[Regular readers - don't panic! This is an entry for a short story competition hosted over at
. We will be returning shortly to our regularly scheduled posts.]
The thin wail twisted its way between the trees and licked
the ears of interested parties. The wild pig paused its snuffling around the large
roots of the western hemlock tree and gazed around it just as the spear pierced
the pig’s ribs, pinning it to the needle-strewn ground. As it kicked out its
last moments on the forest floor, Teco slit the pulsing throat and whispered
words of thanks to the Mother as it gave up its life, spilling into the earth.
Pan joined Teco looking down at the pig. She felt rather guilty; she too had
been distracted by the wail but luckily Teco had followed through with the kill. It
had been many hours of careful stalking and positioning before they had been
able to get this close to their prey. The dog licked the bloodied ground; they
both quickly gutted the pig with sharpened flints, throwing the stinking guts
to the dog who received his reward eagerly.
As they threaded the stick through the sinews in the pig’s
legs and raised it to their shoulders, Pan heard the cry again. This time it
went on for longer, fading in and out of earshot as the breeze shifted
direction through the forest canopy rich with mosses and lichens. Teco seemed
oblivious to its call but it stirred something within her. She suggested that
they go to investigate the sound but Teco seemed reluctant. It would mean
walking further than necessary in the dripping forest with a dead pig between
them, but Pan was adamant, she wanted to go and see what it was. As they were a
newly bonded pair he could deny her nothing, and so they followed the sound.
As they entered the ferny clearing, they saw immediately
that they were in the right place. There was a smell of putrefaction that was
unmistakable. Clouds of flies rose from the corpse to meet them as they
hesitantly stepped forward. The smell of death usually drew scavengers from far
and wide, but they appeared to be the first larger animals to have discovered the
body. It was a young woman, recently dead, her features pallid in death but
still attractive. Her breasts distended. The flies were concentrating their
efforts on the stinking discharge between her legs. She had clearly been dead
for some hours. Another feeble wail from above made them both look up. There on
a tree branch a bundle shifted in the breeze.
Pan swung up into the branches of the big-leaf maple tree,
deftly shinned along the branch and cut the woven western red cedar cords
supporting the bundle and lowered it down into the waiting arms of Teco. By the
time she had jumped down onto the ground, Teco had already uncovered the
infant. His revulsion showed itself on his face. “It’s deformed, leave it with
its mother,” he said. He unsheathed the flint blade, preparing to kill it
cleanly and quickly, but Pan placed a hand on his arm, restraining him. She
gazed upon the child, taking in its overlarge head and the pale skin. Blue eyes
met brown and a silent communion passed between them. “No,” she said, “we are
taking him with us”. Teco snarled back angrily, his greater height and weight
menacing her, but she stared boldly back at him. For a moment she thought he
would hit her but then he lowered his gaze, his eyes softening. He could not
stay angry at her for long. The dead woman deserved a better ending than this,
no member of a tribe died alone out of choice and there was no one here to
grieve for her. Pan stroked her face, rearranged the animal hides over her pale
body and they both crouched over her in silent respect before moving away to
continue their journey. The forest dwellers would return her remains back to
the Mother from which she had sprung. They had retied the baby onto the stick
behind the pig. It seemed to like the swaying and it settled back to sleep.
As they returned through the rainforest, automatically
traversing the ferns and slippery moss covered rocks as they talked, Teco was
still convinced that killing the child was the merciful option. If the child
was to live, going back to their honeymoon shelter was pointless; they had no
milk for the child and Pan needed the counsel of the older women. The child was
deformed and to find the dead mother so close to their encampment was a
worrying sign. Sometimes entire tribes were killed by diseases but otherwise
people lived within the protection of their tribe. No one lived alone from
choice, except for the ghosts.
As the village drew near their dog ran ahead to greet his
fellow pack members. The noisy playful children were the first members of the
tribe to greet them but adults soon followed with worried looks upon their
faces. To return so soon from a honeymoon did not bode well. Had they fought?
Were they not suitable as mates? Pan was a popular member of the tribe and with
her choice of mate being Teco from a neighbouring tribe, they had seemed to be
a perfect pairing. Eager hands took the stick from them, cutting down the pig
and carrying it away to be prepared for cooking, whilst the men carefully tended
the fire. The male magic was fire making, taught by Kanzi so long ago to the
males of the tribe, using the salmonberry branch as a hand drill stalk for
making friction fires, with a western red cedar bow string and tinder. The
knowledge was handed down from father to son. Fire was a protector of the
tribe, keeping away the larger predators that proliferated under the protection
of the forest. It cooked and warmed the sick and young and raised the spirits
through the long dark winter evenings.
Pan grasped the smaller bundle and clasped it to her
protectively. Teco stood silently, hesitantly, as they were bombarded with
questions. He stood, his eyes avoiding looking at Pan or the bundle she
carried. Finally he loped off to rejoin the other young men leaving Pan to cope
alone and answer the questions. Now that she was here back amongst her tribe she
felt bewildered. She was less certain that she had made the right decision
bringing the infant home with her. Everyone knew everything that went on in the
close-knit group but nothing like this had ever happened before to her
knowledge and once the baby was discovered it might be killed before she had a
chance to explain. People were fighting to see what she carried, sniffing at
the unfamiliar urine scent mixing in with the odour of pig blood and rotting
flesh. She held them at bay with her body language; rigidly upright walking on
stiff legs she carried the bundle and the responsibility to the wisest woman in
the tribe.
Salvia sat in her shelter and listened to the noise and
excitement bubbling round the village. As the oldest female she had inherited
the mantle of leadership, whatever that meant. To have survived childbirth,
starvation and disaster so many times ensured that the leadership was self-selecting.
It was she who knew the best places to gather food. She had experienced the vagaries
of the changing climate and knew the best waterholes and campsites. She ensured
that the tribe moved their territory slowly but unremittingly northwards where
rain fell frequently and the lush growth of the advancing forest provided for
their needs. She had seen storms and disease come and go and had met more
members of neighbouring tribes than anyone else. She knew the lineage of all of
her tribe and their parents and grandparents and was a good matchmaker,
ensuring that family lines did not become too entangled. She had overseen the
transfer of skills through the generations and she held the history of her
tribe and the magical means of communication it required in her head. When her
time to return to the Mother was close she would pass on her knowledge to a
younger female, so that the history and knowledge would never die.
Pan scratched on the hide shelter to alert Salvia to her
presence and then bent to enter. Her eyes took a while to adjust to the
darkness within. The scent of Salvia filled the shelter, daunting yet familiar,
mixed with dried herbs and wood smoke. Salvia’s nose wrinkled at the scent of
the bundle in Pan’s arms. She drew back unconsciously: out of all the tribe she
alone knew what Pan carried.
“Is it alive?” she asked.
“Yes,” was the soft reply.
This could change
everything, the old woman mused to herself.
Pan held the deformed baby out to the old female. The baby
fussed and sucked on its fist. Salvia instructed Pan to get some milk from one
of the bitches who had recently given birth and bring it back in a bladder for
the baby. Until they decided the baby’s fate she would not ask one of the
nursing females from the tribe to feed it. The dog’s milk would do for now. As
the baby sucked hungrily from the bladder Pan told her story, trying to
remember everything she had seen. Salvia listened intently, watching the way
Pan held the child protectively, and then made her decision.
“All life is sacred, it is part of Mother Earth; we do not
take life lightly, we thank the Mother after we kill for meat, and we leave
part of every food for the Mother and all of her children. The mothers of this
tribe must decide the future of this baby, for it is they that will need to
order its death or feed and raise it to adulthood. Leave the child here and go
and tell the mothers that we shall meet at sunset for a storytelling.”
The mature females gathered, hailing the full moon as it
rose at the twilight's last gleaming, it frequently rained in the temperate
rainforest that now covered most of what once was called North America but
tonight was still and clear. Bats flitted above their heads, catching the
insects that were drawn towards the firelight. The fire was built up so that
all could see the ancient communication reserved only for storytelling
sessions. To tell stories special words were needed, words that did not refer
to the immediate hunter-gathering needs of now but to abstract events of the
past and future. Words made of hand gestures, like a dance weaving and
shimmering. Salvia sat close to the flickering fire, its light reflecting off her
so that all of her could clearly be seen. Pan sat with the women feeling
uncomfortable and the subject of curious glances. She was only allowed here
because of the extraordinary circumstances. All of the other women had given
birth to life and her premature passport to this meeting was the bundle in her
arms, sleeping quietly.
Salvia started the tale of the tribe from the beginning of known
history, earlier than any of the women had ever heard before. She had chosen to
start at a place that only wise women spoke about to each other, passing on the
knowledge and the signs for unfamiliar concepts from wise woman to woman down
the generations. She told of Kanzi and his sister Panbanisha, the first amongst
them when tribal life had changed so long ago in the south that was called
Oregon, now desert. She spoke of their teachers Sue and Nick who had introduced
them to a different way of thinking and communicating. The many lessons learnt
so well together with their natural gifts had allowed them to survive when so
many other creatures had perished, and thrive on a planet which was
metamorphosing into a new future. She spoke of the gradual flight northwards
over multiple generations, following the great forests as they spread ever
northwards. Their rapid evolution, tool making, shelter building, living
lightly upon the earth, moving around with the seasons never staying anywhere
for too long. She spoke of the female magic of creation and birth. She
continued to speak even as the young women brought the roasted pork, fruit and
vegetables to them and retired again. They all ate as she continued to speak of
lessons learnt over time, the art of preserving food for future use when food
was scarce and drying the medicinal herbs which instinct told them would cure
sickness, and the tribal habit of leaving their environment clean as they moved
on, their dung fertilising the regrowth and spreading the seeds of edible
plants for others to consume. Pan listened entranced: it was her first female
gathering and as the story unfolded she thought she never wanted it to end.
Once the meal was over the mood changed. Salvia spoke of Pan
and the circumstances surrounding the baby’s discovery. Pan stood up and held
the infant for all to see, naked, its pale skin, blue eyes and large misshapen
head gleaming in the moon and firelight combined. The cold air chilled it and
it started to cry again. The women drew back in horror, voices raised in fear
and loathing. It was a beast, ugly, stupid and violent like its parents. It
could never be taught; it would destroy them all as its kind had always done. Salvia
let them speak, pouring out their fears real or imagined. They spoke of the
ghost that would have fathered it, remembered or imagined. Infants were taught
to be good or the ghosts would get them. The tribe’s women rarely roamed alone
for fear of rape by ghosts who lived alone in the forests. The ghosts had no
formal society; they lived by eating carrion or stealing what they needed. They
were pale, naked apart from the skins they wrapped around them. No one had ever
seen a female ghost. That this child’s mother lived without the safety of a tribe
and gave birth alone was shocking to the women, incomprehensible and yet…. They
had all felt the pull of mother-love. That moment when the bond is made, when
the baby kicks inside, when nature wells up so strongly within her that she
would fight tooth and nail for the new life within her. Eventually the tirade
lessened and then stopped; all seemed to be in favour of letting the child die
but no one had offered to do the deed to ensure a quick and painless death. Pan
clutched the baby more tightly to her as the night grew colder and waited with
bated breath.
Silence descended and women started to think of bed; the
sounds of the night became audible and the moon shone on the central clearing
and Salvia within it. For a moment, bathed in silver, Salvia looked like a
ghost herself. Perhaps she was imbued with the spirit of a long dead ghost of a
different era. As the women strained to hear her words she raised her brown
eyes up to them as she spoke, her voice cracking and deeper, hoarse after the long
evenings telling.
“The teachers Sue and Nick were ghosts,” she said. The
gathered women gasped in shock. Pan couldn’t take her eyes off the old woman. “They
called themselves humans. Once they were like us, thinking and speaking and
manipulating the world around them, but where their soul should have been was a
hunger that they could never satisfy. They ate and they ate until they consumed
the whole world and yet it was never enough.”
As she spoke her sobs welled up unchecked for the death of
a race they did not know, Homo Paniscus
weeping for its lost brother Homo sapiens.
Weeping for the countless creatures that died with them. For the destruction
and the violence and the murder, for the hunger that never went away and the humans
tortured by it, who lived with plenty but who were blinded to it. She mourned for
the human race as it once was, and was now, scattered remnants, ghosts from the
machine, slowly and painfully dying.
The women shared in Salvia’s pain, they rose one by one and
comforted her, they touched her, they held her and
murmured comfort to her. Within the tribe you were never alone to bear pain: it
was shared. Pan held the infant to her and gazed into its strange human face
again, the pale skin so different to her own thick black fur, its curious blue
watery eyes meeting her brown ones. It started to fuss again, its strange cries
becoming more insistent; gently a lactating bonobo female took the baby from
Pan and held it to her breast to feed. They could do nothing for what was past
but whilst there was still life, this baby would be given her chance to
survive.
Endnote
Initial genetic studies characterised the DNA of chimpanzees
and bonobos as being 98% to 99.4% identical to that of Homo sapiens. Further information is here:
