Sand Glass (14 page)

We entered in
late afternoon a smooth valley. Here there seemed to be no breeze.
It was still, mellow and warmer than we had yet been used to.
Marcia had furnished us three with water bottle and insisted we
drink at regular intervals. I took a sip from mine, and stared
ahead. I thought I saw movement. But it might have been a trick of
the evening light. My senses told me it was not so.

Marcia slowed
right down, and we continued along this grassy valley bottom. There
was the feeling of being watched. But not by any unnatural
presence. It was as if the trees themselves were observing us. I
recalled then Andre’s story of the hunt, and wondered how loud the
buggy must seem to the tribes people. The sides of the valley
opened out and to our right the gushing of water makes the river’s
edge even though we could not see it from our present position. We
were on the wider plains.

We carried on a
little further. It was time to find a place to stop. We made it to
a rocky area, below which the river dug its course. In a small
wooded glade we parked the vehicle.

Marcia sat with
her hands on the wheel listening for a few minutes. I felt it too.
There was something there still. Or rather someone. We left the
buggy, and taking the canteens for water, went down to the river to
fill them. Marcia straightened up first and froze. She stared at a
spot a few yards distant. I followed her gaze. There was a person
sat quietly on a rock. How long they had been there motionless, who
could say? But there it was. I didn’t know them. The man turned his
head very slightly. And as if on a signal at least twenty others
appeared out of nowhere.

Marcia very
slowly put the canteen on the ground. She pushed her shirt sleeve
up her left arm, so that the tribal tattoo was clearly visible.
Janey stood up and kept herself still. I had no idea how this must
seem to her. I had only the experience in the caves to guide me and
this was no less alarming.

We waited and
then there was a shift of movement, like gust of wind rippling
suddenly through a corn field. Someone moved through the others,
and came out from among them towards us. He smiled broadly and
shifted easily from one foot to the other. I was relieved then, as
we had met before.

‘Andre!’ I
said, ‘am I glad to see you!’

We caused quite
a stir then. As several immediately went to tell the chief that we
were here.

‘You haven’t
changed into a Man yet!’ Andre was still smiling.

‘Oh… You’re
joking.’ I said, ‘but something is odd about you. You look
older.’

‘I am,’ he said
proudly, ‘I lead the main hunt for my father. We are the most
skilled. It has been a long time since you disappeared into the
mountain place of the heavy-footed tribe. We wondered if you had
found what you were looking for.’

‘Some of it…
and we lost something too. We had to flee.’

‘Ah!’ he seemed
pleased with me, ‘You have feet of a bird; that you can flee your
pursuers.’

‘Yes; that, and
a hot wired car.’

‘Come with us.
We will feed you tonight. Your machine is also welcome.’

‘You mean the
Buggy?’

‘Yes. She is
very noisy. But we like her.’ Andre glanced back up the
banking.

I saw Janey in
the corner of my eye; ‘Oh dear Lord! Real people. Out here!’ she
seemed at such a point of stunned awe, that it took several minutes
to persuade her not to get a camera out.

Several hours,
and a lot of food and drink later; we had made up most of what
turned out to be a whole year in time for the Summerland tribe. We
had heard of various unsuccessful forays into the plains and
forests by the people who lived in the mountain. It turned out that
they simply couldn’t take enough of the drugs to be able to operate
in this place without extreme discomfort.

‘You’d need a
truckload of stabilisation drugs to even get close to this place,’
Marcia told us, ‘They can’t keep giving someone way above the max
threshold dose for long without something going hideously wrong.’
she waved a meaty bone at me, ‘You saw what happened.’

‘With Janey?
But that’s opposite to that?’

‘No. the thing
is more or less the same,’ Marcia put the piece of meat down, and
took the cup of wine that was offered to her, as many of the
younger people brought food and drinks to feed the hunters and the
chief.

I looked
towards Heelio. He sat in a calm circle of stillness. He ate and
drank well, but with a studied calmness, that made us all seem very
giddy indeed by comparison.

‘Ah!’ said
Heelio, ‘we know the tribe they are. They have no soul for our
place. And where the soul is empty, the heart and mind cannot
follow.’

‘What about the
body?’ I said. I guess I was having a stupid moment.

‘The body needs
to listen to the mind. If its voice cannot be heard then you will
get sick. And need to be repaired.’

'How did we
manage to come into this place at first?'

'Ah!' Heelio
was very still, 'We saw the path. It is hard to explain.... For you
and your tribe you have a word for it. You have used the word, but
we do not use it.'

'What word?' I
was intrigued, I felt that a deeper understanding may help my fear
subside.

'Your chief
used this word to tell the way you have your tribe; how they stay
together.'

'Jared?' It
hurt me to say his name; but I needed to acknowledge him now, to
Heelio.

'Yes. The Man
called Jared. Your Chief; the one who is travelling the paths of
the Moon, until the Great Water wets his feet.'

'What was
that?' said Marcia having heard Jared's name. Janey turned too, and
stared very hard at Heelio, waiting for him to tell us more. There
was a ripple through the room as everyone fell silent. I could hear
the stuttering of the lamps, and hear my own heartbeat in my
ears.

'There is a
word we do not know,' said Heelio to all the company, 'Their tribe
say "Loyalty". Is it not so? It is a strong thing, creating order
and strength of will. They care for those who are sick, and talk
wisdom to those whose strength is waning like the Moon's second
course.'

A murmur of
understanding passed through the people for a moment, then they
were still again.

'It is very
true,' I spoke clearly so they all could hear, 'we care for this a
lot. But there is a better word. I am to go and find my.... Chief.
The one called Jared. In the world I come from he is sick.... And I
hope to bring him back from the place he has gone. I call this
"Love" because I made an oath in a place that we understand to
represent the err.... Creator. I care for him as my brother. I will
do what I can.'

Then they were
all silent for the longest time. I began to feel foolish. Then a
dark-haired woman stood. I recognised her as the one who had first
approached and examined me the last time we were here.

'I am Leanna;
as all of the tribe know. I have seen many times in the eyes of
this young kinsman. He carries the words of things that may be, or
things that could be, he speaks with his eyes of other places, some
that are very strange. They have plants in patterns like when a
tribe mark is made with order. And a great one cares for the
growing things. He comes from this tribe as well as his other
tribe. He Loves them differently but would walk to the Moon's path
for each of these.'

They were all
looking at me. I didn't understand what was really being said about
me, but guessed that my mother Mary Anne Milnes was being
described. Ordered plants sounded just as good a description of a
nursery as I could hope to get.

I waited.
Heelio nodded to one of those sat near him. A moment or too later
something wrapped in a leather parcel was passed to him. Marcia
pushed me forward to Heelio who beckoned me towards him. He
unwrapped the object. It was a roundish large pebble. At its heart
it had a glow. Heelio held it in both hands. At his touch the light
increased. It became very bright. He put it back into the cloth and
its light faded to flickering phosphorescence.

'Now you must
feel this thing. Hold out your hands.'

I did as I was
told. The stone was cool in my palm. There was nothing unusual
about its texture or shape, and yet a moment later it felt as if it
was expanding outwards. I looked down. I had begun to glow. Softly
at first, then gradually brighter; a warm tone like the burning of
a coal in a fire.

‘Think about
someone who is important to you,’ instructed Heelio, ‘then it will
show you how it is to work with your touch.’

I focused on my
mother. I thought of the plants in the nursery, and how she tended
them and made them strong. I felt it again, this time in a more
springy sensation. It glowed now a warm pinkish colour that moved
towards a clear blue at it centre.

‘Another.’ said
Heelio.

Janey came into
to my mind most strongly then: and immediately it swirled with
twisting shapes of gold and electric blue, twirling with the energy
of two competing essences. I almost loosened my grip. It became
more fierce and energetic until I was blinded. Marcia put her hand
on my arm. Almost immediately it stilled. She was represented by a
soft violet glow that was steady and not raging or conflicted.

‘Now.’ Heelio
said firmly, ‘think of Jared, your Chief. Then we can help you
travel there.’

I thought of
him then. When we had first met, so seemingly inconsequential in
that moment, when others were loud and pushed to the fore; he had
been a constant presence. I remember things he said. How it all was
meant to build us, to help us; to protect us. And then I thought of
that last moment and the fading glow. And lastly the stone chapel
and the sweet herbs and the pendant I pressed into his hand. This
time I had not felt anything resist or push against my grip.
Instead I saw it burn like a multi-coloured torch, an intense flame
that balled around my hands as if they were buried in a pom-pom
made of light. Yet it felt cool, like water flowing over my
fingers. As if I had dipped them in a waterfall. This time I felt
calm, I was not troubled or afraid. I turned to Heelio.

‘So how do I
get there?’ I asked, ‘Can you show me the way to the place where
there are dark rolling hills?’

Andre came to
me and held out the leather wrapping. I put the stone into it, and
the glow returned to its quiet inner glimmer, just as before.

‘The land of
the Moon,’ said Heelio, ‘it is easily found; but not easily
crossed. And none of the tribe who travel into that place return
again to this one.’

I looked into
his face; but it still had the same untroubled stillness about
it.

‘Who of your
people go there?’ I asked.

‘We all
do.’

‘You said some
do this. So what does this mean?’

‘Ah! I see the
difference between us. You have another way to pass to the Great
Water.’

‘What is
that?’

‘I think that
my son will instruct you. And tomorrow we will show you the way to
the edge of that place.’

We were in the
cave that Jared, Oliver, Marcia and I had been in when we first
were welcomed to the Summerland Tribe. It seemed quite the most
homely place now. And the fire that burned dispelled the creeping
sense of fatalistic seriousness that had begun to infect me, in
what I now realised was a negative way. Heelio’s demonstration with
the stone had made Janey quite animated. She felt that there was
some relationship between the electrical signals in the brain and
the way the stone reacted. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘we have used
quartz crystals to tune into radio signals.’

I made no
attempt to challenge her. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps science
could explain any of the phenomena that we had encountered this
late summer and autumn time. Yet the feeling from the inside had
been quite different. Jared’s admonishment came back to me: if you
what to know it, you must see it for yourself. If science was not
excluded then this was also true. And there was no argument between
these different ways of seeing. Maybe it was only our fear that
told us there had to be.

Andre came in
with a scroll, the first I had ever seen in this place. He spread
it out on a little cloth that was rolled out for the purpose. It
had pictures rather than words to represent the information. He
pointed to the human figure.

‘This is a man.
He is nearing his time.’

We saw then
other images. There was a man folding his robes and giving his
hunting equipment to another man. Then we saw him standing with two
others at the edge of two upright rocks. He appeared to be
kneeling. One of the others looked surprisingly like Heelio.

‘The man then
walks into the land,’ said Andre, ‘that is the time of not
returning.’

‘You mean this
is how you celebrate their death?’ said Marcia in a surprised
tone.

Andre looked at
her blankly.

‘When life
ends?’ Janey suggested.

A thought
occurred to me: ‘So what you are saying Andre is that you do not
have any graves?’

‘I don’t know
that word.’ He frowned. His attempt to teach us something was
perhaps not turning out as he had hoped.

Janey seemed
annoyed; ‘So you don’t have a funeral? They just go and die in the
wilderness?’

‘Die?’ Andre
regarded her soberly. I wondered if he was calculating the amount
of trouble he would get himself into if he should ever decide to
find a suitable mate.

‘I think it
would help,’ Marcia suggested, ‘if we found out what we all do have
in common.’

A thought
occurred to me: ‘Andre, if you are on a hunt and the wild animal
was very fierce and strong and it attacked one of the hunters and
overpowered him; what might happen then?’

I saw the light
go on in Andre’s eyes; ‘You tell of the hunt… we sometimes take the
walk of the moon early from the hunt; or if it is better the hunter
can be carried home to find rest…. Then for a while they will not
hunt.’