A NOVEL SET IN PREHISTORY
The Oak People
Chapter 21: Ansa remembers
Ansa
Ansa climbs up to the shelter and crawls in. She sits, rocking herself from side to side, feeling again Koru’s hand in hers, Hua’s body snuggled against her. She thinks of the mantis cradling his son in his arms and a warm stillness steals over her. The tears begin to fall again, a slow, steady trickle like the spring in summer. Could it be that Hua does not hate her, after all?
The light is fading; she must go back to the others, to Koru. Ansa edges her way to the entrance and turns to begin the climb back down. It is then that she sees it. A dark line of shadow between the rock and the sand. The last rays of the day’s warmth are draining away and she begins to shiver. That sand, that rock, sit in the desert, many days’ walk away. She is safe on the mountain, the Nose of the Antelope. She takes a long breath and drops her leg, feeling for a foothold. The dark line of shadow between rock and sand.
Ansa begins to understand that she is not seeing with her eyes, but with her thoughts. Shaking, she crawls back into the shelter, feeling for the bag at her belt. She grasps the Balqa stone and rolls the smooth orb between her fingers till she is calm again. As soon as she dares to replace the stone, there it is again. The sand. The shimmering heat. The akazia tree. She closes her eyes, but the memory only grows stronger and more vivid.
Eshtu is high in the sky and she’s on the sand, in the shade of the akazia tree. She can hear the other children calling to her but Ama told her to watch him while he sleeps. If she leaves him alone, Ama will slap her.
She looks around for something to do, and hops over the hot sand to pick up a handful of small stones. She throws one at a rock but misses. She tries another and this time the cracking sound tells her it has hit home. She scampers across the sand and kneels by the boulder, looking for her lucky stone. Where did it go? Could it be under?
‘No!’ Ansa’s cry echoes against the walls of the shelter. She must never think about that rock. It is not safe. She covers her eyes with her hands, but the pictures only seem to grow clearer.
She kneels by the rock, squinting into the black line of shadow. She runs her fingers along the sand. Nothing. The boulder rolls a little at her touch. She moves it forwards and backwards. This is better than throwing stones — maybe she can roll it right over.
It’s heavy and hurts her hands. No — wait — she can push it like this. It begins to rock from side to side, further each time — it’s going to go right over. She jumps back out of the way, grains of sand spurting into the air. There is something underneath but it’s scuttling away, towards the akazia tree. She crawls after it. It stops dead and she peers at it closely. A shiny black body — skinny black legs, on its back a splash of red. Aiee! A blood spider! She springs back. ‘Fede! Look! Fede!’ But the children have gone. There are only grownups, a long way off, by the tents. The spider is moving towards the akazia tree. ‘I can run faster than you, scary spider!’ It scuttles across the sand towards the sleeping baby. ‘Ama!’ No — shh! She’ll hit me for letting it out. I’ll just smash it to pieces.
She looks around but there’s no stick, nothing.’ Where have you gone, scary spider?’ She tiptoes closer. There it is, scuttling between the little stones.
Why doesn’t the stupid baby wake up? It’s going straight for his fat brown bottom that Ama loves to pinch till he giggles and she smiles back.
She tiptoes a bit closer. He is lying in the shade, still fast asleep. She stares at his chubby brown leg, the crease where his buttocks begin to swell. Ama is always crowing about how fat he is but that’s because he is drinking all Ama’s milk.
The spider is off again, going closer and closer. Aiee! The baby is too heavy to push out of the way and he can’t even crawl. He would scream if the spider bit his fat bottom! He’d open his greedy gob and scream. No more giggling then.
She opens her mouth to shout but nothing comes out. Instead she starts to feel very tired. Too sleepy to go and get a stick. Too sleepy to find Ama. She watches, slow and sleepy and heavy, as the spider makes straight for his fat brown leg. Will he wake when he feels the tickly legs on him? The spider has stopped. Two of its legs are waving — trying to feel their way onto the baby’s skin.
She leans in closer, watching, her mouth open, forgetting to breathe. Now the spider is moving slowly up his leg. It’s enormous — as big as his knee — but he doesn’t wake up. She puts out her hand to shake him but the blood spider scuttles across his hip, onto his buttocks. Now he’s waking up, turning over. She jumps back as his mouth opens in a wail.
She doesn’t want to watch anymore and she looks the other way. The grownups are too far away to hear the screaming. It doesn’t last for long. When Ama comes at last, he is just grizzling, his fist in his mouth. Ama scoops him up with that smile she keeps just for him, and ties him to her front so that he can suck her milk. The blood spider is gone.
Though she is alone in the rockshelter, Ansa dares not uncover her face. She remembers very well what happened later that day. She thinks about it often in the dark, when she is waiting for sleep to come. About running back, laughing with Fede, when it was time to eat, to find no food and the women wailing. Ama with tears on her face. She was trying to make him suck milk, but he had gone stiff and his head wouldn’t turn, and he kept puking up green, watery stuff all over her.
Alone on the mountain in the fading light, Ansa catches her foot on a stone and falls heavily. She gets up and stumbles on. Her knee is bleeding and her wrist aches from the fall, but she hardly feels the pain. She must get back to Ama Koru.
The blood spider. She had always known, somehow, that it was her fault that he had been so sick and had gone to sleep and never woken up again. That’s why Ama had shaken and slapped her, asking her those questions, again and again. Why didn’t you watch him? Did you see him put something in his mouth? She couldn’t answer. Just closed her eyes to make the scuttling black legs, that frightening splash of red, go away. And they did go away.
But Ama was still angry, long after they buried him in the sand. When she climbed onto Ama’s lap, Ama would hit her hard and push her off, even though he was no longer there to drink the milk. Ama’s breasts soon grew slack and empty. Then, the next spring, Ama fell sick herself and died, leaving Ansa alone with only her father and his new wife.
Ansa’s knee is stiffening and swelling up, giving her pain at each step. She stops to rest and get her breath. The night mountain is a stranger whose face she doesn’t know. She should have come to the tortoise path long ago but the slope beside her rises steep and unfamiliar. Just ahead, the ground appears to fall away and the smell of buckthorn reaches her nostrils.
Balqa is nowhere to be seen and the sky seems to press down on her head, accusing her. She turns back, trying to retrace her steps, but it is too dark. Tears are rolling down her face. She tries to think of the mantis rocking his son in his arms, of Koru holding her hand. But the sky only bears down harder, its voice full of malice. How can Koru love you now? She sinks onto the wet ground, her knee throbbing.
After a time, a subtle change comes to the sky; the quality of the darkness is different. A thin blade of white appears above the mountain. He is too weak to give any light but he has risen and the black sky lifts a little. Koru is not like Ama. She is kind. Ansa remembers the magic Koru wove that morning when Hua was born. Perhaps she knows everything. Perhaps she already knows that Ansa killed her brother. Ansa drags herself to her feet, setting off again in what she hopes is the right direction.
Thank you for reading. Chapter 22 coming soon …
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