With the Suns

Cybèle Diniz

Shura never asked for a second serving of stew.

It was a thing the other children of her community did often. Lack was not common. Either way, lack not being common changed little, for stew was not made to last, it was made to be consumed. It survived two days at most in this weather, this dull and stupid cold of autumn’s beginning. No sense in leaving leftovers. Yet Shura never asked for a second serving of stew. Shura thanked the old men who stood beside the fire and put work into that stew, and always wondered if her bowl might be filled some more, even prayed a little, because she was often hungrier than most people thought, though she was a plump girl. Expecting; never, ever, ever asking more.

Not ever did she hold it against the other children, however. In fact, she had reasoned that they should be asking, that it was a good thing to ask, to go for a second bowl, because, she surmised, they would have more energy and more satisfaction and thus go and play and feel stronger, and thus run after rabbits and get more delicious meat for the stew. It was merely that she did not need that, she thought. Moreover, she’d seen that none of the adults ever went for a second bowl, except for the pregnant women and men and iheji. She’d asked one of her mothers why that was the case, who’d answered that children should not worry about whether they will get to have stew. Shura protested that they always had stew, and a lot of it. Her mother — Yano — smiled simply and assured her that she would understand, and that it was for love. She’d asked, then, one of her fathers why it was the case. Her father — Udu — shrugged and told her she should just go for a second bowl of stew, because she was far too young to be wanting to do adult things. Though he was very kind, Shura disliked this, for she did not feel she was doing any adult things, not more than she did any child things.

“Why do we move with the suns, mami Yano?”

Shura had heard the hunters, the healers, and the thinking people discussing their movement many times. It was enough that it seemed significant: they moved in the same direction the suns did, but the way they talked to each other about this made it seem like they were doing something utterly unreasonable. She knew it was a change, though she did not know by what rule they moved before. But hearing the whispers of older people gave her questions. The shape of the question was not yet very concrete, though, and she had to do the best she could to ask it.

“It is not something we should be doing, Shura, but we need to.” Yano answered simply.

“Let the child know, Yano.” Interjected Beoba, another father of Shura.

“She does not need to worry, Beoba.”

Shura did not dare ask again, but she did look at her father with curiosity, or a somewhat pleading face, as if wondering whether papi Beoba would disregard what Yano had to say. Useless, obviously, as Yano was her water-mother. Beoba should not go against what she said.

She played with the idea of finding one of the thinking people, maybe from another family in her itino, and asking them that question. But she did not do that, in part because she was scared of them, because they were very often iheji, and the iheji were odd and loud, and in part because she believed that the thinking people were too busy looking to the suns or understanding the soil and how it gives life the way it does. Shura had heard that so many of the oddest ideas, like marking things on stone and on treeskin, were the making of iheji. Maybe the moving with the suns was their idea too, or maybe it was everyone’s idea. Or maybe it was just the way things were done now. But that seemed strange, for if it was just the way things were done, they should have reached the suns ages ago.

Shura loved helping with the community tasks. She was not allowed to hunt far — no girls or titeji were, not before they were women or iheji — but she still loved helping with the preparation of food, with the making of clothes, with the transporting of things between different places, the starting of fires, the building of wood-and-fabric domes. Today, it was that last one — they had moved much more now, the moon had died two times, and they found another riverside plain with plenty of forest around. Shura was energetic; and whenever she helped, the elders, who could do nothing but cook and rest while watching the settlement go up, nodded happily at her come-and-go.

Shura wondered why they could not just stop there and make homes that last forever. They already brought with them, animals that gave them milk and sometimes meat and pelt. They already planted in the ground, in places only the iheji and the people who spoke to them knew to find, all manner of fruit and vegetable. And, after all, mami Yano said they were not really supposed to be moving like the suns do, so why not stop? It got tiring, she thought, to just build new domes every two moon deaths. If they did away with it, much time could be given to play, and music, and making food. She almost wanted to scream and cry and beg that they just stay there longer than it was usual. But there was, she understood, a reason to not stay.

She decided it must be because of the hills. There were hills, all around, that they often moved towards. These hills were important because it didn’t matter how much the iheji spoke to the ground, too many of the things of the ground went up hills to meet with the things of wind and sky. The rivers, too, came from hills and mountains, and whoever made the rivers needed to be at the top, with all those things of ground and wind and sky. Shura knew, too, that at some point she would need to climb a hill and find the place where all those things met and speak to whichever of them wanted to speak to her, if she wanted to become a woman. But then, why would they not just stay near a hill, or even better, upon it? All that was too bothersome for her. Better to build the domes, because they are needed now and hilltops were only to come later.

“Why do we move, mami Yala?”

Mami Yala laughed a lot, and often she cared less about Yano being Shura’s water-mother. Yala stayed with Shura more often. Yano not as much. Yano was more present in other domes, and she only sometimes came by, though she was always kind to Shura.

“What do you mean, child?”

“Building the domes every time is very tiring. We could have so much more time if we just stopped here!”

Yala cocked her head.

“I think it is mostly that we are guests, Shura. If we stay too long, we will poison the river and eat all the rabbits and all the dores, and there will be a lot less fruit than before. We will upset the place.”

“But then why don’t we just do like we always do when we are in a new place, and just also plant things so we can have enough food, and raise more dulas so we can have more milk and meat, and go farther from where we are to forage?”

Yala cocked her head again and smiled, as if to say clever girl.

“Well, I heard a story that some of our cousins were tired of going around and did that. It worked well, I think.”

Shura looked at Yala with big eyes.

“Why don’t we? That is so good! Really?”

“Well… They needed to leave it behind, too. There was one of their loners who brought a message some moons ago, and they are moving with the suns.”

“But why!”

Yala’s voice vacillated, and she looked around, pressing her lips together. Some noise came out, but it was like a whine. Then she just shrugged.

“It had to be done. We are going to meet them where the suns set.”

“How have we not reached the suns yet?”

“We have not been doing that for so long, you know. We have only been moving with the suns for, I think, eight seasons? Remember? Twelve seasons ago, we had the big meeting with all the cousins, and we were still moving around the rivers.”

“We moved around the rivers?”

To this, Yala laughed.

“Don’t tell me you only became curious today!”

Shura smiled.

It was winter, and though Shura was not yet a woman, they were already teaching her how to hunt. She liked that, because the firepit felt almost as cold as the winter air when she stood still by it. So, learning how to use a bow, or the throwing of lances, was very fulfilling. She was even able to talk to the iheji, who taught her several things, like what things of the wind to call when an arrow cut the air, what plants to chew when she felt about to freeze before an enemy, and how to make small, explosive things which sparkled to distract animals and make predators flee. But it still was odd, because she remembered that children of her age did not learn hunting before going up a hill. To hunt, they needed the permission of the things living there. The eldest people and the iheji looked with dark faces at Shura and her dome-siblings, who showed off their lances and weapons to each other. Closed faces. Heads shaking. And this was only one more thing that felt so strange to Shura, and she felt scared that the things on hilltops would be unhappy if they figured she had learnt to use weapons.

Over the last few moons, the pace had quickened. They walked much more and settled much less. This was very tiring. Shura had other reasons to hate it: her snow treading boots. Her feet had grown a bit more, so the leather backing was digging into her skin. She told herself there was little leather and pelt to go around, and the uses were many, thus there was probably no space for boots. Every so often, she’d take some snow and pour it into the boot, seeking respite.

It was worse today. It was a long walking day, and she pushed what she was supposed to carry on a sledge. Some dulas also pulled sledges, though most of them just walked lazily beside the group. Dulas were not, in all the itinos, used to pull sledges; as far as she understood, the way those sledges were made was dreamt up by an iheji several moons ago, and because there had been no big meeting of the cousins since, they couldn’t transfer what they had figured out yet. She felt a pang of pride for her families, because they had discovered how to keep more things with less work. Yet she worried that maybe they burdened the dulas too much.

They sang songs when they walked. Sometimes she did not quite understand the words, but the one they sang today was low and quiet, and very slow, so she could walk to the rhythm and drink the words. Ieetetuivakoto babatora… a song speaking of Babata.

He had been a member of their people, and he had been a great dreamer. It was said that he dreamt so much that no parents wanted him to join and care for their children, and that his womb was seen as barren, because he could not give birth. Babata wanted children very much, though he was atatamtamka… a word Shura did not know, but she guessed it was “like a father to all”. One day he went into the ground, and asked the thing that inhabited there why he could not have children. The thing in the caverns did not know, but gave him a wind instrument, and told him to set himself where a river splits and play, and maybe the river would give him children. He then left his itino, and he went to seek a place where a river split, and it took much time, because rivers usually join, and that’s why the place where a river meets sea is just as sacred as the places where the tributaries are born. When he found the place where a river split, he played a rising song, and it was so beautiful and so sad the river asked him why he was crying, though he cried no tears. He said his womb was barren and asked if the river could give him a child. The river did not understand. The river said that his womb was full, but of wind. Human soul and human seed is heavy, and dreams are light, the river sang. The river also did not understand why a man with a womb full of wind would come to the water for a child; and so she said to him that he needed to speak to the wind. He walked up the hill, and he tried speaking to the wind, but the wind was fast and busy and never answered. He stood there, because he noticed that even if he was much more like the wind, he was still made of ground and could never catch it. After much waiting and much patience, and days and nights without food and water, his body was lighter, and so the wind took him, and they made love, and a child was born. But his body was left behind, and became a stone, and the ones of wind, and ground, and water decided they would meet atop the hills, because they were children of Babata.

A younger child near Shura fell as they walked, and Shura was the first to come to aid. He’d hit his head on a rock; Shura was already cleaning the cut and pressing a rag filled with snow against his nose to stop a bleed. He seemed fine, otherwise. The parents scurried closer, and told Shura to get back, saying they’d take care of him, and she need not to worry. Had she done something wrong? But she saw one of the child’s fathers smile at her, almost as if congratulating her, or thanking. She watched as they looked at the wound, cleaned it further, and offered the boy a layer of pelt more. When they were back to walking, he was sat on the shoulders of his only mother, and he laughed.

The boots still cut into Shura’s heels.

Her behavior was mysterious to her parents. Her right ankle had, at some point, developed some bothersome kind of infection that she treated herself with some success; it was only when it seemed healed enough that she dared tell Beoba about it. Beoba did not know what to do. Yano was angry, at her. Udu was disappointed, but not at her. Yala was sorry. But Shura calmed them down, and told them exactly how she’d done it, and how she’d observed the healing people doing much of the same, and how she identified the plants. Yala, being shown the many things she’d used against the infection, had to admit with some difficulty she’d been right. Though, they warned, it was not because she’d been right this once that it would be so every time.

She still didn’t ask for second servings, but since she’d grown, she needed more food. Often, then, she ate whatever was not yet food, or whatever was left. Rests that were supposed to return to earth. Fruit, when it was harder to pick or so old it almost fermented. The chewy bits of some legumes. Yet she was still plump and strong, and could run fast, and she’d asked — not begged — to join the foragers and hunters who went much farther. She’d still been told no.

“She needs to be tended to,” Shura overheard Yala one night.

“The girl was bleeding from the ankle and said nothing, Yala. She used mosses to heal herself. And said nothing! At all!” Yano keened. “She could have asked for wrappings, for new boots, and yet, and yet… How are we supposed to know she needs tending to?”

“I do not mean only her ankle.”

“I know you do not. What can I do? I am pulled in ten directions and then some, I need attend to everyone, everywhere, and still I do not even think we should stop here, or anywhere, really, until we’ve reached the sunset land, there is so much to be done…”

“Yano. Yes. And yet truth is that Shura needs to be tended to.”

“Do not talk to me as if I didn’t care.” Yano’s voice was cold.

“It is not what I am doing.”

“Yes, it is. You judge me, because you feel that, since she came from my water, I must stay close. And yet everything, everything, is so much like a weight…”

“My owl…”

“Sometimes, I wish the wind would take me.”

There was a pause, and Yala didn’t answer. Then, the sound of sobbing. Then, two, unsynchronised, sobbing noises.

“Owl, it is alright, it is alright, you know it is…” Yala’s voice was frayed, clipped, rough like old and hard leather.

“We just need to survive the journey first, and she needs to survive…”

Shura held her breath. She tried to hold her heartbeat, as well, but that could not be done.

“We will, we will get her up the hill, and then we’ll join the cousins and the other peoples, and everything will be fine. Owl. It can’t be any other way.”

Shura’s ankle had been, since the small infection, weakened. She’d superficially fixed it, yes, but it was still swollen and warm, and too much weight on it was a terror. This explains perhaps the faltering which caused her to fall, roll down, and sprain it. The sound was so dull and deep she imagined it echoed the world. For once, she had no choice in the matter; she was wounded and needed to be tended to. Ideally, she could be carried with the group, and they’d go their merry way. However, nearby was the last of the hills, the meeting places, they’d cross. Those in coming of age had to go up and meet the things that lived there.

She watched as her siblings and the others coming of age climbed, alone, and came back down. Every elder knew who resided up on that hill; every adult did as well; and those coming down had just discovered it. No one would tell her. Of course not. She needed to discover it. But she would not accept being carried upwards. Udu, always the good father, had suggested doing that, damn the Elders’ scowls, for they needed to move, they needed to go. But Shura also yearned for her womanhood.

She’d declined. Yes, because she did not want to imagine the hard gazes of the elders, the questioning stares of iheji, nor the knowledge that, of all her siblings and peers, she was the one who could not go up alone. Partly, at least.

So she was alone.

No, she was not alone. The elders, who were fond of her, brought and offered food, demanded she eat it, speaking at length of how food heals spirit as much as body. Her siblings and friends, even after coming down the hill, spoke to her as an equal. Yala, Udu, and Beoba came often. Yano, too, more than usual. And yet they did not move with the suns for many days, enough that at some point Shura almost storied it might be lasting. She did also feel restless, deep in the bones, which trembled, and with no running to do, nor building, and too much rest, she had very little of new to notice; and thus everything she noticed became a story, of how the cousins and other peoples might meet, of how her ankle might never heal, of how maybe whatever lived up the hill would come down to meet her, and grace her for her courage and love, or admonish her for her ignorance and infractions. When she slept, it was always of Babata, Mami Sata, Papi Tona, all those figures from stories she had not been the one to make, or at least not the only one.

But it could not continue so long. They had, not in a long time, stood so many weeks in the same place. It was almost a return to what was known. Shura whistled songs with the elders, made little statuettes, and helped where she could, cutting vegetables, preparing meat, and telling stories to the smallest children who did not yet have the age of going up the hill. She imagined a life like this.

This life broke with the yelling and crying of someone at the break of night, one of the hunters, a mother to someone else, lonesome, unaccompanied by any fellow trackers. She yelled of something; the approach from the sunrise side; danger, and what else. Shura, though she had not healed completely, could not stay in her corner, and was almost the first to be there, kneeling by Toma, one of the other mothers in the itino.

“We stood too long, we stood too long… Mara was captured…” she babbled.

Shura paused. It was incomprehensible. She thought it was the moment to cry, but something else took over.

“Toma, calm down, calm down, what is going on?”

“From the sunrise, they moved faster than we thought, they are too close… We were trapping far… And… I don’t know…”

Some hand pulled Shura from behind, trying to take her away. She had to stand, and unfortunately put too much weight on her ankle, and fell backwards. Three other people had come to talk to Toma, one of them Udu, one of them a sibling come of age, one of them an iheji, this last one already trying to make the crying woman chew on some plant. The person behind Shura was Yano.

“Mami! What is going on?”

Yano was shaking.

“Shura…”

“Mami, please.”

Yano had never noticed how the green of Shura’s eyes was much like Beoba’s, and the brown of her skin much like her own.

“My seedling, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry —”

“I need to know…”

“There are people coming from the sunrise, Shura.”

“The other peoples? The ones alongside us?”

“No. Not at all. Not alike. They take too much, leave too little. And… Where the cousins and the other peoples who had stopped walking stayed… They got taken… And…”

“Do they not know they are guests?”

“They do not care, Shura.”

“They…”

“No!” Yano’s face was becoming crooked with the effort of not crying.

Shura came forward and hugged her, and somehow, Yano didn’t cry.

“Is this why…”

“Yes. Yes. The things atop the hills told us to meet the cousins and the other peoples near the sunset.”

They paused.

“Mami, we need to go.”

“Shura, we wanted you to be a woman… I’m so sorry, you might…”

“I know. I’ll be a woman. I’ll go up the hill. I will come back to you, you go without me.”

“Shura, you will be captured.”

Around them, the adults, children, and elders were in high alert, and they seemed to be trying to carry as much as they could, find their carrier bags, their baskets, their packs.

“I will not.”

“Shura, I am your water-mother, you cannot do this, you cannot.”

There was going to be no discussion.

“Yes, mami.”

And Yano cried, and she nodded, and she said sorry. She needed to go. She needed to help. And she asked Shura to pack her things, so they could take the road, and promised her a future hill; and so she did, packed things in a carrier bag, a bow behind her back, plants against the pang of inaction, water, flint, and some dula fat.

She lit a torch and cast her shadow.

If the sunrise people saw fire on the hill, she imagined they’d climb towards it. Perhaps just some of them. Perhaps all of them. Climbing upon the hill, they would not follow the river path. Not following the river path, the itino could dissipate into the night. And one day, maybe, she’d find them again.

She was at the base of the hill, and so she began her hurried climb.

Going up, she had to resist looking downwards. She did not wish it a sacrifice. It didn’t matter that she knew it was so. She could only focus on the top of the hill, the approaching summit, the meeting-place. She wondered whether this was the same hill Babata, Tonoba, or other things had climbed up in the stories. She then wondered whether it was, maybe, the same hill Yano, Yala, Beoba, or Udu had climbed. She then decided to stop wondering and be at peace with knowing only that it was the hill she was climbing.

 Her ankle ached.

She was halfway up the hill, and now it was obvious. In the distance, moving through the clearings of the forest, were the torches and strange shadows of the sunrise people. She could not see any single one of them, but she saw them, their approach, which was less like a river, and more like a flying arrow.

A flying arrow.

There was no snow.

She looked to the sky, then to the earth, then to the lake far away.

To the hilltop. Then back to the forest.

She took an arrow, and around the arrow wrapped a cloth filled with the small and sparkling explosives, and with dula fat she saturated it, and with the torch she lit it. She imagined that, even if the wind took out the fire, then the little packets of mysterious dust inside would go up in flames on impact.

But the wind did not put out the fire once the arrow left her bow, and even she allowed herself to believe that the wind guided the arrow, which fell somewhere in front of the approaching group.

They’d used fire before, to shape the landscape, when the ground gave permission.

She’d seen it.

It always spread so quickly.

She was almost at the top. The hill was very tall, very tall indeed, and the fire still raged, but guided by the wind. Some had escaped, though, and she could already see them, even from so far away, climbing.

The top of the hill was nothing like what she imagined. At first, it seemed like it was simply a place. It was waving greenery, blooming flowers, coursing wind. It was cold and wet earth. It was pebbles. What had she imagined? She couldn’t tell anymore. Wet and waving, tears welled up in her eyes.

Through the blurriness of her tears, she could see perhaps the only remarkable thing about it all, and thus she had to wipe them away.

Upon the centre of that summit stood a single rock. It was only barely taller than papi Udu, who himself was not particularly tall, even shorter than Yala. The rock, despite its isolation, was not in disrepair; it was well cared for. Oval and grey, it bore the markings the iheji would leave on trees and stones around the edges, with an irregular curved line underlining, under which even more markings stood. The first markings were square and tall; the second markings were, though still angular, much more varied. Perhaps about three palms under the top of this rock was also carved a face; not lifelike, but still expressive, so alive, with a wide, squished nose, round and open eyes, and a mouth opened in a grin. She knew this was Shu. Her name, Shura, was given from her.

She stood there for far too long, staring into the round eyes of Shu. It was long enough that, once she broke from her trance, she could see the sunrise people halfway up the hill.

But this was not a thing to be rushed. There was nothing to rush, anymore. She was there. She was to become a woman.

Before it, she started a small fire, to give everything at the hill a place to huddle around.

“Mami Shu...” she started, but she stopped. She did not know why she stopped.

“Mami Shu, I am here, to give blessings and love and ask for favours and answers.”

The rock did not respond.

“Mami Shu, I am Shura, water-daughter of Yano, given-daughter of Beoba, love-daughter of Udu and Yala, sister of Tino, Toto, Baba, Gano. Mami Shu, I am here because I am to become a woman.”

The rock did not respond.

“Mami Shu, who is wind-daughter of Babata, I ask to become a woman.”

The rock did not respond.

“Mami Shu, I ask for protection of my itino.”

No response.

“Mami Shu, I ask…” Shura trailed off.

She could hear the approach. Their voices. Far, but loud. She hated them. Hatred was a feeling she’d always learned to put out so everyone could work on it with her. There was no one to work on it with her here. So she just hated them.

“Mami Shu, I ask why those of the sunrise forget they are guests.”

Still it was just rock.

“Mami Shu, please, answer me.”

Nothing.

She waited. And waited. And she knew she should be thinking of the approach of the people going up, and of how she’d find her way back to the itino, and how she’d help them, and how one day she’d have a child of her own womb, and how she would learn to use the bow and the arrow. But instead she just knelt there, on wet and cold earth, and felt as if the entire sky held her breath much as she did.

“Mami Shu… Have I… Offended you?...”

…

“Mami Shu… Look at me… Do you see a woman?”

The wind blew through her hair, and she felt a chill, and she was still holding her breath. But she could not hold it forever.

“Mami Shu…”

She expected the eyes to blink.

“Should I have asked for a second bowl of stew?”

And she made a sobbing sound. And she sobbed.

And, after, there were two sobbing sounds. She did not look up. Her tears were deep and cloudy, and blurred her vision very much, and she did not care anymore.

Arms came around her. Not from behind, as she’d feared, but instead from the front. Warm stone arms. They wrapped her in a hug. Sobbing so much, she thought she might dry out and become lighter. Around her, the arms were warmer, like rock that stood patiently under the suns, resting and feeling its embrace.

Upon the hilltop, the surviving members of the armed group found almost nothing. Waving grass. Tranquil flowers. Dry earth. Two tall and oval rocks; one of them marked and deeply held by the earth; the other unmarked, less weathered, and even somewhat loose. As they left, one of them placed a hand on the looser stone, wishing to see it tumbling down. It would have taken very little force. But he could not.