cruel and quarrelsome people who sit on their heels — that is the baboon people.’
‘What is a baboon?’ Ansa breaks in.
‘Baboon has fur and a tail and a pointed face,’ Koru replies. ‘And he sits back and finds fault with everyone and everything. Now, don’t ask questions but only listen.’
Hearing Koru’s story-telling voice, Hua stops playing with the shells and leans against Ansa to listen. Her thumb goes back into her mouth.
‘The mantis knew that he would need many spears so he sent his son to collect stout branches. Before long, the baboon people noticed what he was doing and they began to chatter among themselves, asking what this might mean.’
‘The youngest baboon spoke to the mantis boy and asked him why he was gathering branches. Because he was young and ignorant, the son of the mantis told the truth.’
“My father has sent me to gather branches to make spears.”
“What will he do with the spears?” asked the baboon boy.
“He will take aim at the people who sit on their heels,” came the answer.
‘Then the young baboon turned to his brother and told him what the boy had said and his brother told their cousin and their cousin went to an old, grey baboon and told him.’
Koru pauses, her breath catching in her throat, making her cough. While Ansa is waiting for the fit to pass, Hua’s head drops against her chest; the little girl is fast asleep. Feeling the warm weight of Hua’s body nestling into her own, Ansa is suddenly happy. A few strands of her hair are caught tight in Hua’s fist and Ansa gently releases them, holding the small hand in hers. Hua stirs, but does not wake.
‘What did the baboon elder say?’ Ansa prompts, when Koru has recovered.
‘He said, “Why — the mantis means to attack us — we are the people who sit on our heels!” Then he said “Take the child and kill him!”
So the cruel baboon people began to strike the son of the mantis with their fists — again and again till they broke his head. The boy’s eye came out and rolled away. Then the baboon people began to play with the eye, throwing it to one another. Soon they were fighting over it, saying, “the eye is mine” — “no, the eye is mine”. While they played and quarrelled, the son of the mantis lay dying.’
‘Meanwhile the mantis himself was resting in the heat of the day — waiting for his son to return. Sleep took him far away and showed him what was happening to his son. When he woke, the mantis took up his spear at once and ran to the place where the baboons live. The baboon people did not know who he was.’
“Throw the eye to me!” he called to them, but they would not and kept passing it between themselves. The mantis stood between them and, at last, he managed to catch it. Quickly, he anointed the eye with sweat from his armpit, then he stowed it in his skin bag.’
‘At this, the baboons realized who he was. They jumped on him and began to strike him. He was wounded and bleeding but he managed to escape with his son’s eye safe in the bag.’
‘The mantis travelled to the green place of reeds by the water’s edge and he tenderly withdrew his son’s eye from the darkness where it lay. He dropped it gently into the water and left. Each day, for many days, the mantis came back to the water’s edge, watching carefully from behind the reeds.’
‘The heart of the mantis leapt with joy to see his son grow again, just as Balqa grows again in the sky. At last he was fully grown and his father came upon him as he slept by the water’s edge. The mantis woke the boy. He was startled but the mantis anointed the child with his arm scent and said:
“Why are you afraid of me?”
He took the boy in his arms and rocked him to and fro, saying again and again, “don’t be afraid. I am your father. You are my son.”
He dressed the boy in the skin he had prepared and took him home.’
The story is finished and Koru leans back, exhausted. Without another word to Ansa, she turns onto her side, lays her head down on the bedding and covers herself. Soon she is asleep. Ansa sits listening to Hua’s soft breathing and the rasping breath of Koru for a long time, the tears rolling slowly, silently, down her cheeks.
Thank you for reading. Chapter 21 coming soon …
You can find an introduction to the novel and links to all the chapters here:
Or if you prefer, the novel can be ordered in paperback from almost any bookshop, and as an ebook or paperback from Amazon here: https://mybook.to/PYld2
