12. THE FACTS OF LIFE

Defensive plans need to be made whilst Owongo gets the first glimmering of unsderstanding

Owongo stood by the palliasse where Mirumda lay with her eyes barely open and a huge smile on her face.

“Say that again, Owongo man-mine,” she asked.

“Sappo says … son,” he mumbled. “Sappo say you not dying but are producing a son!”

“Owongo, for the best man I’ve ever met, and the strongest and the bravest, you can be the silliest,” she laughed, “of course I’m with child and of course it might be a son. Or, to confuse you, it could equally be a daughter!”

He looked at her, and a prickle of moisture formed behind his eyes. Life, he thought, really ought to be simple but it isn’t. How is a man supposed to know when the stomach of his woman holds a son? Or when, maybe, it holds a daughter? And how do such things come about, and why doesn’t he know?

No answer came to him, so he grinned almost imbecilically. “Owongo silly fool,” he agreed, “and Owongo pleased that Mirumda is not dying. Sappo will help when the time comes. She says.”

“Of course she will! Is she not the Wise Woman and does she not help most maidens as they produce their young?” smiled Mirumda. “Now be a good boy and go hunting or something, and give me time to rest! All this fussing isn’t good for a woman in my condition.”

He felt like weeping. It wasn’t pain or fear or anything unpleasant like that, but a deep and heart-felt sense of love for the lovely woman he wanted to spend eternity with, or if not eternity, the rest of his life. If he was lucky that would be around four tens of years, and that seemed an awful long time for one who didn’t know it could be much longer.

He lived in times when life tended to be short by standards that were to come in what was his far future. There was the constant threat of sickness, of infection from a cut by blade of grass or spiteful thorn, and although Sappo was wise enough to know some ways of helping the sick to recover from minor conditions there was by no means any certainty to her medicine. Then there were the other problems, like the biting cold of some winters combined with a shortage of fuel for the bonfire if the man grew too sick to search for dead wood far off in the forests when the nearby supplies were exhausted, and anyway the fire did precious little good if the wind blew the heat away from the stone interior of the cave.

And finally, there was hunting. That was a most uncertain business with the skilled hunter never quite sure of his role in the game and whether he was the hunter or the prey.

So forever for him might be a short time, but it was a time he treasured.

“I must see Gondut,” he said, “for I have news for him.” He didn’t want to explain to Mirumda that he had seen the dreadful Fart-fart and that the orange monster had plans for an attack on their own community.

“You run off then, my Owongo,” she said, smiling, “and I will rest a little while your son or daughter grows strong inside me.”

That left him confused. He made his way out towards the river and the direction of Gondut’s cave, pondering on why the son or daughter should have anything to do with him. Then he recalled something that Sappo had said, about the joys of squirting, and he tried to connect the two, but his mind, though sharp over most things, was remarkably unreceptive when it came to human reproduction and his part in it.

Gondut was in when he arrived there. He had thought it possible that he might still be out hunting, but as the day was getting towards its end he thought that would be unlikely. Like himself, Gondut was a skilled hunter and he could get meat and skins enough for his large family in short order. He rarely found himself still out, spear at the ready, when the shadows of evening began to gather, and often returned with all he needed when the sun was still high.

“I have news of the orange menace,” said Owongo after Gondut had greeted him warmly.

“I hear he has been seen in the fringes of the Old Forest,” suggested Gondut, “though tell the truth, I haven’t seen him.”

“I was out this very morning, and I glimpsed him,” enthused Owongo. “He was sneaking like a thief through the woodlands until he came upon a certain tree with a savage notch carved in it by some stone blade that must have been sharp as the eyes of an eagle. Hen he raised a cracked horn to his lips a blew a savage note, at which sound two savages emerged from hiding and attended to him. He said that he required an army to attack our very River Bank and that those two should recruit many of their kind to join him in seven risings of the sun and at the same time of the day. I fear he has plans, Gondut, and if we don’t forestall him we will be doomed.”

“Ah, Owongo, you are good!” cried Gondut, “tell me that you could find that tree again!”

“I know the forest like the back of my hand,” nodded Owongo, “and I could find it blindfold! But there is more: he had with him a special pipe through which he expelled a dart by blowing, and that dart scratched the skin of one of the two savages, the one who displeased him, and in less time than it has taken me to recount this event he had fallen to the ground and lay dead! And he used the threat that he would repeat the attack on the other savage to encourage him to do the foul will of our orange-skinned fiend!”

“I see,” murmured Gondut, “what do you make of this?”

“One of two things will happen,” replied Owongo thoughtfully. “Either the death of his comrade will stop the surviving savage from recruiting more of his kind and Fart-fart will find himself without companions in seven days’ time, or the savage will be so filled with fear of his own possible demise that he will appear on the appointed day with scores of them!”

“That’s how I see it too,” murmured Gondut. “I tell you what we must do, Owongo. We must prepare ourselves with sharp flint blades and go into the forest and mark as many trees as we can in the same way as Fart-fart’s tree was marked. That will confuse both him and the hoards he expects. Then, on his appointed day we must lay a trap. He must not be allowed to succeed with his scheme, for it and he are both evil and nothing evil must come to our community.”

“You have such a way with words,” marvelled Owongo, “and so it shall be!”

“Meanwhile, my friend, I have heard on the grapevine that you have squirted well and that Mirumda the Beautiful is heavy with a chidling!”

“She is,” confirmed Owongo, “though how any of this happens is quite beyond me.”

“Ah, I see the confusion of an innocent,” laughed Gondut. “Let me tell you, friend Owongo, when I was ten summers younger and innocent like yourself I couldn’t work it out either. But it will come to you, my friend, and you will be awestruck by your part in the creation of life!”

“The creation of life?” echoed Owongo. “It is such a fine phrase! And yes, I most probably will be awestruck, once I have got over my ignorance!”

“It’s the squirting that does it,” murmured Gondut, and he grinned when he saw the first glimmer of understanding enter Owongo’s eyes and shine from them like the very birth of knowledge itself.

TO BE CONTINUED…

© Peter Rogerson 21.04.17