14. STRANGER

Owongo gows off hunting...

Had time been measured as we measure it in this more (or less?) enlightened time, maybe a week passed and those left in the village mostly women, though not all men had been foolish enough to join the fray, but those left heard nothing from the direction of the mountain pass.
For reasons best known to himself, Prince Dickory had only followed the attacking force as far as the foot of the mountain, the force that his own oratory had stirred into being and as he reached the bottom skirts of rubble that was the beginning of the pass itself, he turned back. He wasn’t the kind of leader to actually expose himself to any kind of danger. Once he was happy that the rabble of an army that he had created were well on their way he returned and posted himself far enough from what might be danger for him to feel safe, and then plastered his usual grin onto his face.
At the end of the first day though, he decided that hours of darkness represented no condition for a lonely man to be trying to sleep in the open, and he knew that Owongo and Mirumda lived nearby. So, as dusk was falling, he made his way to Owongo’s cave and stuck his head inside it.
“Wongo,” he called, somewhat tentatively for him, “you friend?”
It was a question and he must have known the answer. Inside the cave the four children were occupied as any group of four children in any age would be with a little giggling as well as the odd burst of more raucous laughter. Mirumda was lying casually and almost seductively on a bed of skins with her head on Owongo’s shoulder and the two were talking in quiet voices, and occasionally breaking off their conversation to exchange affectionate kisses. That was their way.
“What you want, Dickhead?” demanded Owongo, “you not in my good slate!” he added, using prehistoric version of good books seeing that books of a papery variety had yet to be invented.
“Now don’t be like that, Wongo, just because we have differences,” almost whined the Prince.
“What do you expect?” demanded Owongo, “you have sent half the village on a fool’s errand, and when they get back to tell you what they think of you it might serve to remind you to be more sensible in the future!” Now, the language he used might well have been translated into what I have just written, but it was a great deal briefer and considerably more guttural.
“We have differences,” acknowledged Prince Dickory, “but can’t we be friends… it’s going to be a cold night and I wear no skins!”
“Neither do I, but Mirumda and I have each other to exchange warmth…” replied Owongo, and Mirumda shook her bosom in order to re-enforce his point.
“I am guarding the village,” Prince Dickory said in the sort of voice that gave Owongo the impression that he was trying to convince himself.
“Village only needs guarding against you!” snapped Mirumda, “and if any of the good men and women you have urged to go away and fight get hurt or, the stars help us, killed, then it will be on your reckoning.” She didn’t use a word anything like reckoning, but a close and accurate translation of the primeval words from a far distant past is not always possible and primeval serves my purpose.
“And,” added Owongo, “you not welcome here.”
”Well said!” came the voice of the witch doctor, Peri Winkle, who had been passing by. “Nor in my cave, you scoundrel!” he added.
Prince Dickory, seeing that he was not among friends and having nobody at his back returned to his self-imposed post further along, at the bottom of the skirts of the mountain, and Peri Winkle added “you good fellow Owongo.” and also sauntered off.
By this time the distraction created by adult talk had quietened the four children, and Coo-coo was even just about asleep, her eyelids barely twitching. She and Brava were lying in a kind of human lump of tired flesh under a freshly laundered skin that was fortunate to be dry, but it had been a sunny day And good for drying by draping garments on the rocks. The twins made another another lump, and Coo-coo yawned herself to sleep. It was Oowngo and Mirumda’s favourite time of the day because they had some time to be together and, like loving couples down the vast highway of time, catch up on whatever needed catching up on.
Then the cave was an almost silent dormitory until the calling bird that nested by the river woke its inhabitants at dawn.
The next day came and went, with Prince Dickory trying again to gain Owongo’s comradeship.
“We are on the same side, Wongo,” he tried as Owongo slipped out to find something on which to feed quite a large family.
“Owongo on Owongo’s side,” yawned Owongo, “and he knows you have talked his neighbours and friends into folly.”
“If you right there is no danger, and they will return,” Prince Dickory told him.
“Stupid man!” snapped Mirumda, “what would you or Owongo here do if rabble army marched this way? If we thought we might die at their hands then we might try to take some with us before they slaughter us!”
“And,” added Owongo for emphasis, “that might happen to some of our neighbours and friends!”
At that, Prince Dickory wandered off in what would most probably be a fruitless search for companionship.
Owongo, on the other hand, had man’s work to do, and equipping himself with a wooden staff he set out to find meat, sufficient for the six of them.
The best area for hunting was part way up the side of the mountain, not really very far, and carefully, almost silently, he found his way along familiar paths that he had trodden often before.
It was there that he met the dishevelled shape of Quanto, or at least that was his name when he introduced himself. Like Owongo, he was naked and several wounds were obvious on his torso, nothing serious but scratches and cuts that Owongo knew might be painful and might even turn septic. That sort of knowledge was most important at a time when minor injuries were far from rare. Owongo knew quite a lot about things like septic sores and how best to avoid them.
“You need see Peri Winkle,” Owongo told him, but the man cringed away as if Owongo was a threat to him. It was then that he realised that Quanto was a stranger to him and therefore most likely a refugee from the volcano village, though he didn’t use words like volcano for obvious reasons.
“Where you from?” he asked curiously, “and me Owongo. Me hunting, after meat.”
The stranger smiled. “Me Quanto,” he told him, “and me escape from fire, then attacked by madmen. Madmen came and madmen chased me, called me names, hit me with stones...”And he showed Owongo where the stones had hit him.
Not so much stones as small gravel, thought Owongo, remembering the way up the pass and what had made his feet slip and slide, and yet he smiled at Quanto.
“Stay with me,” he invited, “we catch meat and then we return to cave and get witchdoctor to help you.”
“Quanto good hunter!” smiled Owongo’s new friend, “and we soon catch hares!”
He didn’t call his intended prey by the name hares, but as that’s what they caught, two of them, then that’s what he probably meant.
© Peter Rogerson 20.11.23
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