crispina kemp

Chapter Eight of my current wip. As before, all and any comments very much appreciated

Wide-eyed, Li-Kerbi watched as her mother caused disarray. Bamboo dishes rattled against the wooden beams. Great scoops of white meal – meal that Li-Kerbi herself had pounded to fineness – cast over every surface until all bore that same dull dusting. But not even that was enough. Her mother snatched up the clack-sticks and clacked and clacked them, and all the while repeating over, “Byi, byi, byi,” as if welcoming the Dragon Stars.

“Now clean and straighten it,” her mother said sharply. “Then best take yourself to Cela-Kuci. And say nothing to anyone of what you’ve told me.”

Li-Kerbi kept her head turned, not wanting her mother to see how sullen. She had feared the woman would never stop chanting, and never stop throwing the things around. How much confusion did it take for the spirits to flee in haste instead of festering? She picked up the dishes and dusted them off. She shook the pillows. She fetched the broom to start on the sweeping – but stopped to cough as the fine tuber-meal made its way into her mouth.

“You do realise,” said her mother, still as agitated, “if any should hear of this there’ll be no hill-man for you.”

Li-Kerbi allowed a small smile.

“All those talks your father has had with his brother’s headman, all gone to the midden.”

Li-Kerbi kept her head down. She didn’t want to go to her uncle’s dow, its longhouses borne up on stilts, not to keep them above the seasonal flooding but to lay a flat floor on the steep hillside. A goodly climb into the hills, that dow and a long walk down to set her nets; every day a long walk, else no fish. What else did they eat anyway, up there in the hills? As she’d heard it, they hadn’t even a garden between them.

She did not want to go there. Besides, her uncle’s woman had said, all being well with the talks that the man she was to wed had already lost two wives to the birthing-house. A big man, then, with big babies? Li-Kerbi allowed her hands to slink over her young hips, too slender to accommodate a big baby.

But to go see Cela-Kuci? What if Cela-Kuci wanted to keep her? There’d been talk of late that the spirit-woman was looking for someone able to abide at her star-seats. While it might suit Li-Kerbi fine not to be given to some big babied brute dwelling up there in some fishless hill-dow, it would not suit at all to be given to the spirits here at Toki-dow, and that’s what it meant, to abide with Cela-Kuci at her star-seats. It meant for herself to be a spirit-woman too, once trained. And thereafter no man for her, not ever. No man, no babies, just spirits, be they ancestors’ spirits, animal-spirits, or star-spirits. Just spirits. And always at the call of the dow, always their intermediary.

She dusted her hands of the last of the meal. And when she returned from Cela-Kuci no doubt she’d be set to pounding more. A small laugh escaped her. At least as a spirit-woman there’d be no more of that. A spirit-woman ate what the dow gave her. And a dow would rather starve, all its men, women and children, than to allow their spirit-woman to know hunger.

“And what were you doing down by the burrows?” her mother asked her.

“Looking,” she said.

“Looking? Don’t you let your father hear you say that.” Her mother’s voice rose to nigh a shriek. “Looking?”

“I go that far sometimes to set my nets.”

“But it’s a long haul between the sea and the dunes.”

“It’s the Dragon Stars,” Li-Kerbi said with a shrug, though she didn’t know what she meant by it.

Her mother stared at her a long moment before she yelled, “Go… now! Go tell it all to Cela-Kuci. Hear what she has to say. And until it’s known, you keep that mouth shut. This gets spoken outside of Cela-Kuci and us and there’ll be no man for you, not ever.”

Li-Kerbi sniffed. Her mother opened her mouth to chide. But shut it again when a sneeze rapidly followed. “Out!” she shouted and pointed the length of the longhouse to the farthest steps despite there were steps at intervals along its length. There was no greater sign of a child’s disgrace than to be told to use the back-steps.

*

To arrive at Byi-house ought to have entailed a short circling around the central meeting place. But that’s if Li-Kerbi left by the front steps of Kija-house. Instead, leaving by the back steps meant a great circling around the backs of the houses. She stood at the top of those steps and pondered. Which would be the quickest route? The answer was obvious: neither and both. Either way, there were five houses between the two.

But Li-Kerbi wasn’t to go to Byi-house itself. For the present thirty days, Cela-Kuci could be found at the star-seat, situated at the back of that house. But unless one wishes to undo what’s been done, to travel sunwise was always considered the best. That fixed her direction.

Down the steps she clopped with her grass-sandaled feet. Past the back of Kerbi-house. Past the backs of Tawan, Sae and Kuca. Past Wael – the birth-house and residence of headman Anji-Tiki-ta. Then Naba, and just beyond that was Byi-house. As she passed the back of each long-house, so she crossed the well-worn paths to their star-seats, each in its own fenced enclosure, each with a tall pole planted beside its small gate, each pole carved with representations of the star-spirits, though to Li-Kerbi’s eyes they all looked the same. She supposed she’d learn the differences if she were to become a spirit-woman.

Not that that was what she wanted – though neither did she want to marry the hill-man. Might she find a way to escape it? Or – the thought sparked her – maybe the spirits wouldn’t want her anyway. She knew, though she kept it well-hidden, that she wasn’t the most obedient of daughters, perhaps she’d not be the best intermediary?

Arrived at the gate at the back of Byi-house, Li-Kerbi hesitated to enter. Although the leather-faced Cela-Kuci, sitting on a stump beneath the wide overhang of roof-thatch in the shade of that star-seat, must have known she was there. Not for the first time, Li-Kerbi found herself wondering if that stump was the star-seat – since there was an identical stump at every star-seat – or whether it was the thatched cubby, or even the entire enclosure? But what did it matter.

If she delayed any longer at that gate, likely the leather-faced Cela-Kuci would call her in. And she supposed that wouldn’t set the old woman in the best of humours.

She pushed open the gate, setting the hanging bones to a clatter – at which Cela-Kuci cast her a look.

“Buffalo-child,” she called out, voice surprisingly strong for someone whose life had been spent inhaling smoke and spirit-fumes. “You come see me?”

With an up-jut of her chin she invited Li-Kerbi in.

“Sit!” she ordered as Li-Kerbi came closer. “You want me to crunch all the bones in my neck. Tsk! You young ones, you grow so tall. Now, what brings a buffalo-child of a bear-father to visit me?”

“I…” But Li-Kerbi wasn’t sure how to say it. Perhaps not the way she’d told her mother, that she’d seen an odd-looking man command a dragon to drop and play dead. A dragon, and this in the Byi-stars. “I’ve seen… something strange. Something I don’t understand.”

“Strange, is it?” The old woman’s leathery face suddenly stretched as she looked up, and out across the land. “And when is this?”

“Just this morning – maybe a snitch past midday.”

Cela-Kuci muttered softly as if to herself, “When Kija rises, hmm?” before prompting Li-Kerbi to tell her more. “And where is this?”

“By the dragon-burrows,” Li-Kerbi said and scrunched her shoulders and fists, expecting a repeat of her mother’s reprimand.

But though the spirit-woman pursed her mouth she didn’t rant. She didn’t even seem angry. “By the dragon-burrows, you say… and this in the time of the Dragon-stars. A man, is it?”

“Tall,” Li-Kerbi was quick to say. “With a head of fire and garbed in the deer’s colours.”

“How can it be a man, with a head of fire and standing close to a dragon, and yet he lives? He does still live?”

Li-Kerbi nodded vigorously.

“No, Buffalo-child, your man is a spirit,” Cela-Kuci said with a smiling voice. “And what does he do? Does he look at you?”

Li-Kerbi nodded, her mouth now gone dry. And she hadn’t yet said of the spirit’s command of the old dragon to drop and play dead, to offer itself to its fellows so those fellows would not attack her. She knew she shouldn’t have been that close to the burrows.

“And this so soon after the kidang-boy, lost and returned, all stripped of his skin? The spirits are speaking. You see all this in Kija’s rising, you say, and his head all afire and him garbed as a deer? And Kija your Mother-spirit? Then this must be the star-spirit Kija, and he has a message for us. The dow must know of it. We must call a meeting. Now, when shall we set it to be?”

Li-Kerbi’s mouth dropped. She blinked and her eyes shot wide. Cela-Kuci couldn’t possibly involve her? We, she had said, as if Li-Kerbi already abided at the star-seats.

“When are we now?” Cela-Kuci asked, a question that made no sense to Li-Kerbi. “Five days into Byi. This meeting needs be before the tenth. You agree? The first ten, they’re the auspicious days. Then we’ll say the ninth.”

The spirit-woman Cela-Kuci set herself back. Though still on her stump-seat, she now rested against the door pole.

“Well?” she prompted when Li-Kerbi hadn’t yet moved. “You have a dow to alert to this meeting, now we have set it for the ninth day of Byi. Four days hence. You must alert and inform everyone.”

Four days hence. In four days hence all the dow would know that she’d…that she’d seen a spirit-man. No keeping it then to herself, her mother and Cela-Kuci. Why did she tell her mother what she’d seen? And why did she have to see it? Why her?

to be continued

Please do comment whether you enjoyed, didn’t enjoy, whether something didn’t make sense. Anything, good or bad. I welcome it all