Chapter 14

Birth, death and marriage. These were the three most important events in life. These were also the occasions where Ivory, as the shaman's apprentice, was now required to play an important part. It was Glade whose role was the most vital, particularly with regards to giving birth. Her midwifery skills were in greatest demand during the summer, as this was the time of the year when most women gave birth. Sadly, Glade and Ivory were also in attendance for the sombre duty of burying the bodies of a quarter of those same newly-born who the spirits had deemed were not to stay long in the world.

If death took away an older member of the tribe, especially a man, the solemn ceremony of commemorating the passing of his life was conducted by Chief Cave Lion. A man had to reach adulthood and to have wed to be so honoured. Fortunately there had been only two deaths that summer, apart from that of Ivory's mother. Glade recited songs of a dirge-like nature in these ceremonies whose lyrics she fashioned to celebrate the virtues of the deceased.

Weddings were occasions of great rejoicing. These ceremonies were always led by the chief. The principal duty for the shaman and her apprentice was to provide intoxicants and song. There was only one wedding that summer and that was between Elk Antler and Dandelion. Ivory's feelings were decidedly mixed. Even while she was being coached by Glade in the words and rhythm of the wedding song, Ivory lamented that it wasn't she who would be taking the wedding vows. Rather than give her away, the chief was much more likely to just fuck her.

As Ivory became more confident in her role as the shaman's apprentice, she also became steadily more convinced of the spiritual value of the sacred rites. This was very much in spite of Glade's scepticism. Ivory believed the rites awakened the spirits with at least as much conviction as Glade insisted that they were an empty pantomime whose main value was to satisfy the villagers' need for ceremony and mystery.

"You don't have to believe in the spirits to act as their messenger," Ivory argued. "They're still there. Can't you feel them?"

Glade shook her head sadly. "The only spirits in the rituals are those awakened by alcohol and hemp. If you wish to believe in the validity of the rites and their efficacy don't let me persuade you otherwise. I often feel like a fraud. Perhaps it's best that my successor should be someone with faith. But you have much more to learn. The nights will only get longer and the harsh winter trek is not much more than a moon away."

Winter was the season of hardship. It brought want, sometimes starvation and always death, especially amongst the children. This was the season when the shaman's services were most in demand and this year Ivory would share in her duties. She would help bury the dead, comfort the living, and seek succour and benison in the most unpromising wintry valleys. Already the swallows had flown off, the mammoth herds were restless and the sky was streaked by migrating geese. Sometimes there was a sprinkle of snow on the grass at night. Every morning the earth was hard with the night's frost. Soon, it would snow and not melt in the morning sun. Then the villagers would have to trek southwards away from the carpet of white snow that only the hardiest animal could survive.

"What if we stayed here all winter, like the Reindeer Herders?" Ivory asked Glade. "There are musk oxen, elk, hare and fox."

"Then your tribe would no longer be the tribe of Mammoth Hunters," said Glade. "There are no aurochs. No rhinoceros. The snow drifts cover every tepee from the frozen soil to the height of a man's waist. There isn't enough food for everyone to survive the winter. If the village dwindled in size through starvation to no more than a handful, Chief Cave Lion would be saddened to have dominion over only as many people as he can count on one hand."

"I always feel sorrow when we depart in the winter," Ivory sighed. "It must be blissful to live in one place all the time. Didn't you feel sad when you left your village by the river all those years ago?"

"I did," Glade admitted. "Very much so. But I was a child of the forest. It also pleased me to wander freely under its canopy."

The Forest People were the only refugees who felt any joy at being in the woods when they gathered together well away from the river. The Knights made up a third of their number. Only two villagers came from other tribes and they had come only because they were the Forest People's lovers. Some Forest People, like Macaque, had come because they couldn't bear to be parted from their lovers, but most abandoned the river village because they didn't wish to yield their hard won freedom to Queen Mimosa's tribe.

It was a sombre gathering. The refugees were anxious that Lady Geranium's warriors might pursue them so they spent a restless night under the tall trees, aware that the following day they would need to get much further away. Glade was now part of a ragged troop in a mostly unfamiliar forest and she had abandoned some of her closest friends and lovers. Macaque and Dignity were amongst the refugees but not, Glade was sad to see, either Tree Shrew or Fern.

It wasn't until after more than a day's travel that the company felt sufficiently safe that they could risk the noisy pleasures of sex. When the Forest People did so, their lovemaking was altogether more restrained than the traditional wild orgiastic coupling.

There was no real discussion as to where the troop should go beyond that it should be as far as possible from the plains where Queen Mimosa ruled. The troop processed along the meandering river, which they relied on to satisfy their newly discovered appetite for fish and other river life, but stayed mostly within the shadow of the trees at the forest edge.

The river steadily changed in its character as the refugees wandered. It became wider. It was joined at intersections by other rivers and streams. At first the river was shallow enough for the refugees to wade over, so their trail alternated from one bank to the other according to how easy it was to proceed. After a while, it became too wide to cross so easily. It was also much more dangerous. Hippopotami and crocodiles frequented the deeper waters in much greater numbers. The river had now become much less friendly, although there was a corresponding increase in its bounty of fish, water fowl and otter.

It also became obvious that Glade's troop weren't the only people in the forest. They found the charcoaled remains of fires had been abandoned for no more than the passage of a single moon. There were signs on the trees and forest floor that others had recently wandered along the same animal trails that they were following.

"We should make friends with these people," remarked Macaque excitedly. "They are people of the forest as we are. Surely they would recognise us as kindred spirits."

"Or they might just as easily kill and eat us," said Grasshopper who was one of those who'd accompanied Orchid to Glade's ancestral forest. The deep scars on his buttocks and chest were a permanent reminder of this bloody encounter.

In any case, the Knights in the company wanted to get beyond the forest. They hoped that the river might lead to another open river bank where they might once again lay down their roots. However, as the days passed by, this possibility became steadily more and more remote.

Glade's troop did eventually meet the mysterious forest dwellers. It was in a forest clearing of the kind that had become more common as the river became wider. In these open spaces, baboon, deer, antelope and even rhinoceros and elephant gathered, though these animals were prudently wary of their human visitors. Along with the larger game, there were also similarly large predators, including leopard, bear and even lions.

There were perhaps a dozen or so naked forest dwellers walking across the clearing with their children. Both companies, including the children, were wary and hushed. Although there were similar numbers on each side, the indigenous tribe was armed with rather better spears. The men and women had sharpened bones threaded through their nostrils and earlobes.

"It was the first time I viewed my tribe as others might see us," Glade told Ivory as they gathered medicinal herbs and fungi in a copse just half a day's walk from the village. "We must have appeared as threatening as the Knights should have seemed to us when we first met them. I thought that because we were accompanied by children we would seem less like invaders and more like innocent trespassers, but these bone-nosed people regarded us with suspicion and probably even fear. Although with our long hair and bushy groins we couldn't have looked less like the shaven Knights, we were still armed with spears and flints."

There was a long tense moment during which one set of people with unsmiling faces regarded the other. Eyes flicked warily from side-to-side. The natives tightly gripped their children's hands. Something sooner or later would have to give and Glade was adamant that she wouldn't be the one to make the first move.

It was Fortitude who finally gathered the courage to speak. Just as Flying Squirrel had, he stepped forward towards one man who, for no reason than his position relative to the others, seemed more senior than the others. He addressed him in the Knights' language, which was, of course, the only one he knew. His words were as meek and unthreatening as it was possible with a vocabulary more appropriate for aggression. He gestured towards his company and told the bone-nosed people that he and his friends had come in peace, wished them no harm and wanted only to exchange gifts. He held out his spear in the only conciliatory gesture his tribe knew.

If he'd expected a warm welcome, he was to be very disappointed. Rather than smile with the same warmth that Fortitude expressed, the natives were agitated. They shouted at each other and their visitors in a language that was as incomprehensible to Glade as Fortitude's was to them.

A spear was thrown at Fortitude which punctured his thigh just above the knee. As he fell to the ground a stone hit him in the chest. Glade didn't want to witness more and fled as fast as she could into the forest away from the scene of bloodshed. As she ran, following the same path as the others, she could hear Mercy screaming behind her as she also ran. Fortitude's wife was torn between her natural desire not to share her husband's fate and her guilt at abandoning him. They ran and ran—the Forest People the more swiftly—until, when it at last seemed safe, they rested, panting and spitting, in the shelter of the forest canopy under an echoing cacophony of startled monkeys.

"So these River Forest People were a wicked tribe like the despicable Knights and Mountain Warriors," remarked Ivory.

"I don't think they were," said Glade. "Yes, they did attack Fortitude. It's very likely they killed him too, although we were never to know for sure of course. But I think it was because he spoke in the language of the Knights. They probably recognised it from the time when the Knights invaded their forest and enslaved them, just as they did my tribe. If they were truly evil, why didn't they chase after us? Why did they spare the two children, even though they ran rather slower than anyone else and could easily have been captured? I think they were just frightened and reacted like everyone does when confronted by a threat. You'd act just the same if you were threatened by a lion or a hyena. You wouldn't be so stupid as to fight it and you would most certainly not expect to make friends with it."

Ivory was unconvinced. "The climate may be warm in these far distant southern lands where you come from, but the people appear to be cold and heartless. The Knights, the Mountain Warriors and the cannibals who invaded your forest: they're all monsters. All they know is brutality and cruelty. They are naked and bestial savages. I am lucky indeed to have been born amongst a people governed by spirits who make us wise and tolerant."