Great Sky Woman (43 page)

Chapter Fifty-nine

Runners had traveled to all the bomas, giving word. Those who agreed to follow the medicine woman’s vision would meet up with them on the trek north.

In the morning, those members of the gathered Ibandi committed to the northern journey had lined up at the foot of Great Sky, near the path that once had led to the home of hunt chiefs and which now led to their graves.

The pilgrims had water skins and dried meat and their children by the hand or in backpacks or on sleds.

Standing at the front of the line, his mother and uncle just behind him, his brother tagging at his side, Frog held his son tightly against his chest. Hawk’s widow had chosen not to make the journey, but a woman from Earth boma was still heavy with milk and would serve as wet nurse along the journey.

Stillshadow had declined to name the child, leaving that duty to the girl who had so recently earned her own title. Great Sky Woman—in his mind he still called her T’Cori—had promised to throw the bones before they began their journey.

But now she had other concerns, singing for the people, checking to make certain the herbs in their amulets were fresh, huddling with the dancers to see if their dreams had revealed new signs, new clues as to their destination.

He found her off to the right side of the line with the large girl he had come to know as Blossom. Blossom and her three daughters would accompany them on the trip, although he could tell she resented leaving Great Earth.

“Are you sure there is no other way?” Blossom was complaining as Frog approached. She trailed off, but not because of Frog. Another man was approaching the group with his head bowed.

“I would come with you if it is allowed,” Water Chant said, unable to meet Sky Woman’s eyes.

She stood, and it seemed to Frog that this man and Sky Woman shared some secret unknown to him.

“As Water boma’s father?” she asked.

Chant rubbed his head. “It has been a long time since I was boma father. And my boma was destroyed. I would go merely as a man. A man who once, long ago, made a great mistake.”

“You are Ibandi,” she said, taking his hands in hers. “We need every man, every woman.” She paused. “Every mother and father.”

She smiled at Frog, and now he had known her long enough to understand its meaning.
Later, I will tell you. Tonight. We will talk. And other things.

He could not wait.

Before the sun reached its height, Great Sky Woman came to him and took his boy. The infant did not scream at leaving his father, just looked up at the medicine woman and cooed. “I see his fire,” she said. “There is no darkness there. Just light and love enough to share with others. This one would take the darkness and bring light. This one is a healer,” she said, giving the boy back to Frog.

She bent, opening a deerskin pouch at her belt. Extracting a rattling handful, Sky Woman threw the bones and then studied them, smiling as if they merely confirmed what she already knew.

“Medicine Mouse,” she said. “That is his name.”

Then she gave Mouse back to Frog and walked along the line to speak to the others.

Great Sky Woman,
he thought, watching her.
Yes, that is the name of a woman of power.

But tonight, in my arms, you will be T’Cori.

Love has no name.

Frog pressed his son to his chest. Mouse smelled like warm dry grass, like fresh berries, like the first ray of dawn. His dark, laughing eyes held the promise Frog had left behind on the mountain. With his brothers. With his illusions. He ached, hoping that Mouse and his nameless holy woman might one day fill that emptiness.

Frog glanced at T’Cori. Was that right?
Great Sky Woman.
He did not know what she was. She might be human. She might be a child of the mountain. He did not know. He did know that she had given him hope.

For the first time
he
was the one who longed and could not fulfill that longing. He would learn to cope with it, as she had for so very long.

He could almost smile with the strangeness of it. Almost. One day, perhaps—not yet.

“Mother?” Sky Woman said, and indicated a sled constructed by Fire boma’s hunters. No need to wear the old legs out. Most of the dream dancers were journeying with them, but she had agreed to allow several to remain behind, to minister to the people who would remain in the shadow.

But Stillshadow was with them, and he found that incredibly comforting.

Stillshadow settled down upon the sled with a sigh. “It is good,” she said, and then glared at the two young men who had volunteered to pull. “Don’t jostle me,” she said, eyes narrowed. “These bones are brittle.”

She closed her eyes and then nodded, raising her hand. “We begin,” she said.

The line moved forward.

Frog walked on, his family and the woman he could never have at his side, strangely content. No one could know what lay ahead, but it did not matter.

Stillshadow was with them. And Sky Woman.

Even if they could not see Great Sky, the night itself was the mountain’s shadow, and the stars were their ancestors’ eyes.

That would have to be enough.

Epilogue

Atop Great Sky, the ground opened once again, and tongues of thick, sluggish lava bulged to the top. Not a liquid flow as might happen in some volcanoes, but a thick gray mass veined with fire. Slowly.

But in waves it came, waves that would cool. And in another day, or moon, or year, more lava would flow, so that in time, a decade, or a hundred years, or a thousand, the wound in Great Sky’s peak would heal, and He would be as tall and massive as ever He had been.

So that those men who might look up from the plains would never see the terrible wounds. Might, in time, forget the eruptions that had occurred, the violence that had once changed a world. So that, in time, all that might remain were misty legends.

Ten thousand years it might take, but it would happen.

The mountain had time.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Betsy Mitchell for the first thought, and the resources and time necessary to complete this project to the limit of my ability. To Chagga clansman Gebra Tilda, who hosted me and my daughter for two weeks in the most beautiful locales I’ve ever experienced. Special thanks to one of his assistants, Justo Kimro. To Buck Tilly, Arusha station manager for Thompson Safaris, whose services I would recommend without reservation.

In Gebra’s opinion, the word
Kilimanjaro
means “untravelable.” Stanford graduate students and Chagga tribeswomen Aika and Naike Aswai said that the word derives from
kilima
(hill or obstacle) and
nkyaro
(“in your way”), literally, “mountain in my path.” Tanzanian students are taught that it means “white mountain.”

Based on my own research, I think that the truth is found in a melding of the first two opinions.

To Mushtaq Ali Shah, my very dear friend, who by bizarre coincidence came to live in the precise locale I most needed to research. One senses Father Mountain’s hand in this.

To Honest, our guide on Kilimanjaro, Great Sky itself.

To Jon Wagner, Ph.D., Department of Anthropology at Knox College, and his wife, Jan Lundeen, of Sandburg University, whom I met aboard a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Arusha. Bless them for numerous supportive e-mails and a long and enlightening telephone conversation on the differences between pastoral peoples and hunter-gatherers. My Ibandi are a transitional culture, neither one nor the other. There were doubtless many such, before the pastorals won history’s race. Suppositions on the relationship between storytelling and human consciousness were originally presented by the author at the Smithsonian in February 2004, bolstered by assurances from Jan that I was not, in fact, insane. Thank you so much.

Thanks go also to Professor Barbara J. King and Professor Brian Fagen, wonderful teachers of biological anthropology and the history of ancient civilizations; Dr. Jeffrey T. Freymueller, Geophysical Institute University of Alaska, Fairbanks; and Richard B. Waitt, U.S. Geological Survey, Cascades Volcano Observatory.

Although the author had the thrill and honor of personally walking much of the territory covered in this book, visual references remain as valuable as gold. I would be remiss not to mention the IMAX films
Kilimanjaro
and
Serengeti
in this regard.

There are several plants used by the indigenous population to modify consciousness in advantageous ways. One,
Hoodia gordonii,
has come to the attention of the West as an appetite suppressant, represented here by the Ibandi’s “fill-cactus.” Hoodia works extremely well, but there are a number of faux herbals on the market. In addition, you may believe that pharmaceutical companies are scrambling to patent it and deny the San people the benefits of their thousand-year practical research project. One brand that both contains the genuine product and respects the rights of the indigenous people can be found at the Web site www.desertburn.com.

In my opinion the human aura exists, but whether it is a phenomenon existing separate from the perceptive faculties of the observer, I cannot say. In such a case it would be referred to as an “artifact effect” or a “complex equivalency,” where the mind analyzes a gigantic amount of subliminal data, then produces a simple visual or kinesthetic symbol.

On the other hand, the phenomenon may simply be the nonphysical aspect of the human experience. Whichever it is, I would like to thank Sri Chinmoy, with whom I first experienced this, and Harley Reagan, Diane Nightbird, and the teachers and students of the Deer Tribe Metis Medicine teachings, who have allowed me many times over the years to study things that, as an outsider, I had no right to expect to learn. I love you all, and thank you for being my friends, family and teachers over the years.

Any anthropological accuracies in this book are due to the help of those already mentioned, as well as more helpful folks than I have time, space or memory to thank. Inaccuracies and flights of fantasy are the author’s own.

Observant anthropology buffs will quickly grasp that I have adapted many of the technological and life patterns of the !Kung and other Khoisan peoples of South Africa for my Ibandi. The sources of this information are too numerous to mention, but looming large among them are
Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman,
by Marjorie Shostak, and
Hunter-Gatherers of the Kalahari,
edited by Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore.

While there are many similarities between my upper-paleolithic hunter-gathers and various real-world indigenous peoples, Ibandi social customs are my own invention.

A very special thanks to my daughter, Lauren Nicole Barnes, who shared the greatest adventure of my life, researching this book in beautiful Tanzania. A doting father is inordinately grateful both for cozy nights on the freezing lip of Ngorogoro crater and for moving swiftly when a crazed Floridian tourist induced an elephant to charge.

For my wife, novelist Tananarive Due, who held down the fort, encouraged me, and in general has functioned as the finest muse a man could ever have, I love you, now and always.

Finally, to all of those who have stood beside me all these years…

For those who believe in the unity of man and myth worldwide…

This one is for you.

Covina, California,
November 8, 2005
www.lifewrite.com