Chapter 13

The relatively balmy, but still chilly, days of Summer gradually gave way to those of Autumn. As the oak and ash foliage changed hue, Ivory's life settled into a pattern as deceptively stable as Glade's had once been. She wasn't pleased that she'd become the chief's concubine, but the duty brought with it the benefit that she no longer had to accompany the other women in their daily woodland forage. And however jealous she was of Glade's love, she'd grown to accept her lover's occasional infidelity. In fact, she was even persuaded to share her connubial love for Glade with Oak Leaf.

As a lover, Oak Leaf was no match at all. It was Glade as ever who took the lead, but as Oak Leaf's inhibitions shed while her passion grew, she was revealed as a lover whose enthusiasm compensated for lack of practice. Although Ivory appreciated the taste of Oak Leaf's tender, firm flesh, she also regretted that the woman with whom she shared her body with the shaman was not the husband Ivory had once expected as her due.

Not all Ivory's life was a constant bout of lovemaking, although it sometimes seemed to be so. There was much to learn from the shaman and most of this was of a practical nature. She was taught the properties of selected herbs and fungi and for which ailments they were most efficacious. She was taught about their non-medicinal recreational use and exactly how they were to be prepared. She was taught how honey and fruit could metamorphose into alcohol. Much of what Ivory was taught was concerned with the care of illnesses and wounds for which no drug was appropriate. She learnt how to set splints for broken limbs and how to identify those ailments for which the best advice was rest and recuperation.

Glade also instructed her apprentice in incantations and dances about which she adamantly claimed there was no mystery or magic. "It's what people expect from a shaman and it wouldn't be right to disappoint them."

The shaman taught Ivory wholly practical skills such as how to mould clay into the shape of casks and urns and then heat them into firm but fragile use. Ivory learnt how to weave reeds into baskets or cord. She learnt how to knap flints and carve bone to make delicate instruments that could be used to sew together wounds or clothing. Glade also taught Ivory some rudimentary words from the many languages at her disposal that she used in her incantations.

"What language did you speak when you lived in the river village?" Ivory asked.

"When we spoke to those from other tribes we still used the language of the Knights," said Glade. "This was the one legacy of the Knights that survived, although Dignity tried to learn the language of the Forest People. She had difficulty understanding the concepts of forest-life, but she was soon able to talk relatively freely. It was peculiar to hear my tongue uttered by a non-native. She's probably the only person I've ever known who learnt to speak our language and who wasn't born in the forest. The Knights' other practices and customs were soon completely forgotten. As the moons passed, we were no longer recognisable as the shaven creatures from the time of our enslavement. My hair grew from stubble until it cascaded over my ears and eventually onto my shoulders. Not all tribes grew hair like mine or even yours. The Knights had straight hair like ours, but it was jet black, darker than even their skin, and shone with a bluish lustre in the sun. Other tribes had dull dark hair that sometimes curled around on itself. Fern's lover, Mahogany, had hair that barely grew longer than a finger in length and it was so tightly curled that it seemed even shorter."

Tree Shrew and Glade laboured hard in their ambition to have children but their lovemaking soon became as much an act of desperation as one of pleasure. Glade at last believed she was pregnant when two or three moons passed by when she no longer vented blood between her thighs. She was troubled not by the familiar pains of menstruation but by new more frightening ones. Modesty advised her, as she gripped her baby to her bosom, that these were signs that she would soon show more visible evidence of oncoming motherhood.

Then, after a night of stabbing pain and vomiting, Glade miscarried. This was the first of many such miscarriages that were to blight her in the future.

"It seemed as if I was destined to never have children," Glade sighed.

"But you did later," Ivory reminded the shaman.

"For someone who's made love to as many men as I have and so often, I should now be the mother of an entire tribe," Glade remarked. "But the first loss was the worst of all. It troubled Tree Shrew even more than it did me."

He truly and deeply wished to be a father. After Glade miscarried he made love more often to other women, including Dignity. Most of his lovers were Forest Women, such as Duiker, a girl two or three years younger than Glade, and Genet, a woman several years older. For the first time in her life Glade felt the pangs of jealousy, even of rejection. She relapsed into the custom of fucking the men of the village as randomly as she could and slept every night together with Macaque and Dignity.

The life Glade was now enjoying was as idyllic as any she would ever know. It was almost a welcome reprise of childhood. Everyone was accorded equal status and it seemed that the village was bathed in smiles. However, as Glade couldn't yet know, this was a state of affairs that wouldn't last forever.

As the moons passed and the villagers mostly forgot their habit of servitude, they were reminded of their shared legacy when more strangers found their way through the forest to the village. Most were not Forest People and had abandoned villages that had been seized from the Knights. The new regime that prevailed after the revolution wasn't to everyone's liking.

Mimosa's tribe had ascended in status from being just one of the many enslaved tribes to one that assumed primacy over all the others. Those like the Forest People who were least adaptable to the Mountain Warriors' culture discovered that they were no longer so welcome. As the refugees arrived in dribs and drabs, some opting to settle down in the village and others to move on, they carried news of the world Glade had left behind.

A new history was taking shape of the recent revolution and it was one which differed from the account Glade knew from overhearing her captors' conversation. The story now was that there had been a rebellion led by a martyr who had died an honourable death and was now venerated as the father of the revolution. Glade was surprised to learn that the martyr's name was Rock Baboon and she wondered whether it was the man of the same name who'd been murdered in her village. Perhaps it was just a very common name. The tale was also of the Mountain Warriors' Queen who had led the resultant revolt and that it was she who'd assassinated the King of the Knights. This surprised Glade even more. She'd not been aware that Mimosa's people even had a Queen. But the stories that circulated were undoubtedly rousing. These were tales of her bravery in the face of the Knights' cruel vindictiveness and of how she inspired revolt among other tribes as well as the Mountain Warriors. The legend of her courage and leadership was further embellished by reports from the more recent visitors who, even though they'd abandoned the savannah, were united in their respect for this Queen. Glade was also stirred to admiration.

Then she discovered that the Queen's name was Mimosa. And not only this, but that she had been the slave and forced concubine of the wicked and thoroughly evil Queen of all Knights.

This was the first time that Glade discovered how legends were manufactured, of their potency and, most of all, how very untrue they could be.

"Are you saying that this Queen Mimosa was the same woman who shared your hut with Lady Demure?" asked Ivory who wondered how this could be.

"The very same."

"How can that be?" wondered Ivory. She attached great value to the legends of her tribe and had never once doubted their truth.

"Evidently, Mimosa had chosen to reinvent herself as she would like to be remembered," said Glade with an ironic smile. "The worst of it was not just that Mimosa was now the person of the highest status in what had once been the Knights' domain but that her people had resurrected the same hierarchical order that was so alien to my tribe."

As was to be the pattern for the rest of Glade's life, when change came, as in retrospect it was so obvious it would, it came unexpectedly. It was while Glade was making love with Macaque and Dignity that she heard a hubbub of excitement from outside their hut. Although it was midday and most people would normally be either hunting in the forest or sheltering in their huts away from the oppressive midday heat, these were the animated sounds most often heard at dusk or in the early morning.

Glade was enjoying cunnilingus and didn't welcome the interruption. Dignity's strong white teeth were chewing her labia and her own tongue and fist was busily agitating Macaque's moist vagina, which had already spurted onto Glade's chin and cheeks. The smell of Macaque's pleasure was overpowering and intoxicating, but Glade was intent on returning her tongue to Dignity's salty sweat-sodden black skin, perhaps even to chew once again on the odorous hairs under her armpits.

The light into the hut was momentarily obscured as Tree Shrew scrambled in. He crouched down by the three women and smiled indulgently at their lovemaking. It was likely that he was tempted to take part as he would have been very welcome to do, but instead he addressed the women with urgency.

"We have visitors," he announced.

"So?" said Macaque. "Can't it wait? We're busy."

"There are seven or eight of them," Tree Shrew continued heedlessly. "They're Mountain Warriors, like Mimosa, and they want to address the whole village."

"Do they wish to join our village?" asked Dignity. She asked in good faith, but it was clear she was alarmed by the announcement. No Mountain Warrior had ventured into the village before and she remembered too well their threats to kill her and the other surviving Knights.

"I think they're a kind of delegation from the Queen," he said. "You know, this Queen Mimosa we've heard so much about."

"I think we'll stay here," said Macaque, on behalf of herself and her lover. "My last memories of that woman aren't very good ones."

Glade decided otherwise and followed Tree Shrew out of the hut. At the village's heart was a gathering of all the villagers with the exception of the refugee Knights. Or all the Knights that is, except Venerable who sat behind everyone else hoping that his shoulder length hair and thick beard might disguise him from the delegation who were sitting opposite the villagers. The Mountain Warriors were a mixture of men and women, all with bushy black hair. They were armed with stone-tipped spears and wore about their shoulders, but not below the bosom, the skins of zebra, cheetah and baboon, intertwined with bright feathers.

"Didn't they cover their genitals or breasts?" asked Ivory.

"There are fewer tribes than you imagine that believe it shameful to display proof of their sex," Glade remarked.

The delegation was kneeling and strangely silent. This simple fact was enough to hush the normally boisterous villagers. Glade could see that it would be prudent that one of her company should take the initiative of addressing the visitors and as she had learnt a few words of Mimosa's language during her enslavement, she could see that the onus was on her.

"We welcome you to our humble village," she said in as close as she could remember to the mode of address Mimosa might employ. "We wish you fruitful hunting and good eating."

"You speak the language of the Mountain Warriors?" asked the short slightly tubby woman who was acting as the delegation's chief spokesperson.

"Only a few words," said Glade. She then spoke in the most universally understood language: "Most of us speak only the language of the detestable Knights." And, as she guessed was appropriate, she diplomatically spat on the ground.

The woman was clearly impressed by Glade's show of abhorrence toward the Knights and spoke almost kindly.

"The Knights' language will have to do," she said in a thick accent with a clumsy syntax that betrayed lack of recent use. "You will be pleased to know that after a period of transition after you have all learnt the language of our Queen, you will no longer need to utter the hated hyena barks of our cruel tormentors. In fact, you will be forbidden to do so."