Our eternal curse II Read online

  This spiral of deceit all started when one of the girls asked Julii, "If you only want to learn his words, why did you sit with him during all of the days he slept through fever?"

  This forced Julii to simply make-up: "I needed to keep his throat clear or he would suffocate."

  But then another of the girls asked: "If that is true, why do you still sit by his side when he sleeps by the waterhole?" This necessitated another untruth in order to support the previous untruth. "The leaves on the back of his head must be changed regularly."

  But this was not the truth either. Her Robert's head had healed days ago. The only reason she still bound leaves to his head with a strip of hide was because she had not told the truth and needed to perpetuate her deceit. It all felt very stressful.

  Now the untruth that had barely silenced the girls had to be perpetuated even with her Robert. Every day she had to change his leaves while telling him he still needed them.

  'The very man she had wanted to completely reveal herself to was now being misled because of an untruth told to others.' She hoped that he would never find out that she had not told the truth. 'This was all so horribly stressful!'

  Julii constantly felt as though she was about to get caught for doing something bad. The only thing she had done was say words that were not the truth for no personal gain, and she hadn’t hurt another. 'Why did it feel so bad?' 'This was unbearable!'

  In a kind of self-imposed exile, Julii spent more and more time alone with her pink-red-white man. She told herself it was because she liked learning but it was just easier than making up untruths about her feelings.

  Her pink-white man never asked awkward questions that forced her to not tell the truth, not even about his wounded head. He just taught her new words, and with those words, new knowledge. Because of her shiny pink-white man, because of her Robert, Julii now knew things that no one else in her tribe had ever known. Things like the fact the long pieces of wood tied to his legs with hide were called "splints".

  Another word in the growing number of words in Julii's new world was "crutch".

  And after a while, Robert could use the crutches Julii had made him to leave the tipi and hobble to the waterhole under his own power.

  This was a far better arrangement for Julii because she no longer had to answer all those searching questions as her father and Ringwind carried him.

  Now, they could walk slowly together and, once there, they would sit and communicate and. Although Robert had run out of things to point to, Julii was now ready to focusing on conceptual words.

  He would say worlds like “boat" while floating a leaf on the water.

  Robert would say: "carriage.", then he would draw something in the dirt being pulled by horses on round wooden things called "wheels".

  The wheels had things inside them that Robert drew and called "spokes".

  Julii already knew what a horse, even two horses, looked like, but she did not imagine they would enjoy being tied to a big wooden structure like a carriage.

  Julii asked if he had actually seen one of these things for himself and Robert talked of a place where there were hundreds of carriages and thousands of horses.

  Robert also talked of a thing called "house". A house, 'not a horse', was a tipi made of rocks or wood, 'not hide', and many houses together made a thing called a "street".

  Julii loved hearing about all of these strange and wonderful things but began to wonder if such an extraordinary place could really exist? Sometimes a drawing in the dirt or Robert's descriptions would be too fantastic to believe. She wondered if he was making it all up.

  'Had she caught the ability to not tell the truth from him?' That was very possible because she had never done it before meeting him. She felt gullible and wanted to be cautious but she really liked the fact that Robert admired her ability to learn. She could see it in his face sometimes, and that made her very keen to believe his fantastic claims.

  Sometimes he said ridiculous things like: "A thing called a street had big stone or wood houses on both sides for as far as the eye can see."

  He said these things as though they were in no way special. Then he would add outrageous statements like: "And in the wide gap between the houses, hundreds of carriages carried tons of cargo and hundreds of people."

  Eventually, and without noticing the change, Julii and Robert were having conversations. No longer one word, a drawing, then another word, whole series of words were being exchanged. Within each series there would be another new word, which meant Julii learned another, then another, and another until she became proficient in his tongue. Each new word somehow carried Julii away from her tribe towards an unknown existence which felt a lot like her destiny.

  So, when the splints came off and Robert said it was time for him to leave, Julii could not even consider the idea of not leaving with him.

  The Shiloh trench

  Julii had seen Ringwind attacked by a swarm of bees while collecting honey on more than one occasion. She had seen a wild pig open the flesh on his arm only moments before her father's arrow killed the ugly beast. Julii had even held his hand as the tribe danced his mother up to the sky gods, but she had never seen Ringwind cry as he did on the morning of her departure.

  Letting go his protective shell completely, he had even begged her not to climb onto Robert's horse; but her shiny pink-white man was her destiny. It hurt to leave but she knew it would hurt even more to stay.

  Looking back over her shoulder as she left made Julii feel so deeply sorry for Ringwind; they had always been as close as brother and sister.

  Julii felt cruel for the first time in her life. She wanted to make Ringwind feel better, but the only cure for his pain was staying, so she turned to face in the direction the horse was slowly moving. She would be out of sight soon. 'Not being able to see her may heal Ringwind.'

  She knew that was not true but thinking that way made her feel less cruel. She knew that leaving was the only logical thing to do but these feelings of cruelty made Julii feel sad. She leaned her head harder onto Robert’s shoulder to feel the certainty of contact.

  The gray cloth felt soft at first, but the horse's constant movement made it rub up and down until it felt rough on her cheek. She could easily have lifted her head, but the chafing of the gray material distracted her and caused less discomfort than thinking about Ringwind, so she kept it there.

  Searching for more distractions, Julii concentrated on the movement of her naked pelvis. She could feel the horse's prickly hair but also its powerful muscles moving effortlessly below her.

  Fetching firewood had kept the beast fit and strong, and she took comfort in the memory of Robert being pleased by the condition of at least one of his possessions. She threaded her hands tighter around his waist and pulled her body even closer against his.

  Julii could not afford to relax because she had not yet convinced Robert to take her all the way to his world. The best she could do was persuade him to take her to the edge of her world. To the place she, and all of her tribe, always stopped; the boundary of her tribal land, the boundary that had been obeyed for generations. The elders never said what was on the other side of the boundary, but everyone knew from childhood that it must be bad.

  As the prickly hairs grew more and more intrusive on her bare flesh, Julii schemed and connived a reason for Robert to take her past the tribal boundary and with him to her destiny.

  Her first attempt was to try to convince him by saying: "you will need me to hunt for food."

  But that argument did not make any sense because there was a great haunch of venison hanging from his saddle. 'Why had her father given her pink-white man venison?' 'It was more meat than both of them could eat in a week.'

  Trying a different tack, Julii started listing the things she could do. "I can fetch water."

  "I can make fire."

  "I can skin deer and sew hide."

  But she could feel Robert's disinterest through the tensing of his shoulder.

 
; She was grasping at the wind and he knew it but her mind still searched feverishly for the one thing only she could provide. So, when the words eventually spilled out, they surprised both of them. "I love you."

  Until this moment, the word “love” had been just one more simple word learned by the waterhole but it felt so powerful when used in this context.

  Robert stopped the horse, turned his head in the tight yellow thing that Julii now knew to be called a “collar”, and stared at her. His eyes showed confusion.

  'No, it was more than confusion. It was pain and angst and shame and frustration and wrongdoing.' 'Yes, it was wrong to love her back.' 'Loving her was wrong?' 'How could loving her be wrong?' 'How can something so natural, instinctive and predestined be wrong?'

  Robert said nothing, turned back to the front, kicked the spurs into the flanks of the horse and continued their journey in the unbearable and unnatural silence he had maintained since leaving her village.

  Julii was hurting and confused. She searched for something, anything, to give herself hope. 'At least he had carried her past her tribal boundary' but, when she thought about that, it counted for naught because he had no idea where their boundary was. He had absolutely no idea that they had even passed it.

  Julii wanted to be honest with Robert but she did not have the courage to tell him they had passed the boundary. 'On the other hand, he had not asked to be told, so he really did not want to know.' 'Did he?' 'Or did he?' 'No, he did not.' 'Or did he?' 'No!'

  She wanted to show how hurt she was feeling because of his rejection. She wanted to teach him a lesson because of that horrible look he had given her. She wanted to withhold something from Robert to punish him and hurt him back but the only thing she had to withhold was her presence. He did not seem too keen to keep that, so she hung onto him even harder.

  Alternating her cheek to prevent just one side of her face becoming red, Julii sensed something in the air. It was an, as yet, faint but nasty smell, and it was growing with every step of the horse. 'What was the smell?' 'Was it death?'

  As a child, Julii and Ringwind had played under the scaffolds where her people placed the dead, so she knew the nasty smell that dead bodies give off, but only in small, tolerable amounts. What she was smelling now was clearly death but the overwhelming volume defied any understanding.

  'A giant must have died.' Julii had never seen or heard of giants but a dead giant was the only logical explanation for such an overpowering and profoundly disturbing smell.

  Positioned as she was, Julii could not see what was immediately ahead of Robert but she knew something was wrong because his body stiffened and he pulled the horse to a halt.

  Curious, she looked up and over his shoulder to see for herself, and nothing in her short life could have prepared her for what lay ahead.

  The landscape for as far as the eye could see was devastated. Trees were broken in half like twigs. Open grassland was chewed-up as though a stampede of giant beasts had passed through. 'No, not passed through but deliberately and maliciously destroyed the land.'

  Amongst the carnage, Julii could see many of those awful wild pigs. They were digging in the ground and pulling quite heavy things out of the earth. 'Were they tree roots?' She could not tell exactly, but whatever they were, the pigs were tearing at them with their huge teeth and tusks.

  Looking all around and into the distance she could see more wild pigs. There seemed to be hundreds of them all over the vast field. There were more pigs than Julii knew existed, all pulling at the ground and gorging themselves. 'They were disgusting.'

  Laying her head back down on Robert's shoulder helped Julii escape the horror, but as she turned her head, she spotted a vast river and there in the distance was a giant canoe. 'No, not a canoe, a boat.'

  Robert had taught her the word “boat” while sitting by the waterhole but his floating leaf had done nothing to prepare her for the shock of the real thing.

  It lay alongside the riverbank billowing white smoke from tall straight branch-less trees. The giant canoe “boat” had a great round thing at the back. The round thing was bigger around than the base of her father's tipi.

  The round thing at the back of the canoe-boat suddenly gave a shudder and, after a brief pause, began to turn. It slipped until the water made purchase on the flat cross boards placed all around the wheel.

  'How could that huge wheel be moving?' 'What in the world would be powerful enough to make that wheel turn?'

  The branch-less trees now billowed black smoke from their pointed tops as the giant canoe-boat moved slowly forward away from the riverbank. Now the billowing smoke was white again. 'Was the canoe-boat communicating?'

  Julii had heard the elders talk about communicating with smoke.

  'Is this what the elders had been talking about?'

  Movement in the corner of her eye took Julii's attention away from the canoe-boat to the middle of the torn-up field where a great line of freshly turned earth stretched off into the distance.

  At the far end of the line of earth, men in blue pants and brown tops stood in what Julii could now see was a long trench. The men were digging up more earth and tossing it onto the long pile which stretched the length of the trench.

  Searching for meaning in this overwhelming scene, Julii spoke a single word: "Why?"

  Robert’s answer was very somber. "It's a mass-grave."

  Three things immediately hit Julii. The first was: 'How clever of her Robert to know that this is a mass-grave after seeing it for such a short time.' The second was: 'How can the sky gods take someone from below the ground?' And the third: 'Why is the trench so long?'

  Pondering this last thought, Julii thought Robert must have made a mistake. 'Surely, there cannot possibly be enough bodies to fill it.' 'Can there even be that many people in the world?'

  Then a fourth thing hit her like a rock; 'the heavy objects the pigs were digging up were not tree roots, they were men.' 'The pigs were pulling hundreds of men from just under the ground.'

  'How can that be?' 'This must be why the elders told her never to cross their tribal boundary.' 'The world outside her own was unbearable.'

  In a desperate attempt to stabilize her mind and make some sense of what she was seeing, Julii pointed to a flat thing. It was piled high with bodies and being pulled across the field by horses. "Carriage?"

  She felt clever saying the word just as Robert had taught her to, but Robert's melancholy and disinterested reply made her angry. "No. It's a wagon."

  'This is just too unfair!' She wanted to berate him. He had described a wooden thing bearing people being pulled by horses on wheels with spokes, and that horrifically adorned flat thing fitted exactly his description of a carriage.

  Holding her tongue, Julii silently repeated the word 'wagon'. She watched as men in blue pants and brown tops, with yellow clothes covering their nose and mouths, worked alongside the wagons.

  They were dragging up even more bodies, hundreds, maybe even thousands, of bodies from just under the ground. The bodies were being carried to the wagons where they were dumped on top of each other.

  Many of the bodies wore gray, like Robert, and many were dressed in the blue colored clothing like the digging men. Unlike the digging men, the dead bodies wore blue top and bottom.

  Looking more closely at the men carrying bodies and the men digging in the trench, Julii noticed that they were not wearing brown tops. 'Their upper bodies were naked and their skin was very dark brown; even darker than her own people's skin.'

  At that fascinating moment, a bee sped past Julii's ear faster than any bee she had ever heard before. She felt it glance her hair and could smell singeing as though she was leaning too close to a cooking fire. 'How can that be?'

  A loud 'bang' arrived in the same ear that heard the bee. Julii looked in the direction of the bang. In the distance, a white man in blue, top and bottom, was pointing a long, leafless, branch at her.

  A small, pretty puff of white smoke was drifting away fro
m him on the gentle breeze. 'Was he trying to communicate with smoke?' 'Was he answering the canoe-boat's smoke signals?'

  Robert surprised Julii by turning the horse towards the blue man and kicking his spurs into its flanks. The horse, with Julii clinging desperately to Robert on its back, was now galloping towards the man with the smoking branch.

  'Did Robert know him?' 'Was she about to meet one of Robert's tribe?' He was wearing the same clothes as Robert wore, only his were the blue color. 'Was the man with the smoking branch related to Robert?' 'No!'

  The man in blue turned and started running towards the long trench, discarding his long branch as he ran. He looked back over his shoulder at Robert, and Julii saw the most awful fear and panic in his eyes.

  Ten paces from the blue man, Robert pulled his damaged sword from its shiny scabbard. Julii instinctively knew what was about to happen but she could not believe it. Sure enough, Robert hit the blue man in the head with his sword as they galloped passed him. The man's blue hat was cut in two and he fell to the ground in an explosion of blood.

  Julii was in a state of shock. This act of violence had been impossibly brutal and so cold. She wanted to dismount. She wanted to run all the way back to the safety of her home; but more blue men, all with long, smoking, leafless branches, ran from the trench.

  'More bees.' 'More smoke.' But this time Robert did not run at them. He turned the horse and galloped with all speed for the nearest trees.

  Pursuit

  Robert drove his big, strong horse to the edge of exhaustion. Julii could feel its powerful haunches fading underneath her naked flesh.

  'Robert was no fool.' 'He was clever.' 'He must know that his horse is at its end, and yet he keeps pushing it faster and further away from that place he called Shiloh.' 'Did Robert mean to kill his horse?' 'He murdered the blue man.' 'Killing a horse would be nothing by comparison.'

  'Who was this shiny white-man that fate had sent her?' 'Who was he really?' 'Was he going to kill her too?'