Sunrise

 

    Five mostly uneventful years had passed, and I found myself and Scout wandering the deepest pockets of the savanna, hardly touched by outside customs or even languages. It was the last place I could have expected to find another companion, but my own expectations had proven themselves to be quite unreliable since I had left the burned remnants of my village some twelve years before, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when I found myself traveling alongside a young pygmy krawk barely more than a week into my exploration of the area.

    It all started when I spotted the white elephant. I first saw her in the distance, her thick, white fur glistening in the sun and her colorful trappings jingling with the sound of hundreds of tiny bells. I could only think of one explanation: I had discovered a descendent of the great, white elephant god! Awestruck, I made a resolution to follow the magnificent creature in hopes of catching up to her, meeting her… Only a wise and spectacular beast could have been touched by the blessings of the great elephant god! I had nothing in particular I needed to ask her, but, intrigued, I couldn’t help but find myself tracing her every step, if only to satiate my own curiosity and seek some simple guidance from such a wise and honorable creature.

    I had been trailing the beautiful white elephant for a little over a week when I noticed that a young pygmy krawk, an adolescent at best, had begun following behind the mysterious elephant as well. Earlier on, I had observed that another pygmy krawk, a pastel colored female, was traveling along with the elephant, sitting atop her broad, wooly shoulders wherever she went. At first, I had suspected her to be a fellow shaman, consulting with the great elephant on some matter of importance or perhaps performing some ritual for her tribe, but she seemed too young, yet, to be a shaman, and I soon suspected her motives to be sometime else entirely, which only served to pique my interest more. I quickly began to notice the similarities between that krawk and the newcomer who was now following along unknowingly beside me, and I wondered to myself if perhaps he might be following not the elephant but the one riding her.

    Curious, and eager to provide any help or companionship I might be able to offer the youngster, I made my way over to him once he had set up a sort of makeshift camp the evening after I had detected his presence. I hoped I wouldn’t be ill-received, but I couldn’t imagine how such a young fellow, hardly more than a child, could reject the help that he clearly needed. It was obvious he wasn’t ready to be out here on his own, although he radiated a sort of feigned maturity, which was probably what had gotten him so far to begin with. Before I even met him, I had to admire his spirit.

    He turned his head as I entered his hearing range. It was dusky out, but not dark enough to block vision, yet.
  “Who's there?” he called out, his eyes searching the deep savanna grasses until I stepped out, making my presence apparent.
    I gave him an amiable smile, a nonverbal reassurance that I meant no harm, “My name’s Luimos, just Lui for short. I saw you earlier today, and we seemed to be heading in the same direction, so I decided I’d make my way over here and see what you were up to.”
    His body stiffened. “You’re not Maji-Matamu!”
    “You’re right about that. I’m not from around here.” I lowered my staff, hoping it would assure him I had come in peace, “I’m a rogue medicineman. I haven’t belonged to a tribe for many years, now, probably almost as long as you’ve been alive. I’m an enemy to no one; you have nothing to worry about.”
    “Then why are you here?” He eyed me with suspicion.
    I simply cocked my head in the direction we had been traveling, the direction in which the elephant had headed, “I’ve been following a white elephant. I wanted to meet her.”
    He seemed lost for a response for a moment, then finally replied with a half-formed, falsely confident, “…You have, too?”
    I nodded, “Do you know anything about her?”
    He shook his head and shrugged, “No.”
    “Any reason you’re following her, then?”
    “I...” he tried desperately to formulate a response.
    “I’m just following her because I wanted to meet her. I was curious,” I added, giving the child an opportunity to think a bit more.
    Finally, he managed to formulate his answer and blurted it out as if there had been no delay, “Maybe she could teach me what I... something.”
    I could tell there was something more, but I restrained myself from calling him out just yet. I needed him to trust me, first, so instead I smiled, “Fair enough. Where I come from, white elephants were thought to be descendants of the great elephant god, blessed with special shamanic powers directly from him. That’s why I wanted to talk to her. Perhaps we could travel together, if you’d like? I could teach you some things along the way, even, if what you’re wanting to do is learn.”
    I watched as he put on a pondering face, though it was clear he could hardly contain the excitement brimming inside him. At last, he concluded (with a deceptive reluctance), “Only because we're going in the same direction.”
    “Sounds great,” I nodded cheerfully at my new traveling companion, “I’ll go get my bird, Scout, and we’ll come set up camp here with you, then. We can discuss travel plans in the morning. Oh, and by the way…” I chuckled softly, “Since we’re going to be traveling together, might I have the pleasure of learning your name?”
    “I don't-,” he began, gruffly, “Oh, never mind. Embi Ma-Erli.”
    “Alright, Embi,” I bobbed my head before I left to find Scout, “I’ll be back shortly, then. I’m sure it’ll be a pleasure traveling together.”
    That was the start of my adventure with Embi, and the first time in twelve long, lonely years I had started to feel I was truly a part of something. Something about that young krawk and his stubborn, misplaced determination warmed my heart from the very beginning. I could teach him a good many things, if I could just persuade him to listen. Suddenly, as if fate had merely snapped its fingers that night when I met him, Embi’s goals became mine; the child’s ambitions overpowered my own. It was that old, familiar feeling I had gotten so long ago teaching young apprentices in the village. It was the same exhilarated feeling I felt every time my brilliant young nephew came to my house for his lessons each morning, before everything had been destroyed. For the first real time in twelve years, I felt completely like myself, again, right then and there.

    Over the next few months, there was much learning to be done for both myself and young Embi as we slowly followed the great white elephant and her tiny rider. My new student was eager to learn all I had to teach and more, it seemed, and over and over he would beg in his indirect and begrudging way for me to teach him the secrets he felt so adamantly I was withholding from him.
    At last, after weeks of battling my patience against his determination, I sat the boy down and questioned him out right, gently but forcefully coaxing the answer out of him, “What is it you really want to learn from me, Embi? Nothing I show you seems to satisfy you, but you never let me know what it is you want to learn.”
    Finally, a sort of seal between us cracked and the child blurted desperately, “Teach me the rain dance. I don’t need all the lessons about patience and plant names you keep giving me. Teach me magic! I want to know the dance.”
    I shook my head slowly, “I know no rain dance. I’m sorry. I know other magic, healing magic and light magic, but those tricks will do you little good compared to the value of the simple skills and virtues I’ve been trying to show you. It’s not magic that makes one great, you know.”
    “Lui, you're a shaman: shamans always know the rain dance!” Embi protested,
    “Embi…” I reasoned, calmly, “I’m not from around here. The tribe I came from lived a long way away. We had no rain dance. Besides, magic is nothing but a lot of work for very little good, more times than not. Only when used wisely by a gifted individual is it worth the effort, and even then it’s rare to find a situation in which it is needed. You’re better off learning simple things, knowledge and merits you’ll be able to use.”
    “I could use it,” Embi argued. “I'd use it well. My family has passed down the dance for generations. If my sister can do it, then I can, too.”
    “Your sister?” I asked, interested.
    “I want to learn the rain dance like Nani. I know I could do it well.”
    “Where is your sister?”
    “She…” he hung his head, searching for an answer.
    “You’re looking for her?” I asked, almost in a whisper. Reluctantly, he gave an almost undetectable nod. I placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder, “She’s the one who rides the great elephant, is she not?”
    “She- ah. It doesn't matter.”
    “I came with you to help you, remember?”
    “I don't need any of that- I just wanted you to teach me the rain dance.”
    “I can’t help you with that, though. I can’t teach something I don’t know myself. I can help with this, though, I think.”
    “You just don’t want me to learn it…” his voice cracked, “You don’t think I can do it.”
    “Perhaps the first thing you should learn is a bit of patience, Embi.”
    “Patience! Oh, you… you infuriate me. Patience. Hah,” he stormed off to the far side of our camp and kept silent for the remainder of the evening, resentment shadowing his every movement. I figured I would let him be.

    By the next day, things were mostly back to normal. I never did hear the end of it about that rain dance, though, after the subject had been brought out into the open. As we pressed along behind the white elephant and her rider, wandering in seemingly directionless zig-zags straying farther and farther from the Maji-Matamu territory, the stubborn youngster continued his efforts to force the nonexistent rain dance out of me.
    I had my ways of countering his pressing, though. Slowly, as we continued along, I pried more and more information out of Embi regarding his sister, Nanagi, who he did in fact confirm was who he was following. Apparently she had inherited the rain dance from their mother: Something he was desperately envious of. There had been a series of misunderstandings, and mistakes on his part that he still refused to disclose to me, and now here he was, trying so hard to catch up to her to right what he had wronged. There was something admirable in that, to me, and I told him so. He didn’t think so, though. He only felt embarrassment, it seemed. He only saw his own shame.

    On we traveled, always one too many steps behind the ones we followed. Sometimes, when they got too far ahead of us, we would send Scout up into the air to search out the tell-tale cascades of white fur dressed in brilliant-colored trappings for us and lead us in the right direction. We couldn’t follow them forever, I knew, without eventually finding the opportunity to catch up. Nothing was that hopeless.
    Clearly my hopeful assumptions weren’t too far off, because finally, after well over a month of trailing exhaustingly behind Nanagi and her magnificent elephant steed, our door of opportunity opened wide. We had awoken early, that morning, having gone to bed earlier than ordinary the night before due to finding a particularly comfortable place to set up camp, and so Embi, Scout, and I went traipsing about in the early morning half-light to see what direction we ought to head next. It was much to our astonishment, our complete and utter elation, that there from the top of a nearby hill we spotted the giant, wooly form of a great, white elephant barely twenty minutes walk from where we stood, sound asleep and content, still, with what appeared to be no intent of moving for a good chunk of the morning, yet. Embi and I looked at each other, no amount of surliness hiding the sheer joy on Embi’s face.
    “We can catch up to them, now,” I told him.
    “Of course we can,” Embi huffed, a hint of pride in his voice, “I knew we could. The entire time.”
    I only smiled, then turned back to look towards our goal, “Shall we go, then?”
    Embi had barely finished his nod of agreement before he was bulleting down the shallow hillside, ready at last to see his sister again. I followed along, jogging lightly behind him in the dewy morning air with Scout swooping smoothly overhead, the wobble in her flight long since healed. Everything seemed right, now, in my life. Everything seemed accomplished, at last. Perhaps more challenges would come in the future, maybe even later that very day… but for the time being, for the first time in so many years, I felt at peace with myself and at home in the world around me. With Embi’s goal, my own had been satisfied as well, so off I rushed, that peacefully cool morning on the savanna, to watch a new page of my life and my student’s life both unfold.

Author's Note

Embi (and his sister) belong to my good friend Skatey, who helped me to get Embi's part of the dialogue right. 83